On Feb 10, 4:11 am, Erik Funkenbusch <e...@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx>
wrote:
> On Mon, 9 Feb 2009 21:38:46 -0800 (PST), Rex Ballard wrote:
> > Roy must be doing a pretty good job to get all this individual
> > attention. It seems that the more effective an advocate is, the more
> > "heat" he gets from the WinTrolls.
> No, the more wrong you are. The more you lie and misrepresent the facts
> and the truth, the more "heat" you get. You have had your fair share of
> inceneration given your flagrant disregard for facts, truth, and even
> reality.
Reality and "Truth" are told by those left standing at the end of the
day.
Microsoft has $4 billion/year out of their own pockets to define
"truth"
and about $40 billion/year through "trademark protection" to support
their version of "truth".
Roy and I have usenet news and an hour or two - in transit or on
breaks,
to provide information that Microsoft would rather you DIDN'T get.
Remember the MindCraft benchmarks? Linux advocates crowed
for about a month because the MindCraft benchmarks showed Linux
as about 20% faster than Windows. Mindcraft later came out with
a different benchmark, as reccomended by Microsoft, specially designed
to make the 2.2 kernel "lock up" more frequently, with Windows running
in a specially tweaked configuration, to show that Windaws NT 4.0 was
20% faster - when you had 4 processors, 4 ethernet cards, and
4 scsi controllers in raid 0 configuration. In addition, the disk I/O
was
adjusted to exact multiples of 4096, the NTFS optimum "cluster" size,
rather than the original benchmark which used truly random sizes.
The Linux community took this as an opportunity to see where the
bottlenecks were, make massive improvements including the same
scheduler concepts used in IBM Mainframes for decades, to eliminate
the bottlenecks. I haven't seen any NEW benchmarks, but I have
seen that Microsoft still quotes the Mindcraft bencmarks in their
"fast facts" on comparisons of performance.
Linux has gotten faster and faster, while XP got slower than 2000, and
Vista got slower than XP. I wonder how much of a gap there is today.
Especially when the applications are swizzling through lots of memory.
> It's the classic paranoids excuse. "Oh, gee, I must be on to something
> given all the denial I get for the things I say". This ignores the simple
> fact that if you're wrong, you will be denied, but the closet paranoid
> seems to not be able to make that connection. Denial means it's true in
> yours and their books.
Remember when Republicans said that anyone who disagreed with Bush
was a traitor and sympathetic to terrorists? Ann Coulder even
suggested
that liberals who disagreed with Bush should be tried for treason.
Meanwhile, we killed 1/4 to 1/2 million people in Iraq, and how many
in Afghanistan? And where is Bin Ladin? In Pakistan? Where they
ALREADY have Nukes? To avenge the deaths of 2600 people, most
of whom died because they were given bad advice by the emergency
operatorsr who told them to go to the roof and wait for a helicopter?
The people who went up, died. The people who went down, lived.
There were functional stairways all the way down, even from the
top floors.
And now we have a $11 trillion debt, including $5 trillion owed to
Social Security, and a $1 trillion bail-out, and an economic crisis.
The whole time, those in power (Bush and right wing Republicans)
were telling us everything was fine and that this was all good for the
country. Those who disagreed were "neutralized", some even sent
to Guantanimo.
> > In 1984, Stallman came to net.legal and requested some help finding a
> > way to protect emacs from poachers like Gosling, but at the same time,
> > make it freely distributable and protect the interests of ALL of the
> > contributors.
>
> > About 30 lawyers and others familiar with copyright law spent about 3
> > months making suggestions, ranging from specific clauses, to general
> > concepts, even some composite drafts and eventually the bulk of the
> > language of the General Public License.
>
> Well, at least you stopped referring to yourself as an author of the GPL.
> You're getting better.
I was one of those 30-40 participants in the discussion - yes. I even
contributed a few ideas and a paragraph or two. But it was
definitely
a group efford. I have never claimed that I personally wrote the
entire
GPL all by myself. I was just one of many who contributed to the
discusson.
My prior experience with Copyright law was Music and Theater,
my major in College. I had taken courses in the contracts and
legal aspects of producing theatrical productions, as well as
courses in Business Law. Even then I had to get a copy of the
revised copyright act of 1976 to make sure that I understood
the laws, as written, as clearly as I could.
> > Microsoft has absconded with TCP/IP, Web Browsers, CORBA (DCOM/COM+),
> > Message Queues, and probably 1000 other "innovations" that had been
> > part of BSD and GNU long before Microsoft "innovated" them.
>
> Are you seriously going to pretend that BSD and GNU invented TCP/IP, Web
> Browsers, CORBA, Message Queue's..."? None of those things were invented
> by GNU or Berkeley. Or are you forgetting that, TCP/IP, for example,
> existed BEFORE BSD or GNU even existed?
