Keep in mind that proprietary Java programs may be developed and run under a GPL'd Java system.
Says who? If you write software that links with a GPL'ed library, you must distribute your software under the GPL. I see no reason why that should be any different for Java libraries.
Some market niche meaning...the vast majority of server side web development right now?
Really? That doesn't seem plausible to me. Where are the number to back up that claim? And is that in terms of number of programmers or number of installations?
The exception has nothing to do with the act of running the software, as the GPL allows you to run the software freely, and no exception is necessary to grant you that right over and over again.
Correct. But you can't run the software if nobody distributes it to you. And under the GPL, people can do that only if they comply with the license. Now, if Debian wants to distribute non-GPL Java applications that link together with a set of GPL libraries, then they are violating the GPL. Furthermore, if I develop software against a GPL'ed library and then distribute it, my software may fall under the terms of the GPL.
I very much hope that it is Sun's intent not to contaminate Java applications that happen to be run on their platform with the GPL; not even GNU does that. But, for the time being, that's what it is.
Furthermore, regardless of what the reason for the exception is, the fact is that Classpath has the exception and Sun's code may not, which means that Classpath cannot incorporate Sun's source code without someone changing their license.
Swing/AWT is not slow, it's just that there are lots of incompetent programmers out there making Java look bad.
If lots of programmers produce slow, bloated code with a platform, then the platform is at fault, not the programmers.
The plattform Look'n Feel is improving with every release, 1.6 beta2 looks nice in GNOME and XP for me.
It doesn't look quite native under Gnome. But far worse is that it doesn't behave like a native Gnome application.
What other choise do we have? [...] Mono? Still lacking many 2.0 features!
Application programmers for Mono directly use Gnome and Linux APIs; whether Mono is.NET 2.0 compatible doesn't make any difference to most open source developers.
I realy think this move will put more pressure on Microsoft, hopefully (in my dream) they will release.NET/C# opensource too.
Microsoft doesn't implement the Mono APIs, so it doesn't make much of a difference whether they open source their implementation or not.
Just to keep up with Java.
If Java is indeed open sourced under the strict GPL, then there is nothing to "keep up with": a GPL-licensed Java implementation is useless. Even the official GNU Classpath implementation is GPL+linking exception.
Most likely, the open source Java efforts and Mono will be unaffected by recent events; both the Microsoft/Novell deal and the Java GPL release are publicity stunts without any real significance.
Linux has no GUI standards to speak of, and most Java programs are pretty easy to use anyway, so that is no problem.
You can find the Gnome GUI standards here. The fact that Java programmers don't know them and don't follow them just is an expression of their arrogance and hubris. And the consequence is that Java isn't much used on Linux desktops and likely never will be.
Thinking about it, this is probably pretty much useless. GNU Classpath and other open source Java libraries have a special exception to the GPL, see here. That exception is there because without it, the only software that man people could run with an open source Java implementation would be GPL'ed software. Realistically, that would make an open source Java implementation largely useless, since so much Java code out there is not under the GPL.
If Sun's source code is released under the plain GPL without that exception, then it is largely useless. Sun's JVM and libraries could be reused as part of FOSS implementations, but FOSS Java already has better implementations anyway. The big parts of Sun Java that would have been useful are Swing, but those can't be incorporated into Classpath if Sun doesn't have the exception.
My guess is that Sun has deliberately chosen not to include the exception, in an effort to appear open but deliver little of real value.
The problem with Java on Linux isn't just the license, it's technological: poor platform integration, slow GUI, etc. Java applications feel foreign and violate HIGs on Linux and on other platforms. And neither Sun nor SWT have been able to fix that.
Java will continue to be what it is--a cross-platform tool for some market niche. The window of opportunity where it could take over the world has passed.
Basically, it should be much the same as it is right now - anyone can make a compatible VM (though now they can build it off the original code) - but it has to meet up with Suns standards before they will give the go-ahead to call the thing Java.
That is not the way it is right now; right now, you cannot simply make a compatible VM no matter what you call it, due to Sun's copyrights, patents, and licensing restrictions. The fact that Sun has chosen not to sue Kaffe, GNU Classpath, and gcj doesn't change that fact. It remains to be seen what exactly the GPL release means, but I wouldn't jump to conclusions: Sun is smart and tricky when it comes to licenses.
