Where, in the statement above or linked, do you see any sort of personal abuse? Would you please quote it? Or are you just brainwashed in to believing Debian can't do anything rationally and politely?
I didn't say they made the Apache license compatible with the GPL. There was code being distributed under the Apache license and the GPL in much the same manner as Schilling is distributing cdrtools with mixed and incompatible terms. Some Debian people talked to some Apache people and got the license conflict resolved. The Apache people were obviously much more cooperative than Schilling.
Read the article. This has nothing to do with how free the license is. The cdrtools codebase has code licensed under the GPL as well as the CDDL. Becauase these licenses are incompatible, it is illegal to distribute them together because you will be violating the copyrights of at least one of the copyright holders, if not all of them. So Debian can not distribute cdrtools legally. That's why they went back to the original all-GPL version which can be distributed legally.
t's funny because when the Apache Software Foundation has a license that is incompatible with the GPL, no one gave them grief, but SUN moves to one and suddenly they're evil...
Debian actually quietly engaged the Apache Foundation about their license too and worked to resolve issues there as well.
Try "legal" and "illegal". If two licenses are incompatible, then it is illegal to distribute software written under both together. So it's illegal for Debian to distribute the CDDL licensed bits of cdrecord with the GPL licensed bits. This isn't squabbling about the definition of free, it's about protecting a volunteer project with no money from being sued.
Well, five years ago Lindows ran everything as root. This was, and is, a horrible idea that got them a lot of flack.
I understand the distro has come a long way though, and from what I've heard I wouldn't hesitate to recommend it to newbies today. Then again, I'm not the dude with the PDA.
The biggest issue with Intel's GPU versus ATI and NVidia is that it is onboard. The onboard ATI and NVidia GPU's don't really fare any better. The reason is that off-board cards have dedicated memory and buses, meaning that it doesn't have to fight for bus space with the CPU. If Intel made a non-integrated GPU with the same core, it'd do just fine.
I'll also note that the i915 is just fine for running XGL/AIGLX and compiz.
You probably haven't been around long enough to remember when Netscape was the only graphical browser available on linux. All of us Free Software types gnashed our teeth and used it, wondering when something better would come. Fortunately, something did, both Konqueror and Mozilla became available, and while they were rough at first people supported them. Eventually they got better.
Now we're in a similar situation. Intel's documentation has become available and the drivers are easily the best around for linux as a result. In addition, they're paying some of the best people around to work on those Free drivers. Sure, the hardware is lacking compared to the ATI and Nvidia gaming cards, but you can support those who support you by actively buying machines with the Intel video hardware. In this way, you can actually work towards the ideal and get the best drivers around at the same time. This isn't about instant gratification, it's about actively moving towards a better future, in this case by putting your money where it counts.
Debian policy requires all packages to follow the filesystem hierarchy standard (FHS). If not, it's considered a bug. Any downstream derivatives of Debian should, as a result, also implement the FHS.
The Drosophila version of this protein has been shown to be absolutely required for creating leg joints. Without it, you get flies with short stubby legs that can't walk, and as a result die. See this paper for details.
The knockout mice mentioned above also have major problems, from a brief search of the literature. See this and this for example. This implies that the protein has critical functions that are so important that they are somewhat conserved all the way from flies to humans. So important, it seems, that the negative effects of having the protein don't outweigh the positive ones.
Do you mean the FAQ that, according to Sun, has no legal weight (or is there a new turn of events)?
New turn of events that seems to have satisfied everyone. Go check out the revised header.
There may have been reasons to not do an ITP, but I just checked the Debian Policy Manual: It clearly says that when there is doubt about a license debian-legal should be contacted. We know that the ftp-masters worked with Sun on the license (that's why the FAQ was written), to me that implies they had some doubts... For some reason they decided to contact Sun lawyers (which was good) and not SPI lawyers and debian-legal (which was bad).
debian-legal is simply there to advise the ftpmasters. If the ftpmasters feel that they can get better advice on the matter elsewhere then that's their perogative to do so. Yes, they probably should have talked to SPI's lawyer, but as I understand it the thing was motivated by Sun trying to get java distributed, so Sun came to them. Specifically, Sun representatives were physically present at Debconf, talking over the issues that the ftpmasters had. They didn't blindly go in to this.
