I don't think that it is a big deal for *this* particular distribution. Red Hat, yes. But Mandriva is based outside the US (no clue what % of Mandriva Club users are in the States), and has never really recovered the high position it once held. It's like an Ubuntu you pay for.
The problem isn't even the USPTO; it's the damn federal court system. These jokers have been screwing the works up for decades (Diamond v. Diehr comes to mind), and the USPTO has little choice but to comply.
Mainly because the FreeBSD kernel is the "Heinz 57" of software licenses. CDDL? Sure, why not? Binary-only? Go right ahead! I'm surprised they haven't stuck the nVidia display driver in there for x86.
I'd question whether or not kernel v. userland is arbitrary in the case of Linux. Linus didn't pull the syscalls out of his ass, he got them from POSIX. To assert that any POSIX-compatible app is a derived work of the Linux kernel just because it happens to be running there is quite absurd.
This really doesn't make a difference in the case of FUSE, considering that it needs special kernel functionality to be able to do its thing...
Wouldn't cellulosic ethanol be a more viable use for hemp than biodiesel? It seems there's considerably more cellulose to the average hemp plant than oily seed matter.
Personally, I think that the docs are the "make or break" point for FreeBSD, as well as BSD in general. Very well laid out and well written top-level stuff, the online man pages are excellent, and the GNU man/info schizophrenia is generally limited to the toolchain.
Sadly, I think that's the problem with an "easy to use" FreeBSD: The differences that matter for those of us who love the system really aren't going to matter to someone new to *nix. It's just like having an Ubuntu box.
It depends on the BSD release. PC-BSD, being based on FreeBSD, has DRI/DRM support in the kernel. The 9750XT (presumably a Radeon R300-based card, the 9700 is) *could* work with DRI using the open source r300 drivers, but not optimally. ATI/AMD does not make their fglrx driver available for *BSD. I'm not sure whether or not the FreeBSD kernel has the most recent DRI code, and I know that unless it was released in the past few weeks, PC-BSD is still based on Xorg 6.9, so I can see it being behind on 3d acceleration. the GP mentioned gaming).
I'm largely in agreement with the Objectivist "orthodoxy" in regards to Libertarianism, but that alone is no reason to withhold them a vote; otherwise, I'd never vote for *any* party. The main reason I won't vote Libertarian at this point is that on their absolute best day, assuming someone like Ron Paul (did you really think he was aiming for the Republican nod?) gets the nomination, all that online campaining and all those "Ron Paul in '08" sigs pay off, he'll *maybe* swing enough votes to throw the election into the House. I feel that the Republicans winning another presidential election is a threat to my freedom; therefore, I must support a candidate that is capable of defeating them. I may not like the candidate in question, the thought of voting for that particular candidate may make me unwell for days on end, but I have to do it.
No, she's not Dagny by any means. It ultimately boils down to the few differences between the mainstream political parties: The GWoT and the religious base of the Republican party.
As far as the war goes, the Republican approach does not help us, and probably hurts us considerably. In 2003 I was for invasion, with the thought that we would be wrapped up within a few weeks and be able to move on into Iran or Syria. (I think going into either of these countries first would have been a better idea, but if it was Iraq or nothing, Iraq it was, for the simple value a show of force would have had at the time). 4 years later, our troops are still in the area dying for the altruistic goal of letting the Iraqis vote themselves into theocracy, Iran's becoming more and more belligerent (and we're NEGOTIATING with them, just showing that compromise is the fine art of cutting your own throat to save your enemies the expense), and Syria's apparently gearing up for a blockbuster summer war with Israel. Long story short, the Republicans lack the moral courage to stand down the mullahs and do what is needed to ensure our security, and are therefore no better than the Democrats in this particular regard.
