At a trade show in late 1998, dedicated to the operating system often referred to as ``Linux'', the featured speaker was an executive from a prominent software company. He was probably invited on account of his company's decision to ``support'' that system. Unfortunately, their form of ``support'' consists of releasing non-free software that works with the system--in other words, using our community as a market but not contributing to it.
He said, ``There is no way we will make our product open source, but perhaps we will make it `internal' open source. If we allow our customer support staff to have access to the source code, they could fix bugs for the customers, and we could provide a better product and better service.'' (This is not an exact quote, as I did not write his words down, but it gets the gist.)
People in the audience afterward told me, ``He just doesn't get the point.'' But is that so? Which point did he not get?
He did not miss the point of the Open Source movement. That movement does not say users should have freedom, only that allowing more people to look at the source code and help improve it makes for faster and better development. The executive grasped that point completely; unwilling to carry out that approach in full, users included, he was considering implementing it partially, within the company.
The point that he missed is the point that ``open source'' was designed not to raise: the point that users deserve freedom.
Spreading the idea of freedom is a big job--it needs your help. That's why we stick to the term ``free software'' in the GNU Project, so we can help do that job. If you feel that freedom and community are important for their own sake--not just for the convenience they bring--please join us in using the term ``free software''.
People in Europe and Britain are kinda safe right now. Software patents are being granted, and are being used as the basis of litigation threats that the recipients can't afford to contest, but at least the courts are on our side, so far.
This situation is not stable. If China, India, and Latin America bring in software patents, then Europe will probably give in at a subsequent world trade agreement.
To keep people in Britain and Europe safe, people in Britain and Europe must take action - and one easy way to do this is to donate to competent, active groups such as FSFE. One way to do this is to join The Fellowship of FSFE, and also encourage others to join.
"The problematic parts are not the core technologies submitted to the ECMA or the Unix/Gnome-specific parts."
The problem (software patents) can affect any part. If MS have claimed they don't have patents on "core parts", you cannot trust them. If the Mono devs have claimed that MS don't have patents on "core parts", they are saying something they can't possibly know.
As well as including "according to the public statements of MS and the Mono devs", you should also read that sentence with the qualification: "for now anyway".
if you say something is not well thought out, also saying why
The reasons why their plan is not well though out are given in that article, in the last paragraph of that section, just after the list of the 3 strategies.
It's probably good that Mono exists, it may have uses in some situations. It may help people get out of.Net related lock-in, but in general it should not be built upon.
I used vim for years, and I repeated silly slogans about it during that time too. Vim is a good introduction to what people should expect from an editor, but Emacs is the editor that actually does those things.
Vim lets you do lots of things, but in horrible ways. It makes you ask "I wonder if there's an easy/clean way to do this" - there's a short answer, but the long answer is: move to GNU Emacs.
Consider the purpose of the computer when choosing the filesystem? Yep, can't argue with that.
One other point I thought of just after posting my first comment is that CPU power is growing far faster than IO resources are growing, so changes in the technological environment are causing CPU-using filesystems to be increasingly a good idea.
And here's a benchmark which backs up what I was suggesting. It shows Reiser4 as being the fastest, and the most CPU-using, of the 5 main journaling filesystems. And given that CPU cycles are becoming increasingly numerous and cheap, that's probably ok for most uses.
Reiser is not designed for slow CPUs. AFAIK, a key part of the design was the Hans Reiser realised that CPUs were vastly underused. IO resources were maxed out and CPUs were sitting idle. So he found ways to use the CPU to make more efficient use of the IO resources. So this benchmark on a 500Mhz machine will of course show Reiser in a bad light, and moving lower down to a 266Mhz will make it even worse.
For a decent benchmark of how filesystems work on modern hardware: use modern hardware.
I agree that preaching must be avoided, but not mentioning that it is free software is a false economy.
People who don't value their freedom will let it slip through their fingers. i.e. they will install a bunch of proprietary plug-ins, and over time, Firefox will become a platform for a set of non-free plug-ins for browsing the non-free WWW.
...but the preaching has to be removed. Freedom and community could be mentioned without an explanation, and at least the user would then have the option of investigating for themself.
In business terms, freedom is the software's "unique selling point".
