"...their enhancements and extra utilities (Yast, etc.) are not released as free software and remain proprietary."
Of course, this means that you cannot sell _any_ media that contains the modified version. This means popular outlets that sell cheapo CD's can't produce distribution discs.
This is an example of the classic "non-commerical" clause and thus does not meet the OSD.
If Red Hat had put portions of their installer under a similar license, then we would not have Mandrake Linux, which has graduated from "Redhat + KDE" to become a testbed distribution for developing ease-of-use technologies. And Mandrake Linux has not cut into Red Hat's sales at all.
That's why people bitch about Yast so much. SuSE is a great product otherwise, and could be adapted and customized for use in markets that require specialization. But instead, we are stuck with a paranoid, monolithic company.
Get real, SuSE. People are going to buy your distro because its so well polished in the first place. There's no need to continue to stifle innovation.
Unless, of course, you are afraid that a bunch of people working together over the Internet can produce and market a product that is better than yours using your own technology as a basis. If that is the case, then not only are you grossly missing the point of free software, you are going against the very heart of the community that buys your products.
P.S.- As for the person you hired to work on X, you are to be commended. Still, it makes understanding of the Yast license even more difficult. I guess maybe you support Free Software when it's "convenient".
Getting 550 out of a 366 is certainly the holy grail of OCing for the last few months.
It's only occured in rare, or extreme, instances. The Medichino ( sp, damn those silly rivers Intel uses for names) core can't really get much past 520~530 Mhz reliably. We'll need a die shrink, FSB increase to drop the multiplier, and 133-rated RAM before we start to see miracles like the 450A happen again.
your best bet is to hang out at 5.5x83. Should be quite nice, just make sure your video card can handle it. You machine stil lays the smack down at at cool dual 457;)
quote the slashdot: "...and Ayn Rand can blow me" (do the search, we've covered her here before)
Seriously, be realistic. The world will not magically become this ideal ( although a whack ideal ) society. We cannot change the fundametals of human nature and social structure. What we can do is promote, in our homes and in our lives, the value of communication and friendship. We can decide to share the kind of miseries that have befallen these kind of students and let them know that they will always be surrounded by their families and friends, ready to catch their fall on a moment's notice.
That's the point,right there. These students had nothing to catch them when the fell of the ledge, and their descent into oblivion, obvious yet unnoticed by all, went unchecked, with nothing or no one to break their fall.
Promoting social change is a good thing, but not on the basis of Rand's greed-based egotism. There are much more constructive, and applicable, means of curing our society's cancer.
P.S. - Put the high school philosophy book down and look at the world around you. You ever noticed that you only hear of philosophers in books? It because the real world-day to day decisions-are so much more simpler.
American social repair algorithm: 1) Find a scapegoat 2) Identify all collaborators with scapegoat 3) Institute "rehabilitation" on transgressors 4) if ( NEXT_INCIDENT )
Once again, the press fears the ominous spectre of another empire rising the ashes of a smoldering, outdated MS.
Once again, rampant paranoia and delusion reign supreme in the press. I for one, am not shocked.
What choices did Red Hat had for providing certification? With no community organizations doing anything until _very_ recently, Red Hat decided to start training people so that Linux could get in the workplace, on resumes, and gain some desparately needed corporate credibility.
They blazed their own trial in this matter because there was no path made yet. They certify Red Hat Linux because that's what they are experts in. If history serves true, Red Hat would happily sponsor the community certification movement mentioned-certification is certainly outside their business.
Once again, why should Red Hat be attacked for choosing to do something by themselves when no coherent community efforts were availiable in a usable state ( cf. LSB )
For one, let me address the last line of your post:
"Regulations and restrictions must be industry-wide, not just levied against the most successful of contenders."
MS is the only defendant on trial for abusing monopoly power. Note that each of the companies you have mentioned does not hold monopoly status, and thus cannot abuse the power therein.
Now I'll address the question of "Can RMS's actions work without the whole software industry taking hold?" The answer: yes.
1) Nondisclosed API's are only beneficial if they are used in conjuction with an established product with monopoly marketshare as a means for giving other products a competitive advantage. If the nondisclosed API's are in a non-established product, then the customer can simply choose another product. Say Apple put a hidden API into Quick Time that allowed the MacOS to perform superior to Windows on certain streaming applications. Fine then, they do that. Since Quick Time is not in a monopoly position, then one could choose Real Video G2 or MPEG-I Layer 4 for video content. One is not forced to forced to have QuickTime to view internet videos. There is a choice. There is no choice ( until recently ) for desktop operating systems. Nor is there any doubt to Windows' monopoly marketshare.
2) Patents. The patent pool takes away any hope of MS reclaiming its closed API tactics. ( as RMS pointed out) The key is to keep the Windows monopoly from being leveraged onto other products.
3) Hardware. I think this is a consumer education issue ( lay out the quid to cooperative vendors, calmor for support and openly chastise stubborn companies ) more than a MS-realted problem.
If the provisions RMS makes are implemented, would the entire software industry ( both free and proprietary) benefit?
1) Open APIs? Certainly benefits free software since NDA's aren't an option in free code. Benefits proprietary software when the API's aren't even disclosed at all, no matter what the arrangement. I'd say the industry benefits on all fronts.
