Then you'll need to throw out the whole concept of copyleft, upon which the Free Software Foundation is based. You cannot have copyleft without the legal basis for the ownership of creative works. And that's copyright. You cannot control the distribution of a work unless you own it.
Of course, there will be those that argue that without copyright there would be no need for copyleft, but that ignores the fact that the four "freedoms" of the FSF cannot be guaranteed without it. One might be able to legally share copies of a copyright-less binary, but without the source code to it, no one can improve it.
Do I go with Linux, which might fork, or choose something else? If I go with Linux, I do not know if someone will fork it next year. How will I know which fork to switch to when it happens? I need to know that my applications will be unchanging and static.
Therefore I'm going to stick with Windows 98, which I know will always be there until the end of time...
Very good point. But the article in question was written for FreeBSD users. It's not how to use FreeBSD's steganography, but rather, how to use steganography on FreeBSD. As such it's not much different than articles like "How to run a webserver on your Linux box".
The Libertarian party is in a tough bind regarding free trade agreemants. On one hand, they directly support their platform. On the other hand, NAFTA and WTO are also super-governmental organizations that have the authority on paper to over-rule US sovereignty.
NAFTA and the WTO have nothing whatsoever to do with free trade. Though he wasn't a libertarian, I think Buchanan said it when he referred to NAFTA [gross paraphrase]: "if it were a true free trade agreement it wouldn't be hundreds of pages long."
I respect the position, but disagree. Free trade amongst truly free nations is good. Free trade with tyrants is selling out American principles of equality and freedom.
While I am not against the concept of tarrifs, I am against them being used as an intrument for social change in other nations. I would argue for uniform tarrifs modified only by objective means, and not diplomatic negotiation.
Of course companies need to get out new products at certain dates. And of course they'll know those dates sometimes years in advance. Sometimes the competition will come out with a product that moves up the deadlines months earlier than would otherwise be reasonable. But companies don't treat software like they do other products, which leads to absurd practices.
Example. Ford knows they need a new model ready to ship in late 2006. What do they do? If they were a software company, they would do the following. There would be a requirement to use a hybrid engine in their heavy duty pickup trucks, with an increase of 10% horsepower over the diesel model. Existing door locks would be deemed obsolete, and biometric keyed locks would be demanded, and not until the beta would they realize that they needed an infrastructure for the dealerships to key the locks to the customers. There would also be ten new never-before-seen-anywhere features on the trucks, all of which must be patentable, in order convince the customer that the vehicle is something new. Such features would include ceiling airbags, liquid cooled tires, and a voice controlled television embedded in the steering column.
But that's not how Ford, or any non-software company works. Ford needs to distinguish themselves from their competition, to be sure. They do so by redesigning the look of their products. The engines mostly stay the same. The feature sets mostly stay the same.
Maybe it's time to abandon the waterfall model of project development.
I've been trying to get them to do this for some time now. The waterfall model works, and works well, but it's a schedule killer.
But the problem with other models (in my company at least) is that it won't solve the problem. A spiral model (as an example) won't change anything if they insist on changing the requirements without adjusting the schedule. Also, our software is developed in parallel with hardware, which follows the waterfall model. When the hardware prototypes are two weeks late, the software will be as well, regardless of development model.
Last week was the deadline to finalize software resource estimates for a major project. This morning, less than two hours ago, we received a brand new hardware architecture that completely negates our software estimates. Our OS infrastructure was 90% done, but now we have to start over from scratch. How would changing the development model fix the problem?
In the past we've had a software feature cancelled a mere weeks before customer shipment, because the marketing vision (wetdream) didn't match the reality of what was possible. This of course required a whole new round of QA testing. How would changing the development model fix the problem?
A good development model is a necessity. But it still must take a back seat to even more fundamental needs, among which are executives and managers who understand that software development is an engineering endeavor, not a manufacturing process.
