Rasmus on slashdot != Rasmus from php devel. If he was.. he would have come out and said it. Anyway, here's a snippet I pulled from license-discuss. Now, I'm not the one to certify a license as being OSD-compliant or not... but I do know there are some issues with the license.. and I also believe it isn't open-source (see previous post).
There are always anti-GPL messages on slashdot, many from people who don't write software. I'd not concern yourself with them. There are also lots of people who speak in favor of the GPL and more vendors are using it lately.
The PHP4 license was not quite identical with the QPL 2.0. We discussed some license problems with the PHP folks and they will fix them.
Ain't true. What do you think all these people in AOL chat rooms are doing? Yeah, I know, it's a big stretch to call that flirting, but it is generally the same idea.
And your cgi concerns aren't too well-founded. The thing you can do with the cgi version, at least under Unix, is to run it as your own user id through suExec which is quite safe.
I think they are. Check out this CERT advisory, as well as this page from the php manual. It's certainly possible to set up a host like this guy is suggesting.. but some care needs to be taken. I'm not familiar with IIS, so I can't comment on the availability of a chroot()-style environment.
Also, ODBC support is not new to PHP 4. It was in PHP 3 as well and it hasn't changed much.
Okay, you caught me on this one - I went back and looked, and there is indeed support for an ODBC driver manager in php3.:}
About your comment that php4 is open source... I quote the php4 License FAQSecond, the license prevents commercial use of the Zend library to build commercial applications. Correct me if I'm wrong.. but that sounds an aweful lot like a violation of OSD rule #1. See this link for the full monty.
You know, in all seriousness, remote learning won't achieve widespread acceptance within the next 30 years for one simple reason: you can't flirt with somebody who's in another state. Seriously.. human interaction is a key component to learning. Geeks have come the farthest in this country to breaking that rule - but even we still need some real-life human interaction to do some things. Imagine trying to hold a chemistry lab... via video-conferencing. "Charlie was a chemist, but charlie is no more, what charlie thought was H2O was H2SO4". There are just some things you can't do online. I should know... I've been trying to get a job online for the last three months. I'm still unemployed. *g*
Now, the online "classroom" idea I dig - multimedia presentations are a great way to convey lots of information quickly. Just turn on the disovery channel, or "Bill Nye the Science Guy" and you'll see what I mean. Those are the kinds of things that I'd like to see - technology to assist the teacher.. not to replace him/her.
I'm sure that other people will give you the scoop on all the advantages of php3/4/zend and the usual recommendations, so this post is dedicated to informing you of the disadvantages and shortfalls of your implimentation. Likely this post will be -1'd, but I feel it important to mention.
I would seriously recommend using the mod_php3 modules under Apache due to performance and security. If you run PHP as a CGI script, you can do nasty-evil things like read the.htaccess files under apache. There is also no "safe mode" for the CGI module (I haven't verified this, however).. which means one coding slip-up and you hand the remote user all the priveledges the webserver has on the system (which given that you'd be running NT, is probably full access). Even with safe mode, you will still have some additional security concerns that the apache module doesn't have.:(
The other problem with PHP4 is the licensing - it is not open source. Bruce Perens and the OSI have been working on it for awhile now (a long while ago *muttering*) but it isn't fixed yet. Go over the license and see if you can live with it.. otherwise stick with PHP3 (which meets the OSD).
The single compelling reason to use PHP over third-party or Microsoft offerings is the database support. You should know that PHP4 brings ODBC driver support (via iodbc under linux, YMMV under NT) so that you can access alot more RDBMS systems than before. This is a definate consideration when looking at the client's needs. I will again reiterate that NT isn't the best platform for serving dynamic content from.. and would urge you to consider using a unix-based solution.. it's more scaleable, easier to maintain, and more reliable than it's NT counter-parts.
Government: "... and your honor, as we have clearly demonstrated Bill Gates is infact the anti-christ and should be immediately slain by a silver sword under a full moon on the fourth week of february".
Microsoft: "... We will concede that Mr. Gates is a deity of extraordinary power and has been very 'innovative' in the area of computers. But the economic loss would be immeasurable if we were to kill him. We recommend breaking up into four seperate units - four horsemen if you will, who will ride fourth bringing Office, NT, W2K, and The Road Ahead to everybody!"
*cough* Unless he wrote this book himself, I think you're doing him a disservice by saying his vision was naive. After it's all said and done, it's easy for critics to go back and say that you were naive, stupid, didn't know what you were doing, and a plethora of other things. What these critics will universally fail to grasp however - is that ground-breaking work is hard, frought with difficulty, and often bears no fruit.