2) Patents. Encourages start-ups ( both free and proprietary) to overcome the oppression of patent lockdown. Allows greater sharing of ideas, resulting in more consumer choice. Allows companies not to use MS patents if they want to keep their own patents under their control. Benefits free software community, who is exposed to the patent issue and has no patents ( with restrictive licensing) of its own the greatest. But the biggest winner is still the consumer, since all will have greater access to more ideas and thus resultign in a higher degree of innovation.
3) Open hardware programming specifications for all certified drivers. Much less clear than 1) or 2). Forces hardware companies to sacrifice their freedom to hoard information in order to provide guaranteed functionality for customers. Better solution-promote consumer awareness of hardware companies that are free-software friendly. Publically vilify those that are not. Don't let MS's crimes give an excuse to strip the freedom of other companies. Just make those companies that don't comply look like the nasty, paranoid, "greed is good, avarice as always" American corporations that they really are. Inform the public and let natural selection do its wonders in our incredibly time-accelerated industry.
But other parts of the Win32 platform that are hidden are done so for _purely_ anitcompetitive reasons.
1) Internet explorer integration. Why can't I integrate Netscape instead of IE?
2) Explorer shell. Why are the LiteStep people having such terrible problems with compatibility? Why isn't there an effective MacOS replacement for the Windows shell?
3) Every MS app goes in and manipulates the file associations without regard to user wishes or desires. Most applications now are forced to combat with the same anticompetitive, anti-choice with mirror reponses.
I have to agree with you on this, and the reason harken back to the whole API thing.
When Microsoft announced their OLE technology for Windows, they did so nearly simultaneously with the launch of Office that took advantage of those feautures. What this amounted to was leveraging their control over development of the OS to give Office a competitive advantage.
Thus, the problem of MS pulling a blitzkrieg attack where they exploit a loophole to code apps that use the new APIs internally before the are even released to early adopters and then release those apps before the others have a chance to react.
As long as their is not some formal delineation and separtion between OS and app divsions, expect this kind of behavior to be rampant. We are dealing with a company with all the self-justified delusion that normally only accompanies cult members. This kind of behavior, in their eyes, is not only ethical, but indeed a moral imperative, done for the sake of "innovation".
As for my solution to this whole mess: Redmonda delenda est.
The first part of the article is a direct ad hominem attack on Ralph Nader. I can deal with that, but it certainly isn't fitting for a Washington think tank...unless, of course, that the think tank is paid to do 'research' to promote certain viewpoints ( in this case, unabated, unregulated American captialism.)
That article proves its intellectual bankruptcy with the following quote:
"...OSS rejects free market competition and loses the market's distinct advantages to meet consumer needs with quality products and targeted marketing. In a free market, identifiable manufacturers own the product. They are responsible for product performance, and they can be held liable for inexcusable flaws."
The last line is especially telling-no software company can be held liable for flaws. If something doesn't work like you think it should, then you're pretty much SOL. ( EULA nonsense) As for the topic of ownership, software is quickly becoming less product-oriented and more service oriented ( that's where the real money is ), and there is certainly a great deal of room for companies to compete in services, much more so than in products.
Why is that? Because with proprietary software, there are the "haves" and "have-nots". The practices of vendor lock-in, interface hiding, and patent clamping have virtually held software innovation to a stand-still. If it wasn't for the need of standardized computing ( items antithetical to the proprietary tactics above), things would be even more stagnant than they are now. RMS offers solutions to all three of the practices that MS has used to singlehandedly retard computing for at least 5-8 years. And yes, that includes item number one, first and foremost.
Just think: What if office suites had become the killer app for data interchange, instead of the breeding pits for vendor lock-in through file formats? We might have had XML in everyday use _long_ ago. What if MS/Novell had chosen TCP/IP instead of IPX or NetBeui? I'll leave that one for your mind to toss around.
In short, if these scenarios would have played out differently, then hardware might be catching up with software, and not the other way around. RMS suggests way to stop poor practices now, and thus lessen the devastation that proprietary computing has wrought on the digital landscape.
1. No Linux 3D driver, No sale for me. 3dfx has provided drivers (albeit proprietary) for Linux for a _long_ time now. They even pay a guy to write 3d drivers. NVidia just says "bugger off" on the 3d part.
2. Recent reports on the hardware sites tell of NVidia lying _again_ about the TNT2's processor clock speed. It seems Tom and the rest of the bunch got overclocked boards. The actual clock speed of the TNT2 will be 125Mhz, not 150Mhz. They pulled the same stunt with the first TNT. At least this time they aren't lying about the fabrication process,too(.25 micron, really, this time).
The whole 3D accelerator industry is cutthroat and crooked. One must choose between which company stomps all over ethics the least and provides what you, the consumer, desire in a product. For most Linux users wishing to play Quake under Linux, the only choice has been 3dfx. And that is why I'll look beyond the Glide wrapper thing,( which has UltraHLE written all over it, check dejanews and see why people _really_ want Glide wrappers ) and get my Voodoo3 as soon as they arrive at buycomp. ( Daryll's said that the new server shouldwork with Voodoo3, nothing like a trial by fire-the source is out there!)
I've been reading Salon for some time now, and I think that they are quite a techno-savvy, sophisticated, and progressive bunch. While their lust for profit is definitely present ( the are a business,after all), they don't seem like the types that would butcher a community of people in the name of banner ads. If one thing about their site is consistent, it's that they cater to a _sophisticated_ bunch and desire readership loyalty more than anything else. To do that they have to get greater exposure.