The second difference breaks down into underlying philosophy. The Democrats really have none at this point. The Marxist underpinnings of the party have been disproven in the real world, and few besides Gore are committed to going fully Green (not to mention that the Greens will probably be high and dry when "doomsday fatigue" sets in again). There's just a sort of freewheeling pragmatism occasionally wrapped up in "class struggle" overtones. (Notice how all the bad things the Republicans predicted would happen during the Clinton regime didn't).
The Republicans, on the other hand, seem to be becoming more and more theocratic. Christianity cannot be proven or disproven in the real world, and the pressure to integrate politics into Christian philosophy is becoming stronger and stronger (Some Dems, like Obama, pay lip service to religion, but they have a *long* way to go in that particular regard). Even the "fiscally conservative" wing of the party has by and large fallen to the Christianists.
So I guess it boils down to: both parties are a threat, but the Democrats are the less imminent one.
But seriously, I think that's what PC-BSD already does. Really, there's not a whole lot of difference in package management across the board; everyone's still installing, deleting, or upgrading packages, and almost all of them handle dependencies. Are BSD's tools in the same degree of usability as APT/Synaptic? No. Can I get what I need within a short amount of time? Undoubtedly.
If it could be traced to MS, or a decision on MS's part, cause MS to lose control of that particular patent due to GPL section 7, or
Be one Hell of an affirmative defense for any suspected infringer
Supposedly, Novell's already tried this with an OpenOffice OOXML plugin. The OOXML debacle seems more outright confusing than obviously in bad faith (getting it standardized by ECMA/ISO, as MS has planned, pretty much involves giving up on associated patent royalties, IIRC).
Really, what did you expect? The boxed desktop Linux market just isn't there; it wasn't there in '98 when venture capitalists were tripping over themselves trying to throw money at Linux anything, and it isn't there now. Novell had to move into the enterprise to keep SuSE alive; ditto with Linspire and OEM's. Unlike Canonical or SPI, Red Hat has to make money, both in the short and long term.
I recall him mentioning the same on the Distrowatch comments board. I had pegged Mandriva as the next to go, given their desktop focus and weakness in recent years. Really, what's left besides hobbyist distros now?
BSD's really aren't package management heavy; they've got programs for installing and removing packages, and scripts to upgrade, but that's about it. The BSD's generally focus around *ports* instead of packages, which are more like Gentoo's ebuilds; the user downloads the framework from CVS, executes the script, and the port downloads source code and compiles a binary package which is then installed. It's probably not as robust or as simple as APT, but allows for more customization. (For the record, there is something called PC-BSD out there that supposedly uses a more Linux-like package management interface; it's supposedly one of the most easy-to-install and easy-to-use systems out there, according to some pointy-hat I couldn't be bothered to remember the name of).
The real genius of the BSD way, IMO, is the separation of the base system from the package manager. Whenever I've had troubles with upgrades on Linux, it's usually on account of the kernel, glibc, or some essential library. With the BSD's these components are compiled and installed as a whole.
The version of the GPL included with the Linux kernel states at the top:
NOTE! This copyright does *not* cover user programs that use kernel
services by normal system calls - this is merely considered normal use
of the kernel, and does *not* fall under the heading of "derived work".
Not sure how far back this clarification really goes, but I think it predates the GPLv2-only one, making it at least six years old.
There's no rights given back or forth; it's strictly a promise not to inquire or initiate legal action. Not to mention that the FSF or any other party taking action against these companies on behalf of GPLv2 violations undercuts half the case for GPLv3.
It seems more like an Alford plea to me. NOVL/etc pay the money without admitting any wrongdoing, and MS doesn't look any further. Just to play devil's advocate, how many of the tech companies out there that x-license patents bother to list each and every one? I know the "FUD" angle is being played here against community Linux, though.
Congratulating Red Hat on not licensing with MS, however, is like congratulating them on not cutting their own throat. They're probably the closest thing out there to corporate subsidized "community Linux" out there (there's Ubuntu and Debian, but for the most part they're in a strictly "downstream" role) and the backlash from something like this would kill them dead. The average person who purchases SuSE/Linspire/Xandros in a box probably doesn't give a shit about a MS cross license; the average person purchasing RHEL more than likely does.
