They listed the various demographics of their group to illustrate that the FOSS community is composed of a broad spectrum of everyday folks, not counter-cultural anarchists (like me) who wish to destroy copyright.
This is an important fact. SCO has been painting the FOSS commmunity as a bunch of anarcho-socialist, pot-smokin', JD drinkin', code-stealin', wife-beatin', non-conformin', US-hatin', anti-Freedom neo-hippies. SCO presents this as strawman character assassination, and so Groklaw points out that we are really just everyday folks who love freedom and respect copyright, and not at all un-American just because we think SCOX is a bunch of self-loathing, Bill Gates butt-munching, reality-distortion cocktail swilling, free-software hating, pug-faced pirates with rods bigger than Wall Street stuck so far up their asses they will require the jaws of life for extraction.
And many of us *are* their customers. Until recently, we were excusively a Sun shop, with Sun hardware in the server room, and X terminals and Sun Rays on the desktop. The Sun Ray is an excellent product, but Sun has priced it at $500 a terminal, without monitor. For $100 less, I can get a computer with Linux pre-installed that'll integrate in with our system just fine.
(Granted, that doesn't address management; Sun Rays are truly plug-and-play, and have some cool features, like the mobile card thingy.)
However.
We have been moving to MS-Windows on the desktop. (Not my choice: I'd go Linux or BSD or even the HURD, of course, because I want to control my computing future.) We have been replacing some Sun systems with Linux in the server room. Our purchase of Sun equipment has dropped dramatically.
And after seeing the way Sun treats FOSS (and by extension, FOSS developers), I think I am going to encourage we move away from Sun completely.
I will make a prediction: Sun will go the way of SGI. That is, a niche player with a dwindling customer base, which makes good hardware that very few people really use.
Don't just assume and feed absurd conspiracy theories. READ THE LAW.
Even more important than how the law is written is how the law is *interpreted.* In many cases, the DMCA has been used to stop interoperability as well. For instance, it has been used to silence deCSS sites, and has successfully been used to block clones of various ebook software.
Do not think that, just because the law states reverse-engineering for interoperability is permitted, that the courts will rule on the side of OpenOffice, for instance.
Plus, Microsoft has several patents pertaining to DRM. If the DMCA fails them, it's patent-infringement time.
Most of what you talk about is the job of the distribution-- common installation no matter the program, etc. As far as things like IceWM being familiar to a Gnome/Metacity user, that's rather like saying, "I'm all for choice, but shouldn't my pickup seat 10, and shouldn't my sedan be able to haul a load of gravel?"
The importance of choice is twofold: first, it drives competition (as mentioned in another post 'round here); second, it provides diversity. Diversity in which everything is the same is not diversity at all.
Plus, it shouldn't matter to an average user whether or not IceWM behaves like KDE/KDEWM. Their distro is going to default to KDE (or GNOME, or....), and that is all they need to know. If they default to KDE, but the user wants to run a GNOME program, their distro installs the programs and libraries necessary, and the user doesn't even need to know that the GNOME libraries were installed; hell, the user doesn't even need to know what that *means*.
The top execs are not selling their stock, or else they might draw the fire of the SEC.
What's happening instead is a shuffling of stock to other Canopy Group shell companies, and it is dumped from there. Bruce Perens supplied a link in one of the commments around here someplace. So, the deal is probably like this:
While SCO has stock that is worth something more than toilet paper, they "buy" companies already owned by their parent company, The Canopy Group. The Canopy Group liquidates those stocks, and at the end, Darl and Friends get a nice hefty bonus, as SCO stock tanks.
The stock scam angle, and the MSFT-puppet angle are just yammering conspiracy theories from linux zealots without the mental accumen to think outside the slashbot party line. I dont buy it.
The stock scam is the only angle that fits all the facts.
Fact: SCO has filed a lawsuit against IBM concerning breach of contract.
Fact: though not in any way related to the breach of contract (which would be incumbent upon IBM to provide renumeration should SCO win the suit), SCO has sent out letters to large Linux users demanding money. (I don't mean big-boned Linux users, of course.)
Fact: SCO has stated they have evidence proving their claims, but refuse to present the evidence.
Fact: SCO has kept upping the ante, their statements growing wilder and wilder each week. Oddly, their stock goes *up* after many of these wild, unsubstantiated, sometimes incoherent claims.
Fact: SCO execs are dumping their stocks, and their parent, The Canopy Group, is shuffling holdings around, "selling" portions of some Canopy companies to SCO in exchange for inflated SCO stock.
As the old saying goes, follow the money. This is all about the money, both from stock and from any Linux user stupid enough to pay the shakedown. SCO has no established legal right to demand money; they won't until after it has been judged in a court of law that their IP was misappropriated.
