"It's the MS-PL(MPL would the the Mozilla Public License).
It means the MPL is incompatible with a greater number of OSI-approved licenses than any other OSI-approved license. Wrong. GPL is a OSI approved license and is as incompatible as the MS-PL with other OSI approved licenses."
I was really generalizing the criticisms. As far as the UI people seem to think that's the problem rather than needing more innovation.
I definitely agree with your general criticism as Linux needs (or could use) much more documentation. Also Photoshop and Illustrator also have a ridiculously sharp learning curve. I know when I'm using them, and fairly successfully, that I'm only breaking the skin on what they can actually do. This is such a problem that even as an untrained user I often hear people claim that these apps are missing features that I've actually used.
Anyway good luck. I will say that I've also got Krita, XaraLX, and Cinepaint. Have you tried them, or anything else?
Of course it's not the ONLY Linux app I've ever tried. Do you honestly believe that there are people out there who would (or even could) do that to themselves?
Of course not, I was being facetious.
You can call it biased and inflammatory if you want, but it's a perfect example of taking something beautiful and well engineered, copying it, and making something that's almost unusable.
It was more about hacking than copying. I particularly liked the pointless notepad app where you used the fairly functional scrollwheel to input text by scrolling through the qwerty keyboard. Oh, and running doom.
I couldn't believe how bad simple things like wheel acceleration and fonts were.
Very true, but I didn't consider this software even gamma (nevermind beta). Precisely my point.
I don't doubt that it was fun for you, but this is something for people who want to run Linux on their toaster. Once you remove the novelty of that, there's no there there.
It didn't take me long to restore the Apple firmware and sell it. It didn't make the ipod more effective. Unless I had meant to buy a pda and got confused. And it still wasn't much of a pda.
iPod Linux might be a particularly bad case, but it's typical of FOSS.
It's ironic that FLOSS people often accuse MS of considering their users unpaid beta testers. I would agree with your statement if it was directed at early, unpolished software. However, before I run a program I generally have an idea of whether I'm running something stable and polished.
If you're not happy with my iPod example, how about OpenMoko [openmoko.org]? It's like somebody went out of their way to make an iPhone clone that totally misses the point.
There were betas and screenshots available when the iphone was a half-believed rumor. The openmoko is only out or coming out this month though. Trolltech's greenphone looks better but is still only available to developers for a hefty price. I wouldn't say that smartphones are a much better example than turning an mp3 player into a pda. But I see your point. How about the Sharp Zaurus if we're talking of paid developer projects. Or sony's Location Free TV. Or Tivo.
To be fair - I haven't used the latest versions of Open Office, Gnome, KDE, so maybe things have changed dramatically in the last year or so, but my experience with iPod Linux was absolutely typical and representative of my experience with other open source software.
IMO Firefox and OpenOffice.org look better on *nix. Gnome and KDE get screwed up pretty dramatically in appearance depending on the distro. Fedora's default settings tend to look decent to me eyes. And while I don't use SUSE, it looks good. I'm no graphic designer, but I use a lot more than Linux.
Developers make shoddy, half-assed copies of closed source software and then bitch and moan when somebody points out that it's a poor imitation that totally misses the point. It's the user's fault! We're just biased against Linux!
Most complaints on the GIMP relate to it not copying Adobe enough. I think oss looks worse when they try to copy closed source apps. Probably there's more art or pride in doing your own thing. maybe not true of gimp...
It's probably no coincidence that the one piece of open source software I have used (and actually continue to use on a daily basis) with a UI that doesn't suck is Eclipse. In addition to having solid commercial roots, I'm sure that its quality stems in no small part from the fact that it's used primarily by developers (and even then, it leaves some things to be desired).
I wonder if your experience is colored by developer apps. I think they are generally acknowledged to lack a polished gui when oss.
You say yourself that you're a longtime Linux user - well I'm sorry, but there's your problem. You're too close to this to see it clearly. You are by definition s
I would try to find a lawyer that would do a free consult and try to determine whether it would be reasonably affordable to invest in having a lawyer prepare the dmca takedown and other legal forms.
It would only be in choosing between sending it myself and taking no action that I would do the former. I should have said this instead of blindly defending the idea of "customizing" someone else's legal form and sending it along with only my name attached. However, it's a simple statement and the perjury charge only applies if I'm lying.
IANAL and your recommendation of consulting one would be a much better idea than my and others' of hacking up a notice we found on the 'net. I'm just saying it's not insane. But probably is a little silly.