This isn't like AOL buying out Netscape just to prey on the millions of Netscape users who won't change their default home page. They did that ( as well as the ICQ buyout) just to shovel poop down the throats of the ignorant. They aren't after loyalty, just forced page views and click-throughs.
If the Well had to get bought out, I could think of _much_ worse stewards than Salon.
What I heard while spending April Fools' Day laid out on the couch sick:
The plane did have a malfunction of some sorts, and went down. The pilot ejected, and the plane destroyed itself. Machines like that have too much secret technology to let any part of them fall to the ground intact and be salvaged. (Although 117's use first-gen stealth tech).
If the plane had gone down and was somewhat intact, some nation would have certainly found a way to buy what was leftover for reverse-engineering purposes.
x86 margins are very thin indeed. For reasons already stated, Apple can (and has) charged a premium for superior hardware design and implementation.
What Apple needs most is marketshare. They need the assurances that they can count on apps that people buy computers for in the first place run, and run well, on their platform. They do not have this 100% right now, especially in the gaming industry (what most home PCs do), and they will not get it unless they can increase marketshare.
I agree that full disclosure is a risk. No major computer company has ever risked their very existance on free software. But Linux is poised to become the priemere operating system in less than 3 years. Apple can either snag developer mindshare now and focus on being a hardware company with a great free software OS, or they can try to catch up later. It's the same problem that a great deal of computer companies are going to have to deal with as free software begins its march.
As a consultant, I've seen the forces of free software at work before my very eyes. As they say, "You can't fight the future, time is on its side."
1) Is Apple can't compete with their hardware against Intel, then why haven't they gone bankrupt already? I hardly believe it is due to their interface, since if that was such an advantage then replicating their interface would have happened long ago. People buy Macs because they are easy in _all_ regards to get set up and going. Note that in all of Apple's IMac ads, they emphasized the ease of installation and setup of the hardware and the benfits of Mac hardware over PC stuff (remember the slug ad?). I don't recommend Macs to novices because the interface is sane, I do so because the chance of them getting tied up into the setup and configuration problems that plague PC architecture is non-existent. It is even worth sacrificing their Windows experience they carry from their workplace.
Besides, I see no reason to think that Apple can't compete with PC vendors. They have proven themselves ( at least over the last year) to be quite cunning and capable of tearing into markets.
I'll ask you this: If you could buy a PC running MacOS or a similarly equipped G3 running MacOS at the same price, which would you pick, ceteris paribus?
2) I already stated that Apple isn't making any kind of profit off OS sales in comparison with hardware sales. In my experience, only corporations have bothered to pay the upgrade costs, and most of those do it for the support they receive for the migration-which they would pay for anyway instead of using some Cheapbytes CD. Besides, MacOS installations like that only give the platform what Apple needs most to continue to succeed-marketshare and an expanded application base.
The problem here is that values such as freedom are not uniform across our community. There are many who believe that the APSL is a free license (ESR among them). Since the APSL is hardly final right now, I reserve my personal judgement(which matters to me, at least) upon it until they stop listening to suggestions.
The idea that we can judge software as either free or non-free in some grand unified manner is absurd. Why? Becasue we are unique individuals in a community. For some, nothing less than the infective nature of the GPL is revered as free. For others, the BSD,NPL,QPL,and even the IBM and APSL licenses are delegated free status.
What the community needs is some kind of license taximony. For example, if that vile (IMO) retraction clause is in a license, then classify it as such. There's no grey area in that decision. Then let the judgement of freedom rest upon the individual hands of the community, and the direction(s) of the community will be revealed. Could it get burned or fragmented in the process? Yes, of course it could. That's all part of a maturing community. To force a single defintion of freedom on people would be a much more horrible - and costly - mistake.
First the APSL should be, at this time, considered a rough alpha cut at best. It would be foolish to believe that Apple would not make amends to at least fix some of the "wording" issues that ESR has pointed out.(then we'll determine the degree, if any, of ESR's duplicity)
But what of the perspective you describe? How much money does Apple make off its Operating System divsion. I'd be mighty surprised if they made a profit on upgrades that is significant in comparison to profits on hardware sales. In their case, the OS is included as part of the cost of manufacturing. Contrast that with Microsoft, who makes a profit on every systems sold by other people.
So, how does keeping the higher-level parts of their operating system proprietary keep them alive? You say it is because having the higher-level portions on only one platform force users to buy their hardware to get the Mac interface.
Let's do a mind experiment: Suppose Apple releases all of _their_ code under the GPL License. Company A does what Apple fears most-ports the whole shebang to x86. Now, since the code is under the GPL, the features of the new port will be folded main tree.
Now we have competition independent of software ( any software written for the Mac can now be targeted at either platform). As the companies rush to improve their support for the latest hardware technologies, drivers and new features to support the hardware are incorporated into MacOS. Both platforms, Mac-i386 and Mac-PPC benefit. Any software written for MacOS runs on both sets of hardware.
The result? Consumer choice and higher quality software, as well as programmer freedom.
What does Apple live off of by not exposing the upper levels of its software? Control and monopoly over a customer desiring their interface.
I know I must sound like a Stallmanista right now, but look at what differentiates Apple from a PC vendor. Different hardware, an easy interface, and , most of all, brand recognition. Freeing the higher levels of their OS deprives them of none of those, and will eventually result in a higher quality OS that Apple can use to trump Microsoft's PC lackeys with.