Debian is adding new members to the project faster than Ubuntu, despite Ubuntu's position on distrowatch. Ubuntu is doing great and exciting work, but they haven't been able to build a distribution that can be sustained by volunteer work alone. That's why people say that without Debian, Ubuntu couldn't exist. Debian doesn't need upstream developers to be involved with Debian, it needs people who are committed to Debian to be involved in Debian, and that's still happening.
But like I said; this crap was bound to happen. Debian has always been a distribution which keeps strict standards, so how does one make a better name for himself? Simple; take the whole issue one level upwards so people can say "Whoah, he's really protecting Debian's standards."
Reading the article may prove useful in the future before writing diatribes that are the complete opposite of reality.
There is no requirement to do an ITP. The ITP exists to prevent duplicate work, and to allow people to have some idea of what's going on. It's generally a good idea to do one, but I can think of several examples in which an ITP was never filed and no one cared. Even when one has been filed, it's not like a contract or anything, as people will sometimes usurp ITP's. Sending a license to debian-legal has never been required, as it is really only an advisory body for people who need such advice.
There were also good reasons for not doing an ITP in this case. Whether or not it should have been put in to non-free was an issue, but now that the FAQ has been clarified this doesn't seem to be a real problem for anyone.
I'd like to echo Eugenia's confusion about what the site actually is, though not her tone. I'm honestly curious because I don't get it. What does it do better than MySpace, LiveJournal, or Last.fm? Do you guys actually use this (I mean really use, not beta test) for anything yet, and if so what?
The raster graphics are horrible. I realize that redesigning the rendering system will be arduous and time consuming. But I think it wold be nice if the *nix rendering system would advance past the 70's.
Go play the game Katamari Damacy. Then imagine that each random thing you add to your proto-star is one little piece of the Xorg whole. You can imagine that the server is a cow if you like.
I think it's rather unfortunate. The Darwin community seems really small, and despite releasing the code Apple hasn't nurtured a culture of users that would want to hack on their kernel at all. As a result of this, I don't think the promise held in keeping it open really has taken off, with lots of community-based fixes and improvements flowing back to the mainline source the way it does for Linux. As someone who uses OSX a bit at work, I wouldn't have minded reaping the benefits of the work from such a community.
Anyone who tells you that you can't use non-free stuff in your distro is a fool. Either that or you're hearing what you want to hear, which is more likely the case. Even Debian, which is widely considered to be full of zealots, explicitly has a section for non-free software in the archive and explicitly acknowledges that people will want to use non-free software on a Debian system. If even Debian does this, then who's telling you that you can't?
That said, the idea is to strongly encourage use of the free stuff. If every distro shipped AOL's linux AIM client as default, gaim would suffer due to lack of interest from the community. If every distro shipped RealPlayer for linux rather than xine/totem/etc, they would also suffer due to lack of interest. The point is to encourage free software so that it grows. This actually works in practice, believe it or not, or else you wouldn't have any free software to even use.
No one is saying not to use MP3's or Java if you want them, but that you should at least consider using something that protects your freedoms because it's the smart thing to do in the long run. If there's no free software available that suits your needs (like a full java stack for example) then it's your decision to do what you need to do. I made that choice to use ndiswrapper as one example. But the important thing is that free alternatives are encouraged in order to strengthen them. This is a practical choice as much as it is a philisophical one.
By taking the hardline "only OSS" stance at the distro level, we're just pushing installing the non OSS software onto the users. It's just an annoyance that accomplishes nothing.
No, I think you have this backwards. Taking a hardline stance on Free software encourages people to look for alternatives and, more importantly, to develop alternatives.
