About LinuxToday's coverage...
on
Forbes on Linux
·
· Score: 3, Interesting
Linux Today has covered these pieces over the week. Interestingly, the piece about browsers on Linux was inexplicably missed. I refuse to think it's because Galeon came first, and Konqueror next to last in the comparison. A couple of attempts by me to alert the editors to the missing article have gone unheeded for _some_ reason, however.
Of course, _nothing_ says that any apple x86 computers would in any way be compatible with standard PC offerings. They would likely still have their own, special BIOS and architecture, and would likely include some 'special', cool, apple-specific hardware OSX would depend on. You would not be able to get OSX to run on anything but genuine Apple hardware, x86 or not.
You need gzip, which is available for Windows as well as for Unix. As for the.ps part, it's simply a postscript file. Send it directly to a printer, or use a postscript viewer./Janne
The whole issue of 'publication date' is very slippery online. With books or newspapers, it's easy, but on the net, it can be a very difficult issue.
Assume I've written a rant where I accuse CowboyNeal of secretly harboring immoral thoughts about herring. I put it up on my private web page. That should be the publication date, no? Well, maybe. Nobody could find it as there are no links to it, and I don't tell anybody about it.
Suddenly Google gets hold of the link. Is that the publication date, now that people can actually find the page? On one hand, the text may have languished on a nowhere website for ten years, and I've totally forgotten about it, so surely I can't be punished for google finding it ten years after it being written? On the other hand, is it considered published (or even defamation) if nobody can find it unless I tell them where to look?
It all erupts into a huge uproar; CowboyNeal denies everything and maintains he has unhealthy obsessions only for salmon, but never, ever, herring. Of course/. picks it up and adds a newsitem about it - complete with a link to the text. Is that publication? By me or by/.? Can I get into trouble for something/. does? Can/. be sued for defamation by providing that link, even if the statute of limitation has elapsed on the text for me?
This is just scratching the surface, of course; the problem here (as with so many aspects of the net) is that concepts that are clear and workable offline do not translate well online./Janne
Here, calls to a cell phone are never local calls - you have to dial a prefix to get to a cell phone. All cell phone comapines have their own set of prefixes, all beginning with 07, so it's always clear that you are calling a cell phone. The cell phone company bills the callers' phone company, that in turn adds the item to the callers bill. It works just as it does when calling to another country or to a subscriber to another phone company (and, I assume, between phone companies within the US). The cost to call to a cell phone is pretty fixed, and they are displayed as a separate set of items on the phone bill, along with local (ie. within Sweden) and foreign calls.
If you call from a cell phone, it works just the same; the recipients phone company bills the cell phone company, that tacks on their charge for calling from the cell phone, and puts it all as a call on the bill. Same thing with calls between cell phones. The only difference there tends to be calls between cell phones subscribers that usethe same cell phone company; those calls are usually cheaper than others'.
There is no shortage of cell phone plans; the one I have makes it relatively cheap to just have the phone, and relaitvely expensive to make calls on it. I pay about $5 a month as a subscriber (and as I've said, incoming calls or SMS are of course free). This plan has no 'pile of minutes' (they basically stink, as you pay for minutes whether you use them or not), and outgoing calls cost me about $0.4 a minute daytime and $0.2 in the evenings. I could get calls a lot cheaper, but then the monthly subscription would be higher. All in all, my monthly bill is usually between $6 and $8 (I usually use SMS to get hold of people)./Janne
OK. That's really evil, you know. I have my cellphone mostly to receive calls from people that want to reach me whenever I'm out somewhere; if I had to pay for everyone calling me, I'd just have to filter the calls - or have it switched off, thus largely defeating the point of the phone to begin with...:(/Janne
But why on earth do you have a cell phone where _you_ pay for incoming calls?! The caller pays for the call on a land line, so how can you accept getting billed for someone calling you? Or I have misunderstood the whole piece, and you have forwarding to your cell phone from your land line or something.../Janne
The point of press releases today are more often than not just another way of showing that there is activity. There is often little or no intention of actually inform anybody; instead the point is in showing "interested parties", that includes investors and shareholders, that Things Are Happening. That use unfortunately debases the use of press releases for 'real' news, of course.