I think a lot of this comes from "management" getting tired of "artisans" refusing to ship products on a schedule
My company was a small American firm who put out an embedded system that was considered by all to be the gold standard of our industry. Then we got bought out (because the founder retired) by a huge multinational German company.
Two years later we were trying to figure out why the Germans were pissed at us. No matter what we did we were treated like dirt. We increased marketshare and they were mad. We win a prestigious international award and they were mad. We couldn't figure it out. We gave them golden eggs and they acted like we gave them goose shit. We made one BILLION euros last year on a product and they laid off half our developers and outsourced their work to India in retaliation. They even flew out corporate "brass" just to *yell* at our software managers. Seriously! We heard the yelling from the other side of the wall.
Finally a German insider told us what was wrong. We never made our deadlines. We had always worked this way. We would estimate a ship date three years in advance, before we ever came up with requirements or specifications. So we would often miss the target by a few weeks. This was anathema to the Germans! It was intolerable. We were considered incompetent bungling fools because the one major product during that two year period was two weeks late to beta testing. Not to ship date, which we made, but to beta testing!
In one incident, I myself was seriously ill and was hospitalized. When I came back to work I found a waiting email message demanding to know why I was late on my project.
Professor M. Eric Johnson, who says that, 'Low-skill jobs like coding are moving offshore and what's left in their place are more advanced project management jobs.' Now I know coders aren't rocket scientists, but less advanced than project managers?
Do I laugh at the absurdity of this? Coding is not a "low-skill" job. Far from it. Programming in C is a high-skill job. Programming in C++ is a high-skill job. Heck, even programming in C# is a high-skill job. Ditto for PHP, Perl, Python, etc. He must be thinking of the one-off Visual Basic script he wrote last week...
But I want to cry at the same time, because the PHB's believe this crap. Offshore development to India? My company did this because they thought coding was a low-skill job suitable to outsourcing to low-skill workers. Not only is this insulting to developers here in the US, it's equally insulting to the developers in India. It's the new Anglo Imperialism!
I've been told flat out that my only future in the company is to be a project manager. I've done that and it sucks. I would rather be developing and coding. I don't want to have to schedule time on Outlook just so I have a block of time available to schedule all my myriad meetings on Outlook.
Hmmm, maybe this attitude that development is "low-skill" works explains that shoddy quality of commercial software these days.
But The more people that switch to OO, the more attractive switching to Linux becomes.
Don't stop there! The more people switch to OO, the more attractive switching to FreeBSD becomes!
I'm being serious here. While FreeBSD (along with most Linux distros) isn't ready for your grandma's home desktop, it's more than ready for the corporate desktop where systems are centrally administered.
In fact, Ford cannot legally tell you what brand of gas, oil or tires (or any number of other auto components) you can or cannot use.
How is this any different from Dell, Gateway, HP, etc? If I buy a Dell I can put any damned OS I want to on it, and I'll still get hardware support. I would be rather surprised if Dell even cared what I used.
The trouble with Microsoft is the trouble with the whole software industry: no standards. The consumer wants their computer to run any off-the-shelf software, and utilize any off-the-shelf hardware. If there were more standards, then an OEM could very well tell Microsoft to stuff it and ship with BeOS, Linux or nothing instead. The marketplace has "chosen" a defacto OS standard, and happens to be Microsoft.
If you take a whole bunch of Dell's, preinstall Linux on it, bundle it with OpenOffice.org and Mozilla, and shove them on a rack at CompUSA for the same price as the Windows variants, guess what? 95% of the consumers will still buy the Dell's with Windows on it. You might not, and I might not, but most people will.
But the OEM's could have preinstalled some other operating system besides Windows. They had the choice to do so, but they decided to use Windows. Because that's what their customers wanted.
Exclusive contracts like this are commonplace. It doesn't matter if Microsoft is a monopoly or not, because EVERY manufacturer has a monopoly on their specific product. Ford has a monopoly on Ford automobiles. Krupps has a monopoly on Krupps coffee makers. Etc.