If you're looking into programming with Xlib and its friends, O'Reilly published a nice series of books about X about five years ago. Since X hasn't had revolutionary advances ( although it certainly has undergone evolution ), the API specs and docs there should be decent. I think I remember Raster talking about them a few times.
Why you would choose to use Xlib for anything but window manager coding is beyond me, so I'll address the other possibility of your post-coding for multiple toolkits.
You pretty much have to do the same kind of things you do for making code portable across platforms. Preprocessor directives specifcy regions of code certain to one set of platforms. You autoconf to find out which regions are required by the host, and then build.
You can also make things much cleaner by putting on abstraction layers to windowing calls and then compiling the implementations to the abstractions separately for each function. Makes the code cleaner.
*sigh* The easiest thing would be to look at programs that have build targets of both QT and GTK. But those are few and far between, probably due to QT silly C++.
oh, back to yor question. Look for books on writing portable code. Best place to start.
The new 300A's in the PPGA form ( socket 370 ) can be used in Slot 1 boards with an adapter.
On some of these adapters, SMP can be enabled easily just by modifying the adapter ($15 part, just buy three in case you mess one up ), and thus circumeventing the old school celeron hack.
BTW, the PPGA 300A's go to 450 just as easy.
http://www.bxboards.com has article on it somewhere.
The best advocates of free software are the users themselves. RMS,ESR,Bruce,or anyone else isn't going to give the GNU/Linux demo to your boss. You,the user, are.
As for media representation, while I'd prefer the community to be the focus, but the press _have_ to have a spokesman. What time of person, and who that should be, needs to be addressed RSN.
RMS accepts other licenses as free. He just thinks that the GPL is the best one, which isn't surprising considering it represents his vision. Often times RMS will go to what some people view as an extreme on an issue. I might not agree with everything he says, but I pay attention to _what_ he is talking about and form an opinion on it. RMS is invaluable to the free software community because he stirs up debate on issues that someone with less conviction might accept. He's an uneasy conscience that we might not agree with, but we certainly should listen to and reflect how we feel on the topics he raises. People who dismiss RMS as a loony should not be as quick to dismiss what he is taking issue to as they are to call names.
If you're looking for people who look past the license and more at the freedom of the software, look for people like Bruce and the legal eagles in the Debian group. They have repeatedly resolved issues with software that was "open-source" but not free. Look at their work on Zope, for example. They thought that the forced recognition of their product was an acceptable clause on their license. Bruce and the Debian people disagreed and gave arguments for their disagreement. The whole issue was resolved and now the clause has been dropped. Textbook diplomacy.
The only reason you love ORA books is because they are all you are used to. We ( I am not innocent of using their documentation either) duped by the fact that we accept proprietary documentation.
I know that there was a time when I accepted proprietary software. And thought it was good. But then I used free software and experienced the relinquishing of power once held far from me.
What we need is to shift our minds from the delusion that there can't be anything better than proprietary documentation.
> If all software was free, there wouldn't be > much software.
Do you understand what Free Software is all about? If you do, and can make a statement like that, then you are the one disconnected, my friend.
If you carefully look at ORA's take on Free Software, you'll see that it is more out of self-preservation than anything else. All their promotions for free software can be viewed as being redirected through a UNIX pipe-right to their wallets ( after a few filters, of course ). There's nothing wrong with that, except for that one of the filters has a conspicuous regex:
s/free/proprietary/
Is there an easy solution to ORA? They distribute proprietary books on free software. So what we need is free books for free software. Programmers put in a large amount of time into writing software, but hate documentation work. I'm much more literary in nature than a coder, and there are others akin to me out there. What I wish is that there was a publisher that would accept books from the community and publish those works. The books would be under a 'free content' agreement where the source of the books is freely available to all. Practices that have yielded such success in the free software community should prove to have analogues to this 'free content', such as peer review.
I think the LDP is in the best position to make this sort of agreement with a publisher.
Bruce, if you're out there ( and I know you are ), could you please elaborate for the community what you meant in the following line:
"The Open Source certification mark has already been abused in ways I find unconscionable".
If the group is abusing the mark to such a degree that it became your impetus for leaving, I think there are quite a few people out there who would like to know some specifics.
BTW, hats off to you and RMS for having a ideological intrest in Free Software. We are a community that is on an exodus from propreitary software to freedom. Without sentinels such as RMS, the Debian group, and people like yourself keeping the night watch, the wolves in sheep's clothing would have devoured that freedom long ago. ( I won't name any names, but we know who they are)
Seems like SGI is taking cues from IBM's turnaround-they are listening to their customers again.
I used to work in a large all SGI shop. To sell the Visual Workstations to management, there would have to be assurances that the existing administrative routines be preserved.
And that takes NT, an OS designed from the ground up to be incompatible with non-MS systems, out of the picture entirely.
Thus, those machines will need an alternative operating system that can play with _any_ existing configuration. I've got one on the tip of my tounge-Linux.
Less than a year ago I had marked SGI for dead by 2001. They are extending the lease on life every day it seems.
Doesn't look like there are enough new gadgets to compel existing Palm Pro/III owners to migrate. Me thinks that 3Com is playing the "ergonomically sleek" card paired with the "latest and greatest" to trap corporate customers into getting a Palm V-which is just a refinement to the Palm III.
BTW, I have a Palm III and I live out of it. They're really nicely priced now, $218.95 at buycomp.com . Worth every penny.
Slashdot Mirror
"...their enhancements and extra utilities (Yast, etc.) are not released as free software and remain proprietary."
