The *BSD forked something quite a bit lighter than GCC, namely GAS, in 1993; they implemented a useful feature (dynamic shared libraries, à la SunOS) with it; since the main GAS thread went to ELF and BFD, they had to support themselves their fork; it proved to be too heavy a weight for them, so they were "forced" a few years later to drop the enhancement, or at least making it deprecated/obsolete.
So I do not believe forking GCC as being rational, at least for a mainstream projet like *BSD.
Please bear with me: I did not write IBM, and I meant Gates as co-writer of a (later named Microsoft) BASIC interpreter, IMHO an instrumental part of the success of Altair, Commodore, TRS, and then Apple.
It is in fact interesting that you mention hardware players as being more important than the software ones; as you rightly commented, hardware were in that epoch seen as much more important than the ethereal software. And yes I guess the plan of MS is to establish for software the same kind of market behaviour as it was for IBM in the 70's; particularly since they have already passed the monopoly trial.
The "usurpation" of the micros from IBM occured yet in the 80's, and the crapy DOS that Microsoft successfully sold to IBM was AFAIK not written by Gates: I would qualify the Microsoft move then as Monopoly(tm) playing or mere capitalism: they made money with BASIC and they traded for more. I would not qualify DEC or Sun as leaders of the micros' revolution. Yet since it appears micros finally took over minis, cool and more capable softwares is probably not as instrumental as other factors; like perhaps value-for-money or (unitary) price?
(And yes, Windows in the 80's was a pretty ugly piece of crap, when it was here.)
... since the licence is only about use (or redistribution and similar rights), not about property.
The idea is merely to get more cash by changing the model, that is, changing the point of reference of the buyers.
Remember the model in the 70's, before the micro's revolution? (leadered by Gates): was based on leasing. Micros came in, changed the model, and make (lot of) money fast, partly because the unitary cost was low, so passed through the accounting filters.
I agree with your point of view, since it looks like my own experience (but I spent much less money;-)).
MS is the only company that gets away with activation in my case.
But I fail to understand why you are refusing it including for products you *want*, but still accepting it for (I assume) Windows.
Either you failed to analyse it fully (no pun intended), or there is something special in your relationship with MS. I understand MS has more chance to be still in the business in the next years than the average e-book seller, but I feel Adobe is quite solid too...
And how is Microsoft protected from a theft of its invaluable IP?
Either there are a small number of actual developpers like you (and they are all "controlled" so it cannot happen), or they are pretty good at convincing masses, even of (supposedly more rebel) developpers.
I know the "release" of the W2k code in 2004 did not create any revolution, but I believe the yet-to-be-released kernel would be hotter.
Just a wild guess, but perhaps it was the only way they thought to be successful at XP superceeding 9x/Me: to make some things less secure/stable but able to support those horny legacies that the average IT journalists will certainly test in (remember the comments about OS/2 or NT3.x "compatibility"?)
Now that the 9x days are mostly over, so they can definitively close the Windows 1-2-3-9x parenthesis of an-OS-on-top-of-an-OS; and snap the door to the less stable variations, without too much "bad user experience" (reported).
First came Cygwin, which challenged kernel32.dll; sympathical, but definitively not the killer app.
Then there is Qt to challenge gdi32.dll. Great too, but won't change at Nasdaq.
Now we have KDE to challenge user32.dll. OK, great too, we continue the track. Still, none of my loosy users will notice anything. Technically, or for the lawyer, sure it is great. Fonctionnaly, this is widely different.
Next on the track is, of course, KOffice. And this is the place where these people will actually notice something.
Also, I remember it was KOffice which makes me looking at KDE in the first place...
My ISP was acting as a mail gateway. Four months ago, the mail server exploded because of too much spam (I receive >99% of spam). So they "promoted" me as the main MX.
Of course I had to learn quickly how to stop wild-relying (it was completely open before:-( ). Even then, I am unsure I can trust my config.
Since then, I am burning CD every other week with the logs, and I dedicate over 1 hour a day just to monitor what is happenning, installing memory and disk (my mail server also went off-road) etc. I am learning the hard way what means being a seasonned mail admin... and I am sure it is below the bar, and if some of my users got hit by some of Melissa's friends, well certainly it will add to the bad situation over there. Sorry, but that's life.