You want to elucidate? I'm pretty sure that I didn't pay any music or copyright tax on the spindle of generic CD-RWs sitting next to my computer.
Legally, you are not supposed to use data disks to record copyrighted music.
but with larger computer hard drives and iPods, it's now virtually unnecessary. People can share, listen, and copy music without ever using a piece of blank physical media.
My point is that the US is not immune to this kind of legislation: it was in effect and effective for a decade (pre-CD) and may be updated to reflect new realities.
Let's wait and see until they release something. Given Sun's history, this may well be the "genuine GPL(*)" (*) with Sun enhancements. And I don't think anybody can say yet with certainty that the GPL is the right license.
Keep in mind that Sun's Solaris release was done in such a way as to be incompatible with Linux (of course, open source Solaris also has turned out to be largely irrelevant).
There are no patent "side deals" possible under the GPL. If there are any patents that a piece of GPL software is violating, then nobody can use that software anymore, regardless of who they got it from. And since it's pretty evident that any infringement would be at best unintentional and revenue loss would be difficult to establish, Microsoft can't get any damages from a lawsuit. So, if they assert a patent, then everybody would have to stop using whatever software they are talking about, and nobody would realistically have to pay--the deal is worthless.
So, why are they doing it? Maybe Novell did actually have some patents they wanted. But perhaps, more importantly, by getting licensing deals for their patents they (1) show that the patents are valuable, which may help them assert them, and (2) they create FUD in the market.
Mankiw was the guy who said that for the justice department to hold up the release of Windows 98 (or Windows ME or something) was like "throwing sands into the gears of progress". His argument was that because Windows is so economically successful, it is self-evident that it is technically superior and highly advanced, and that it was really not necessary for him to know anything about technology to make that determination. Obviously, his position and area of expertise (economics) had gone to his head.
Whether you should vote or not, and what the consequences of that are, is actually something people have studied. But, based on his publications, I think it's pretty evident that this is also not Mankiw's area of expertise.
The guy likes to talk a lot and use his academic credentials to lend credence to statements about subjects he should probably be considered little more than a smart layman in (kind of like your average Slashdot participant). Don't take his word for more than it's worth.
a discovery that may provide further evidence that ocean-dwelling mammals once lived on land.
As opposed to what? Falling from the sky? Being formed from clay by a divine being? Oh, I forgot, people actually believe that.
In any case, these vestigial legs provide little evidence that wasn't already well known: the DNA sequences leave no doubt that dolphins had land-dwelling ancestors.
How did Red Hat go about determining that their uncertainties were not an issue?
I don't know; presumably, they consulted their lawyers, and after a few months or years, they came back with the answer.
According to the language used in the announcement from Microsoft and Novell, only their customers are covered under whatever patent agreement those two corporations have set up (the specifics of which are said to be revealed later).
Such agreements are impossible under the GPL or LGPL. If there is an enforceable patent, then neither Novell nor RedHat can ship the software.
The details are missing, so no, it's not enough to explain what happened.
And my point is: there is nothing to explain. Companies don't ship software for all sorts of reasons. Your inference that this tells you anything about patents is bordering on the bizarre.
The simplest explanation is that RedHat simply wasn't interested in Mono. Now that Mono is an official language for Gnome and applications start being written in it, they are. That's why they did their legal research, like they probably do for everything, and started shipping it when they got the "all clear".
That particular site may not be very credible. But it does point out something important: today, some bureaucrat or politician with the right connections can effectively keep you in the country or out of it, whether you are a US citizen or not, without giving any reason and without any recourse. That wasn't the case 10 years ago. It's not just a question of privacy, it just invites abuse of government power, and it is just the sort of thing that the US Constitution was supposed to protect us from.
I don't think Bush has either the intention or wherewithal to abuse this power very much; but once these mechanisms are in place, any future administration can use them for nefarious purposes.
Could it possibly be that this regulation would not have the effect that the far left claims that it would have?
Yeah, it could be, in the sense that this regulation is just another step in a gradual ratcheting up of restrictions. But that doesn't change the fact that there has been a profound change since the Republicans have come to power, with little oversight, review, or understanding of the consequences--and with no indication that these regulations improve security or help curb illegal immigration.
