The first version said "Redistribution and use in source and binary forms are permitted provided that this notice is preserved and due credit is given to the original author and the contributors."
Everyone had assumed that use included modification. Darren got pissed at Theo and started claiming that it did not. To quote Darren at the time: "Yes, this means that derivitive or modified works are not permitted
without the author's prior consent." He claimed that this was not a change to the license, but it was certainly a change from the way everyone using it had thought it was to be read. This was what provoked OBSD to remove his package. If the other BSD teams were true to their principles they would have removed it too, at this point, and actually they might have if Darren hadn't lobbied them heavily and agreed to change itfor them. Which he eventually did. If he's still claiming that he never changed the license then he's just exposing himself as a shameless liar - the first case it sort of made sense to claim he wasn't *changing* the license but only clarifying (although he's on record earlier that it amounted to "public domain" - his words - which shows that he was really lying even then - his reinterpretation was definately novel even in his own mind, even if he wouldn't admit it. But the new license actually changes words in the license itself, it's not just a "clarification" by any stretch of the imagination. The license on the versions he's distributing now says "Redistribution and use, with or without modification, in source and binary forms, are permitted provided that this notice is preserved in its entirety and due credit is given to the original author and the contributors." It also has a viral clause prohibiting it's incorporation into anything under a different license, such as GPL or BSD. This was not a part of the original license.
For comparison:
The original license, for example from the ip_fil.c in NetBSD 1.5, is:
/*
* Copyright (C) 1993-2000 by Darren Reed.
*
* Redistribution and use in source and binary forms are permitted
* provided that this notice is preserved and due credit is given
* to the original author and the contributors.
*/
The complete LICENSE file, as included with NetBSD 1.5 and the original ip_fil3.4.17 source distribution, is:
/*
* Copyright (C) 1993-2000 by Darren Reed.
*
* The author accepts no responsibility for the use of this software and
* provides it on an ``as is'' basis without express or implied warranty.
*
* Redistribution and use in source and binary forms are permitted
* provided that this notice is preserved and due credit is given
* to the original author and the contributors.
*
* This program is distributed in the hope that it will be useful,
* but WITHOUT ANY WARRANTY; without even the implied warranty of
* MERCHANTABILITY or FITNESS FOR A PARTICULAR PURPOSE.
*
* I hate legaleese, don't you ?
*/
Pretty much the same license, the second just has some disclaimers added. This was the license he first described as "public domain" (search for my comments on past articles on this and you should find a link to where he stated that" - and then "clarified" at a later date to prohibit modification.
Now, the license on the version he is distributing today, with an explicit allowance for modification, and the new viral clause:
Copyright (C) 1993-2002 by Darren Reed.
The author accepts no responsibility for the use of this software and
provides it on an ``as is'' basis without express or implied warranty.
Redistribution and use, with or without modification, in source and binary
forms, are permitted provided that this notice is preserved in its entirety
and due credit is given to the original author and the contributors.
The licence and distribution terms for any publically available version or
derivative of this code cannot be changed. i.e. this code cannot simply be
copied, in part or in whole, and put under another distribution licence
[including the GNU Public Licence.]
THIS SOFTWARE IS PROVIDED BY THE AUTHOR AND CONTRIBUTORS ``AS IS'' AND
ANY EXPRESS OR IMPLIED WARRANTIES, INCLUDING, BUT NOT LIMITED TO, THE
IMPLIED WARRANTIES OF MERCHANTABILITY AND FITNESS FOR A PARTICULAR PURPOSE
ARE DISCLAIMED. IN NO EVENT SHALL THE AUTHOR OR CONTRIBUTORS BE LIABLE
FOR ANY DIRECT, INDIRECT, INCIDENTAL, SPECIAL, EXEMPLARY, OR CONSEQUENTIAL
DAMAGES (INCLUDING, BUT NOT LIMITED TO, PROCUREMENT OF SUBSTITUTE GOODS
OR SERVICES; LOSS OF USE, DATA, OR PROFITS; OR BUSINESS INTERRUPTION)
HOWEVER CAUSED AND ON ANY THEORY OF LIABILITY, WHETHER IN CONTRACT, STRICT
LIABILITY, OR TORT (INCLUDING NEGLIGENCE OR OTHERWISE) ARISING IN ANY WAY
OUT OF THE USE OF THIS SOFTWARE, EVEN IF ADVISED OF THE POSSIBILITY OF
SUCH DAMAGE.