I'm reminded of a quote from the Guiness book of world records - Babe Ruth, argueably the greatest baseball player of all time.. couldn't even hit the ball half the time.
As has been previously said on slashdot - Bruce Perens & the OSI are already speaking with Corel on remedying the situation. No need to get irritated (yet).
As a curious sidenote... somebody should e-mail zdnet and let them know to check slashdot before they post linux articles. Wait, nevermind. Who would we have left to poke fun at if zdnet got hit by a clue-by-four? Better not tell them.:)
... Go back and re-read the ARIN FAQ I posted. I just got done telling you that ipv6 was not designed to increase the available address space. You are confusing routing with addressing. IPv6 was designed primarily to help ease path discovery in embedded systems (routers!).. not increase the amount of addressable space.
Oh bother.. these people didn't do their research.
Hit up this FAQ put out by ARIN. To quote: IPv6 was not designed to address the routing table overload.
Not only that, CIFS is supposed to address this issue for ipv4. The biggest problem IMO is that router tables will simply become too large and cumbersome to maintain. There is a practical limit to how much routing info you can squeeze into a embedded system (router!) before the costs outweigh the benefits.
You bring up a good point, but I would like to point out that regardless of what you or I think - the big UNIX shops are Solaris, not linux. Veritas has been in those shops for a long time, and both management and the techies are used to it. That adds up to a wide acceptance in these shops - esp. considering that most every business has a few windows systems out there that need file and print services.
And though I am loathe to admit it... the Linux filesystem is woefully inadequate for large servers. It works very nicely for SOHO and small workgroups.. but it has too many performance issues to be considered for large servers. ( To illustrate, create an 800mb file on the ext2 fs. Now go ahead and delete it. Can you see the smoke coming out of your HDD yet? ) As always, work is being done to address this... but right now the support isn't there.
In short, Veritas is a very commonly-used filesystem in the workplace - there's not many Solaris sysadmins that haven't heard of it. It is mainly used for high performance filesystems - raid0, raid5... the big boys.
Since samba is supported by these guys now, it's a given that very high performance samba servers are going to enter the marketplace soon. What does this mean for Microsoft? Bad news. You can now replace your 50+ NT servers with a single solaris box.. and get better performance to boot. Stability, speed, reliability... everything a unix wookie needs in his holy war against the evil empire.
Peer pressure is a very good way of enforcing social convention. Witness our own open source movement. How come the GPL has yet to be tested/violated in any major fashion yet? There's a good reason which I'm sure you'll come up with. Someday.
Isn't the Z80 the same processor used in lego mindstorms? If so... I'm thinking there's going to be a few adventerous(sp?) souls that are going to opt for a brain transplant.
I disagree. Look at our movie ratings system - if you run an unrated film, it's likely to not see more than a small handful of theatres. And those that do show unrated films may wind up fines or additional cost for non-conformance.
The very same thing could happen with ISPs, and infact is already occurring without gov't. intervention. Read the AUPs of a few major ISPs? "You will not offend, annoy, or otherwise piss off anybody - if you do, we'll revoke your access". So if you make a website that say, deals with safe sex for teens, you may wind up not being able to post it anywhere.
The biggest threat from censorship isn't the government - it's ISPs caving in to (un)popular demand by their public officials. If we create a voluntary ratings system, it won't be long before reactionary politicians demand a kind of RBL for non-compliant ISPs by compliant ones. If you want to reach the maximum number of customers - you comply with the ratings / censorship system so they don't blacklist you.
There has been alot of discussion about merging KDE and Gnome together either via a universal toolkit, or by actually merging the two code-bases together.
What are the technical (and legal?) obstacles that need to be overcome for this to succeed? How does the KDE and Gnome developers feel about such a merger? Is there currently any work being done to further this goal at present (by either camp)?
I'm waiting for Bruce Perens here, since he always posts good material on these copyright issues. But he hasn't posted yet, so I will.:)
Nobody here can do anything about this violation. That's right - you can't stop Corel from doing this. But the authors of these packages can. If Corel won't back off, the community will need to undertake an effort to bring a class-action lawsuit against Corel for violation of the GPL. This should amount to some 200 or so violations if all the authors of the individual packages cooperate. Debian might also be able to sue (IANAL).
Bruce, are you out there? How do you feel about getting a group going to spearhead this? We need somebody to herd cats.:)
For now, everybody just sit tight - I'm fairly certain it won't come to this - Corel isn't this stupid. The legal department probably erred and didn't contact the engineers before slapping these restrictions on. We'll see...