I have flown to and from Europe for several decades now. The level of control that the US government has obtained over travel over the last few years is absolutely unprecedented in US history, and unparalleled among democratic societies. Today, every departure by any vessel to and from the US is recorded and analyzed, and the US can intervene on either end to prevent people from boarding, with essentially no legal recourse, or even any information about the reason. The change is absolutely mind-boggling.
What's your source on this--that Mono's.NET implementation has "no known patent violations"?
None have been submitted to the Mono bug tracker or mailing lists, none are described in the distribution, and there has been no lawsuit or threat of a lawsuit by Microsoft or Sun or anybody else.
If you know of a specific patent violation, please submit it to the Mono developers. However, suggesting that there might be without actually saying what they are is spreading FUD.
If you should manage to find one, please be clear about whether it is in the Microsoft.NET APIs (which are mostly not used by open source software, but are available for Mono) or in the FOSS APIs (which are the ones that count as far as FOSS development is concerned).
I remember an amazing silence from Red Hat when they went from not shipping Mono or Mono-based programs to shipping them in Fedora Core. I recall reading only one or two blog entries that said a full explanation was forthcoming, but nothing in detail materialized.
What is there for them to say? They were uncertain about the legal situation before, then they looked into it, and they decided that there wasn't a problem. Isn't that enough of an annoncement?
Mono solves the problem of running.net on Unix, but its legal status makes many people worried,
The legal situation with Mono's.NET implementation on Linux is far better than with Java: Mono is already an open source implementation, it has been carefully analyzed against Microsoft's patents for several years, and there are no known patent violations. Furthermore, most FOSS uses of Mono are not based on.NET at all, they are based on the Gnome APIs.
For Java, the situation is pretty sad: the only fully usable implementation is Sun's proprietary Java implementation, Sun has an extensive patent portfolio and other copyrights, and Sun has already legally threatened open source projects that didn't fit into their strategy. Furthermore, there are no real open source API alternatives to Sun's APIs: if you're using Java, it makes little sense to use anything other than Sun's sanctioned APIs.
thus Java is much heavier present in the enterprise, thus eventually it will get to the point of having as nice UI as WinForms from both visual and developer's perspective. The moment it happens, being a cross-platform Java will run on both Unix & Windows - not good for MS.
After 10 years of Java, all we get is AWT, Swing and GridBagLayout; what makes you think that Sun will ever be able to deliver a decent GUI toolkit? Gtk# is a better toolkit after barely 2 years than Sun has managed to produce in 10.
I refuse to pay money to Microsoft unless someone puts a gun to my head. I did pick up a copy of XP (the upgrade) for a neighbor and installed it from scratch using an old 98 CD that I had lying around to show that I could use the upgrade version.
So, you're playing right into Microsoft's hands. What Microsoft primarily cares about is that your neighbor is running Windows. Whether your neighbor paid $400, $150, or $0 is a secondary concern to them; they prefer $400, but they'll take $0.
It's exactly people like you that maintain the Microsoft monopoly. Tell your neighbor to pay the required price for Windows (and, yes, when you lose your CD and license, you must buy a new copy). Refuse to install a version that he doesn't clearly own. Observing Microsoft's copyrights and licenses to the letter is not only prudent, it's the right thing to do if you care about having a competitive market. Violating Microsoft's licenses isn't an act of civil disobedience, it is a contribution to their differential pricing schemes; they love it when you do that.
I haven't paid for Windows since Win95, (or, at least, more than $5-$10 for the college issue). Microsoft seems to be content with opening a back door
Yes: that's a "differential pricing" strategy: you charge everybody as much as they are willing to pay for the product. It undermines market and competition mechanisms.
It will also force more people to side with me, and effectively refuse to pay the rediculous amount of money, but admit that we are dependant on a microsoft OS because of its interoperability with 90% of the programs most computer-savvy people need to survive their day-to-day lives.
You don't "refuse to pay", you simply become a Microsoft customer at a lower price and thereby support their operating system monopoly. If everybody Windows user actually had to pay the average Windows price (say, $150), you'd see Windows market share plummet and all the interoperability and software availability arguments you make would fall apart.
