Re: Derivative effects.
On Mon, 26 Jan 2004 01:46:24 -0800, Day Brown [EMAIL PROTECTED] wrote in message [EMAIL PROTECTED]: Al Davis wrote: At the time, I believed like the majority, that Henderson was just jealous of his competition, because he couldn't keep up. In hindsight, now I see it Henderson's way. How is this case different from GPL violations today? http://www.esva.net/~thom/philkatz.html http://www.was-ist-fido.de/doks/fnews/fido540.txt Whatever history decides what the details were, the future looks like we are going to return to the Greek tradition, which was to view ideas as the gifts of the Muses. Therefore not patentable. ..I take it you guys here discuss the US Software Patents and not real life patent such as say, Orville and Wilbur Wright wing twist patent? ..patent was conceived as a legal instrument to promote industry and the advance of technology, by allowing the innovator a 20 year monopoly to exploit his idea commercially, _provided_ the idea is new, provides a technical and tangible effect that is reproducible, and can be exercized by anyone with average knowledge of the state of art in the relevant field of technology. ..it is right there, that the US has failed. The complexity of software is such now that the judges and juries who decide case law cannot possibly understand what they are doing, and- as the PKzip case suggests, we'll find ways around the court decisions to make them trivial. -- ..med vennlig hilsen = with Kind Regards from Arnt... ;-) ...with a number of polar bear hunters in his ancestry... Scenarios always come in sets of three: best case, worst case, and just in case. -- To UNSUBSCRIBE, email to [EMAIL PROTECTED] with a subject of unsubscribe. Trouble? Contact [EMAIL PROTECTED]
Re: Derivative effects.
On Tue, Jan 27, 2004 at 07:46:51AM +0100, Jan Minar wrote: On Mon, Jan 26, 2004 at 01:41:30AM -0800, Day Brown wrote: [...] DR-DOS, since at least 5, have had taskswitching. Well, sort of. AFAICR, it was a bleeding edge feature, and it felt like one. You just didn't really expect it to work like we expect Linux to work. After all, it was just a DOS. This is not to start a flamewar, but rather to inform the reader the real meaning of the words sometimes isn't the obvious one. Quarterdeck brought out a task-switching system to run on ordinary DOS; ISTR it got a glowing review in Electronics Wireless World - they rated it better than the windoze of the time - but it was text-based rather than full pretty pictures GUI, and didn't have M$'s backing, so it sunk without trace. Unfortunately I never got a chance to try it. -- Pigeon Be kind to pigeons Get my GPG key here: http://pgp.mit.edu:11371/pks/lookup?op=getsearch=0x21C61F7F pgp0.pgp Description: PGP signature
Re: Derivative effects.
Thus spake Pigeon ([EMAIL PROTECTED]): On Tue, Jan 27, 2004 at 07:46:51AM +0100, Jan Minar wrote: On Mon, Jan 26, 2004 at 01:41:30AM -0800, Day Brown wrote: [...] DR-DOS, since at least 5, have had taskswitching. Well, sort of. AFAICR, it was a bleeding edge feature, and it felt like one. You just didn't really expect it to work like we expect Linux to work. After all, it was just a DOS. This is not to start a flamewar, but rather to inform the reader the real meaning of the words sometimes isn't the obvious one. Quarterdeck brought out a task-switching system to run on ordinary DOS; ISTR it got a glowing review in Electronics Wireless World - they rated it better than the windoze of the time - but it was text-based rather than full pretty pictures GUI, and didn't have M$'s backing, so it sunk without trace. Unfortunately I never got a chance to try it. Yes - Desqview/QEMM wasn't it? I actually wrote an application to run under DV and had the developer's SDK. It was as I recall pretty good, although text only as you suggest. Funnily enough I moved house last month and the DV manuals were among the stuff that didn't make it to the new one. Quarterdeck also announced, maybe even released Desqview-X c1994/5 (?) which IIRC was an implementation of (part of?) the X protocol on (gulp) DOS. I had a product brief but don't recall ever seeing the product. -- |Deryk Barker, Computer Science Dept. | Music does not have to be understood| |Camosun College, Victoria, BC, Canada| It has to be listened to. | |email: [EMAIL PROTECTED] | | |phone: +1 250 370 4452 | Hermann Scherchen. | -- To UNSUBSCRIBE, email to [EMAIL PROTECTED] with a subject of unsubscribe. Trouble? Contact [EMAIL PROTECTED]
Re: Derivative effects.
