Well, guess you have been lucky in your "extremely heavy" use of CVS. Our developers have not been so lucky.
So, you claim people rewrite perfectly good code Just For The Heck Of It, and then make up excuses as to why they spent huge amounts of time on a project? Um...yeah.
And then, you claim to know why this was "really" done. Funny, I don't recall seeing your name on the list of OpenBSD developers. I don't recall seeing you in the internal discussions on this. I do recall seeing many developers have CVS do something stupid on them, following up with "how's JFB's CVS replacement coming along? I can't wait". I can assure you, it wasn't about the license. For the record, I've never had CVS do anything surprising to me when committing but I am certainly one of the lightweight users on the project, and I'd certainly not use that experience as the Universal Experience.
Believe it or not, as a mostly volunteer force, we don't go about rewriting perfectly good software the size of CVS just for grins and giggles. There is WAY too much important work to do to waste time remaking perfectly good wheels. This wheel was ready for replacement.:)
There is a lot more to this than the license, though the license alone would be more than sufficient to justify doing it. While true, CVS is typically a development tool, that is HARDLY the limit of its abilities. What if you want to use a modified CVS to track configuration changes in a non-open source application? Oops! Can't do that with GPL'd CVS.
CVS development has basicly stalled for quite some time. It has reached "good enough" state -- obviously, considering the number of projects that live off of it -- but there are still issues. Check the OpenBSD CVS Commit logs, search for "cvs sucks" and other such non-positive reviews of CVS's operation.
There are also the relative primativeness of some aspects of CVS and its access rights. If you have access to the CVS repository, you can do anything with it... What if I'm not qualified to work in certain trees? What if I fat-finger an scp operation and upload a huge set of files into the CVS directory (no, I *don't* want to talk about it, but it's not a hypothetical concern!:). Then there is just plain simple security: nothing stops any person who has CVS access from being able to go in and directly edit the CVS repository files files OUTSIDE the CVS system, leading to untracked changes in the tree.
And that's hardly all the complaints... If you think "license" is the only difference, you obviously didn't read the goals page very carefully (or believed the one line summary:-)
And yes, I consider it nonsense, but rather than name calling, I'll happily share it and let you decide how not matching every feature of another program is "harmful". If you agree, don't run OpenNTPD. That simple.
What is your goal? If it is to run an app with the maximal buzzword compliance, ok, fine, go run ntp.org's ntpd, and enjoy it. No one is attempting to take it away from you.
If your goal is to have a clock set within any meaningful accuracies for normal people, openntpd is great. Most computers now are not running any kind of time sync program, and probably wander several seconds (or minutes) a day, assuming they were ever set within a minute or two in the first place.
WHY IN THE WORLD should OpenNTPD be bloated out to get that last few milliseconds of accuracy? MOST people don't need it. Those that do have long been running (and maintaining) ntp.org's ntpd, and they don't care about openntpd, and that's great.
If you are running a clock in pool.ntp.org, you better understand all the issues, and probably you really want to go after those last few milliseconds. For 95% of the rest of the world, OpenNTPD is a "activate and forget" tool which will enable them to do things they aren't even trying to do now, simply, safely and securely. How is that bad?
OpenNTPD is not here to eliminate ntp.org's work, it is here to complement it, and bring it to the masses. The authors do NOT intend for it to become another piece of bloatware.As for whether OpenNTPD is "SNTP" or "NTP"...WHO CARES? IF it works for you, use it. IF it doesn't don't. The world is plenty big for two options here.
Re:If you had ordered the CD's...
on
OpenBSD 3.6 Released!
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· Score: 2, Informative
We've taken some steps with this release to make this a little less difficult:
When G5 hardware is put in the hands of a developer who can bring it on-line.
I don't think anyone considers it an impossible task, at least if one has real HW to work on. So far, no offers from Apple or users of G5 hardware. It is a very expensive machine for a volunteer workforce.:)
Curiously, the people who know OSs the best have been sticking with C. The people talking about "modern languages" have been mostly doing just that: talking. The fact that nothing has been done beyond "talk" says more then all the talk.
Someone who believes this can be done has to prove it by reimplementing an existing OS in one of these "modern languages", and demonstrate that it is maintainable, performs sufficiently, and actually works better than a C implemented OS. Implementing a "whole new" OS isn't going to work, as the barriers to entry in this business are just too high -- you would have to implement an entire software library as well. And note: having to have a multi-processor P4 or AMD64 to do what is currently done with a Pentium 90 isn't going to fly...
I really doubt any programming language can make programing "intrinsically safe". In fact, if past experience is any guide, it would probably lower the bar to entry into OS programming, and probably end up with a net REDUCTION in quality. All it takes to prove me wrong is...well, do it.:)
Time to de-lurk, as other ACs are resorting to name calling, and don't want to be confused with them. I wasn't being so much an Anonymous Coward as a "Lazy Bum", too lazy to look up my old slashdot name and PW.:)
Most of our disagreement here appears to over terms and usage. I think we've made our respective meanings clear...now readers get to decide for themselves which they prefer 8).
Hopefully we can also agree with this point: there are benefits and downsides to both BSD and GPL licenses -- the choice of license should always be up to the coder. I would also think that the acceptability of each should always be left to the person using the software in question.
HOWEVER, I do want to pick on this statement of yours: "BSD derived code... can disappear while GPL derived code can not" This is not true (at least for my definition of "dissappear"). Once a work is released with a license, that license can not be revoked on that particular version of the source. The project may fork at that point, with someone taking a BSD'd project in a non-BSD direction (i.e., Apache or XFree86 or SSH), but the OLD VERSIONS remain with their old license. Believe me, if SSH.com could revoke the old v1 ssh code's BSD license, they would in a heartbeat. They took their app closed source, OpenSSH took the old BSD code and extended it (and a side note: I have no doubt that both OpenSSH and SSH.com's products are better because of the existance of the other, which means the users win).
Now, if by "can disapear", you mean developement can take place that is not fed back to the open source community, sure, but that's not what I would call "disappearing". XFree86, Apache and SSH didn't "disappear" from the world, just got "less free" development. If the open source community cares enough to continue "free" development of BSD licensed code, they can.
As for is sharing back modifications "really asking too much?", the idea sounds great...however, it gets messy. Making a three line change in a GPL program? Sure, easy. Incorporating a small 100 line GPL'ed routine into a 10,000 line application forcing the entire app GPL? That doesn't seem "fair" to me. Things get ugly if you start trying to draw a line here...lawyers get involved. The BSD philosophy is "just use it. Feed back your contributions if you wish to, but you are 'free' do to as you wish in that regard". Personally, I prefer that acts of generosity be voluntary...but that's me.:)
As for hardware availability guarantees, What does that REALLY mean? I have a couple clients who, after believing the Compaq hardware availability guarantee would keep them running, discovered it didn't, and they were down for considerably longer than the "guaranteed" repair time. No one offered to cover the business's cost of down-time. No one even offered to refund the price of the service and support contract.
If this was a one-shot event, well, perhaps it could be forgiven. Problem is, I have *never* seen a Compaq problem solved in the promised time frame. Don't get me wrong, Compaqs are reliable boxes, but they DO break, and they don't seem to be repairable in business acceptable time periods, and certainly not in time periods that the customer thought they were buying.
To be fair, a friend of mine who works at a Compaq service center told me there are ways to "make it happen", but the marketing people made it sound like it was "automatic", you shouldn't have to start tracking down the particular people you need to grovel to when things break!