Now, I'm not saying this is not interesting, or 'real' news. It might be, or might not; I'm not sufficiently knowledgeable about this aspect of the business to decide, but it the very existence of 'look at me!' press releases does debase the value of the announcement.
Well, what do you expect? Ninety percent of press-releases are overhyped; they only exist to make something look big and significant. You might want something like this:
"In a totally pedestrian move, Mandrake - as utterly expected - announced a totally unsurprising future port to the Hammer architecture. As everybody have realized for the past year, Linux will be running on the platform, and this of course includes all the major distributions. Spokesmen for the company added: 'of course, no end-users will see any actual results from this announcement for another year or so, when actual systems will be available'. Added the AMD spokesperson: 'As far as novelty value goes, this announcement is the equivalent of watching paint dry.' Both did add that they do get a little free press out of the announcement, making it more valuable than the paper it's printed on."
The current production version of Galeon is for Gnome1. If you want to run Gnome1 apps, you need Gnome1 installed. A major reason for bumping version from 1 to 2 is that the ABI (and API) is not backwards compatible. And as you point out yourself on the Mac, you need both systems to run legacy stuff. As more applications become stable on Gnome2, there will be less need for Gnome1 to be installed.
So, the oprions are: have Gnome1 installed as well; run Galeon from CVS; or wait until Galeon for Gnome2 is out.
You have all configuration in the 'Desktop Preferences' menu. Also, you can of course always run the individual configurations from the command line - or you could use gconf-editor.
I haven't tried running without Nautilus, but I don't think there is any problems doing so.
What is and isn't a commonly used option is a rather subjective thing. That's before you consider that any configuation really should be settable or even mandatable by the sysadmin. Quite possibly on a per user/group basis to deal with tweakers who'd never get any work done if they could tweak all day.
Been there. Done that. Tweaked the T-shirt.
Yes, it is a point. However, having meta-tweaking to decide what's supposed to be tweakable won't really solve the problem, not to mention the UI horrors that can so easily be the result of meta-tweakable configuration applications...
As for what is common and what is not, again, that is sort of true. But there are some things that pretty much everybody would agree on being common, and other things that pretty much anybody would agree on being esoteric. The problem arises whith the stuff in between. And even there, it is frequently better to err on the side of caution and let people use gconf-editor to tweak it if they really want it.
Some of the issues he brings up seems valid. That said, I run Gnome2 and I don't recognize many of the problems he brings up.
First, for me, Gnome2 is far faster than Gnome1.4. This goes for most individual applications, as well as the desktop overall.
Lack of options: Well, yes and no. There has been a serious attempt at providing sensible defaults for a lot of stuff, and hide away rare and/or strange options into the gconf system. While some people like being able to tweak their desktops to hell and back, for many users it is just plain confusing to have as ridiculously many options everywhere as Gnome1 had. Note that for those serious about tweaking, gconf is there for your time-wasting pleasure.:)
Gedit: I've tried repeatedly, but I am unable to duplicate the marking thing he talks about.
Galeon has continued to work flawlessly for me, as have all other Gnome1 apps I have. he mentions that he does not have a Gnome1 installation; that may be an explanation as to why Gnome1 apps do not work...
As for 'scattered settings' - huh? I get all settings neatly in the 'Desktop Preferences' menu. That certainly includes things like xscreensaver settings and pretty much everything else he gripes about in this area. I do not have a 'Desktop theme', as he seems to have, but just the 'theme' option - as it should be.
I get the feeling there is something rather wrong with the reviewers setup; something like an incomplete install, or a mix of older and newer packages or something like it.
I agree with you in general. This issue has some additional wrinkles, however. The users are clearly not fully aware what Gator does or when it does it. Gator does not mark in any way that it changes content. By switching like this _without_ the user being aware of it, they can reasonable be said to misrepresenting the web site owners.