I believe there are many levels to this whole deal. The first is the stock scam angle, which is undeniably part of their scheme, whether they think they are right or not. Secondly, they appear to be trying to make a nuisance of themselves to the point IBM or Red Hat finally gets them to shut up by buying them outright. And, in a Shoot The Moon sort of gamble, they may just win in court and become one of the richest Unix companies in existence.
This isn't conspiracy theory; this is simply trying to explain all the facts. Do you have an explaination that covers all the facts?
This is more than a pump-and-dump scam, else they're about the most pathetically inept corporate criminals in history.
Hardly. Their legal claims against IBM have not changed substantially, and it is the legal aspect that matters, not their absurd public statements about owning millions of lines of Linux code. But, it is the public statements that are pumping up the price of SCO stock.
It's doubtful the SEC will look twice at SCO. It would be nice, but since they've not even managed to nail those Enron bastards, I don't see when they'll get around to picking up someone as penny-ante as SCO.
Lets ignore the fact that there are countless politically motivated anti-corporate types in the linux "community", any one of which would not hesitate to dump corporate IP into the kernel. SCOs allegations are not as far fetched as/. would have you believe.
And your proof for this is....? No, "My nose goblins told me so!" does not count.
It doesn't matter what/. thinks, as most on/. don't contribute to any Free Software project, let alone the kernel. Linus & co. have had an excellent history of removing *any* code which might not be completely untainted. Yes, it is possible for one person to claim corporately-created code as his own, and submit that; however, if that case were to arise, Linus would not hesitate to remove that code, as demonstrated both by statements on record and by past action.
And, as one of those "politically motivated anti-corporate types," I resent the statement that I do not respect the work of others. I would never claim another's work as my own; nor would I do anything with that work contrary to their wishes. Most other programmers I have met feel very strongly about this, as well, *especially* the Free Software crowd.
But, if you feel comfortable with your head in the sand and your fingers in your ears, please don't let me destroy your delusions.
One easy way for repayment is to ask other governments to release *their* publicly-funded works on the internet. For the US, that would be PBS. This would draw a lot of fire, since it is in the spirit of open-source software, which is, as we all know, a tool of the devil, pinko communists, and bleeding-heart liberals everywhere.
I'm not sure what other countries have to bring to the table; but, it would be nice to see public works open to, say, the public.
Care to quote the portion of the GPL that requires distributors of a GPL'd work to do this?
Note the original post:... obligation to their shareholders... This isn't a responsibility due to the GPL; it's a responsibility due to public ownership. Many companies have been sued by shareholders when the company does not act in the interest of the shareholders.
Linux is rather large... it's not suprising that if proprietary code was misappropriated and inserted, that it was not detected immediately.
Yes, but the SCO Group has continued to distribute the Linux kernel to this day, months after first announcing they discovered the code. When IBM mentioned this in their response a couple of months back, SCO began attacking the GPL instead of curtailing their own Linux distribution.
There are methods of automagically detecting identical code. Once IBM and other SysV licensees began contributing to Linux, it was SCO's duty to its shareholders to scan Linux for infringing code. At the very least, it was SCO's responsiblity to contact IBM quietly and try to work something out, instead of busting into the barroom, six-guns a-blazing, and hollerin' and generally carrying on with shenanigans.
Being able to start from Stage 1 really teaches you a lot about the system,...
To me, this is the only real reason to use Gentoo. The binary optimisations are nice, but don't really make the 1337 system most Gentoo users claim. (Proper sysadmin of the system will gain you much more than compiler optimisations, in most cases.)
Portage is nice, but no great shakes; Debian's dpkg system is much better for maintaining a system. And I've discovered that maintaining my system takes quite a while (2.8 GHz P4, 512Gb RAM, etc).
I think you are right: Gentoo is the perfect "journeyman" system. After an apprenticeship with one of the easy systems (Red Hat, Mandrake, SuSE, etc), someone who wants to learn would do well with Gentoo. The documentation and community are first-rate.
That said, I think I am about to ditch Gentoo and return to Debian. I like the cutting edge nature of Gentoo, but I think I miss Debian's package management too much.
Oh well, bash away, I'm sure you all hate it for completely non-technical reasons.
What if I hate it for technical reasons?
The task-oriented nature is good, but is an old idea (MacOS X has it, for instance, and it has been around longer than that). Mostly I dislike the candy-like aspect of the UI, and this is a technical problem: even applications that manage only one or two small functions take up the entire freakin' desktop.
It's as if I can only have my tape despenser or scissors or stapler (red Swingline, of course) on my desk at one time, and not all three.
Eye candy is good, but functionality is better. And though they are moving in the right direction with a task-oriented view, I feel that, from a technical standpoint, a pervasive task-oriented interface impedes efficient multi-task use of a general-purpose computer.
