While Sun's intentions in open sourcing their products may not be neccesarily benign, they ARE giving *something significant* to the open source communuity. The best example I can give is OpenOffice.
OpenOffice is great, and it's nice that Sun has open sourced it. However, "don't worry about Java being proprietary because OpenOffice is open source" is not much of an argument.
I'm no programmer, however isn't Java's appeal the fact that it's very easy to make Java apps cross-platform?
For some definition of "easy" and "cross-platform". One big problem is that, in the end, Sun decides which platforms Java gets implemented on, and some platforms are just out of luck.
For about $100, you can already get a hardware firewall. It obviously will be a fairly basic model with less than stellar performance, but it may be good enough for your needs. Hardware firewalls tend to be simpler to set up and more robust than something you install under XP.
Sage acts nothing like Safari. LiveBookmarks are nice
Sage, Live Bookmarks, and Aggreg8 are browser-integrated RSS readers, and they predate Safari. Therefore, Apple wasn't the first to release a browser with an integrated RSS reader or integrated RSS support.
In terms of UI, I think among the browser-integrated RSS readers, the winner is clearly Live Bookmarks: it gives the user the power of a dedicated RSS reader while staying within a paradigm and interface (bookmarks) the user already knows. Safari's RSS support is much more limited and not particularly innovative.
Those books often are in the public domain only because their copyright has expired; back when they were created, they were created by experts. And there is no reason why a 19th century translation, commentary, or piece of literature should not still be the definitive version.
It doesn't matter how many million lines of Java code Sun open sources as long as they still own the platform, and they do still own the platform:
Sun is the final arbiter of what constitutes a Java-compliant application. People incorrectly claim that Sun's control extends only over the trademark, but that's not true: they can keep you from shipping your Java implementation through patents and the licenses on their specifications if they don't like what you are doing, no matter what you call your Java.
The Java specifications that you need to create your own Java implementation are only available under a strict license (the fact that you can download them so easily from java.sun.com makes it even worse)
Sun owns several patents on key technologies needed for creating a compliant Java implementation
The only Java implementations actually capable of running the code are Sun's and licensed derivatives.
Maybe the creation of a fully open source Java implementation by IBM, Apache, and/or GNU will finally force Sun's hand--while technically, non-enforcements of their patents and licenses against such open source projects doesn't invalidate their claims, practically, they would have to act or face tough questions. But until the legal status of open source Java implementations is resolved (or Sun abandons their ridiculous patent and license claims), the only Java there is is proprietary: Sun Java and its derivatives.
And open sourcing stuff built on top of their proprietary platform doesn't bring it one step closer to open source. Quite to the contrary: it merely looks like an attempt to drum up business for their proprietary platform.
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While Sun's intentions in open sourcing their products may not be neccesarily benign, they ARE giving *something significant* to the open source communuity. The best example I can give is OpenOffice. OpenOffice is great, and it's nice that Sun has open sourced it. However, "don't worry about Java being proprietary because OpenOffice is open source" is not much of an argument. I'm no programmer, however isn't Java's appeal the fact that it's very easy to make Java apps cross-platform? For some definition of "easy" and "cross-platform". One big problem is that, in the end, Sun decides which platforms Java gets implemented on, and some platforms are just out of luck.
For about $100, you can already get a hardware firewall. It obviously will be a fairly basic model with less than stellar performance, but it may be good enough for your needs. Hardware firewalls tend to be simpler to set up and more robust than something you install under XP.
Sage acts nothing like Safari. LiveBookmarks are nice
Sage, Live Bookmarks, and Aggreg8 are browser-integrated RSS readers, and they predate Safari. Therefore, Apple wasn't the first to release a browser with an integrated RSS reader or integrated RSS support.
In terms of UI, I think among the browser-integrated RSS readers, the winner is clearly Live Bookmarks: it gives the user the power of a dedicated RSS reader while staying within a paradigm and interface (bookmarks) the user already knows. Safari's RSS support is much more limited and not particularly innovative.
Those books often are in the public domain only because their copyright has expired; back when they were created, they were created by experts. And there is no reason why a 19th century translation, commentary, or piece of literature should not still be the definitive version.
- Sun is the final arbiter of what constitutes a Java-compliant application. People incorrectly claim that Sun's control extends only over the trademark, but that's not true: they can keep you from shipping your Java implementation through patents and the licenses on their specifications if they don't like what you are doing, no matter what you call your Java.
- The Java specifications that you need to create your own Java implementation are only available under a strict license (the fact that you can download them so easily from java.sun.com makes it even worse)
- Sun owns several patents on key technologies needed for creating a compliant Java implementation
- The only Java implementations actually capable of running the code are Sun's and licensed derivatives.
Maybe the creation of a fully open source Java implementation by IBM, Apache, and/or GNU will finally force Sun's hand--while technically, non-enforcements of their patents and licenses against such open source projects doesn't invalidate their claims, practically, they would have to act or face tough questions. But until the legal status of open source Java implementations is resolved (or Sun abandons their ridiculous patent and license claims), the only Java there is is proprietary: Sun Java and its derivatives.And open sourcing stuff built on top of their proprietary platform doesn't bring it one step closer to open source. Quite to the contrary: it merely looks like an attempt to drum up business for their proprietary platform.
Firefox had RSS viewing built in long before Safari, both as live bookmarks and as an RSS reader.