Put it this way: if you had a program that changed banners, that you installed _knowing_ that's what it did, and it showed you ads for steamy porn on nytimes.com, there would be no problem. You knew after all that the banners came from your program, not from the New York Times. In this case, however, the intent is to do this behind peoples' backs. If it pushed goatse.cx advertisements onto nytimes site, a lot of people would be very angry at nytimes, thinking its they who pushed the stuff on them.
It's not that it changes the 'surfing experience', it's that it does it with intent to deceive that's the problem.
Actually, I've seen the opposite effect. From what I've seen, people coming from Windows tend to prefer Gnome over KDE precisely because it's not like the Windows desktop they've left behind. It seems to be a combination of factors. One seems to be a desire to 'make a clean break'; they left Windows for a reason, and do not wish to be reminded of it. Another is likely to be the danger of confusion in using a desktop that's almost - but not quite - like the one they already know. Using a very different desktop there is no longer that danger.
Both Gnome and KDE are good, and Linux is far stronger for having two lively projects (and a lot of small or special-purpose projects as well) in this area.
Of course, how many users would you have had had you tried to charge for it? Or, in other words, your time may not be free according to your father, but if what you produced did not have a perceived value to your users equal to the value of your time, then you were working on the wrong thing. And that will mean you should be working on whatever gives you the highest income, not what you _like_ to work on - which pretty much destroys the hobby and enjoyment aspect of it, turning it into another job.
Of course, if you want to have it as an income source, you should reason like this. If you are doing it for the fun of it - and for the opportunity to learn stuff - then it just isn't a good value calculation. Trying to equal time and money in everything you do is a pretty destructive way to see your life. Why go to the movies, spend time with your friends or read a book, when you could spend that time much more productively with a second job and lots of overtime?
/Janne
Re:Ring of Fire - Johnny Cash
on
Crescent Sunset
·
· Score: 1
I cannot get over the idea that the song originally is about hemorroids...
There is. Almost all materials can be taken care of in various ways; for most materials you don't even have to burn it. Some plastics can be reused instead of oil to make new plastics; metals can be extracted and used again and so on.
The trick is to make manufacturers design this possibility into the products. There is little point to know how to take care of the different materials if you can't separate them cleanly, or if you can't identify the material. In the EU, car manufacturers (and by and by, other product manufacturers) have to take disposal into account, by considering disassembly, marking materials with a material code and so on.
Yes, there are exceptions. How well is HP doing in the hardware commodity markets today?
I'm not saying we'll _only_ get shoddy stuff - there is always a market for good quality. The problam is that the smaller the market, the harder it is to find the stuff, and the more expensive it'll become. And when it comes to x86 hardware, the market is comparatively small. You get a 'squeeze' of the market, with a large part at the rock bottom, a small specialist market at the (almost unattainable) top, and nothing in between.
Everybody want to get the best possible deal whenever we buy something. This goes not only for electronics, but for all big-ticket items: homes, cars - you name it. When it comes to most stuff, we have at least a vague idea that quality costs, and is worth having. We don't usually get the car with the lowest sticker price; we get the one with the best balance between perceived mechanical reliabilty, guarantees and price - features being equal.
But with electronics - specifically computers and related devices - we tend to act differently. We have an idea that all machines are about equal in qwuality; they tend to use the same components from the same factories, after all. Instead we have a sheet of performance figures (this much memory, that many MHz and so on), and try to find the seller with the lowest price for what we want to have.
What we forget is of course that quality still matters. There are a lot of ways to make a functionally identical item more or less reliable and long-lasting. But by focusing on price and ignoring quality issues for so long we have been digging our own graves. If a manufacturer is to compete (and not just become a niche operator or go extinct), he needs to cut corners wherever he can. You get circuit boards manufactured by the cheapest possible technology, soldered together by the lowest bidding contractor that still barely meet very minimal standards, and pack it together with iffy, electrically noisy power supplies and/or the cheapest rechargeable batterypacks money can (or can't ) buy. Then you install it into a case that's made to be cheap and easy to assemble, but that's barely adequate to hold the package together - and totally inadequate to protect the package from the wear and tear that will be the norm for the unit. The thing works when brought out of it's box, but that's about it.