The best example of this is the massive wealth of great Free software written in languages like python, ruby, or on the mono platform instead of java. People need good software so they use the tools that are available under the terms that they want.
An alternate problem is drivers. This is clearly an issue, most notably with wireless and video cards. Because people have been handed binary drivers by nvidia and ati, and also have accessibility to wireless drivers via ndiswrapper, it's taken years to get good functional drivers for this hardware. The broadcom chip that I use ndiswrapper for in my laptop only now has a driver that's hitting the mainline kernel, mainly because people could get by ok with ndiswrapper.
Pushing people towards Free software provides them with a set of Free tools on which to build more Free software. It's worked well in the past, and it's only now being subverted because people have something that, while working for them ok, does restrict their freedoms. The only solution to this problem that I can see is to encourage more people to use and develop Free softare.
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Where, in the statement above or linked, do you see any sort of personal abuse? Would you please quote it? Or are you just brainwashed in to believing Debian can't do anything rationally and politely?
I didn't say they made the Apache license compatible with the GPL. There was code being distributed under the Apache license and the GPL in much the same manner as Schilling is distributing cdrtools with mixed and incompatible terms. Some Debian people talked to some Apache people and got the license conflict resolved. The Apache people were obviously much more cooperative than Schilling.
Read the article. This has nothing to do with how free the license is. The cdrtools codebase has code licensed under the GPL as well as the CDDL. Becauase these licenses are incompatible, it is illegal to distribute them together because you will be violating the copyrights of at least one of the copyright holders, if not all of them. So Debian can not distribute cdrtools legally. That's why they went back to the original all-GPL version which can be distributed legally.
No, this has nothing to do with Matthew. And how is this a "hit" exactly? Debian is leading by example here.
Try "legal" and "illegal". If two licenses are incompatible, then it is illegal to distribute software written under both together. So it's illegal for Debian to distribute the CDDL licensed bits of cdrecord with the GPL licensed bits. This isn't squabbling about the definition of free, it's about protecting a volunteer project with no money from being sued.
How, exactly, is X broken currently? It's working well for myself and lots of others. Got a bug report number handy?
It does go up to 11, after all. It'll be that huge.
Well, five years ago Lindows ran everything as root. This was, and is, a horrible idea that got them a lot of flack.
I understand the distro has come a long way though, and from what I've heard I wouldn't hesitate to recommend it to newbies today. Then again, I'm not the dude with the PDA.
The biggest issue with Intel's GPU versus ATI and NVidia is that it is onboard. The onboard ATI and NVidia GPU's don't really fare any better. The reason is that off-board cards have dedicated memory and buses, meaning that it doesn't have to fight for bus space with the CPU. If Intel made a non-integrated GPU with the same core, it'd do just fine.
I'll also note that the i915 is just fine for running XGL/AIGLX and compiz.
What's news about this is that a new organization launched, not that women are working on Fedora.
You probably haven't been around long enough to remember when Netscape was the only graphical browser available on linux. All of us Free Software types gnashed our teeth and used it, wondering when something better would come. Fortunately, something did, both Konqueror and Mozilla became available, and while they were rough at first people supported them. Eventually they got better.
Now we're in a similar situation. Intel's documentation has become available and the drivers are easily the best around for linux as a result. In addition, they're paying some of the best people around to work on those Free drivers. Sure, the hardware is lacking compared to the ATI and Nvidia gaming cards, but you can support those who support you by actively buying machines with the Intel video hardware. In this way, you can actually work towards the ideal and get the best drivers around at the same time. This isn't about instant gratification, it's about actively moving towards a better future, in this case by putting your money where it counts.
Well said.
Debian policy requires all packages to follow the filesystem hierarchy standard (FHS). If not, it's considered a bug. Any downstream derivatives of Debian should, as a result, also implement the FHS.
The Drosophila version of this protein has been shown to be absolutely required for creating leg joints. Without it, you get flies with short stubby legs that can't walk, and as a result die. See this paper for details.