My customer's response was simple: In at least one case, we junked the Compaq server. It wasn't servicable in the time they promised, in the time this retailer REQUIRED, so the Compaq server is now being used as a workstation. They replaced it with a matched pair of Dell machines, one server, one as on-site spare parts (and workstation until needed). Compaq wasn't even considered as a replacement system. I call this "full on-site redundancy" -- in my (not) humble opinion, this only way to run a important business computer system: have a spare part for every critical part (computers, hubs, cables, etc.).
Availability guarantees are marketing ploys. Don't trust them. Don't believe them. And don't believe anyone who tries to sell you something based on them. Even if I believed the M$ Marketing up to that point, this statement totally discredits their entire pitch.
Um... I don't want this to sound like a flame, but what you are saying is just plain wrong, on almost every point.
>It was (until recently) loaded on top of DOS Netware v3 through v5 (and probably future versions) uses DOS as a BOOT LOADER (a task it is well suited for, in my opinion;) and a place to store SOME driver and config files, and NOTHING MORE. The Netware OS completely takes over and shuts down DOS so completely that the DOS clock actually stops (if you DOWN and EXIT the server, and do a DATE and TIME from DOS, it will report the time and date the server was started..often years earlier!). The only thing DOS does once Netware is running is, if requested, load a device driver from either the floppy or the DOS partition of the disk (and you will see the performance really hurt when this happens, as it has to jump in and out of the 80x86 Real Mode, and they obviously felt no reason to optimize this). In fact, you can do a REMOVE DOS command which frees up the few hundred K of RAM used by DOS, and slightly improves console security (as you can no longer load anything from the floppy drive).
OLD versions of Netware (Netware 86 and v2) were free-booting OSs. They were a pain to reconfigure. Using DOS as a boot loader really improved things at the cost of what is now a very insignificant amount of RAM overhead. I can pull a set of non-hardware RAID drives out of most any Novell server and have it BACK UP AND RUNNING on a totally different box (different disk controller, different NIC, different video card, different main board, etc.) in a matter of minutes (barring mechanical problems, like missing cables). I can't think of any other server OS which can make this claim.
>It still only has a DOS-like shell with no decent text processing utilities. If you consider the Netware environment DOS-like, you have obviously never used many other OSs. The only thing it shares with DOS is a command prompt (i.e., it isn't a GUI). It gives you a command prompt, it has new tasks spawn off their own screens automatically (this is a really cool UI feature I wish Unix and other command prompt desktop OSs had!).
Text processing utilities? Huh? This is a file server OS, not a workstation OS! The LARGEST configuration files I have ever seen on a well-implemented Netware server were less than two pages long. The text editing facilities are limited, but you don't need WordPerfect (or Word 2000) to edit small configuration files. For reference, Netware gave you a full-screen text editor for editing these things when MS was still giving nothing better than edlin. The editor lets you type, correct, and even cut, copy and paste. Not bad for something that is used to edit tiny little files! It even qualifies as fairly intuitive. If you cut your teeth on Word 95 or even MS's EDIT, you may disagree, but EDIT.NLM was implemented long before these products..it can't be faulted for not following their "lead"... It certainly wins prizes compared to vi or emacs for "hit the ground running".
>And until Netware 5, it used an outmoded proprietary network protocol. Proprietary, yes. Certainly. Stupidly, even (they should have thrown it open long ago instead of militantly demanding licensing fees). Outmoded? Hardly. First of all, IPX is a near zero-maintenance protocol. You provide a unique number for all servers (I use the license number to ensure uniqueness) and for each NICs/protocol set. After that, you just plug in workstations, no IP numbering problems. Hey, every NIC has an address, might as well use it, right? Move a WS? Reboot, and it is back up and running at its new location. Of course, some IS people hate it for just this reason...it doesn't ensure job security as IP does. The number one reason I like IPX/SPX now, however, is the security. Now that so many offices are connected to the Internet, there are real security issues if you have systems live on the 'net. You have to have and maintain a good, solid firewall at all times. Or...use IPX/SPX for all your private company operations, and use TCP/IP ONLY for getting outside the building! Talk about a perfect firewall: A server which doesn't even recognize the hostile protocols running around the wire. I actually don't care for Netware 5 for just that reason. It scares the heck out of me to think of any server of any kind (probable exception: OpenBSD) holding company data sitting live on the Internet. Again, though..job security for IS people.
>I don't know much about the latest version, but it still looks like something that came out of the ark. The same would be said of a Unix command prompt by someone who didn't know much about it.
Netware IS a server platform! It is NOT a general purpose OS, and it NEVER was intended to be! Please judge this very capable, very solid platform at the job it was intended and sold to be.
As for adherence to open standards, this is a personal preferance, and one I respect. Ultimately, however, it is results that count. For most businesses, the computer is only a tool to their business, not the goal in and of itself. Netware is the closest thing to "set and forget" networking I have seen, and the fastest repair time OS I have seen. This is very critical to real-world business. Would I run a Web server on Netware? Heck, no. Would I port Doom to Netware? No (although the XWindows interface of Netware 5 would potentially make it a cute stunt). Would I relish the thought of implementing a client-server database engine on Netware? No, although the results would be delicious, the process would be very painful, though NW4x and 5 make it less so. Would I use it as a platform for E-mail or Internet access? No, there are better choices. As a file and print server, however, which is a critical service in most PC-based business now, I haven't found a way to beat it.
Yes, there are few really good people at Netware installation, configuration, and troubleshooting but my experience is there are no more who (really) know NT. NO ONE has more than what, three years of experience with NTv4? I've got five years professional experience with Netware 4, and another six years professional experience with Netware 3, which Netware 4 builds on very directly (and another four years of experience with earlier versions, but NW3+ is so different from NW2- that it doesn't really help much).
I would argue that having an network OS that is "easy" to set up and get running is very counter-productive. You don't want newbies setting up the backbone of your business! Many people consider the loading of an OS the measure or success..these people don't even understand how far they are from success.
O.k...enough with my soap box. I don't mean to attack you or anyone personally. I'm just very tired of people who don't understand the product condemming Netware for totally bogus reasons, and treating this product which the rest of the industry has yet to surpass as a has-been.
It sounds like you are an advocate of disk partitioning. Do you mind if I ask why?
Many, many years ago, I was an advocate of partitioning disks up (under DOS, CP/M, and many other small system OSs), with all kinds of reasons such as separating data for selective backups, organization, etc. HOWEVER, quite a few years ago, after learning lessons the hard way, I quit doing this in favor of simply using good directory structures. In other words, unless there is some overriding reason TO partition, I don't, for I know a lot of reasons NOT to partition.
Now, I find in the Unix world, partitioning is accepted as standard. While I have heard a few very good reasons for partitioning "special purpose" systems (logs, transaction records, mail, etc...anything which COULD grow suddenly without control...why do so few OSs provide good protection from this? Your firewall idea sounds really good, too), for a general purpose, desktop machine, is there a good reason to partition? I'm assuming there is, I'd just love to hear an explaination from someone who knows!
