Linux-Advocacy Digest #179, Volume #34 Fri, 4 May 01 05:13:03 EDT
Contents:
Re: Why is Microsoft opening more Windows source code? ("Erik Funkenbusch")
Re: Why is Microsoft opening more Windows source code? (Ray Chason)
Re: Boot Disk (Terry Porter)
Re: bank switches from using NT 4 ("David Brown")
Re: Justice Department LOVES Microsoft! (Greg Cox)
Re: The Text of Craig Mundie's Speech (Ray Chason)
Re: Justice Department LOVES Microsoft! (Greg Cox)
Re: Performance Measure, Linux versus windows ("Mikkel Elmholdt")
Re: Just how commercially viable is OSS?... (Was Re: Interesting MS speech on
OSS/GPL ( /. hates it so it's good)) (Ray Chason)
Re: Windos is *unfriendly* ("Mikkel Elmholdt")
Re: Alan Cox responds to Mundie (pip)
----------------------------------------------------------------------------
From: "Erik Funkenbusch" <[EMAIL PROTECTED]>
Subject: Re: Why is Microsoft opening more Windows source code?
Date: Fri, 4 May 2001 02:47:00 -0500
"Ray Chason" <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> wrote in
message news:[EMAIL PROTECTED]...
> George Peter Staplin <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> wrote:
>
> >Not everybody benefits from the GPL. Some large corporations have
> >strict rules that guard against the use of any GPL'd software.
>
> Alas, FUD reigns supreme in the feeble minds of PHBs.
No, actually, in the minds of Lawyers. I've seen first hand how the company
lawyers reacted when they read the GPL after they found out a developer had
incorporated some GPL'd code into the project. The proverbial shit hit the
fan, and no less than 10 people were fired over it.
Right after, an edict was issued that *NO* code that originated outside the
company could be used in any product, no matter what its license.
------------------------------
From: Ray Chason <[EMAIL PROTECTED]>
Subject: Re: Why is Microsoft opening more Windows source code?
Date: Fri, 04 May 2001 07:56:56 -0000
"Erik Funkenbusch" <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> wrote:
>I also see that most people that use the GPL don't really understand it's
>full ramifications. In this very newsgroup we've seen arguments with very
>knowledgeable people that were surprised to find some of the restrictions
>that the GPL has.
Such as?
>Most people think the GPL just means "free software", and the FSF goes out
>of its way to use the most confusing terms possible
Such as?
>(while explicitly
>clarifying them on their website, where few actually ever read them).
If pertinent information is made available in a well-known place, in
plain English or whatever other language the user understands, in a
manner such that the user can reasonably find it, and the user still
can't be bothered to read it, then I have no sympathy. This is why
there is an F in RTFM.
--
--------------===============<[ Ray Chason ]>===============--------------
PGP public key at http://www.smart.net/~rchason/pubkey.asc
Delenda est Windoze
------------------------------
Crossposted-To: alt.linux,alt.destroy.microsoft
From: [EMAIL PROTECTED] (Terry Porter)
Subject: Re: Boot Disk
Reply-To: No-Spam
Date: 04 May 2001 07:59:26 GMT
On Thu, 3 May 2001 22:36:25 -0700, A. Smith <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> wrote:
>
> I just bought an old school machine that I wanted to install mandrake on,
> the problem is the machine won't boot from the floppy drive!
> How do I get linux to install?
> All it has on the hard drive is command.com
> That sucks!
> Any suggestions....
>
Is the floppy drive faulty?
Do you have a CD, can the bios support booting from the CD ?
Is the pc fitted with a network card, and do you have access to a
Linux network ?
--
Kind Regards
Terry
--
**** ****
My Desktop is powered by GNU/Linux.
1972 Kawa Mach3, 1974 Kawa Z1B, .. 15 more road bikes..
Current Ride ... a 94 Blade
** Registration Number: 103931, http://counter.li.org **
------------------------------
From: "David Brown" <[EMAIL PROTECTED]>
Crossposted-To: comp.os.ms-windows.nt.advocacy
Subject: Re: bank switches from using NT 4
Date: Fri, 4 May 2001 09:53:58 +0200
Jon Johansan wrote in message <3af18b76$0$37328$[EMAIL PROTECTED]>...