If you don't want Windows to continue having a near monopoly, you have to switch to some other platform for your day-to-day work; there is no easy shortcut. It matters less whether you send the money for it to Microsoft, what matters is that in those interactions with other "computer-savvy people", you behave like a non-Microsoft user.
If switching from Windows is too hard, at least switch to open source applications on Windows as much as possible: use OpenOffice and complain to people when they send you files you can't read. It's the latter part that breaks the monopoly.
By getting agreements that Microsoft won't assert patents, Microsoft manages to create the appearance that they actually have valid patents; these sorts of agreements are a way spreading FUD.
To be quite clear: this deal doesn't hold water and it doesn't protect anybody from anything, not even SuSE users. Should Microsoft selectively assert any patent against GPL'ed software that SuSE ships, then SuSE users won't be able to use that software anymore either because the GPL prohibits redistributing software that a third party has patent claims on. That was a deliberate decision in the GPL, with the specific goal to prevent just these kinds of selective deals.
In reality, there are no known, valid Microsoft patent claims that are violated by software SuSE ships; if there were, the sofware would already have been changed.
Too many of the design decisions of the kernel and even common user space have remained the way they are in order to maintain compatibility and make Linux a better server.
Like what?
You have a very interesting definition of "obsolete." It [OpenStep, Cocoa] provides superior functionality that Linux has not yet managed. Until there is something better, it is not obsolete.
Like what?
Its true OS X could use better package management, but that has nothing to do with OpenStep.
You're right that it doesn't, but you made the connection, not me.
The tiny amount of extra space means nothing on the desktop compared to the ease of use. Its thinking like this that is part of what keeps Linux from advancing. Clinging to and defending outdated, inferior ways of doing things to save an insignificant amount of disk space on a desktop makes no sense. Saving space on a server image, maybe.
It's not a question of space, it's a question of consistency and usability. Asking users to manually manage software versions, and to do so through an interface that's different for each software package, is inconsistent and hard to use.
And Apple itself knows that package management is important: they give you Software Update. It's just that Apple hasn't figured out how to extend the benefits of Software Update to all applications, while Linux has.
And yet it is there and shows superior integration between different applications.
Stuff that's in the services menu has simple, natural equivalents using cut-and-paste; it simply isn't needed.
You not liking the UI in no way removes that advantage.
It's not a question of preference; the Services menu is objectively broken.
If functionality is hard to use, remove it. Brilliant!
Yes, that's what makes a good UI: remove badly implemented features if there is a reasonable equivalent, and there is. In fact, in addition to cut-and-paste equivalents, UNIX-like systems provide filtering through command pipes.
Right now OS X wins on commercial software availability, application portability, services, GUI/CLI integration, interface consistency, and ease of upgrades.
That's your opinion, but for each of those points, you're either wrong, or the point is simply not a meaningful advantage.
Upgrading my mac laptop to a new machine, including the VM takes me several days of work less time than just upgrading a kubuntu machine. I don't know about you, but there are a lot of things I can get done in that time.
Upgrading Ubuntu requires answering "Yes" to the question of "There is a new release of the OS available; would you like to upgrade now?" Generally, that's all you need to do: all the applications and packages will get upgraded, and they will get upgraded consistently.
Upgrading the Mac usually blows away several bits of the system, and afterwards, one spends days dealing with, and upgrading, software that doesn't quite work with the new OS release. So, yes, there are better things to do than fiddle with software installations and management, and that's why I use Linux for the heavy lifting and the Mac for playing iTunes.
In the future, that won't be necessary, as archaeologists are replaced by anthropologists that mine this treasure trove for data.
We have plenty of written records (letters, diaries, commmentaries, commercial documents, etc.) of daily life from most periods of history, including Rome, Greece, the Middle Ages, and 150 years ago. Archaeologists still dig because those records are not sufficient by themselves.
Wikipedia will be useful to archaeologists, and it will provide information that other sources won't, but it won't obviate the need for digging. And, I suspect, our E-mail records, chat transcripts, surveillance recordings, webcams, and other traces will be far more interesting for understanding daily life than Wikipedia.
Slashdot Mirror
Keep in mind that proprietary Java programs may be developed and run under a GPL'd Java system.