So what if the XBox is sold as a loss-leader? That's Microsoft's fault for building an overly-expensive PC to compete against a Game Console. And Microsoft will not have any IP problems by providing a signature for Linux; they won't sell Linux themselves. I would imagine they don't vet the games sold for the XBox for IP infringement; why should they require that for Linux?
No, the reason they don't provide a signature for Linux is because that would give Linux some validity from Microsoft. Like a child that is worried another kid is getting more attention on the playground, they don't wanna be friends.
You had an opportunity to ask someone who produces cool advanced technologies about what they thought was coming in 5 to 10 years,...
The XBox is hardly "cool advanced technology." It's a restrictive PC with some software thrown in for media and game apps. See, this is what I don't get: MS had a chance to design a game console, but their "PC in every living room" mentality caused them to build, well, a PC, and produce it at a price point 30%+ more expensive than the PS2.
MS blew it. Their lack of vision caused them to throw a PC at the problem, because (surprise, surprise) that's all they know. It's this same lack of innovation that I believe will doom them to second- or third- place in the game console world for quite a few years, if not forever.
"Ideas" are not property, to be bought and sold. And, if you and I invent the same thing at about the same time, but you patent it and I do not, you have essentially stopped me from profitting off my own work, which was most likely equal to the work you did.
Just because two people have the same idea does not mean one stole it from the other.
This is especially true when the patent is about a concept, instead of a method; and double-especially true when the concept is a simple or obvious one.
The rant isn't about patent infringement; it's about how silly patents have become (such as the "concept" patent of "buy it now"), thereby undermining the whole meaning of patents.
Legal 101 there's no in betweens in the law or else it wouldn't be fair.
Since when has the law been about being "fair?"
People shouldn't rant on about something which is not trivial,
Near as I can tell, this patent is trivial, as in, given frivolously to a trivial concept which is neither unique nor innovative.
Now some of you may not agree, but to follow the law to the letter eBay was wrong.
Not really. If the patent office followed the law to the letter, they would not have issued this patent due to its obviousness.
emerge -upD world will do the same exact thing as installing from this cd.
Yay! I get to nitpick!
Just a quick correction before all these newbies think that the install consists of lists of packages scrolling up the screen: you *really* want emerge -uD world . The p in "emerge -upD world" tells it to print out what it would do, and not really do it.
There really isn't an installer, though there are some in development (just search for "gentoo installer" on sourceforge). As another reply said, it's just a laundry list of commands.
This means it takes a fair bit of knowledge to install. A lot of that knowledge can be gleaned from the install docs (which are *excellent*), but previous knowledge is certainly beneficial. If you know the difference between Lilo and Grub, you should be fine.
That said: thought Gentoo has a great package management system, it falls short of Debian in the package management area; however, it's a more-current system than Debian. Also, unless you have either a lot of time, or a fast machine, or both, it can sometimes be a pain in the ass keeping up to date.
(Me, I kick off updates at night, and it's *usually* finished by morning, unless it has to update XFree86, Mozilla, and Openoffice all at once.)
IMNSHO, Gentoo is for those who are tired of simple life of "apt-get update". It's a lot of fun, believe it or not, as frustrating as it is (WHY isn't CFLAGS in a file that doesn't get updated with every Portage update?).
For me, it was either the Hurd, or Gentoo. Once I'm bored with Gentoo, I'm moving on the the Hurd; but for now, Gentoo is plenty to keep me occupied.
The reason the industry is going to Hell....
on
Novell Buys Ximian
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· Score: 1
It's not what we want to do but what is happening none the less.
Yah. Unfortunately, I see this happening everywhere (and not just with NDS/AD, either). People are saying, "We have no choice; we have to do this.
So, let me ask this: is this the way a free market is supposed to work? Or is it that we are all in Microsoft's Reality Distortion Field (tm)?
It's time to demand the best solution, not the most convenient. Many vendors are starting to understand that Microsoft is not the fount of all software; so, when NDS is the better solution, demand support for NDS, or choose a different vendor for your software. Once the vendors hear that enough (and perhaps lose a few sales), they will wake up.
Okay, so the real world doesn't work that cleanly. But, damn, sometimes I wish the market were truly free (as in "Free Market Economy"), and we were active participants instead of sheep.
Don't question the audio sequencing stuff, question the UI. It's a complete laundry list of everything that's wrong w/ software usability today.
Absolutely. The interface is extremely funky (to say the least), completely unintuitive.
That said: the program is very small (though bloating up nicely), and the UI was designed for in-house use, not general distribution. And, once you get used to the interface (after about 4 months of use), it is *very* fast and easy to use.
Like Emacs and vi, though, you have to get used to it before you see the power.
I've had the same types of experience with W2k and (very recently) XP. Had a D-Link WLAN setup, and the machine would just randomly stop recognizing the WLAN card.
