MS has a number of proprietary things that the FOSS world would like to get inter-operable. The NTFS file system. The Office formats. Etc. etc. And the EU has been nagging at them to release interoperability information for ages.
Since MS seems to really dislike GPL v3, they could solve a lot of their problems with a simple move: Release all the code necessary to get interoperability under Linux working. Under GPL v2 only.
Take Samba. Samaba is going GPL v3-only. If MS released some significantly-big swathes of code under v2-only that resulted in much better Linux-Windows networking compatibility, a lot of people would use the MS-code with the last GPL-v2 release of Samba: Most end users are more concerned with how well software works than with which license it's released under.
That would leave the Samba team with two choices: Stick with GPL v3 and have a less-popular, less-functional fork of their own software. Or cave in and go back to GPL v2 so they can take advantage of the GPL'd code from MS.
And either way, MS would be able to show to concerned parties, such as the EU antitrust people, that they have finally released the code that the FOSS people have been demanding, under the single most popular FOSS license in current use.
# Copyright 2005-2007 Intel Corporation. All Rights Reserved. # # This file is part of Threading Building Blocks. # # Threading Building Blocks is free software; you can redistribute it # and/or modify it under the terms of the GNU General Public License # version 2 as published by the Free Software Foundation.
There's no "Or Later" in there. This is GPL v2 only.
Well I'm here to place an order But there's a choice I don't know It's weathered every crisis you can think of And I came here to buy Vista But the Windows joy I know Is priced beyond belief way down in the shadows And the need for anti-virus Chokes the smile on every face And common sense is screaming, "What the Hell!?" This ain't no technological breakdown Oh no, this is Linux on Dell
And I don't need to ask for credit And there's nothing they can do But watch the E.U.L.A.s, flying away from you Oh look out world, take a good look What goes down here You must learn not to have fear of the G.P.L. This ain't no vendor lock-in-forced upgrade Oh no! This is Linux This is Linux This is Linux on Dell
of the 21 members, IBM's was the sole dissenting vote. IBM again was the lone dissenter when Ecma also agreed to submit Open XML as a standard so long as you don't count the twenty assorted countries that registered comments and objections to our fast-tracking proposal.
When ODF was under consideration, Microsoft made no effort to slow down the process because we were too busy trying to kill it completely.
This campaign to stop even the consideration of Open XML in ISO/IEC JTC1 is a blatant attempt to use the standards process to limit choice in the marketplace for ulterior commercial motives and is in no way whatsoever similar to our own campaign to stop the consideration of ODF in Massachusetts for our own commercial interest.
It is not a coincidence that IBM's Lotus Notes product, which IBM is actively promoting in the marketplace, fails to support the Open XML international standard in the same way as all other office software (other than our own) does, because we deliberately designed it so nobody but us could use it.
If successful, the campaign to block consideration of Open XML could create a dynamic where the first technology to the standards body, regardless of technical merit, gets to preclude other related ones from being considered and that's one of our tactics, dammit! Or do you actually think all those people out there using Internet Explorer do so because they tried out Opera and Firefox too, but decided IE was the best browser going? No, they use it because it was the first browser they ever used.
The IBM driven effort to force ODF on users through public procurement mandates is a further attempt to stop us forcing Open XML on them instead through our usual blatant monopoly abuse.
XML-based file formats, which can easily interoperate through translators can easily allow Open XML documents to be imported into Lotus Notes, and there are two such translators currently in existence - one of which we ourselves initiated - so we're being blatantly two-faced here by saying that Lotus Notes not supporting Open XML will be a significant barrier to people using Open XML for their documents.
This campaign to limit choice and force their single standard on consumers should be resisted so that we can limit choice and force our single standard onto consumers. Don't you know how important lock-in is to us??
We have listened to our customers. They want choice. They want interoperability. They want innovation. But we don't have to give it to them, because we're Microsoft! Bwahahahahah! Give us money or you'll wither and fade into the limbo of incompatibility.
What do you mean, that tactic doesn't work any more? It's got to, our whole business depends on it!
Most of the online guides for the few bits of hardware that do exactly what you suggest tell you to ignore the drivers the hardware comes with, as a newer kernel will almost certainly be out by now with an updated driver. The last thing we should do is try to get them to supply the drivers with the hardware.