Says who? If you write software that links with a GPL'ed library, you must distribute your software under the GPL. I see no reason why that should be any different for Java libraries.
Some market niche meaning...the vast majority of server side web development right now?
Really? That doesn't seem plausible to me. Where are the number to back up that claim? And is that in terms of number of programmers or number of installations?
The exception has nothing to do with the act of running the software, as the GPL allows you to run the software freely, and no exception is necessary to grant you that right over and over again.
Correct. But you can't run the software if nobody distributes it to you. And under the GPL, people can do that only if they comply with the license. Now, if Debian wants to distribute non-GPL Java applications that link together with a set of GPL libraries, then they are violating the GPL. Furthermore, if I develop software against a GPL'ed library and then distribute it, my software may fall under the terms of the GPL.
I very much hope that it is Sun's intent not to contaminate Java applications that happen to be run on their platform with the GPL; not even GNU does that. But, for the time being, that's what it is.
Furthermore, regardless of what the reason for the exception is, the fact is that Classpath has the exception and Sun's code may not, which means that Classpath cannot incorporate Sun's source code without someone changing their license.
Swing/AWT is not slow, it's just that there are lots of incompetent programmers out there making Java look bad.
.NET 2.0 compatible doesn't make any difference to most open source developers.
.NET/C# opensource too.
If lots of programmers produce slow, bloated code with a platform, then the platform is at fault, not the programmers.
The plattform Look'n Feel is improving with every release, 1.6 beta2 looks nice in GNOME and XP for me.
It doesn't look quite native under Gnome. But far worse is that it doesn't behave like a native Gnome application.
What other choise do we have? [...] Mono? Still lacking many 2.0 features!
Application programmers for Mono directly use Gnome and Linux APIs; whether Mono is
I realy think this move will put more pressure on Microsoft, hopefully (in my dream) they will release
Microsoft doesn't implement the Mono APIs, so it doesn't make much of a difference whether they open source their implementation or not.
Just to keep up with Java.
If Java is indeed open sourced under the strict GPL, then there is nothing to "keep up with": a GPL-licensed Java implementation is useless. Even the official GNU Classpath implementation is GPL+linking exception.
Most likely, the open source Java efforts and Mono will be unaffected by recent events; both the Microsoft/Novell deal and the Java GPL release are publicity stunts without any real significance.
Linux has no GUI standards to speak of, and most Java programs are pretty easy to use anyway, so that is no problem.
You can find the Gnome GUI standards here. The fact that Java programmers don't know them and don't follow them just is an expression of their arrogance and hubris. And the consequence is that Java isn't much used on Linux desktops and likely never will be.
Thinking about it, this is probably pretty much useless. GNU Classpath and other open source Java libraries have a special exception to the GPL, see here. That exception is there because without it, the only software that man people could run with an open source Java implementation would be GPL'ed software. Realistically, that would make an open source Java implementation largely useless, since so much Java code out there is not under the GPL.
If Sun's source code is released under the plain GPL without that exception, then it is largely useless. Sun's JVM and libraries could be reused as part of FOSS implementations, but FOSS Java already has better implementations anyway. The big parts of Sun Java that would have been useful are Swing, but those can't be incorporated into Classpath if Sun doesn't have the exception.
My guess is that Sun has deliberately chosen not to include the exception, in an effort to appear open but deliver little of real value.
The problem with Java on Linux isn't just the license, it's technological: poor platform integration, slow GUI, etc. Java applications feel foreign and violate HIGs on Linux and on other platforms. And neither Sun nor SWT have been able to fix that.
Java will continue to be what it is--a cross-platform tool for some market niche. The window of opportunity where it could take over the world has passed.
Basically, it should be much the same as it is right now - anyone can make a compatible VM (though now they can build it off the original code) - but it has to meet up with Suns standards before they will give the go-ahead to call the thing Java.
That is not the way it is right now; right now, you cannot simply make a compatible VM no matter what you call it, due to Sun's copyrights, patents, and licensing restrictions. The fact that Sun has chosen not to sue Kaffe, GNU Classpath, and gcj doesn't change that fact. It remains to be seen what exactly the GPL release means, but I wouldn't jump to conclusions: Sun is smart and tricky when it comes to licenses.
