The term "open source" was coined to avoid talking about freedom, under the rather stupid assumption that business people don't want to hear about it. Here's the thing: business owners are some of the most vehement seekers of their own freedom, so if you talk to a business owner who is frustrated with vendor lock-in and tell him that he can have the freedom to do away with this crap once and for all, he'll listen. Perhaps some short-sighted middle managers will resist the idea, but if you convince the people at the top, those middle managers will be irrelevant.
I've heard plenty of stories I've heard about companies who "open sourced" their products, expecting to cut their development costs and improve their product quality by using the free labour of volunteers (like ESR observed in The Cathedral and the Bazaar), only to later give up because there are a finite number of volunteers, and their product just wasn't interesting enough. We shouldn't be promoting "open source" to software suppliers; What we should do is teach software consumers that they can demand freedom, and software developers will have no choice but to supply it.
We need to talk more about "free as in free markets". "Open source" just represents a preoccupation with technical details (source code) that business owners ultimately don't care about, and serves more as a buzzword and a source of unrealistic expectations than as a long-term promotional tool.
With enough lock-in, a company can protect its market share even as it reduces customer service, raises prices, refuses to innovate and otherwise abuses its customer base. It should be no surprise that this sounds like pretty much every experience you've had with IT companies: Once the industry discovered lock-in, everyone started figuring out how to get as much of it as they can.
... and if Bruce Schneier gets what he wants with liability legislation for software developers/vendors, then a big way of avoiding lock-in---free and open-source software---will cease being viable.
It didn't matter how many video geeks knew and understood that Beta was better than VHS, did it? They were the small minority of video users... the same sadly applies to the computer world.
Betamax was Sony-proprietary. VHS was open. For everyone except Sony, VHS was a better technology because it was cheaper and provided comparable features. It could also record 6 hours to a single videotape.
Freedom of expression shall be inviolable. Every Afghan shall have the right to express thoughts through speech, writing, illustrations as well as other means in accordance with provisions of this constitution. Every Afghan shall have the right, according to provisions of law, to print and publish on subjects without prior submission to state authorities. Directives related to the press, radio and television as well as publications and other mass media shall be regulated by law.
That sounds great, but this year (2008), a man was sentenced to death for printing and distributing a copy of a website that criticised Islam for its treatment of women. The Afghan senate has affirmed the death sentence.
How is this constitutional? Article 2 of the same constitution states:
No law shall contravene the tenets and provisions of the holy religion of Islam in Afghanistan.
This is basically a free pass to use religion as an excuse to infringe upon what would otherwise be constitutionally-protected freedom of expression, and people tolerate it. They wanted it so much, in fact, that they put other provisions into the constitution to prevent Article 2 from ever being removed. Article 149 starts with:
The principles of adherence to the tenets of the Holy religion of Islam as well as Islamic Republicanism shall not be amended.
An atheist state would not have this cop-out. An atheist populace would not tolerate this cop-out.
Another thing: Joseph Stalin in a red herring. Being atheist doesn't necessarily make a good person, but it takes away a ton of excuses for being a bad person.
The last mile IS controlled by the government, which is supposedly "a non-profit public-interest organization".
What I meant was an organization set up exclusively for facilitating access to the last mile by any interested parties. Like an IXP, but for the last mile.
No, but that means that everyone planning to run non-Python3 code will have to maintain two parallel Python installations. With package management that's not so bad, but it still puts a bit of pain on distro maintainers.
This site (Warning! Informative non-conspiracy site!) describes the simple details of fiber-optic coupling by bending one fiber.
A few things:
Undersea cables are big bundles of fibre, not single fibres, right?
When you bend a fibre, there is an increase in the attenuation visible at the receiving end. This might interfere with reception, but even if it doesn't, both sides likely have an optical time domain reflectometer, which will can tell them where the bend is.
The NSA could do it, but would likely be detectable. On the other hand, if they cut the cable, then later installed a sniffer at the break while repairing the cable, then the people on each end would ignore the spike in the OTDR plot, because they would say "oh, that's just a break that has been repaired. It's always been there.".
"Is it really possible for a 350-pound tiger to leap a 12.5-foot barrier from 33 feet away?... But I guess we already knew that following the death of Carlos Souza at the paws of Tatiana, a Siberian Tiger he had allegedly been taunting at San Francisco zoo at the end of last year."
