Slashback: Switchover, EULA, Perspectives 240
It's the little things. Time for another cumulative patch for IE, it seems. (Mozilla may have its share of security problems, but at least there's a new build broken in unique and exciting ways more frequently :)). Logica writes with a snippet from this ZDNet article, which reads: "Microsoft released a collection of software fixes Monday to plug six security problems in its Internet Explorer browser, including one that could be exploited to take over a victim's computer."
"Users are urged to download the latest patch."
What happened to the tar-and-feather clause? djmurdoch writes "Back in January, Borland promised to come up with new EULAs without some objectionable terms. They've just posted the new EULAs. Gone are the anti-competitive product clause, the right to audit, and the requirement to give up a jury trial. They still have required registration, and you can't use a 2nd hand copy. They've added a requirement that it be licensed to one named user; you need extra licenses to share a copy. Not perfect, but a big improvement."
Keep in the loop as consolidation continues. craig writes: "AT&T Broadband has now posted instructions for their cable modem users to change their e-mail addresses from @mediaone.net to @attbi.com. The instructions have been posted here. The instructions seem to work, and my upgrade has been smooth.
The instructions have been posted on the web, but it looks like they have not been e-mailed to current AT&T Broadband subscribers. It is probably a good idea to follow these instructions before they are mailed to the masses, because chances are, this is migration is going to keep AT&T Broadband customer support very busy. The old @mediaone.net addresses will stop working on March 15, as was mentioned in this previous posting on Slashdot."
And although it's been said many times, many ways ... LiquidPC writes: "Apple's Ernest Prabhakar is reporting that BSD is now 3 times as popular on the desktop as Linux, largely thanks to MacOSX, of course. He also commented that Microsoft now has Office running on a Berkeley UNIX."
Oh for the old days of Borland's "as a book" terms (Score:5, Insightful)
I used to like Borland.
Re:Oh for the old days of Borland's "as a book" te (Score:1)
Re:Oh for the old days of Borland's "as a book" te (Score:2, Informative)
Re:Oh for the old days of Borland's "as a book" te (Score:2)
The original poster only lamented the loss of the book-license, and that he used to like Borland; he didn't say anything about charging for patches, that was the replier.
Re:Oh for the old days of Borland's "as a book" te (Score:3, Funny)
:)
--joshua
MS Office on Berkely Unix? (Score:2, Insightful)
Re:MS Office on Berkely Unix? (Score:2, Informative)
it did not say that the Berkeley Group had gotten MS Office to run on a UNIX.
Re:MS Office on Berkely Unix? (Score:2)
Of course, then you'll need to wrap a BSD interface around the Linux kernel API, and if you aren't running Linux/PPC you will only be able to run Office in a PPC-to-X emulator. So, maybe more work than it needs to be, but not for the reason you were thinking of.
I was going to ask what crack-smoking moderator bumped you down to -1, but this comment apparently hasn't been moderated. Oh well, trolls can ask good questions, too.
Re:MS Office on Berkely Unix? (Score:2, Informative)
Well, you might or might not have to rewrite the GUI code to get it working under Linux. MS Office for OSX is a Carbon-based app, and Carbon is a wrapper around the Cocoa system that emulates the OS9 GUI API. So all you would actually need to do (in that area) would be to write a wrapper around GNUStep that provides the same interface, and in theory it would work.
Sorry no, Carbon is not a wrapper around Cocoa. Carbon is a peer API layer to Cocoa. You could (in theory) remove Cocoa entirely from a Mac OS X machine and still run Carbon apps. Carbon is an entire operating system (Mac OS 9) written on top of Darwin. Essentially it uses Darwin as an advanced Hardware Abstraction Layer.
Carbon is a very complex piece of software. It is several million lines of mainly C code that took several hundred person-years of write. Reproducing that work would be highly non-trivial, especially as you don't have the full specs.
MSIE patch (Score:4, Informative)
This patch was mentioned in the recent MSN Messenger "virus" story. Just to recap, the "virus" was no virus at all, but just an exploitation of the old (as in, known since December) document.open bug in MSIE. This was fixed with Monday's patch [microsoft.com]. Everybody using IE should have installed this already, but those who haven't should do so [microsoft.com] now.
Re:MSIE patch (Score:3)
In other words, M$ don't consider this a critical update! Morons.
Re:MSIE patch (Score:2)
Re:MSIE patch (Score:2)
dave
Changing EULA's (Score:2)
I think the only valid condition is to remove clauses, or grant further rights, or not to persue breaches of existing conditions.
But then, I am not a lawyer.
