The best long term solution would be to revamp the system, with some precautions to prevent this from happening again. A few alternatives are:
work with an engineering faculty to design the replacement board,
require spec's as part of the manufacturing contract, or
that the specifications are placed in escrow to be released if the company goes into bankrupcy, or is no longer able to provide duplicates at specified rates.
If you need to keep the existing card, find some modern hardware that has a suitable bus. It is probably an ISA card, so your choices may be limited by that; a quick search on Froogle shows that they can still be purchased in modern motherboards.
I suspect that any version of Linux could be suitable, provided you run it with minimal background tasks. Consider running the program on Linux 2.0 in single-user mode. It sounds like that would be an improvement on the current setup:)
Also, you may find that your existing DOS drivers work on Linux using dosemu.
Next thing you know, those wacky astronomers will be naming a plutino Homer.
Re:This is no different than BitKeeper
on
Microsoft Sues EU
·
· Score: 2, Interesting
But, whether they like it or not, being told to interoperate is the fruit of thier own success. Microsoft is legally classified as a monopoly, and so it is governments responsibility to stand over them to ensure that innovation is not stifled.
Regarding BitKeeper, paying customers recieve a product that is extremely good at inter-operating, and BitMover always went out of their way to assist open source developers export their data in a variety of ways.
The objection was about an open source client being developed to talk to the BitKeeper TCP talk. Personally I think the offical client would never have been threatened by the open source client, but I can understand BitMover's response. The approach that was used to develop the open source client was hardly strict clean-room reverse engineering with specifications being developed by one team, and the coding done by another. Consequently, BitMover became scared of a herd of cats, and withdrew their free-to-download client.
The freedom to use the software is not in any way affected by this or any other version of the GPL.
The GPL is about the freedom to re-distributed other peoples copyright works. You are right to say it is a behaviour agreement: it grants software developers rights they otherwise would not have, provided they enter into an agreement to not screw the original developer up the arse.
Some developers feel that such an agreement is crucial to them being able to give the code away, and I expect RMS will phase the new patent clause that will be acceptable to 99.99% of GPLv2 users.
... and if we go on past experience, when Stallman puts his thoughts onto paper, and he uses the review processes that he put in place to convert his ramblings into a license, the world becomes a slightly better place.
I am appalled at the lack of respect and trust being shown by slashdotters; give RMS enough credit to go find the details of the proposed clauses, and provide an informed response.ot
I dont know how you read into my post that I was advocating that [Americans] should get all the jobs.
Try re-reading my post without assuming that I am an american. you insensitive clod (sorry, I couldnt resist).
If there is any pro-American spin on my post, it would be that I am happy that the America job market benefits from open source; because open source is not a zero-sum game; an American job in open source improves the number of open source jobs in other countries. While it is possible that the amount of open source work will become limited in the future, maybe when free/libre, feature complete, stable solutions exist for all problems known to man, Im sure I will be dead by then.
Regarding the Microsoft's supposed offshoring, it could be considered bad, not because of its affects on American jobs, but because outsourcing overseas affects Microsofts shareholders. The article was eluding to the situation that CS grads are not as prevalent, and that is hurting MS' R&D division in Redmond. Here is a hint for them, offshoring is not going to help! Paying your staff in real hard cash rather than shares will! And another one: "an Access database to track the health history of people in the village" is not going to encourage CS grads to join the company.
(BillG: google Google to find out how to increase R&D personnel)
So if I understand you correctly, its difficult to compare GNU/Linux with MS/Windows?
Every baby born, in every country in the world, has the opportunity of becoming a GNU programmer, but apparently it is now becoming harder for Americans to become a Microsft programmer. I think GNU has the advantage in this contest.
That's why the original post accusing the submitter of double standards is funny. Every American job that is related to Linux exists because some dude in Finland decided to throw his code to the wind, letting it grow wherever it landed.
... and in response, Eric Schmidt changed his name to Jesus F***ing Christ. While he wasn't available for comment, his ever present media representative indicated that it was their policy to 'turn the other cheek', whatever that means.
I disagree with your premise on why libraries exist. Historically, their objective is not to provide everyone with the ability to read something. Libraries exist to preserve works so that it is possible, not necessarily easy, to access these works in the original format.
A librarian would be well within their rights to encourage media with good archival properties, such as strongly objecting to publishers using proprietary encoding, but I think they are stretching their calling a bit too far if they were to fight DRM simply because it could be used to protect the copyright holders rights.
