Frankly, I stopped reading at that point. This guy seems to be a bit too old and a bit too old school to understand the subject he's trying to cover.
Rob Enderle isn't just any guy. He is the troll if there ever was one. From his Wikipedia page:
Enderle has surpassed most analysts in stirring up industry-wide controversy.
Enderle has been critical of Apple Computer and Linux, as well as Unix and the open source/free software movements in general. In particular, he believes that Linux is a "free-software scam," and he has compared some Linux advocates to terrorists, predicting that "one of them -- or perhaps a group of them -- will go too far at some point and do significant damage to the open-source movement, the ongoing litigation with SCO or their employers." It is for these reasons that Enderle has been called "a Microsoft shill"[2] and even "raving lunatic"[3] by critics.
The rights extension thing for plugin use is rediculous. You can link to this software as long as your software operates under the same terms as ours... In many settings thats unacceptable and the definition of what this actually means and the parameters of it has never been specifically understood. (The "Viral" MS termed effect is not a function of no license, it is a restriction *ADDED* by the GPL)
Are you claiming that the GPL is unique in demanding that users (in terms of software programs) of a certain package follow its license? I'd guess that most or all proprietary licenses demand that programs that use the covered code have to abide by its license. Do you think that you can incorporate any random Microsoft-developed library into your code without abiding by the license for that library? Such restrictions were not invented by the GPL.
The GPL isn't a respond to copyright law. It's entirely dependent on it. The purpose of the GPL is to make sure source code is redistributed in software releases, so if there were no copyright laws, the GPL would be violated because nobody would have to redistribute that source code.
Are you sure that you are not contradicting yourself? First you say that GPL is dependent on copyright law (which I agree with, as GPL violations amount to copyright infringements), but then you claim that the GPL would be violated if copyright laws wouldn't exist. How could that be? Without copyright law, there would be no GPL to be violated.
SELinux was not contributed to 2.6.20, or even in the last year, which is all the article talks about. They could certainly still help with improving SELinux, but whether they do that is unknown to me.
HP, the same company that at one time hired Bruce Perens, is currently shipping a NAS device that runs on top of a Linux kernel. They don't advertise source availability and the only way to get the source is from the private web page of one of the guys who worked on the project
Just because you build your business on Linux, your products does not magically become open source. What he probably meant is that most of Google's products, such as their search engine, Gmail, Google Earth, their in-house extensions to Linux, are not open source.
They remove the original innovator by a number of means: outright purchase and asset strip (stacker?), use their monopoly (netscape, firewalls, antivirus), FuD (linux - thats not working so well for them)... Have I missed any?
Maybe Spyglass/IE. Microsoft acquired the rights to distribute, provided Spyglass got a percentage of the profits from IE. Microsoft then set the price to zero, so they didn't have to send any money to Spyglass.
Part of the blame would be on Spyglass, since they didn't require a minimum amount of money per copy, just a percentage (any percentage of zero is zero).
The other thing I was thinking, if each of these movies are DRMed, doesn't that mean each movie is unique, making them pointless to try and Bittorrent? Or is it more that the movie is encrypted with a given key, and your DRM player adds that key to its "keychain" so you get access to it?
My guess: Every copy of a certain movie is encrypted with the same key, i.e. all copies are equal. But then you get a decryption key encrypted with a personally unique key separately, that enables you to view the movie.
Why would anyone sponsor the big movie companies with their bandwidth, storage and cpu power? I fail to see why anyone would want to do that without receiving a piece of the action, i.e. monetary compensation. This is just a plot by the movie companies to be able to sell movies and have the users pay for the infrastructure.
Seems to me like your employer was trying to do the right thing, but giving the source code to the people who bought the program, but didn't want to have the code available to everyone, just those who had paid for the product. It's just another level of open source. It may not be as open as GPL or BSD
Actually, the GPL allows distributing the source to your customers (i.e. recipients of your software) only, and does not require distribution to anyone else. Of course, the GPL requires that your customers can redistribute to anyone they like, which may not have been the case here.
That keyboard combination does not always work. Just a few days ago I tried Homeworld SDL 0.3 (the last public release, although development seems to have gotten far beyond that), and it locked up my X session, including CTRL-ALT-Backspace. Fortunately, I have a laptop too, so I ssh:ed in and killed X.
POSIX means "Portable Operating System" (no one is sure what the I & X stand for!)
I = Interface. The X is more uncertain. Some people regard this as a tribute to Unix, but I don't think it is in the standard. POSIX is expanded to "Portable Operating System Interface" on the IEEE page, while it is expanded to "Portable Operating System Interface for uniX" on its Wikipedia page.