I hate legalese, don't you ?
Try these
on
Debian NetBSD
·
· Score: 4, Informative
Slackware, the daddy of em all - still alive and kicking. Very BSDish install, similar package handling, BSD init. No ports system last I checked:( but a very friendly system otherwise for compiling from source. http://www.slackware.com
Gentoo, a newcomer, to oversimplify a little the idea seems to be Slack+Ports. Haven't used it yet, heard some great things, sure looks promising. http://www.gentoo.org
Also another similar project that was just recently reported here - sorcerer linux. Don't know enough about it to differentiate it from gentoo, the ideas seem very similar unless I'm missing something (quite possible, haven't had the time to try either.) http://sorcerer.wox.org/
Thanks for the reply. Finally found it. No tools menu on 6.4, it's view-options-player. Looked at that earlier but I guess I just saw what I was used to seeing, on 6.1, which doesn't have that particular button.
Where? I'm holding onto 6.4, tried 7.x and really hate the GUI. I can't find this option anywhere. Can't find the registry keys either. There is a "user id" in there though.
At the same time, the point of the parent poster should not be underestimated - even the best coders would face a monstrous task trying to secure a codebase that is so large and that has been, to this point, engineered to meet totally different priorities.
Of course the smart money says they don't mean a word of it anyhow - just PR. Oh, sure, they'll probably fix a few more bugs than usual for a month or two, but institutional inertia combined with the technical problems would probably keep them from doing more than that even if the Borg Queen really does mean it.
Tolkein sold the movie rights years ago. His heirs aren't getting a dime for this movie.
Actually the Estate will receive royalties. Funny that, since they've refused to help with the movie in any way, and even outcast the one member of the family that disagreed, but that's the deal old man Tolkien worked out... one time payment of $250,000 plus royalties.
It seems to me that the hypothesis of the gift culture and the findings of this study are entirely compatible. This research does not show, as it author seems to be suggesting, that "scratching an itch" is not the primary motivation for free software development. Rather, it shows that this motivation does not trump traditional economics.
Very well put. First you have to eat... then you worry about the particulars. Academia is a traditional haven for activities that don't have any other immediate economic return, but seem worthwhile to someone.
Remember, though, that producing Free Software is not by any means the only expression of this, even among computer programmers. Much commercial software has its roots in academic work which was closed instead of opened.
There actually is a "good" reason that even people that know better often do this on NT(aka 2k). If you're sitting there word processing, logged in as a non-admin, and someone calls you and needs, let's say, a new account made for the new hire - you must close out of your program, log out of windows, log back in, then make the account. It's a pain. Whereas on a *nix box it's as it should be, you just open an xterm, su, and make the account. It's very handy to be able to change the user in a controlled way like that in an existing session, without affecting the other stuff you are doing.
Another reason that this is done a lot is that there are a lot of NT admins out there that just don't know what they are doing. You tell them you need two accounts and they think you're trying to scam them. These people are just jokes, but if they happen to be over you in the local hierarchy there isn't often a lot you can do about them. So you do it their way, and just hope you don't get hit when it hits the fan.
Most of this stuff is fine, lots of good ideas and UI nuances. Which are already being ripped off by various competitors, including of course most prominently MS, in their usual half-conscious, never quite grokking the idea way. And Apple is understandable trying to prevent this from happening. Understandable that they would want to at least. The problem is they can't. Oh, sure, they can scare private citizens working on open source projects for the common good with a few cheap threats, but that's not going to do jack about the real threat.
Back to their interface, though, it is really disappointing to me. Yes, there are quite a few nice features as I always expected (given the origin of the codebase it could be assumed,) however two decisions they made strike me as utterly hideous - the whole overdone gumdrop pastel nonsense, along with the decision to adopt the MS window control widget layout (after all these years of correct criticism of it) stick out like a sore thumb in an otherwise fairly well done gui. Why they made these decisions I'll probably never know. The silly gumdrop crap I guess is supposed to drive sales of new hardware, but the window widget layout is truly incomprehensible. Unecessary animations, unecessary and basically useless drains on the system resources may drive hardware sales I suppose, but they certainly are not good things from a UI design point of view. And I know that the points may sound fairly minor, but when a product has that much evident attention to the UI to begin with, those things stick out like the proverbial sore thumb.
