Yes, let's look at this. BeOS? Hmm.... They use GCC. BSD UNIX? Also GCC.
Yes, well, before GCC there was NO market for independent OS vendors who didn't also supply a compiler. Before GCC, it was pretty much the case that only the hardware vendors could capitalize both an OS and compiler development. This lead to a fractured, non interoperable, marketplace because the hardware/OS vendors were only interested into locking you in to their brands. Today, the situation is rather better, I think.
Sure, GCC may have hurt some compiler vendors, but those businesses were always fairly marginal anyway.
This is an analog to what I think you'll be seeing with Linux. As the basic tools become more available and commoditized, software vendors can concentrate on applications, contract programming and support.
Not just by "giving back" -- that's commonly done under other licenses such as the MIT X and BSD licenses.
Sometimes it's done, sometimes it's not. Hey, companies sometimes release commercial wares into the public domain. You can depend on the kindness of strangers if you want.
Rather, the GPL demands that the author give up any prospect of licensing his or her work for money. He or she must give the code not only to the original developers but to everyone for free.
The GPL only demands this of an author who uses GPL'd works. If you want to license for fee, don't use GPL'd works. That's not onerous. Most commercial source licensing is the same. You aren't allowed to modify the SAP code you're provided with their source license and sell the result.
This is an onerous requirement which, as Richard Stallman himself states, is designed to reduce programmers' salaries and compromise their livelihoods.
Where does RMS state that the GPL "is designed to reduce programmer's salaries and compromise their livelihoods."?
I've seen him state that it may have that effect, but I don't think you'll be able to back up your claim that this is what it was designed to do.
Even in the face of the ever increasing popularity of GPL'd software, programmer's salaries have been soaring. Maybe creating markets (like for BSD UNIX and BeOS) has been a good thing for programmers livelihoods?
None of the labels you mention is entirely off base. His writings definitely do borrow rhetorical techniques and concepts from those of Marxism. I don't know about "Svengali," but there is some legitimacy to the claims that he is a fraud. I personally believe that the FSF's 501(c)(3) tax exemption was obtained fraudulently, because the purpose of the FSF is (and always has been) to compete directly with for-profit businesses. This is not allowed, and since he intended to do this from the start, it may well be that he could be accused of defrauding the IRS.
You seem big on throwing around unsubstantiated claims. Please cite the tax law where it is not allowed that 501(c)(3) corporations compete with for-profit entities.
Mitre (a 501(c)(3) corporation) submits competitive bids, and often wins, against other Defense contractors. Another company that I'm familiar with, CTC (Concurrent Technology Corporation, a 501(c)(3) corporation), competes with for-profit companies to get various government contracts. Last I checked PBS (television) and NPR (radio) stations (all 501(c)(3)) compete with for-profit media.
Yes, let's look at this. BeOS? Hmm.... They use GCC. BSD UNIX? Also GCC. In fact, GCC has usurped virtually all of the compiler business except for a few embedded niches and Microsoft Windows. It has done this via predatory pricing -- an explicitly intended activity of the FSF. Why is this any more justified than Microsoft "cutting off Netscape's air supply?" The answer: It's not.
Congratulations, you've found the one of the very few OS vendors that doesn't support their own compiler. I wonder if BeOS would even exist were it not for the great freely usable compiler technology?
Your claim that gcc has eliminated all compilers except "a few embedded niches and Microsoft Windows" is bizaare. Sun, Compaq, IBM, SGI, and HP all have quite active compiler groups. Intel builds a compiler for their architectures. There never was much of a third party market for compilers before gcc, most compilers were provided by the OS/Hardware vendor and they still are.
Gcc succeeds through "predatory pricing"? Another interesting claim. By this reasoning, I suppose ALL freeware should be stopped as being "predatory".
In any case, predatory pricing is only illegal if it seeks to establish an illegal monopoly. Someone giving something away that continues to give away their product is not disallowed. If it were, we'd be shutting down the people who voluntarily clean the roadsides as being predatory against the businesses that do the same.
RMS's discussion of such licenses isn't reasoned. It's demagoguery which is designed to deceive and to hide his true intent.
I'm still waiting to see some reason in rebuttal. Did you know that US Senate rules forbid the use of the word "Demagogue"? It's because it's an empty epithet that adds nothing to the discussion. RMS doesn't throw around labels and call that debate, unlike his detractors.
Absolutely. Check your history. It is historical fact, verifiable from RMS's own writings and from his remarks in public and in print, that the GPL was conceived as an instrument of spite against Symbolics -- a commercial spinoff of the MIT AI Lab. And all other companies of its ilk.
I'm familiar with that history. So what? RMS saw what he considered an injustice and moved to correct it. He didn't move for restrictive legislation or just sit around and complain about it, he got to work in building something to correct an injustice. It's hardly a spite directed at Symbolics as it's not reasonable to assume that they would ever use GPL'd software. You might consider it spite against all who commit this, to RMS's thinking, wrong, but isn't that what correcting injustice is all about?
Again, RMS's detractors characterize him with labels (spiteful, malicious) while not actually adding anything interesting to the discussion of ideas in which RMS engages.
"The GPL is far less restrictive than any commercial license with which I'm familiar."
So what? Khruschev was less restrictive than Stalin, but what difference does that make. However, a commercial license does have one huge advantage over the GPL: no commercial library that I am aware of tells the developer what license they must use.
So, I take it by your analogy that you feel that any restriction on a license is evil. I suppose you are suggesting that all software should be covered under a BSD license of something.