Actually, I found OpenBSD a joy to set up as a cable internet access NAT box. The FAQ section on the OpenBSD web site almost walks you through the setup(!). I've played with Linuxes on-and-off for many years (admittedly, only resembling seriously for the last year or so), but I hit the ground running FAR faster with OpenBSD than I did any of the Linux implementations I have tried. Undoubtably, part of the reason was the fact I had more Linux experience when I tackled OpenBSD, but also that I just found OpenBSD, well, more coherently layed out, as one might expect from a project developed more by a very small group of people. Every Linux distro I have seen feels almost like a whole new OS, I had a much easier time finding the things I needed to find on OpenBSD.
Most of the problems I had with OpenBSD regarded the disk partitioning system, and that probably would not have been a problem had I not chosen an old Compaq (with the "maintenance partition") to implement it on. Once I got OpenBSD loaded without blowing away the things I wanted to keep, I had the NAT function working within one day. I was amazed. And pleased. My background on OSs is wide and deep in many spots, but I've still got my water wings on when it comes to Unix.
My OpenBSD box is a 75MHz Pentium with 40M RAM, with exclusively EISA and PCI cards in it. I've managed to download at greater than 400kBytes/sec (rarely, but it happens). (That was in case you were wondering what it took to run a good firewall/NAT/whatever system. I got carried away with the EISA/PCI stuff, but I had it piling up around here. I have to try it on a more modest 486 with ISA cards to see how it compares. Internet access speeds vary so much anyway, I'm not sure how to really test it...)
I agree with your comments regarding "flaming bigots". On the other hand, the Linux flaming bigots that I saw *here* on Slashdot were the reason I started checking out the *BSD OSs. Anything that generated that much negative assault *HAD* to be worth checking out. When people get that negative, it is usually because they are scared and ignorant. A reasonable person who has truly investigated the multiple platforms, when confronted with a question will say something along the lines of "I found x on y works better than w on v", not "x rules always! You are a fool to consider anything else".
You are also right, there is no either-or. It is the results that matter, not the tools used. A master can do more with bad tools than a novice can do with the best tools. Tools not only have to be matched to the task at hand, but to the PERSON or PEOPLE who are implementing the task.
I'm trying to think of some clever saying about closed minds/closed source, open minds/open source, but I'm failing. Besides, I've seen too many closed minds on open source, too.
"Use the source, Luke" That is GOOD! I like it! 8)
I am yet another person who glanced through the web page, and pulled down the.PDF file, and after a few moments of looking through it, have no idea what e-Speak does. All I saw is it had something to do with the Internet, and I guess that was supposed to excite me.
It didn't.
Every day I'm bombarded with products that offer to improve my life, solve all my problems, and make me rich and famous. If they can't quickly tell me even what area of my life they are wanting to work on, well, I've got other things to do.
Does this form of "marketing" work? Are there people out there who respond to vague promises of "nerdvana"? Personally, it trips my B.S. detector. Open source or not, if it does something for me, I'll consider it. If it doesn't, I won't. If I can't tell, I'm not going to spend a lot of time trying to figure it out.
Part of me feels like a fool for responding to something I didn't take the time to understand, but on the other hand, I'm more responding to a marketing ploy than to e-Speak itself.
Very cool idea. We have spent a lot of time working on cool OSs, but for the most part, we run them on what should be called pathetic hardware designs.
Face it, the PC design is a very bad joke. It started out as bad in 1981 (YES, it was a bad design in 1981, and I said so then. 16 bit processor, 8 bit bus. Shortage of on-board resources. Shortage of interrupts and slots on DAY ONE. Bizzare memory layout. BIOS in ROM. BASIC in ROM), and the attempts to "improve" and "update" it to a 16 bit then a 32 bit bus have been hampered by the desire to maintain compatability with the original bad design.
Most other platforms with history (Macintosh, for example) have similar problems with historical mistakes which won't quite die.
Back in my youth, I used and loved a Heathkit H-100 computer (kit form of the Zenith Z-100), a system that showed what could be done with a properly designed 8088 design. The only significant design limitation was the 8088 processor (instead of the available 8086), but that was done to support its other processor, an 8085 (there to run older CP/M-80 applications). The machine had an IEEE-696 S-100 bus, which was a 16 bit bus, with 24 bit addressing, so they were thinking AHEAD, not backwards when they designed it. The Z-100 was designed as a transition between the 8 bit world and the 16 bit world, to exploit the new without being cripped by the old. I have talked to people who worked for Zenith, and had seen the machine which was planned to replace the Z-100, completing the transition to the 16 bit world. Wow. I can't tell you how dissapointed we should *all* be that the IBM design is what we all work around now.
I'll take minor exception to your use of the phrase "Wintel architecture". YES, Intel now has a lot to do with the PC design (being a major manufacturer of "glue" chips and (co?)designer of the PCI bus and other current "features"), but the primary problems we have with the PC design are the the fault of IBM's PC design and the industry and market for having embraced that design and not letting go.
It really would be cool to see a machine with modern technology using familiar sounding parts without the limitations of the IBM design... Yeah, there were other machines which avoided the PC design completely (I've got a few Altos machines in the basement, and the Sun 386i you mentioned), but they are too few and too far in between.
Gotta get my own soldering iron and wrap tool out one of these days and start doing some hardware hacking myself...
On the other hand, it is very difficult to really roll-your-own hardware anymore. When dealing with proceesors with bus speeds of 286s and beyond, you aren't really dealing with digital signals anymore, but radio, where every wire is an inductor and a capacitor... Ah, for the days of 1MHz processors 8)
Dream on. This boring post probably helped you get to dreaming. Wake up!
Plenty of precident for this. Think of an server OS which has been selected for many uses for no (apparent) reason other than "Oh, the GUI is cool" or "Play solitair on the server!", and is now used on mission critical apps including stranding battleships at sea.
This seems to have decayed into a non-positive posting. Sorry.
Out of curiosity (NOT flame!), what is your definition of *real* Unix?
A friend of mine contents that AT&T is the "One True Unix". I've seen people argue that *BSD could, due to the development history, be "A True Unix (but you could get sued if you say so)". SCO, as owners of Unix Systems Labs could probably claim to be Real Unix. Anyone I'm forgetting?
It sounds like you have something in mind, just curious what? Esp. curious if it is something other than the ones I have mentioned! You refer to "a couple", I'm guessing you aren't one of the "One True Unix" people. 8-)
I managed to "make my own" on my Windows-based CD-ROM burner (I haven't transitioned it to a real OS yet). I downloaded the appropriate files from the site, and after a serious "Doh!" momement, remembered that.tar.gz is "equivelent" to.tgz (if you download them in Windows, don't forget that you have to end up with ISO9660 file names!), put them all in a directory called:
\2.5\I386
and it worked great. (My burner machine/software wouldn't make a bootable CDR off the OpenBSD boot disk. I used the floppy boot disk)
Cost me a couple blanks to get it right, but it worked. 8-)
I'd guess they probably held up your 2.5 order to send you the new 2.6 version (this is JUST a guess). I put my 2.6 order in a week or so ago. We'll see how long it take. I'm not too worried, myself. I found the FTP install worked great through my Cable Internet Access, I was just sending them money because I think it was worth supporting some people who have put some serious work into a very good project.
It has developed a life of its own. It has influenced the design of virtually all small computers in the world today. Almost 20 years after the thing was developed/hacked together, we are still living with its design defects/choices:
* It has influenced the design not only of later computers, but even chips. All modern Intel processors after the '286 was called "brain dammaged" for its incomplete emulation of the 8086/88 have had complete binary compatability with the 8088. * the "real mode" (related to the above) * the 640k DOS memory segment and the corresponding memory hole between 640k and 1M. * The system ROM located in the midst of the system RAM. * The ISA bus. * The resolution changing monitor (o.k., that was a later "innovation", which if it isn't clear from my tone, I have zero respect for. I much prefer that the computer would power up in one video mode/resolution, and STAY THERE!). * The shortage of available interupts. * DOS: The OS that won't quite die.