OTH, the Suse on that same box had no problem. The WLAN was installed after both systems were installed; both XP and Suse recognized and set up the card instantly. But XP operation was quite dodgy.
So, I think it's more of a "YMMV" situation for both operating systems.
IMHO, both Linux and MS-Windows suck to about the same degree. The difference is this: in Linux, I see progress; in MS-Windows, I see a fast retreat in flexibility, configurability, and user control. With the stuff coming up in Longhorn (including (especially?) DRM), I don't see the future getting any better for MS products.
Plus, I have fun with my OS, and Linux is *fun.* MS-Windows hasn't been fun for years.
JFS was used in OS/2 before AIX. NUMA was used in (Sequent?) computers before AIX. I *believe* (but don't recall for sure, and am too damned lazy to google it just for your benefit) that RCU was developed independently of AIX.
Therefore, these techniques and codes are not covered by the SCO/IBM agreement, since they are clearly not derivitive works.
SCO is trying to claim the horse because they smithed the horseshoes. 'taint going to work.
They'd have no monopoly if they weren't big to begin with -- they certainly weren't a government granted monopoly like AT&T once was.
No, they were an IBM-granted monopoly.
The "chicken-and-egg" problem isn't a problem, because they got to be a monopoly by exploiting the hobbyist nature of the beginning of the personal computer revolution. Microsoft was there from the beginning; and from the beginning, they used other people's code (BASIC for the Altair, for example, which was ported from available sources; the only thing neat and original about that is the way in which it was ported, and Paul Allen was the one doing the heavy lifting).
Before the IBM PC (and their Charley Chaplin ads), the Apple ][ was making inroads into corporate culture, though mostly through the back door. Apple did not have much legitimacy in the corporate culture of the time. So, IBM decided (on a lark, essentially) to create a hobbyist computer of their own, only geared toward corporate culture.
Mr. Gates' mother was on the (Red Cross?) board of directors with one of the top execs of IBM. This connection was Microsoft's major break. As IBM did not take this project too seriously, they met with Bill Gates and Paul Allen, who sold them a CP/M-like operating system they had "developed" for the 8086. (In fact, they had done no such thing.)
Once they sold IBM on the idea, they scampered back to Seattle and purchased outright the proto-DOS from a small Seattle company. Selling price: $10k. The Seattle company knew nothing about the IBM deal. Mr. Gates screwed this company, instead of dealing fairly with them (which would have involved giving him or his company a small stake in all sales of DOS).
(At this point, a bunch of you are screaming, "But they made the deal! It was all fair!" To which I reply, no fucking way was it fair. It was exploitation, and preyed on ignorance, which is about as moral as taking sexual advantage of a mentally handicapped person. Businesses can make money without fucking over people at every possible opportunity.)
So, with IBM's legitimacy, and Microsoft's ownership of of MS-DOS and a deal to ship this DOS with every PC, Microsoft began its PC life with the monopoly on desktop operating systems.
When the first clones came out, Compaq should have also cloned the OS; ironically, though they weren't willing to pay royalties on the IBM BIOS, they were willing to pay for the OS.
Those in control of Microsoft have made very cunning deals. But, yes, they *did* start off in a monopoly position of a very small market, and grew as the market grew.
But, *completely* off-topic, let me pose this question: if Microsoft has proven it will not play fairly with other businesses (that Seattle company wasn't even a competitor at the time, but a potential partner), why should we expect them to play fairly with their customers if they don't have to?
Microsoft's try-try-again philosophy and focused determination are why it is at the top of the heap of software companies and why they are sitting on the 45 billion in cash now.
Hardly. Their willingness to fuck over anyone and everyone in pursuit of market dominance is the reason they are at the top of the software heap.
In short, Gates is right but it doesn't mean they'll start firing lawsuits against open source...They didn't previously sue their other competitors unlike how Sun/Oracle lobbied and/or sued MSFT.
Of course MS doesn't sue very often. They have the luxery of simply buying out the company, stealing their product, or running the company out of business by hiring away key personnel, or providing pricing breaks to the competitor's customers to switch to MS products, or otherwise abusing their superior position. (That's why MS has been convicted of anti-trust practices. Twice.)
Litigation is expensive, both financially and from a PR perspective. Much easier to be sneaky, underhanded, and sleazy, like paying SCO to sue.
Slashdot Mirror
They listed the various demographics of their group to illustrate that the FOSS community is composed of a broad spectrum of everyday folks, not counter-cultural anarchists (like me) who wish to destroy copyright.