If we already know the answer, then the question really is, can we explain how a 350-pound tiger to leap a 12.5-foot barrier from 33 feet away, or do we need to do some more research?
Open Source monolithic kernels are best, allowing any user to build their own custom kernel and a choice of either having device drivers & support to either be built as a module or in to the kernel itself...
The ability to build drivers into the kernel could disappear and almost nobody would notice. Most distros already use an initial ramdisk (initrd) to load essential boot-time drivers, start RAID arrays, initialize LVM, populate/dev/, and mount the root filesystem.
Like it or not, Linux is slowly turning into a microkernel. The question will soon be whether Linux can be any good at being a microkernel.
Moving more device drivers into userspace is also a very good idea. It means that security issues with a driver are less likely to root the OS or take out the OS with a crash.
It depends on the driver. For a filesystem driver that's not serving stuff like/bin/login, that's true. For other hardware devices, you need a hardware architecture with an I/O MMU, or the driver can just instruct some device to do DMA into some sensitive region of memory.
But yeah, moving stuff out of the kernel is the way forward in terms of security, and that's pretty much the definition of a microkernel architecture.
People suck - we're all capable of doing terrible things in support of our beliefs, just because a very visible minority of one group has drawn attention to its particular capability for that doesn't mean that the rest of us are innocent.
So what? It's not a matter of saving face for what our ancestors did, it's a matter of not allowing the same crap to happen again. Lest we forget, and all that.
You're right, it would have been much easier to write a perl script or pipe 30 commands together, like Linux users are so fond of./sarcasm.
You're trying to be sarcastic, but what you said it actually correct. It would be eaiser, because you'd have to write the script once (or not at all, if someone else wrote the script for you), and then all it takes is to run the script whenever you have a problem. Hell, you could write another script to monitor the log files and run your first script automatically.
Automating common tasks is approximately 2 orders of magnitude easier on Linux (particularly on Debian) than on Windows. I'm saying this having done both.
Re:Just prooves - your data is worth more ...
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Nokia Buys Trolltech
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Wrong.
What is wrong? That the LGPL isn't non-free according to RMS and the FSF? A post by RMS from last month suggests otherwise:
I frequently run OpenSSH, whose license is not the GNU GPL, and is incompatible with the GPL (if
my memory serves). It is free software, so why not use it?
Quoting you:
None of those are directly limited by LGPL, but they are not preserved fully, either.
Releasing a library under the LGPL can help preserve people's freedom, if it means that substantially more software vendors/providers will use that library instead of a proprietary alternative. Quoting the FSF:
There are reasons that can make it better to use the Lesser GPL in certain cases. The most common case is when a free library's features are readily available for proprietary software through other alternative libraries. In that case, the library cannot give free software any particular advantage, so it is better to use the Lesser GPL for that library.
This is why we used the Lesser GPL for the GNU C library. After all, there are plenty of other C libraries; using the GPL for ours would have driven proprietary software developers to use another--no problem for them, only for us.
... in other words, in poor, conflict-ridden countries where extremism is likely to be more popular, people who have the opportunity to get a university education are less likely to piss it away on a degree in sociology.
But we don't want to say that, so we'll just blame the "engineers' mindset". Yeah, those evil engineers!
Re:Just prooves - your data is worth more ...
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Nokia Buys Trolltech
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GTK+ is not "less free" according to the FSF's definition. It just allows "less free" software to link against it, which might provide less of an economic incentive for people to release their software that uses it as free software.
Free software is a matter of the users' freedom to run, copy, distribute, study, change and improve the software. More precisely, it refers to four kinds of freedom, for the users of the software:
The freedom to run the program, for any purpose (freedom 0).
The freedom to study how the program works, and adapt it to your needs (freedom 1). Access to the source code is a precondition for this.
The freedom to redistribute copies so you can help your neighbor (freedom 2).
The freedom to improve the program, and release your improvements to the public, so that the whole community benefits (freedom 3). Access to the source code is a precondition for this.
Name one of those freedoms that GTK+ doesn't provide, or provides to a lesser extent than Qt does.