I'm sure with a little thought, we can all add to this list...
The only question is, was it a hack? I would argue it is, based on the apparently rapid development, the lack of careful planning, etc. Your call! 8-)
Uh... Your statement "Netware is not gaining any new customers - they're just keeping existing customers." isn't at all true, and seems to be FUD from the "other direction".
I believe FUD tactics are wrong, whether from MS or from the Open Source world...
I'm still installing NEW Novell networks, where no network has been, or (so-called) competing networks have been. I install several new ones a year (two this month), and being a one-person operation, that's pretty good numbers. Novell is not gaining market SHARE, but the whole market is growing so rapidly, they are gaining huge numbers of seats (the percentage slice of the pie is shrinking, but the pie is growing so much the slice's size is still growing).
One of my clients is soon going to be decommissioning an NT server as they found they could run their app just fine from their existing Netware server with only a disk system upgrade (they had been told the app required NT) and a heck of a lot less headaches. Now, they don't count as a "new" install, or even a new server, but I think it counts as a definite Netware "victory". That's one of the "problems" Netware has...it just tends to take on more tasks with little fanfare, rather than implementing five new NT servers. This doesn't show up in the statistics.
Netware may not be gaining as many new seats and customers as NT. They ARE possibly gaining more new seats supported (quantity, not market share) than Linux. These numbers are difficult to make sense of, however. A site that runs off one or two Netware servers doesn't do as much for Novell's numbers as a similar size site which runs off 10 NT servers, and has five Linux machines doing various functions.
When it comes to the business world, I feel what matters is results (or, at least, this is what SHOULD matter). If the employees at my clients sit down and think "Oh, now I start work on our [fill in type] network", I have done my job improperly. My goal is to have my clients think of their computer as they do their stapler and their phone: just one more tool to get The Job done, and The Job is rarely computers. I've found Netware does this well.
Don't get me wrong, I've got my own list of what Novell has done wrong. I'm looking forward to a day where I can start setting up Linux or FreeBSD systems as servers (and to be honest, I'm leaning towards FreeBSD [oh, now I'm in trouble..]) for small offices (by the way, there are FAR MORE small offices than there are mega-corporations!), and I'm really not sold on Netware 5 and "Pure IP" yet (IPX is the perfect firewall. Internet (IP) traffic can't hurt/breach/crack an IPX-only server!). However, several things are going to have to change and improve in the Linux/*BSD world before that happens..and Novell is free, of course, to improve their world, at the same time.
Real competition is good. Keeps everyone on their toes. That should be true of Open vs. Closed source, as well. But that's another essay...
I've been seeing (small pieces of) this "fight" for quite some time, and I've been impressed by the lack of verifiable facts and the VERY curious lack of refuting of unverified facts on ALL sides. Very strange for a group of technology people to be that accepting of non-original source material.
I've managed to read a very far ways through this rather painful discussion, and I've seen several people asking the obvious questions: "Did this picture exist? Did it really give out her address?" FINALLY it sounds like we might have a plausable answer to the question. (Yes, it existed, not necessisarily with the purpose of being a threat, but it *could* have easily been interpreted that way. Even if the information was publicly available elsewhere, to have it lumped with non-flattering information about a different person is, well, impolite at best.
O.k., is John's reaction the most enlightened response? Heck, no. But hey, the guy is young. We've all done things when we were(are) young that we can look back at and wish for repressed memory (and those of you who are still young..you will! And, I'm sure when I look back on my current age when I consider *it* young, I'll do it then! 8) And just because someone has great technical skills doesn't mean they are beyond doing something that might be socially questionable (posting a mirror of information which *could* be considered threatening).
My impression: We have a person who views himself as having been wronged by a community which doesn't care for people who claim skills and abilities they can't/don't/won't demonstrate. The guy may be a fraud, or he may just be a non-open-sourcer who believes he needs to play his cards close to his chest. As we like to believe, the proof is in the results. O.k., enough with the name calling, and let the best geeks prove themselves! 8-)
More "productive" interviews would be nice in the future. This just seemed to have fanned up a pile of embers which should have been permitted to die out.
Nick. (who seems to be contributing his own wind to the embers, eh?)
I have a client looking at an office automation system. They are really thrilled with the program, problem is, they have 40 offices around the country, with anywhere between 5 and 100 users at each office. All of which have to be pulling from one database. The app is a Windows based, client server app. It will be a maintenance nightmare. Something like eight different products are knitted together, each going through anywhere between a revision every two years to four revisions per year. Times hundreds of workstations. Times dozens of servers.
Uh, yeah.
I'd love to see a Unix-based text-mode app. Put it on a big Unix box (whatever flavor). Use telnet to get to it from PCs, dumb terminals where appropriate. Very modest WAN links. Getting a little slow? Update the one box. Software update? Update the one box. App update require an update to the terminal emulation software? Install the new TES at the clients at your leasure, when done, update the app.
GUIs are pretty. Oh, but are they maintenance nightmares!
Some apps just work better on text mode systems. I've not seen evidence that GUI-based accounting software gives you ANY serious improvements. And, as far as just throwing text in proper order, I have never seen anything beat DOS WP5.1 in the hands of a legal secretary.
I know I am a very distinct minority here, but I don't like seeing fancy GUI word processors in schools. Most students should be working on the CONTENT of their work, making sure their words are in logical order, their ideas are expressed clearly, their thoughts are complete and conveyed well rather than trying to make it look pretty. I'm not saying there is no place for presentation, but a writing class should be teaching writing, not graphic arts. A math class should be teaching math, not graphic arts. A public speaking class should be teaching speaking, not graphic arts.
My local school district is looking at spending millions of dollars to put in all kinds of wonderful technology. They will be paying for it years after it is obsolete. Scarry. They want fancy video cameras, digital cameras, etc. I'd like to set them up with a few *nix/*BSD systems -- labs full of terminals/old PCs as word processors, available in the morning, all day long, and late into the evening. I'd like the kids to learn basic programming -- not to make them all computer programmers, but to teach the thought-process of step-by-step problem decomposition, and to help them with things like programming VCRs or other things requiring the ability to understand guiding the electronic devices that are all over our lives now. I'm working on the school board nicely, but I know I will loose this one, so I'm just trying to keep them from squandering my money too badly.
Your comparison of finding Slashdot on the web to finding accurate information on Linux is..um..wierd.
You assume I was looking for Slashdot, and found it. You assume incorrectly. I found it basicly by accident, it looked interesting, so I "joined in". That's not the way you learn, examine or implement an OS in a professional environment (and that is my goal: a professional environment). Although, it appears to be the way some companies IMPLEMENT OSs ("Oh, there's an idea for a feature! Quick, put it in our product, shut them down!").
Slashdot Mirror
Well, guess you have been lucky in your "extremely heavy" use of CVS. Our developers have not been so lucky.
:)
So, you claim people rewrite perfectly good code Just For The Heck Of It, and then make up excuses as to why they spent huge amounts of time on a project? Um...yeah.