You want to elucidate? I'm pretty sure that I didn't pay any music or copyright tax on the spindle of generic CD-RWs sitting next to my computer.
Legally, you are not supposed to use data disks to record copyrighted music.
but with larger computer hard drives and iPods, it's now virtually unnecessary. People can share, listen, and copy music without ever using a piece of blank physical media.
My point is that the US is not immune to this kind of legislation: it was in effect and effective for a decade (pre-CD) and may be updated to reflect new realities.
Let's wait and see until they release something. Given Sun's history, this may well be the "genuine GPL(*)" (*) with Sun enhancements. And I don't think anybody can say yet with certainty that the GPL is the right license.
Keep in mind that Sun's Solaris release was done in such a way as to be incompatible with Linux (of course, open source Solaris also has turned out to be largely irrelevant).
There are no patent "side deals" possible under the GPL. If there are any patents that a piece of GPL software is violating, then nobody can use that software anymore, regardless of who they got it from. And since it's pretty evident that any infringement would be at best unintentional and revenue loss would be difficult to establish, Microsoft can't get any damages from a lawsuit. So, if they assert a patent, then everybody would have to stop using whatever software they are talking about, and nobody would realistically have to pay--the deal is worthless.
So, why are they doing it? Maybe Novell did actually have some patents they wanted. But perhaps, more importantly, by getting licensing deals for their patents they (1) show that the patents are valuable, which may help them assert them, and (2) they create FUD in the market.
Mankiw was the guy who said that for the justice department to hold up the release of Windows 98 (or Windows ME or something) was like "throwing sands into the gears of progress". His argument was that because Windows is so economically successful, it is self-evident that it is technically superior and highly advanced, and that it was really not necessary for him to know anything about technology to make that determination. Obviously, his position and area of expertise (economics) had gone to his head.
Whether you should vote or not, and what the consequences of that are, is actually something people have studied. But, based on his publications, I think it's pretty evident that this is also not Mankiw's area of expertise.
The guy likes to talk a lot and use his academic credentials to lend credence to statements about subjects he should probably be considered little more than a smart layman in (kind of like your average Slashdot participant). Don't take his word for more than it's worth.
Most countries (including the US) already have a "music tax"; you pay it on blank media.
a discovery that may provide further evidence that ocean-dwelling mammals once lived on land.
As opposed to what? Falling from the sky? Being formed from clay by a divine being? Oh, I forgot, people actually believe that.
In any case, these vestigial legs provide little evidence that wasn't already well known: the DNA sequences leave no doubt that dolphins had land-dwelling ancestors.
How did Red Hat go about determining that their uncertainties were not an issue?
I don't know; presumably, they consulted their lawyers, and after a few months or years, they came back with the answer.
According to the language used in the announcement from Microsoft and Novell, only their customers are covered under whatever patent agreement those two corporations have set up (the specifics of which are said to be revealed later).
Such agreements are impossible under the GPL or LGPL. If there is an enforceable patent, then neither Novell nor RedHat can ship the software.
The details are missing, so no, it's not enough to explain what happened.
And my point is: there is nothing to explain. Companies don't ship software for all sorts of reasons. Your inference that this tells you anything about patents is bordering on the bizarre.
The simplest explanation is that RedHat simply wasn't interested in Mono. Now that Mono is an official language for Gnome and applications start being written in it, they are. That's why they did their legal research, like they probably do for everything, and started shipping it when they got the "all clear".
That particular site may not be very credible. But it does point out something important: today, some bureaucrat or politician with the right connections can effectively keep you in the country or out of it, whether you are a US citizen or not, without giving any reason and without any recourse. That wasn't the case 10 years ago. It's not just a question of privacy, it just invites abuse of government power, and it is just the sort of thing that the US Constitution was supposed to protect us from.
I don't think Bush has either the intention or wherewithal to abuse this power very much; but once these mechanisms are in place, any future administration can use them for nefarious purposes.
Could it possibly be that this regulation would not have the effect that the far left claims that it would have?
Yeah, it could be, in the sense that this regulation is just another step in a gradual ratcheting up of restrictions. But that doesn't change the fact that there has been a profound change since the Republicans have come to power, with little oversight, review, or understanding of the consequences--and with no indication that these regulations improve security or help curb illegal immigration.