I was addressing the point that the poster felt that the GPL places "massive restrictions" on you. I think the restrictions are pretty similar to those placed on you by commercial licenses, only less restrictive, yet you don't hear complaints about people chaffing under those.
Perhaps libeled is a bit strong. You do see RMS alternately called a communist, a Svengali a fraud and a number of other things. He generally is not criticized in a way that could legally be termed libel.
This shows the destructiveness of the GPL. While these people would very much prefer to use another tool, the predatory nature of the GPL has eliminated alternatives.
An amazing claim. Let's see, every single OS vendor has a compiler suite which they heavily support. Most chip manufacturers have a compiler (Intel, Motorola, IBM) for their architecture. There are any number of companies that sell commercial compilers. There is lcc. Seems like there are many, many, many alternatives.
Oh, you mean a good, free, cross architecture compiler that really works well?
Since you make a speculation about a market that could have been had it not been dominated by that mean, destructive GPL'd gcc, allow me to me to make one. Intel, IBM, Compaq (and DEC), Motorola and probably any number of other companies spent a lot developing code generation for gcc. Had the GPL not tied their hands and required them to give these changes back, these companies almost certainly would have sold the modified compiler as a product. After all, each of these companies had their own compilers that they sold as products. Why would they give away their work on gcc had they not been forced to?
Rather than gcc destroying the market for a good cross architecture compiler, it set up an environment where such a thing could thrive.
Compilers (FORTRAN, Algol, Cobol) and free software both existed since the 1950s. It wasn't until a GPL'd compiler appeared that good, free, cross architecture compiler appeared.
By tying it up with a multi-page license that's rife with legalese and places massive restrictions on its use. Yeah, right.
The GPL is shorter than most EULAs, and it only really places one restriction on the code; You can't take advantage of this community work unless you are willing to participate in the community by giving back. It may be more restrictive than the X/MIT or BSD licenses, but I don't see how you can reasonably call this a "massive restriction". The GPL is far less restrictive than any commercial license with which I'm familiar. What would you call commercial licensing? Tremendously restrictive? Unbelievably restrictive?
Not so. They differ with RMS, and with good reason. Stallman's agenda is one of spite and malice.
Sure. He unfairly gets called all kinds of names. A reasoned discussion of issues of various "free" licenses is met with "RMS isn't God, GNU isn't a religion and the FSF isn't a bunch of prophets." and absolutely no substantive arguments and Stallman's agenda is one of spite and malice?
While many users (in particular, "end users") can use the software in the way that best suits their needs, programmers cannot. This is the purpose of the GPL: to transform open source from a public good into a weapon directed against those who engage in activities of which Richard Stallman does not approve.
Another amazing claim. What public good could these Open Source programmers be considering that is not allowed by the GPL except to turn an Open Source product into a Closed Source product. Seems like any other kind of Open Source license allows programmers to transform open source from a public good into a private good. You speak of engaging in "activities" (plural), but really there's only one activity that GPL doesn't allow. That's benefitting from others work without giving back changes to the community that gave you your start.
RMS isn't God, GNU isn't a religion and the FSF isn't a bunch of prophets.
The referenced page doesn't ask us to accept anything on faith. RMS doesn't support worship of him or any of his principles. RMS primarily makes reasoned arguments. You may disagree with those arguments, but if you were up to the challenge you'd use reason yourself.
RMS tells us his view as to why other licenses, and specifically the X/MIT license can lead to problems. It's a pity his detractors have to bring up these tired cultist labels that actually serve to remove reason from the discussion.
If you don't like the license, don't participate. Don't use any of the products that might be created with this license.
It's funny that with all of the libel that RMS takes for his stands, you never see RMS suggest that others who don't support the GPL should stop using GPL'd products. Gcc comes to mind as something that has benefitted many in the Open Source "Community" who snipe at RMS, the FSF and the GPL.
Now we can see the philosophy of some of those who support other "free" licenses. They are factionalists. The FSF and the GPL support Freedom in software. The software is permitted to be used by anyone, even those who work against FSF goals.
Hey, give Rob a break. If we don't stop putting him on the hot seat for this, he might stop posting stories about cool new Open Sources being made availble.
If only to save him some pain when it brings up the inevitable subject of the slash code.:-)
Somewhere along the line this "community" became more about competition than it did about sharing. Sharing code and working together together to make a better system?
I think the "community" is about Freedom. Now, you might not define Freedom in the way RMS does, but I do believe that he was on to something.
Where there is Freedom, there is no contradiction between competition and sharing. You get to decide you who you share with and you get to decide who you compete against. Only in Ideal Communist Dictatorships do you have sharing without competition.
Perhaps you are referring to a BSD "community" here. Where everything is given away and there's no competition. Oh wait, that doesn't fit either, witness FreeBSD, OpenBSD, NetBSD and BSDI. Each of these compete, in their own ways, against the others to make the "best" system.
From the very beginning of the Free Software Foundation, I think RMS made it quite clear that his movement was in competition with evil software "hoarders". Under the GPL, there is free sharing only with those who are like minded.
I recall reading, years ago, when Tux was just being drawn that Linus wanted to see a graphic with Tux and the BSD Daemon playing Ice Hockey against each other. Linus clearly saw it as a competition and this has spurred him on to "make a better system". Linus was the one who said that the goal was "World Domination", after all.
I don't know what "community" that you've been in contact with , but those who really founded THIS "community" (RMS, Linus, the various *BSD leaders) were never part of it.
-Jordan Henderson
Re:Redhat moving away from OpenSource?