>
>"Tom Wilson" <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> wrote in message
>news:zySH6.6169$[EMAIL PROTECTED]...
>>
>> Just from the commercial side of things, I don't see XP taking off for
>quite
>> a while. So many of these shops have just now upgraded to W2K. I think MS
>> would have been better served to have given W2K a miss and just waited
>until
>> XP was done. The whole thing is more than a little strange when you
>consider
>> their past marketing efforts. It just doesn't make sense.
>
>Imagine this:
>XP is the achievement of a single code base. One set of drivers, you do not
>need to maintaine different drivers for W9x and ME and W2K. There is only
>one set of updates. Only one GUI to learn. One way to do things. It's the
>termination of a KNOWN ugly line of code. It's the end of ANYTHING remotely
>to do with DOS (other than emulation for backwards compatibility).
>
It is amazing how you can view "doing it right for once" as such a big deal.
Dropping DOS and moving to a single code base is without doubt a big step
forward for MS, but you make it sound like they have just invented sliced
bread - they should have taken this step 10 years ago when the 386 became
popular. There is nothing magical or dramatic about dropping DOS - no other
OS has been hobbled by such legacy. Basically, all they are doing is taking
a working non-DOS OS (NT 5.0, aka. W2K) and making it better for games so
that home users will want it too. In fact, given that (as far as I
understand it), W2K is fine for games and other home uses, it is more a
marketting change than anything else - MS could easily have marketted W2K
for home use.
>XP is a godsend for tech support. No longer having to ask: what version of
>windows are you running? and then having to fork your knowledgebase and
>script based on that.
What's the weather like on your planet? Perhaps companies with one computer
will upgrade all at once, but for everyone else, there will be a mixture of
versions as always. Newer versions come in at the top, older ones go out at
the bottom, but the release of XP does not change anything there. It may
mean that eventually tech support will only have to ask which version of XP
people are running.
>
>I don't see XP as a wait for it or think about it upgrade, I see XP as a
>must have upgrade. Give me a shop running W2K servers and W2K/XP desktops
>and I'll show you one that has cut tech support by half just from
>eliminating support for old crap.
>
Don't forget that XP is not yet ready - the "old crap" is MS's current OS.
------------------------------
From: Greg Cox <[EMAIL PROTECTED]>
Crossposted-To:
comp.os.ms-windows.nt.advocacy,comp.sys.mac.advocacy,comp.os.ms-windows.advocacy
Subject: Re: Justice Department LOVES Microsoft!
Date: Fri, 04 May 2001 08:04:04 GMT
In article <[EMAIL PROTECTED]>,
[EMAIL PROTECTED] says...
> Said Greg Cox in comp.os.linux.advocacy on Wed, 02 May 2001 23:15:52
> >In article <[EMAIL PROTECTED]>,
> >[EMAIL PROTECTED] says...
> [...]
> >I don't know what you mean by "after BASIC was trashed" since ROM BASIC
> >was shipped in every IBM PC and IBM XT box. Or are you talking about
> >the MS-BASIC that shipped with every version of DOS?
>
> No, I was referring to the ROM BASIC, and so obviously I would be
> talking about after the XT. That would be the AT, no?
Yes, the AT followed the XT. What's your point?
>
> >I wouldn't be that surprised if IBM got a flat fee license for ROM BASIC
> >from Microsoft but I believe IBM always paid a (very low) royalty on
> >each copy of IBM-DOS sold. You have to realize that Bill Gates wanted
> >every contract for Microsoft products to be on some kind of royalty
> >basis and all contracts for products Microsoft bought (QDOS for example)
> >to be on a flat fee basis.
>
> No, he just wanted to monopolize; I doubt he has any strong feelings how
> it's accomplished.
This has got nothing to do with monopolizing or not monopolizing. Is
that just the explanation you pull out when you don't know what you're
talking about?
>
> >> >It was so cheap compared to what other OEMs paid for MS-DOS because IBM
> >> >participated in the development of IBM-DOS/MS-DOS from the beginning
> >> >through the development of OS/2 version 1.0.