Anyone want to take bets on the next one to give in? So far, Ubuntu and Red Hat have ruled out "partnership", Adam Williamson mentioned on Distrowatch that Mandriva would give an official statement to the same extent shortly, Debian's obviously out, and most of the "techie" distros are probably beneath MS's radar.
That's it, more or less. The lesser of two (or three) evils. In this case, the Dems are evil, yet philosophically bankrupt (except for a few closet Reds running around covered in Green paint). The Republicans are evil, but their Christianist philosophy is getting stronger and stronger. The Libertarians are too hopelessly subjective, and really have no chances of winning anyways.
Actually, it's more center (or even center-left) and center-right. Bush and friends are much less conservative than you'd think, especially in the economic area. The whole war thing probably isn't a very liberal thing, but he's just following in the grand tradition of Harry Truman (Korea), as well as John Kennedy and Lyndon Johnson (Vietnam).
The tax cuts and deregulation are largely a joke. Even independent of the war, Bush has been a bigger liberal than some of the liberals, running wild with the government Visa card. Just look at his "education reform". Or the convenient absence of the "Social Security reform" that was once a campaign promise. He's not fighting the welfare state, he's feeding it. The tax cuts are good, I'll admit, but our tax burden is still higher than it was under the Clinton administration; they are not a substitute for sound fiscal policy. So, economically the conservatives are no better than the liberals now.
Clinton I had the advantage of a real Republican congress (as opposed to the welfare-statist "compassionate conservatives" that have taken control of the party since 2000) for the last six years of his term, and that undoubtedly had something to do with his fiscal restraint. As for foreign policy, he didn't notice the terrorism threat, but then again, neither did Carter, Reagan, or Bush I.
I'll vote for Hillary in 2008 if that is what it takes to keep the theocrats from pushing their agenda, but I have no illusions about what she'll do to this country in the long run if unchecked.
Slashdot Mirror
I don't think that it is a big deal for *this* particular distribution. Red Hat, yes. But Mandriva is based outside the US (no clue what % of Mandriva Club users are in the States), and has never really recovered the high position it once held. It's like an Ubuntu you pay for.
That was an intentional decision by the MPAA to allow movies to skip the panel entirely and rate themselves.
I thought DSL *was* a hobbyist distro. Besides, we all know that SPI will more than likely never enter into agreement with Microsoft.
Where have *you* been the past 140 years?
The problem isn't even the USPTO; it's the damn federal court system. These jokers have been screwing the works up for decades (Diamond v. Diehr comes to mind), and the USPTO has little choice but to comply.
Mainly because the FreeBSD kernel is the "Heinz 57" of software licenses. CDDL? Sure, why not? Binary-only? Go right ahead! I'm surprised they haven't stuck the nVidia display driver in there for x86.
I'd question whether or not kernel v. userland is arbitrary in the case of Linux. Linus didn't pull the syscalls out of his ass, he got them from POSIX. To assert that any POSIX-compatible app is a derived work of the Linux kernel just because it happens to be running there is quite absurd.
This really doesn't make a difference in the case of FUSE, considering that it needs special kernel functionality to be able to do its thing...
Wouldn't cellulosic ethanol be a more viable use for hemp than biodiesel? It seems there's considerably more cellulose to the average hemp plant than oily seed matter.
Personally, I think that the docs are the "make or break" point for FreeBSD, as well as BSD in general. Very well laid out and well written top-level stuff, the online man pages are excellent, and the GNU man/info schizophrenia is generally limited to the toolchain.
Sadly, I think that's the problem with an "easy to use" FreeBSD: The differences that matter for those of us who love the system really aren't going to matter to someone new to *nix. It's just like having an Ubuntu box.