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New CTO at Red Hat
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Failed OSS model?
While I can't agree with the suggestion that RedHat Linux will become a 'closed proprietary solution', I do wonder if Cygnus' history seems to indicated that the OSS model is not a business model that can be profitable.
If this is not the case, why does Cygnus sell closed source products when their original charter was support of Open Source (more specifically, GPL'd) software?
Cygnus tried the OSS business model before anyone, and seems to have backed away from it, at least to some extent. What does this say to others considering this model?
Perhaps the OSS business model will always be one of leveraging other profitable business. An IBM can afford to support OSS insofar as it hurts competitors more than them and it supports hardware sales. Companies like Cygnus can do OSS to help market their support/consulting business as long as they hold back some of their most valuable gems for more standard commercial licensing.
I know of one small business that uses the OSS product that they produce to generate consulting work for the author and a few associates. That's the purist OSS business model and it seems to work for them, but they appear to have very low overheads.
Who's got more clout, the "altruistic, customer-focused" megacorp, or the "evil, interfering" gov't. The dominant meme in American politics today is that the government can do no right.
I dunno. Seems like lately, the dominant meme in American Politics is "we must protect the children".
All the while, the 3 largest Energy (Oil) mergers (Exxon/Mobil, Amoco/BP, Shell/Texaco downstream), the largest telecomm (MCI Worldcomm), the largest automotive (Daimler/Chrysler), the largest media (CBS/Viacom) and the huge (and illegal at the time of cosummation, they got the law changed AFTER the merger) banking/insurance merger (Travelers/Citicorp) all take place.
Rather than the Government being afraid to take on these corporations, after all they DID take on Microsoft, I think the politicians and media are providing cover for them.
It's funny how the 1980s are still known in the media as the Merger Madness decade when it was the 1990s and now the 2000s that have really seen the growth of the MegaCorp. Who would have thunk that Clinton was more friendly to big bidness than Reagan?
IBM can't Open Source OS/2 because Microsoft still have a firm claim on much of the code.
I'd forgotten this. Yep, don't expect an OSS OS/2 soon. At least not until Microsoft starts releasing Open Source.
Wouldn't you like to be a fly on the wall in Microsoft's board room today?
I doubt if there's anything in this that raises many eyebrows in Redmond.
IBM has, months ago, heavily committed to Linux in the areas that compete most directly with MS offerings. This is about commitment to Linux in the rest of the IBM line.
IBM also made quite a splashy commitment to Windows 2000 last year.
I think this is more about IBM deemphasizing their own OS line vs. taking up Linux against MS.
IBM may be banking on a shakeout that leaves only Linux and MS standing. If such a shakeout occurs, it's the various UNIX and other OS vendors that'll need to scramble.
IBM has claimed to support Linux on their laptops for some time now. And, they've supported Linux on the PC Servers for a awhile also.
This announcement is about Linux EVERYWHERE, going UP their product line. We've heard about Linux on the Mainframes. Now, I guess this means AS/400s will get it too. And, it's a firm commitment on IBM's part to support it on RS/6000 machines.
I think IBM believes this will return their economics back to the mid 60's, when they dominated the market and gave away their Operating Systems when you purchased their hardware. The problem with that was that the DOJ found it to be anti-competitive and forced them to start selling the OS's unbundled from the hardware at "competitive" prices.
Nobody since then, with the exception of MS, has ever made much money selling Operating Systems. It's capital intensive and your market for new releases can dry up really fast.
I'm sure IBM realizes that they can't hope to make money in Operating Systems the MS way, so... IBM is deemphasizing the Operating System as a profit center. Let others (MS and the Free Software Community) deal with the headaches. IBM will still invest heavily in making sure the dominant OSs run well on their hardware, but they can greatly simplify their lives by letting others develop the "commodity" Operating Systems.
I think IBM also believes that their services business will pick up in supporting end users and Enterprises on Linux. IBM is quietly but aggressively pushing into Linux services. This services business is very lucrative.
Expect to see price hikes in other IBM Operating Systems as these get smaller market shares. Who knows, they might even Open Source some of the marginal Operating Systems, like OS/2.
These states are just asking for Truth in Advertising. If you advertise $400 in service rebates, then these States are saying that there'd better really be $400 available somewhere.
Otherwise, you are making a false claim concerning this $400 "rebate". For example, the people who ARE paying $400 for that equivalent service could be being cheated.
The guys selling the PCs splashing a price with the $400 removed are the one's attempting to benefit through a misleading practice and MSN is an accomplice. There would be no misrepresentation if the vendors just displayed the price you really end up paying and added "free 3 years of MSN when you buy now!" Bundling services and products together is not the problem, putting a misleading funny-money $ amount on it but not being willing to back that up with real money is the problem.
I don't have a problem with State laws that require clear representations of what is being offerred. Do you?
Frankly after giving poiticians a chance (republican or democrat) for a number of years, I'm sick of the lies, the half-truths, etc. Normally I don't see any reason to give them the benefit of the doubt when I've been lied to so many times.
With your cynicism toward politicians and your apparent belief that Agencies like OSHA protect us from horrific backward conditions, perhaps you'd prefer that Government be taken away from those rascally politicians and give it over to the enlightened beaurocrats you seem to trust.
After all, if a Government by politicians can't be trusted, how can we trust them to run our cherished Regulatory Agencies?
Anything that says "X sucks" stands a good change of being downscored, and probably deserves it, too. Please endeavour to express whatever sentiments lie behind that outburst using substantiating reasoning rather than emotive expletives.