If your feeling a little silly try this for "templates" I'm saving my ideas (think of a large company with famous cartoon animals) for 4/1/08. Good fun.
I installed ipod linux a while ago before I sold my ipod mini and it was fun, but not exactly a finished product.
As a longtime Linux user of many distributions that is about one of the most biased and inflammatory examples you could have used. I heard of people installing Linux on an ipaq. Could you try that out and report back on how well Linux coders do with GUI's in general.
Is that honestly the ONLY group of Linux apps you've ever tried? Seems like a masochistic way to try out Linux. I thought newbies starting out on slack or gentoo was weird.
True, just because I have Gnome installed (comes with Fedora) doesn't mean I want to see GTK anywhere. I think people who say that GIMP is ugly should login to Gnome and run The GIMP. Will they still admit it's ugly? Did it just clash with your WM?
I love GIMP but occasionally use Xara because I dread visually defacing my desktop when I'm feeling artistic(visually).
IP law takes into account the intent of the licensor and easily/gracefully sidesteps what seem to be technicalities. That is why IP lawyers are paid so well, because it is more flexible and subtle than other laws
Good points in general, but as a fellow musician I have a different perspective on "source". Including a recording in a modification of a song that I wrote and allow you to modify, changes the practicality of modification for other musicians. It's like embeding a.wmv in flash, and embeding that in a gpl'ed web page. Can I modify the video?
If I used a gpl type license or the cc-gnugpl on creativecommons.org, and that behavior was prevented my intent would be preserved. Even if I prefer to allow that behavior where possible.
If I release un-mixed/mastered tracks along with my recordings I can (should be able to?) require other distributors do the same without providing (or requiring others to provide) a musical score. I can also easily release a musical score under the gpl. At this point, while not ideal, the score and the recording can be released under differing copyrights to accomplish many different goals. And there are legal and meaningful differences between a musical composition and a recording of a musical performance. Maybe I'm OK with you modifying my composition but do not want you to alter my performance.
I am much more intent on allowing other musicians to modify my work than allowing remixers to slice up audiofiles or add slices to my works. But I would like to accommodate both.
Because if they actually did ignore it they would give up the isp protections under the dmca, which would result in lawyers becoming more interested in representing the copyright holder. And they might wonder if the guys brother-in-law or someone is a lawyer...
They are so good that some months ago they had already warned me of this. I followed their instructions to email them my ssn dob name address password and license plate number to ameratrade54@yahoo.nl
so the argument that kde has better accessibility features for various applications and open office takes advantage of them is irrelevant because people don't want to switch to Linux?
whatever, I'll grant you that as people don't seem to want to switch.
but no one should say that I, as an ooo user do not have these accessibility features. I do. I don't actually think it's relevant that using an accessible, open source application on a closed source OS removes features that I have since I probably installed ooo on Linux before they installed it on Windows.
this is only to reserve MY moral high ground, I understand your point anyway and appreciate IBM ameliorating the effects of so many pc users using ms.
you seriously need to shut up about this. why can't i read a story on slashdot without you posting an ad hominem against any random post being about 'twitter'? Shut up.
I'm guessing he's right, at least as far as 5 times their(Walmart's) original 3%. I don't know if MS has that same profit. That doesn't mean revenue is irrelevant though.
ATI and AMD can do whatever they want. No one owes Linux users an opensource driver, but Intel increased our loyalty by giving them to us. Even though they're not the best hardware. nVidia has excellent hardware and while the drivers aren't opensource, at least their binaries work fairly well.
I used to really like ATI when I used Windows. I might even recommend them to a Windows user.
We may not be the largest demographic, but there is no doubt that they could sell Linux users more hardware if they got out of the "software business"
If they're even in it...don't they provide the drivers at no cost only to people who have their hardware? Sounds like they're really diversifying.
Sorry for the misunderstanding, let me explain...
vi? or vim?
(If I have to edit a text file for some reason when no x server is running, I start one and kwrite or gedit, save, and log back out. That's efficient! Otherwise I actually have one of those Oreilly pocket books on vi If I really have to use it) I was actually suggesting that vi might not have mouse support unless you were using the "improved" vi; vim. Then the next part was to show that I'm very inexperienced and don't know a lot because I jump through crazy hoops to edit text files, including going so far as to start up x instead of learning to use vi (or emacs) effectively. It was self-deprecating, attempting to clarify that I was being sarcastic in the original post.
I wasn't implying that you thought you could have a mouse without x running. In any case vim is obviously vi.
