I know very well how it worked, I alluded to that in the original post. And that is an explanation, not a justification. The whole extension version matching system is pretty much broken by design, and exposing it to the users is not a great idea either.
Open source projects tend to have somewhat byzantine version numbering schemes, but Firefox really takes the cake. It has four different numbers, out of which only two are used. The second one was a "5" once, but that was completely arbitary, too.
I know the reason for this is supposedly the extension system, but that is not a valid excuse. An internal technical detail should not exposed to users like that, and even so, the reason is not the extension system, but that the version checking for extensions was designed wrong from the start.
Now, can we please have a sane two-part version number for 3.0 and up?
For me, it's more a matter that I would prefer all source code to be available and open, but I feel it is not my place to force this upon people, and I would much rather they do it of their own free will.
The only restriction the GPL imposes is that you can't restrict the freedoms of the user. Which is done by restricting the freedoms of the programmer and distributor. The GPL people tend to conveniently forget about that. The FSF in general seems to think their worst enemies are programmers, and I really don't see any reason why programmers should trust them, if they don't trust programmers.
And you know, some of us are far more interested in "a free exchange of ideas and code that let you do what ever you wanted with it" than in some convulted ideology where "freedom" is redefined as something restrictive.
I personally made that image, drawing it pixel by pixel. Thus the copyright belongs solely to me, and Alexander Strange has an full license to use the image as he sees fit.
Not that I don't like harping on the Slashdot editors as much as the next guy, but the grandparent poster is looking at the wrong libarc here. The article links to the right one, which is GPL.
In the beginning, it was discovered that radiation kills cells, and especially that it kill cancer cells. Thus was born radiation therapy, which is used to this date, although in much more sophisticated ways than in the early 20th century.
Other effects of radiation were not well known, but the miraculous healing properties of radiation were widely reported, and it took off as a fad. Many took advantage of the public's lack of understanding of radiation (and perhaps their own lack of understanding) to cash in on this fad, and started selling health products that included radioactive materials.
Over time, however, it became clear that ionizing radiation had many other side effects on the body. As those effects could take a long time to manifest themselves, and were not well known, the medical community decided to act as far on the side of caution as possible. Guidelines were drawn up to absolutely minimize any exposure to radiation on the public. Radiation limits were set very close to the natural background dose.
However, this meant that there would forever be an almost complete absence of experimental data of radiation exposure in humans. We cannot simply expose people to high levels of radiation to see what happens, and the guidelines largely ensure this does not happen accidentially, either. Thus, our lack of understanding of the long-term effects of radiation largely remained, and thus the safety guidelines could not be changed, either.
This article is about how those few accidents that did happen are slowly giving us a bit more of an insight into the issues, and showing not so much that radiation is not as dangerous as we thought, but that we did err on the side of caution when the dangers were discovered, just as we meant to.
But isn't the point? Most average users will only want a photo manip program to clean up their digital photos and help them store them. Photoshop is bloat for anyone except the advanced user -- even Elements seems a bit overdone. The idea is to sell OSS to people and show them that it has the functionality they need without all the excess that they don't. A nice theory, but GIMP is also stuffed full of things you truly don't need.
It is capable of much more, but it is not good at it. And it is completely incapable of many things professionals absolutely need, or at least want very much.
As for your list, layers and filters are the absolute basics of a graphics program. An "insane amount of formats supported" is nice, but matters not in the least for most users who only use a few common ones. Photoshop is also quite scriptable. And pretty much nobody who wants to use GIMP have the knowledge or time necessary to customize the source.
Slashdot Mirror
That same #wikipedia that bans people for posting chat logs? Great company you keep.
Nobody has ever made that argument, other than GPL advocates.
I know very well how it worked, I alluded to that in the original post. And that is an explanation, not a justification. The whole extension version matching system is pretty much broken by design, and exposing it to the users is not a great idea either.
That is certainly an improvement, but I still don't see why they have to have the "y" in there, since they don't actually use it.
I love how there's a verb used as a noun AND a noun used as a verb in that title.
You don't need a four-component version number to do that.
Open source projects tend to have somewhat byzantine version numbering schemes, but Firefox really takes the cake. It has four different numbers, out of which only two are used. The second one was a "5" once, but that was completely arbitary, too.
I know the reason for this is supposedly the extension system, but that is not a valid excuse. An internal technical detail should not exposed to users like that, and even so, the reason is not the extension system, but that the version checking for extensions was designed wrong from the start.
Now, can we please have a sane two-part version number for 3.0 and up?
For me, it's more a matter that I would prefer all source code to be available and open, but I feel it is not my place to force this upon people, and I would much rather they do it of their own free will.
Yeah, that's awesome. Do none of the work, but have lots of opinions on how it should be done.
Yes, freedoms are often restricted, and there is nothing wrong with this, but few people claim that speed limits increase freedom.
And you know, some of us are far more interested in "a free exchange of ideas and code that let you do what ever you wanted with it" than in some convulted ideology where "freedom" is redefined as something restrictive.
You're missing pretty much the entire article.
I doubt you'll find any jurisdiction where drawing a simple symbol is considered a derivative work of any kind.
I personally made that image, drawing it pixel by pixel. Thus the copyright belongs solely to me, and Alexander Strange has an full license to use the image as he sees fit.
Not that I don't like harping on the Slashdot editors as much as the next guy, but the grandparent poster is looking at the wrong libarc here. The article links to the right one, which is GPL.
I come here for the trolls, and even they have seem to be getting fewer and further between.
In the beginning, it was discovered that radiation kills cells, and especially that it kill cancer cells. Thus was born radiation therapy, which is used to this date, although in much more sophisticated ways than in the early 20th century.
Other effects of radiation were not well known, but the miraculous healing properties of radiation were widely reported, and it took off as a fad. Many took advantage of the public's lack of understanding of radiation (and perhaps their own lack of understanding) to cash in on this fad, and started selling health products that included radioactive materials.
Over time, however, it became clear that ionizing radiation had many other side effects on the body. As those effects could take a long time to manifest themselves, and were not well known, the medical community decided to act as far on the side of caution as possible. Guidelines were drawn up to absolutely minimize any exposure to radiation on the public. Radiation limits were set very close to the natural background dose.
However, this meant that there would forever be an almost complete absence of experimental data of radiation exposure in humans. We cannot simply expose people to high levels of radiation to see what happens, and the guidelines largely ensure this does not happen accidentially, either. Thus, our lack of understanding of the long-term effects of radiation largely remained, and thus the safety guidelines could not be changed, either.
This article is about how those few accidents that did happen are slowly giving us a bit more of an insight into the issues, and showing not so much that radiation is not as dangerous as we thought, but that we did err on the side of caution when the dangers were discovered, just as we meant to.
Deniability is based on the revelation of information, not hiding. How do you hack something so that it is becomes no longer known?
Except completely new users have, in my experience, a much harder time getting to grips with the GIMP than with Photoshop.
It is capable of much more, but it is not good at it. And it is completely incapable of many things professionals absolutely need, or at least want very much.
As for your list, layers and filters are the absolute basics of a graphics program. An "insane amount of formats supported" is nice, but matters not in the least for most users who only use a few common ones. Photoshop is also quite scriptable. And pretty much nobody who wants to use GIMP have the knowledge or time necessary to customize the source.