TCP/IP - Federally funded by the DOD ARPA project
TCP/IP code stored in Simtel-20 the ARPA "federal archive".
Telnet, TFTP, and FTP - Bill Joy (BSD)
Mosaic Web Browser - Mark Andreeson
Lynx web browser - OSS
Viola Web Browser - OSS
Mico CORBA implementation - OSS
ORBIT CORBA implementation GNU
Windows - text based - Emacs
Windows - GUI - SmallTalk - Xerox Alto
Windows - GUI - X11 MIT License, Project Athena.
Embedded mixed media documents - Project Athena (Andrew).
Virtual Desktop - Xerox licensed under MIT license ONLY.
Remote desktop - VNC - OSS
Message Queues - IBM - used for DOD contracts.
IPC Message queues - BSD, AT&T then
contributed to GNU by original author.
Multiplexed I/O (BSD)
Named Pipes (BSD)
Named Sockets (BSD).
Message oriented sockets (BSD).
Unix Domain UDP (BSD).
Message Passing Interface (MPI) - OSS
Parallel Virtual Machine (PVM) - OSS
Virtualization - IBM, Bochs, WINE.
Microsoft purchased 3rd rate competitors who gave
them the technology and "plausible deniability", assuming
the risk and liability for piracy of other code.
But then again, IBM hired Microsoft to give them CP/M
without having to worry about the liability of reverse
engineering done by Microsoft.
> > When Microsoft refers to "innovation" does this mean something like
> > "We stole it from Linux/Unix but this is the first time it's appeared
> > in Windows so it's our INNOVATION".?
> But when GNU or BSD takes others ideas and implements them, that's
> different. Right?
Not at all. In fact, it's illegal. SCO has been trying to prove that
GNU
or BSD did something like that, and so far the audit trails keep
pointing
back to the original authors, who were not doing work-for-hire and
released
their code under BSD, AND AT&T AND GNU licenses.
Back in the 80s, the bad guy for the Unix community was AT&T, who
had made a deal with BSD that gave them the ability to release all
of the BSD code under the AT&T license.
Prior to 1977, many of the laws relating to licenses and code didn't
exist. AT&T even published the source code and gave it to
colleges and universities and said "do what you can" because
under anti-trust restrictions, they weren't allowed to sell UNIX
directly to business customers or consumers.
AT&T considered Unix to be a step-child, and figured it wouldn't
amount to much, especially since they were in the business of
telephones and the "best thinking" of the day was to "stick to
knitting" - and not get "distracted" by other side projects.
> Are you even listening to yourself. GNU was founded to *COPY* Unix. How
> can you seriously sit there and criticize others for the very same thing
> you're lauding GNU for?
Actually, GNU was founded to implement the published APIs established
by UNIX. In many cases, the original authors of the Unix versions of
the
applications also contributed their code to GNU as well.
Let's say it's 1985, you've spent about 6 months to a year, working
on an application, as a thesis or masters project, or even just as a
class assignment. You create the code to meet the requirement,
and you turn it in to your teacher, who gives you a "B" for the
effort.
The following semester, you see that your little utility or
application
is now benig published as part of the BSD licensed distribution.
It's being e-mailed or sent by usenet to Unix users all over the
country and you feel pretty good.
Now, 1 year later, you see that AT&T is publishing YOUR code,
loaded with extra copyright notices. AT&T wants you to pay
$700 for a copy of Unix that runs on your PC. You contact
AT&T and they offer you an entry level position at the lowest
wages of any company you have talked to, and ask you to
give them exclusive ownership of the code. You decline.
Upset with AT&T, you get on usenet news and find out that
the GNU project will protect your code, and the enhancements
you make to it, from this kind of "poaching" by AT&T. As a
result, you not only contribute your original code to GNU, but
you put in a few hours to fix some bugs, add some enhancements,
and make it a bit nicer.
A few days or weeks later, you get more enhancements and
bug fixes from other contributors, who are upgrading your
GNU version. The result is that the GNU version works better,
does more, and can be freely redistributed.
You get a job as a system administrator or entry level
programmer, and tell your employer about your GNU
activities - so they don't presume that this is work for
hire. You might even put it on your resume, so they
know that you have actually produced some software
that is widely used. They hire you and give you permission
to continue to support your project.
For several years enhancements come flowing in, a few
changes a month, and you faithfully apply the patches,
and publish them back out under GNU. Eventually, when
changes and enhancements stop coming in, you finally
move on to other projects.
You write another application, but it's not really related to
the company business. You suggest that it might be useful
and ask if they want to support it. They say they don't want
to get into the software business. They just ask that you
make the contribution to GNU as an individual and don't
expose the company to liability.
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