Actually in the commercial world everyone comes out of Uni believing essentially in the OSS world view that elegant code is the most important thing. Either they learn that you sometimes have to compromise on elegance to keep customers happy, or they end up not earning much money. So if the OSS world is better at attracting developers who won't accept that, it's welcome to them.
"Oh great, you found a straw man. Have fun attacking it."
And I hate the idea that software development is about making things easy for developers as opposed to users.
Without developers, how do you expect to get software developed? (Also, why do you think Linux supports more devices than any other operating system right now?)
... they create chaos in the commercial world, where if you release something and it doesn't work absolutely 100% of the time when tested by non experts, the company has a serious problem.
Which problem is that, too many customers lining up to throw money at them? I've never seen proprietary software work that reliably, and in my experience, it's rarely been solely fatal to the business.
If you could buy NES games today, then it might be pirating (though even there I would argue not in the case of very old games).
I'm no fan of copyright laws, but I'm not aware of anything that suggests you can ignore the wishes of the copyright holder if said person doesn't want to sell something.
In common, everyday usage (i.e.: when people aren't being nit-picky about minor things), "Linux" refers to an OS built on the Linux kernel, as well as the kernel itself.
Does it refer to GUI components such as GNOME and KDE, which run on any free Unix-like platform, including Solaris and the *BSDs? How about KDE applications running on Windows or Mac OS X? If I run KDE instead of explorer on Windows XP, does my hypothetical Windows machine suddenly run Linux, despite not having Linux even installed?
If you plan to (or think that you will want to) make a closed product from the software you write today, you would use BSD license, so it wouldn't prevent you in doing it.
Nothing prevents the copyright holder from releasing a product under as many conflicting licenses as he or she desires.
[What] makes a book really bad is much easier to identify.
Is it part of a series of more than three books? If yes, it's probably bad. Is the lead character a Mary Sue? If yes, it's probably bad. Is the lead character an irresistible vampire, were-wolf, were-tiger, were-lemur, were-panda, were-hippo with magic powers? If yes, you should have known already not to read the Anita Blake books.
Unless the laws have changed, which is of course a possibility since they seem to be moving that way, I'm very much free to change my copy of Windows if I so desire...
Out here on the perimeter we count ourselves "mythical man months" as a preclude to slumber.
If you really think that Brooks's Law means that having one full-time developer working on Parrot wouldn't improve our velocity over zero full-time developers working on Parrot, I hope you never manage any software project I care about.
The same way you finish any other project: you decide which features it'll have, then you implement them.
I take Google's "beta" label as warning that they don't want to guarantee that their software will work, that it won't eat your data, and that they won't suddenly remove a bunch of features you like. Likewise, I have a silly notion that an 18,000 person company with gigabucks of resources should be able to get a handful of projects to that state in several years -- given a healthy dose of reality in its project management.
Since you're releasing it for the Mac which is Unix based I reckon it won't be as impossible as once would be.
Very little of the interesting GUI and IO stuff in Mac OS X has anything to do with Unix. If the game uses OpenGL, that's a plus... but input handling and sound will be very different on the Mac than it will be on a modern Unix-like machine (unless Blizzard uses some cross-platform portability libraries).
I do accept that blind faith in the automatic garbage collector isn't good, it stops people thinking about their algorithms.
I'm skeptical. Sure, not having to worry (mostly) about memory leaks and uninitialized pointers lets non-expert programmers get things done without having to go through really difficult reasoning about resource usage, but it lets non-expert programmers get things done. That seems like a benefit.
You can argue -- and I might agree -- that having only mediocre programmers on a project is not a good idea. Yet I have confidence that any business which staffs an important project with only mediocre programmers would find other ways to fail if its programmers stumbled into the most brilliant code possible.
That's why it's on so many BILLIONS of devices including NASA missions to Mars.
I just talked to a software guy at the JPL this morning. He said that the code on the Phoenix mission is all C. There's Java at ground control, but not on the spacecraft.
I have seen code that allocates vast splashes of memory and the de-references it all in a tight loop, and you do have to think: "hmm is this a good idea, wouldn't it be better to think about what's going on?"
A decent garbage collector will handle that just fine -- better, often, than malloc/free.
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"Oh great, you found a straw man. Have fun attacking it."
Without developers, how do you expect to get software developed? (Also, why do you think Linux supports more devices than any other operating system right now?)
Which problem is that, too many customers lining up to throw money at them? I've never seen proprietary software work that reliably, and in my experience, it's rarely been solely fatal to the business.
I'm no fan of copyright laws, but I'm not aware of anything that suggests you can ignore the wishes of the copyright holder if said person doesn't want to sell something.
"Fix it yourself" includes "report bugs". If that doesn't work, only then has the process really failed.
So does wrongness -- or are you clinging to the argument from unpopularity fallacy?
You may be thinking of listening on port 25, not connecting to a remote host's port 25.
Nice work, bringing the "let's raise taxes on the rich!" class welfare argument up.
Hey, I care.
Does it refer to GUI components such as GNOME and KDE, which run on any free Unix-like platform, including Solaris and the *BSDs? How about KDE applications running on Windows or Mac OS X? If I run KDE instead of explorer on Windows XP, does my hypothetical Windows machine suddenly run Linux, despite not having Linux even installed?
Words mean things for a very good reason.
Nothing prevents the copyright holder from releasing a product under as many conflicting licenses as he or she desires.
... being a kernel and all.
Which OO languages have people who have never programmed before used?
Is it part of a series of more than three books? If yes, it's probably bad. Is the lead character a Mary Sue? If yes, it's probably bad. Is the lead character an irresistible vampire, were-wolf, were-tiger, were-lemur, were-panda, were-hippo with magic powers? If yes, you should have known already not to read the Anita Blake books.
Where did you get the source code?
Not Cleveland, then?
If you really think that Brooks's Law means that having one full-time developer working on Parrot wouldn't improve our velocity over zero full-time developers working on Parrot, I hope you never manage any software project I care about.
The same way you finish any other project: you decide which features it'll have, then you implement them.
I take Google's "beta" label as warning that they don't want to guarantee that their software will work, that it won't eat your data, and that they won't suddenly remove a bunch of features you like. Likewise, I have a silly notion that an 18,000 person company with gigabucks of resources should be able to get a handful of projects to that state in several years -- given a healthy dose of reality in its project management.
I don't know how many paid, full-time Parrot developers you think there are, but I guarantee that Google has several orders of magnitude more.
You'd think an 18,000 person company would be able to release a finished project once in a while.
Acquisitions.
Very little of the interesting GUI and IO stuff in Mac OS X has anything to do with Unix. If the game uses OpenGL, that's a plus ... but input handling and sound will be very different on the Mac than it will be on a modern Unix-like machine (unless Blizzard uses some cross-platform portability libraries).
Which game was that, Blizzard v. Bnetd?
I'm skeptical. Sure, not having to worry (mostly) about memory leaks and uninitialized pointers lets non-expert programmers get things done without having to go through really difficult reasoning about resource usage, but it lets non-expert programmers get things done. That seems like a benefit.
You can argue -- and I might agree -- that having only mediocre programmers on a project is not a good idea. Yet I have confidence that any business which staffs an important project with only mediocre programmers would find other ways to fail if its programmers stumbled into the most brilliant code possible.
I just talked to a software guy at the JPL this morning. He said that the code on the Phoenix mission is all C. There's Java at ground control, but not on the spacecraft.
A decent garbage collector will handle that just fine -- better, often, than malloc/free.