Re:Changing EULA's (Score:2)
I often wonder about these EULAs... most apps do not give the user easy access to the agreement once it is accepted. As an example, here is the licensing agreement for IE, that I had to search for under help:
"Supplemental End User License Agreement for Microsoft Software Your use of Microsoft products is governed by the terms of the End User License Agreement (EULA), as well as by copyright law. The EULA is the contract regarding your use of the licensed product, and it grants you certain rights to use Microsoft software on your computer. To View the EULA for Internet Explorer If you are using Windows NT or Windows 98, you can view the EULA by double-clicking license.txt in the directory where you installed Internet Explorer. The default location for installing Internet Explorer is C:/Program Files/Internet Explorer. If you are using Windows Millennium Edition, Windows 2000, see Windows Help for more information about the EULA. Note If you are not sure where to find the EULA for Internet Explorer, you can search for license.txt, and then open the version of license.txt in the directory where you installed Internet Explorer. For more information about searching in Windows, see Windows Help. "
Now a text file isn't exactly the most secure way to store a "legal document."
The actual license of this "free" browser are, of course, more than mildly amusing.
It is also amusing how these EULAs usually refer to the "rights" of the user.... well these rights are generally the RIGHT TO USE THE PRODUCT! Imagine selling shoes that way...
Time for another cumulative patch for IE (Score:2, Flamebait)
Time for another cumulative patch for IE, this time covering 6 security holes found during the last week, including this one [slashdot.org]. Using that is like having "Come and get me, 'leet script kiddies" stamped on your forehead.
Misleading BSD Article (Score:4, Interesting)
Apple uses good code in MacOS X but it seems telling people *BSD is #1 is an attempt to keep the developer community busy working on Darwin so Apple remains the true victor.
So whats the progress of the Sorenson codec on non-OSX UNIX? How about Aqua themes? How is Apple helping me again?
Re:Misleading BSD Article (Score:2, Insightful)
Boohoo
If you want the Soreson codec then find someone to pony up the cold hard cash to license it. The developers put a lot of work into it and decided this is how they want it to go. That they didn't give it away - well hell that's their right. Apple saw it, liked it, ponied up the money to license it. No guns or extortion were involved.
On the other hand QuickTime is pretty much free to use and doesn't depend on the Sorenson codec, works with lots of codecs.
For that matter why aren't you bleating about MS and their licensed formats? Or Real?
Codecs are hard to build, require LOTS of work and yes those folks are loathe to give it away. Sorry - not everything is free and we don't live in a socialist economy.
As to Apple and it's Aqua theme - again they spent a lot of work developing their trade dress and yes have a right to defend it. Sorry it's soo nice, got develop your own look and quit trying to rip off others.
So how's Apple "helping" you? By giving away lots of their stuff. Not all of it - tough. If you disagree send me your car keys or is all property theft in your world?
Soo tired of the gimme-gimme-gimme whiners.
Re:Misleading BSD Article (Score:1)
If you want something for nothing, get FreeBSD. If you want somethging for money, get OS 10. That is what Apple did, they wanted Unix for nothing, so they took BSD code and forked.
Now if only we could train the hords of OS 10 users to not depend on the gui, we admins would be in good shape.
Re:Misleading BSD Article (Score:2)
Re:Misleading BSD Article (Score:1, Funny)
Because somebody figured out how to load x86 WMP codecs in Linux.
As soon as someone does the same for QuickTime, they'll shut up, because it's not really about the licence or the technology, it's about white middle-class boys being oppressed by not being able to watch advertisements for the latest outerspace or elf movie on every computer on the planet.
Re:Misleading BSD Article (Score:2)
Actually, we do. Ever heard of wellfare? Taxes? Roads built by the government? The US economic system is socialist, however, not to the extent that it is in Europe. We don't live in a communist economy, however.
Re:Misleading BSD Article (Score:1)
Re:Misleading BSD Article (Score:1)
Re:Misleading BSD Article (Score:2)
Free as in market?
or
Free as in Republic?
That's the important difference.
Re:Misleading BSD Article (Score:1)
I do wish people would get a basic grasp of socialism before they talk about it.
Welfare, taxation, and public works all predate both socialism and capitalism by millennia. You could find them all in ancient Rome.
Socialism is an economic system in which resources (capital) are controled by those who use them to do the work, as opposed to a government-appointed minority of owners, aka "capitalists". It comes in both statist and libertarian flavors.
It has nothing to do with welfare (socialists would argue that it's a band-aid solution for a problem in need of complete revolution), taxation (which has been a feature of every government in history), or public works (likewise).
Re:Misleading BSD Article (Score:2)
Our system has holes, and it's very easy to whip out complaints and arguments against. But take a look at a few pics of russia under communist rule and then look at what we have.
Oh, and just for your betterment (or knowledge, whichever way you prefer to take it) Soviet Russia was between Socialism and Capitalism; you seem to imply that socialism is the one in the middle.
Re:Misleading BSD Article (Score:2)
Re:Misleading BSD Article (Score:2)
I like having roads too.