One of the problems that arise from the Linux trademark issue, while not a new one, is that if all open source projects enforce trademarks, Red Hat Linux may not be able to include all the wonderful packages we know and love. The complexity of having so many trademark regulations to wade through will slow down the packaging process, and would cause smaller distributions to wither.
For example, the Mozilla trademarks on Firefox caused quite a stir as it was seen to violate the Debian social contract.
If a project is being very strict about a trademark on the name, it violates the trademark to use that name on a modified version of the product. This means that in order to modify the source code, you now have to jump through one of two hoops:
Relabel the package
Send your patch to the maintainers, and wait for it find its way through the projects queue and arrive back to you as an official package before you can use it with branding intact.
What I find most interesting about this development, is that the software remains free, but it is becoming less open.
In this specific case of Linux, which is not a user-facing piece of software, a trademark will not have a large impact, but if the trend continues, open source will be choking on its own FUD.
I doubt America will sink into irrevelence even if they continued in Bush-like fashion for antoher hundred years. America still has a serious slice of the worlds technology, and there is litle chance that will change.
The changes that may eventuate in the next 50 years is that the Research grants and Tax breaks will only be given in politically "safe" area's. Expect faster computers from America, and cybernetics to move offshore.
That is utter tripe. Google does not require that everyone who uses the term/verb "google" needs to pony up some cash; because their management has not given their laywers free rein. They protect the trademark sensitively. In Australia, emails and letters have been sent out rather indiscrimately to companies using the work Linux on their website.
Personally, if this turns out sour, I will start using Hurd or ReactOS, because I dont intend to give $699 to SCO, or $$$ to anyone for the sole purpose of protecting the name. There are untold millions of people who contributed, so when I donate money to keep the OS free, its the FSF that is first in line.
How does that justify the protection racket that has been set up around the trademark. The term Linux was supposed to be public domain until a US company buggered it up for everyone. Now the people that set out to reclaim the name are now the perps at the top of a slippery slope with the best of intentions.
There are a lot of other alternatives:
Ignore the scum, and have a laugh when MS brings out a product called LinuxSomething. good luck to them. It wont stop you or I from downloading it from here, and calling it Linux.
Delegate licensing down to the LUGs, where participation is a good thing. Linux companies most likely already have staff attending the LUG meetings. New Linux companies would do well to have to chat to the local group who can keep tabs on the products to be sure that the use of the trademark is suitable. For-profit licensing would still be required to keep the trademark protection coffers full, but that is much more palatable than the current scheme.
Ignore the laywers, and organise rallies and boycotts when people overstep the line. Companies that blatantly abuse the good will of the people should not be quietly accused in court -- public hangings are required.
If nothing else works, rename the kernel regularily to avoid confusion with improper uses of the old name; after all, it appears to have worked for Firefox.
I say absolute bollocks to anyone who tries to justify trademarking the name Linux. IMO even Linus does not have a claim to the name, as it was others that named it, so its inception is a play on the trademark UNIX coupled with the original authors name. Besides that, he has not protected the term, and IIRC he stated that he would not do this. (Anyone remember the details?)
So why the change of tune? Because the name is so valuable? There is plenty of case history to indicate that a company can not cash in on a term that has become popular, and has fallen into general use. Why the double standards when it comes to Linux? Because something bad could be associated with Linux? I would prefer to see the name Linux used out of context, thank you very much. Something rotten is happening right now; expect more of the same to come if this is not reversed.
I am sure that many of us felt that Linux was not able to be owned by any one person; now it is, and fee's are being charged. The sad part about this is that it will reduce the expectation that companies need to be part of the community; instead they will pay their dues and expect the developers to jump when they have a problem.
Paying SCO $699 sounds like the better option in hindsight.
I know its not that simple, but I expected the resolution of the trademark dispute to mean that it was now in good hands, and that they would either let it slip into the public domain to avoid the problem re-occuring, or would fight the most obvious of infringements with the full backing of the community.
(UNIX is a registered trademark of The Open Group).
Washington Post decided to not include links in the interest of PATRIOTism; since the Internet became a haven for terrorists, the DMCA is now being used to remove links to websites that circumvent our convoluted sense of freedom.
A high positive correlation between a states suicide rate and percentage of mormons can also be explained by non-mormons being rather unhappy with with the state they live in.
And when Ant finally introduces proper dependency support, the wheel will have turned once more. Im looking forward to the complaints about Ant's dreaded XML problem. Maybe 0x09 will be fashionable again in my lifetime.
Im looking forward to reading the justification; something about longer average life spans is sure to be in there, with no mention of the growing percentage of Iraqi colonists contributing to the rise.