Of course, this means that you cannot sell _any_ media that contains the modified version. This means popular outlets that sell cheapo CD's can't produce distribution discs.
This is an example of the classic "non-commerical" clause and thus does not meet the OSD.
If Red Hat had put portions of their installer under a similar license, then we would not have Mandrake Linux, which has graduated from "Redhat + KDE" to become a testbed distribution for developing ease-of-use technologies. And Mandrake Linux has not cut into Red Hat's sales at all.
That's why people bitch about Yast so much. SuSE is a great product otherwise, and could be adapted and customized for use in markets that require specialization. But instead, we are stuck with a paranoid, monolithic company.
Get real, SuSE. People are going to buy your distro because its so well polished in the first place. There's no need to continue to stifle innovation.
Unless, of course, you are afraid that a bunch of people working together over the Internet can produce and market a product that is better than yours using your own technology as a basis. If that is the case, then not only are you grossly missing the point of free software, you are going against the very heart of the community that buys your products.
P.S.- As for the person you hired to work on X, you are to be commended. Still, it makes understanding of the Yast license even more difficult. I guess maybe you support Free Software when it's "convenient".
Getting 550 out of a 366 is certainly the holy grail of OCing for the last few months.
;)
It's only occured in rare, or extreme, instances. The Medichino ( sp, damn those silly rivers Intel uses for names) core can't really get much past 520~530 Mhz reliably. We'll need a die shrink, FSB increase to drop the multiplier, and 133-rated RAM before we start to see miracles like the 450A happen again.
your best bet is to hang out at 5.5x83. Should be quite nice, just make sure your video card can handle it. You machine stil lays the smack down at at cool dual 457
quote the slashdot:
"...and Ayn Rand can blow me"
(do the search, we've covered her here before)
Seriously, be realistic. The world will not magically become this ideal ( although a whack ideal ) society. We cannot change the fundametals of human nature and social structure. What we can do is promote, in our homes and in our lives, the value of communication and friendship. We can decide to share the kind of miseries that have befallen these kind of students and let them know that they will always be surrounded by their families and friends, ready to catch their fall on a moment's notice.
That's the point,right there. These students had nothing to catch them when the fell of the ledge, and their descent into oblivion, obvious yet unnoticed by all, went unchecked, with nothing or no one to break their fall.
Promoting social change is a good thing, but not on the basis of Rand's greed-based egotism. There are much more constructive, and applicable, means of curing our society's cancer.
P.S. - Put the high school philosophy book down and look at the world around you. You ever noticed that you only hear of philosophers in books? It because the real world-day to day decisions-are so much more simpler.
American social repair algorithm:
1) Find a scapegoat
2) Identify all collaborators with scapegoat
3) Institute "rehabilitation" on transgressors
4) if ( NEXT_INCIDENT )
Once again, the press fears the ominous spectre of another empire rising the ashes of a smoldering, outdated MS.
Once again, rampant paranoia and delusion reign supreme in the press. I for one, am not shocked.
What choices did Red Hat had for providing certification? With no community organizations doing anything until _very_ recently, Red Hat decided to start training people so that Linux could get in the workplace, on resumes, and gain some desparately needed corporate credibility.
They blazed their own trial in this matter because there was no path made yet. They certify Red Hat Linux because that's what they are experts in. If history serves true, Red Hat would happily sponsor the community certification movement mentioned-certification is certainly outside their business.
Once again, why should Red Hat be attacked for choosing to do something by themselves when no coherent community efforts were availiable in a usable state ( cf. LSB )
For one, let me address the last line of your post:
"Regulations and restrictions must be industry-wide, not just levied against the most successful of contenders."
MS is the only defendant on trial for abusing monopoly power. Note that each of the companies you have mentioned does not hold monopoly status, and thus cannot abuse the power therein.
Now I'll address the question of "Can RMS's actions work without the whole software industry taking hold?" The answer: yes.
1) Nondisclosed API's are only beneficial if they are used in conjuction with an established product with monopoly marketshare as a means for giving other products a competitive advantage. If the nondisclosed API's are in a non-established product, then the customer can simply choose another product. Say Apple put a hidden API into Quick Time that allowed the MacOS to perform superior to Windows on certain streaming applications. Fine then, they do that. Since Quick Time is not in a monopoly position, then one could choose Real Video G2 or MPEG-I Layer 4 for video content. One is not forced to forced to have QuickTime to view internet videos. There is a choice. There is no choice ( until recently ) for desktop operating systems. Nor is there any doubt to Windows' monopoly marketshare.
2) Patents. The patent pool takes away any hope of MS reclaiming its closed API tactics. ( as RMS pointed out) The key is to keep the Windows monopoly from being leveraged onto other products.
3) Hardware. I think this is a consumer education issue ( lay out the quid to cooperative vendors, calmor for support and openly chastise stubborn companies ) more than a MS-realted problem.
Redmonda delenda est.
The question you must now answer is this:
If the provisions RMS makes are implemented, would the entire software industry ( both free and proprietary) benefit?
1) Open APIs? Certainly benefits free software since NDA's aren't an option in free code. Benefits proprietary software when the API's aren't even disclosed at all, no matter what the arrangement. I'd say the industry benefits on all fronts.