Re:Misleading BSD Article (Score:2)
We don't have a completely free-market economy, so I really couldn't slam it.
Re:Misleading BSD Article + Sorenson (Score:3, Insightful)
Apple worked hard and spent a lot of their money in the development of that interface. If it was opensource and put together by people not paid by Apple then I would say yes, spread it around.
We must urge companies to open up, but we must not try to force them or criticize them if they don't move as fast or as far as we want. They should want to come to our side.
How is Apple helping me again? (Score:2)
So how are you helping Apple again?
Apple helped me, for sure.
I have a kickass laptop, a BSD based OS, good networking functionality, wireless networking, movie, photo, and music applications, good access to BSD and GNU tools, a good developer environment, a pleasant user environment, AppleWorks, Quicktime, DivX, Aqua, Quartz, Sorenson, free email, free online disk space, free webpage, and hopefully RSN, MPEG4, SMB print capability, SMB network browsing, and kickass power management features.
Re:How is Apple helping me again? (Score:2)
man are you going to be screwed when it get's stolen!
Re:Misleading BSD Article (Score:5, Insightful)
This is just me, but you'd probably have more sucess complaining to Sorenson [sorenson.com] about that, if you think you can convince them that 1)There are enough content creators on Linux that they will sell enough copies of Sorenson Video 3 Pro to recoup their porting costs or 2)Content creators feel that there are enough content consumers on Linux that they feel support for the platform is important. You could just try to get Apple to fully implement QuickTime on Linux, if you think you can convince them of #2 above.
How about Aqua themes?
Why the hell do you feel that you have the right to Apple's art? Source code is one thing, pixmaps are another thing entirely. If someone copied art that my design team had spent many long hours designing, I would go after them a lot harder than Apple did.
How is Apple helping me again?
By employing dozens of programmers who work on open source code, perhaps? By building and open source steaming media server that you can run on your favorite OS? By having, "one of the biggest gcc compiler design teams in the world" and giving all that code back?
Re:Misleading BSD Article (Score:1)
This is a compression/decompression codec.
all that is required is to read in bits,
transform them, and read them out.
... you don't HAVE any porting
( assuming you keep it for x86 )
please, if you want to argue, make sense.
Re:Misleading BSD Article (Score:2)
I said, "1)There are enough content creators on Linux that they will sell enough copies of Sorenson Video 3 Pro to recoup their porting costs." Sorenson Video 3 Pro is a $499 program, very different from the decoder and basic encoder incuded with QuickTime, which have been on OS X from the start; although SV3P works as a plug-in, it would definitely need a lot of porting work to get it to work on Linux; they haven't even got it ported to OS X yet!
Please, if you want to argue, read the post fully, and check the links if you need to.
Re:Misleading BSD Article (Score:2)
Oh, wait...
Sorenson (Score:3, Informative)
No, talking to Sorenson won't help. A few years back I asked about whether they'd be interested in making a BeOS version of their codec--since BeOS handles such things at the OS level, any media application would immediately have it available for their use. (This was back before Be's infamous focus shift and when they were getting a lot of positive attention in the A/V marketplace.) A Sorenson rep wrote back and said that they couldn't do that, because the codec is exclusively licensed to Apple for use in QuickTime--I was explicitly told the only way to get it on BeOS was to get Apple to port QuickTime to BeOS. Not the QuickTime file format, which a lot of other programs support, but actual QuickTime the program.
I like Apple (sometimes), but I don't really expect them to do much in the way of directly supporting Linux. The only commercial, closed-source app I could imagine them porting to a free Unix would be WebObjects, and I wouldn't be surprised if they ported it to FreeBSD before Linux.
Linux will get benefits from Apple, as you observed, if the Free Software Foundation deigns to accept the work Apple is doing on GCC. Having "one of the biggest GCC compiler design teams in the world and giving all that code back" doesn't mean the FSF is actually going to use it. I hope political considerations won't be an issue, but even without those they tend to be notoriously picky.
Re:Misleading BSD Article (Score:1)
Re:Misleading BSD Article (Score:5, Insightful)
Then there's Apple's open-sourcing of Darwin [apple.com]. Yeah you don't get the GUI, but at least they are contributing to open source and allowing you to use their core operating system with whatever GUI you want by way of the many open source GUIs out there.
We also have Quicktime Streaming Server [apple.com], a completely free and open multimedia server that lets you stream video and audio in most open formats out there. No server tax what so ever, what a joy!
Apple also is championing several efforts to keep fees and licensing issues from affecting the "little guys". They are trying to influence the developing MPEG-4 license so that there will be no streaming fees and they have even taken the stance that they will not release software which uses the MPEG-4 format until the fees have been removed. They also have taken a stance that any patents which are involved with W3C standards should be free of charge for use in the standards instead of requiring royalties, see this article [com.com] for more information.