It sounds like you would rather shoot them. I suggest you do another walk around your property, just to be sure you are safe.
taking responsibility for one's actions, especially the stupid ones
agreed. However taking responsibility for ones own actions includes thinking about how your actions may affect others around you; that is, if you want to live peacefully with your neighbours.
I keep lots of bees and barbwired electric fence around a house I dont frequent too often, but there are signs clearly alerting any wanderer that they may want to pass on without stopping for long.
Slashdot Mirror
- work with an engineering faculty to design the replacement board,
- require spec's as part of the manufacturing contract, or
- that the specifications are placed in escrow to be released if the company goes into bankrupcy, or is no longer able to provide duplicates at specified rates.
If you need to keep the existing card, find some modern hardware that has a suitable bus. It is probably an ISA card, so your choices may be limited by that; a quick search on Froogle shows that they can still be purchased in modern motherboards.I suspect that any version of Linux could be suitable, provided you run it with minimal background tasks. Consider running the program on Linux 2.0 in single-user mode. It sounds like that would be an improvement on the current setup
Also, you may find that your existing DOS drivers work on Linux using dosemu
Good luck.
... and we don't know very much about them. But look at this pretty picture I drew!!!
That's strange, because I don't know anyone who doesn't.
My goodness. Where have you been hiding?
To quickly come up to speed, you might like to start here.
Next thing you know, those wacky astronomers will be naming a plutino Homer.
But, whether they like it or not, being told to interoperate is the fruit of thier own success. Microsoft is legally classified as a monopoly, and so it is governments responsibility to stand over them to ensure that innovation is not stifled.
Regarding BitKeeper, paying customers recieve a product that is extremely good at inter-operating, and BitMover always went out of their way to assist open source developers export their data in a variety of ways.
The objection was about an open source client being developed to talk to the BitKeeper TCP talk. Personally I think the offical client would never have been threatened by the open source client, but I can understand BitMover's response. The approach that was used to develop the open source client was hardly strict clean-room reverse engineering with specifications being developed by one team, and the coding done by another. Consequently, BitMover became scared of a herd of cats, and withdrew their free-to-download client.
The freedom to use the software is not in any way affected by this or any other version of the GPL.
The GPL is about the freedom to re-distributed other peoples copyright works. You are right to say it is a behaviour agreement: it grants software developers rights they otherwise would not have, provided they enter into an agreement to not screw the original developer up the arse.
Some developers feel that such an agreement is crucial to them being able to give the code away, and I expect RMS will phase the new patent clause that will be acceptable to 99.99% of GPLv2 users.
... and if we go on past experience, when Stallman puts his thoughts onto paper, and he uses the review processes that he put in place to convert his ramblings into a license, the world becomes a slightly better place.
I am appalled at the lack of respect and trust being shown by slashdotters; give RMS enough credit to go find the details of the proposed clauses, and provide an informed response.ot
I dont know how you read into my post that I was advocating that [Americans] should get all the jobs.
Try re-reading my post without assuming that I am an american. you insensitive clod (sorry, I couldnt resist).
If there is any pro-American spin on my post, it would be that I am happy that the America job market benefits from open source; because open source is not a zero-sum game; an American job in open source improves the number of open source jobs in other countries. While it is possible that the amount of open source work will become limited in the future, maybe when free/libre, feature complete, stable solutions exist for all problems known to man, Im sure I will be dead by then.
Regarding the Microsoft's supposed offshoring, it could be considered bad, not because of its affects on American jobs, but because outsourcing overseas affects Microsofts shareholders. The article was eluding to the situation that CS grads are not as prevalent, and that is hurting MS' R&D division in Redmond. Here is a hint for them, offshoring is not going to help! Paying your staff in real hard cash rather than shares will! And another one: "an Access database to track the health history of people in the village" is not going to encourage CS grads to join the company.
(BillG: google Google to find out how to increase R&D personnel)
So if I understand you correctly, its difficult to compare GNU/Linux with MS/Windows?
Every baby born, in every country in the world, has the opportunity of becoming a GNU programmer, but apparently it is now becoming harder for Americans to become a Microsft programmer. I think GNU has the advantage in this contest.
That's why the original post accusing the submitter of double standards is funny. Every American job that is related to Linux exists because some dude in Finland decided to throw his code to the wind, letting it grow wherever it landed.
... and in response, Eric Schmidt changed his name to Jesus F***ing Christ. While he wasn't available for comment, his ever present media representative indicated that it was their policy to 'turn the other cheek', whatever that means.
A librarian would be well within their rights to encourage media with good archival properties, such as strongly objecting to publishers using proprietary encoding, but I think they are stretching their calling a bit too far if they were to fight DRM simply because it could be used to protect the copyright holders rights.