I have flown to and from Europe for several decades now. The level of control that the US government has obtained over travel over the last few years is absolutely unprecedented in US history, and unparalleled among democratic societies. Today, every departure by any vessel to and from the US is recorded and analyzed, and the US can intervene on either end to prevent people from boarding, with essentially no legal recourse, or even any information about the reason. The change is absolutely mind-boggling.
What's your source on this--that Mono's .NET implementation has "no known patent violations"?
.NET APIs (which are mostly not used by open source software, but are available for Mono) or in the FOSS APIs (which are the ones that count as far as FOSS development is concerned).
None have been submitted to the Mono bug tracker or mailing lists, none are described in the distribution, and there has been no lawsuit or threat of a lawsuit by Microsoft or Sun or anybody else.
If you know of a specific patent violation, please submit it to the Mono developers. However, suggesting that there might be without actually saying what they are is spreading FUD.
If you should manage to find one, please be clear about whether it is in the Microsoft
I remember an amazing silence from Red Hat when they went from not shipping Mono or Mono-based programs to shipping them in Fedora Core. I recall reading only one or two blog entries that said a full explanation was forthcoming, but nothing in detail materialized.
What is there for them to say? They were uncertain about the legal situation before, then they looked into it, and they decided that there wasn't a problem. Isn't that enough of an annoncement?
Mono solves the problem of running .net on Unix, but its legal status makes many people worried,
.NET implementation on Linux is far better than with Java: Mono is already an open source implementation, it has been carefully analyzed against Microsoft's patents for several years, and there are no known patent violations. Furthermore, most FOSS uses of Mono are not based on .NET at all, they are based on the Gnome APIs.
The legal situation with Mono's
For Java, the situation is pretty sad: the only fully usable implementation is Sun's proprietary Java implementation, Sun has an extensive patent portfolio and other copyrights, and Sun has already legally threatened open source projects that didn't fit into their strategy. Furthermore, there are no real open source API alternatives to Sun's APIs: if you're using Java, it makes little sense to use anything other than Sun's sanctioned APIs.
thus Java is much heavier present in the enterprise, thus eventually it will get to the point of having as nice UI as WinForms from both visual and developer's perspective. The moment it happens, being a cross-platform Java will run on both Unix & Windows - not good for MS.
After 10 years of Java, all we get is AWT, Swing and GridBagLayout; what makes you think that Sun will ever be able to deliver a decent GUI toolkit? Gtk# is a better toolkit after barely 2 years than Sun has managed to produce in 10.
I refuse to pay money to Microsoft unless someone puts a gun to my head. I did pick up a copy of XP (the upgrade) for a neighbor and installed it from scratch using an old 98 CD that I had lying around to show that I could use the upgrade version.
So, you're playing right into Microsoft's hands. What Microsoft primarily cares about is that your neighbor is running Windows. Whether your neighbor paid $400, $150, or $0 is a secondary concern to them; they prefer $400, but they'll take $0.
It's exactly people like you that maintain the Microsoft monopoly. Tell your neighbor to pay the required price for Windows (and, yes, when you lose your CD and license, you must buy a new copy). Refuse to install a version that he doesn't clearly own. Observing Microsoft's copyrights and licenses to the letter is not only prudent, it's the right thing to do if you care about having a competitive market. Violating Microsoft's licenses isn't an act of civil disobedience, it is a contribution to their differential pricing schemes; they love it when you do that.
I haven't paid for Windows since Win95, (or, at least, more than $5-$10 for the college issue). Microsoft seems to be content with opening a back door
Yes: that's a "differential pricing" strategy: you charge everybody as much as they are willing to pay for the product. It undermines market and competition mechanisms.
It will also force more people to side with me, and effectively refuse to pay the rediculous amount of money, but admit that we are dependant on a microsoft OS because of its interoperability with 90% of the programs most computer-savvy people need to survive their day-to-day lives.
You don't "refuse to pay", you simply become a Microsoft customer at a lower price and thereby support their operating system monopoly. If everybody Windows user actually had to pay the average Windows price (say, $150), you'd see Windows market share plummet and all the interoperability and software availability arguments you make would fall apart.