And then, you claim to know why this was "really" done. Funny, I don't recall seeing your name on the list of OpenBSD developers. I don't recall seeing you in the internal discussions on this. I do recall seeing many developers have CVS do something stupid on them, following up with "how's JFB's CVS replacement coming along? I can't wait". I can assure you, it wasn't about the license. For the record, I've never had CVS do anything surprising to me when committing but I am certainly one of the lightweight users on the project, and I'd certainly not use that experience as the Universal Experience.
Believe it or not, as a mostly volunteer force, we don't go about rewriting perfectly good software the size of CVS just for grins and giggles. There is WAY too much important work to do to waste time remaking perfectly good wheels. This wheel was ready for replacement.
There is a lot more to this than the license, though the license alone would be more than sufficient to justify doing it. While true, CVS is typically a development tool, that is HARDLY the limit of its abilities. What if you want to use a modified CVS to track configuration changes in a non-open source application? Oops! Can't do that with GPL'd CVS.
:). Then there is just plain simple security: nothing stops any person who has CVS access from being able to go in and directly edit the CVS repository files files OUTSIDE the CVS system, leading to untracked changes in the tree.
:-)
CVS development has basicly stalled for quite some time. It has reached "good enough" state -- obviously, considering the number of projects that live off of it -- but there are still issues. Check the OpenBSD CVS Commit logs, search for "cvs sucks" and other such non-positive reviews of CVS's operation.
There are also the relative primativeness of some aspects of CVS and its access rights. If you have access to the CVS repository, you can do anything with it... What if I'm not qualified to work in certain trees? What if I fat-finger an scp operation and upload a huge set of files into the CVS directory (no, I *don't* want to talk about it, but it's not a hypothetical concern!
And that's hardly all the complaints... If you think "license" is the only difference, you obviously didn't read the goals page very carefully (or believed the one line summary
oops, I didn't answer the other part about pool.ntp.org:
http://www.pool.ntp.org/#news
see the "2004-09-07" entry.
Most probably, this:/ 2004/09/openntpd.html
http://bradknowles.typepad.com/considered_harmful
And yes, I consider it nonsense, but rather than name calling, I'll happily share it and let you decide how not matching every feature of another program is "harmful". If you agree, don't run OpenNTPD. That simple.
What is your goal?
If it is to run an app with the maximal buzzword compliance, ok, fine, go run ntp.org's ntpd, and enjoy it. No one is attempting to take it away from you.
If your goal is to have a clock set within any meaningful accuracies for normal people, openntpd is great. Most computers now are not running any kind of time sync program, and probably wander several seconds (or minutes) a day, assuming they were ever set within a minute or two in the first place.
WHY IN THE WORLD should OpenNTPD be bloated out to get that last few milliseconds of accuracy? MOST people don't need it. Those that do have long been running (and maintaining) ntp.org's ntpd, and they don't care about openntpd, and that's great.
If you are running a clock in pool.ntp.org, you better understand all the issues, and probably you really want to go after those last few milliseconds. For 95% of the rest of the world, OpenNTPD is a "activate and forget" tool which will enable them to do things they aren't even trying to do now, simply, safely and securely. How is that bad?
OpenNTPD is not here to eliminate ntp.org's work, it is here to complement it, and bring it to the masses. The authors do NOT intend for it to become another piece of bloatware.As for whether OpenNTPD is "SNTP" or "NTP"...WHO CARES? IF it works for you, use it. IF it doesn't don't. The world is plenty big for two options here.
http://www.openbsd.org/faq/upgrade36.html
As the author of the above, my opinion of its value may be biased, however. :)
When G5 hardware is put in the hands of a developer who can bring it on-line.
:)
I don't think anyone considers it an impossible task, at least if one has real HW to work on. So far, no offers from Apple or users of G5 hardware. It is a very expensive machine for a volunteer workforce.
Curiously, the people who know OSs the best have been sticking with C. The people talking about "modern languages" have been mostly doing just that: talking. The fact that nothing has been done beyond "talk" says more then all the talk.
...well, do it. :)
Someone who believes this can be done has to prove it by reimplementing an existing OS in one of these "modern languages", and demonstrate that it is maintainable, performs sufficiently, and actually works better than a C implemented OS. Implementing a "whole new" OS isn't going to work, as the barriers to entry in this business are just too high -- you would have to implement an entire software library as well. And note: having to have a multi-processor P4 or AMD64 to do what is currently done with a Pentium 90 isn't going to fly...
I really doubt any programming language can make programing "intrinsically safe". In fact, if past experience is any guide, it would probably lower the bar to entry into OS programming, and probably end up with a net REDUCTION in quality. All it takes to prove me wrong is
What is/was there to backport?
Time to de-lurk, as other ACs are resorting to name calling, and don't want to be confused with them. I wasn't being so much an Anonymous Coward as a "Lazy Bum", too lazy to look up my old slashdot name and PW. :)
... can disappear while GPL derived code can not" This is not true (at least for my definition of "dissappear"). Once a work is released with a license, that license can not be revoked on that particular version of the source. The project may fork at that point, with someone taking a BSD'd project in a non-BSD direction (i.e., Apache or XFree86 or SSH), but the OLD VERSIONS remain with their old license. Believe me, if SSH.com could revoke the old v1 ssh code's BSD license, they would in a heartbeat. They took their app closed source, OpenSSH took the old BSD code and extended it (and a side note: I have no doubt that both OpenSSH and SSH.com's products are better because of the existance of the other, which means the users win).
:)
Most of our disagreement here appears to over terms and usage. I think we've made our respective meanings clear...now readers get to decide for themselves which they prefer 8).
Hopefully we can also agree with this point: there are benefits and downsides to both BSD and GPL licenses -- the choice of license should always be up to the coder. I would also think that the acceptability of each should always be left to the person using the software in question.
HOWEVER, I do want to pick on this statement of yours: "BSD derived code
Now, if by "can disapear", you mean developement can take place that is not fed back to the open source community, sure, but that's not what I would call "disappearing". XFree86, Apache and SSH didn't "disappear" from the world, just got "less free" development. If the open source community cares enough to continue "free" development of BSD licensed code, they can.
As for is sharing back modifications "really asking too much?", the idea sounds great...however, it gets messy. Making a three line change in a GPL program? Sure, easy. Incorporating a small 100 line GPL'ed routine into a 10,000 line application forcing the entire app GPL? That doesn't seem "fair" to me. Things get ugly if you start trying to draw a line here...lawyers get involved. The BSD philosophy is "just use it. Feed back your contributions if you wish to, but you are 'free' do to as you wish in that regard". Personally, I prefer that acts of generosity be voluntary...but that's me.
Wow...Those are very funny...
I'd love to hear an official explaination of those search results.
Nick.
As for hardware availability guarantees, What does that REALLY mean? I have a couple clients who, after believing the Compaq hardware availability guarantee would keep them running, discovered it didn't, and they were down for considerably longer than the "guaranteed" repair time. No one offered to cover the business's cost of down-time. No one even offered to refund the price of the service and support contract.
If this was a one-shot event, well, perhaps it could be forgiven. Problem is, I have *never* seen a Compaq problem solved in the promised time frame. Don't get me wrong, Compaqs are reliable boxes, but they DO break, and they don't seem to be repairable in business acceptable time periods, and certainly not in time periods that the customer thought they were buying.
To be fair, a friend of mine who works at a Compaq service center told me there are ways to "make it happen", but the marketing people made it sound like it was "automatic", you shouldn't have to start tracking down the particular people you need to grovel to when things break!