> >>
> >> Such vague and obviously carefully neutral bullshit terms as
> >> "participated in development" lead me to believe that you are unaware of
> >> what really happened to begin with.
> >
> >Well, since Microsoft's development on DOS 1.0 occurred in the office
> >across the hallway from my office I really do have a better idea than
> >you do how it happened. By "IBM participated in the development of IBM-
> >DOS/MS-DOS from the beginning through the development of OS/2 version
> >1.0" I mean that IBM developers worked on parts of all versions of DOS
> >and OS/2 1.0 while Microsoft developers worked on other parts with daily
> >communication between them to coordinate development. It was completely
> >a joint development effort.
>
> I did not know that. Are you sure they weren't just making sure that
> PC-DOS worked?
Yes, I'm very sure...
>
> [...]
> >> Because MS-BASIC was in the PROM, according to the information I have.
> >
> >So what? The ROM BASIC was very limited and only used if you bought a
> >PC without floppy drives or a hard drive and loaded BASIC programs
> >through the built-in cassette tape port. As it turned out, virtually no
> >IBM PCs were ever purchased in this configuration.
>
> Well, it wasn't my strategy; ask Bill Gates why he thought it would
> work.
It wasn't Bill Gates strategy - it was IBM's. Their hardware design,
remember?
>
> >> I don't see what this has to do with my comment, though. Are you saying
> >> having to select the cheapest from a list of three entirely unknown
> >> alternatives means that DOS "competed"? You're a pretty incredulous
> >> guy, you know that?
> >
> >Yea, right. No one ever heard of CP/M before it was released for the
> >IBM PC.
>
> I used CP/M on the Commodore 128, though that was not "before it was
> released for the IBM PC". Why does that mean it 'competed'? Are you
> saying DOS made CP/M a forgotten memory because of competitive merits?
Damn right they competed. What do you call it when customers in a
market have products they can freely choose from?
The issue is you said that CP/M was an entirely unknown alternative.
Anyone familiar with the small computer market would have known about
CP/M. It had been sold for several years. Hell, even Microsoft sold it
as part of the SoftCard for the Apple ][. But no one had ever heard of
IBM-DOS or MS-DOS. Which OS had the advantage here?
I believe there were several reasons CP/M-86 lost out to DOS.
1) CP/M-86 was late shipping and missed the big PC rollout by IBM
2) IBM-DOS was significantly cheaper than CP/M-86
3) IBM sold several development languages licensed from Microsoft for
IBM-DOS: MASM, FORTRAN, Pascal, BASIC compiler (I'm probably forgetting
a couple others). This encouraged many developers to write IBM-DOS
based applications.
>
> >And if I remember correctly, the UCSD P-System had a magazine
> >devoted to it prior to 1981. Of the three OSs, IBM-DOS was the only
> >unknown one.
>
> I'm also familiar with an OS called Thoroughbred, which was popular for
> programming PC accounting systems (it included a development environment
> for just that purpose.) Unfortunately, the term 'compete' suffers from
> abstraction error. I say that DOS didn't compete with these, not
> because they were not potential alternatives, but because Microsoft
> attempted to monopolize, not compete.
Please explain what Microsoft did here to monopolize. There were
multiple products available that all did basically the same thing, one
of which came from Microsoft. How exactly did Microsoft avoid competing
with CP/M-86 and the UCSD P-System on the IBM PC?
> That this coincidentally
> resembles 'competing' is not all that surprising; extortion and
> blackmail are similar in the same way.
You think a 30-some employee company somehow extorted and blackmailed
IBM? You raise fanaticism to new levels.
--
[EMAIL PROTECTED]
------------------------------
From: Ray Chason <[EMAIL PROTECTED]>
Subject: Re: The Text of Craig Mundie's Speech
Date: Fri, 04 May 2001 08:09:10 -0000
"Interconnect" <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> wrote:
>Don't you just love the statement "this viral aspect". Like MS just wants to
>Grab as much as they can for FREE have all the benefits and NOT allow anyone
>else access to their code. If GPL has so many *significant* drawbacks (they
>go on to equate OSS with the recent .com bubble) why in the hell is MS even
>worrying about it.