Finally, having Apple out there definitely helps innovation. With a company like Apple breaking ground and popularizing technology in areas such as PDAs, USB, Firewire, LCD displays, removal of dead-weight legacy equipment, and even computer form factors, they are helping to drive the industry forward. Lets face it, while Linux is a damn fine operating system it would have a tough time facing down the Microsoft bear alone. All of the alternatives will take their tiny bites out of the giant and together they will work toward keeping the monopolies from gaining total control.
Sure Apple is in it for the money. I think that is true of everyone, not just big corporations. I don't see many people volunteering 100% of their time and not trying to make a buck here or there. On a scale from mega-greedy to handing out bushels of money, I think that Apple falls safely in the middle. They make good, solid products, they seem to put some of their souls into their work, and they make some money off it. Sounds like a decent trade-off to me, and far more than we can say about many corporations out there.
Re:Misleading BSD Article (Score:2)
Their customers pay them money. Their business is to provide them tools for that money, not to bring people to the OSS community. That's a side-effect, if anything.
BTW, the first time I even "heard" about Objective-C (no ++ here) was installing Linux on my box. I think it was a pre-processor package to compile to Objective-C; as far as I know the language is never compiled directly, it's compiled to C and THEN gcc takes over.
Anyone knows if the free pre-processors support Apple's Objective-C (at the language level), or if there are non-standard idioms?
Re:Misleading BSD Article (Score:2)
Also, the Graffiti system of character recognition which is used on every PalmOS PDA was first made for the Newton. There were also many other innovations which were first seen on the Newton. This definitely sounds like the Newton had something to do with popularizing PDAs. Yeah, the Newton was canceled, but it still had a major impact on the PDA world.
Re:Misleading BSD Article (Score:2)
Whatever was "first" will depend on how you decide to define "PDA", but I think it's pretty clear that the early Sharp (later Zaurus) and Casio BOSS "personal organizers" were early, crude PDAs. These predate the Newton by several years, and most of the Japanese consumer electronics companies offered something similar. In general, the organizers seemed to be a branch from the programmable calculator family in the early 1980s, a move that was heavily influenced by Tandy at the time. (Remember Tandy was the 800-lb gorilla in the PC market circa 1980, staying there until the IBM PC started to gain traction around 1983, largely through Lotus 1-2-3.)
Re:Misleading BSD Article (Score:2)
First of all, it was with the Newton that the term "Personal Digital Assistant" was first coined. Secondly, the Newton contained and helped to standardise many of the features of the modern PDA such as synching with a desktop computer, handwriting recognition, a removable flash card slot, a GUI, and the flexibility to upload new software modules.
While some of the previous organizers may have contained one or more of these features, I don't believe that any of them came close to offering as much versatility as the Newton. The Newton was not just an evolutionary step, it was a revolutionary step and thus I believe it deserves the status as the first true PDA.
MS Office only kinda sorta under Unix (Score:5, Insightful)
MS Office X runs with Apple's Carbon [slashdot.org] compatibility layer (even though it's no longer able to run on MacOS 8 or 9.) This isn't the same as running on Apple's Cocoa [slashdot.org] Nextstep-based libraries and not at all like running on raw Unix.
So yeah, it's running on Unix, however pretty much entirely within a proprietary Apple compatibility library that is MacOS X specific and itself unlikely and probably unable to be ported to other Unix flavors.
Great for MacOS X folks, not very relevant to the rest of the Unix world.
Re:MS Office only kinda sorta under Unix (Score:1)
Actually it matters quite a bit to the Unix world. Every Unix has differenent API's. Carbon is just another API.
This is no different then saying Oracle on Linux matters to only Linux users. It doesn't . Because it presents you with options. Microsoft X on Mac OS X is a hand above the Windows version. Entourage is essentially Outlook with NNTP, POP, and IMAP built into it. Instead of having to use gateways on the Exchange server.
You want a Unix on the desktop , you got it. Mac OS X may not be perfect, but it is a huge step in the right direction (95% open source is better then 0% open source.)
Re:MS Office only kinda sorta under Unix (Score:2, Insightful)
Re:MS Office only kinda sorta under Unix (Score:2)
Re:MS Office only kinda sorta under Unix (Score:2)
"StarOffice run's on Sun's Java compatibility layer. This isn't the same as running on Microsoft's Windows Win32-based libraries and not at all like running on raw DOS.
So yeah, it's running on DOS, however pretty much entirely within a proprietary Microsoft-Java compatibility library that is Windows specific and itself unlikely and probably unable to be ported to other Windows flavors."