2) Patents. Encourages start-ups ( both free and proprietary) to overcome the oppression of patent lockdown. Allows greater sharing of ideas, resulting in more consumer choice. Allows companies not to use MS patents if they want to keep their own patents under their control. Benefits free software community, who is exposed to the patent issue and has no patents ( with restrictive licensing) of its own the greatest. But the biggest winner is still the consumer, since all will have greater access to more ideas and thus resultign in a higher degree of innovation.
3) Open hardware programming specifications for all certified drivers. Much less clear than 1) or 2). Forces hardware companies to sacrifice their freedom to hoard information in order to provide guaranteed functionality for customers. Better solution-promote consumer awareness of hardware companies that are free-software friendly. Publically vilify those that are not. Don't let MS's crimes give an excuse to strip the freedom of other companies. Just make those companies that don't comply look like the nasty, paranoid, "greed is good, avarice as always" American corporations that they really are. Inform the public and let natural selection do its wonders in our incredibly time-accelerated industry.
Redmonda delenda est.
But other parts of the Win32 platform that are hidden are done so for _purely_ anitcompetitive reasons.
1) Internet explorer integration. Why can't I integrate Netscape instead of IE?
2) Explorer shell. Why are the LiteStep people having such terrible problems with compatibility? Why isn't there an effective MacOS replacement for the Windows shell?
3) Every MS app goes in and manipulates the file associations without regard to user wishes or desires. Most applications now are forced to combat with the same anticompetitive, anti-choice with mirror reponses.
Redmonda delenda est.
I have to agree with you on this, and the reason harken back to the whole API thing.
When Microsoft announced their OLE technology for Windows, they did so nearly simultaneously with the launch of Office that took advantage of those feautures. What this amounted to was leveraging their control over development of the OS to give Office a competitive advantage.
Thus, the problem of MS pulling a blitzkrieg attack where they exploit a loophole to code apps that use the new APIs internally before the are even released to early adopters and then release those apps before the others have a chance to react.
As long as their is not some formal delineation and separtion between OS and app divsions, expect this kind of behavior to be rampant. We are dealing with a company with all the self-justified delusion that normally only accompanies cult members. This kind of behavior, in their eyes, is not only ethical, but indeed a moral imperative, done for the sake of "innovation".
As for my solution to this whole mess:
Redmonda delenda est.
The first part of the article is a direct ad hominem attack on Ralph Nader. I can deal with that, but it certainly isn't fitting for a Washington think tank...unless, of course, that the think tank is paid to do 'research' to promote certain viewpoints ( in this case, unabated, unregulated American captialism.)
That article proves its intellectual bankruptcy with the following quote:
"...OSS rejects free market competition and loses the market's distinct advantages to meet consumer needs with quality products and targeted marketing. In a free market, identifiable manufacturers own the product. They are responsible for product performance, and they can be held liable for inexcusable flaws."
The last line is especially telling-no software company can be held liable for flaws. If something doesn't work like you think it should, then you're pretty much SOL. ( EULA nonsense) As for the topic of ownership, software is quickly becoming less product-oriented and more service oriented ( that's where the real money is ), and there is certainly a great deal of room for companies to compete in services, much more so than in products.
Why is that? Because with proprietary software, there are the "haves" and "have-nots". The practices of vendor lock-in, interface hiding, and patent clamping have virtually held software innovation to a stand-still. If it wasn't for the need of standardized computing ( items antithetical to the proprietary tactics above), things would be even more stagnant than they are now. RMS offers solutions to all three of the practices that MS has used to singlehandedly retard computing for at least 5-8 years. And yes, that includes item number one, first and foremost.
Just think: What if office suites had become the killer app for data interchange, instead of the breeding pits for vendor lock-in through file formats? We might have had XML in everyday use _long_ ago. What if MS/Novell had chosen TCP/IP instead of IPX or NetBeui? I'll leave that one for your mind to toss around.
In short, if these scenarios would have played out differently, then hardware might be catching up with software, and not the other way around. RMS suggests way to stop poor practices now, and thus lessen the devastation that proprietary computing has wrought on the digital landscape.
1. No Linux 3D driver, No sale for me. 3dfx has provided drivers (albeit proprietary) for Linux for a _long_ time now. They even pay a guy to write 3d drivers. NVidia just says "bugger off" on the 3d part.
.25 micron, really, this time).
2. Recent reports on the hardware sites tell of NVidia lying _again_ about the TNT2's processor clock speed. It seems Tom and the rest of the bunch got overclocked boards. The actual clock speed of the TNT2 will be 125Mhz, not 150Mhz. They pulled the same stunt with the first TNT. At least this time they aren't lying about the fabrication process,too(
The whole 3D accelerator industry is cutthroat and crooked. One must choose between which company stomps all over ethics the least and provides what you, the consumer, desire in a product. For most Linux users wishing to play Quake under Linux, the only choice has been 3dfx. And that is why I'll look beyond the Glide wrapper thing,( which has UltraHLE written all over it, check dejanews and see why people _really_ want Glide wrappers ) and get my Voodoo3 as soon as they arrive at buycomp. ( Daryll's said that the new server shouldwork with Voodoo3, nothing like a trial by fire-the source is out there!)
I've been reading Salon for some time now, and I think that they are quite a techno-savvy, sophisticated, and progressive bunch. While their lust for profit is definitely present ( the are a business,after all), they don't seem like the types that would butcher a community of people in the name of banner ads. If one thing about their site is consistent, it's that they cater to a _sophisticated_ bunch and desire readership loyalty more than anything else. To do that they have to get greater exposure.