Yes, and how many *closed*-source vendors have gone under, not for lack
of technical merit or business sense, but for the misfortune of being in
Microsoft's way?
>Unhealthy forking? Well how about letting the community decide. The biggest
>problem that MS has is that users are forking AWAY from Windows.
>
>[QUOTE]---------------------------------------------------------------------
>----------------------------------
[snip]
>Some of the most successful OSS technology is licensed under the GNU General
>Public License or GPL. The GPL mandates that any software that incorporates
>source code already licensed under the GPL will itself become subject to the
>GPL. When the resulting software product is distributed, its creator must
>make the entire source code base freely available to everyone, at no
>additional charge. This viral aspect of the GPL poses a threat to the
>intellectual property of any organization making use of it.
[snip]
>[/QUOTE]--------------------------------------------------------------------
>-----------------------------------
So let me see if I have this straight. Mundie claims that all your
base are belong to Richard Stallman simply because somebody, somewhere,
in your vast corporate empire has installed DJGPP on his Win98 box?
--
--------------===============<[ Ray Chason ]>===============--------------
PGP public key at http://www.smart.net/~rchason/pubkey.asc
Delenda est Windoze
------------------------------
From: Greg Cox <[EMAIL PROTECTED]>
Crossposted-To:
comp.os.ms-windows.nt.advocacy,comp.sys.mac.advocacy,comp.os.ms-windows.advocacy
Subject: Re: Justice Department LOVES Microsoft!
Date: Fri, 04 May 2001 08:15:01 GMT
In article <[EMAIL PROTECTED]>,
[EMAIL PROTECTED] says...
> Said Greg Cox in comp.os.linux.advocacy on Thu, 03 May 2001 06:56:37
> >In article <z81I6.1998$[EMAIL PROTECTED]>,
> >[EMAIL PROTECTED] says...
> >> "T. Max Devlin" <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> wrote in message
> >> news:[EMAIL PROTECTED]...
> >> > Word for Windows 1.0 was released
> >> > simultaneously with Windows 3.0;
> >>
> >> I'm certain that Word for Windows 2 predated
> >> Win3, and ran on Windows v2. I just don't know
> >> if it ever ran on Windows v1.
> >
> >You made me curious so I looked for my special leather bound version of
> >the Word for Windows 1.0 manual I received as a ship gift: Word for
> >Windows 1.0 required Windows version 2.03 or later. If you didn't have
> >Windows installed Word came with a special cut-down version of Windows
> >so it could run without the full version being installed.
>
> Well, it might say that, but Word for Windows was not available until
> Windows 3.0 was released. Your "special leather bound version" sounds
> like a beta; I was up on all this stuff, since I was teaching courses in
> it at the time, and I've never seen or heard of Word coming with the
> run-time Windows. (Those weren't "cut-down" versions at all, BTW, they
> were just the regular Win2 or Win286/386 (mostly the latter) that were
> bundled with apps. It was called "run time", but it was simply Windows.
>
>
Well, the only reason I received the book was because I was a developer
on the Word for Windows 1.0 project. I received the book as a ship gift
after RTM.
The book states that the "special version" of Windows did not include
the MS-DOS Executive so it was not a complete release of Windows.
--
[EMAIL PROTECTED]
------------------------------
From: "Mikkel Elmholdt" <[EMAIL PROTECTED]>
Subject: Re: Performance Measure, Linux versus windows
Date: Fri, 4 May 2001 10:17:41 +0200
"Paolo Ciambotti" <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> wrote in message
news:[EMAIL PROTECTED]...
<snip>
> This is only the first in a series of articles. This one is interesting
> only for the fact that subsequent benchmarks will have to take into
> account the poorer response times for WinNT. The rest of the series
> should be more entertaining. BTW, that "IBM guy", as you referred to him,
> is IBM's product guru in charge of MSFT, not Linux. I'm expecting bias
> in a different direction than you.
OK, maybe this thread has taken a bad turn. I was not really objecting to
the article as such (and I apologize for the dismissive "IBM guy" term). I
was more after the poster, who believed that the test described said
something about the relative performance of Linux versus WinNT.