Well, that analogy breaks in that Java exists on other Windows flavors
Re:MS Office only kinda sorta under Unix (Score:2)
Well, if you want to talk about why Office will never run on Linux, I think Cocoa's proprietary nature is hardly the biggest reason
From a practical point of view, this really is relevant to the rest of the Unix world. Many many Linux users have dual-boot systems. That may be because they want to run certain games, use certain peripherals, or be able to deal with Word files. Now that Office runs on mosX, some of these people will be able to start running dual-boot mosX-Linux rather than Windows-Linux. They will then have the advantage of being able to use a consistent Unix environment for everything they do.
Consider this: by running dual-boot Windows-Linux, people are helping sustain the Windows monopoly. By running dual-boot mosX-Linus, they're helping to attack it. I think that is relevant to the rest of the Unix world.
People focus too much on running Linux. The way to lure people towards open source is to show them that there are good apps. If a person starts by running a mixture of opsn source and proprietary software, well, big deal. That person has still learned the power of free information.
And finally, maybe the Linux world should ask why mosX is more successful on the desktop than Linux, and try to learn something from that.
Re:MS Office only kinda sorta under Unix (Score:2)
Well, certainly you can run command-line software like LaTeX on mosX. But to run many apps, e.g., GIMP, you have to install X windows. And while Fink is doing a great job, they certainly haven't ported every Linux GUI app.
MS Office only kinda sorta under Windows (Score:2)
Re:MS Office only kinda sorta under Windows (Score:2)
you mean spending 10 minutes hitting every permutation of backspace, space and enter, trying to trick word's auto-make-things-look-right into doing what they actually want?
cuz if you dont, thats fun too.
Lets not forget the Cox users conversion... (Score:1, Informative)
BSD allways was more popular, but nobody noticed.. (Score:2, Informative)
Many web-caches, firewalls, embedded systems for machine tools, routers... are BSD based, instead of linux based for instance, since the BSD-license is much more corporate-friendly.
But the end result is that no one really notices how widely deployed BSD really is, since it remains hidden by the same persons that sell BSD products, therefore weakning the creative environment witch originated the system.
That's how you really see the advantages of a license like the GPL, forcing others to contribute to the environment in a positive way, instead of being merely predators, and generally getting more steam into the project, instead of simply grabbing others efforts.
Well, just my 2 (euro)cents :-)
Re:BSD allways was more popular, but nobody notice (Score:2, Insightful)
Basically the older the company, the more likely it is that they run BSD under the covers. Newer companies are choosing Linux.
I haven't asked why, but that's the trend I've seen.
BSD is now 3 times more popular for me (Score:5, Interesting)
Until one month ago when my powerbook G4 arrived. Now I have XFree86, Gimp, Gnumeric, Octave, Gcc, Xemacs... all my favorites running in BSD. I'll probably install Linux just for the heck of it, but IMHO there's not too much reason to do it. Darwin/XFree86 is absolutely perfect when it comes to development of your own projects. This is because you don't have to worry about some company that owns the libraries and interfaces from changing things and screwing up your code or ruining your knowledge. Since the Darwin/Xfree combo is completely opensourced, I have faith in my fellow progammers that they will continue to support the combo despite Profits or Marketshare.
Anyways, True transparent terminals are pretty cool. So is IPhoto/ITunes. Each recognized my Digital Camera or MP3 player respectively and each has a great intuitive interface. Having a legal DVD player is also a plus.
I guess if there is a point to this post (not much of one), it's that using Darwin/Xfree is using GPL software. The Aqua interface and kewl G4 processor are bonuses. That's why OS X will continue to impress Linux users.
Re:BSD is now 3 times more popular for me (Score:1)
GIMP takes a couple seconds to launch, Much faster than Photoshop. It is so cool to be able to use PS, Colorit, and Gimp on the same screen.
I was given Virtual PC and XP, but I don't need it. Why infest a perfectly good Computer with that crap from Redmond?
I no longer even check to see if my pages look right on IE. I don't care if my pages work with any MS product. I won't even allow IE on my drive.
Re:BSD is now 3 times more popular for me (Score:2)
To each his own, my parents used to tell me.
(Actually, I'll gladly take a Powerbook over a PC laptop. The reason I quit buying Apples back in, what, '97, was the operating system slowly turning into shite and the proprietary hardware. Now that the PC world is becoming increasingly proprietary with it's hardware, like the HP modem/soundcard, or winfrisbees^H^H^H^H^H^H^H^Hmodems...I just might be going back to the Apple fambly. I'm sure I'm not alone here)
Re:BSD is now 3 times more popular for me (Score:2)
So having a player set on its region after 5 plays on a particular region is cool?
Used MacOSX much more than you realize (ain't gonna tell you where or how) I do like it alot, but prefer KDE 2x because I can customize it much more (to be fair Linux is really having more impact on the Intel architecture, we know who owns that desktop area). This may not be the best thing for total newbies who could get lost and end up changing things and not know how to get back, plus would they install Linux? Doubt it...
