It is just me or is slashdot in the habit of pretending sites like Groklaw doesn't exist? Groklaw had the scoop a full day before the Computer Business Review article (which probably used Groklaw as its primary source anyway). I don't think this is some corporate conspiracy against Groklaw; I just wonder if Slashdot is having a hard time coping with the fact that specialized blogs, rss feeds, and aggregators like Thunderbird are doing a much better job of providing what Slashdot provided in the past... So the editors don't post articles that directly link to the 'competition'.
Next we have USE flags. These do strike me as an insanely useful thing. But I have one niggling little doubt: I suspect they only work for code that supports it. e.g. project foo has optional support for libbar. If the upstream/original code doesn't have a feature marked as optional I don't imagine the Gentoo people would rework it to strip it out.
Almost all large programs have optional features; I suspect USE flags were a realization of that fact.
As far as Gentoo devs reworking stuff, check out the KDE Split Ebuilds stuff. Instead of installing several monolithic KDE packages, you can now install just the KDE apps that you really want. That sort of splitting effort isn't the norm, but that is probably related to the fact that most large packages already have optional features.
What you need to do, Rebeka, is read John Stuart Mills' "On Liberty" (specifically Chapter IV). Then perhaps you will realise just how short sighted your thinking is. An inept bureacracy is just as bad if not worse than an actual conspiracy.
Suddenly they are the ultimate vehicle for brand-bashing, personal attacks, political extremism and smear campaigns.
That's an interesting statement coming from a magazine that frequently publishes personal attacks and smear campaigns. Come to think of it, since a blog is by definition a personal web-log, this entire article is just one mass personal attack...
The point that DiDio seems hellbent on ignoring is that no well informed person is arguing that F/OSS is better because its free (as in free beer). The informed folks are (rightly IMHO) arguing that Free Software is much more valuable (in terms of $$$ as well) in the long run because it is Free (as in Free Speach).
No vendor lock-in allows a business to have real choice. And having a real choice in your infrastructure can give you an advantage over your competitors. At the very least, your vendor can't hold your data hostage in a proprietary format during the next upgrade cycle.
The trio is almost done with an application binary interface and language extensions for Cell. A system-level simulator is also nearly complete. Yet to come is a full-fledged Linux implementation for the CPU.
So it sounds like IBM is working on porting Linux to it.
Q: Who said that Google was giving away free copies of books?
A: Nobody!
I believe what they intend to do is:
scan in the books
user searches for term(s) as usual
results include book titles, authors, etc., not the books themselves
Google isn't some magic fairy company that is above copyright law, and Google isn't dumb either. This is probably just another example of an idiot scared of a disruptive technology crying wolf. Google's new feature will probably just bolster book sales for these folks in the long run (and the short run too!).
GrokLaw readers will recognize Paul Murphy as the SYS-CON writer who likes to defend SCO. The statement from the ZDNet blog that should raise a red flag is this:
The second most important threat facing them is that an IBM Linux on Cell offering gives the Linux and general open source communities an opportunity to rebel against Red Hat's pretense of selling support with free licenses rather than licenses with free support.
Anyone who isn't an idiot knows that F/OSS business are supposed to sell support with their Free licenses, not the other way around. The only rebellion I see against traditional software vendors like Microsoft, not RedHat. This guy is just spreading FUD.
Isolate the computers that are spreading the virus and shut down their access to the DHCP server based on their MAC address. Then make the reconnect process as painful (yet educational) as possible. >:)
The folks who are replacing the workers with machinery are not doing for the workers' sake; they are doing it to increase productivity. And its not the governments job to insure your success in life; that's each individual's job.
Einstein was refering to math & science, not people. RMS deals with people when spreading his beliefs.
Insanity is doing the same thing over and over again with varying groups of different people and expecting the same results.
People are capable of change; the rules of mathematics and the laws of physics are not.
Andrew has laudable goals. But if he was truly offended by the use of proprietary software in the development process he should have started a fork of the kernel on something like Subversion and advocated the adoption of those tools (or better yet -- developed them). Instead, he disrupted a productive development environment by antagonizing relations between contributors who were perfectly happy otherwise.
Actually, if you RTFA, Andrew was off doing this on his own and it was Linus who told McVoy about Andrew's efforts. That is what got McVoy's panties in a wad.