I am sure the ISP did not do half of this, because the fees I paid them will not cover it. Right now, their response is to sell me Just Another Box to "block spam". Of course it is not the solution, just a short-term kludge (but the decision to spend my budget on this or not is mine.) And do not tell me to choose another one, from what I see around it is all about the same.
On the long term, I share John's concern: we all should do something, or the whole SMTP system will disappear and be replaced by a paying system for the only benefit of You-Know-Who.
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The *BSD forked something quite a bit lighter than GCC, namely GAS, in 1993; they implemented a useful feature (dynamic shared libraries, à la SunOS) with it; since the main GAS thread went to ELF and BFD, they had to support themselves their fork; it proved to be too heavy a weight for them, so they were "forced" a few years later to drop the enhancement, or at least making it deprecated/obsolete. So I do not believe forking GCC as being rational, at least for a mainstream projet like *BSD.
OK, I did misunderstand you in the first place; I believed you activated only (some) softwares from MS, and I did not see why.
Thanks
Please bear with me: I did not write IBM, and I meant Gates as co-writer of a (later named Microsoft) BASIC interpreter, IMHO an instrumental part of the success of Altair, Commodore, TRS, and then Apple.
It is in fact interesting that you mention hardware players as being more important than the software ones; as you rightly commented, hardware were in that epoch seen as much more important than the ethereal software. And yes I guess the plan of MS is to establish for software the same kind of market behaviour as it was for IBM in the 70's; particularly since they have already passed the monopoly trial.
The "usurpation" of the micros from IBM occured yet in the 80's, and the crapy DOS that Microsoft successfully sold to IBM was AFAIK not written by Gates: I would qualify the Microsoft move then as Monopoly(tm) playing or mere capitalism: they made money with BASIC and they traded for more.
I would not qualify DEC or Sun as leaders of the micros' revolution.
Yet since it appears micros finally took over minis, cool and more capable softwares is probably not as instrumental as other factors; like perhaps value-for-money or (unitary) price?
(And yes, Windows in the 80's was a pretty ugly piece of crap, when it was here.)
The idea is merely to get more cash by changing the model, that is, changing the point of reference of the buyers.
Remember the model in the 70's, before the micro's revolution? (leadered by Gates): was based on leasing. Micros came in, changed the model, and make (lot of) money fast, partly because the unitary cost was low, so passed through the accounting filters.
I agree with your point of view, since it looks like my own experience (but I spent much less money ;-)).
But I fail to understand why you are refusing it including for products you *want*, but still accepting it for (I assume) Windows.
Either you failed to analyse it fully (no pun intended), or there is something special in your relationship with MS.
I understand MS has more chance to be still in the business in the next years than the average e-book seller, but I feel Adobe is quite solid too...
Now that the 9x days are mostly over, so they can definitively close the Windows 1-2-3-9x parenthesis of an-OS-on-top-of-an-OS; and snap the door to the less stable variations, without too much "bad user experience" (reported).
Then there is Qt to challenge gdi32.dll. Great too, but won't change at Nasdaq.
Now we have KDE to challenge user32.dll. OK, great too, we continue the track. Still, none of my loosy users will notice anything. Technically, or for the lawyer, sure it is great. Fonctionnaly, this is widely different.
Next on the track is, of course, KOffice. And this is the place where these people will actually notice something.
Also, I remember it was KOffice which makes me looking at KDE in the first place...
Well, it can even coming out of willingness.
:-( ). Even then, I am unsure I can trust my config.
My ISP was acting as a mail gateway. Four months ago, the mail server exploded because of too much spam (I receive >99% of spam). So they "promoted" me as the main MX.
Of course I had to learn quickly how to stop wild-relying (it was completely open before
Since then, I am burning CD every other week with the logs, and I dedicate over 1 hour a day just to monitor what is happenning, installing memory and disk (my mail server also went off-road) etc. I am learning the hard way what means being a seasonned mail admin... and I am sure it is below the bar, and if some of my users got hit by some of Melissa's friends, well certainly it will add to the bad situation over there. Sorry, but that's life.
I am sure the ISP did not do half of this, because the fees I paid them will not cover it. Right now, their response is to sell me Just Another Box to "block spam". Of course it is not the solution, just a short-term kludge (but the decision to spend my budget on this or not is mine.) And do not tell me to choose another one, from what I see around it is all about the same.
On the long term, I share John's concern: we all should do something, or the whole SMTP system will disappear and be replaced by a paying system for the only benefit of You-Know-Who.