Except that *all* these forks have a consistent problem: there is no commercial license available. [...] The GPL is a bit "too free" (or too restrictive, depending on your definition of free) to be palatable.
The real problem is Chrome is not open source. It's a proprietary, binary blob that is based on open source. If Microsoft released a hypothetical browser based on Chromium, let's call it Crummium, it would be exactly the same thing, but without the Googly-woogly "trust us, we're not evil" claim attached.
Given the amateurish origins and background of this community, there wasn't much emphasis put on security, reliability, quality, maintainability and proper language features like static typing.
What a fucking joke you are. C and C++ are notorious for lack of "security, reliability, quality, maintainability". They allow all sorts of memory corruption. They have static typing, but it is weak. C is too low-level for doing common things, like string handling. C++ is too damn complex. People were absolutely right to use languages like Perl and PHP instead of C and C++ for the web.
Which is pretty expensive for a computer these days. I recently built one from Newegg parts about six months ago for around $200 (motherboard, cpu, ram, case, and power supply). I don't use it for games, so I rely on the integrated graphics, but I could always throw in a cheap "last-gen" card if I wanted to, and still come nowhere near your price.
I remember when Sun sued Microsoft on the same grounds (an incomplete implementation.)
It wasn't just an incomplete implementation. They provided Microsoft alternatives to what they didn't implement. They also put Microsoft extensions into the java.* namespace. The whole thing was Microsoft's way of vendor lock-in.
The really stupid thing is that Microsoft could have added these extensions *as extensions*, putting stuff into their own namespace and implementing the standard Java way of doing things, like IBM did.
The interface was a huge improvement, but so were there search results.
I used to use Altavista before.
So did I. I remember looking through pages and pages of AltaVista search results hoping to find what I was looking for. After using Google for a while, I rarely had to look past the first page.
I also used to use Yahoo as a directory service when I wasn't looking for something more specific with AltaVista. Google took over that too.
or admit that you're a corporate whore who will do anything for money
Yang should have admitted that then, because at first he was just demanding more money, and after Ballmer called his bluff, he tried to woo him back. Like the old joke, we've already established that Yang is a whore, the rest is just haggling over price.
you are 'encouraged' to be always online, you have to deal with authorizations to even dream about playing offline on some shitty guest account (your progress on your account and on guest are separate so you'd have to start campaign from scratch)
This doesn't appear to be true. From what I can tell by reading this thread, you are required to authenticate online initially and every 30 days after that. It appears there is/was a bug (they say they have a patch, but I don't know if it is released yet) that if your machine changes it's hostname when offline, the authentication doesn't stick.
They had to reconcile free software with someone, somewhere (not even necessarily themselves) making money, because that is the greatest societal good.
Even Stallman never had a problem with people making money on software, as long as the source was distributed, modifiable, and redistributable in modified form. The problem, from a libertarian point of view, is being required to distribute source code.
That said, I highly doubt that the original open source founders were driven by libertarian views, but rather by pragmatism and not being outright hostile to those who wanted to follow the closed source model.
People can be rude on any side of an argument. And sometimes people really don't know what they are talking about. There's no need to downmod because you don't like somebody's tone.
There's just way too much downmodding going on, and most of it boils down to "I vehemently disagree".
Slashdot is prone to groupthink on certain issues, and global warming is one of them. How do you know this? When reasonable arguments are downmodded, whether it is for or against an issue.
I used to be firmly in the global warming camp. Then enough bad science got exposed that I no longer trust the consensus. When the leak came out, the tide shifted in the skeptical direction for a bit. Lately, though, it has gone firmly back to the "denier!" stage.
Better yet, make it a machine. Put money into the machine. Play it until you run out of lives. Do you want to continue? Put more money into the machine.
Now we just need to come up with a name for this device...
Who, ultimately, cares one way or another whether our species survives or expires?
Most people, I would suspect. We're all aware of our finite existence and want something of ourselves to carry on. That starts with caring about our children, and continues on to ever larger organizations until you get to the species itself.
What price should the coffee be? As a daily coffee drinker, I go back and forth whether it makes more sense for me to spend $2 a day at Starbucks or a similar place (all the prices are about the same), or spend $10-12 plus $1.50 for pint of cream and brew at home which lasts about a week.
I think the price should be whatever the market will bear. However, based on home brewing prices, it costs less than $4 for a can of coffee, which amounts to 30 18 ounce servings. That's $60 vs $4. I don't know what kind of coffee you buy that costs $10-$12 a week, but it sounds like a bunch of overpriced bullshit.
Slashdot Mirror
Except that *all* these forks have a consistent problem: there is no commercial license available. [...] The GPL is a bit "too free" (or too restrictive, depending on your definition of free) to be palatable.
Is that you, Monty?
The fact that MySQL sucks as bad as it does...
Ok, I guess not :)
The real problem is Chrome is not open source. It's a proprietary, binary blob that is based on open source. If Microsoft released a hypothetical browser based on Chromium, let's call it Crummium, it would be exactly the same thing, but without the Googly-woogly "trust us, we're not evil" claim attached.
Given the amateurish origins and background of this community, there wasn't much emphasis put on security, reliability, quality, maintainability and proper language features like static typing.