Please lets get this straight, this is a closed source product. If the developers wanted you reverse engineering the product, they would have clearly stated it in their license agreement, further more they would of provided the source code.
Lets get this straight. Permission and/or a license agreement and/or source code are not not needed to reverse engineer software or anything else. And its still perfectly legal, moral, etc.
It is sad to see people trying to ride on other people's hard work. Microsoft is a different situation, completely different.
Not in the case of reverse engineering; reverse engineering is a vital part of competition in a free market.
Thus when you have a product, namely Windows with the market share that it does, you need to have controls to maintain a free market.
Actually, it is the controls put in place by Microsoft (no-compete licenses with OEM's + punishment for those who disobey) that skew the market and merit sanctions against Microsoft. Microsoft's size and market share only enable the problem (their bad behaviour); its not the problem itself. In a truely free market, the market dictates how the vendors behave, not visa-versa.
But regardless of the company, taking an existing product where the developer has expressly stated that no reverse engineering of said product is to be done, where the method in which it works is proprietary is effectively stealing.
Unfortunately for your arguement and for the BK folks, you can't preclude people from doing things in a license if those people aren't actually party to the license. Tridge stole nothing from BK by reverse engineering it.
Then this 'Tridge' guy comes along, and is *so* opposed to BK that he is determined to fight against it using tactics that are legal, but not especially moral, ethical, or friendly.
There is nothing unmoral, unethical, or unfriendly about reverse engineering. Otherwise have fun buying only PC's from IBM and cars from Ford (or whoever) for the rest of your life, since anything else would be against your sense of 'ethics'.
Usually, "reverse engineering" means that I've written code that does what someone else's code does, and I wrote it after studying the other code's behavior but not the code itself. Now, maybe Tridge saw the BK code, maybe he didn't; I can't tell. But it seems that what he wrote doesn't really mimic what BK did. He was adding a new capability as a sort of add-on. So his work fails to satisfy the first part of the definition, and isn't "reverse engineering".
What Tridge did was exactly "reverse engineering", and there is absolutely nothing illegal or immoral about that. And reverse engineering software never involves looking at the original code. It seems like the SAMBA folks have published a few good write ups on the subject of reverse engineering; you might want to dig around for it.
If someone has a problem with reverse engineering, that person must be in the 'proprietary' camp.
Reverse-engineering is perfectly legal (when done correctly) and is employed by proprietary folks regularly. How do you think the PC-clone market got started?
Since Bitkeeper now suffers from POSS (Proprietary Orphaned Software Syndrome) and therefore won't be receiving any more updates, bug fixes, etc, KDE and anyone else would do well to find another solution.
Exactly. And Tridge was NOT hosting a BK site. What he did was perfectly ethical. Furthermore, reverse engineering is a vital part of our economy, and McVoy needs to stop making himself look foolish by vilifying it.
RTFA! Eugenia did try to DO something about it. She may be the Dvorak of OSNews (I don't know or care), but even a broken clock shows the right time twice a day; IMHO, she nailed this one.
F/OSS must figure out how to add users to the feedback loop if they want to compete. Software nirvana = Free/Open Source + Inclusive/Meaningful User Feedback
Slashdot Mirror
It is just me or is slashdot in the habit of pretending sites like Groklaw doesn't exist? Groklaw had the scoop a full day before the Computer Business Review article (which probably used Groklaw as its primary source anyway). I don't think this is some corporate conspiracy against Groklaw; I just wonder if Slashdot is having a hard time coping with the fact that specialized blogs, rss feeds, and aggregators like Thunderbird are doing a much better job of providing what Slashdot provided in the past... So the editors don't post articles that directly link to the 'competition'.
If you really want to test the waters, put up a no-trespassing and a no soliciting sign, and then do the American thing: SUE!!!!
Almost all large programs have optional features; I suspect USE flags were a realization of that fact.
As far as Gentoo devs reworking stuff, check out the KDE Split Ebuilds stuff. Instead of installing several monolithic KDE packages, you can now install just the KDE apps that you really want. That sort of splitting effort isn't the norm, but that is probably related to the fact that most large packages already have optional features.
What you need to do, Rebeka, is read John Stuart Mills' "On Liberty" (specifically Chapter IV). Then perhaps you will realise just how short sighted your thinking is. An inept bureacracy is just as bad if not worse than an actual conspiracy.