Cafes are starting to install Linux/KDE/kiosk admin. There they have to worry about your issues and potential vandelism and scriptkiddies. A kiosk would be great for you as it's easy to disable anything you like and have auto logins. A pentium 3 or higher would run Kubuntu or Fedora with no problems. You would only need to setup Firefox with Flash, etc.
The package I use is kiosktool, on Kubuntu (currently at least)
You could likely have better uptime than any other solution, for a cheaper price.
I remember the days of helping customers with WebTV and that was harder to configure and teach, good luck in any case.
PS Knoppix would be an easy out, you can have persistent settings.
Linux is still GPL'ed as far as I know. If Linus doesn't want to enforce the GPL (Linux Foundation really) then he (they) could release it under a BSD license.
And I read what he says on GPLv3 as not good enough to switch to or not worth switching to without good reason. He hasn't been super consistent with his statements though.
(If I have to edit a text file for some reason when no x server is running, I start one and kwrite or gedit, save, and log back out. That's efficient! Otherwise I actually have one of those Oreilly pocket books on vi If I really have to use it)
Stealing something out of the public domain, for instance, is possible. I think Disney's managed it a couple of times.
I'm against putting copyrighted music and movies on bittorrent or p2p, but it's not stealing. I think the consensus is that if just as many people have it after you "stole" it as before, then "stealing" is the wrong term. In this case if Walmart takes oss code, locks it down and releases it and patents it, that could be stealing. If not code theft, then rights theft.
Interesting question though. Probably a lot to think about.
GPL encourages competition. I like BSD but think it's closer to communism than GPL. Maybe I don't even mean that, but BSD folks that say GPL is communistic are really, really stupid. (ie:you)
Alcohol causes thousands of times the chaos and heartache than all drugs put together! I've been close to heroin addicts and alcoholics; they're both sad but not to the same degree. Any truth in what you claimed boils down to alcohol being consumed by far more people than other drugs and when using both alcohol is usually used more often. If you remove pot from the question even more so. Compare alcohol to pot and I may agree with you although I don't like pot.
Religion has been responsible for more evil (death, destruction, torture, hate, misery) than porn will/can if it continues for one million years. Without religion the death, destruction, etc. would have happened anyway in most cases, except where its structure misled people into valuing their own morality/judgment/ethics too highly. If a ruler desires to go to war they will find a way to do it, and I suspect religions are often expedient to the cause. That doesn't make religion the cause.
Slashdot Mirror
"It's the MS-PL(MPL would the the Mozilla Public License).
It means the MPL is incompatible with a greater number of OSI-approved licenses than any other OSI-approved license.
Wrong. GPL is a OSI approved license and is as incompatible as the MS-PL with other OSI approved licenses."
Funny that the OSI disagrees with you though?
Clearly, URNAL
I was really generalizing the criticisms. As far as the UI people seem to think that's the problem rather than needing more innovation.
I definitely agree with your general criticism as Linux needs (or could use) much more documentation. Also Photoshop and Illustrator also have a ridiculously sharp learning curve. I know when I'm using them, and fairly successfully, that I'm only breaking the skin on what they can actually do. This is such a problem that even as an untrained user I often hear people claim that these apps are missing features that I've actually used.
Anyway good luck. I will say that I've also got Krita, XaraLX, and Cinepaint. Have you tried them, or anything else?
Of course it's not the ONLY Linux app I've ever tried. Do you honestly believe that there are people out there who would (or even could) do that to themselves?
Of course not, I was being facetious.
You can call it biased and inflammatory if you want, but it's a perfect example of taking something beautiful and well engineered, copying it, and making something that's almost unusable.
It was more about hacking than copying. I particularly liked the pointless notepad app where you used the fairly functional scrollwheel to input text by scrolling through the qwerty keyboard. Oh, and running doom.
I couldn't believe how bad simple things like wheel acceleration and fonts were.
Very true, but I didn't consider this software even gamma (nevermind beta). Precisely my point.
I don't doubt that it was fun for you, but this is something for people who want to run Linux on their toaster. Once you remove the novelty of that, there's no there there.
It didn't take me long to restore the Apple firmware and sell it. It didn't make the ipod more effective. Unless I had meant to buy a pda and got confused. And it still wasn't much of a pda.
iPod Linux might be a particularly bad case, but it's typical of FOSS.
It's ironic that FLOSS people often accuse MS of considering their users unpaid beta testers.
I would agree with your statement if it was directed at early, unpolished software. However, before I run a program I generally have an idea of whether I'm running something stable and polished.
