Open source vs Microsoft vs public domain

[Malcolm McLean]

Personally I've got mixed feeling about Open Source. It's nice to have
software for free. On the other hand, the Microsoft monopoly meant
that you generally had software of high quality. I know that there are
always irritating niggles, but that's in the nature of GUIs. With Open
Office the niggles and glitches are worse.

However whenever I release source code onto the web, I always do so as
public domain rather than GPL. The reason is that an important set of
users is programmers in for-profit environments. Often those companies
are small and the profits only just enough to keep them in business.
don't see any purpose in excluding them, other than to create what
Bill Gates called a "viral licence" (anything touched by Open Source
becomes open source), which has the potential to damage paid-for-
software, which is why Gates is so rattled.

 

[Tom St Denis]

Personally I've got mixed feeling about Open Source. It's nice to have
software for free. On the other hand, the Microsoft monopoly meant
that you generally had software of high quality.

I was with you, feeling the vibe, digging your sentiment, until this
last sentence. MSFT software is high quality? Since when?

I know that there are
always irritating niggles, but that's in the nature of GUIs. With Open
Office the niggles and glitches are worse.

No glitches in Windows ... none at all. And MS IE is CSS3
compliant...

However whenever I release source code onto the web, I always do so as
public domain rather than GPL. The reason is that an important set of
users is programmers in for-profit environments. Often those companies
are small and the profits only just enough to keep them in business.
don't see any purpose in excluding them, other than to create what
Bill Gates called a "viral licence" (anything touched by Open Source
becomes open source), which has the potential to damage paid-for-
software, which is why Gates is so rattled.

Gates [well more so Balmer] hates OSS because it tears into the need
to buy their software. Before Linux came around [or BSD] your x86 PC
basically ran DOS and only DOS [and/or windows on top]. Linux and BSD
give you the ability to use your PC with other software they don't own
or control.

And sadly, instead of embracing the TECHNOLOGICAL merits of a proper
*NIX and POSIX environment they choose to go their own way the entire
time.

And none of this has anything to do with clc.

Tom

 

[Seebs]

Personally I've got mixed feeling about Open Source. It's nice to have
software for free. On the other hand, the Microsoft monopoly meant
that you generally had software of high quality.

lolwut?

I don't think I've had more than one or two remotely positive experiences
with Microsoft's software in the last twenty years. I get better, faster,
service from open source people. Once upon a time, I was at a megacorp
that had a high-end Microsoft support contract. We reported a bug in Word
to them. It was a simple, clear, unambiguous bug. They explained that,
when they said they supported "TIFF", they meant that there were a few TIFF
files they read, but that they did not support the several year old current
standard or have any plans ever to do so.

I know that there are
always irritating niggles, but that's in the nature of GUIs. With Open
Office the niggles and glitches are worse.

This utterly fails to match my experience. I've had worse troubles trying
to migrate files between MS Office and MS Office than I have with basically
anything else ever. I was obliged to use MS Office for a book recently, and
every version available to me (Office XP, Office 2007, Office 2008) was
catastrophically awful in various ways, with massive data loss bugs, random
UI quirks such as permanently losing focus, and so on. All of which was
consistently reported by other people when I compared notes with them; it
wasn't just me.

However whenever I release source code onto the web, I always do so as
public domain rather than GPL. The reason is that an important set of
users is programmers in for-profit environments. Often those companies
are small and the profits only just enough to keep them in business.
don't see any purpose in excluding them, other than to create what
Bill Gates called a "viral licence" (anything touched by Open Source
becomes open source), which has the potential to damage paid-for-
software, which is why Gates is so rattled.

I'm making decent money working on GPLd software. It's not particularly hard
to make money on Open Source. The notion that it prevents people from
using it in for-profit products is 100% FUD. It is not true, and it is
not consistent with observed reality. Furthermore, only some Open Source
licenses have that viral effect, and many other choices exist.

-s

 

[jacob navia]

Le 21/12/10 21:45, Seebs a écrit :

Personally I've got mixed feeling about Open Source. It's nice to have
software for free. On the other hand, the Microsoft monopoly meant
that you generally had software of high quality.

lolwut?

I don't think I've had more than one or two remotely positive experiences
with Microsoft's software in the last twenty years.
[snip]

I'm making decent money working on GPLd software.