This is supposed to be an improved NeXT/Mac fusion, yet in this particular respect both NeXT and Mac did things in a defensible way, while MacOS10 doesn't. There is just no defensible reason to place a button with any other function next to the "kill" button from a UI design point of view. Mac people have talked for ages about how incredibly stupid it was for MS to do this (and they're right) and now they turn around and do exactly the same thing? I just don't get it... has Jobs got alzheimers or what?
And for everyone else, the second that I see "windoze" or "M$" or "micro$oft" I stop reading your post. If you can't even have the maturity to type the names properly...
Well I can type out those names "properly" just fine - the quality required is not maturity. At the same time I rarely do. Because giving them the names that the Co. behind them prefers grants them an illusion of legitimacy they do not deserve.
Want to talk about maturity? Whatever you may think of my opinion of Microsoft, it is certainly mature. I converted from Apple to DOS at version 3.0. (Before I used Apple I hacked, in the oldest meaning of the word, involving soldering irons and opcodes, on hardware I'm sure you've never heard of.) I've used every Microsoft OS since DOS 3, either personally or professionally or both. I've had the time to study the MS way in action, over many many years and many many upgrades. And I don't think they deserve the courtesy of typing out there name "properly" on a regular basis. If that means you won't read my posts... oh, hurt me. Your choice, your loss.
Onboard stuff is... well... onboard. Come on. I mean, ok, maybe the NICs work fine, but honestly, I only needed one. Maybe the SCSI controller is great (hope it comes with provisions for external connect though) - but I already have a perfectly good SCSI card sitting here ready to pop in, so whatever the added cost of the onboard setup, it's too much. And onboard video always sucks, unless it's exactly what you need and that never changes. In this case it's not. I've never had a good experience trying to add a vidcard to a board with one built in - and again the added cost, low though it may be, is worse than 100% waste - not only paying for something not needed, but for something that will probably wind up causing problems.
Why would any self respecting slashdot reader not opt for a DDR Athlon??
Well there's a couple reasons I can think of. First off you might be looking to upgrade an Intel board you got for free *cough* but in that case you wouldn't be buying one of these motherboards.:)
The second reason would be thermal protection. Intel build a little thermometre into their chips, along with some circuitry that'll turn the sucker off in case the temperature goes way over where it should be. Which isn't such a huge thing, if you use proper cooling it shouldn't matter, but in some cases it's probably worth thinking about.
If you do get an Athlon, be sure and cool it properly. They'll keep processing till they burst into flames...:)
Excuse me, I meant an operating system for a general purpose computer. I did expect that much to be understood. Obviously if you're computer is designed to run a watch or something, things are different. You still have to have a text editor and a compiler on the general purpose computer you use to set the thing up though.
I understand RMS' point here, but a Linux distro is much more than just Linus' kernel and a bunch of GNU stuff on top. It seems unfair to single out GNU/FSF/RMS when KDE, Gnome, XFree, MySQL, sendmail.org/Eric Allman, the ReiserFS, Emacs and LVM people and loads of others are just as well-deserved of a honourable mention.
Silly silly. Emacs is GNU - in fact it was the first piece of GNU. Gnome is GNU also. But that's not the point.
The point is that an Operating System is a collection of software that makes a computer usable. There is a minimum level, and it's more than a kernel. You have to have a text editor. You have to have a compiler collection. Without those you can't do anything at all.
RMS and the FSF have been working to make all the crucial components of an OS available for decades. Without that work there wouldn't be any Linux. Don't believe me? Just what do you suppose Thorvalds himself had to have before he started writing the kernel? VIM and GCC. RMS himself wrote GCC. VIM was written by people inspired by his example, who preferred the design of vi, but longed for the freedom of Emacs.
For that matter, BSD in the form we know it today relies on GCC, and quite a bit of other GNU software too. It's probably possible, at this point, to put together a Free system that doesn't use anything GNU. But it would be an inferior system, so no one, not even OBSD (Theo hates RMS and yanks anything GPL out of his base the moment anything half-usable under another license is available,) does. But would it be possible to do that at this point if it weren't for RMS' unflagging uncompromising belief in Free Software, were it not for the tremendous amount of work he has done? I very much doubt it. So yes, I think he does deserve some credit, and yes, I think it's quite accurate to call most linux-based OSes GNU/Linux.
I wonder what the goal is of dening the Free Software Foundation credit for things such as the GPL and kicking off gcc, etc.?