For capitalism to work the government needs to ensure the possibility of competition, right?
So says the theory. The reality says that Linux went from an itch to Bill Gates' worst nightmare during the exact same time period that he a monopoly. Internet Explorer became a monopoly by taking one away from Netscape. How? I thought theory said that wasn't possible? And as if that weren't enough, we've seen three major browser families appear on the market in the past five years.
In the days of the Standard Oil monopoly, I either bought petroleum from Rockefeller or I did without. In the days of the AT&T monopoly, I either used their telephones or I did without. But Microsoft doesn't follow this model at all! Competition exists! If I don't like Windows I can use OSX, Linux, or BSD. If I don't like Internet Explorer I can use Mozilla, Safari, Konqueror or Opera. Unlike monopolies of the past, I have viable (and superior) alternatives.
1) Honesty in all things. Be honest with your investors, your employees and your customers. Don't "stretch" the truth in your advertisements. Make sure you're sales force understand exactly what the product does, so that they don't "oversell" it.
2) Respect the property of the customer. If you're not sure, err on the side of the customer. Although you may own the copyright to the software, the particular copy on my system is *mine*, so don't try to control it. If that's not the way you want it, don't pretend to sell me the software when you're really selling a license to use it (see number one above).
3) Don't hassle me or enable others to hassle me. Don't sell my personal information. Don't assume that just because I bought your product that I want to be on your mailing list (email or snail). Stay away from popups, popunders, and excessive ads in your webpages. No nag screens. If you think there is a need for privacy agreements, you've already stepped over the line.
GWB is on record as saying that he didn't like the MS suit.
I'm on record saying the exact same thing. My reasons might not be the same as Bush's though. I felt that the whole premise of the case was weak to begin with. It was based solely determining if A) Microsoft was a monopoly, and B) decide what normally ethical business practices it engaged in, and C) declare those practices illegal for monopolies.
I am of the quaint and old fashioned (and very unpopular on Slashdot) opinion that the law should apply equally to all. Even for people you don't like. What is legal for Apple and Sun should be legal for Microsoft.
What was not tried in this case were actual instances of breaking or flouting the law. They (the Reno DOJ) could have tried Microsoft on failing to abide by the Sporkin decision, but chose not to. Instead, they tried Microsoft for embedding a browser and offering discounts.
As soon as he gets into office, the DOJ takes a 100% clear win, and flushes it down the toilet.
What the Ashcroft DOJ did not seek was a *breakup* of Microsoft. That's far from unreasonable. A breakup would have been purely punitive, and done nothing to correct the situation. They sought, and got, other penalties. That these penalties were not as harsh as a breakup does not negate their existance.
(headed by his appointed crony, John Ashcroft)
Do you know of any attorney generals that were NOT appointed by one president or another?
But the Justice Department did indicate that it will seek penalties first suggested by a judge earlier in the case that could affect or delay the company's soon-to-be-released Windows XP operating system.
This is far different from GWD ordering the DOJ to back down. It appears to me merely that they were interested in a different penalty than a breakup.
The official said Bush went out of his way to leave the matter in Attorney General John Ashcroft's hands.
That sure doesn't sound like GWB was ordering anyone around.
But BSD make is not available on Cygwin. If you don't want to use the more widely available GNU make and its extensions...
A long time ago in a galaxy far far away, there were two makes. One was BSD make. The other was SysV make. They were not compatible with each other. Then along came GNU and instead of choosing one or the other, decided to meld them together in an unholy marriage whose offspring wasn't compatible with either. As if that weren't enough, it added in half a million extensions of its own.
Then there's the POSIX make specification. It's so skimpy it's almost useless. The reason the BSDiff makefile isn't portable is because it uses conditionals, and there is no standard for make conditionals. BSD make conditionals aren't portable to GNU, and GNU make conditionals aren't portable to BSD. BSDiff could easily get away without the conditionals, but it would lose a lot of build flexibility.