Consider this: Let's say Palm had two models. they are identical, functionally - feature by feature, they are twins. One, however, is built to last, with a thicker glass substrate, a sturdier case, better solderings, sturdy metal contacts, 'real' key switches and so on. It's still not 'ruggedized' by any means, just a lot better at handling the daily grind. It also costs another $50 or so over the other unit. Which one will be the big seller, and which one will mostly collect dust in the showroom?
Such a license would go against the whole point in using the GNU GPL. Free Software developers have to make advantages for one another and produce software that is Free Software. Linking with non-free software is antithetical to the Free Software movement because this movement maintains everyone should have the four fundamental freedoms of Free Software for all of their software. Distributing software linked with non-free software prevents people from having complete software freedom (more specifically, studying, modifying, and distributing source code).
Granted. However, given that I need to develop closed software, I need to know whether I can use LGPL licenced components or if I have to look at other options. What really worries me is that gcc (and glibc) may be too restrictive, licence wise, to develop closed software at all - in which case I kind of wonder why FSF have not gone after those who do so.
In any case, if we release any libraries or other code, the alternative is probably a non-FSF license, seeing how the LGPL does not do what we need.
OK, first, I totally missed that section on electronic distribution. Seems that if you offer the software through FTP, offering the source on the same site will fulfill any obligations. That'll teach me to actually find the facts before spouting.:)
As I read it, I don't think the mail requierement is in force when distributing over the net. In any case, the 'customary medium' for source distribution today is the net, not a physical medium - I don't even own a CD-ROM, and I haven't used an actual floppy for at least a year.
The thing about #8 is still very confusing. I wasn't trying to send a message; I apparently thought LGPL allowed different things than it actually does. What, exactly _is_ the point of LGPL if you can't link an LGPL lib with proprietary code without opening that code? Seems there is room to define a license like "This is GPL, with the exception that you may freely dynamically (ie. at runtime) link this software with software bearing any license without any obligations of the GPL having any effect on that software".
Slashdot Mirror
Linux Today has covered these pieces over the week. Interestingly, the piece about browsers on Linux was inexplicably missed. I refuse to think it's because Galeon came first, and Konqueror next to last in the comparison. A couple of attempts by me to alert the editors to the missing article have gone unheeded for _some_ reason, however.
Of course, _nothing_ says that any apple x86 computers would in any way be compatible with standard PC offerings. They would likely still have their own, special BIOS and architecture, and would likely include some 'special', cool, apple-specific hardware OSX would depend on. You would not be able to get OSX to run on anything but genuine Apple hardware, x86 or not.
This is really a new low in conspiracy theories...
/Janne
Nothing is too low for conspiracy theories...
You need gzip, which is available for Windows as well as for Unix. As for the .ps part, it's simply a postscript file. Send it directly to a printer, or use a postscript viewer. /Janne
The whole issue of 'publication date' is very slippery online. With books or newspapers, it's easy, but on the net, it can be a very difficult issue.
/. picks it up and adds a newsitem about it - complete with a link to the text. Is that publication? By me or by /.? Can I get into trouble for something /. does? Can /. be sued for defamation by providing that link, even if the statute of limitation has elapsed on the text for me?
/Janne
Assume I've written a rant where I accuse CowboyNeal of secretly harboring immoral thoughts about herring. I put it up on my private web page. That should be the publication date, no? Well, maybe. Nobody could find it as there are no links to it, and I don't tell anybody about it.
Suddenly Google gets hold of the link. Is that the publication date, now that people can actually find the page? On one hand, the text may have languished on a nowhere website for ten years, and I've totally forgotten about it, so surely I can't be punished for google finding it ten years after it being written? On the other hand, is it considered published (or even defamation) if nobody can find it unless I tell them where to look?
It all erupts into a huge uproar; CowboyNeal denies everything and maintains he has unhealthy obsessions only for salmon, but never, ever, herring. Of course
This is just scratching the surface, of course; the problem here (as with so many aspects of the net) is that concepts that are clear and workable offline do not translate well online.