It's usually motivated by personal hatred for RMS it seems. The guy has strong ideals and has refused to compromise them. In a world where corruption and compromise is the norm, this naturally pisses a lot of people off. Even people that rely on software that exists because of his refusal to compromise. Those are the ones that are most virulently opposed to giving him any credit at all, naturally.
How is the ports system an improvement over Debian's apt-get system?
Last I checked, apt-get was great for binary installs, but not so well suited to local compilation. Ports is the equivelant for people that prefer their binaries locally compiled and optimised for their system.
Specifically, does the original author own the copyright on a large project that other people have made minor contributions to? Also, consider that no one explicitly handed over their copyright.
IANALS (I am not a land shark) but I have researched the issue in depth.
By default - if no other arrangements are made, the author of each contribution owns copyright on their contribution. For a variety of reasons most small contributors are asked to assign their copyright to another person - either the leader or main contributor of the project, the company they work for (in the case of RedHat for instance,) or the Free Software foundation. However in the case of Linux, Thorvalds from the beginning has asked that people *not* assign their copyrights to him. The idea being that this would quickly reach the point where no one could, as a practical matter, reach each and every copyright holder to negotiate a separate license - to make sure that the kernel would always be available under the GPL and ONLY under the GPL.
I think that one of the best ways for GPL developers to make money is by creating software under the GPL and also selling that software under a different license to companies that don't wish to use the GPL. But, I am unclear on whether the original author can do this if other people have made contributions to the project.
Indeed, this is a perfectly legitimate option for many projects. However, in the case of Linux, it is not, and by design.
The copyright holders are, in most cases, the actual author of each particular section of code. Linus does not ask contributors to assign their copyright to him or to anyone else, as many others do. By leaving the copyright fragmented among the numerous original authors, it was his hope to make it impossible for anyone to ever use the source in proprietary software. This was not only to make it perfectly clear that he had no intention of unilaterally making a deal to allow such use, but also specifically to create a situation where it would literally be impossible to hunt down all the copyright holders and get their permission individually for such use.
IANALS (I am not a land shark) but it is my understanding that any of these copyright holders would have standing to sue the violator, however the violator could possibly moot such a suit by removing only the code copyrighted by the individual who filed. This is the possible downside to Linus' strategy - if the majority of the kernel is copyright of people who cannot be located, then the majority of the kernel source possibly could be used in a proprietary product, without consent, because the only people with suit to apply for legal enforcement would be the ones who cannot be located.
I have ACLs for cookies, the sites that actually have some legitimate reason to use them are allowed, the ad-tracker sites are dissallowed. Works great. You can do this in Opera and Konqueror and (I think) Mozilla.
I turn off image loading regularly, and the number of sites that are worth loading and won't work without images I can count on one hand. There's... my bank. Hrmm... can't think of even one more right off, although there probably is.
Same comment for javascript. It's always been more abused than used, and except for my bank I can get by just fine with it turned off.
Now I know what you're going to say: "If site X won't let me browse my way, then I don't need site X". Well, damn near every site out there is becoming site X. Whether you like it or not, that's the way the world is moving, and you can either accept their way of doing things, or stay in 1995.
How many web sites are there out there? Now how many of those are actually worthwhile? Big difference. If you think looking for content, rather than glitzy layout, is "stay[ing] in 1995" then you are the one that needs a wake-up call.
Doing whatever everyone else is doing, just so you can feel like you're current, is not a commendable or desirable habit.
Left-handed people probably move the mouse to the right side too, because that's where the scrollbar is.
Not necessarily. I get the scrollbar on nearly all of my programs situated properly - on the left. However, I rarely actually use a scrollbar anyway - preferring to use the keyboard whenever possible, and page-up/page-down almost always works. So even with the scrollbars on the left, the mouse pointer is most often shoved out of the way to the top-right corner of screen, simply because that's the most natural-feeling place to flick it. So I'd guess a leftie would tend toward the top left?
His post certainly does represent your views, which you've made abundantly clear over and over here. You seize every opportunity to flame the GPL and anyone associated with it, and your complaints always boil back down to the same point - once something's GPLd you can't turn around and make a derivative work proprietary. Oh, the horrors. That's the whole point to the GPL! If you don't like it, don't use it. If you spent half the time coding that you spend flaming, you might amount to something.
Slashdot Mirror
He's definately changed it.
The first version said "Redistribution and use in source and binary forms are permitted provided that this notice is preserved and due credit is given to the original author and the contributors."