The poster says, quite clearly, what he dislikes about perl;
Perl code is a mess of obscure control characters which can change the meaning of the code significantly. More to the point, Perl will generally try to "guess" what you want to do even if you don't quite express it correctly (Tom Christiansen's words, not mine). This may initially sound like a good idea, but it makes finding bugs a nightmare.
While it's not a Doctoral Thesis, it does seem to me that the above qualifies, at least by Slashdot standards, as "substantiated reasoning".
Tom elides this substance and attacks an isolated statement - "Perl sucks" - to enter into a barrage of emotional attacks. Tom incidentally offends those who have a problem maintaining Perl code, suggesting the fault may lie with them, and goes on to suggest that those who know Visual Basic are "Weenies".
As far as I can see, Tom's post was pretty substance free. It's easy to assert that perl is without flaw when it comes to the often heard complaints about maintenance, it's more difficult to make substantive points showing where the common pitfalls of perl that might bite a would be maintainer are not really much of a problem.
I'm sure Tom wouldn't make the claim that maintenance of programs is just as easy in all computer programming languages and thus any such complaints are the fault of the maintainer or the author.
I happen to believe that Perl does lack attributes of a programming language that lends itself to high maintainability. I think this is probably a design tradeoff. Perl is not Ada, it's not Visual Basic and thankfully, it's not Cobol.
It's right there in the 9th and 10th amendments! The Constitution does not enumerate our rights; it's limits are only for the federal government. Anything not explicitly in the document is a right still held by the people.
Who said anything about the federal government regulating roads? Last I checked, laws of the roads and law enforcement on the roads is a State responsibility.
Interesting that you would quote the 10th Amendment:
Amendment X
The powers not delegated to the United States by the Constitution, nor prohibited by it to the States, are reserved to the States respectively, or to the people.
Can you show any article of the Constitution that prohibits the States from regulating roads? If not, the 10th Amendment seems to explicitly permit the States to regulate the roads.
"just because it looks good on the surface"?! But the surface is all there is to a web page! HTML is a mark-up language; it is supposed to present page content, and that's all. If it does that well -- and/. does look well in any browser I've tried -- then it works.
Sloppy HTML coding hurts us all in a number of ways.
It makes browsers bigger, more complicated and buggy trying to deal with the non-grammatical crud out there that passes for HTML. This further goes on to make the cost of entry into the browser market very high.
I remember well when I had a program which occasionally generated BAD HTML (missing ) and my users immediately switched to MS IE because it included an implicit before subsequent tags or EOF. People didn't even report it to me, the user's had just shared the knowledge that IE worked better and I inadvertently sold a group on the merits of IE vs. Netscape. As a Netscape user, I was mortified and I immediately ran and killed the bug.
I've written programs to read, parse and interpret Web Pages. Bad HTML makes this problematic.
Careless, expedient engineering almost always has a price. Sometimes it's not obvious at first look, but under the surface, there's always a price. If nothing else, it's in forwarding the attitude that "good enough to pass" is good.
Further, by openning it up to the general public gratis, I'd be interested what it is that they're REALLY testing. The performance of the cluster, or the security of their OS tweaks... Hmmm...
See disclaimer below. I'm not in any way involved with the test drive program.
While I'm sure the people who are running these machines are interested in performance stats and security issues with putting the testdrives out to the public, I think the real purpose of this is Marketing.
There have been several stories about various of the Compaq testdrive programs here, so they've succeeded, to some extent, in getting the word out.
I think they are trying to overcome people's perception that Alpha is too much of an odd, niche, architecture and won't really run your applications. It's not true and you can get on one of these machines and prove it for yourself.
They are also trying to get the word out about the fact that Alpha runs Linux (including Beowolf clusters), FreeBSD, Tru64 UNIX and of course, my personal favorite OpenVMS.
Disclaimer: Yes, I work for Compaq, No, I'm not speaking for Compaq.
Popular is when my parents and grandparents ask "What is Linux?"
Well, this says a lot about your parents and grandparents, but not much about the populace at large. I guess all those investors that made the billion+ $ IPOs were completely in the dark about Linux.
What a crazy stock market. People are pushing prices up to 10 and 20 times initial offer and they've never heard of what it is the company is doing.
A certain level of "popularity" is necessary before investors are attracted to something. Sure, there's a feeding frenzy effect caused by this, which makes it even more popular, but you have to have a certain mindshare to make it possible.
Stallman's agenda is obvious. He wants no one to own their own work.
Well, make up your mind. First, the agenda was hidden and now it's obvious.
As to people "owning" their own work, perhaps it could be said that GNU advocates believe that Intellectual Property rights should be reviewed, but the broad statements about "no one to own their own work" are a bit strong. I've never heard RMS say anything about the ownership of material works.
. I can't recall the URL, but I read some great stuff from a BSD developer on his realization that Stallman is just a power hungry freak.
A couple of posts ago, you - I think it was you, it's so hard to debate the anonymous - insisted that "There are many good resources on the web explaining the hidden agenda of the FSF and the GPL. "
Now, you refer to some vague statement somewhere by a BSD developer who said that RMS "is just a power hungry freak". Well, to paraphrase the signature of a Slashdot BSD advocate "I read it from a BSD Developer, it must be true."
I have no reason to believe that RMS is not completely forthcoming about his agendas. I think a lot of his followers would wish that he were a bit more subtle.
The GPL is a virus. It is the number one reason that these other licenses keep popping up, and will continue to do so.
Gee, I must have missed the clause in the GPL that states "If you prefer not to release under the tenets of the GPL, then please consider making your work covered under an incompatible, but still Open Source, license."