But since BSDiff was made specifically for FreeBSD, who cares?
Re:automake is not required to use ./configure
on
Debugging Configure
·
· Score: 1
autoconf/automake are self-contained, and should only need to be used for... setting up packages from CVS.
And that's exactly what I'm doing. automake/autoconf need a simple way to switch between versions. There isn't one that I can find. If you know of a way, please tell me. Rid me of this aggravation.
If these incompatibilities were between major versions of the software, I could understand. But GNU has an annoying propensity to break compatibility for every minor release with most of their software.
Reading makefiles is easy if you understand make. Well, most makefiles, that is. If the makefile was created via autoconf, then I personally find reading coredumps with a hex editor easier...
You're right in that xmake and similar systems didn't work well. You're right in that an automatic configuration system should query for capabilities.
But you're wrong in that autoconf/automake is the answer. I tried to build some software yesterday and I got the error that I wasn't using the correct version of automake. WTF! When the specific versions of automake/autoconf are themselves configuration variables, something's seriously wrong.
Who should control the internet? Government or businesses?
I don't want anyone controlling the internet. The individual pieces, to be sure, need to be controlled. For instance, I demand complete controll over my tiny section of it known as my workstation. And I'm not going to dispute an ISP's right to control their servers, or another company's right to control their landlines. But I don't want any group in control over the whole of the internet.
What happens if a government gets control of the internet? We would have no choice but to suck it in and live with it. They'll have police forces and armies to ensure that you smile and pretend you're happy with the situation.
But what happens if businesses gain control of the internet? (that's assuming it's even possible). The answer is simple. We can do something that would be illegal if the government were in charge. We can fork the internet.
One of the design principles of TCP/IP is decentralization. Not only can we route around onerous nodes, we can fork off the entire thing if an attempt is made to centrally control it. It would take the will to do it, but the knowledge and means to do it are widely available.
Slashdot Mirror
Then you'll need to throw out the whole concept of copyleft, upon which the Free Software Foundation is based. You cannot have copyleft without the legal basis for the ownership of creative works. And that's copyright. You cannot control the distribution of a work unless you own it.
Of course, there will be those that argue that without copyright there would be no need for copyleft, but that ignores the fact that the four "freedoms" of the FSF cannot be guaranteed without it. One might be able to legally share copies of a copyright-less binary, but without the source code to it, no one can improve it.
Do I go with Linux, which might fork, or choose something else? If I go with Linux, I do not know if someone will fork it next year. How will I know which fork to switch to when it happens? I need to know that my applications will be unchanging and static.
Therefore I'm going to stick with Windows 98, which I know will always be there until the end of time...
</sarcasm>
prevents people from putting messages hidden in the KDE or Gnome icons and such?
How do you know they haven't?
Very good point. But the article in question was written for FreeBSD users. It's not how to use FreeBSD's steganography, but rather, how to use steganography on FreeBSD. As such it's not much different than articles like "How to run a webserver on your Linux box".
The Libertarian party is in a tough bind regarding free trade agreemants. On one hand, they directly support their platform. On the other hand, NAFTA and WTO are also super-governmental organizations that have the authority on paper to over-rule US sovereignty.
NAFTA and the WTO have nothing whatsoever to do with free trade. Though he wasn't a libertarian, I think Buchanan said it when he referred to NAFTA [gross paraphrase]: "if it were a true free trade agreement it wouldn't be hundreds of pages long."
I respect the position, but disagree. Free trade amongst truly free nations is good. Free trade with tyrants is selling out American principles of equality and freedom.
While I am not against the concept of tarrifs, I am against them being used as an intrument for social change in other nations. I would argue for uniform tarrifs modified only by objective means, and not diplomatic negotiation.
Of course companies need to get out new products at certain dates. And of course they'll know those dates sometimes years in advance. Sometimes the competition will come out with a product that moves up the deadlines months earlier than would otherwise be reasonable. But companies don't treat software like they do other products, which leads to absurd practices.