Everyone had assumed that use included modification. Darren got pissed at Theo and started claiming that it did not. To quote Darren at the time: "Yes, this means that derivitive or modified works are not permitted without the author's prior consent." He claimed that this was not a change to the license, but it was certainly a change from the way everyone using it had thought it was to be read. This was what provoked OBSD to remove his package. If the other BSD teams were true to their principles they would have removed it too, at this point, and actually they might have if Darren hadn't lobbied them heavily and agreed to change itfor them. Which he eventually did. If he's still claiming that he never changed the license then he's just exposing himself as a shameless liar - the first case it sort of made sense to claim he wasn't *changing* the license but only clarifying (although he's on record earlier that it amounted to "public domain" - his words - which shows that he was really lying even then - his reinterpretation was definately novel even in his own mind, even if he wouldn't admit it. But the new license actually changes words in the license itself, it's not just a "clarification" by any stretch of the imagination. The license on the versions he's distributing now says "Redistribution and use, with or without modification, in source and binary forms, are permitted provided that this notice is preserved in its entirety and due credit is given to the original author and the contributors." It also has a viral clause prohibiting it's incorporation into anything under a different license, such as GPL or BSD. This was not a part of the original license.
For comparison:
The original license, for example from the ip_fil.c in NetBSD 1.5, is:
The complete LICENSE file, as included with NetBSD 1.5 and the original ip_fil3.4.17 source distribution, is:
Pretty much the same license, the second just has some disclaimers added. This was the license he first described as "public domain" (search for my comments on past articles on this and you should find a link to where he stated that" - and then "clarified" at a later date to prohibit modification.
Now, the license on the version he is distributing today, with an explicit allowance for modification, and the new viral clause:
Slackware, the daddy of em all - still alive and kicking. Very BSDish install, similar package handling, BSD init. No ports system last I checked :( but a very friendly system otherwise for compiling from source. http://www.slackware.com
Gentoo, a newcomer, to oversimplify a little the idea seems to be Slack+Ports. Haven't used it yet, heard some great things, sure looks promising. http://www.gentoo.org
Also another similar project that was just recently reported here - sorcerer linux. Don't know enough about it to differentiate it from gentoo, the ideas seem very similar unless I'm missing something (quite possible, haven't had the time to try either.) http://sorcerer.wox.org/
Thanks for the reply. Finally found it. No tools menu on 6.4, it's view-options-player. Looked at that earlier but I guess I just saw what I was used to seeing, on 6.1, which doesn't have that particular button.
Ok but how do you turn it off?
Where? I'm holding onto 6.4, tried 7.x and really hate the GUI. I can't find this option anywhere. Can't find the registry keys either. There is a "user id" in there though.
All true.
At the same time, the point of the parent poster should not be underestimated - even the best coders would face a monstrous task trying to secure a codebase that is so large and that has been, to this point, engineered to meet totally different priorities.
Of course the smart money says they don't mean a word of it anyhow - just PR. Oh, sure, they'll probably fix a few more bugs than usual for a month or two, but institutional inertia combined with the technical problems would probably keep them from doing more than that even if the Borg Queen really does mean it.
Actually the Estate will receive royalties. Funny that, since they've refused to help with the movie in any way, and even outcast the one member of the family that disagreed, but that's the deal old man Tolkien worked out... one time payment of $250,000 plus royalties.
Very well put. First you have to eat... then you worry about the particulars. Academia is a traditional haven for activities that don't have any other immediate economic return, but seem worthwhile to someone.
Remember, though, that producing Free Software is not by any means the only expression of this, even among computer programmers. Much commercial software has its roots in academic work which was closed instead of opened.
There actually is a "good" reason that even people that know better often do this on NT(aka 2k). If you're sitting there word processing, logged in as a non-admin, and someone calls you and needs, let's say, a new account made for the new hire - you must close out of your program, log out of windows, log back in, then make the account. It's a pain. Whereas on a *nix box it's as it should be, you just open an xterm, su, and make the account. It's very handy to be able to change the user in a controlled way like that in an existing session, without affecting the other stuff you are doing.
Another reason that this is done a lot is that there are a lot of NT admins out there that just don't know what they are doing. You tell them you need two accounts and they think you're trying to scam them. These people are just jokes, but if they happen to be over you in the local hierarchy there isn't often a lot you can do about them. So you do it their way, and just hope you don't get hit when it hits the fan.
No, I think you stated it perfectly.