The knockout mice mentioned above also have major problems, from a brief search of the literature. See this and this for example. This implies that the protein has critical functions that are so important that they are somewhat conserved all the way from flies to humans. So important, it seems, that the negative effects of having the protein don't outweigh the positive ones.
Debian is adding new members to the project faster than Ubuntu, despite Ubuntu's position on distrowatch. Ubuntu is doing great and exciting work, but they haven't been able to build a distribution that can be sustained by volunteer work alone. That's why people say that without Debian, Ubuntu couldn't exist. Debian doesn't need upstream developers to be involved with Debian, it needs people who are committed to Debian to be involved in Debian, and that's still happening.
There is no requirement to do an ITP. The ITP exists to prevent duplicate work, and to allow people to have some idea of what's going on. It's generally a good idea to do one, but I can think of several examples in which an ITP was never filed and no one cared. Even when one has been filed, it's not like a contract or anything, as people will sometimes usurp ITP's. Sending a license to debian-legal has never been required, as it is really only an advisory body for people who need such advice.
There were also good reasons for not doing an ITP in this case. Whether or not it should have been put in to non-free was an issue, but now that the FAQ has been clarified this doesn't seem to be a real problem for anyone.
I'd like to echo Eugenia's confusion about what the site actually is, though not her tone. I'm honestly curious because I don't get it. What does it do better than MySpace, LiveJournal, or Last.fm? Do you guys actually use this (I mean really use, not beta test) for anything yet, and if so what?
Go play the game Katamari Damacy. Then imagine that each random thing you add to your proto-star is one little piece of the Xorg whole. You can imagine that the server is a cow if you like.
I think it's rather unfortunate. The Darwin community seems really small, and despite releasing the code Apple hasn't nurtured a culture of users that would want to hack on their kernel at all. As a result of this, I don't think the promise held in keeping it open really has taken off, with lots of community-based fixes and improvements flowing back to the mainline source the way it does for Linux. As someone who uses OSX a bit at work, I wouldn't have minded reaping the benefits of the work from such a community.
Anyone who tells you that you can't use non-free stuff in your distro is a fool. Either that or you're hearing what you want to hear, which is more likely the case. Even Debian, which is widely considered to be full of zealots, explicitly has a section for non-free software in the archive and explicitly acknowledges that people will want to use non-free software on a Debian system. If even Debian does this, then who's telling you that you can't?
That said, the idea is to strongly encourage use of the free stuff. If every distro shipped AOL's linux AIM client as default, gaim would suffer due to lack of interest from the community. If every distro shipped RealPlayer for linux rather than xine/totem/etc, they would also suffer due to lack of interest. The point is to encourage free software so that it grows. This actually works in practice, believe it or not, or else you wouldn't have any free software to even use.
No one is saying not to use MP3's or Java if you want them, but that you should at least consider using something that protects your freedoms because it's the smart thing to do in the long run. If there's no free software available that suits your needs (like a full java stack for example) then it's your decision to do what you need to do. I made that choice to use ndiswrapper as one example. But the important thing is that free alternatives are encouraged in order to strengthen them. This is a practical choice as much as it is a philisophical one.
The best example of this is the massive wealth of great Free software written in languages like python, ruby, or on the mono platform instead of java. People need good software so they use the tools that are available under the terms that they want.
An alternate problem is drivers. This is clearly an issue, most notably with wireless and video cards. Because people have been handed binary drivers by nvidia and ati, and also have accessibility to wireless drivers via ndiswrapper, it's taken years to get good functional drivers for this hardware. The broadcom chip that I use ndiswrapper for in my laptop only now has a driver that's hitting the mainline kernel, mainly because people could get by ok with ndiswrapper.
Pushing people towards Free software provides them with a set of Free tools on which to build more Free software. It's worked well in the past, and it's only now being subverted because people have something that, while working for them ok, does restrict their freedoms. The only solution to this problem that I can see is to encourage more people to use and develop Free softare.