Hrmph. So Microsoft bought off a few people. You know what's really telling about this article? It's that slashdot readers don't even really feel like commenting. We just take it as read that Microsoft does these kinds of things. It's not even news anymore.
What does that tell us about Microsoft's standing in the technical communities?
Well, it's experimental, but you might be able to use the netblock driver in linux in concert with the "logical drive" support (I forget the exact name) to create a "real" distributed harddrive. You probably would only want to do this with something like a beowulf where you can physically isolate the network from unauthorized access (too insecure).
Maybe in a few months I'll know enough C to do it myself.;^)
Ignore this? Are you nuts? This is Microsoft's solution to linux' long term threat to the server market. Go back and re-read the halloween documents and you'll note that they are very concerned about the long term threat linux poses. Their solution is also long-term.
It'll be a long time - 3-5 years, before Microsoft starts to reap any rewards from this tactic. But they will reap the rewards. The best time to stop this strategy is now - at the beginning. Not four years down the road when we can all see first-hand the results of a unix-deprived IT community.
Slashdot Mirror
Rasmus on slashdot != Rasmus from php devel. If he was.. he would have come out and said it. Anyway, here's a snippet I pulled from license-discuss. Now, I'm not the one to certify a license as being OSD-compliant or not... but I do know there are some issues with the license.. and I also believe it isn't open-source (see previous post).
From: bruce@perens.com
07/24/99 12:04
Subject: Re: gpl backlash?
To: license-discuss@opensource.org, signal11@mediaone.net
There are always anti-GPL messages on slashdot, many from people who don't write software. I'd not concern yourself with them. There are also lots of
people who speak in favor of the GPL and more vendors are using it lately.
The PHP4 license was not quite identical with the QPL 2.0. We discussed some license problems with the PHP folks and they will fix them.
Thanks
Bruce
--
"How old r u d00d? R u a grrrl?"
--
I think they are. Check out this CERT advisory, as well as this page from the php manual. It's certainly possible to set up a host like this guy is suggesting.. but some care needs to be taken. I'm not familiar with IIS, so I can't comment on the availability of a chroot()-style environment.
Also, ODBC support is not new to PHP 4. It was in PHP 3 as well and it hasn't changed much.
Okay, you caught me on this one - I went back and looked, and there is indeed support for an ODBC driver manager in php3. :}
About your comment that php4 is open source... I quote the php4 License FAQ Second, the license prevents commercial use of the Zend library to build commercial applications. Correct me if I'm wrong.. but that sounds an aweful lot like a violation of OSD rule #1. See this link for the full monty.
--
Now, the online "classroom" idea I dig - multimedia presentations are a great way to convey lots of information quickly. Just turn on the disovery channel, or "Bill Nye the Science Guy" and you'll see what I mean. Those are the kinds of things that I'd like to see - technology to assist the teacher.. not to replace him/her.
--
I would seriously recommend using the mod_php3 modules under Apache due to performance and security. If you run PHP as a CGI script, you can do nasty-evil things like read the .htaccess files under apache. There is also no "safe mode" for the CGI module (I haven't verified this, however).. which means one coding slip-up and you hand the remote user all the priveledges the webserver has on the system (which given that you'd be running NT, is probably full access). Even with safe mode, you will still have some additional security concerns that the apache module doesn't have. :(
The other problem with PHP4 is the licensing - it is not open source. Bruce Perens and the OSI have been working on it for awhile now (a long while ago *muttering*) but it isn't fixed yet. Go over the license and see if you can live with it.. otherwise stick with PHP3 (which meets the OSD).
The single compelling reason to use PHP over third-party or Microsoft offerings is the database support. You should know that PHP4 brings ODBC driver support (via iodbc under linux, YMMV under NT) so that you can access alot more RDBMS systems than before. This is a definate consideration when looking at the client's needs. I will again reiterate that NT isn't the best platform for serving dynamic content from.. and would urge you to consider using a unix-based solution.. it's more scaleable, easier to maintain, and more reliable than it's NT counter-parts.
--
MEDIC!
what happened? This linux geek was just sitting here surfing.. and now he's passed out.
What was he reading?
Says here that "Winlinux" is available. Maybe some kind of new Microsoft offering?
--
Microsoft: "... We will concede that Mr. Gates is a deity of extraordinary power and has been very 'innovative' in the area of computers. But the economic loss would be immeasurable if we were to kill him. We recommend breaking up into four seperate units - four horsemen if you will, who will ride fourth bringing Office, NT, W2K, and The Road Ahead to everybody!"