Most of this stuff is fine, lots of good ideas and UI nuances. Which are already being ripped off by various competitors, including of course most prominently MS, in their usual half-conscious, never quite grokking the idea way. And Apple is understandable trying to prevent this from happening. Understandable that they would want to at least. The problem is they can't. Oh, sure, they can scare private citizens working on open source projects for the common good with a few cheap threats, but that's not going to do jack about the real threat.
Back to their interface, though, it is really disappointing to me. Yes, there are quite a few nice features as I always expected (given the origin of the codebase it could be assumed,) however two decisions they made strike me as utterly hideous - the whole overdone gumdrop pastel nonsense, along with the decision to adopt the MS window control widget layout (after all these years of correct criticism of it) stick out like a sore thumb in an otherwise fairly well done gui. Why they made these decisions I'll probably never know. The silly gumdrop crap I guess is supposed to drive sales of new hardware, but the window widget layout is truly incomprehensible. Unecessary animations, unecessary and basically useless drains on the system resources may drive hardware sales I suppose, but they certainly are not good things from a UI design point of view. And I know that the points may sound fairly minor, but when a product has that much evident attention to the UI to begin with, those things stick out like the proverbial sore thumb.
This is supposed to be an improved NeXT/Mac fusion, yet in this particular respect both NeXT and Mac did things in a defensible way, while MacOS10 doesn't. There is just no defensible reason to place a button with any other function next to the "kill" button from a UI design point of view. Mac people have talked for ages about how incredibly stupid it was for MS to do this (and they're right) and now they turn around and do exactly the same thing? I just don't get it... has Jobs got alzheimers or what?
Well I can type out those names "properly" just fine - the quality required is not maturity. At the same time I rarely do. Because giving them the names that the Co. behind them prefers grants them an illusion of legitimacy they do not deserve.
Want to talk about maturity? Whatever you may think of my opinion of Microsoft, it is certainly mature. I converted from Apple to DOS at version 3.0. (Before I used Apple I hacked, in the oldest meaning of the word, involving soldering irons and opcodes, on hardware I'm sure you've never heard of.) I've used every Microsoft OS since DOS 3, either personally or professionally or both. I've had the time to study the MS way in action, over many many years and many many upgrades. And I don't think they deserve the courtesy of typing out there name "properly" on a regular basis. If that means you won't read my posts... oh, hurt me. Your choice, your loss.
Emacs has been able to emulate VI pretty completely for ages actually, in addition to actually doing real work. Just takes a single snippet of e-lisp.
(use-global-map (make-sparse-keymap))
There you go! Just like vi, it beeps every time you do anything, and you can't quit. :)
Onboard stuff is... well... onboard. Come on. I mean, ok, maybe the NICs work fine, but honestly, I only needed one. Maybe the SCSI controller is great (hope it comes with provisions for external connect though) - but I already have a perfectly good SCSI card sitting here ready to pop in, so whatever the added cost of the onboard setup, it's too much. And onboard video always sucks, unless it's exactly what you need and that never changes. In this case it's not. I've never had a good experience trying to add a vidcard to a board with one built in - and again the added cost, low though it may be, is worse than 100% waste - not only paying for something not needed, but for something that will probably wind up causing problems.
...would be to put the cooler on right the first time. :)
Well there's a couple reasons I can think of. First off you might be looking to upgrade an Intel board you got for free *cough* but in that case you wouldn't be buying one of these motherboards. :)
The second reason would be thermal protection. Intel build a little thermometre into their chips, along with some circuitry that'll turn the sucker off in case the temperature goes way over where it should be. Which isn't such a huge thing, if you use proper cooling it shouldn't matter, but in some cases it's probably worth thinking about.
If you do get an Athlon, be sure and cool it properly. They'll keep processing till they burst into flames... :)
Excuse me, I meant an operating system for a general purpose computer. I did expect that much to be understood. Obviously if you're computer is designed to run a watch or something, things are different. You still have to have a text editor and a compiler on the general purpose computer you use to set the thing up though.
Silly silly. Emacs is GNU - in fact it was the first piece of GNU. Gnome is GNU also. But that's not the point.
The point is that an Operating System is a collection of software that makes a computer usable. There is a minimum level, and it's more than a kernel. You have to have a text editor. You have to have a compiler collection. Without those you can't do anything at all.