The Foundation promises that all distribution of the Work, or of any
work "based on the Work", that takes place under the control of the
Foundation or its agents or assignees, shall be on terms that explicitly and
perpetually permit anyone possessing a copy of the work to which the terms
apply, and possessing accurate notice of these terms, to redistribute copies
of the work to anyone on the same terms. These terms shall not restrict which
members of the public copies may be distributed to. These terms shall not
require a member of the public to pay any royalty to the Foundation or to
anyone else for any permitted use of the work they apply to, or to communicate
with the Foundation or its agents in any way either when redistribution is
performed or on any other occasion.
You have to be careful, though, not to miss newly-developed cost-cutting/quality-improving technology (e.g. Pylons and Django, neither of which existed in any useful capacity more than 3 years ago) or your competitors will eat your lunch.
Slashdot Mirror
Wake me up in a year, when it's the 10th anniversary of Bruce Perens' mailing list post: It's Time to Talk About Free Software Again.
The term "open source" was coined to avoid talking about freedom, under the rather stupid assumption that business people don't want to hear about it. Here's the thing: business owners are some of the most vehement seekers of their own freedom, so if you talk to a business owner who is frustrated with vendor lock-in and tell him that he can have the freedom to do away with this crap once and for all, he'll listen. Perhaps some short-sighted middle managers will resist the idea, but if you convince the people at the top, those middle managers will be irrelevant.
I've heard plenty of stories I've heard about companies who "open sourced" their products, expecting to cut their development costs and improve their product quality by using the free labour of volunteers (like ESR observed in The Cathedral and the Bazaar), only to later give up because there are a finite number of volunteers, and their product just wasn't interesting enough. We shouldn't be promoting "open source" to software suppliers; What we should do is teach software consumers that they can demand freedom, and software developers will have no choice but to supply it.
We need to talk more about "free as in free markets". "Open source" just represents a preoccupation with technical details (source code) that business owners ultimately don't care about, and serves more as a buzzword and a source of unrealistic expectations than as a long-term promotional tool.
... and if Bruce Schneier gets what he wants with liability legislation for software developers/vendors, then a big way of avoiding lock-in---free and open-source software---will cease being viable.
Betamax was Sony-proprietary. VHS was open. For everyone except Sony, VHS was a better technology because it was cheaper and provided comparable features. It could also record 6 hours to a single videotape.
The problem is that when some nutjob says "let's kill Joe Smith because our religion says so", other people agree with the nutjob.
Article 34 of the current Constitution of Afghanistan (2004) protects freedom of expression:
Freedom of expression shall be inviolable. Every Afghan shall have the right to express thoughts through speech, writing, illustrations as well as other means in accordance with provisions of this constitution. Every Afghan shall have the right, according to provisions of law, to print and publish on subjects without prior submission to state authorities. Directives related to the press, radio and television as well as publications and other mass media shall be regulated by law.That sounds great, but this year (2008), a man was sentenced to death for printing and distributing a copy of a website that criticised Islam for its treatment of women. The Afghan senate has affirmed the death sentence.
In 2006, another man was almost sentenced to death for converting from Islam to Christianity.
How is this constitutional? Article 2 of the same constitution states:
No law shall contravene the tenets and provisions of the holy religion of Islam in Afghanistan.This is basically a free pass to use religion as an excuse to infringe upon what would otherwise be constitutionally-protected freedom of expression, and people tolerate it. They wanted it so much, in fact, that they put other provisions into the constitution to prevent Article 2 from ever being removed. Article 149 starts with:
The principles of adherence to the tenets of the Holy religion of Islam as well as Islamic Republicanism shall not be amended.An atheist state would not have this cop-out. An atheist populace would not tolerate this cop-out.
Another thing: Joseph Stalin in a red herring. Being atheist doesn't necessarily make a good person, but it takes away a ton of excuses for being a bad person.
What do you mean, "as a media center"? Can you not use Debian/Ubuntu or something?
What I meant was an organization set up exclusively for facilitating access to the last mile by any interested parties. Like an IXP, but for the last mile.
Meter the traffic running through your VPN connection? You are using a n encrypted VPN connection, right?
That's why the last mile should be controlled by the government or by a non-profit public-interest organization.
That she values the freedom of speech and of expression? Oh wait, this is Hillary we're talking about.
I thought it was to reduce mercury emissions.
This is already done in the distros I've seen.