The point that DiDio seems hellbent on ignoring is that no well informed person is arguing that F/OSS is better because its free (as in free beer). The informed folks are (rightly IMHO) arguing that Free Software is much more valuable (in terms of $$$ as well) in the long run because it is Free (as in Free Speach).
No vendor lock-in allows a business to have real choice. And having a real choice in your infrastructure can give you an advantage over your competitors. At the very least, your vendor can't hold your data hostage in a proprietary format during the next upgrade cycle.
The book's homepage can be found here: http://www.knosof.co.uk/cbook/cbook.html
From TFA:
So it sounds like IBM is working on porting Linux to it.
Q: Who said that Google was giving away free copies of books?
A: Nobody!
I believe what they intend to do is:
Google isn't some magic fairy company that is above copyright law, and Google isn't dumb either. This is probably just another example of an idiot scared of a disruptive technology crying wolf. Google's new feature will probably just bolster book sales for these folks in the long run (and the short run too!).
GrokLaw readers will recognize Paul Murphy as the SYS-CON writer who likes to defend SCO. The statement from the ZDNet blog that should raise a red flag is this:
Anyone who isn't an idiot knows that F/OSS business are supposed to sell support with their Free licenses, not the other way around. The only rebellion I see against traditional software vendors like Microsoft, not RedHat. This guy is just spreading FUD.
Isolate the computers that are spreading the virus and shut down their access to the DHCP server based on their MAC address. Then make the reconnect process as painful (yet educational) as possible. >:)
The folks who are replacing the workers with machinery are not doing for the workers' sake; they are doing it to increase productivity. And its not the governments job to insure your success in life; that's each individual's job.
Einstein was refering to math & science, not people. RMS deals with people when spreading his beliefs. Insanity is doing the same thing over and over again with varying groups of different people and expecting the same results. People are capable of change; the rules of mathematics and the laws of physics are not.
Actually, if you RTFA, Andrew was off doing this on his own and it was Linus who told McVoy about Andrew's efforts. That is what got McVoy's panties in a wad.
Lets get this straight. Permission and/or a license agreement and/or source code are not not needed to reverse engineer software or anything else. And its still perfectly legal, moral, etc.
Not in the case of reverse engineering; reverse engineering is a vital part of competition in a free market.
Actually, it is the controls put in place by Microsoft (no-compete licenses with OEM's + punishment for those who disobey) that skew the market and merit sanctions against Microsoft. Microsoft's size and market share only enable the problem (their bad behaviour); its not the problem itself. In a truely free market, the market dictates how the vendors behave, not visa-versa.
Unfortunately for your arguement and for the BK folks, you can't preclude people from doing things in a license if those people aren't actually party to the license. Tridge stole nothing from BK by reverse engineering it.
There is nothing unmoral, unethical, or unfriendly about reverse engineering. Otherwise have fun buying only PC's from IBM and cars from Ford (or whoever) for the rest of your life, since anything else would be against your sense of 'ethics'.
What Tridge did was exactly "reverse engineering", and there is absolutely nothing illegal or immoral about that. And reverse engineering software never involves looking at the original code. It seems like the SAMBA folks have published a few good write ups on the subject of reverse engineering; you might want to dig around for it.
Reverse-engineering is perfectly legal (when done correctly) and is employed by proprietary folks regularly. How do you think the PC-clone market got started?
Since Bitkeeper now suffers from POSS (Proprietary Orphaned Software Syndrome) and therefore won't be receiving any more updates, bug fixes, etc, KDE and anyone else would do well to find another solution.
Exactly. And Tridge was NOT hosting a BK site. What he did was perfectly ethical. Furthermore, reverse engineering is a vital part of our economy, and McVoy needs to stop making himself look foolish by vilifying it.
Which is how it should be considering that we are talking about a US school...
Well documented, unencumbered interfaces would be a nice start.
RTFA! Eugenia did try to DO something about it. She may be the Dvorak of OSNews (I don't know or care), but even a broken clock shows the right time twice a day; IMHO, she nailed this one.
F/OSS must figure out how to add users to the feedback loop if they want to compete. Software nirvana = Free/Open Source + Inclusive/Meaningful User Feedback
But many of the 'unsung heros of opensource' do accept monetary donations.
Of course, you could always donate some time & effort (as others have pointed out).
We could all thank them by donating a buck or two to their projects.