This is an important fact. SCO has been painting the FOSS commmunity as a bunch of anarcho-socialist, pot-smokin', JD drinkin', code-stealin', wife-beatin', non-conformin', US-hatin', anti-Freedom neo-hippies. SCO presents this as strawman character assassination, and so Groklaw points out that we are really just everyday folks who love freedom and respect copyright, and not at all un-American just because we think SCOX is a bunch of self-loathing, Bill Gates butt-munching, reality-distortion cocktail swilling, free-software hating, pug-faced pirates with rods bigger than Wall Street stuck so far up their asses they will require the jaws of life for extraction.
Or am I the only one who thinks that?
Good point.
And many of us *are* their customers. Until recently, we were excusively a Sun shop, with Sun hardware in the server room, and X terminals and Sun Rays on the desktop. The Sun Ray is an excellent product, but Sun has priced it at $500 a terminal, without monitor. For $100 less, I can get a computer with Linux pre-installed that'll integrate in with our system just fine.
(Granted, that doesn't address management; Sun Rays are truly plug-and-play, and have some cool features, like the mobile card thingy.)
However.
We have been moving to MS-Windows on the desktop. (Not my choice: I'd go Linux or BSD or even the HURD, of course, because I want to control my computing future.) We have been replacing some Sun systems with Linux in the server room. Our purchase of Sun equipment has dropped dramatically.
And after seeing the way Sun treats FOSS (and by extension, FOSS developers), I think I am going to encourage we move away from Sun completely.
I will make a prediction: Sun will go the way of SGI. That is, a niche player with a dwindling customer base, which makes good hardware that very few people really use.
Since I'm a lazy-ass, it won't be me, but seems like it's time to retaliate with a properly-documented DRM standard for document management.
Might this be a good adjunct to the Liberty project?
"Well, yes, MS-Office locks the world into MS products. But, really, that's what everyone wanted!"
- W. Gates, 12 Aug 2006
Don't just assume and feed absurd conspiracy theories. READ THE LAW.
Even more important than how the law is written is how the law is *interpreted.* In many cases, the DMCA has been used to stop interoperability as well. For instance, it has been used to silence deCSS sites, and has successfully been used to block clones of various ebook software.
Do not think that, just because the law states reverse-engineering for interoperability is permitted, that the courts will rule on the side of OpenOffice, for instance.
Plus, Microsoft has several patents pertaining to DRM. If the DMCA fails them, it's patent-infringement time.
I am not alone when I say this: Windows 2000 is the best Microsoft OS since DOS 6.22.
Well, that's damning with faint praise.
Most of what you talk about is the job of the distribution-- common installation no matter the program, etc. As far as things like IceWM being familiar to a Gnome/Metacity user, that's rather like saying, "I'm all for choice, but shouldn't my pickup seat 10, and shouldn't my sedan be able to haul a load of gravel?"
The importance of choice is twofold: first, it drives competition (as mentioned in another post 'round here); second, it provides diversity. Diversity in which everything is the same is not diversity at all.
Plus, it shouldn't matter to an average user whether or not IceWM behaves like KDE/KDEWM. Their distro is going to default to KDE (or GNOME, or....), and that is all they need to know. If they default to KDE, but the user wants to run a GNOME program, their distro installs the programs and libraries necessary, and the user doesn't even need to know that the GNOME libraries were installed; hell, the user doesn't even need to know what that *means*.
Anyway, just my opinion. I might be wrong.
The top execs are not selling their stock, or else they might draw the fire of the SEC.
What's happening instead is a shuffling of stock to other Canopy Group shell companies, and it is dumped from there. Bruce Perens supplied a link in one of the commments around here someplace. So, the deal is probably like this:
While SCO has stock that is worth something more than toilet paper, they "buy" companies already owned by their parent company, The Canopy Group. The Canopy Group liquidates those stocks, and at the end, Darl and Friends get a nice hefty bonus, as SCO stock tanks.
It's a nice scam, if you can get it.
The stock scam angle, and the MSFT-puppet angle are just yammering conspiracy theories from linux zealots without the mental accumen to think outside the slashbot party line. I dont buy it.
/. would have you believe.
/. thinks, as most on /. don't contribute to any Free Software project, let alone the kernel. Linus & co. have had an excellent history of removing *any* code which might not be completely untainted. Yes, it is possible for one person to claim corporately-created code as his own, and submit that; however, if that case were to arise, Linus would not hesitate to remove that code, as demonstrated both by statements on record and by past action.
The stock scam is the only angle that fits all the facts.
Fact: SCO has filed a lawsuit against IBM concerning breach of contract.
Fact: though not in any way related to the breach of contract (which would be incumbent upon IBM to provide renumeration should SCO win the suit), SCO has sent out letters to large Linux users demanding money. (I don't mean big-boned Linux users, of course.)
Fact: SCO has stated they have evidence proving their claims, but refuse to present the evidence.
Fact: SCO has kept upping the ante, their statements growing wilder and wilder each week. Oddly, their stock goes *up* after many of these wild, unsubstantiated, sometimes incoherent claims.