Here, calls to a cell phone are never local calls - you have to dial a prefix to get to a cell phone. All cell phone comapines have their own set of prefixes, all beginning with 07, so it's always clear that you are calling a cell phone. The cell phone company bills the callers' phone company, that in turn adds the item to the callers bill. It works just as it does when calling to another country or to a subscriber to another phone company (and, I assume, between phone companies within the US). The cost to call to a cell phone is pretty fixed, and they are displayed as a separate set of items on the phone bill, along with local (ie. within Sweden) and foreign calls.
/Janne
If you call from a cell phone, it works just the same; the recipients phone company bills the cell phone company, that tacks on their charge for calling from the cell phone, and puts it all as a call on the bill. Same thing with calls between cell phones. The only difference there tends to be calls between cell phones subscribers that usethe same cell phone company; those calls are usually cheaper than others'.
There is no shortage of cell phone plans; the one I have makes it relatively cheap to just have the phone, and relaitvely expensive to make calls on it. I pay about $5 a month as a subscriber (and as I've said, incoming calls or SMS are of course free). This plan has no 'pile of minutes' (they basically stink, as you pay for minutes whether you use them or not), and outgoing calls cost me about $0.4 a minute daytime and $0.2 in the evenings. I could get calls a lot cheaper, but then the monthly subscription would be higher. All in all, my monthly bill is usually between $6 and $8 (I usually use SMS to get hold of people).
OK. That's really evil, you know. I have my cellphone mostly to receive calls from people that want to reach me whenever I'm out somewhere; if I had to pay for everyone calling me, I'd just have to filter the calls - or have it switched off, thus largely defeating the point of the phone to begin with... :( /Janne
But why on earth do you have a cell phone where _you_ pay for incoming calls?! The caller pays for the call on a land line, so how can you accept getting billed for someone calling you? Or I have misunderstood the whole piece, and you have forwarding to your cell phone from your land line or something... /Janne
The point of press releases today are more often than not just another way of showing that there is activity. There is often little or no intention of actually inform anybody; instead the point is in showing "interested parties", that includes investors and shareholders, that Things Are Happening. That use unfortunately debases the use of press releases for 'real' news, of course.
Now, I'm not saying this is not interesting, or 'real' news. It might be, or might not; I'm not sufficiently knowledgeable about this aspect of the business to decide, but it the very existence of 'look at me!' press releases does debase the value of the announcement.
/Janne
Well, what do you expect? Ninety percent of press-releases are overhyped; they only exist to make something look big and significant. You might want something like this:
"In a totally pedestrian move, Mandrake - as utterly expected - announced a totally unsurprising future port to the Hammer architecture. As everybody have realized for the past year, Linux will be running on the platform, and this of course includes all the major distributions. Spokesmen for the company added: 'of course, no end-users will see any actual results from this announcement for another year or so, when actual systems will be available'. Added the AMD spokesperson: 'As far as novelty value goes, this announcement is the equivalent of watching paint dry.' Both did add that they do get a little free press out of the announcement, making it more valuable than the paper it's printed on."
/Janne
Since I'm a poor schmuck I hope that:
1. install NWN in WINE
will work...
It doesn't.
/Janne
The current production version of Galeon is for Gnome1. If you want to run Gnome1 apps, you need Gnome1 installed. A major reason for bumping version from 1 to 2 is that the ABI (and API) is not backwards compatible. And as you point out yourself on the Mac, you need both systems to run legacy stuff. As more applications become stable on Gnome2, there will be less need for Gnome1 to be installed.
So, the oprions are: have Gnome1 installed as well; run Galeon from CVS; or wait until Galeon for Gnome2 is out.
/Janne
You have all configuration in the 'Desktop Preferences' menu. Also, you can of course always run the individual configurations from the command line - or you could use gconf-editor.
I haven't tried running without Nautilus, but I don't think there is any problems doing so.
/Janne
What is and isn't a commonly used option is a rather subjective thing. That's before you consider that any configuation really should be settable or even mandatable by the sysadmin. Quite possibly on a per user/group basis to deal with tweakers who'd never get any work done if they could tweak all day.
Been there. Done that. Tweaked the T-shirt.