My customer's response was simple: In at least one case, we junked the Compaq server. It wasn't servicable in the time they promised, in the time this retailer REQUIRED, so the Compaq server is now being used as a workstation. They replaced it with a matched pair of Dell machines, one server, one as on-site spare parts (and workstation until needed). Compaq wasn't even considered as a replacement system. I call this "full on-site redundancy" -- in my (not) humble opinion, this only way to run a important business computer system: have a spare part for every critical part (computers, hubs, cables, etc.).
Availability guarantees are marketing ploys. Don't trust them. Don't believe them. And don't believe anyone who tries to sell you something based on them. Even if I believed the M$ Marketing up to that point, this statement totally discredits their entire pitch.
Nick.
Um... I don't want this to sound like a flame, but what you are saying is just plain wrong, on almost every point.
;) and a place to store SOME driver and config files, and NOTHING MORE. The Netware OS completely takes over and shuts down DOS so completely that the DOS clock actually stops (if you DOWN and EXIT the server, and do a DATE and TIME from DOS, it will report the time and date the server was started..often years earlier!). The only thing DOS does once Netware is running is, if requested, load a device driver from either the floppy or the DOS partition of the disk (and you will see the performance really hurt when this happens, as it has to jump in and out of the 80x86 Real Mode, and they obviously felt no reason to optimize this). In fact, you can do a REMOVE DOS command which frees up the few hundred K of RAM used by DOS, and slightly improves console security (as you can no longer load anything from the floppy drive).
>It was (until recently) loaded on top of DOS
Netware v3 through v5 (and probably future versions) uses DOS as a BOOT LOADER (a task it is well suited for, in my opinion
OLD versions of Netware (Netware 86 and v2) were free-booting OSs. They were a pain to reconfigure. Using DOS as a boot loader really improved things at the cost of what is now a very insignificant amount of RAM overhead. I can pull a set of non-hardware RAID drives out of most any Novell server and have it BACK UP AND RUNNING on a totally different box (different disk controller, different NIC, different video card, different main board, etc.) in a matter of minutes (barring mechanical problems, like missing cables). I can't think of any other server OS which can make this claim.
>It still only has a DOS-like shell with no decent text processing utilities.
If you consider the Netware environment DOS-like, you have obviously never used many other OSs. The only thing it shares with DOS is a command prompt (i.e., it isn't a GUI). It gives you a command prompt, it has new tasks spawn off their own screens automatically (this is a really cool UI feature I wish Unix and other command prompt desktop OSs had!).
Text processing utilities? Huh? This is a file server OS, not a workstation OS! The LARGEST configuration files I have ever seen on a well-implemented Netware server were less than two pages long. The text editing facilities are limited, but you don't need WordPerfect (or Word 2000) to edit small configuration files. For reference, Netware gave you a full-screen text editor for editing these things when MS was still giving nothing better than edlin. The editor lets you type, correct, and even cut, copy and paste. Not bad for something that is used to edit tiny little files! It even qualifies as fairly intuitive. If you cut your teeth on Word 95 or even MS's EDIT, you may disagree, but EDIT.NLM was implemented long before these products..it can't be faulted for not following their "lead"... It certainly wins prizes compared to vi or emacs for "hit the ground running".
>And until Netware 5, it used an outmoded proprietary network protocol.
Proprietary, yes. Certainly. Stupidly, even (they should have thrown it open long ago instead of militantly demanding licensing fees). Outmoded? Hardly. First of all, IPX is a near zero-maintenance protocol. You provide a unique number for all servers (I use the license number to ensure uniqueness) and for each NICs/protocol set. After that, you just plug in workstations, no IP numbering problems. Hey, every NIC has an address, might as well use it, right? Move a WS? Reboot, and it is back up and running at its new location. Of course, some IS people hate it for just this reason...it doesn't ensure job security as IP does.
The number one reason I like IPX/SPX now, however, is the security. Now that so many offices are connected to the Internet, there are real security issues if you have systems live on the 'net. You have to have and maintain a good, solid firewall at all times. Or...use IPX/SPX for all your private company operations, and use TCP/IP ONLY for getting outside the building! Talk about a perfect firewall: A server which doesn't even recognize the hostile protocols running around the wire. I actually don't care for Netware 5 for just that reason. It scares the heck out of me to think of any server of any kind (probable exception: OpenBSD) holding company data sitting live on the Internet. Again, though..job security for IS people.
>I don't know much about the latest version, but it still looks like something that came out of the ark.
The same would be said of a Unix command prompt by someone who didn't know much about it.
Netware IS a server platform! It is NOT a general purpose OS, and it NEVER was intended to be! Please judge this very capable, very solid platform at the job it was intended and sold to be.
As for adherence to open standards, this is a personal preferance, and one I respect. Ultimately, however, it is results that count. For most businesses, the computer is only a tool to their business, not the goal in and of itself. Netware is the closest thing to "set and forget" networking I have seen, and the fastest repair time OS I have seen. This is very critical to real-world business. Would I run a Web server on Netware? Heck, no. Would I port Doom to Netware? No (although the XWindows interface of Netware 5 would potentially make it a cute stunt). Would I relish the thought of implementing a client-server database engine on Netware? No, although the results would be delicious, the process would be very painful, though NW4x and 5 make it less so. Would I use it as a platform for E-mail or Internet access? No, there are better choices. As a file and print server, however, which is a critical service in most PC-based business now, I haven't found a way to beat it.
Yes, there are few really good people at Netware installation, configuration, and troubleshooting but my experience is there are no more who (really) know NT. NO ONE has more than what, three years of experience with NTv4? I've got five years professional experience with Netware 4, and another six years professional experience with Netware 3, which Netware 4 builds on very directly (and another four years of experience with earlier versions, but NW3+ is so different from NW2- that it doesn't really help much).
I would argue that having an network OS that is "easy" to set up and get running is very counter-productive. You don't want newbies setting up the backbone of your business! Many people consider the loading of an OS the measure or success..these people don't even understand how far they are from success.
O.k...enough with my soap box. I don't mean to attack you or anyone personally. I'm just very tired of people who don't understand the product condemming Netware for totally bogus reasons, and treating this product which the rest of the industry has yet to surpass as a has-been.
Nick.
It sounds like you are an advocate of disk partitioning. Do you mind if I ask why?
Many, many years ago, I was an advocate of partitioning disks up (under DOS, CP/M, and many other small system OSs), with all kinds of reasons such as separating data for selective backups, organization, etc. HOWEVER, quite a few years ago, after learning lessons the hard way, I quit doing this in favor of simply using good directory structures. In other words, unless there is some overriding reason TO partition, I don't, for I know a lot of reasons NOT to partition.
Now, I find in the Unix world, partitioning is accepted as standard. While I have heard a few very good reasons for partitioning "special purpose" systems (logs, transaction records, mail, etc...anything which COULD grow suddenly without control...why do so few OSs provide good protection from this? Your firewall idea sounds really good, too), for a general purpose, desktop machine, is there a good reason to partition? I'm assuming there is, I'd just love to hear an explaination from someone who knows!
Nick.