This isn't like AOL buying out Netscape just to prey on the millions of Netscape users who won't change their default home page. They did that ( as well as the ICQ buyout) just to shovel poop down the throats of the ignorant. They aren't after loyalty, just forced page views and click-throughs.
If the Well had to get bought out, I could think of _much_ worse stewards than Salon.
What I heard while spending April Fools' Day laid out on the couch sick:
The plane did have a malfunction of some sorts, and went down. The pilot ejected, and the plane destroyed itself. Machines like that have too much secret technology to let any part of them fall to the ground intact and be salvaged. (Although 117's use first-gen stealth tech).
If the plane had gone down and was somewhat intact, some nation would have certainly found a way to buy what was leftover for reverse-engineering purposes.
x86 margins are very thin indeed. For reasons already stated, Apple can (and has) charged a premium for superior hardware design and implementation.
What Apple needs most is marketshare. They need the assurances that they can count on apps that people buy computers for in the first place run, and run well, on their platform. They do not have this 100% right now, especially in the gaming industry (what most home PCs do), and they will not get it unless they can increase marketshare.
I agree that full disclosure is a risk. No major computer company has ever risked their very existance on free software. But Linux is poised to become the priemere operating system in less than 3 years. Apple can either snag developer mindshare now and focus on being a hardware company with a great free software OS, or they can try to catch up later. It's the same problem that a great deal of computer companies are going to have to deal with as free software begins its march.
As a consultant, I've seen the forces of free software at work before my very eyes. As they say, "You can't fight the future, time is on its side."
Both valid arguments. Let me explain.
1) Is Apple can't compete with their hardware against Intel, then why haven't they gone bankrupt already? I hardly believe it is due to their interface, since if that was such an advantage then replicating their interface would have happened long ago. People buy Macs because they are easy in _all_ regards to get set up and going. Note that in all of Apple's IMac ads, they emphasized the ease of installation and setup of the hardware and the benfits of Mac hardware over PC stuff (remember the slug ad?). I don't recommend Macs to novices because the interface is sane, I do so because the chance of them getting tied up into the setup and configuration problems that plague PC architecture is non-existent. It is even worth sacrificing their Windows experience they carry from their workplace.
Besides, I see no reason to think that Apple can't compete with PC vendors. They have proven themselves ( at least over the last year) to be quite cunning and capable of tearing into markets.
I'll ask you this: If you could buy a PC running MacOS or a similarly equipped G3 running MacOS at the same price, which would you pick, ceteris paribus?
2) I already stated that Apple isn't making any kind of profit off OS sales in comparison with hardware sales. In my experience, only corporations have bothered to pay the upgrade costs, and most of those do it for the support they receive for the migration-which they would pay for anyway instead of using some Cheapbytes CD. Besides, MacOS installations like that only give the platform what Apple needs most to continue to succeed-marketshare and an expanded application base.
The problem here is that values such as freedom are not uniform across our community. There are many who believe that the APSL is a free license (ESR among them). Since the APSL is hardly final right now, I reserve my personal judgement(which matters to me, at least) upon it until they stop listening to suggestions.
The idea that we can judge software as either free or non-free in some grand unified manner is absurd. Why? Becasue we are unique individuals in a community. For some, nothing less than the infective nature of the GPL is revered as free. For others, the BSD,NPL,QPL,and even the IBM and APSL licenses are delegated free status.
What the community needs is some kind of license taximony. For example, if that vile (IMO) retraction clause is in a license, then classify it as such. There's no grey area in that decision. Then let the judgement of freedom rest upon the individual hands of the community, and the direction(s) of the community will be revealed. Could it get burned or fragmented in the process? Yes, of course it could. That's all part of a maturing community. To force a single defintion of freedom on people would be a much more horrible - and costly - mistake.
First the APSL should be, at this time, considered a rough alpha cut at best. It would be foolish to believe that Apple would not make amends to at least fix some of the "wording" issues that ESR has pointed out.(then we'll determine the degree, if any, of ESR's duplicity)
But what of the perspective you describe? How much money does Apple make off its Operating System divsion. I'd be mighty surprised if they made a profit on upgrades that is significant in comparison to profits on hardware sales. In their case, the OS is included as part of the cost of manufacturing. Contrast that with Microsoft, who makes a profit on every systems sold by other people.
So, how does keeping the higher-level parts of their operating system proprietary keep them alive? You say it is because having the higher-level portions on only one platform force users to buy their hardware to get the Mac interface.
Let's do a mind experiment:
Suppose Apple releases all of _their_ code under the GPL License. Company A does what Apple fears most-ports the whole shebang to x86. Now, since the code is under the GPL, the features of the new port will be folded main tree.
Now we have competition independent of software ( any software written for the Mac can now be targeted at either platform). As the companies rush to improve their support for the latest hardware technologies, drivers and new features to support the hardware are incorporated into MacOS. Both platforms, Mac-i386 and Mac-PPC benefit. Any software written for MacOS runs on both sets of hardware.
The result? Consumer choice and higher quality software, as well as programmer freedom.
What does Apple live off of by not exposing the upper levels of its software? Control and monopoly over a customer desiring their interface.
I know I must sound like a Stallmanista right now, but look at what differentiates Apple from a PC vendor. Different hardware, an easy interface, and , most of all, brand recognition. Freeing the higher levels of their OS deprives them of none of those, and will eventually result in a higher quality OS that Apple can use to trump Microsoft's PC lackeys with.