If you're not happy with my iPod example, how about OpenMoko [openmoko.org]? It's like somebody went out of their way to make an iPhone clone that totally misses the point.
There were betas and screenshots available when the iphone was a half-believed rumor. The openmoko is only out or coming out this month though. Trolltech's greenphone looks better but is still only available to developers for a hefty price. I wouldn't say that smartphones are a much better example than turning an mp3 player into a pda. But I see your point. How about the Sharp Zaurus if we're talking of paid developer projects. Or sony's Location Free TV. Or Tivo.
To be fair - I haven't used the latest versions of Open Office, Gnome, KDE, so maybe things have changed dramatically in the last year or so, but my experience with iPod Linux was absolutely typical and representative of my experience with other open source software.
IMO Firefox and OpenOffice.org look better on *nix. Gnome and KDE get screwed up pretty dramatically in appearance depending on the distro. Fedora's default settings tend to look decent to me eyes. And while I don't use SUSE, it looks good. I'm no graphic designer, but I use a lot more than Linux.
Developers make shoddy, half-assed copies of closed source software and then bitch and moan when somebody points out that it's a poor imitation that totally misses the point. It's the user's fault! We're just biased against Linux!
Most complaints on the GIMP relate to it not copying Adobe enough. I think oss looks worse when they try to copy closed source apps. Probably there's more art or pride in doing your own thing. maybe not true of gimp...
It's probably no coincidence that the one piece of open source software I have used (and actually continue to use on a daily basis) with a UI that doesn't suck is Eclipse. In addition to having solid commercial roots, I'm sure that its quality stems in no small part from the fact that it's used primarily by developers (and even then, it leaves some things to be desired).
I wonder if your experience is colored by developer apps. I think they are generally acknowledged to lack a polished gui when oss.
You say yourself that you're a longtime Linux user - well I'm sorry, but there's your problem. You're too close to this to see it clearly. You are by definition s
I would try to find a lawyer that would do a free consult and try to determine whether it would be reasonably affordable to invest in having a lawyer prepare the dmca takedown and other legal forms.
It would only be in choosing between sending it myself and taking no action that I would do the former. I should have said this instead of blindly defending the idea of "customizing" someone else's legal form and sending it along with only my name attached. However, it's a simple statement and the perjury charge only applies if I'm lying.
IANAL and your recommendation of consulting one would be a much better idea than my and others' of hacking up a notice we found on the 'net. I'm just saying it's not insane. But probably is a little silly.
If your feeling a little silly try this for "templates"
I'm saving my ideas (think of a large company with famous cartoon animals) for 4/1/08. Good fun.
I installed ipod linux a while ago before I sold my ipod mini and it was fun, but not exactly a finished product.
As a longtime Linux user of many distributions that is about one of the most biased and inflammatory examples you could have used. I heard of people installing Linux on an ipaq. Could you try that out and report back on how well Linux coders do with GUI's in general.
Is that honestly the ONLY group of Linux apps you've ever tried? Seems like a masochistic way to try out Linux. I thought newbies starting out on slack or gentoo was weird.
http://krecipes.sourceforge.net/
Yes you can!
True, just because I have Gnome installed (comes with Fedora) doesn't mean I want to see GTK anywhere. I think people who say that GIMP is ugly should login to Gnome and run The GIMP. Will they still admit it's ugly? Did it just clash with your WM?
I love GIMP but occasionally use Xara because I dread visually defacing my desktop when I'm feeling artistic(visually).
Oh yeah and all the browsers that support css. And some features of css2 css3 etc.
IP law takes into account the intent of the licensor and easily/gracefully sidesteps what seem to be technicalities. That is why IP lawyers are paid so well, because it is more flexible and subtle than other laws
Good points in general, but as a fellow musician I have a different perspective on "source". .wmv in flash, and embeding that in a gpl'ed web page. Can I modify the video?
Including a recording in a modification of a song that I wrote and allow you to modify, changes the practicality of modification for other musicians. It's like embeding a
If I used a gpl type license or the cc-gnugpl on creativecommons.org, and that behavior was prevented my intent would be preserved. Even if I prefer to allow that behavior where possible.
If I release un-mixed/mastered tracks along with my recordings I can (should be able to?) require other distributors do the same without providing (or requiring others to provide) a musical score. I can also easily release a musical score under the gpl. At this point, while not ideal, the score and the recording can be released under differing copyrights to accomplish many different goals. And there are legal and meaningful differences between a musical composition and a recording of a musical performance. Maybe I'm OK with you modifying my composition but do not want you to alter my performance.