PPC hardware is cool, RISC processors do make a difference in speed and I do like them a lot. I like Apple a lot too (its a fun culture too) and hope they can continue to hire Open Source people and continue to release more apps.
Here is something to check out:
opensource.apple.com
Two things that I don't like hearing from the Apple camp, as a long time Linux user and Open Source advocate:
"FreeBSD is on 3 times as many desktops as Linux"
Been discussed before, or:
"We're targeting Linux users..."
Don't like the word targeting, give me a decent OS that I can do all sorts of cool things on and I'll be using your system too. Notice I said too, I'd set up 3 boot partitions: 1 with MacOSX 1 with OS9 and one with Linux. That way I could totally change desktops when I feel like it, not be stuck with one. Currently do something similer with a dual boot between windows and Linux, with the Linux partition having Ximian Gnome and the latest stable KDE. Love this combo. Then to have MacOSX would be a dream too.
Any, enough from me...
StarTux
Re:BSD is now 3 times more popular for me (Score:2)
Same for me as you said, I would use it in addition to my Linux box. In fact, the new Imac looks as though it could quite easily fit between my server and my desktop. Then one could use an Ipod to access a share on my linux box and copy across all those MP3's to it. Hmmm
Matt
Re:BSD is now 3 times more popular for me (Score:1)
t.
Re:BSD is now 3 times more popular for me (Score:2)
AT&T broadband support busy? (Score:1)
Their support and service is bad. They had a DHCP server fail, it took them 5 days to get it up and runnning. Having to register the MAC address of the NICs is a pain and not needed.
Office on *BSD (Score:3, Interesting)
Re:Office on *BSD (Score:1)
Re:Office on *BSD (Score:2)
Re:Office on *BSD (Score:1)
AT&T Email Change (Score:2, Informative)
That's some extra info I can use (Score:1)
Where's the proof? (Score:1, Interesting)
Still, if it were true, I could see MS porting Office to BSD before it ported to Linux, since MS doesn't like the GPL.
The Macintosh has always been very fascist (Score:2, Troll)
"The Macintosh has always been very fascist, but we're now starting to embrace the diversity of BSD. We'd love you to bring your X11 application to Mac OS X."
I bet you do. How about bringing some of your MAC OS programs to my GNU OS?!?!
Re:The Macintosh has always been very fascist (Score:2)
The biggest news? (Score:4, Funny)
Re:The biggest news? (Score:3, Funny)
AT&T Broadband Change (Score:2)
How does the BSD community feel about that? (Score:3, Insightful)
Re:How does the BSD community feel about that? (Score:3)
One things for sure, the vast majority of the sourcecode to Darwin is of BSD origin. But what percentage of Darwin makes up OSX?
Re:How does the BSD community feel about that? (Score:2)
Wild Speculation (Score:5, Interesting)
Apple is alive through the good graces of MS. If MS wanted, they could have killed Apple years ago. With their investment ontop of the 'deal' they have over MSExplorer and MSOffice - Apple is alive today ONLY because MS and Apple worked out a non-competition arrangment. This provided MS with a the 'image' of having competition.
Fastforward to Corel. Corel decides GNU/Linux is the right place for them to go, they build Corel Linux OS, port Draw && Corel Office (via tonnes of work on Wine). Corel gets in a pinch... and BAM, MS makes a deal with them to work on
A) They can now also control/stear/prop-up Corel as proof of 'competition'
B) They de-ligitimize GNU/Linux by removing Corel's support.
Now, here's the kicker - how are these two things relevant/related??? Well, I personally feel Apple's adoption of BSD is a 'poison pill', encouraged and supported by MS, against GNU/Linux.
You see, with Apple boxes with a relatively Open UNIX (via FreeBSD) MS is effectively capable of stearing users - who WANT A FREE UN*X -- to Apple. MS even supports Explorer and Office on OSX.
Apple adopts FreeBSD because
A) they cant compete w/ GNU/Linux, *BSD or MSWin
B) It makes a strong alternative to GNU/Linux
C) it supports Apple/MS hegemony.
Flight of Fancy? Maybe - but I am really tired of MS swooping in and making sweet deals w/ their former competitiors in order to
A) prop up corpses for the US DoJ
B) further entrench MS Office and MS Win by screwing with the natural course of competition/innovation*.
*eww, i feel all dirty after having used that word now - i mean real innovation, not the chomsky-1984-doublespeak that has loaded the word with propaganda.
Re:Wild Speculation (Score:1)
Re:Wild Speculation (Score:2, Interesting)
Apple adopts FreeBSD because
* A) they cant compete w/ GNU/Linux, *BSD or MSWin
* B) It makes a strong alternative to GNU/Linux
* C) it supports Apple/MS hegemony.