If you don't want Windows to continue having a near monopoly, you have to switch to some other platform for your day-to-day work; there is no easy shortcut. It matters less whether you send the money for it to Microsoft, what matters is that in those interactions with other "computer-savvy people", you behave like a non-Microsoft user.
If switching from Windows is too hard, at least switch to open source applications on Windows as much as possible: use OpenOffice and complain to people when they send you files you can't read. It's the latter part that breaks the monopoly.
3. The Virtualization argument is pointless. How many home users do virtualization?
Lots of Mac users and lots of Linux users do. And with Xen 3.0, even more will.
By getting agreements that Microsoft won't assert patents, Microsoft manages to create the appearance that they actually have valid patents; these sorts of agreements are a way spreading FUD.
To be quite clear: this deal doesn't hold water and it doesn't protect anybody from anything, not even SuSE users. Should Microsoft selectively assert any patent against GPL'ed software that SuSE ships, then SuSE users won't be able to use that software anymore either because the GPL prohibits redistributing software that a third party has patent claims on. That was a deliberate decision in the GPL, with the specific goal to prevent just these kinds of selective deals.
In reality, there are no known, valid Microsoft patent claims that are violated by software SuSE ships; if there were, the sofware would already have been changed.
Too many of the design decisions of the kernel and even common user space have remained the way they are in order to maintain compatibility and make Linux a better server.
Like what?
You have a very interesting definition of "obsolete." It [OpenStep, Cocoa] provides superior functionality that Linux has not yet managed. Until there is something better, it is not obsolete.
Like what?
Its true OS X could use better package management, but that has nothing to do with OpenStep.
You're right that it doesn't, but you made the connection, not me.
The tiny amount of extra space means nothing on the desktop compared to the ease of use. Its thinking like this that is part of what keeps Linux from advancing. Clinging to and defending outdated, inferior ways of doing things to save an insignificant amount of disk space on a desktop makes no sense. Saving space on a server image, maybe.
It's not a question of space, it's a question of consistency and usability. Asking users to manually manage software versions, and to do so through an interface that's different for each software package, is inconsistent and hard to use.
And Apple itself knows that package management is important: they give you Software Update. It's just that Apple hasn't figured out how to extend the benefits of Software Update to all applications, while Linux has.
And yet it is there and shows superior integration between different applications.
Stuff that's in the services menu has simple, natural equivalents using cut-and-paste; it simply isn't needed.
You not liking the UI in no way removes that advantage.
It's not a question of preference; the Services menu is objectively broken.
If functionality is hard to use, remove it. Brilliant!
Yes, that's what makes a good UI: remove badly implemented features if there is a reasonable equivalent, and there is. In fact, in addition to cut-and-paste equivalents, UNIX-like systems provide filtering through command pipes.
Right now OS X wins on commercial software availability, application portability, services, GUI/CLI integration, interface consistency, and ease of upgrades.
That's your opinion, but for each of those points, you're either wrong, or the point is simply not a meaningful advantage.
Upgrading my mac laptop to a new machine, including the VM takes me several days of work less time than just upgrading a kubuntu machine. I don't know about you, but there are a lot of things I can get done in that time.
Upgrading Ubuntu requires answering "Yes" to the question of "There is a new release of the OS available; would you like to upgrade now?" Generally, that's all you need to do: all the applications and packages will get upgraded, and they will get upgraded consistently.
Upgrading the Mac usually blows away several bits of the system, and afterwards, one spends days dealing with, and upgrading, software that doesn't quite work with the new OS release. So, yes, there are better things to do than fiddle with software installations and management, and that's why I use Linux for the heavy lifting and the Mac for playing iTunes.
In the future, that won't be necessary, as archaeologists are replaced by anthropologists that mine this treasure trove for data.
We have plenty of written records (letters, diaries, commmentaries, commercial documents, etc.) of daily life from most periods of history, including Rome, Greece, the Middle Ages, and 150 years ago. Archaeologists still dig because those records are not sufficient by themselves.
Wikipedia will be useful to archaeologists, and it will provide information that other sources won't, but it won't obviate the need for digging. And, I suspect, our E-mail records, chat transcripts, surveillance recordings, webcams, and other traces will be far more interesting for understanding daily life than Wikipedia.