Example. Ford knows they need a new model ready to ship in late 2006. What do they do? If they were a software company, they would do the following. There would be a requirement to use a hybrid engine in their heavy duty pickup trucks, with an increase of 10% horsepower over the diesel model. Existing door locks would be deemed obsolete, and biometric keyed locks would be demanded, and not until the beta would they realize that they needed an infrastructure for the dealerships to key the locks to the customers. There would also be ten new never-before-seen-anywhere features on the trucks, all of which must be patentable, in order convince the customer that the vehicle is something new. Such features would include ceiling airbags, liquid cooled tires, and a voice controlled television embedded in the steering column.
But that's not how Ford, or any non-software company works. Ford needs to distinguish themselves from their competition, to be sure. They do so by redesigning the look of their products. The engines mostly stay the same. The feature sets mostly stay the same.
Maybe it's time to abandon the waterfall model of project development.
I've been trying to get them to do this for some time now. The waterfall model works, and works well, but it's a schedule killer.
But the problem with other models (in my company at least) is that it won't solve the problem. A spiral model (as an example) won't change anything if they insist on changing the requirements without adjusting the schedule. Also, our software is developed in parallel with hardware, which follows the waterfall model. When the hardware prototypes are two weeks late, the software will be as well, regardless of development model.
Last week was the deadline to finalize software resource estimates for a major project. This morning, less than two hours ago, we received a brand new hardware architecture that completely negates our software estimates. Our OS infrastructure was 90% done, but now we have to start over from scratch. How would changing the development model fix the problem?
In the past we've had a software feature cancelled a mere weeks before customer shipment, because the marketing vision (wetdream) didn't match the reality of what was possible. This of course required a whole new round of QA testing. How would changing the development model fix the problem?
A good development model is a necessity. But it still must take a back seat to even more fundamental needs, among which are executives and managers who understand that software development is an engineering endeavor, not a manufacturing process.
Bless you. I'll stick around a while longer to see if my company comes to their senses.
My company actually does that! Unfortunately, we still keep our "domestic" C-Workers where they are :-(
You're forgetting the seven Libertarian Party candidates, all of which want to abolish NAFTA and get us out of the WTO.
I think a lot of this comes from "management" getting tired of "artisans" refusing to ship products on a schedule
My company was a small American firm who put out an embedded system that was considered by all to be the gold standard of our industry. Then we got bought out (because the founder retired) by a huge multinational German company.
Two years later we were trying to figure out why the Germans were pissed at us. No matter what we did we were treated like dirt. We increased marketshare and they were mad. We win a prestigious international award and they were mad. We couldn't figure it out. We gave them golden eggs and they acted like we gave them goose shit. We made one BILLION euros last year on a product and they laid off half our developers and outsourced their work to India in retaliation. They even flew out corporate "brass" just to *yell* at our software managers. Seriously! We heard the yelling from the other side of the wall.
Finally a German insider told us what was wrong. We never made our deadlines. We had always worked this way. We would estimate a ship date three years in advance, before we ever came up with requirements or specifications. So we would often miss the target by a few weeks. This was anathema to the Germans! It was intolerable. We were considered incompetent bungling fools because the one major product during that two year period was two weeks late to beta testing. Not to ship date, which we made, but to beta testing!
In one incident, I myself was seriously ill and was hospitalized. When I came back to work I found a waiting email message demanding to know why I was late on my project.
Professor M. Eric Johnson, who says that, 'Low-skill jobs like coding are moving offshore and what's left in their place are more advanced project management jobs.' Now I know coders aren't rocket scientists, but less advanced than project managers?
Do I laugh at the absurdity of this? Coding is not a "low-skill" job. Far from it. Programming in C is a high-skill job. Programming in C++ is a high-skill job. Heck, even programming in C# is a high-skill job. Ditto for PHP, Perl, Python, etc. He must be thinking of the one-off Visual Basic script he wrote last week...