All of this is crap
Apple picked BSD because it was in OpenSTEP/NeXTSTEP and that's what OS X is. There is no conspriacy here, well except for the Corel thing, that's fishy, but smart on the part of MS, but I think it will kill Corel in the end.
Re:Wild Speculation (Score:4, Insightful)
There are 2 problems with this. First, OSX is NeXT. It was BSD Unix back before anyone cared. It was BSD before Gates began the jihad. It was BSD when BSD wasn't cool.
Second, implementing Carbon on OSX is a lot like programming for MacOS9. That's the whole point of the library. Sure, you can write in Carbon and have it only run on OSX - for example, the OSX Finder is a Carbon but OSX-Only app. MS is sticking with as much non-Unix tech as possible. This is also because of the time and effort to retrain the Mac Business Unit.
Re:Wild Speculation (Score:2)
There still is a strong wintel alliance, why would they upset this? Apple is purely RISC and will remain so, they won't port OSX across to the x86 platform ever. In fact wanna run x86 hardware? Use Linux, with the new KDE 3 its gonna rock, those guys deserve a medal at the very least.
One thing I wish though, I wish Apple had a more open Open Source panel, just like HP have. Would be nice to see Apple at Linuxworld and perhaps even have Steve give a speech there someday.
StarTux
PS Like in another post, I like OSX it is very nice, but I prefer linux personnally. All about choice and its darn nice to have it!
StarTux
Re:Wild Speculation (Score:2, Interesting)
I don't know if you ever used Corel's Software but it sucked. All of it. I never had a version that didn't.
I had Corel Photopaint crash on me when I hit File=>New. It divided by zero. WTF? Of all the retarted errors you could possibly fail to trap that has to be the worst. What kind of programmer divides without checking it the program is dividing by zero?
My boss was having problems with Wordperfect 8 trying to get the formatting to work correctly. I eventually had to rewrite his default template to get his document to apply the formatting correctly.
At least M$ Office works mostly.
For what it's worth... (Score:3, Insightful)
If making MS Office for Mac ceases to be profitable, I do not doubt for an instant that Microsoft will cease to develop it. I don't really expect that to happen for a long time, though.
-Isaac
No conspiracy theory is required to explain Corel (Score:4, Interesting)
Corel has been "in a pinch" for years, certainly long before anyone in Corel considered the idea of using Linux (remember the Java fiasco?). The enormously huge fall in Corel stock value came months after the enormously huge inflation in Corel stock value--remember it went from $3.50 to $60 (CDN) in just one year for _no good reason at all_, so it's hardly surprising that it came crashing down again.
Aside from stock market capitalization, Corel had no significant revenue from anything Linux--certainly nothing close to the millions they were spending on it. If you spend money without earning revenue, and only earn enough income from selling worthless stock to pay for deficit financing...sooner or later, you'll run out of money. Hard. The insider-trading allegations against Mike currently in front of the OSC are probably just one of many securities-related irregularities waiting to become public knowledge.
Interestingly enough, Corel did produce some actually interesting and profitable products--and quietly sold off those products to other companies. It's like Mike enjoys the challenge of running unprofitable businesses with poor business plans or something...
When Corel was doing the GNU/Linux thing, only two groups of people in the company bought into the idea of "open source" or "free as in speech": one group of people were engineers hired after the decision to do the KDE/Linux (*) thing, and the other group of people I can count on one hand. Except for Mike, all of those people were engineers, QA people, new hires, or bottom-level managers--none people with any real corporate decision-making authority.
* Yes, KDE/Linux...after all, everyone knows KDE is better than GNOME, so why not purge out as many GNU packages as we can while we're at it? Even gcc was targeted at one point, but due to political reasons the alternative never materialized, so gcc was kept.
The general attitude in the company toward Linux was that Linux was either 1) a fad that would find its niche and go away, like Java; 2) a fad that would just go away; 3) possibly a small but important market, like the Mac--but nobody wants to touch it until it becomes a whole lot more like Windows. Understandably this view was held by many of the senior developers on Corel's Windows products, but a number of key Corel Linux people felt that way too.
With one notable exception, the Corel executives had no intention of producing products with any kind of open-source license--some just couldn't grasp the concept of "free as in speech", much less find motivation for actually doing it. They could understand "free as in beer" well enough to use it as a marketing technique, but could not fathom why other people would use "free as in beer" for non-marketing purposes.
Put another way: they seemed to think that open-source people craved attention. These guys really thought they were doing the KDE and Debian people a favor by distributing millions of copies of ancient versions of their free code linked to Corel's non-free code written by inexperienced, fresh-from-Windows, where's-my-Visual-Studio-For-Linux? developers, and they were genuinely surprised each and every time when their license terms ended up being flamebait on Slashdot or gnu-misc-discuss or debian-legal.