I think the reason other licenses keep popping up is that people are waking up to the advantages of community development and they want all the advantages while still holding their precious Intellectual Property. They want it both ways. If that's not the case, why don't these entities just choose a BSD style license?
The GPL license is no more viral than any commercial license that allows you to see the source and modify the source, but not allow you to own changes. Funny, you never hear those commercial licenses referred to as viral.
Is the problem that you just really really want to use the GPL'd software, but once you do, you find you're stuck, it's just so hard to make money from it? Well, I have a solution. Stop using that darn virus carrying software.
That's right, come up with your own C compiler if the GPL is so pernicious. I seriously doubt that Intel, IBM, Digital, SGI, Sun and everybody else down through the years would have given away their changes to gcc that they paid to have done had it not been for that horrible viral GPL. These guys would have included binaries with their OS releases and closed off their changes, just like they do with their own compilers.
Sure would have put a crimp in Free OS (Linux, *BSD) portability had gcc not been a fairly decent cross platform compiler.
What an amazing virus the GPL is! Software catches it and people benefit.
GNU is a cult. They all follow RMS in lock step, and if you don't agree, they say that you are not enlightened. It is a software cult, fairly benign, but a cult nonetheless.
I agree with Tom Christiansen about the use of emotionally charged words and how they are used to destroy objectivity. RMS is a cult leader, a communist, a counter-culture hippy, all sorts of things that evoke emotional responses. So much talk, so little insight.
Slashdot Mirror
Some things I see I missed in the last post.
Yes, well, before GCC there was NO market for independent OS vendors who didn't also supply a compiler. Before GCC, it was pretty much the case that only the hardware vendors could capitalize both an OS and compiler development. This lead to a fractured, non interoperable, marketplace because the hardware/OS vendors were only interested into locking you in to their brands. Today, the situation is rather better, I think.
Sure, GCC may have hurt some compiler vendors, but those businesses were always fairly marginal anyway.
This is an analog to what I think you'll be seeing with Linux. As the basic tools become more available and commoditized, software vendors can concentrate on applications, contract programming and support.
Sometimes it's done, sometimes it's not. Hey, companies sometimes release commercial wares into the public domain. You can depend on the kindness of strangers if you want.
The GPL only demands this of an author who uses GPL'd works. If you want to license for fee, don't use GPL'd works. That's not onerous. Most commercial source licensing is the same. You aren't allowed to modify the SAP code you're provided with their source license and sell the result.
Where does RMS state that the GPL "is designed to reduce programmer's salaries and compromise their livelihoods."?
I've seen him state that it may have that effect, but I don't think you'll be able to back up your claim that this is what it was designed to do.
Even in the face of the ever increasing popularity of GPL'd software, programmer's salaries have been soaring. Maybe creating markets (like for BSD UNIX and BeOS) has been a good thing for programmers livelihoods?
-Jordan Henderson
You seem big on throwing around unsubstantiated claims. Please cite the tax law where it is not allowed that 501(c)(3) corporations compete with for-profit entities.
Mitre (a 501(c)(3) corporation) submits competitive bids, and often wins, against other Defense contractors. Another company that I'm familiar with, CTC (Concurrent Technology Corporation, a 501(c)(3) corporation), competes with for-profit companies to get various government contracts. Last I checked PBS (television) and NPR (radio) stations (all 501(c)(3)) compete with for-profit media.
Congratulations, you've found the one of the very few OS vendors that doesn't support their own compiler. I wonder if BeOS would even exist were it not for the great freely usable compiler technology?
Your claim that gcc has eliminated all compilers except "a few embedded niches and Microsoft Windows" is bizaare. Sun, Compaq, IBM, SGI, and HP all have quite active compiler groups. Intel builds a compiler for their architectures. There never was much of a third party market for compilers before gcc, most compilers were provided by the OS/Hardware vendor and they still are.
Gcc succeeds through "predatory pricing"? Another interesting claim. By this reasoning, I suppose ALL freeware should be stopped as being "predatory".
In any case, predatory pricing is only illegal if it seeks to establish an illegal monopoly. Someone giving something away that continues to give away their product is not disallowed. If it were, we'd be shutting down the people who voluntarily clean the roadsides as being predatory against the businesses that do the same.
I'm still waiting to see some reason in rebuttal. Did you know that US Senate rules forbid the use of the word "Demagogue"? It's because it's an empty epithet that adds nothing to the discussion. RMS doesn't throw around labels and call that debate, unlike his detractors.
I'm familiar with that history. So what? RMS saw what he considered an injustice and moved to correct it. He didn't move for restrictive legislation or just sit around and complain about it, he got to work in building something to correct an injustice. It's hardly a spite directed at Symbolics as it's not reasonable to assume that they would ever use GPL'd software. You might consider it spite against all who commit this, to RMS's thinking, wrong, but isn't that what correcting injustice is all about?
Again, RMS's detractors characterize him with labels (spiteful, malicious) while not actually adding anything interesting to the discussion of ideas in which RMS engages.
-Jordan Henderson
So what? Khruschev was less restrictive than Stalin, but what difference does that make. However, a commercial license does have one huge advantage over the GPL: no commercial library that I am aware of tells the developer what license they must use.
So, I take it by your analogy that you feel that any restriction on a license is evil. I suppose you are suggesting that all software should be covered under a BSD license of something.
I was addressing the point that the poster felt that the GPL places "massive restrictions" on you. I think the restrictions are pretty similar to those placed on you by commercial licenses, only less restrictive, yet you don't hear complaints about people chaffing under those.