What we want - and what this process does - is to get them to release enough information that a driver can be written and incorporated upstream into the kernel so that Linux supports their hardware out-of-the-box. This bypasses all the "critical mass" problems because they don't have to pay for the development costs, and negates the need to supply drivers with the hardware. How can they lose?
I'll make it easier for you: Which of these is the more beneficial scenario:
Somebody sustains an injury that causes chronic pain, and millions is spent on developing a new painkiller so the damage won't hurt even though it's still present
-or-
Somebody sustains an injury that causes chronic pain, and millions is spent on developing a way to repair the damage so he doesn't suffer from chronic pain.
I work in the pharmaceutical industry, and I can tell you that far more money is spent on the former than the latter. After all, there's no money to be made out of healthy people: Far better to have chronically ill patients that will buy your products for the rest of their lives.
And people fall for it, that's the sad thing. Pain is marketed as a disease, and painkillers as the cure. But pain isn't a disease, it's a symptom. Curing a disease is beneficial, masking the symptoms is not.
. ..more time & effort is spent on hiding a symptom than on finding a cure for the cause.
I'm a chronic pain sufferer myself - I spend 8 hours a day on a PC and I have RSI in both hands. Yet I wouldn't touch this stuff with a 10-foot pole. The pain is telling you that you're doing yourself damage. Masking the pain so you can do yourself even more damage in complete comfort is the worst thing you could possible do.
For myself, I learned that improving my posture was enough to stop the RSI causing me a tortuous day: Little things, like keeping my shoulders back instead of slumped forward; and not letting my hands bend backwards so the tendons in my wrist scrape against each other and the joint, eliminated more of my pain than all the wrist supports, ergonomic chairs, and painkillers ever did.
Look: If you buy a legitimate copy of Vista, and then install it on virtual hardware, it'll look to the WGA like you've installed it on multiple machines and it should shut you down for piracy. How are they supposed to monitor everything you do with your hardware if they let you use *imaginary* hardware as well?!?
It's great that they've GPL'd it, but it's a pity that, if you want your code to make it into Sun's Java, you have to give Sun the right to make your code proprietary:
Sun requiresthat contributors to all of its Free and open-source projects sign the Sun Contributor Agreement (SCA). ..to ensure that Sun has the rights to use your contributions in products and projects."
It makes a community fork almost inevitable, IMHO - too many people won't want to see their code turned into something Microsoft can license and use without any GPL worries.
I have to run Firefox via a USB flash drive at work, because IT won't allow FF to be installed on our machines, nor will they install it for us: The logic is that they can only support one browser, and there are many Intranet pages that only work with IE.
So now that a new version of IE is coming out that those IE6-pages probably won't work with, they have the options:
Stick with the less-secure IE6 for the forseeable future
Upgrade to IE7 and break a load of websites
Learn their lesson and stop letting people put important business information/applications in a form that only one version of one application can access.
when audio CDs threatened to deliver to consumers a perfect digital master of the original recording on every disc, a worried crowd of record company execs disrupted the launch event, chanting "the truth is in the groove... the truth is in the groove" as a protest.
Sony had to push pretty hard to get the music industry to accept CDs, and they did it - and in those days, it wasn't so that they could put rootkits on them.
You missed out the time they revolutionized the music industry by creating the CD.
They actually pushed for a music distribution method that, being digital, enabled the consumer to make unlimited perfect copies that would never degrade in quality.
It's hard to actually work out where the "face" is on the new, high-quality images - they show a lot more area and they're not taken at the same angle. I put a post on my blog with just the part of the image that shows the face, you might find it useful for comparisons.
Slashdot Mirror
From the Development download src/tbb/Makefile:
# Copyright 2005-2007 Intel Corporation. All Rights Reserved.
#
# This file is part of Threading Building Blocks.
#
# Threading Building Blocks is free software; you can redistribute it
# and/or modify it under the terms of the GNU General Public License
# version 2 as published by the Free Software Foundation.
There's no "Or Later" in there. This is GPL v2 only.
My all-time favourite text editor, with its plethora of keyboard shortcuts, on a device with no keyboard!
How have I lived so long without one?