But I want to cry at the same time, because the PHB's believe this crap. Offshore development to India? My company did this because they thought coding was a low-skill job suitable to outsourcing to low-skill workers. Not only is this insulting to developers here in the US, it's equally insulting to the developers in India. It's the new Anglo Imperialism!
I've been told flat out that my only future in the company is to be a project manager. I've done that and it sucks. I would rather be developing and coding. I don't want to have to schedule time on Outlook just so I have a block of time available to schedule all my myriad meetings on Outlook.
Hmmm, maybe this attitude that development is "low-skill" works explains that shoddy quality of commercial software these days.
But The more people that switch to OO, the more attractive switching to Linux becomes.
Don't stop there! The more people switch to OO, the more attractive switching to FreeBSD becomes!
I'm being serious here. While FreeBSD (along with most Linux distros) isn't ready for your grandma's home desktop, it's more than ready for the corporate desktop where systems are centrally administered.
In fact, Ford cannot legally tell you what brand of gas, oil or tires (or any number of other auto components) you can or cannot use.
How is this any different from Dell, Gateway, HP, etc? If I buy a Dell I can put any damned OS I want to on it, and I'll still get hardware support. I would be rather surprised if Dell even cared what I used.
The trouble with Microsoft is the trouble with the whole software industry: no standards. The consumer wants their computer to run any off-the-shelf software, and utilize any off-the-shelf hardware. If there were more standards, then an OEM could very well tell Microsoft to stuff it and ship with BeOS, Linux or nothing instead. The marketplace has "chosen" a defacto OS standard, and happens to be Microsoft.
If you take a whole bunch of Dell's, preinstall Linux on it, bundle it with OpenOffice.org and Mozilla, and shove them on a rack at CompUSA for the same price as the Windows variants, guess what? 95% of the consumers will still buy the Dell's with Windows on it. You might not, and I might not, but most people will.
But the OEM's could have preinstalled some other operating system besides Windows. They had the choice to do so, but they decided to use Windows. Because that's what their customers wanted.
Exclusive contracts like this are commonplace. It doesn't matter if Microsoft is a monopoly or not, because EVERY manufacturer has a monopoly on their specific product. Ford has a monopoly on Ford automobiles. Krupps has a monopoly on Krupps coffee makers. Etc.
For capitalism to work the government needs to ensure the possibility of competition, right?
So says the theory. The reality says that Linux went from an itch to Bill Gates' worst nightmare during the exact same time period that he a monopoly. Internet Explorer became a monopoly by taking one away from Netscape. How? I thought theory said that wasn't possible? And as if that weren't enough, we've seen three major browser families appear on the market in the past five years.
In the days of the Standard Oil monopoly, I either bought petroleum from Rockefeller or I did without. In the days of the AT&T monopoly, I either used their telephones or I did without. But Microsoft doesn't follow this model at all! Competition exists! If I don't like Windows I can use OSX, Linux, or BSD. If I don't like Internet Explorer I can use Mozilla, Safari, Konqueror or Opera. Unlike monopolies of the past, I have viable (and superior) alternatives.
1) Honesty in all things. Be honest with your investors, your employees and your customers. Don't "stretch" the truth in your advertisements. Make sure you're sales force understand exactly what the product does, so that they don't "oversell" it.
2) Respect the property of the customer. If you're not sure, err on the side of the customer. Although you may own the copyright to the software, the particular copy on my system is *mine*, so don't try to control it. If that's not the way you want it, don't pretend to sell me the software when you're really selling a license to use it (see number one above).
3) Don't hassle me or enable others to hassle me. Don't sell my personal information. Don't assume that just because I bought your product that I want to be on your mailing list (email or snail). Stay away from popups, popunders, and excessive ads in your webpages. No nag screens. If you think there is a need for privacy agreements, you've already stepped over the line.
GWB is on record as saying that he didn't like the MS suit.