Ahhhh ok. Look, I am making money with propietary software (iPhone,
Apple Mac).

And I will not start telling here the horror stories that I had
with linux...

It suffices to remember to all GPLed people here that malloc never
fails in some implementations of linux. They always give you
memory.

Obviously if they give you more than what the machine has, they
will randomly crash some process to make space.

This is open source design in all its beauty. I remember that dicussion
that we had right in this newsgroup.

Consequence: is ALL linux bad?

No. They have good features, they have really bad features, they have a
lot of software that is not bad but not good either.

As anything. Microsoft has its horrors, and even if I am working for
Apple now, I KNOW they have THEIR horrors too.

THERE IS NO SILVER BULLET and that you are making money with linux,
Seebs, doesn't make it better ok?

Why do we have to SELL OUT when we work for something? I do not try to
tell anyone that the iphone is the best thing since baked bread was
invented even if I like Apple. I earned money with linux too, and
earned money with windows. But I am not a "Windows is the best" guy,
nor I am evangelizing Linux or Apple.

In fact, I do not evangelize anything, maybe because I am atheist at
heart (as we have also discussed here in this newsgroup remember?
I PROVED the inexistence of god!)



have a good night Seebs, and dream of open source

 

[JohnF]

I've got mixed feeling about Open Source.
It's nice to have software for free.
However I release source code as public domain rather than GPL.
The reason is that an important set of
users is programmers in for-profit environments. Often those companies
are small and the profits only just enough to keep them in business.
don't see any purpose in excluding them

GPL doesn't (necessarily) exclude them. Read it (more carefully).
All code I release publicly is GPL'ed. That means I retain themy code with the library of congress), and anyone who uses it
is >>licensed<< to use it under the terms and conditions of the GPL.
To repeat: I retain the >>copyright<<, users are >>licensed<< by me
under the GPL.
Now the good part vis-a-vis potential closed-source users.
As the copyright holder I can also license my code any other
way I want. That is, the GPL allows everybody to use code freely
under the open source terms of the GPL. But if you want to use
my GPL'ed code in some closed source app, then just pay me for a
license to use my source in any non-GPL way that we contractually
agree on. No problem at all.

 

[Tom St Denis]

It suffices to remember to all GPLed people here that malloc never
fails in some implementations of linux. They always give you
memory.

Obviously if they give you more than what the machine has, they
will randomly crash some process to make space.

That can only happen from a Kernel process and only with special types
of allocation [general kmalloc can fail].

Why do we have to SELL OUT when we work for something? I do not try to
tell anyone that the iphone is the best thing since baked bread was
invented even if I like Apple. I earned money with linux too, and
earned money with windows. But I am not a "Windows is the best" guy,
nor I am evangelizing Linux or Apple.

Um what? Not everyone who works in "Linux" [which distro?] are solely
in one platform. Remember an OS is a tool, not a religion. You can
use multiple OSes at once. heck my macbook has a VM on it just for
that.

Tom

 

[Seebs]

That can only happen from a Kernel process and only with special types
of allocation [general kmalloc can fail].

No, it's an option for userspace -- the famous "OOM killer". It's
optional. Some people turn it off because it is a really stupid
policy in some cases.

-s

 

[Mark Wooding]

No, it's an option for userspace -- the famous "OOM killer". It's
optional. Some people turn it off because it is a really stupid
policy in some cases.

And in other cases it's very sensible. Unix has a problem with fork(2):
in principle, fork(2) requires enough spare virtual memory for a
complete copy of the process's data segment; in theory, this is
needlessly pessimistic and most forked processes share most of their
pages with their parents. One therefore has a choice between poor
memory utilization and the risks of overcommitment.

Overcommitment seems like a valid choice in some (especially fairly
constrained) environments. Programs which /assume/ that systems will
overcommit are unequivocally wrong, though.

-- [mdw]

 

[TonyMc]

I PROVED the inexistence of god!)

I imagine God was quite rattled by that. Bless you Jacob, as a
philosopher and theologian you make a satisfactory software vendor.

Tony

 

[Malcolm McLean]

This is sarcastic ...
No glitches in Windows ... none at all.  And MS IE is CSS3
compliant...