Its package management system is awesome. I don't have the broken dependency issues I use to have with Fedora/Red Hat.
Such as? Did you ever try to use Yum on Red Hat/Fedora? It resolves dependencies in much the same way that apt-get does. In many cases, people try rpm and then complain that it isn't as good as apt-get. Try comparing rpm with dpkg and yum with apt-get instead.
Unlike Red Hat, Ubuntu is willing to "eat its own dog food."
Do you even know what "eat your own dog food" means? Do you claim that Red Hat internally uses other systems than their own? "Eat your own dog food" means to use the systems and tools that you have developed yourself.
The OEM version of Ubuntu should have codecs pre-installed. The operating system can cost $30 instead of free, and this cost can be transparent to the user. If you want Ubuntu to succeed, they can't half-ass "Just Work". The user can't be required to take any extra steps whatsoever to get a working desktop (and codecs is one of the bare necessities of a working desktop).
It's funny that it is acceptable to install codecs on Windows, but not on Linux. Last time I checked, Windows did not come with MPEG2/DVD support, DivX/XviD support, etc.
He probably meant something that can rpm or apt-get the dependencies of a source package from the distribution repositories. I don't think GNU Autotools do that.
A user program such as wine should not be able to lock the machine up!
It probably locked up X, which for the inexperienced user is the same thing as locking up the entire computer. More experienced users know that they could probably login from another computer using ssh and kill X.
That depends on how you would like it validated. There are at least three court cases or groups of cases that are more or less directly related to the GPL: 1) The iptables/netfilter team vs Sitecom Germany, 2) gpl-violations.org vs D-Link Germany, and 3) Daniel Wallace vs FSF/IBM/Novell/Red Hat. All judgements were in the favour of the GPL.
You can find information about them e.g. on Wikipedia.
What are you trying to install, some pre-alpha release of 5.04 or something?
No, the Ubuntu 6.06 that I got via Shipit.
Or by "computers" do you mean you're trying to install the i386 version on, like, an old iMac or a PS3?
No, only Athlon XP and Pentium 4-based computers.
At no point have I ever had to add a single kernel parameter.
It's not only me, in several forums I have seen questions about Ubuntu 6.06 and 6.10 locking up during kernel boot, and other users suggest trying with kernel parameters noacpi, noapic, nolapic, etc. Since Ubuntu at the same time is claimed to be sooo much easier to use and install for novices (which I'm not), I'll not accept having to try around with various kernel parameters (it should be user friendly, right?) where I don't have to with Fedora/CentOS.
Perhaps you are the unluckiest person in the world
Certainly not, I have a system that works fine, even though it isn't Ubuntu. Just trying to dispel the myths that Ubuntu is sooo much easier than Fedora. It depends on your system in both cases. Fedora may work fine on my systems, but fail on others, and likewise Ubuntu may work fine on some people's systems but fail on others (like mine).
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What? What do you mean?
Oh, I understand, you are probably thinking of surströmming. In that case, I agree completely, it is just plain repulsive.
Rob Enderle isn't just any guy. He is the troll if there ever was one. From his Wikipedia page:
Enderle has surpassed most analysts in stirring up industry-wide controversy.
Enderle has been critical of Apple Computer and Linux, as well as Unix and the open source/free software movements in general. In particular, he believes that Linux is a "free-software scam," and he has compared some Linux advocates to terrorists, predicting that "one of them -- or perhaps a group of them -- will go too far at some point and do significant damage to the open-source movement, the ongoing litigation with SCO or their employers." It is for these reasons that Enderle has been called "a Microsoft shill"[2] and even "raving lunatic"[3] by critics.
His free software scam piece is a good example of his twisted ways. Another one is his article about Why SCO Should Win.
Are you claiming that the GPL is unique in demanding that users (in terms of software programs) of a certain package follow its license? I'd guess that most or all proprietary licenses demand that programs that use the covered code have to abide by its license. Do you think that you can incorporate any random Microsoft-developed library into your code without abiding by the license for that library? Such restrictions were not invented by the GPL.
Are you sure that you are not contradicting yourself? First you say that GPL is dependent on copyright law (which I agree with, as GPL violations amount to copyright infringements), but then you claim that the GPL would be violated if copyright laws wouldn't exist. How could that be? Without copyright law, there would be no GPL to be violated.
You have obviously never heard about companies like Red Hat. They seem to make a tidy profit off software licensed under the GPL.
The point is the Microsoft are using GPL code in their Services for Unix addon to Windows.
You don't have to be a thief/pirate to abhor DRM.