Yes, it is a point. However, having meta-tweaking to decide what's supposed to be tweakable won't really solve the problem, not to mention the UI horrors that can so easily be the result of meta-tweakable configuration applications...
As for what is common and what is not, again, that is sort of true. But there are some things that pretty much everybody would agree on being common, and other things that pretty much anybody would agree on being esoteric. The problem arises whith the stuff in between. And even there, it is frequently better to err on the side of caution and let people use gconf-editor to tweak it if they really want it.
/Janne
Some of the issues he brings up seems valid. That said, I run Gnome2 and I don't recognize many of the problems he brings up.
:)
First, for me, Gnome2 is far faster than Gnome1.4. This goes for most individual applications, as well as the desktop overall.
Lack of options: Well, yes and no. There has been a serious attempt at providing sensible defaults for a lot of stuff, and hide away rare and/or strange options into the gconf system. While some people like being able to tweak their desktops to hell and back, for many users it is just plain confusing to have as ridiculously many options everywhere as Gnome1 had. Note that for those serious about tweaking, gconf is there for your time-wasting pleasure.
Gedit: I've tried repeatedly, but I am unable to duplicate the marking thing he talks about.
Galeon has continued to work flawlessly for me, as have all other Gnome1 apps I have. he mentions that he does not have a Gnome1 installation; that may be an explanation as to why Gnome1 apps do not work...
As for 'scattered settings' - huh? I get all settings neatly in the 'Desktop Preferences' menu. That certainly includes things like xscreensaver settings and pretty much everything else he gripes about in this area. I do not have a 'Desktop theme', as he seems to have, but just the 'theme' option - as it should be.
I get the feeling there is something rather wrong with the reviewers setup; something like an incomplete install, or a mix of older and newer packages or something like it.
/Janne
I agree with you in general. This issue has some additional wrinkles, however. The users are clearly not fully aware what Gator does or when it does it. Gator does not mark in any way that it changes content. By switching like this _without_ the user being aware of it, they can reasonable be said to misrepresenting the web site owners.
Put it this way: if you had a program that changed banners, that you installed _knowing_ that's what it did, and it showed you ads for steamy porn on nytimes.com, there would be no problem. You knew after all that the banners came from your program, not from the New York Times. In this case, however, the intent is to do this behind peoples' backs. If it pushed goatse.cx advertisements onto nytimes site, a lot of people would be very angry at nytimes, thinking its they who pushed the stuff on them.
It's not that it changes the 'surfing experience', it's that it does it with intent to deceive that's the problem.
/Janne
The advantage is, you don't need to write it in Java.
/Janne
Actually, I've seen the opposite effect. From what I've seen, people coming from Windows tend to prefer Gnome over KDE precisely because it's not like the Windows desktop they've left behind. It seems to be a combination of factors. One seems to be a desire to 'make a clean break'; they left Windows for a reason, and do not wish to be reminded of it. Another is likely to be the danger of confusion in using a desktop that's almost - but not quite - like the one they already know. Using a very different desktop there is no longer that danger.
Both Gnome and KDE are good, and Linux is far stronger for having two lively projects (and a lot of small or special-purpose projects as well) in this area.
/Janne
Of course, how many users would you have had had you tried to charge for it? Or, in other words, your time may not be free according to your father, but if what you produced did not have a perceived value to your users equal to the value of your time, then you were working on the wrong thing. And that will mean you should be working on whatever gives you the highest income, not what you _like_ to work on - which pretty much destroys the hobby and enjoyment aspect of it, turning it into another job.
Of course, if you want to have it as an income source, you should reason like this. If you are doing it for the fun of it - and for the opportunity to learn stuff - then it just isn't a good value calculation. Trying to equal time and money in everything you do is a pretty destructive way to see your life. Why go to the movies, spend time with your friends or read a book, when you could spend that time much more productively with a second job and lots of overtime?
/Janne
I cannot get over the idea that the song originally is about hemorroids...
/Janne
There is. Almost all materials can be taken care of in various ways; for most materials you don't even have to burn it. Some plastics can be reused instead of oil to make new plastics; metals can be extracted and used again and so on.