What a fucking joke you are. C and C++ are notorious for lack of "security, reliability, quality, maintainability". They allow all sorts of memory corruption. They have static typing, but it is weak. C is too low-level for doing common things, like string handling. C++ is too damn complex. People were absolutely right to use languages like Perl and PHP instead of C and C++ for the web.
I say this as somebody who prefers static typing.
Total price was ~950$
Which is pretty expensive for a computer these days. I recently built one from Newegg parts about six months ago for around $200 (motherboard, cpu, ram, case, and power supply). I don't use it for games, so I rely on the integrated graphics, but I could always throw in a cheap "last-gen" card if I wanted to, and still come nowhere near your price.
I remember when Sun sued Microsoft on the same grounds (an incomplete implementation.)
It wasn't just an incomplete implementation. They provided Microsoft alternatives to what they didn't implement. They also put Microsoft extensions into the java.* namespace. The whole thing was Microsoft's way of vendor lock-in.
The really stupid thing is that Microsoft could have added these extensions *as extensions*, putting stuff into their own namespace and implementing the standard Java way of doing things, like IBM did.
The interface was a huge improvement, but so were there search results.
I used to use Altavista before.
So did I. I remember looking through pages and pages of AltaVista search results hoping to find what I was looking for. After using Google for a while, I rarely had to look past the first page.
I also used to use Yahoo as a directory service when I wasn't looking for something more specific with AltaVista. Google took over that too.
or admit that you're a corporate whore who will do anything for money
Yang should have admitted that then, because at first he was just demanding more money, and after Ballmer called his bluff, he tried to woo him back. Like the old joke, we've already established that Yang is a whore, the rest is just haggling over price.
He's not ripping anybody off. That's the free market at work.
If you don't inform others of your trademark, you are not defending it.
If nobody infringes on the trademark, and you have established usage, then there is no need to "defend" it.
you are 'encouraged' to be always online, you have to deal with authorizations to even dream about playing offline on some shitty guest account (your progress on your account and on guest are separate so you'd have to start campaign from scratch)
This doesn't appear to be true. From what I can tell by reading this thread, you are required to authenticate online initially and every 30 days after that. It appears there is/was a bug (they say they have a patch, but I don't know if it is released yet) that if your machine changes it's hostname when offline, the authentication doesn't stick.
I'm talking about the latecomers, the late 90's OSI types
That's who I'm talking about as well. You say libertarian, I say pragmatist.
They had to reconcile free software with someone, somewhere (not even necessarily themselves) making money, because that is the greatest societal good.
Even Stallman never had a problem with people making money on software, as long as the source was distributed, modifiable, and redistributable in modified form. The problem, from a libertarian point of view, is being required to distribute source code.
That said, I highly doubt that the original open source founders were driven by libertarian views, but rather by pragmatism and not being outright hostile to those who wanted to follow the closed source model.
You don't REALLY need to CAPITALIZE words so FREQUENTLY to make your point.
Don't pretend like you care about every person who dies, if you did you'd be in a continual state of massive grief.
I do, but it's counter-balanced by all the new born births. It's a net positive!
People can be rude on any side of an argument. And sometimes people really don't know what they are talking about. There's no need to downmod because you don't like somebody's tone.
There's just way too much downmodding going on, and most of it boils down to "I vehemently disagree".
You call this progress? I call it a big fat advertisement for would-be fraudsters. "Make millions! Pay $10k and do no jail time years later!"
Debtor's prison does not exist in the US
Did you know that if you bounce a check at the casinos in Vegas they'll throw you in prison if you can't pay your debts?
They could also carry nuclear weapons.
Rubbish. They carry giant magnifying glasses so they can burn you like ants.
There's a fine line between disagree and flame bait/troll.
There really isn't. People just need to stop assuming bad faith and let people speak their mind:
Do you know how some people get angry during an argument and call people morons? That's what the "troll" word has become online.
Slashdot is prone to groupthink on certain issues, and global warming is one of them. How do you know this? When reasonable arguments are downmodded, whether it is for or against an issue.
I used to be firmly in the global warming camp. Then enough bad science got exposed that I no longer trust the consensus. When the leak came out, the tide shifted in the skeptical direction for a bit. Lately, though, it has gone firmly back to the "denier!" stage.
Better yet, make it a machine. Put money into the machine. Play it until you run out of lives. Do you want to continue? Put more money into the machine.
Now we just need to come up with a name for this device...
Surface Tension, 1952.
Who, ultimately, cares one way or another whether our species survives or expires?
Most people, I would suspect. We're all aware of our finite existence and want something of ourselves to carry on. That starts with caring about our children, and continues on to ever larger organizations until you get to the species itself.
What price should the coffee be? As a daily coffee drinker, I go back and forth whether it makes more sense for me to spend $2 a day at Starbucks or a similar place (all the prices are about the same), or spend $10-12 plus $1.50 for pint of cream and brew at home which lasts about a week.
I think the price should be whatever the market will bear. However, based on home brewing prices, it costs less than $4 for a can of coffee, which amounts to 30 18 ounce servings. That's $60 vs $4. I don't know what kind of coffee you buy that costs $10-$12 a week, but it sounds like a bunch of overpriced bullshit.
The discussion is not about how to stop climate change. We simply don't have the technology to do so.
But we do. There have been a few ideas put forth about artificially cooling the Earth, and people are starting to look at them seriously.