Fact: SCO execs are dumping their stocks, and their parent, The Canopy Group, is shuffling holdings around, "selling" portions of some Canopy companies to SCO in exchange for inflated SCO stock.
As the old saying goes, follow the money. This is all about the money, both from stock and from any Linux user stupid enough to pay the shakedown. SCO has no established legal right to demand money; they won't until after it has been judged in a court of law that their IP was misappropriated.
I believe there are many levels to this whole deal. The first is the stock scam angle, which is undeniably part of their scheme, whether they think they are right or not. Secondly, they appear to be trying to make a nuisance of themselves to the point IBM or Red Hat finally gets them to shut up by buying them outright. And, in a Shoot The Moon sort of gamble, they may just win in court and become one of the richest Unix companies in existence.
This isn't conspiracy theory; this is simply trying to explain all the facts. Do you have an explaination that covers all the facts?
This is more than a pump-and-dump scam, else they're about the most pathetically inept corporate criminals in history.
Hardly. Their legal claims against IBM have not changed substantially, and it is the legal aspect that matters, not their absurd public statements about owning millions of lines of Linux code. But, it is the public statements that are pumping up the price of SCO stock.
It's doubtful the SEC will look twice at SCO. It would be nice, but since they've not even managed to nail those Enron bastards, I don't see when they'll get around to picking up someone as penny-ante as SCO.
Lets ignore the fact that there are countless politically motivated anti-corporate types in the linux "community", any one of which would not hesitate to dump corporate IP into the kernel. SCOs allegations are not as far fetched as
And your proof for this is....? No, "My nose goblins told me so!" does not count.
It doesn't matter what
And, as one of those "politically motivated anti-corporate types," I resent the statement that I do not respect the work of others. I would never claim another's work as my own; nor would I do anything with that work contrary to their wishes. Most other programmers I have met feel very strongly about this, as well, *especially* the Free Software crowd.
But, if you feel comfortable with your head in the sand and your fingers in your ears, please don't let me destroy your delusions.
BTW, IANAL, IDNPOOTV, ETC.
One easy way for repayment is to ask other governments to release *their* publicly-funded works on the internet. For the US, that would be PBS. This would draw a lot of fire, since it is in the spirit of open-source software, which is, as we all know, a tool of the devil, pinko communists, and bleeding-heart liberals everywhere.
I'm not sure what other countries have to bring to the table; but, it would be nice to see public works open to, say, the public.
I say blanket solutions based on ideology are never as good as actually thinking about the problem.
Excellent suggestion!
What do you suggest?
Care to quote the portion of the GPL that requires distributors of a GPL'd work to do this?
... obligation to their shareholders... This isn't a responsibility due to the GPL; it's a responsibility due to public ownership. Many companies have been sued by shareholders when the company does not act in the interest of the shareholders.
Note the original post:
Linux is rather large... it's not suprising that if proprietary code was misappropriated and inserted, that it was not detected immediately.
Yes, but the SCO Group has continued to distribute the Linux kernel to this day, months after first announcing they discovered the code. When IBM mentioned this in their response a couple of months back, SCO began attacking the GPL instead of curtailing their own Linux distribution.
There are methods of automagically detecting identical code. Once IBM and other SysV licensees began contributing to Linux, it was SCO's duty to its shareholders to scan Linux for infringing code. At the very least, it was SCO's responsiblity to contact IBM quietly and try to work something out, instead of busting into the barroom, six-guns a-blazing, and hollerin' and generally carrying on with shenanigans.
Being able to start from Stage 1 really teaches you a lot about the system,...
To me, this is the only real reason to use Gentoo. The binary optimisations are nice, but don't really make the 1337 system most Gentoo users claim. (Proper sysadmin of the system will gain you much more than compiler optimisations, in most cases.)
Portage is nice, but no great shakes; Debian's dpkg system is much better for maintaining a system. And I've discovered that maintaining my system takes quite a while (2.8 GHz P4, 512Gb RAM, etc).
I think you are right: Gentoo is the perfect "journeyman" system. After an apprenticeship with one of the easy systems (Red Hat, Mandrake, SuSE, etc), someone who wants to learn would do well with Gentoo. The documentation and community are first-rate.
That said, I think I am about to ditch Gentoo and return to Debian. I like the cutting edge nature of Gentoo, but I think I miss Debian's package management too much.
Oh well, bash away, I'm sure you all hate it for completely non-technical reasons.
What if I hate it for technical reasons?
The task-oriented nature is good, but is an old idea (MacOS X has it, for instance, and it has been around longer than that). Mostly I dislike the candy-like aspect of the UI, and this is a technical problem: even applications that manage only one or two small functions take up the entire freakin' desktop.
It's as if I can only have my tape despenser or scissors or stapler (red Swingline, of course) on my desk at one time, and not all three.