--
I'm reminded of a quote from the Guiness book of world records - Babe Ruth, argueably the greatest baseball player of all time.. couldn't even hit the ball half the time.
--
As a curious sidenote... somebody should e-mail zdnet and let them know to check slashdot before they post linux articles. Wait, nevermind. Who would we have left to poke fun at if zdnet got hit by a clue-by-four? Better not tell them. :)
--
You really want to go to this link instead.
--
... Then ARIN is lying. Unless I see some credentials or a link, I'm going to stick with what ARIN said in their FAQ...
--
... Go back and re-read the ARIN FAQ I posted. I just got done telling you that ipv6 was not designed to increase the available address space. You are confusing routing with addressing. IPv6 was designed primarily to help ease path discovery in embedded systems (routers!).. not increase the amount of addressable space.
--
Hit up this FAQ put out by ARIN. To quote: IPv6 was not designed to address the routing table overload.
Not only that, CIFS is supposed to address this issue for ipv4. The biggest problem IMO is that router tables will simply become too large and cumbersome to maintain. There is a practical limit to how much routing info you can squeeze into a embedded system (router!) before the costs outweigh the benefits.
--
And though I am loathe to admit it... the Linux filesystem is woefully inadequate for large servers. It works very nicely for SOHO and small workgroups.. but it has too many performance issues to be considered for large servers. ( To illustrate, create an 800mb file on the ext2 fs. Now go ahead and delete it. Can you see the smoke coming out of your HDD yet? ) As always, work is being done to address this... but right now the support isn't there.
--
In short, Veritas is a very commonly-used filesystem in the workplace - there's not many Solaris sysadmins that haven't heard of it. It is mainly used for high performance filesystems - raid0, raid5... the big boys.
Since samba is supported by these guys now, it's a given that very high performance samba servers are going to enter the marketplace soon. What does this mean for Microsoft? Bad news. You can now replace your 50+ NT servers with a single solaris box.. and get better performance to boot. Stability, speed, reliability... everything a unix wookie needs in his holy war against the evil empire.
--
Some food for thought...
--
Peer pressure is a very good way of enforcing social convention. Witness our own open source movement. How come the GPL has yet to be tested/violated in any major fashion yet? There's a good reason which I'm sure you'll come up with. Someday.
--
Isn't the Z80 the same processor used in lego mindstorms? If so... I'm thinking there's going to be a few adventerous(sp?) souls that are going to opt for a brain transplant.
--
The very same thing could happen with ISPs, and infact is already occurring without gov't. intervention. Read the AUPs of a few major ISPs? "You will not offend, annoy, or otherwise piss off anybody - if you do, we'll revoke your access". So if you make a website that say, deals with safe sex for teens, you may wind up not being able to post it anywhere.
The biggest threat from censorship isn't the government - it's ISPs caving in to (un)popular demand by their public officials. If we create a voluntary ratings system, it won't be long before reactionary politicians demand a kind of RBL for non-compliant ISPs by compliant ones. If you want to reach the maximum number of customers - you comply with the ratings / censorship system so they don't blacklist you.
--
What are the technical (and legal?) obstacles that need to be overcome for this to succeed? How does the KDE and Gnome developers feel about such a merger? Is there currently any work being done to further this goal at present (by either camp)?
--
Nobody here can do anything about this violation. That's right - you can't stop Corel from doing this. But the authors of these packages can. If Corel won't back off, the community will need to undertake an effort to bring a class-action lawsuit against Corel for violation of the GPL. This should amount to some 200 or so violations if all the authors of the individual packages cooperate. Debian might also be able to sue (IANAL).
Bruce, are you out there? How do you feel about getting a group going to spearhead this? We need somebody to herd cats. :)
For now, everybody just sit tight - I'm fairly certain it won't come to this - Corel isn't this stupid. The legal department probably erred and didn't contact the engineers before slapping these restrictions on. We'll see...
--
What does that tell us about Microsoft's standing in the technical communities?
--
Do androids feel pain? Well, yes. That is, if you drain all their oil and drive them up to the supermarket.
--
Maybe in a few months I'll know enough C to do it myself. ;^)
--
It'll be a long time - 3-5 years, before Microsoft starts to reap any rewards from this tactic. But they will reap the rewards. The best time to stop this strategy is now - at the beginning. Not four years down the road when we can all see first-hand the results of a unix-deprived IT community.
--