Actually, I found OpenBSD a joy to set up as a cable internet access NAT box. The FAQ section on the OpenBSD web site almost walks you through the setup(!). I've played with Linuxes on-and-off for many years (admittedly, only resembling seriously for the last year or so), but I hit the ground running FAR faster with OpenBSD than I did any of the Linux implementations I have tried. Undoubtably, part of the reason was the fact I had more Linux experience when I tackled OpenBSD, but also that I just found OpenBSD, well, more coherently layed out, as one might expect from a project developed more by a very small group of people. Every Linux distro I have seen feels almost like a whole new OS, I had a much easier time finding the things I needed to find on OpenBSD.
Most of the problems I had with OpenBSD regarded the disk partitioning system, and that probably would not have been a problem had I not chosen an old Compaq (with the "maintenance partition") to implement it on. Once I got OpenBSD loaded without blowing away the things I wanted to keep, I had the NAT function working within one day. I was amazed. And pleased. My background on OSs is wide and deep in many spots, but I've still got my water wings on when it comes to Unix.
My OpenBSD box is a 75MHz Pentium with 40M RAM, with exclusively EISA and PCI cards in it. I've managed to download at greater than 400kBytes/sec (rarely, but it happens). (That was in case you were wondering what it took to run a good firewall/NAT/whatever system. I got carried away with the EISA/PCI stuff, but I had it piling up around here. I have to try it on a more modest 486 with ISA cards to see how it compares. Internet access speeds vary so much anyway, I'm not sure how to really test it...)
I agree with your comments regarding "flaming bigots". On the other hand, the Linux flaming bigots that I saw *here* on Slashdot were the reason I started checking out the *BSD OSs. Anything that generated that much negative assault *HAD* to be worth checking out. When people get that negative, it is usually because they are scared and ignorant. A reasonable person who has truly investigated the multiple platforms, when confronted with a question will say something along the lines of "I found x on y works better than w on v", not "x rules always! You are a fool to consider anything else".
You are also right, there is no either-or. It is the results that matter, not the tools used. A master can do more with bad tools than a novice can do with the best tools. Tools not only have to be matched to the task at hand, but to the PERSON or PEOPLE who are implementing the task.
I'm trying to think of some clever saying about closed minds/closed source, open minds/open source, but I'm failing. Besides, I've seen too many closed minds on open source, too.
Nick.
"Use the source, Luke" That is GOOD! I like it! 8)
.PDF file, and after a few moments of looking through it, have no idea what e-Speak does. All I saw is it had something to do with the Internet, and I guess that was supposed to excite me.
I am yet another person who glanced through the web page, and pulled down the
It didn't.
Every day I'm bombarded with products that offer to improve my life, solve all my problems, and make me rich and famous. If they can't quickly tell me even what area of my life they are wanting to work on, well, I've got other things to do.
Does this form of "marketing" work? Are there people out there who respond to vague promises of "nerdvana"? Personally, it trips my B.S. detector. Open source or not, if it does something for me, I'll consider it. If it doesn't, I won't. If I can't tell, I'm not going to spend a lot of time trying to figure it out.
Part of me feels like a fool for responding to something I didn't take the time to understand, but on the other hand, I'm more responding to a marketing ploy than to e-Speak itself.
Nick.
Very cool idea. We have spent a lot of time working on cool OSs, but for the most part, we run them on what should be called pathetic hardware designs.
Face it, the PC design is a very bad joke. It started out as bad in 1981 (YES, it was a bad design in 1981, and I said so then. 16 bit processor, 8 bit bus. Shortage of on-board resources. Shortage of interrupts and slots on DAY ONE. Bizzare memory layout. BIOS in ROM. BASIC in ROM), and the attempts to "improve" and "update" it to a 16 bit then a 32 bit bus have been hampered by the desire to maintain compatability with the original bad design.
Most other platforms with history (Macintosh, for example) have similar problems with historical mistakes which won't quite die.
Back in my youth, I used and loved a Heathkit H-100 computer (kit form of the Zenith Z-100), a system that showed what could be done with a properly designed 8088 design. The only significant design limitation was the 8088 processor (instead of the available 8086), but that was done to support its other processor, an 8085 (there to run older CP/M-80 applications). The machine had an IEEE-696 S-100 bus, which was a 16 bit bus, with 24 bit addressing, so they were thinking AHEAD, not backwards when they designed it. The Z-100 was designed as a transition between the 8 bit world and the 16 bit world, to exploit the new without being cripped by the old. I have talked to people who worked for Zenith, and had seen the machine which was planned to replace the Z-100, completing the transition to the 16 bit world. Wow. I can't tell you how dissapointed we should *all* be that the IBM design is what we all work around now.
I'll take minor exception to your use of the phrase "Wintel architecture". YES, Intel now has a lot to do with the PC design (being a major manufacturer of "glue" chips and (co?)designer of the PCI bus and other current "features"), but the primary problems we have with the PC design are the the fault of IBM's PC design and the industry and market for having embraced that design and not letting go.
It really would be cool to see a machine with modern technology using familiar sounding parts without the limitations of the IBM design... Yeah, there were other machines which avoided the PC design completely (I've got a few Altos machines in the basement, and the Sun 386i you mentioned), but they are too few and too far in between.
Gotta get my own soldering iron and wrap tool out one of these days and start doing some hardware hacking myself...
On the other hand, it is very difficult to really roll-your-own hardware anymore. When dealing with proceesors with bus speeds of 286s and beyond, you aren't really dealing with digital signals anymore, but radio, where every wire is an inductor and a capacitor... Ah, for the days of 1MHz processors 8)
Dream on. This boring post probably helped you get to dreaming. Wake up!
Nick.
Plenty of precident for this. Think of an server OS which has been selected for many uses for no (apparent) reason other than "Oh, the GUI is cool" or "Play solitair on the server!", and is now used on mission critical apps including stranding battleships at sea.
This seems to have decayed into a non-positive posting. Sorry.
Nick.
Out of curiosity (NOT flame!), what is your definition of *real* Unix?
A friend of mine contents that AT&T is the "One True Unix". I've seen people argue that *BSD could, due to the development history, be "A True Unix (but you could get sued if you say so)". SCO, as owners of Unix Systems Labs could probably claim to be Real Unix. Anyone I'm forgetting?
It sounds like you have something in mind, just curious what? Esp. curious if it is something other than the ones I have mentioned! You refer to "a couple", I'm guessing you aren't one of the "One True Unix" people. 8-)
Diversity is good.
Nick.
I managed to "make my own" on my Windows-based CD-ROM burner (I haven't transitioned it to a real OS yet). I downloaded the appropriate files from the site, and after a serious "Doh!" momement, remembered that .tar.gz is "equivelent" to .tgz (if you download them in Windows, don't forget that you have to end up with ISO9660 file names!), put them all in a directory called:
\2.5\I386
and it worked great. (My burner machine/software wouldn't make a bootable CDR off the OpenBSD boot disk. I used the floppy boot disk)
Cost me a couple blanks to get it right, but it worked. 8-)
I'd guess they probably held up your 2.5 order to send you the new 2.6 version (this is JUST a guess). I put my 2.6 order in a week or so ago. We'll see how long it take. I'm not too worried, myself. I found the FTP install worked great through my Cable Internet Access, I was just sending them money because I think it was worth supporting some people who have put some serious work into a very good project.
Nick.
How about the original IBM PC?
It has developed a life of its own. It has influenced the design of virtually all small computers in the world today. Almost 20 years after the thing was developed/hacked together, we are still living with its design defects/choices:
* It has influenced the design not only of later computers, but even chips. All modern Intel processors after the '286 was called "brain dammaged" for its incomplete emulation of the 8086/88 have had complete binary compatability with the 8088.