It depends on the BSD release. PC-BSD, being based on FreeBSD, has DRI/DRM support in the kernel. The 9750XT (presumably a Radeon R300-based card, the 9700 is) *could* work with DRI using the open source r300 drivers, but not optimally. ATI/AMD does not make their fglrx driver available for *BSD. I'm not sure whether or not the FreeBSD kernel has the most recent DRI code, and I know that unless it was released in the past few weeks, PC-BSD is still based on Xorg 6.9, so I can see it being behind on 3d acceleration. the GP mentioned gaming).
I'm largely in agreement with the Objectivist "orthodoxy" in regards to Libertarianism, but that alone is no reason to withhold them a vote; otherwise, I'd never vote for *any* party. The main reason I won't vote Libertarian at this point is that on their absolute best day, assuming someone like Ron Paul (did you really think he was aiming for the Republican nod?) gets the nomination, all that online campaining and all those "Ron Paul in '08" sigs pay off, he'll *maybe* swing enough votes to throw the election into the House. I feel that the Republicans winning another presidential election is a threat to my freedom; therefore, I must support a candidate that is capable of defeating them. I may not like the candidate in question, the thought of voting for that particular candidate may make me unwell for days on end, but I have to do it.
No, she's not Dagny by any means. It ultimately boils down to the few differences between the mainstream political parties: The GWoT and the religious base of the Republican party.
As far as the war goes, the Republican approach does not help us, and probably hurts us considerably. In 2003 I was for invasion, with the thought that we would be wrapped up within a few weeks and be able to move on into Iran or Syria. (I think going into either of these countries first would have been a better idea, but if it was Iraq or nothing, Iraq it was, for the simple value a show of force would have had at the time). 4 years later, our troops are still in the area dying for the altruistic goal of letting the Iraqis vote themselves into theocracy, Iran's becoming more and more belligerent (and we're NEGOTIATING with them, just showing that compromise is the fine art of cutting your own throat to save your enemies the expense), and Syria's apparently gearing up for a blockbuster summer war with Israel. Long story short, the Republicans lack the moral courage to stand down the mullahs and do what is needed to ensure our security, and are therefore no better than the Democrats in this particular regard.
The second difference breaks down into underlying philosophy. The Democrats really have none at this point. The Marxist underpinnings of the party have been disproven in the real world, and few besides Gore are committed to going fully Green (not to mention that the Greens will probably be high and dry when "doomsday fatigue" sets in again). There's just a sort of freewheeling pragmatism occasionally wrapped up in "class struggle" overtones. (Notice how all the bad things the Republicans predicted would happen during the Clinton regime didn't).
The Republicans, on the other hand, seem to be becoming more and more theocratic. Christianity cannot be proven or disproven in the real world, and the pressure to integrate politics into Christian philosophy is becoming stronger and stronger (Some Dems, like Obama, pay lip service to religion, but they have a *long* way to go in that particular regard). Even the "fiscally conservative" wing of the party has by and large fallen to the Christianists.
So I guess it boils down to: both parties are a threat, but the Democrats are the less imminent one.
Sounds good. Go do it.
But seriously, I think that's what PC-BSD already does. Really, there's not a whole lot of difference in package management across the board; everyone's still installing, deleting, or upgrading packages, and almost all of them handle dependencies. Are BSD's tools in the same degree of usability as APT/Synaptic? No. Can I get what I need within a short amount of time? Undoubtedly.
I think such an injection would either:
Supposedly, Novell's already tried this with an OpenOffice OOXML plugin. The OOXML debacle seems more outright confusing than obviously in bad faith (getting it standardized by ECMA/ISO, as MS has planned, pretty much involves giving up on associated patent royalties, IIRC).
Really, what did you expect? The boxed desktop Linux market just isn't there; it wasn't there in '98 when venture capitalists were tripping over themselves trying to throw money at Linux anything, and it isn't there now. Novell had to move into the enterprise to keep SuSE alive; ditto with Linspire and OEM's. Unlike Canonical or SPI, Red Hat has to make money, both in the short and long term.