If you're looking into programming with Xlib and its friends, O'Reilly published a nice series of books about X about five years ago. Since X hasn't had revolutionary advances ( although it certainly has undergone evolution ), the API specs and docs there should be decent. I think I remember Raster talking about them a few times.
Why you would choose to use Xlib for anything but window manager coding is beyond me, so I'll address the other possibility of your post-coding for multiple toolkits.
You pretty much have to do the same kind of things you do for making code portable across platforms. Preprocessor directives specifcy regions of code certain to one set of platforms. You autoconf to find out which regions are required by the host, and then build.
You can also make things much cleaner by putting on abstraction layers to windowing calls and then compiling the implementations to the abstractions separately for each function. Makes the code cleaner.
*sigh* The easiest thing would be to look at programs that have build targets of both QT and GTK. But those are few and far between, probably due to QT silly C++.
oh, back to yor question. Look for books on writing portable code. Best place to start.
The new 300A's in the PPGA form ( socket 370 ) can be used in Slot 1 boards with an adapter.
On some of these adapters, SMP can be enabled easily just by modifying the adapter ($15 part, just buy three in case you mess one up ), and thus circumeventing the old school celeron hack.
BTW, the PPGA 300A's go to 450 just as easy.
http://www.bxboards.com has article on it somewhere.
The best advocates of free software are the users themselves. RMS,ESR,Bruce,or anyone else isn't going to give the GNU/Linux demo to your boss. You,the user, are.
As for media representation, while I'd prefer the community to be the focus, but the press _have_ to have a spokesman. What time of person, and who that should be, needs to be addressed RSN.
RMS accepts other licenses as free. He just thinks that the GPL is the best one, which isn't surprising considering it represents his vision. Often times RMS will go to what some people view as an extreme on an issue. I might not agree with everything he says, but I pay attention to _what_ he is talking about and form an opinion on it. RMS is invaluable to the free software community because he stirs up debate on issues that someone with less conviction might accept. He's an uneasy conscience that we might not agree with, but we certainly should listen to and reflect how we feel on the topics he raises. People who dismiss RMS as a loony should not be as quick to dismiss what he is taking issue to as they are to call names.
If you're looking for people who look past the license and more at the freedom of the software, look for people like Bruce and the legal eagles in the Debian group. They have repeatedly resolved issues with software that was "open-source" but not free. Look at their work on Zope, for example. They thought that the forced recognition of their product was an acceptable clause on their license. Bruce and the Debian people disagreed and gave arguments for their disagreement. The whole issue was resolved and now the clause has been dropped. Textbook diplomacy.
The only reason you love ORA books is because they are all you are used to. We ( I am not innocent of using their documentation either) duped by the fact that we accept proprietary documentation.
I know that there was a time when I accepted proprietary software. And thought it was good. But then I used free software and experienced the relinquishing of power once held far from me.
What we need is to shift our minds from the delusion that there can't be anything better than proprietary documentation.
> If all software was free, there wouldn't be
> much software.
Do you understand what Free Software is all about? If you do, and can make a statement like that, then you are the one disconnected, my friend.
Damn straight.
If you carefully look at ORA's take on Free Software, you'll see that it is more out of self-preservation than anything else. All their promotions for free software can be viewed as being redirected through a UNIX pipe-right to their wallets ( after a few filters, of course ). There's nothing wrong with that, except for that one of the filters has a conspicuous regex:
s/free/proprietary/
Is there an easy solution to ORA? They distribute proprietary books on free software. So what we need is free books for free software. Programmers put in a large amount of time into writing software, but hate documentation work. I'm much more literary in nature than a coder, and there are others akin to me out there. What I wish is that there was a publisher that would accept books from the community and publish those works. The books would be under a 'free content' agreement where the source of the books is freely available to all. Practices that have yielded such success in the free software community should prove to have analogues to this 'free content', such as peer review.
I think the LDP is in the best position to make this sort of agreement with a publisher.
Bruce, if you're out there ( and I know you are ), could you please elaborate for the community what you meant in the following line:
"The Open Source certification mark has already been abused in ways I find unconscionable".
If the group is abusing the mark to such a degree that it became your impetus for leaving, I think there are quite a few people out there who would like to know some specifics.
BTW, hats off to you and RMS for having a ideological intrest in Free Software. We are a community that is on an exodus from propreitary software to freedom. Without sentinels such as RMS, the Debian group, and people like yourself keeping the night watch, the wolves in sheep's clothing would have devoured that freedom long ago. ( I won't name any names, but we know who they are)
Seems like SGI is taking cues from IBM's turnaround-they are listening to their customers again.
I used to work in a large all SGI shop. To sell the Visual Workstations to management, there would have to be assurances that the existing administrative routines be preserved.
And that takes NT, an OS designed from the ground up to be incompatible with non-MS systems, out of the picture entirely.
Thus, those machines will need an alternative operating system that can play with _any_ existing configuration. I've got one on the tip of my tounge-Linux.
Less than a year ago I had marked SGI for dead by 2001. They are extending the lease on life every day it seems.
Doesn't look like there are enough new gadgets to compel existing Palm Pro/III owners to migrate. Me thinks that 3Com is playing the "ergonomically sleek" card paired with the "latest and greatest" to trap corporate customers into getting a Palm V-which is just a refinement to the Palm III.
BTW, I have a Palm III and I live out of it. They're really nicely priced now, $218.95 at buycomp.com . Worth every penny.
Works great with Linux, too.