Eye candy is good, but functionality is better. And though they are moving in the right direction with a task-oriented view, I feel that, from a technical standpoint, a pervasive task-oriented interface impedes efficient multi-task use of a general-purpose computer.
Of course, that's my opinion. I could be wrong.
"I doubt the SEC will get involved too, but that's because they're understaffed and have bigger fishes to fry."
Like Martha Stewart?
So what if the XBox is sold as a loss-leader? That's Microsoft's fault for building an overly-expensive PC to compete against a Game Console. And Microsoft will not have any IP problems by providing a signature for Linux; they won't sell Linux themselves. I would imagine they don't vet the games sold for the XBox for IP infringement; why should they require that for Linux?
No, the reason they don't provide a signature for Linux is because that would give Linux some validity from Microsoft. Like a child that is worried another kid is getting more attention on the playground, they don't wanna be friends.
You had an opportunity to ask someone who produces cool advanced technologies about what they thought was coming in 5 to 10 years,...
The XBox is hardly "cool advanced technology." It's a restrictive PC with some software thrown in for media and game apps. See, this is what I don't get: MS had a chance to design a game console, but their "PC in every living room" mentality caused them to build, well, a PC, and produce it at a price point 30%+ more expensive than the PS2.
MS blew it. Their lack of vision caused them to throw a PC at the problem, because (surprise, surprise) that's all they know. It's this same lack of innovation that I believe will doom them to second- or third- place in the game console world for quite a few years, if not forever.
"Ideas" are not property, to be bought and sold. And, if you and I invent the same thing at about the same time, but you patent it and I do not, you have essentially stopped me from profitting off my own work, which was most likely equal to the work you did.
Just because two people have the same idea does not mean one stole it from the other.
This is especially true when the patent is about a concept, instead of a method; and double-especially true when the concept is a simple or obvious one.
The rant isn't about patent infringement; it's about how silly patents have become (such as the "concept" patent of "buy it now"), thereby undermining the whole meaning of patents.
Legal 101 there's no in betweens in the law or else it wouldn't be fair.
Since when has the law been about being "fair?"
People shouldn't rant on about something which is not trivial,
Near as I can tell, this patent is trivial, as in, given frivolously to a trivial concept which is neither unique nor innovative.
Now some of you may not agree, but to follow the law to the letter eBay was wrong.
Not really. If the patent office followed the law to the letter, they would not have issued this patent due to its obviousness.
emerge -upD world will do the same exact thing as installing from this cd.
Yay! I get to nitpick!
Just a quick correction before all these newbies think that the install consists of lists of packages scrolling up the screen: you *really* want emerge -uD world . The p in "emerge -upD world" tells it to print out what it would do, and not really do it.
Leave out the "p". You'll be happier for it.
There really isn't an installer, though there are some in development (just search for "gentoo installer" on sourceforge). As another reply said, it's just a laundry list of commands.
This means it takes a fair bit of knowledge to install. A lot of that knowledge can be gleaned from the install docs (which are *excellent*), but previous knowledge is certainly beneficial. If you know the difference between Lilo and Grub, you should be fine.
That said: thought Gentoo has a great package management system, it falls short of Debian in the package management area; however, it's a more-current system than Debian. Also, unless you have either a lot of time, or a fast machine, or both, it can sometimes be a pain in the ass keeping up to date.
(Me, I kick off updates at night, and it's *usually* finished by morning, unless it has to update XFree86, Mozilla, and Openoffice all at once.)
IMNSHO, Gentoo is for those who are tired of simple life of "apt-get update". It's a lot of fun, believe it or not, as frustrating as it is (WHY isn't CFLAGS in a file that doesn't get updated with every Portage update?).
For me, it was either the Hurd, or Gentoo. Once I'm bored with Gentoo, I'm moving on the the Hurd; but for now, Gentoo is plenty to keep me occupied.
It's not what we want to do but what is happening none the less.
Yah. Unfortunately, I see this happening everywhere (and not just with NDS/AD, either). People are saying, "We have no choice; we have to do this.
So, let me ask this: is this the way a free market is supposed to work? Or is it that we are all in Microsoft's Reality Distortion Field (tm)?
It's time to demand the best solution, not the most convenient. Many vendors are starting to understand that Microsoft is not the fount of all software; so, when NDS is the better solution, demand support for NDS, or choose a different vendor for your software. Once the vendors hear that enough (and perhaps lose a few sales), they will wake up.
Okay, so the real world doesn't work that cleanly. But, damn, sometimes I wish the market were truly free (as in "Free Market Economy"), and we were active participants instead of sheep.
Baaaaa.
Don't question the audio sequencing stuff, question the UI. It's a complete laundry list of everything that's wrong w/ software usability today.