One of the problems that arise from the Linux trademark issue, while not a new one, is that if all open source projects enforce trademarks, Red Hat Linux may not be able to include all the wonderful packages we know and love. The complexity of having so many trademark regulations to wade through will slow down the packaging process, and would cause smaller distributions to wither.
For example, the Mozilla trademarks on Firefox caused quite a stir as it was seen to violate the Debian social contract.
If a project is being very strict about a trademark on the name, it violates the trademark to use that name on a modified version of the product. This means that in order to modify the source code, you now have to jump through one of two hoops:
What I find most interesting about this development, is that the software remains free, but it is becoming less open. In this specific case of Linux, which is not a user-facing piece of software, a trademark will not have a large impact, but if the trend continues, open source will be choking on its own FUD.
I doubt America will sink into irrevelence even if they continued in Bush-like fashion for antoher hundred years. America still has a serious slice of the worlds technology, and there is litle chance that will change.
The changes that may eventuate in the next 50 years is that the Research grants and Tax breaks will only be given in politically "safe" area's. Expect faster computers from America, and cybernetics to move offshore.
That is utter tripe. Google does not require that everyone who uses the term/verb "google" needs to pony up some cash; because their management has not given their laywers free rein. They protect the trademark sensitively. In Australia, emails and letters have been sent out rather indiscrimately to companies using the work Linux on their website.
Personally, if this turns out sour, I will start using Hurd or ReactOS, because I dont intend to give $699 to SCO, or $$$ to anyone for the sole purpose of protecting the name. There are untold millions of people who contributed, so when I donate money to keep the OS free, its the FSF that is first in line.
How does that justify the protection racket that has been set up around the trademark. The term Linux was supposed to be public domain until a US company buggered it up for everyone. Now the people that set out to reclaim the name are now the perps at the top of a slippery slope with the best of intentions.
There are a lot of other alternatives:
I say absolute bollocks to anyone who tries to justify trademarking the name Linux. IMO even Linus does not have a claim to the name, as it was others that named it, so its inception is a play on the trademark UNIX coupled with the original authors name. Besides that, he has not protected the term, and IIRC he stated that he would not do this. (Anyone remember the details?)
So why the change of tune? Because the name is so valuable? There is plenty of case history to indicate that a company can not cash in on a term that has become popular, and has fallen into general use. Why the double standards when it comes to Linux? Because something bad could be associated with Linux? I would prefer to see the name Linux used out of context, thank you very much. Something rotten is happening right now; expect more of the same to come if this is not reversed.
I am sure that many of us felt that Linux was not able to be owned by any one person; now it is, and fee's are being charged. The sad part about this is that it will reduce the expectation that companies need to be part of the community; instead they will pay their dues and expect the developers to jump when they have a problem.
Paying SCO $699 sounds like the better option in hindsight.
I know its not that simple, but I expected the resolution of the trademark dispute to mean that it was now in good hands, and that they would either let it slip into the public domain to avoid the problem re-occuring, or would fight the most obvious of infringements with the full backing of the community.
(UNIX is a registered trademark of The Open Group).
Washington Post decided to not include links in the interest of PATRIOTism; since the Internet became a haven for terrorists, the DMCA is now being used to remove links to websites that circumvent our convoluted sense of freedom.
Which in effect means Novell is not a creditor in this transaction; the money has been fraudulently withheld, and included in SEC filings.
A high positive correlation between a states suicide rate and percentage of mormons can also be explained by non-mormons being rather unhappy with with the state they live in.
And when Ant finally introduces proper dependency support, the wheel will have turned once more. Im looking forward to the complaints about Ant's dreaded XML problem. Maybe 0x09 will be fashionable again in my lifetime.
make provides you the real language that you seek. You may have used it before, its called /bin/sh.
Its the end of the world as we know it ... [come on, dont stop now] and I feel fine."
Im looking forward to reading the justification; something about longer average life spans is sure to be in there, with no mention of the growing percentage of Iraqi colonists contributing to the rise.
You are using democracy and the US in the same context; did you preview your post before submitting??
It sounds like you would rather shoot them. I suggest you do another walk around your property, just to be sure you are safe.
taking responsibility for one's actions, especially the stupid onesagreed. However taking responsibility for ones own actions includes thinking about how your actions may affect others around you; that is, if you want to live peacefully with your neighbours.
I keep lots of bees and barbwired electric fence around a house I dont frequent too often, but there are signs clearly alerting any wanderer that they may want to pass on without stopping for long.