I am much more intent on allowing other musicians to modify my work than allowing remixers to slice up audiofiles or add slices to my works. But I would like to accommodate both.
Because if they actually did ignore it they would give up the isp protections under the dmca, which would result in lawyers becoming more interested in representing the copyright holder. And they might wonder if the guys brother-in-law or someone is a lawyer...
They are so good that some months ago they had already warned me of this. I followed their instructions to email them my ssn dob name address password and license plate number to ameratrade54@yahoo.nl
so the argument that kde has better accessibility features for various applications and open office takes advantage of them is irrelevant because people don't want to switch to Linux?
whatever, I'll grant you that as people don't seem to want to switch.
but no one should say that I, as an ooo user do not have these accessibility features. I do. I don't actually think it's relevant that using an accessible, open source application on a closed source OS removes features that I have since I probably installed ooo on Linux before they installed it on Windows.
this is only to reserve MY moral high ground, I understand your point anyway and appreciate IBM ameliorating the effects of so many pc users using ms.
you seriously need to shut up about this. why can't i read a story on slashdot without you posting an ad hominem against any random post being about 'twitter'? Shut up.
shutup you idiot. I don't care who you say he is if he writes a post in context with the discussion. You did not. Quit trolling
I'm guessing he's right, at least as far as 5 times their(Walmart's) original 3%. I don't know if MS has that same profit. That doesn't mean revenue is irrelevant though.
ATI and AMD can do whatever they want. No one owes Linux users an opensource driver, but Intel increased our loyalty by giving them to us. Even though they're not the best hardware. nVidia has excellent hardware and while the drivers aren't opensource, at least their binaries work fairly well.
I used to really like ATI when I used Windows. I might even recommend them to a Windows user.
We may not be the largest demographic, but there is no doubt that they could sell Linux users more hardware if they got out of the "software business"
If they're even in it...don't they provide the drivers at no cost only to people who have their hardware? Sounds like they're really diversifying.
(If I have to edit a text file for some reason when no x server is running, I start one and kwrite or gedit, save, and log back out. That's efficient! Otherwise I actually have one of those Oreilly pocket books on vi If I really have to use it) I was actually suggesting that vi might not have mouse support unless you were using the "improved" vi; vim. Then the next part was to show that I'm very inexperienced and don't know a lot because I jump through crazy hoops to edit text files, including going so far as to start up x instead of learning to use vi (or emacs) effectively. It was self-deprecating, attempting to clarify that I was being sarcastic in the original post.
I wasn't implying that you thought you could have a mouse without x running. In any case vim is obviously vi.
Cafes are starting to install Linux/KDE/kiosk admin. There they have to worry about your issues and potential vandelism and scriptkiddies. A kiosk would be great for you as it's easy to disable anything you like and have auto logins. A pentium 3 or higher would run Kubuntu or Fedora with no problems. You would only need to setup Firefox with Flash, etc.
The package I use is kiosktool, on Kubuntu (currently at least)
You could likely have better uptime than any other solution, for a cheaper price.
I remember the days of helping customers with WebTV and that was harder to configure and teach, good luck in any case.
PS Knoppix would be an easy out, you can have persistent settings.
??
Linux is still GPL'ed as far as I know. If Linus doesn't want to enforce the GPL (Linux Foundation really) then he (they) could release it under a BSD license.
And I read what he says on GPLv3 as not good enough to switch to or not worth switching to without good reason. He hasn't been super consistent with his statements though.
vi? or vim?
(If I have to edit a text file for some reason when no x server is running, I start one and kwrite or gedit, save, and log back out. That's efficient! Otherwise I actually have one of those Oreilly pocket books on vi If I really have to use it)
Stealing something out of the public domain, for instance, is possible. I think Disney's managed it a couple of times.
I'm against putting copyrighted music and movies on bittorrent or p2p, but it's not stealing. I think the consensus is that if just as many people have it after you "stole" it as before, then "stealing" is the wrong term. In this case if Walmart takes oss code, locks it down and releases it and patents it, that could be stealing. If not code theft, then rights theft.
Interesting question though. Probably a lot to think about.
vi was great until I managed to install wine. Now I can use notepad.exe
plug-in a mouse already
GPL encourages competition. I like BSD but think it's closer to communism than GPL. Maybe I don't even mean that, but BSD folks that say GPL is communistic are really, really stupid. (ie:you)