(take Ballmer's word for it?)
Even if it is more expensive, the money stays in Germany, in the EU, not going to the US. That's a good enough reason for many govts.
Quite right but... If MS were to add a feature to MSJVM based on Sun's hypothetical GPL-ed JVM which only worked on Windows OSes, then any other GPL-ed JVM can use that code on Windows. It's just a Windows-only feature. But it's not a MS-only feature which is what happened with the Microsoft Virtual Machine.
So there could be a Windows-only extension to Java available, but it is still vendor neutral.
To be harmful, such an extension would have to be either used by MS compiler in order to kill Write-Once-Run-Anywhere, in which case Sun would sue like over the MSVM; or be such a killer feature that developers want to use it, in the knowledge that they are tieing themselves to Windows. This last case is not dangerous, because if a developer decides to write non-portable stuff he's not loss to portability. If it's just such a killer feature that developers use it without thinking (and realising that they're breaking portability) then it should probably be emulated/ ported to other platforms!
Can you think of any examples that are not of the MSVM type?
Debian exists to give easy access to *free* software. Non-free is just an optional extra. The packages will still be accessible from non-standard apt sources, so don't sweat it! People who want to provide such sources can; people who want to use them can. Debian will never *prevent* people doing what they want, because it will be 100%, therefore modifiable, redistributable etc.
On a side note, there are a few points where non-free software is by far the best available, or the only realistic alternative. These are the places where free software development can be really useful.
An example of a technical challenge that is really now maturing is free Java environments - classpath, kaffe etc are getting good enough to be viable on their own without non-free Sun stuff.
Many areas that need work are beyond mere hacking but require serious social/political work - like Nvidia drivers another poster talked about, and Flash plugins etc (similar issue - non-free plugins/kernel modules are a pain when ABI/API changes).
Anyway, back to topic - Debian is about user freedom. This include the freedom to add non-free software, at your own choice, but the core is about free software.
There is also the paper "The Art of the Interpreter" by the same author (one of the Sussmans) - other papers by Sussman available from http://library.readscheme.org/page1.html.
The Art of the Interpreter is all about implementing mini-languages in interpreters. Using Lisp. Making an interpreter in Lisp is easy, since the whole language runtime gives you an interpreter, so you just define your parser and your evaluator...
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(take Ballmer's word for it?) Even if it is more expensive, the money stays in Germany, in the EU, not going to the US. That's a good enough reason for many govts.
and they save money by not having to have guys in armoured cars pick up the cash (which is not free).
Quite right but... If MS were to add a feature to MSJVM based on Sun's hypothetical GPL-ed JVM which only worked on Windows OSes, then any other GPL-ed JVM can use that code on Windows. It's just a Windows-only feature. But it's not a MS-only feature which is what happened with the Microsoft Virtual Machine.
So there could be a Windows-only extension to Java available, but it is still vendor neutral.
To be harmful, such an extension would have to be either used by MS compiler in order to kill Write-Once-Run-Anywhere, in which case Sun would sue like over the MSVM; or be such a killer feature that developers want to use it, in the knowledge that they are tieing themselves to Windows. This last case is not dangerous, because if a developer decides to write non-portable stuff he's not loss to portability. If it's just such a killer feature that developers use it without thinking (and realising that they're breaking portability) then it should probably be emulated/ ported to other platforms!
Can you think of any examples that are not of the MSVM type?
In a democrasy, the people. I.e. the public/voters. In particular, jurors and judges.
Debian exists to give easy access to *free* software. Non-free is just an optional extra. The packages will still be accessible from non-standard apt sources, so don't sweat it! People who want to provide such sources can; people who want to use them can. Debian will never *prevent* people doing what they want, because it will be 100%, therefore modifiable, redistributable etc.
One possibly important point is that Debian cannot be the FSF-approved GNU/Linux (/whatever else) distro until it removes non-free.
On a side note, there are a few points where non-free software is by far the best available, or the only realistic alternative. These are the places where free software development can be really useful.
An example of a technical challenge that is really now maturing is free Java environments - classpath, kaffe etc are getting good enough to be viable on their own without non-free Sun stuff.
Many areas that need work are beyond mere hacking but require serious social/political work - like Nvidia drivers another poster talked about, and Flash plugins etc (similar issue - non-free plugins/kernel modules are a pain when ABI/API changes).
Anyway, back to topic - Debian is about user freedom. This include the freedom to add non-free software, at your own choice, but the core is about free software.
There is also the paper "The Art of the Interpreter" by the same author (one of the Sussmans) - other papers by Sussman available from http://library.readscheme.org/page1.html. The Art of the Interpreter is all about implementing mini-languages in interpreters. Using Lisp. Making an interpreter in Lisp is easy, since the whole language runtime gives you an interpreter, so you just define your parser and your evaluator...