I think you've spotted somewhere you can help :-)
on
Blender 2.40 Released
·
· Score: 1
If you could spread the word in the forums you know of, that would be helpful. It was a gimp mailing list where I heard about it, so I don't know how well-publicised it is in forums of other projects.
I'm not actually involved in the meeting, I'm just interested because I think the conference is based on a good idea.
(Correction: In my post I said the conference was on the 19th, but it's actually a 3-day event from the 17th to the 19th)
There's Blender meeting in March (also for gimp...
on
Blender 2.40 Released
·
· Score: 4, Informative
Anyone interested in Blender should be aware of the Libre Graphic Meeting. The plan is to get developers of Blender in one place, plus get developers of other free software packages like GIMP, Inkscape, and Scribus together too.
The languages page of my website is about my experiences in learning a few languages. I moved to a French-speaking country 18 months ago, and for my job it's useful for me to have a grasp of a few other languages. (I'm a lobbyist - working for free software and against software patents.)
Other than Linus Torvalds, practically zero people's projects have deleted the "or later version" bit....and I don't think it was one of Linus's better thought out moves.
This is news because Debian is ahead of the field in some ways, but is always tarnished by it's outdatedness. This outdatedness causes people to think things like "Debian is only for servers you don't have physical access to" etc.
There's probably a good reason why the article doesn't say why the GPL is not suitable - namely that this hasn't been thought through.
As Torvalds says, the GPL is the simplist wording possible for a complex system. Keep in mind that Creative Commons licenses are not simple, they're just hidden behind a laymans explanation. Did the poster of the article realise that the 1-page summary of the Creative Commons licenses is not the legally binding part?
Slashdot Mirror
Here's an anecdote from Richard Stallman.
At a trade show in late 1998, dedicated to the operating system often referred to as ``Linux'', the featured speaker was an executive from a prominent software company. He was probably invited on account of his company's decision to ``support'' that system. Unfortunately, their form of ``support'' consists of releasing non-free software that works with the system--in other words, using our community as a market but not contributing to it.
He said, ``There is no way we will make our product open source, but perhaps we will make it `internal' open source. If we allow our customer support staff to have access to the source code, they could fix bugs for the customers, and we could provide a better product and better service.'' (This is not an exact quote, as I did not write his words down, but it gets the gist.)
People in the audience afterward told me, ``He just doesn't get the point.'' But is that so? Which point did he not get?
He did not miss the point of the Open Source movement. That movement does not say users should have freedom, only that allowing more people to look at the source code and help improve it makes for faster and better development. The executive grasped that point completely; unwilling to carry out that approach in full, users included, he was considering implementing it partially, within the company.
The point that he missed is the point that ``open source'' was designed not to raise: the point that users deserve freedom.
Spreading the idea of freedom is a big job--it needs your help. That's why we stick to the term ``free software'' in the GNU Project, so we can help do that job. If you feel that freedom and community are important for their own sake--not just for the convenience they bring--please join us in using the term ``free software''.
That says you can use it - for any purpose, and it's capable of being studied, modified, patched, forked, audited, etc.
(see Subject)
People in Europe and Britain are kinda safe right now. Software patents are being granted, and are being used as the basis of litigation threats that the recipients can't afford to contest, but at least the courts are on our side, so far.
This situation is not stable. If China, India, and Latin America bring in software patents, then Europe will probably give in at a subsequent world trade agreement.
To keep people in Britain and Europe safe, people in Britain and Europe must take action - and one easy way to do this is to donate to competent, active groups such as FSFE. One way to do this is to join The Fellowship of FSFE, and also encourage others to join.
Here's a webpage about how and why to support FSFE's Fellowship campaign.
"The problematic parts are not the core technologies submitted to the ECMA or the Unix/Gnome-specific parts."
The problem (software patents) can affect any part. If MS have claimed they don't have patents on "core parts", you cannot trust them. If the Mono devs have claimed that MS don't have patents on "core parts", they are saying something they can't possibly know.
As well as including "according to the public statements of MS and the Mono devs", you should also read that sentence with the qualification: "for now anyway".
if you say something is not well thought out, also saying why
The reasons why their plan is not well though out are given in that article, in the last paragraph of that section, just after the list of the 3 strategies.
The strategy for dealing with patents is discussed on the Wikipedia article about Mono. It is not a well thought out strategy.
