Re: we were opensource, once
Re: we were opensource, once
- Subject: Re: we were opensource, once
- From: Derick Centeno <email@hidden>
- Date: Mon, 27 Jun 2005 22:02:21 -0400
I really find this discussion very, very odd.
If anyone wants the wild roaming freedom of true open source why not
participate as a professional in the Yellow Dog Linux support mailing
lists, Board or elsewhere where Linux for the PowerPC is utilized
heavily! The key advantage for participating in Yellow Dog Linux
(www.yellowdoglinux.com) is that because it follows the Red Hat tree
very tightly one is essentially running Red Hat on a Power PC! Keeping
in mind that Apple is shifting to Intel, doesn't change the fact that
YDL code will run without any change on IBM PowerPC Boxes, as well as
other PowerPC systems!
Apple, has made it's decision to change CPU's for many reasons. It
also decided to handle what it considers as open source and what it
considers proprietary in unique ways which it controls. If you want to
see how different or similar things are with Sun I refer you to
Openoffice.org and ask you to compare it to StarOffice. Or how Java
runs as an open source compiler (available within YDL) vs. the
proprietary Sun engine.
Companies, have rights, akin to individuals to determine what they will
share and what they will not.
The licenses, Apple's included, are very clear what one may or may not
do as a programmer/developer. And I do view that Apple's position is
very reasonable otherwise it's code would be as easy to crack as
Microsoft and development would be more chaotic and harder to control;
it would be also extremely difficult to maintain the quality item that
the Mac OS actually is. Regarding suggestions or recommendations to
make to the Apple development team there are all sorts of means of
communicating one's views; the issue is just how far is one willing to
share or contribute. Just as anything else there are rules to becoming
and being an Apple developer; there are expectations of trust,
commitments and so on which protect each party.
For my part, the fees were a bit stiff, but there really is nothing
like a cash investment to keep someone's attention riveted to what is
essential, as well as what one is doing or intends to do as a software
product.
Again with YDL one doesn't have to worry about any of this and one can
jump in at any level of participation at any time. BUT as everything
is voluntary by nearly everyone, chaos is very much a part of what goes
on in Linux in all it's distributions. In many ways, Linux is it's own
explanation of how a wheel gets reworked and improved again and again.
The only difference, in Linux, is that the recognition one receives is
not quite tied to the effort one actually contributes or participates
with. Which is just as well, as I've found errors in coding various
kernels and some drivers which I'm sure neither a freshman nor a junior
programmer would have made but because the project is "free", the
programmer is much less careful. This kind of thing happens A LOT.
Human error is one thing, what I keep finding is sheer carelessness,
literally a "lack of caring" about what is being coded.
When it becomes time for Linus to retire or "give up the ghost", I
doubt very much whether anyone of his survivors will be able to collect
the value of his contributive efforts from the whole planet. I also
doubt that whoever follows him will be as conscientious as he has
proven himself to be. But this is the nature of open source; it is not
the nature of AIX, Sun, Unix or even the Mac OS.
We each choose where we "play" or "work" for "free", and when we expect
to get "compensation" or "pay".
This as usual is for individuals to decide.
This is the very thing that communists, socialists and the like have
never quite understood. There is a great deal of difference between a
contribution, a gift or a freebie or other intended benefit as opposed
to the practice of theft, unwelcome intrusion or rape. This stuff is
the very essence of comprehending the distinctions which individuals,
(human or corporate) participate in producing as products for sale or
compensation or contributions for society's good. The author Ayn Rand
covered the fundamentals nicely in her work, "The Fountainhead";
valuable reading even today. Or one can see the movie with of the same
title starring Gary Cooper. Her other works are also compelling
covering these issues...
On Jun 27, 2005, at 2:35 PM, Michael L Torrie wrote:
On Mon, 2005-06-27 at 11:15 -0700, Gary wrote:
Michael L Torrie wrote:
Red Hat is just as guilty of hiding their dirty laundry. Take this
for example:
[PATCH] read() sometimes crashes in the second pthread_set_canceltype
call (https://bugzilla.redhat.com/bugzilla/show_bug.cgi?id=130926)
This is a major 2.4 linux kernel patch that fixes a serious flaw in
the
POSIX threading library in RH Enterprise Linux 2.1 -- an OS that's
been
around for a few years now. Strangely enough, even when logged in to
my
Red Hat bugzilla account, I'm told that I am not authorized to access
that particular bug ID.
Tis true. However none of Apple's bug system is open at all to my
account. RedHat does need to get their act together on this also.
Apple is not the only guilty one, just more guilty.
Have you contacted any redhat developers about this issue? Under the
terms of the GPL, you have legal access to the patch that fixes this
bug.
Wait a minute. YDL users/programmers are way beyond 2.6, isn't
everyone else on the Red Hat tree?
Why should anyone be dealing with a deprecated kernel?
You are forgetting that Apple, HP, IBM, SGI, Sun Microsystems, Intel,
nVidia, ATI, VIA, Red Hat, Novell, etc. are all businesses that sell
highly competitive products and will continue to do anything to stay
in business and make money for themselves and shareholders -- even
if it is under the guise of allegedly contributing to the open
source community. I can't deny that some of these companies have
contributed significiantly to the open source community -- some more
than others -- but one shouldn't be surprised when they hold their
cards close to their chest. I would imagine that Sun is going to
face similar challenges with Open Solaris. Who's going to want to
give freely to a project that is unlikely to give much back?
Not sure what you mean by that last statement. If Apple doesn't owe
the
open source community anything, then does the community owe apple
anything? Ultimately, like I said, Apple is a cathedral, and I expect
cathedral-like behavior from them. I had hoped, based on experiences
with other OSS vendors, that it would be different. That was all I was
really trying to say.
Sun and Apple have contributed to open source communities by allowing
their systems to be able to run open source products with either a
recompile from source or a basic rebuild. Speaking for myself, I am
still mystified that I can now run gnuplot, xemacs, gimp,
openoffice.org, xine and MORE and STILL be within Mac OS X! What Apple
did to xine in incorporating it (or the Goom plug-in or both) into
iTunes is a wonderful example of how Apple embellishes open source...
that is not a contribution to the open source community??? Or did you
think that iTune's music visualization engine was all Apple's doing?
Just what do you have in mind as a contribution to the open source
community, if you believe that this is not good enough????
I can use Xcode or not or I can switch to YDL and have a server on the
laptop! And although Apple is abandoning the PowerPC chip, because of
YDL I can run on a PowerPC for as long as the run of my natural human
life (which if I'm really lucky is projected to be another 40 years if
I don't suffer from Alzheimer's or anything else first) AND have that
code run on any PowerPC from IBM or anywhere else. If anyone here is
looking to do PowerPC stuff still, YDL is very much around and active
as a path forward which seems to me to be really good news for all
those Apple PowerPC clusters which various universities use.
Implementing YDL into Unix or other networks or research or work
environments is not the problem; gathering the expertise to weed out
all the careless errors out there however is. And like it or not,
there is a limit to how much anyone will work or endure for "free" or
even for "love". Sooner or later it comes back to paying for expertise
as opposed to the current trend in how to avoid paying for expertise.
Best wishes...
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