Although clustering is no substitute for real software engineering, you can't get real reliability without redundant hardware, because hardware fails. I don't see any contradiction here; I think the points are unrelated.
JKH didn't "leave" FreeBSD any more than Jeremy Allison "left" SAMBA when VALinux laid him off. Nor any more than Linus "left" Linux when he went to work for Transmeta.
Apparently much of the open source community has no idea how open source projects actually function. Anyone who reads the FreeBSD mailing lists has seen major FreeBSD developers change jobs many times without losing their commitment to the project.
Apple is a profitable hardware manufacturer. It's no coincidence that none of the people calling for them to port OS X to the PC are Apple stockholders. It would be fiscal suicide.
It works pretty well, because users and developers have differing and sometimes incompatible needs. Users need a stable operating system whose behavior they can predict. But for the operating system to move forward, sometimes large changes need to be made, and they can't be made stable and predictable without some time for debugging. So the developers need a "sandbox" where they can do what they have to do and not worry about destroying users' expectations of stability.
OS X uses some code from FreeBSD, but it's not "build on FreeBSD" in the sense that Win 3.1 was built on DOS.
As others pointed out, the whole point of the BSD license is that the contributors are philosophically happy with having their code used in commercial products.
Man, the clueless Linux bigots are really out in force today.
It's drivel. FreeBSD is not dependent on corporations for development. FreeBSD-STABLE (4.x) will continue to be developed and supported; FreeBSD-CURRENT (5.x) will continue to be developed.
I don't think it's very likely that the BSDs will merge, but I believe I have noticed an increase in sharing of code and ideas between NetBSD and FreeBSD in the last couple of years. Needless to say, I think this is a Good Thing.
That's an excellent point. (And thank you for making the distinction between Stalinism and other forms of socialism/communism, a distinction that's too often obliterated due to anti-left ideology.)
A source in the NYS Attorney-General's office tells me that that type of thing is illegal but generally not considered harmful enough to go after (gov't lawyers generally being overworked).
I asked because I saw the same type of fraud on store.apple.com.
There's nothing inconsistent about condemning bad law while praising good administration of a good law.
I know libertarianism-soaked Slashdot doesn't like to think this way, but there does exist a middle ground between the positions of "laws are bad, mm-kay?" and "government is the answer to everything".
No, fraud and unfair business practices generally fall under the purview of the FTC, not the FCC. The FCC is "charged with regulating interstate and international communications by radio, television, wire, satellite and cable", according to their web site. They regulate the mechanisms themselves, not so much what people do using those mechanisms.
If Microsoft crashed and burned, the government could pick up the most significant source code during the bankruptcy sell-off and turn it over to the people.
(... and there'd be free sex and ice cream for everyone...)
Well yeah, and there aren't any free drinks, or scantily-clad women.
I did usually start to go slightly bugfuck after a few hours at that facility. When my job started to require that I spend a *lot* of time there, I started looking around for a new one.
I've seen what happens when a big telco tries to dumb down a NOC. It's ugly. Might be cost-effective in the long run, I don't know, but it sure is no fun.
IMO, what you got for your money was use of a tariffed form of access. So when your ISDN line breaks, you'll actually get it fixed. Not a bad deal, again IMO.
> [W]hat advantage is there to Linux over
> other OS's if everything that Linux does can
> be done by them as well, in a completely
> identical manner?
Now you're getting it! Open source is the graveyard of revenue-producing intellectual property -- when an idea is sufficiently well-understood and unencumbered by patents, it is implemented in open-source and thus commoditized.
Apple understands that unix's base functionality is no longer a source of proprietary advantage. That's why they weren't afraid to open their kernel and BSD userland source. But their graphics and user interface software contain real innovation and valuable proprietary ideas.
Open source software can provide considerable value to the world by providing a baseline. Part of the idea of BSD-licensed software is that no new implementation has any excuse for being worse than the BSD-licensed implementation, because they can use the BSD-licensed implementation with basically no strings attached.
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Although clustering is no substitute for real software engineering, you can't get real reliability without redundant hardware, because hardware fails. I don't see any contradiction here; I think the points are unrelated.
I guess so. Don't blame me, I didn't do it.
JKH didn't "leave" FreeBSD any more than Jeremy Allison "left" SAMBA when VALinux laid him off. Nor any more than Linus "left" Linux when he went to work for Transmeta.
Apparently much of the open source community has no idea how open source projects actually function. Anyone who reads the FreeBSD mailing lists has seen major FreeBSD developers change jobs many times without losing their commitment to the project.