-Jordan Henderson
Perhaps libeled is a bit strong. You do see RMS alternately called a communist, a Svengali a fraud and a number of other things. He generally is not criticized in a way that could legally be termed libel.
An amazing claim. Let's see, every single OS vendor has a compiler suite which they heavily support. Most chip manufacturers have a compiler (Intel, Motorola, IBM) for their architecture. There are any number of companies that sell commercial compilers. There is lcc. Seems like there are many, many, many alternatives.
Oh, you mean a good, free, cross architecture compiler that really works well?
Since you make a speculation about a market that could have been had it not been dominated by that mean, destructive GPL'd gcc, allow me to me to make one. Intel, IBM, Compaq (and DEC), Motorola and probably any number of other companies spent a lot developing code generation for gcc. Had the GPL not tied their hands and required them to give these changes back, these companies almost certainly would have sold the modified compiler as a product. After all, each of these companies had their own compilers that they sold as products. Why would they give away their work on gcc had they not been forced to?
Rather than gcc destroying the market for a good cross architecture compiler, it set up an environment where such a thing could thrive.
Compilers (FORTRAN, Algol, Cobol) and free software both existed since the 1950s. It wasn't until a GPL'd compiler appeared that good, free, cross architecture compiler appeared.
The GPL is shorter than most EULAs, and it only really places one restriction on the code; You can't take advantage of this community work unless you are willing to participate in the community by giving back. It may be more restrictive than the X/MIT or BSD licenses, but I don't see how you can reasonably call this a "massive restriction". The GPL is far less restrictive than any commercial license with which I'm familiar. What would you call commercial licensing? Tremendously restrictive? Unbelievably restrictive?
Sure. He unfairly gets called all kinds of names. A reasoned discussion of issues of various "free" licenses is met with "RMS isn't God, GNU isn't a religion and the FSF isn't a bunch of prophets." and absolutely no substantive arguments and Stallman's agenda is one of spite and malice?
Another amazing claim. What public good could these Open Source programmers be considering that is not allowed by the GPL except to turn an Open Source product into a Closed Source product. Seems like any other kind of Open Source license allows programmers to transform open source from a public good into a private good. You speak of engaging in "activities" (plural), but really there's only one activity that GPL doesn't allow. That's benefitting from others work without giving back changes to the community that gave you your start.
-Jordan Henderson
The referenced page doesn't ask us to accept anything on faith. RMS doesn't support worship of him or any of his principles. RMS primarily makes reasoned arguments. You may disagree with those arguments, but if you were up to the challenge you'd use reason yourself.
RMS tells us his view as to why other licenses, and specifically the X/MIT license can lead to problems. It's a pity his detractors have to bring up these tired cultist labels that actually serve to remove reason from the discussion.
It's funny that with all of the libel that RMS takes for his stands, you never see RMS suggest that others who don't support the GPL should stop using GPL'd products. Gcc comes to mind as something that has benefitted many in the Open Source "Community" who snipe at RMS, the FSF and the GPL.
Now we can see the philosophy of some of those who support other "free" licenses. They are factionalists. The FSF and the GPL support Freedom in software. The software is permitted to be used by anyone, even those who work against FSF goals.
-Jordan Henderson
If only to save him some pain when it brings up the inevitable subject of the slash code. :-)
-Jordan Henderson
I think the "community" is about Freedom. Now, you might not define Freedom in the way RMS does, but I do believe that he was on to something.
Where there is Freedom, there is no contradiction between competition and sharing. You get to decide you who you share with and you get to decide who you compete against. Only in Ideal Communist Dictatorships do you have sharing without competition.
Perhaps you are referring to a BSD "community" here. Where everything is given away and there's no competition. Oh wait, that doesn't fit either, witness FreeBSD, OpenBSD, NetBSD and BSDI. Each of these compete, in their own ways, against the others to make the "best" system.
From the very beginning of the Free Software Foundation, I think RMS made it quite clear that his movement was in competition with evil software "hoarders". Under the GPL, there is free sharing only with those who are like minded.
I recall reading, years ago, when Tux was just being drawn that Linus wanted to see a graphic with Tux and the BSD Daemon playing Ice Hockey against each other. Linus clearly saw it as a competition and this has spurred him on to "make a better system". Linus was the one who said that the goal was "World Domination", after all.
I don't know what "community" that you've been in contact with , but those who really founded THIS "community" (RMS, Linus, the various *BSD leaders) were never part of it.
-Jordan Henderson
While I can't agree with the suggestion that RedHat Linux will become a 'closed proprietary solution', I do wonder if Cygnus' history seems to indicated that the OSS model is not a business model that can be profitable.
If this is not the case, why does Cygnus sell closed source products when their original charter was support of Open Source (more specifically, GPL'd) software?
Cygnus tried the OSS business model before anyone, and seems to have backed away from it, at least to some extent. What does this say to others considering this model?
Perhaps the OSS business model will always be one of leveraging other profitable business. An IBM can afford to support OSS insofar as it hurts competitors more than them and it supports hardware sales. Companies like Cygnus can do OSS to help market their support/consulting business as long as they hold back some of their most valuable gems for more standard commercial licensing.
I know of one small business that uses the OSS product that they produce to generate consulting work for the author and a few associates. That's the purist OSS business model and it seems to work for them, but they appear to have very low overheads.
-Jordan Henderson
I dunno. Seems like lately, the dominant meme in American Politics is "we must protect the children".