We need to define our terms:

A niggle is where the software works as designed but not as wanted. An
example is lack of PDF support in most versions of Word - obviously a
deliberate Microsoft policy to try to reduce use of a format they
don't control. Another example is automatic numbering - usually you
want to number 1 2 3 4 5 and so on, but quite often you want some
other scheme, like 2 3 5 7 11. It's surprising how often this happens,
and the software insists on renumbering in steps of one. Infuriating.

A glitch is where the software doesn't work as designed. Glitches are
far less common than niggles in Microsoft software, although to be
fair to you until recently Windows did use to crash much more often
than Linux. For some reason it's easier for a Windows program to take
down the system.

And none of this has anything to do with clc.

No, it's a pacifier thread.

 

[jacob navia]

Le 22/12/10 15:35, TonyMc a écrit :

I imagine God was quite rattled by that.

Obviously he will be very proud of me.
because...

suppose there is an all powerful being (othewise known as "god")
QUESTION:

Can he forget?

EITHER

He can't forget, then it is not all powerful because there is ONE thing
he can't do: forget

OTHERWISE
He can forget. OK, but then... he can't remember what he has forgotten!
Then, he is not "all powerful" either.

The existence of an "all powerful" being is a contradiction in itself.

There is NO GOD no hell, no angels, there is NO REASON to screw your
life with the collective hysteria called religion.

Bless you Jacob, as a
philosopher and theologian you make a satisfactory software vendor.

Tony

Did I sold YOU anything?

Or is it that you just despise people that earn their life working?
Anybody that works must sell his work force. Yes, I am software
vendor if you want.

Happy Christmas Tony, from somebody that doesn't celebrate anything in
that day.

 

[Malcolm McLean]

Le 22/12/10 15:35, TonyMc a écrit :



Obviously he will be very proud of me.
because...

suppose there is an all powerful being (othewise known as "god")
QUESTION:

Can he forget?

EITHER

He can't forget, then it is not all powerful because there is ONE thing
he can't do: forget

OTHERWISE
He can forget. OK, but then... he can't remember what he has forgotten!
Then, he is not "all powerful" either.

The existence of an "all powerful" being is a contradiction in itself.

What you are saying is "Can God change His own nature?". The answer is
no. Gods can't change their nature whilst remaining the same, just as
gods can't create married batchelors or circles with angles.
A logical contraction doesn't acquire meaning because we prefix "God
can ..." to it.

 

[jacob navia]

Le 22/12/10 16:37, Malcolm McLean a écrit :

What you are saying is "Can God change His own nature?". The answer is
no. Gods can't change their nature whilst remaining the same, just as
gods can't create married batchelors or circles with angles.
A logical contraction doesn't acquire meaning because we prefix "God
can ..." to it.

Yes, so the existence of an "all powerful" being is impossible.

Can he make a stone so heavy that he himself can't lift it?

Same answer.

In this time of the year religious propaganda skyrockets, and the
atheists feel forced to keep low profile...

Well NO.

And anyway, this god (if he exists) created me as atheist isn't it?

It's his fault then!

He shouldn't have created atheists in the first place.

 

[Seebs]

And in other cases it's very sensible. Unix has a problem with fork(2):
in principle, fork(2) requires enough spare virtual memory for a
complete copy of the process's data segment; in theory, this is
needlessly pessimistic and most forked processes share most of their
pages with their parents. One therefore has a choice between poor
memory utilization and the risks of overcommitment.

Good point. That's a noticably different case from the malloc-never-fails
model, but turns out to be technically equivalent.

-s

 

[Seebs]

Another example is automatic numbering - usually you
want to number 1 2 3 4 5 and so on, but quite often you want some
other scheme, like 2 3 5 7 11. It's surprising how often this happens,
and the software insists on renumbering in steps of one. Infuriating.

A glitch is where the software doesn't work as designed. Glitches are
far less common than niggles in Microsoft software,

What the !@#*!@# are you smoking?

Just take the auto-numbering case. I've never, ever, seen it work correctly
for nested documents. Ever. It renumbers things horribly.

although to be
fair to you until recently Windows did use to crash much more often
than Linux.

It still does.

For some reason it's easier for a Windows program to take
down the system.

That would be because everything I've seen from them has, at every technical
level, been garbage. Their specifications are garbage, and they are then
implemented badly.