When they come out in the UK, I'll buy an iPhone for sure now!
Since I can't find it in the article itself:c e.mspx
http://www.microsoft.com/interop/letters/userchoi
It's a month old, but who's counting..?
you can't sign away your rights, so such terms are never enforceable. I'm surprised as litigious a place as the USA still allows it.
Other than Washington, that is...
Thank God for that!
No, wait...
Right. Because "Powerpoint" is exactly what somebody who needs to do a slideshow will look for.
Need a spreadsheet? "Excel" will be the first word that comes to mind!
Want to get your email? "Lotus Notes" or "Outlook Express" - almost the DEFINITION of names that clearly explain what the application does.
Need to view a PDF? Good thing you've got the intuitively-named "Acrobat" available, isn't it?
And "Quicktime" is the first place I'd look when I wanted to watch a movie file. Really.
http://geekblog.oneandoneis2.org/index.php/2007/03 /29/linux_on_dell
(To the tune of "Road to Hell")
Well I'm here to place an order
But there's a choice I don't know
It's weathered every crisis you can think of
And I came here to buy Vista
But the Windows joy I know
Is priced beyond belief way down in the shadows
And the need for anti-virus
Chokes the smile on every face
And common sense is screaming, "What the Hell!?"
This ain't no technological breakdown
Oh no, this is Linux on Dell
And I don't need to ask for credit
And there's nothing they can do
But watch the E.U.L.A.s, flying away from you
Oh look out world, take a good look
What goes down here
You must learn not to have fear of the G.P.L.
This ain't no vendor lock-in-forced upgrade
Oh no!
This is Linux
This is Linux
This is Linux on Dell
...as in the Windows Genuine Advantage? :o)
There's a better quality video (i.e. a non-YouTube one) available at http://downloads.sourceforge.net/fornix/linuxbios. ogg
Here's what I wrote :o)
of the 21 members, IBM's was the sole dissenting vote. IBM again was the lone dissenter when Ecma also agreed to submit Open XML as a standard so long as you don't count the twenty assorted countries that registered comments and objections to our fast-tracking proposal.
When ODF was under consideration, Microsoft made no effort to slow down the process because we were too busy trying to kill it completely.
This campaign to stop even the consideration of Open XML in ISO/IEC JTC1 is a blatant attempt to use the standards process to limit choice in the marketplace for ulterior commercial motives and is in no way whatsoever similar to our own campaign to stop the consideration of ODF in Massachusetts for our own commercial interest.
It is not a coincidence that IBM's Lotus Notes product, which IBM is actively promoting in the marketplace, fails to support the Open XML international standard in the same way as all other office software (other than our own) does, because we deliberately designed it so nobody but us could use it.
If successful, the campaign to block consideration of Open XML could create a dynamic where the first technology to the standards body, regardless of technical merit, gets to preclude other related ones from being considered and that's one of our tactics, dammit! Or do you actually think all those people out there using Internet Explorer do so because they tried out Opera and Firefox too, but decided IE was the best browser going? No, they use it because it was the first browser they ever used.
The IBM driven effort to force ODF on users through public procurement mandates is a further attempt to stop us forcing Open XML on them instead through our usual blatant monopoly abuse.
XML-based file formats, which can easily interoperate through translators can easily allow Open XML documents to be imported into Lotus Notes, and there are two such translators currently in existence - one of which we ourselves initiated - so we're being blatantly two-faced here by saying that Lotus Notes not supporting Open XML will be a significant barrier to people using Open XML for their documents.
This campaign to limit choice and force their single standard on consumers should be resisted so that we can limit choice and force our single standard onto consumers. Don't you know how important lock-in is to us??
We have listened to our customers. They want choice. They want interoperability. They want innovation. But we don't have to give it to them, because we're Microsoft! Bwahahahahah! Give us money or you'll wither and fade into the limbo of incompatibility.
What do you mean, that tactic doesn't work any more? It's got to, our whole business depends on it!
Damnit. . . hand me another chair. . .
Most of the online guides for the few bits of hardware that do exactly what you suggest tell you to ignore the drivers the hardware comes with, as a newer kernel will almost certainly be out by now with an updated driver. The last thing we should do is try to get them to supply the drivers with the hardware.