* the "real mode" (related to the above)
* the 640k DOS memory segment and the corresponding memory hole between 640k and 1M.
* The system ROM located in the midst of the system RAM.
* The ISA bus.
* The resolution changing monitor (o.k., that was a later "innovation", which if it isn't clear from my tone, I have zero respect for. I much prefer that the computer would power up in one video mode/resolution, and STAY THERE!).
* The shortage of available interupts.
* DOS: The OS that won't quite die.
I'm sure with a little thought, we can all add to this list...
The only question is, was it a hack? I would argue it is, based on the apparently rapid development, the lack of careful planning, etc. Your call! 8-)
Nick.
Uh... Your statement "Netware is not gaining any new customers - they're just keeping existing customers." isn't at all true, and seems to be FUD from the "other direction".
I believe FUD tactics are wrong, whether from MS or from the Open Source world...
I'm still installing NEW Novell networks, where no network has been, or (so-called) competing networks have been. I install several new ones a year (two this month), and being a one-person operation, that's pretty good numbers. Novell is not gaining market SHARE, but the whole market is growing so rapidly, they are gaining huge numbers of seats (the percentage slice of the pie is shrinking, but the pie is growing so much the slice's size is still growing).
One of my clients is soon going to be decommissioning an NT server as they found they could run their app just fine from their existing Netware server with only a disk system upgrade (they had been told the app required NT) and a heck of a lot less headaches. Now, they don't count as a "new" install, or even a new server, but I think it counts as a definite Netware "victory". That's one of the "problems" Netware has...it just tends to take on more tasks with little fanfare, rather than implementing five new NT servers. This doesn't show up in the statistics.
Netware may not be gaining as many new seats and customers as NT. They ARE possibly gaining more new seats supported (quantity, not market share) than Linux. These numbers are difficult to make sense of, however. A site that runs off one or two Netware servers doesn't do as much for Novell's numbers as a similar size site which runs off 10 NT servers, and has five Linux machines doing various functions.
When it comes to the business world, I feel what matters is results (or, at least, this is what SHOULD matter). If the employees at my clients sit down and think "Oh, now I start work on our [fill in type] network", I have done my job improperly. My goal is to have my clients think of their computer as they do their stapler and their phone: just one more tool to get The Job done, and The Job is rarely computers. I've found Netware does this well.
Don't get me wrong, I've got my own list of what Novell has done wrong. I'm looking forward to a day where I can start setting up Linux or FreeBSD systems as servers (and to be honest, I'm leaning towards FreeBSD [oh, now I'm in trouble..]) for small offices (by the way, there are FAR MORE small offices than there are mega-corporations!), and I'm really not sold on Netware 5 and "Pure IP" yet (IPX is the perfect firewall. Internet (IP) traffic can't hurt/breach/crack an IPX-only server!). However, several things are going to have to change and improve in the Linux/*BSD world before that happens..and Novell is free, of course, to improve their world, at the same time.
Real competition is good. Keeps everyone on their toes. That should be true of Open vs. Closed source, as well. But that's another essay...
Nick.
Thank you...
Thank you...
Thank you!!
I've been seeing (small pieces of) this "fight" for quite some time, and I've been impressed by the lack of verifiable facts and the VERY curious lack of refuting of unverified facts on ALL sides. Very strange for a group of technology people to be that accepting of non-original source material.
I've managed to read a very far ways through this rather painful discussion, and I've seen several people asking the obvious questions: "Did this picture exist? Did it really give out her address?" FINALLY it sounds like we might have a plausable answer to the question. (Yes, it existed, not necessisarily with the purpose of being a threat, but it *could* have easily been interpreted that way. Even if the information was publicly available elsewhere, to have it lumped with non-flattering information about a different person is, well, impolite at best.
O.k., is John's reaction the most enlightened response? Heck, no. But hey, the guy is young. We've all done things when we were(are) young that we can look back at and wish for repressed memory (and those of you who are still young..you will! And, I'm sure when I look back on my current age when I consider *it* young, I'll do it then! 8) And just because someone has great technical skills doesn't mean they are beyond doing something that might be socially questionable (posting a mirror of information which *could* be considered threatening).
My impression: We have a person who views himself as having been wronged by a community which doesn't care for people who claim skills and abilities they can't/don't/won't demonstrate. The guy may be a fraud, or he may just be a non-open-sourcer who believes he needs to play his cards close to his chest. As we like to believe, the proof is in the results. O.k., enough with the name calling, and let the best geeks prove themselves! 8-)
More "productive" interviews would be nice in the future. This just seemed to have fanned up a pile of embers which should have been permitted to die out.
Nick.
(who seems to be contributing his own wind to the embers, eh?)
Three words: Wide Area Networks.
I have a client looking at an office automation system. They are really thrilled with the program, problem is, they have 40 offices around the country, with anywhere between 5 and 100 users at each office. All of which have to be pulling from one database. The app is a Windows based, client server app. It will be a maintenance nightmare. Something like eight different products are knitted together, each going through anywhere between a revision every two years to four revisions per year. Times hundreds of workstations. Times dozens of servers.
Uh, yeah.
I'd love to see a Unix-based text-mode app. Put it on a big Unix box (whatever flavor). Use telnet to get to it from PCs, dumb terminals where appropriate. Very modest WAN links. Getting a little slow? Update the one box. Software update? Update the one box. App update require an update to the terminal emulation software? Install the new TES at the clients at your leasure, when done, update the app.
GUIs are pretty. Oh, but are they maintenance nightmares!
Some apps just work better on text mode systems. I've not seen evidence that GUI-based accounting software gives you ANY serious improvements. And, as far as just throwing text in proper order, I have never seen anything beat DOS WP5.1 in the hands of a legal secretary.
I know I am a very distinct minority here, but I don't like seeing fancy GUI word processors in schools. Most students should be working on the CONTENT of their work, making sure their words are in logical order, their ideas are expressed clearly, their thoughts are complete and conveyed well rather than trying to make it look pretty. I'm not saying there is no place for presentation, but a writing class should be teaching writing, not graphic arts. A math class should be teaching math, not graphic arts. A public speaking class should be teaching speaking, not graphic arts.
My local school district is looking at spending millions of dollars to put in all kinds of wonderful technology. They will be paying for it years after it is obsolete. Scarry. They want fancy video cameras, digital cameras, etc. I'd like to set them up with a few *nix/*BSD systems -- labs full of terminals/old PCs as word processors, available in the morning, all day long, and late into the evening. I'd like the kids to learn basic programming -- not to make them all computer programmers, but to teach the thought-process of step-by-step problem decomposition, and to help them with things like programming VCRs or other things requiring the ability to understand guiding the electronic devices that are all over our lives now. I'm working on the school board nicely, but I know I will loose this one, so I'm just trying to keep them from squandering my money too badly.
Nick.
Your comparison of finding Slashdot on the web to finding accurate information on Linux is..um..wierd.
You assume I was looking for Slashdot, and found it. You assume incorrectly. I found it basicly by accident, it looked interesting, so I "joined in". That's not the way you learn, examine or implement an OS in a professional environment (and that is my goal: a professional environment). Although, it appears to be the way some companies IMPLEMENT OSs ("Oh, there's an idea for a feature! Quick, put it in our product, shut them down!").
Nick.