... and authenticating it!
A few things:
The NSA could do it, but would likely be detectable. On the other hand, if they cut the cable, then later installed a sniffer at the break while repairing the cable, then the people on each end would ignore the spike in the OTDR plot, because they would say "oh, that's just a break that has been repaired. It's always been there.".
If we already know the answer, then the question really is, can we explain how a 350-pound tiger to leap a 12.5-foot barrier from 33 feet away, or do we need to do some more research?
It needs to be rewritten to use L4. GNU Mach is painfully heavy.
Do they, actually? It's not as though virtualization doesn't incur a performance hit.
The ability to build drivers into the kernel could disappear and almost nobody would notice. Most distros already use an initial ramdisk (initrd) to load essential boot-time drivers, start RAID arrays, initialize LVM, populate /dev/, and mount the root filesystem.
Like it or not, Linux is slowly turning into a microkernel. The question will soon be whether Linux can be any good at being a microkernel.
It depends on the driver. For a filesystem driver that's not serving stuff like /bin/login, that's true. For other hardware devices, you need a hardware architecture with an I/O MMU, or the driver can just instruct some device to do DMA into some sensitive region of memory.
But yeah, moving stuff out of the kernel is the way forward in terms of security, and that's pretty much the definition of a microkernel architecture.
So what? It's not a matter of saving face for what our ancestors did, it's a matter of not allowing the same crap to happen again. Lest we forget, and all that.
You're trying to be sarcastic, but what you said it actually correct. It would be eaiser, because you'd have to write the script once (or not at all, if someone else wrote the script for you), and then all it takes is to run the script whenever you have a problem. Hell, you could write another script to monitor the log files and run your first script automatically.
Automating common tasks is approximately 2 orders of magnitude easier on Linux (particularly on Debian) than on Windows. I'm saying this having done both.
What is wrong? That the LGPL isn't non-free according to RMS and the FSF? A post by RMS from last month suggests otherwise:
I frequently run OpenSSH, whose license is not the GNU GPL, and is incompatible with the GPL (if my memory serves). It is free software, so why not use it?Quoting you:
None of those are directly limited by LGPL, but they are not preserved fully, either.Releasing a library under the LGPL can help preserve people's freedom, if it means that substantially more software vendors/providers will use that library instead of a proprietary alternative. Quoting the FSF:
There are reasons that can make it better to use the Lesser GPL in certain cases. The most common case is when a free library's features are readily available for proprietary software through other alternative libraries. In that case, the library cannot give free software any particular advantage, so it is better to use the Lesser GPL for that library.
This is why we used the Lesser GPL for the GNU C library. After all, there are plenty of other C libraries; using the GPL for ours would have driven proprietary software developers to use another--no problem for them, only for us.
... in other words, in poor, conflict-ridden countries where extremism is likely to be more popular, people who have the opportunity to get a university education are less likely to piss it away on a degree in sociology.
But we don't want to say that, so we'll just blame the "engineers' mindset". Yeah, those evil engineers!
GTK+ is not "less free" according to the FSF's definition. It just allows "less free" software to link against it, which might provide less of an economic incentive for people to release their software that uses it as free software.
Let's review the Free Software Definition:
Free software is a matter of the users' freedom to run, copy, distribute, study, change and improve the software. More precisely, it refers to four kinds of freedom, for the users of the software:Name one of those freedoms that GTK+ doesn't provide, or provides to a lesser extent than Qt does.
The usual FSF copyright assignment contract obliges the FSF to act in certain ways:
The Foundation promises that all distribution of the Work, or of any work "based on the Work", that takes place under the control of the Foundation or its agents or assignees, shall be on terms that explicitly and perpetually permit anyone possessing a copy of the work to which the terms apply, and possessing accurate notice of these terms, to redistribute copies of the work to anyone on the same terms. These terms shall not restrict which members of the public copies may be distributed to. These terms shall not require a member of the public to pay any royalty to the Foundation or to anyone else for any permitted use of the work they apply to, or to communicate with the Foundation or its agents in any way either when redistribution is performed or on any other occasion.You have to be careful, though, not to miss newly-developed cost-cutting/quality-improving technology (e.g. Pylons and Django, neither of which existed in any useful capacity more than 3 years ago) or your competitors will eat your lunch.