I'm on record saying the exact same thing. My reasons might not be the same as Bush's though. I felt that the whole premise of the case was weak to begin with. It was based solely determining if A) Microsoft was a monopoly, and B) decide what normally ethical business practices it engaged in, and C) declare those practices illegal for monopolies.
I am of the quaint and old fashioned (and very unpopular on Slashdot) opinion that the law should apply equally to all. Even for people you don't like. What is legal for Apple and Sun should be legal for Microsoft.
What was not tried in this case were actual instances of breaking or flouting the law. They (the Reno DOJ) could have tried Microsoft on failing to abide by the Sporkin decision, but chose not to. Instead, they tried Microsoft for embedding a browser and offering discounts.
As soon as he gets into office, the DOJ takes a 100% clear win, and flushes it down the toilet.
What the Ashcroft DOJ did not seek was a *breakup* of Microsoft. That's far from unreasonable. A breakup would have been purely punitive, and done nothing to correct the situation. They sought, and got, other penalties. That these penalties were not as harsh as a breakup does not negate their existance.
(headed by his appointed crony, John Ashcroft)
Do you know of any attorney generals that were NOT appointed by one president or another?
This is far different from GWD ordering the DOJ to back down. It appears to me merely that they were interested in a different penalty than a breakup.
That sure doesn't sound like GWB was ordering anyone around.
But BSD make is not available on Cygwin. If you don't want to use the more widely available GNU make and its extensions...
A long time ago in a galaxy far far away, there were two makes. One was BSD make. The other was SysV make. They were not compatible with each other. Then along came GNU and instead of choosing one or the other, decided to meld them together in an unholy marriage whose offspring wasn't compatible with either. As if that weren't enough, it added in half a million extensions of its own.
Then there's the POSIX make specification. It's so skimpy it's almost useless. The reason the BSDiff makefile isn't portable is because it uses conditionals, and there is no standard for make conditionals. BSD make conditionals aren't portable to GNU, and GNU make conditionals aren't portable to BSD. BSDiff could easily get away without the conditionals, but it would lose a lot of build flexibility.
But since BSDiff was made specifically for FreeBSD, who cares?
autoconf/automake are self-contained, and should only need to be used for ... setting up packages from CVS.
And that's exactly what I'm doing. automake/autoconf need a simple way to switch between versions. There isn't one that I can find. If you know of a way, please tell me. Rid me of this aggravation.
If these incompatibilities were between major versions of the software, I could understand. But GNU has an annoying propensity to break compatibility for every minor release with most of their software.
when GWB got into office, he ordered the DOJ to back down
Why does everyone keep repeating this urban legend? Please cite some factual evidence that this is what happened.
Reading makefiles is easy if you understand make. Well, most makefiles, that is. If the makefile was created via autoconf, then I personally find reading coredumps with a hex editor easier...
You're both right and wrong.
You're right in that xmake and similar systems didn't work well. You're right in that an automatic configuration system should query for capabilities.
But you're wrong in that autoconf/automake is the answer. I tried to build some software yesterday and I got the error that I wasn't using the correct version of automake. WTF! When the specific versions of automake/autoconf are themselves configuration variables, something's seriously wrong.
Who should control the internet? Government or businesses?
I don't want anyone controlling the internet. The individual pieces, to be sure, need to be controlled. For instance, I demand complete controll over my tiny section of it known as my workstation. And I'm not going to dispute an ISP's right to control their servers, or another company's right to control their landlines. But I don't want any group in control over the whole of the internet.
What happens if a government gets control of the internet? We would have no choice but to suck it in and live with it. They'll have police forces and armies to ensure that you smile and pretend you're happy with the situation.
But what happens if businesses gain control of the internet? (that's assuming it's even possible). The answer is simple. We can do something that would be illegal if the government were in charge. We can fork the internet.
One of the design principles of TCP/IP is decentralization. Not only can we route around onerous nodes, we can fork off the entire thing if an attempt is made to centrally control it. It would take the will to do it, but the knowledge and means to do it are widely available.