SELinux was not contributed to 2.6.20, or even in the last year, which is all the article talks about. They could certainly still help with improving SELinux, but whether they do that is unknown to me.
You might want to tell this to gpl-violations.org.
Just because you build your business on Linux, your products does not magically become open source. What he probably meant is that most of Google's products, such as their search engine, Gmail, Google Earth, their in-house extensions to Linux, are not open source.
Maybe Spyglass/IE. Microsoft acquired the rights to distribute, provided Spyglass got a percentage of the profits from IE. Microsoft then set the price to zero, so they didn't have to send any money to Spyglass.
Part of the blame would be on Spyglass, since they didn't require a minimum amount of money per copy, just a percentage (any percentage of zero is zero).
My guess: Every copy of a certain movie is encrypted with the same key, i.e. all copies are equal. But then you get a decryption key encrypted with a personally unique key separately, that enables you to view the movie.
Why would anyone sponsor the big movie companies with their bandwidth, storage and cpu power? I fail to see why anyone would want to do that without receiving a piece of the action, i.e. monetary compensation. This is just a plot by the movie companies to be able to sell movies and have the users pay for the infrastructure.
I think that this someone may be Tim O'Reilly, as the article discusses the OSCON conference, which is organized by O'Reilly Media.
Actually, the GPL allows distributing the source to your customers (i.e. recipients of your software) only, and does not require distribution to anyone else. Of course, the GPL requires that your customers can redistribute to anyone they like, which may not have been the case here.
Ahh, I didn't know about that combination. I'll try it next time it happens. Thanks a lot.
I might even provoke it by running the same code (Homeworld SDL 0.3) again, just to see if it works. :)
That keyboard combination does not always work. Just a few days ago I tried Homeworld SDL 0.3 (the last public release, although development seems to have gotten far beyond that), and it locked up my X session, including CTRL-ALT-Backspace. Fortunately, I have a laptop too, so I ssh:ed in and killed X.
I = Interface. The X is more uncertain. Some people regard this as a tribute to Unix, but I don't think it is in the standard. POSIX is expanded to "Portable Operating System Interface" on the IEEE page, while it is expanded to "Portable Operating System Interface for uniX" on its Wikipedia page.
Such as? Did you ever try to use Yum on Red Hat/Fedora? It resolves dependencies in much the same way that apt-get does. In many cases, people try rpm and then complain that it isn't as good as apt-get. Try comparing rpm with dpkg and yum with apt-get instead.
Unlike Red Hat, Ubuntu is willing to "eat its own dog food."Do you even know what "eat your own dog food" means? Do you claim that Red Hat internally uses other systems than their own? "Eat your own dog food" means to use the systems and tools that you have developed yourself.
It's funny that it is acceptable to install codecs on Windows, but not on Linux. Last time I checked, Windows did not come with MPEG2/DVD support, DivX/XviD support, etc.
He probably meant something that can rpm or apt-get the dependencies of a source package from the distribution repositories. I don't think GNU Autotools do that.
It probably locked up X, which for the inexperienced user is the same thing as locking up the entire computer. More experienced users know that they could probably login from another computer using ssh and kill X.
That depends on how you would like it validated. There are at least three court cases or groups of cases that are more or less directly related to the GPL: 1) The iptables/netfilter team vs Sitecom Germany, 2) gpl-violations.org vs D-Link Germany, and 3) Daniel Wallace vs FSF/IBM/Novell/Red Hat. All judgements were in the favour of the GPL.
You can find information about them e.g. on Wikipedia.
Another version is "If you sleep with the devil, don't be surprised if you wake up in hell". :)
No, the Ubuntu 6.06 that I got via Shipit.
Or by "computers" do you mean you're trying to install the i386 version on, like, an old iMac or a PS3?No, only Athlon XP and Pentium 4-based computers.
At no point have I ever had to add a single kernel parameter.It's not only me, in several forums I have seen questions about Ubuntu 6.06 and 6.10 locking up during kernel boot, and other users suggest trying with kernel parameters noacpi, noapic, nolapic, etc. Since Ubuntu at the same time is claimed to be sooo much easier to use and install for novices (which I'm not), I'll not accept having to try around with various kernel parameters (it should be user friendly, right?) where I don't have to with Fedora/CentOS.
Perhaps you are the unluckiest person in the worldCertainly not, I have a system that works fine, even though it isn't Ubuntu. Just trying to dispel the myths that Ubuntu is sooo much easier than Fedora. It depends on your system in both cases. Fedora may work fine on my systems, but fail on others, and likewise Ubuntu may work fine on some people's systems but fail on others (like mine).