Look at it this way: Consider the famed Microsoft variant of "Hungarian".
It's a bug to begin with, and they *mandated* it, meaning that all their
programs were full of useless clutter making it harder to see the actual
program, and distracting people with irrelevancies. They built a system
for ensuring that logical type mismatches would be missed because of the
strong cues telling you that things were "compatible". What did they
get? Exactly what they asked for; buggy code.

It's stuff like this that makes it very hard for me to comprehend where
you're coming from or what experiences you're having and reporting on.
Reading your posts about software quality or the nature of bugs feels
like peering into a strange parallel universe where the laws of physics
are subtly different. It's like reading posts where someone explains
that one of the reasons that giraffes are so much more popular as pets
than cats are is that they're easier to transport.

-s

 

[D. Stussy]

Personally I've got mixed feeling about Open Source. It's nice to have
software for free. On the other hand, the Microsoft monopoly meant
that you generally had software of high quality. I know that there are
always irritating niggles, but that's in the nature of GUIs. With Open
Office the niggles and glitches are worse....

"[T]he Microsoft monopoly meant that you generally had software of high
quality."

What are you smoking? It has been quite clear for some time that it's of
lesser quality.

 

[Kenny McCormack]

Personally I've got mixed feeling about Open Source. It's nice to have
software for free. On the other hand, the Microsoft monopoly meant
that you generally had software of high quality. I know that there are
always irritating niggles, but that's in the nature of GUIs. With Open
Office the niggles and glitches are worse....

"[T]he Microsoft monopoly meant that you generally had software of high
quality."

What are you smoking? It has been quite clear for some time that it's of
lesser quality.

I suppose it depends entirely on your own personal definition of
"quality". You could ask 20 people to define it and you'd get 20
different answers.

By some metrics, MS software is very good. By others, well, not so much...

--
Is God willing to prevent evil, but not able? Then he is not omnipotent.
Is he able, but not willing? Then he is malevolent.
Is he both able and willing? Then whence cometh evil?
Is he neither able nor willing? Then why call him God?
~ Epicurus

 

[Nick Keighley]

Since pretty much whenever. Yuo can complain about viruses all you want

yes, And I do. The prevalence of virii is BIG black mark against
Microsoft. The whole anti-virus industry is a wrong headed. The OS
should be resistant to malware in the first place. Belatedly Microsoft
are taking security seriously but they have a way to go yet.

but Win 7 and XP are damn stable.

I'm a fan of Vista despite the panning it received. I really did like
XP.

Office is the clear market leader. Its
certainly no worse than anything else.

damning with faint praise. Word can behave in some very strange ways
sometimes.

I don't agree that it *has* to be that way. GUIs are just software and
we shouldn't just accept crap because thats all we've seen.

Zzzzz. You sound like a zealot. IE6 was a dog. But then so were previous
versions of Firefox etc.

no glitches in windows...

Gates [well more so Balmer] hates OSS because it tears into the need
to buy their software.  Before Linux came around [or BSD] your x86 PC

Except it hasn't. OSS accounts for probably less than 1% of home OSen
and almost no one uses Open Office.

I do. I won't pay for Word for home use.


<snip>

 

[Nick Keighley]

Le 22/12/10 15:35, TonyMc a écrit :



Obviously he will be very proud of me.
because...

suppose there is an all powerful being (othewise known as "god")
QUESTION:

Can he forget?

EITHER

He can't forget, then it is not all powerful because there is ONE thing
he can't do: forget

OTHERWISE
He can forget. OK, but then... he can't remember what he has forgotten!
Then, he is not "all powerful" either.

this is too feeble to labelled sophomoric. And it's off-topic to boot.
Try reading up on Aquinus if you're going to take theology/philosophy
seriously.

<snip>

 

[Nick Keighley]

Le 22/12/10 16:37, Malcolm McLean a écrit :







Yes, so the existence of an "all powerful" being is impossible.

Can he make a stone so heavy that he himself can't lift it?

Same answer.

In this time of the year religious propaganda skyrockets, and the
atheists feel forced to keep low profile...

can't say I'd noticed. Seem to be more propaganda trying to get me to
buy smelly things and people whining that "the spirit of chrsitmas has
disappeared".

Well NO.

And anyway, this god (if he exists) created me as atheist isn't it?

It's his fault then!

He shouldn't have created atheists in the first place.

you may consider me to be an atheists but God regards me as the loyal
opposition.