It's pronounced "Oh Ess Ten".
Apple is a profitable hardware manufacturer. It's no coincidence that none of the people calling for them to port OS X to the PC are Apple stockholders. It would be fiscal suicide.
FreeBSD has worked this way for a long time.
It works pretty well, because users and developers have differing and sometimes incompatible needs. Users need a stable operating system whose behavior they can predict. But for the operating system to move forward, sometimes large changes need to be made, and they can't be made stable and predictable without some time for debugging. So the developers need a "sandbox" where they can do what they have to do and not worry about destroying users' expectations of stability.
Don't forget that Apple employs Mike Smith too, who's also on FreeBSD's Core Team.
Yahoo already employs at least one FreeBSD Core Team member, Peter Wemm.
OS X uses some code from FreeBSD, but it's not "build on FreeBSD" in the sense that Win 3.1 was built on DOS.
As others pointed out, the whole point of the BSD license is that the contributors are philosophically happy with having their code used in commercial products.
Man, the clueless Linux bigots are really out in force today.
This is "insightful"?
It's drivel. FreeBSD is not dependent on corporations for development. FreeBSD-STABLE (4.x) will continue to be developed and supported; FreeBSD-CURRENT (5.x) will continue to be developed.
I don't think it's very likely that the BSDs will merge, but I believe I have noticed an increase in sharing of code and ideas between NetBSD and FreeBSD in the last couple of years. Needless to say, I think this is a Good Thing.
That's an excellent point. (And thank you for making the distinction between Stalinism and other forms of socialism/communism, a distinction that's too often obliterated due to anti-left ideology.)
Corporatism isn't Orwellian -- Orwell's dystopia was a socialist one. It's more like _Brave New World_ than like _1984_. So it's, uh, Huxleian.
A source in the NYS Attorney-General's office tells me that that type of thing is illegal but generally not considered harmful enough to go after (gov't lawyers generally being overworked).
I asked because I saw the same type of fraud on store.apple.com.
Bah.
Fraud and criticism are different types of activities and they receive correspondingly different levels of First Amendment protection.
That's not hypocrisy, it's common sense.
Fraud is fraud, whether it's perpetrated over the phone, the web, in print, or in person.
There's nothing inconsistent about condemning bad law while praising good administration of a good law.
I know libertarianism-soaked Slashdot doesn't like to think this way, but there does exist a middle ground between the positions of "laws are bad, mm-kay?" and "government is the answer to everything".
No, fraud and unfair business practices generally fall under the purview of the FTC, not the FCC. The FCC is "charged with regulating interstate and international communications by radio, television, wire, satellite and cable", according to their web site. They regulate the mechanisms themselves, not so much what people do using those mechanisms.
If Microsoft crashed and burned, the government could pick up the most significant source code during the bankruptcy sell-off and turn it over to the people.
...)
(... and there'd be free sex and ice cream for everyone
Back in the heyday of IBM, the government wasn't afraid to enforce the law.
...
Times have changed
Well yeah, and there aren't any free drinks, or scantily-clad women.
I did usually start to go slightly bugfuck after a few hours at that facility. When my job started to require that I spend a *lot* of time there, I started looking around for a new one.
I used to compare Exodus/J.C. to a casino ... with no clocks and no sunlight, it's really easy to lose track of time.
I've seen what happens when a big telco tries to dumb down a NOC. It's ugly. Might be cost-effective in the long run, I don't know, but it sure is no fun.
IMO, what you got for your money was use of a tariffed form of access. So when your ISDN line breaks, you'll actually get it fixed. Not a bad deal, again IMO.
> [W]hat advantage is there to Linux over
> other OS's if everything that Linux does can
> be done by them as well, in a completely
> identical manner?
Now you're getting it! Open source is the graveyard of revenue-producing intellectual property -- when an idea is sufficiently well-understood and unencumbered by patents, it is implemented in open-source and thus commoditized.
Apple understands that unix's base functionality is no longer a source of proprietary advantage. That's why they weren't afraid to open their kernel and BSD userland source. But their graphics and user interface software contain real innovation and valuable proprietary ideas.
Open source software can provide considerable value to the world by providing a baseline. Part of the idea of BSD-licensed software is that no new implementation has any excuse for being worse than the BSD-licensed implementation, because they can use the BSD-licensed implementation with basically no strings attached.
Apple is putting unixalike machines on the desks of every Mac user in the world, and you're concerned about this hurting Linux's market share?
Don't quit your day job to be a strategic consultant, is all I can say.