They were genuinely disappointed when millions of Linux users failed to immediately make the switch from Red Hat to Corel after the release. They were also disappointed when their lawyers told them that the GPL was "ambiguous"--they were hoping for something more concrete, like "inapplicable" or "unenforceable", not something that could put the company on the losing end of a precedent-setting lawsuit.
At the end, four things happened: the stock crashed, Mike left the company, all the Linux people with any marketable skills left the company, and Derek's first action as new CEO was to declare that Microsoft
Everyone had their personal agendas planned out months in advance anyway. If it wasn't for Mike, the Corel
Hurray for the FreeBSD License! (Score:5, Insightful)
It would not have happened, if it were not for Microsoft having to follow up and provide Office for the latest mainstream Apple OS. It proves a lot of things: that there is no inherent reason for Microsoft's applications not to run on Unix-based platforms, which has implications for those looking at anti-trust remedies, and such.
And note that even though Linux has wider acceptance than FreeBSD, and far more application support, device support, and so on, this did not happen for Linux first, and it might never happen. This is solely because of the commercializability allowed by the BSD license. GPL'd OS's are far less likely to be embraced by a major player like Apple.
There's a lot of interesting debate between GPL and BSD licensing. I'm a much bigger fan of BSD/X-Windows, etc., licensing, as commercial outcroppings of these are often more interesting, solid and, well, commercial-grade than purely non-commercial products.
And I think this is one of the great examples of where such truly free, and not the forced-freedom of the GPL, achieves a measurable positive result for the industry.
(I think a better overall solution for the industry would be for monopolistic entities to be required to fully open, publish, and standardize the data, interchange, and communication formats and protocols. We have limit choices on what roads to use, but because the specifications are standardized and open, we have a choice of cars to use. I think the government should force proven monopolistic entities to open *all* their interfaces.)
But, in the world of Enron and MS Campaign contributions, and a populace that in general doesn't care (current company, largely excluded
-me
Re:Hurray for the FreeBSD License! (Score:2, Informative)
It's just MS support other _commersal_ OSes.
mlk
Re:Hurray for the FreeBSD License! (Score:2, Interesting)
DB
Re:Hurray for the FreeBSD License! (Score:2)
This is just too ironic (Score:5, Insightful)
Well screw that! MacOSX has more BSD code than Redhat has GNU code. Make up your minds how you're going to name on OS. You can't have it both ways.
Too ironic to be true... (Score:3, Insightful)
I would be very surpised if that was true. All the proprietary Apple API's and GUI applications tend to be much fatter than the lean and mean BSD code.
In contrast, Red Hat's GUI layer is Gnome, a GNU project.
In fact, I suspect MacOSX has more GNU code than BSD code, if you include the development tools, allthough both are dwarfed by the Apple proprietary code.
Not the first time for M$ on Unix... (Score:3, Interesting)
Anyway, AT&T ended up selling 8.5 of these things and they're somewhat of a collector's item nowadays. Microsoft however, did release Microsoft Word for the UnixPC, yup, that's right, Microsoft Word for System V Unix.
Yeah, so that was 1985. It shouldn't be too hard to port it now. Word couldn't have changed *that* much, right? I mean it's not like Microsoft's products have gotten bloated...*tries to keep a straight face*
AT&T snail mailed the upgrade info (Score:2, Insightful)
Just yesterday (the 14th) I received a letter from AT&T discussing the whole changeover. What was changing, why, and what to expect. It was clear, concise, and accurate. Thankfully, they didn't email this to me as I don't use my AT&T email account. Then again, maybe they did.
The instructions on how to change your various settings for your email/web/whatever clients may or may not be accurate - I didn't read them.
Semantics! (Score:1, Troll)
OS X is only BSD based, and Red Hat is only Linux based, so why should it count? Red Hat is not a real Linux system.
Show you native apps that run on... what? OS X? Like top, grep, Apache, perl? On BSD? Like top, grep, Apache, perl?
Re:Semantics! (Score:1)
It's still Linux. Same kernel. Completely non-sequiter with your argument.
Max
Re:BSD 3 times more popular than Linux (Score:2)
heh. We'll be waiting for you to reply to your own message with a correction.
Re:put it in your mouth (Score:2)
Re:Just use GNU/Linux! (Score:1)
When I said Linux, I meant GNU/Linux. I was also referring to it vs MS-Windows. As far is it vs BSD, I don't think it matters. They're all great OS'es, they're Unix based, free, and open source. However, when was the last time a well-tested Linux kernel screwed a fs? {Net/Free/Open}BSD does CVS, right? So in their test-kernels, or non-pre-release, they might have had a fs crash or two. I've been planning on trying BSD sometime, when I get a machine free. Also, I think OpenBSD is a big showoff, and NetBSD is much better. But I haven't tried either, so...