RMS and the FSF have been working to make all the crucial components of an OS available for decades. Without that work there wouldn't be any Linux. Don't believe me? Just what do you suppose Thorvalds himself had to have before he started writing the kernel? VIM and GCC. RMS himself wrote GCC. VIM was written by people inspired by his example, who preferred the design of vi, but longed for the freedom of Emacs.
For that matter, BSD in the form we know it today relies on GCC, and quite a bit of other GNU software too. It's probably possible, at this point, to put together a Free system that doesn't use anything GNU. But it would be an inferior system, so no one, not even OBSD (Theo hates RMS and yanks anything GPL out of his base the moment anything half-usable under another license is available,) does. But would it be possible to do that at this point if it weren't for RMS' unflagging uncompromising belief in Free Software, were it not for the tremendous amount of work he has done? I very much doubt it. So yes, I think he does deserve some credit, and yes, I think it's quite accurate to call most linux-based OSes GNU/Linux.
It's usually motivated by personal hatred for RMS it seems. The guy has strong ideals and has refused to compromise them. In a world where corruption and compromise is the norm, this naturally pisses a lot of people off. Even people that rely on software that exists because of his refusal to compromise. Those are the ones that are most virulently opposed to giving him any credit at all, naturally.
Last I checked, apt-get was great for binary installs, but not so well suited to local compilation. Ports is the equivelant for people that prefer their binaries locally compiled and optimised for their system.
IANALS (I am not a land shark) but I have researched the issue in depth.
By default - if no other arrangements are made, the author of each contribution owns copyright on their contribution. For a variety of reasons most small contributors are asked to assign their copyright to another person - either the leader or main contributor of the project, the company they work for (in the case of RedHat for instance,) or the Free Software foundation. However in the case of Linux, Thorvalds from the beginning has asked that people *not* assign their copyrights to him. The idea being that this would quickly reach the point where no one could, as a practical matter, reach each and every copyright holder to negotiate a separate license - to make sure that the kernel would always be available under the GPL and ONLY under the GPL.
Indeed, this is a perfectly legitimate option for many projects. However, in the case of Linux, it is not, and by design.
The copyright holders are, in most cases, the actual author of each particular section of code. Linus does not ask contributors to assign their copyright to him or to anyone else, as many others do. By leaving the copyright fragmented among the numerous original authors, it was his hope to make it impossible for anyone to ever use the source in proprietary software. This was not only to make it perfectly clear that he had no intention of unilaterally making a deal to allow such use, but also specifically to create a situation where it would literally be impossible to hunt down all the copyright holders and get their permission individually for such use.
IANALS (I am not a land shark) but it is my understanding that any of these copyright holders would have standing to sue the violator, however the violator could possibly moot such a suit by removing only the code copyrighted by the individual who filed. This is the possible downside to Linus' strategy - if the majority of the kernel is copyright of people who cannot be located, then the majority of the kernel source possibly could be used in a proprietary product, without consent, because the only people with suit to apply for legal enforcement would be the ones who cannot be located.
I have ACLs for cookies, the sites that actually have some legitimate reason to use them are allowed, the ad-tracker sites are dissallowed. Works great. You can do this in Opera and Konqueror and (I think) Mozilla.
I turn off image loading regularly, and the number of sites that are worth loading and won't work without images I can count on one hand. There's... my bank. Hrmm... can't think of even one more right off, although there probably is.
Same comment for javascript. It's always been more abused than used, and except for my bank I can get by just fine with it turned off.
How many web sites are there out there? Now how many of those are actually worthwhile? Big difference. If you think looking for content, rather than glitzy layout, is "stay[ing] in 1995" then you are the one that needs a wake-up call.
Doing whatever everyone else is doing, just so you can feel like you're current, is not a commendable or desirable habit.
Not necessarily. I get the scrollbar on nearly all of my programs situated properly - on the left. However, I rarely actually use a scrollbar anyway - preferring to use the keyboard whenever possible, and page-up/page-down almost always works. So even with the scrollbars on the left, the mouse pointer is most often shoved out of the way to the top-right corner of screen, simply because that's the most natural-feeling place to flick it. So I'd guess a leftie would tend toward the top left?
His post certainly does represent your views, which you've made abundantly clear over and over here. You seize every opportunity to flame the GPL and anyone associated with it, and your complaints always boil back down to the same point - once something's GPLd you can't turn around and make a derivative work proprietary. Oh, the horrors. That's the whole point to the GPL! If you don't like it, don't use it. If you spent half the time coding that you spend flaming, you might amount to something.