It's probably good that Mono exists, it may have uses in some situations. It may help people get out of .Net related lock-in, but in general it should not be built upon.
I used vim for years, and I repeated silly slogans about it during that time too. Vim is a good introduction to what people should expect from an editor, but Emacs is the editor that actually does those things.
Vim lets you do lots of things, but in horrible ways. It makes you ask "I wonder if there's an easy/clean way to do this" - there's a short answer, but the long answer is: move to GNU Emacs.
I'm glad to learn I'm not the only one that thinks wget is fantastic.
One util that I'll add that you might like is http://www.gnu.org/software/wdiff/wdiff.html">GNU wdiff - a diff that's word-based instead of line-based. Great.
Oh, and don't worry about insulting Emacs. It'll still be there when you grow out of vim ;-p
Eh, the GNU project and the Linux project?
> How much better are we talking here?
See my second post in this thread, I give a link to a benchmark where Reiser is twice as fast as its nearest competitor.
Consider the purpose of the computer when choosing the filesystem? Yep, can't argue with that.
One other point I thought of just after posting my first comment is that CPU power is growing far faster than IO resources are growing, so changes in the technological environment are causing CPU-using filesystems to be increasingly a good idea.
And here's a benchmark which backs up what I was suggesting. It shows Reiser4 as being the fastest, and the most CPU-using, of the 5 main journaling filesystems. And given that CPU cycles are becoming increasingly numerous and cheap, that's probably ok for most uses.
Reiser is not designed for slow CPUs. AFAIK, a key part of the design was the Hans Reiser realised that CPUs were vastly underused. IO resources were maxed out and CPUs were sitting idle. So he found ways to use the CPU to make more efficient use of the IO resources. So this benchmark on a 500Mhz machine will of course show Reiser in a bad light, and moving lower down to a 266Mhz will make it even worse.
For a decent benchmark of how filesystems work on modern hardware: use modern hardware.
> preaching about open source software
I agree that preaching must be avoided, but not mentioning that it is free software is a false economy.
People who don't value their freedom will let it slip through their fingers. i.e. they will install a bunch of proprietary plug-ins, and over time, Firefox will become a platform for a set of non-free plug-ins for browsing the non-free WWW.
...but the preaching has to be removed. Freedom and community could be mentioned without an explanation, and at least the user would then have the option of investigating for themself.
In business terms, freedom is the software's "unique selling point".
If you could spread the word in the forums you know of, that would be helpful. It was a gimp mailing list where I heard about it, so I don't know how well-publicised it is in forums of other projects.
I'm not actually involved in the meeting, I'm just interested because I think the conference is based on a good idea.
(Correction: In my post I said the conference was on the 19th, but it's actually a 3-day event from the 17th to the 19th)
Anyone interested in Blender should be aware of the Libre Graphic Meeting. The plan is to get developers of Blender in one place, plus get developers of other free software packages like GIMP, Inkscape, and Scribus together too.
19 March 2006 in Lyon, France
ATI and NVidia are famous for being the two worst companies to buy from. Some links:
The languages page of my website is about my experiences in learning a few languages. I moved to a French-speaking country 18 months ago, and for my job it's useful for me to have a grasp of a few other languages. (I'm a lobbyist - working for free software and against software patents.)
There's also a nice, and very frank, quote about software patents being used for abusive purposes.
Other than Linus Torvalds, practically zero people's projects have deleted the "or later version" bit. ...and I don't think it was one of Linus's better thought out moves.
"Did You Say "Intellectual Property"? It's a Seductive Mirage "
This is news because Debian is ahead of the field in some ways, but is always tarnished by it's outdatedness. This outdatedness causes people to think things like "Debian is only for servers you don't have physical access to" etc.
There's probably a good reason why the article doesn't say why the GPL is not suitable - namely that this hasn't been thought through.
As Torvalds says, the GPL is the simplist wording possible for a complex system. Keep in mind that Creative Commons licenses are not simple, they're just hidden behind a laymans explanation. Did the poster of the article realise that the 1-page summary of the Creative Commons licenses is not the legally binding part?
FSF have a lengthy and interesting report from yesterdays meeting
Stallman is consistent in saying that names are important.
What he said in this article is that "What names you're allowed to call a program is a side issue" (emphasis mine)
Who would have thought (or used a search engine to check) that GNU.org has an essay about this: What's in a name?