All the while, the 3 largest Energy (Oil) mergers (Exxon/Mobil, Amoco/BP, Shell/Texaco downstream), the largest telecomm (MCI Worldcomm), the largest automotive (Daimler/Chrysler), the largest media (CBS/Viacom) and the huge (and illegal at the time of cosummation, they got the law changed AFTER the merger) banking/insurance merger (Travelers/Citicorp) all take place.
Rather than the Government being afraid to take on these corporations, after all they DID take on Microsoft, I think the politicians and media are providing cover for them.
It's funny how the 1980s are still known in the media as the Merger Madness decade when it was the 1990s and now the 2000s that have really seen the growth of the MegaCorp. Who would have thunk that Clinton was more friendly to big bidness than Reagan?
-Jordan Henderson
I'd forgotten this. Yep, don't expect an OSS OS/2 soon. At least not until Microsoft starts releasing Open Source.
I doubt if there's anything in this that raises many eyebrows in Redmond.
IBM has, months ago, heavily committed to Linux in the areas that compete most directly with MS offerings. This is about commitment to Linux in the rest of the IBM line.
IBM also made quite a splashy commitment to Windows 2000 last year.
I think this is more about IBM deemphasizing their own OS line vs. taking up Linux against MS.
IBM may be banking on a shakeout that leaves only Linux and MS standing. If such a shakeout occurs, it's the various UNIX and other OS vendors that'll need to scramble.
-Jordan Henderson
IBM has claimed to support Linux on their laptops for some time now. And, they've supported Linux on the PC Servers for a awhile also.
This announcement is about Linux EVERYWHERE, going UP their product line. We've heard about Linux on the Mainframes. Now, I guess this means AS/400s will get it too. And, it's a firm commitment on IBM's part to support it on RS/6000 machines.
I think IBM believes this will return their economics back to the mid 60's, when they dominated the market and gave away their Operating Systems when you purchased their hardware. The problem with that was that the DOJ found it to be anti-competitive and forced them to start selling the OS's unbundled from the hardware at "competitive" prices.
Nobody since then, with the exception of MS, has ever made much money selling Operating Systems. It's capital intensive and your market for new releases can dry up really fast.
I'm sure IBM realizes that they can't hope to make money in Operating Systems the MS way, so... IBM is deemphasizing the Operating System as a profit center. Let others (MS and the Free Software Community) deal with the headaches. IBM will still invest heavily in making sure the dominant OSs run well on their hardware, but they can greatly simplify their lives by letting others develop the "commodity" Operating Systems.
I think IBM also believes that their services business will pick up in supporting end users and Enterprises on Linux. IBM is quietly but aggressively pushing into Linux services. This services business is very lucrative.
Expect to see price hikes in other IBM Operating Systems as these get smaller market shares. Who knows, they might even Open Source some of the marginal Operating Systems, like OS/2.
-Jordan Henderson
These states are just asking for Truth in Advertising. If you advertise $400 in service rebates, then these States are saying that there'd better really be $400 available somewhere.
Otherwise, you are making a false claim concerning this $400 "rebate". For example, the people who ARE paying $400 for that equivalent service could be being cheated.
The guys selling the PCs splashing a price with the $400 removed are the one's attempting to benefit through a misleading practice and MSN is an accomplice. There would be no misrepresentation if the vendors just displayed the price you really end up paying and added "free 3 years of MSN when you buy now!" Bundling services and products together is not the problem, putting a misleading funny-money $ amount on it but not being willing to back that up with real money is the problem.
I don't have a problem with State laws that require clear representations of what is being offerred. Do you?
-Jordan Henderson
With your cynicism toward politicians and your apparent belief that Agencies like OSHA protect us from horrific backward conditions, perhaps you'd prefer that Government be taken away from those rascally politicians and give it over to the enlightened beaurocrats you seem to trust.
After all, if a Government by politicians can't be trusted, how can we trust them to run our cherished Regulatory Agencies?
-Jordan Henderson
You're right. Before OSHA was established in 1971, conditions were exactly like they were in the 1800's.
-Jordan Henderson
The poster says, quite clearly, what he dislikes about perl;
While it's not a Doctoral Thesis, it does seem to me that the above qualifies, at least by Slashdot standards, as "substantiated reasoning".
Tom elides this substance and attacks an isolated statement - "Perl sucks" - to enter into a barrage of emotional attacks. Tom incidentally offends those who have a problem maintaining Perl code, suggesting the fault may lie with them, and goes on to suggest that those who know Visual Basic are "Weenies".
As far as I can see, Tom's post was pretty substance free. It's easy to assert that perl is without flaw when it comes to the often heard complaints about maintenance, it's more difficult to make substantive points showing where the common pitfalls of perl that might bite a would be maintainer are not really much of a problem.
I'm sure Tom wouldn't make the claim that maintenance of programs is just as easy in all computer programming languages and thus any such complaints are the fault of the maintainer or the author.
I happen to believe that Perl does lack attributes of a programming language that lends itself to high maintainability. I think this is probably a design tradeoff. Perl is not Ada, it's not Visual Basic and thankfully, it's not Cobol.
-Jordan Henderson
Who said anything about the federal government regulating roads? Last I checked, laws of the roads and law enforcement on the roads is a State responsibility.
Interesting that you would quote the 10th Amendment:
Amendment X
The powers not delegated to the United States by the Constitution, nor prohibited by it to the States, are reserved to the States respectively, or to the people.
Can you show any article of the Constitution that prohibits the States from regulating roads? If not, the 10th Amendment seems to explicitly permit the States to regulate the roads.