What we want - and what this process does - is to get them to release enough information that a driver can be written and incorporated upstream into the kernel so that Linux supports their hardware out-of-the-box. This bypasses all the "critical mass" problems because they don't have to pay for the development costs, and negates the need to supply drivers with the hardware. How can they lose?
No, it appears to be software that's multi-platform collected into one big corporate-friendly package.
So in the same way that dual-booters have been using Firefox and Opera on both OSes for years, IBM is making it easy for corporations to do the same.
Do I win $25 million..?
No it won't. So that solves that issue, doesn't it?
Congratulations on completely missing the point!
I'll make it easier for you: Which of these is the more beneficial scenario:
Somebody sustains an injury that causes chronic pain, and millions is spent on developing a new painkiller so the damage won't hurt even though it's still present
-or-
Somebody sustains an injury that causes chronic pain, and millions is spent on developing a way to repair the damage so he doesn't suffer from chronic pain.
I work in the pharmaceutical industry, and I can tell you that far more money is spent on the former than the latter. After all, there's no money to be made out of healthy people: Far better to have chronically ill patients that will buy your products for the rest of their lives.
And people fall for it, that's the sad thing. Pain is marketed as a disease, and painkillers as the cure. But pain isn't a disease, it's a symptom. Curing a disease is beneficial, masking the symptoms is not.
. . .more time & effort is spent on hiding a symptom than on finding a cure for the cause.
I'm a chronic pain sufferer myself - I spend 8 hours a day on a PC and I have RSI in both hands. Yet I wouldn't touch this stuff with a 10-foot pole. The pain is telling you that you're doing yourself damage. Masking the pain so you can do yourself even more damage in complete comfort is the worst thing you could possible do.
For myself, I learned that improving my posture was enough to stop the RSI causing me a tortuous day: Little things, like keeping my shoulders back instead of slumped forward; and not letting my hands bend backwards so the tendons in my wrist scrape against each other and the joint, eliminated more of my pain than all the wrist supports, ergonomic chairs, and painkillers ever did.
Look: If you buy a legitimate copy of Vista, and then install it on virtual hardware, it'll look to the WGA like you've installed it on multiple machines and it should shut you down for piracy. How are they supposed to monitor everything you do with your hardware if they let you use *imaginary* hardware as well?!?
Be reasonable!
It's great that they've GPL'd it, but it's a pity that, if you want your code to make it into Sun's Java, you have to give Sun the right to make your code proprietary:
Sun requires that contributors to all of its Free and open-source projects sign the Sun Contributor Agreement (SCA). . .to ensure that Sun has the rights to use your contributions in products and projects."
It makes a community fork almost inevitable, IMHO - too many people won't want to see their code turned into something Microsoft can license and use without any GPL worries.
I have to run Firefox via a USB flash drive at work, because IT won't allow FF to be installed on our machines, nor will they install it for us: The logic is that they can only support one browser, and there are many Intranet pages that only work with IE.
So now that a new version of IE is coming out that those IE6-pages probably won't work with, they have the options:
Stick with the less-secure IE6 for the forseeable future
Upgrade to IE7 and break a load of websites
Learn their lesson and stop letting people put important business information/applications in a form that only one version of one application can access.
I won't throw away my USB drive just yet. . .
The consumer might not have known, but the record company execs were KEENLY aware of the replication potential of CDs:
Quote:
Sony had to push pretty hard to get the music industry to accept CDs, and they did it - and in those days, it wasn't so that they could put rootkits on them.
You missed out the time they revolutionized the music industry by creating the CD.
They actually pushed for a music distribution method that, being digital, enabled the consumer to make unlimited perfect copies that would never degrade in quality.
Hard to believe these days, isn't it?
I seem to recall Calvin making a similar observation: "I don't need parents, I just need a recording that says 'Go play outside'" ;o)
It's hard to actually work out where the "face" is on the new, high-quality images - they show a lot more area and they're not taken at the same angle. I put a post on my blog with just the part of the image that shows the face, you might find it useful for comparisons.
it seems like Microsoft are trying their hardest to confuse people as to when they can and cannot play their music.
Look, it's PERFECTLY simple: Keep giving Microsoft large quantities of cash, and they'll let you keep playing music.
Any questions?