The trick is to make manufacturers design this possibility into the products. There is little point to know how to take care of the different materials if you can't separate them cleanly, or if you can't identify the material. In the EU, car manufacturers (and by and by, other product manufacturers) have to take disposal into account, by considering disassembly, marking materials with a material code and so on.
/Janne
Yes, there are exceptions. How well is HP doing in the hardware commodity markets today?
I'm not saying we'll _only_ get shoddy stuff - there is always a market for good quality. The problam is that the smaller the market, the harder it is to find the stuff, and the more expensive it'll become. And when it comes to x86 hardware, the market is comparatively small. You get a 'squeeze' of the market, with a large part at the rock bottom, a small specialist market at the (almost unattainable) top, and nothing in between.
/Janne
Everybody want to get the best possible deal whenever we buy something. This goes not only for electronics, but for all big-ticket items: homes, cars - you name it. When it comes to most stuff, we have at least a vague idea that quality costs, and is worth having. We don't usually get the car with the lowest sticker price; we get the one with the best balance between perceived mechanical reliabilty, guarantees and price - features being equal.
But with electronics - specifically computers and related devices - we tend to act differently. We have an idea that all machines are about equal in qwuality; they tend to use the same components from the same factories, after all. Instead we have a sheet of performance figures (this much memory, that many MHz and so on), and try to find the seller with the lowest price for what we want to have.
What we forget is of course that quality still matters. There are a lot of ways to make a functionally identical item more or less reliable and long-lasting. But by focusing on price and ignoring quality issues for so long we have been digging our own graves. If a manufacturer is to compete (and not just become a niche operator or go extinct), he needs to cut corners wherever he can. You get circuit boards manufactured by the cheapest possible technology, soldered together by the lowest bidding contractor that still barely meet very minimal standards, and pack it together with iffy, electrically noisy power supplies and/or the cheapest rechargeable batterypacks money can (or can't ) buy. Then you install it into a case that's made to be cheap and easy to assemble, but that's barely adequate to hold the package together - and totally inadequate to protect the package from the wear and tear that will be the norm for the unit. The thing works when brought out of it's box, but that's about it.
Consider this: Let's say Palm had two models. they are identical, functionally - feature by feature, they are twins. One, however, is built to last, with a thicker glass substrate, a sturdier case, better solderings, sturdy metal contacts, 'real' key switches and so on. It's still not 'ruggedized' by any means, just a lot better at handling the daily grind. It also costs another $50 or so over the other unit. Which one will be the big seller, and which one will mostly collect dust in the showroom?
/Janne
Such a license would go against the whole point in using the GNU GPL. Free Software developers have to make advantages for one another and produce software that is Free Software. Linking with non-free software is antithetical to the Free Software movement because this movement maintains everyone should have the four fundamental freedoms of Free Software for all of their software. Distributing software linked with non-free software prevents people from having complete software freedom (more specifically, studying, modifying, and distributing source code).
Granted. However, given that I need to develop closed software, I need to know whether I can use LGPL licenced components or if I have to look at other options. What really worries me is that gcc (and glibc) may be too restrictive, licence wise, to develop closed software at all - in which case I kind of wonder why FSF have not gone after those who do so.
In any case, if we release any libraries or other code, the alternative is probably a non-FSF license, seeing how the LGPL does not do what we need.
/Janne
OK, first, I totally missed that section on electronic distribution. Seems that if you offer the software through FTP, offering the source on the same site will fulfill any obligations. That'll teach me to actually find the facts before spouting. :)
As I read it, I don't think the mail requierement is in force when distributing over the net. In any case, the 'customary medium' for source distribution today is the net, not a physical medium - I don't even own a CD-ROM, and I haven't used an actual floppy for at least a year.
The thing about #8 is still very confusing. I wasn't trying to send a message; I apparently thought LGPL allowed different things than it actually does. What, exactly _is_ the point of LGPL if you can't link an LGPL lib with proprietary code without opening that code? Seems there is room to define a license like "This is GPL, with the exception that you may freely dynamically (ie. at runtime) link this software with software bearing any license without any obligations of the GPL having any effect on that software".
/Janne