I recall him mentioning the same on the Distrowatch comments board. I had pegged Mandriva as the next to go, given their desktop focus and weakness in recent years. Really, what's left besides hobbyist distros now?
BSD's really aren't package management heavy; they've got programs for installing and removing packages, and scripts to upgrade, but that's about it. The BSD's generally focus around *ports* instead of packages, which are more like Gentoo's ebuilds; the user downloads the framework from CVS, executes the script, and the port downloads source code and compiles a binary package which is then installed. It's probably not as robust or as simple as APT, but allows for more customization. (For the record, there is something called PC-BSD out there that supposedly uses a more Linux-like package management interface; it's supposedly one of the most easy-to-install and easy-to-use systems out there, according to some pointy-hat I couldn't be bothered to remember the name of).
The real genius of the BSD way, IMO, is the separation of the base system from the package manager. Whenever I've had troubles with upgrades on Linux, it's usually on account of the kernel, glibc, or some essential library. With the BSD's these components are compiled and installed as a whole.
The version of the GPL included with the Linux kernel states at the top:
Not sure how far back this clarification really goes, but I think it predates the GPLv2-only one, making it at least six years old.
They're 4-F.
There's no rights given back or forth; it's strictly a promise not to inquire or initiate legal action. Not to mention that the FSF or any other party taking action against these companies on behalf of GPLv2 violations undercuts half the case for GPLv3.
It seems more like an Alford plea to me. NOVL/etc pay the money without admitting any wrongdoing, and MS doesn't look any further. Just to play devil's advocate, how many of the tech companies out there that x-license patents bother to list each and every one? I know the "FUD" angle is being played here against community Linux, though.
Congratulating Red Hat on not licensing with MS, however, is like congratulating them on not cutting their own throat. They're probably the closest thing out there to corporate subsidized "community Linux" out there (there's Ubuntu and Debian, but for the most part they're in a strictly "downstream" role) and the backlash from something like this would kill them dead. The average person who purchases SuSE/Linspire/Xandros in a box probably doesn't give a shit about a MS cross license; the average person purchasing RHEL more than likely does.
Anyone want to take bets on the next one to give in? So far, Ubuntu and Red Hat have ruled out "partnership", Adam Williamson mentioned on Distrowatch that Mandriva would give an official statement to the same extent shortly, Debian's obviously out, and most of the "techie" distros are probably beneath MS's radar.
That's it, more or less. The lesser of two (or three) evils. In this case, the Dems are evil, yet philosophically bankrupt (except for a few closet Reds running around covered in Green paint). The Republicans are evil, but their Christianist philosophy is getting stronger and stronger. The Libertarians are too hopelessly subjective, and really have no chances of winning anyways.
Actually, it's more center (or even center-left) and center-right. Bush and friends are much less conservative than you'd think, especially in the economic area. The whole war thing probably isn't a very liberal thing, but he's just following in the grand tradition of Harry Truman (Korea), as well as John Kennedy and Lyndon Johnson (Vietnam).
The tax cuts and deregulation are largely a joke. Even independent of the war, Bush has been a bigger liberal than some of the liberals, running wild with the government Visa card. Just look at his "education reform". Or the convenient absence of the "Social Security reform" that was once a campaign promise. He's not fighting the welfare state, he's feeding it. The tax cuts are good, I'll admit, but our tax burden is still higher than it was under the Clinton administration; they are not a substitute for sound fiscal policy. So, economically the conservatives are no better than the liberals now.
Clinton I had the advantage of a real Republican congress (as opposed to the welfare-statist "compassionate conservatives" that have taken control of the party since 2000) for the last six years of his term, and that undoubtedly had something to do with his fiscal restraint. As for foreign policy, he didn't notice the terrorism threat, but then again, neither did Carter, Reagan, or Bush I.
I'll vote for Hillary in 2008 if that is what it takes to keep the theocrats from pushing their agenda, but I have no illusions about what she'll do to this country in the long run if unchecked.