-Jordan Henderson
Sloppy HTML coding hurts us all in a number of ways.
It makes browsers bigger, more complicated and buggy trying to deal with the non-grammatical crud out there that passes for HTML. This further goes on to make the cost of entry into the browser market very high.
I remember well when I had a program which occasionally generated BAD HTML (missing ) and my users immediately switched to MS IE because it included an implicit before subsequent tags or EOF. People didn't even report it to me, the user's had just shared the knowledge that IE worked better and I inadvertently sold a group on the merits of IE vs. Netscape. As a Netscape user, I was mortified and I immediately ran and killed the bug.
I've written programs to read, parse and interpret Web Pages. Bad HTML makes this problematic.
Careless, expedient engineering almost always has a price. Sometimes it's not obvious at first look, but under the surface, there's always a price. If nothing else, it's in forwarding the attitude that "good enough to pass" is good.
-Jordan Henderson
What will Andover be doing to make sure we can continue to trust that Slashdot Editorial policy is not in thrall to advertisers' concerns?
-Jordan Henderson
See disclaimer below. I'm not in any way involved with the test drive program.
While I'm sure the people who are running these machines are interested in performance stats and security issues with putting the testdrives out to the public, I think the real purpose of this is Marketing.
There have been several stories about various of the Compaq testdrive programs here, so they've succeeded, to some extent, in getting the word out.
I think they are trying to overcome people's perception that Alpha is too much of an odd, niche, architecture and won't really run your applications. It's not true and you can get on one of these machines and prove it for yourself.
They are also trying to get the word out about the fact that Alpha runs Linux (including Beowolf clusters), FreeBSD, Tru64 UNIX and of course, my personal favorite OpenVMS.
Disclaimer: Yes, I work for Compaq, No, I'm not speaking for Compaq.
-Jordan Henderson
Now that sounds like an interesting story.
What hearing in California?
-Jordan Henderson
It's not exactly a post that can be refuted by facts. The poster has one definition of "popular" that doesn't yield to argument.
I think something is popular when it attracts a lot of investor interest and thus the Billion $ IPOs.
The poster feels it's not popular until somebody's relatives are asking about it.
It's a semantic argument with no authority to decide it.
As for Ad Hominems it was the poster - mr - who bitterly complained about the Slashdot posters as being religious zealots who don't listen to facts.
-Jordan Henderson
Well, this says a lot about your parents and grandparents, but not much about the populace at large. I guess all those investors that made the billion+ $ IPOs were completely in the dark about Linux.
What a crazy stock market. People are pushing prices up to 10 and 20 times initial offer and they've never heard of what it is the company is doing.
A certain level of "popularity" is necessary before investors are attracted to something. Sure, there's a feeding frenzy effect caused by this, which makes it even more popular, but you have to have a certain mindshare to make it possible.
-Jordan Henderson
That Pat must be a pretty sharp fellow!
-Jordan Henderson
1) There is a billion dollar BSD IPO.
Uhhmmmm... billion dollar IPOs are a result of hype, not the cause of it...
Seems like you're getting the cart before the horse.
-Jordan Henderson
Well, make up your mind. First, the agenda was hidden and now it's obvious.
As to people "owning" their own work, perhaps it could be said that GNU advocates believe that Intellectual Property rights should be reviewed, but the broad statements about "no one to own their own work" are a bit strong. I've never heard RMS say anything about the ownership of material works.
A couple of posts ago, you - I think it was you, it's so hard to debate the anonymous - insisted that "There are many good resources on the web explaining the hidden agenda of the FSF and the GPL. "
Now, you refer to some vague statement somewhere by a BSD developer who said that RMS "is just a power hungry freak". Well, to paraphrase the signature of a Slashdot BSD advocate "I read it from a BSD Developer, it must be true."
I have no reason to believe that RMS is not completely forthcoming about his agendas. I think a lot of his followers would wish that he were a bit more subtle.
Gee, I must have missed the clause in the GPL that states "If you prefer not to release under the tenets of the GPL, then please consider making your work covered under an incompatible, but still Open Source, license."
I think the reason other licenses keep popping up is that people are waking up to the advantages of community development and they want all the advantages while still holding their precious Intellectual Property. They want it both ways. If that's not the case, why don't these entities just choose a BSD style license?
The GPL license is no more viral than any commercial license that allows you to see the source and modify the source, but not allow you to own changes. Funny, you never hear those commercial licenses referred to as viral.
Is the problem that you just really really want to use the GPL'd software, but once you do, you find you're stuck, it's just so hard to make money from it? Well, I have a solution. Stop using that darn virus carrying software.
That's right, come up with your own C compiler if the GPL is so pernicious. I seriously doubt that Intel, IBM, Digital, SGI, Sun and everybody else down through the years would have given away their changes to gcc that they paid to have done had it not been for that horrible viral GPL. These guys would have included binaries with their OS releases and closed off their changes, just like they do with their own compilers.
Sure would have put a crimp in Free OS (Linux, *BSD) portability had gcc not been a fairly decent cross platform compiler.
What an amazing virus the GPL is! Software catches it and people benefit.
- GNU is a cult. They all follow RMS in lock step, and if you don't agree, they say that you are not enlightened. It is a software cult, fairly benign, but a cult nonetheless.
I agree with Tom Christiansen about the use of emotionally charged words and how they are used to destroy objectivity. RMS is a cult leader, a communist, a counter-culture hippy, all sorts of things that evoke emotional responses. So much talk, so little insight.-Jordan Henderson