------------------------------
From: Ray Chason <[EMAIL PROTECTED]>
Crossposted-To:
comp.os.ms-windows.nt.advocacy,comp.unix.advocacy,comp.os.ms-windows.advocacy
Subject: Re: Just how commercially viable is OSS?... (Was Re: Interesting MS speech on
OSS/GPL ( /. hates it so it's good))
Date: Fri, 04 May 2001 08:21:18 -0000
"Stephen Edwards" <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> wrote:
>First of all, Microsoft is a member of the
>BSA. Secondly, the "shakedown" as you put
>it is targeted towards software pirates and
>people who have been using unlicensed software.
http://www.motherjones.com/mother_jones/JF98/burstein.html
Legal? Absolutely. But it doesn't pass the smell test.
--
--------------===============<[ Ray Chason ]>===============--------------
PGP public key at http://www.smart.net/~rchason/pubkey.asc
Delenda est Windoze
------------------------------
From: "Mikkel Elmholdt" <[EMAIL PROTECTED]>
Subject: Re: Windos is *unfriendly*
Date: Fri, 4 May 2001 10:51:25 +0200
"Terry Porter" <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> wrote in message
news:[EMAIL PROTECTED]...
> From a Motorcycle news group today
> "glitch1" <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> wrote in message
>
> > Linux and Unix geeks, stay away !! :)
> > Been mucking around for months with w98se and w2k to get the 2 machines
> > networked, also trying to rig both onto one internet connection. Tried
all
> > those "you beaut" apps like Winproxy, Wingate etc., trying to follow the
> > EASY instal & forget stuff, resulting in more frustration than coffee at
> > hand....
> > W98 dropping the network constantly resulting in endless logon/logoffs,
98
> > and 2k not talking on the same level, bugger it.
>
> Tell us again Wintrolls, how "easy" Windos is to set up ?
>
>
> --
> Kind Regards
> Terry
Hmmm - according to the "Porter Principle" we obviously have:
1) When someone complains that Linux is hard to setup and use, then the
following apply:
- He is stupid and ought to stay away from computers
- He is probably paid by Microsoft
- He should RTFM, and Get A Life, and <whatever>
2) When someone complains that Windows is hard to setup and use, then the
following apply:
- He is making an educated and intelligent assessment
- He is finally seeing the light
Perhaps a bit unbalanced, don't you think Terry? Ever occurred to you that
this Motorcycle guy perhaps needed to RTFM on general PC setup and such?
(using months to network two WinPCs - really impressive!)
Mikkel
------------------------------
From: pip <[EMAIL PROTECTED]>
Subject: Re: Alan Cox responds to Mundie
Date: Fri, 04 May 2001 09:59:10 +0100
Erik Funkenbusch wrote:
>
> "Adam Warner" <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> wrote in message
> news:[EMAIL PROTECTED]...
> > http://www2.usermagnet.com/cox/index.html
> >
> > 'nuff said.
>
> Not really. I think Alan made a critical error in mentioning the internet.
> The Internet was funded by the government
Which one? There was more than one involved (Hint: check history of tcp
- and yes the USA did not invent the Internet alone - sorry!)
> I think Alan is also making a critical mistake mentioning major FUD items
> like the NSAKEY debacle. He's also making a critical mistake referring to
> the Halloween memo as "their" Halloween memo, as if it were an intentially
> published document expressing corporate opinion, versus the work of a single
> author as a memo to his bosses.
Memo's are two page briefs - this is a report.
> And he's CERTAINLY making a critical error when over exagerates the forking
> of Windows (claiming that 98 and ME are seperate forks, rather than simply
> next versions) and claiming that NT, 2000 and the different editions are
> seperate forks as well.
Erm, so I guess that millions of new lines of code is working to the
original codebase (w2k)?
> If Alan wants Linux and the GPL to be taken more seriously, he has to think
> his arguments through more clearly and not make such exagerated and
> incorrect statements. After all, he is a spokesman for the movement.
And he is a good spokesperson.
------------------------------
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