Absolutely. The interface is extremely funky (to say the least), completely unintuitive.
That said: the program is very small (though bloating up nicely), and the UI was designed for in-house use, not general distribution. And, once you get used to the interface (after about 4 months of use), it is *very* fast and easy to use.
Like Emacs and vi, though, you have to get used to it before you see the power.
(this is from painful, and recent, experience)
I've had the same types of experience with W2k and (very recently) XP. Had a D-Link WLAN setup, and the machine would just randomly stop recognizing the WLAN card.
OTH, the Suse on that same box had no problem. The WLAN was installed after both systems were installed; both XP and Suse recognized and set up the card instantly. But XP operation was quite dodgy.
So, I think it's more of a "YMMV" situation for both operating systems.
IMHO, both Linux and MS-Windows suck to about the same degree. The difference is this: in Linux, I see progress; in MS-Windows, I see a fast retreat in flexibility, configurability, and user control. With the stuff coming up in Longhorn (including (especially?) DRM), I don't see the future getting any better for MS products.
Plus, I have fun with my OS, and Linux is *fun.* MS-Windows hasn't been fun for years.
JFS was used in OS/2 before AIX. NUMA was used in (Sequent?) computers before AIX. I *believe* (but don't recall for sure, and am too damned lazy to google it just for your benefit) that RCU was developed independently of AIX.
Therefore, these techniques and codes are not covered by the SCO/IBM agreement, since they are clearly not derivitive works.
SCO is trying to claim the horse because they smithed the horseshoes. 'taint going to work.
They'd have no monopoly if they weren't big to begin with -- they certainly weren't a government granted monopoly like AT&T once was.
No, they were an IBM-granted monopoly.
The "chicken-and-egg" problem isn't a problem, because they got to be a monopoly by exploiting the hobbyist nature of the beginning of the personal computer revolution. Microsoft was there from the beginning; and from the beginning, they used other people's code (BASIC for the Altair, for example, which was ported from available sources; the only thing neat and original about that is the way in which it was ported, and Paul Allen was the one doing the heavy lifting).
Before the IBM PC (and their Charley Chaplin ads), the Apple ][ was making inroads into corporate culture, though mostly through the back door. Apple did not have much legitimacy in the corporate culture of the time. So, IBM decided (on a lark, essentially) to create a hobbyist computer of their own, only geared toward corporate culture.
Mr. Gates' mother was on the (Red Cross?) board of directors with one of the top execs of IBM. This connection was Microsoft's major break. As IBM did not take this project too seriously, they met with Bill Gates and Paul Allen, who sold them a CP/M-like operating system they had "developed" for the 8086. (In fact, they had done no such thing.)
Once they sold IBM on the idea, they scampered back to Seattle and purchased outright the proto-DOS from a small Seattle company. Selling price: $10k. The Seattle company knew nothing about the IBM deal. Mr. Gates screwed this company, instead of dealing fairly with them (which would have involved giving him or his company a small stake in all sales of DOS).
(At this point, a bunch of you are screaming, "But they made the deal! It was all fair!" To which I reply, no fucking way was it fair. It was exploitation, and preyed on ignorance, which is about as moral as taking sexual advantage of a mentally handicapped person. Businesses can make money without fucking over people at every possible opportunity.)
So, with IBM's legitimacy, and Microsoft's ownership of of MS-DOS and a deal to ship this DOS with every PC, Microsoft began its PC life with the monopoly on desktop operating systems.
When the first clones came out, Compaq should have also cloned the OS; ironically, though they weren't willing to pay royalties on the IBM BIOS, they were willing to pay for the OS.
Those in control of Microsoft have made very cunning deals. But, yes, they *did* start off in a monopoly position of a very small market, and grew as the market grew.
But, *completely* off-topic, let me pose this question: if Microsoft has proven it will not play fairly with other businesses (that Seattle company wasn't even a competitor at the time, but a potential partner), why should we expect them to play fairly with their customers if they don't have to?
Microsoft's try-try-again philosophy and focused determination are why it is at the top of the heap of software companies and why they are sitting on the 45 billion in cash now.
Hardly. Their willingness to fuck over anyone and everyone in pursuit of market dominance is the reason they are at the top of the software heap.
In short, Gates is right but it doesn't mean they'll start firing lawsuits against open source...They didn't previously sue their other competitors unlike how Sun/Oracle lobbied and/or sued MSFT.
Of course MS doesn't sue very often. They have the luxery of simply buying out the company, stealing their product, or running the company out of business by hiring away key personnel, or providing pricing breaks to the competitor's customers to switch to MS products, or otherwise abusing their superior position. (That's why MS has been convicted of anti-trust practices. Twice.)
Litigation is expensive, both financially and from a PR perspective. Much easier to be sneaky, underhanded, and sleazy, like paying SCO to sue.