On Tue, Jan 27, 2004 at 07:38:36PM -0800, Deryk Barker wrote: Yes - Desqview/QEMM wasn't it? I actually wrote an application to run under DV and had the developer's SDK. It was as I recall pretty good, although text only as you suggest. Funnily enough I moved house last month and the DV manuals were among the stuff that didn't make it to the new one. I believe IBM also had a product called TopView. -- Carl Fink [EMAIL PROTECTED] Jabootu's Minister of Proofreading http://www.jabootu.com -- To UNSUBSCRIBE, email to [EMAIL PROTECTED] with a subject of unsubscribe. Trouble? Contact [EMAIL PROTECTED]
Re: Derivative effects.
On Sun, Jan 25, 2004 at 04:58:20AM -0800, Nano Nano wrote: The radical libertarian in me enjoys the concept of an O/S where user apps can trash the system. Protection faults just seem anti-democratic. I'd love to see a modern equal-opportunity O/S :-) AFAIK, Linux 2.6 port for an MMU-less architecture is what you call for ;-) apt-get -y kernel-image-2.6.1-v850 crashme echo \ $'#!/bin/sh\n/usr/bin/crashme' /etc/rc2.d/S99crashme reboot # ;-)) -- Jan Minar Please don't CC me, I'm subscribed. x 9 pgp0.pgp Description: PGP signature
Re: Derivative effects.
On Sun, Jan 25, 2004 at 08:48:34PM -0700, Paul E Condon wrote: Also, he says that it runs on the PDP-11 and the Interdata 8/32, which contradicts my memory that it was developed on an earlier model DEC computer. But he does say that work on UNIX started in 1971. so maybe my memory is OK. dict -djargon unix ;-) -- Jan Minar Please don't CC me, I'm subscribed. x 9 pgp0.pgp Description: PGP signature
Re: Derivative effects.
Micha Feigin wrote: Dos people haven't figured out how to get more then one program running at a time and windows haven't figured out how to get a program running for more then five minutes without going into the infamous blue screen of death. I dont do windoz, never have. But you are not correct. DR-DOS, since at least 5, have had taskswitching. But, I dont use my pc to run a fax in the background anymore. I dunno anyone who still tries. And most of the time, when I load dos, I dont bother with the multitasking functionality. dos programs are so small you can open and close them faster than you can open and close the windows of a gui. But yes, ms windoz is shit, always has been. And sure, you can use the CLI to go mucking around in the user permissions and setup files to get a debian install to come up to the single user desktop just like dos does. But the point is, that the windoz users dont know how to do that, and the option should be there in the ansi color scrollbar installation menus, which it aint. That aint a problem with Linux per se, but with the cultural effect of the distro programmer teams working in a networked environment. Sure the win newbies are stupid; but their market share is such, that if you want more development of more functionality offered to debian users, then you need to make it simple for them. -- To UNSUBSCRIBE, email to [EMAIL PROTECTED] with a subject of unsubscribe. Trouble? Contact [EMAIL PROTECTED]
Re: Derivative effects.
Al Davis wrote: At the time, I believed like the majority, that Henderson was just jealous of his competition, because he couldn't keep up. In hindsight, now I see it Henderson's way. How is this case different from GPL violations today? http://www.esva.net/~thom/philkatz.html http://www.was-ist-fido.de/doks/fnews/fido540.txt Whatever history decides what the details were, the future looks like we are going to return to the Greek tradition, which was to view ideas as the gifts of the Muses. Therefore not patentable. The complexity of software is such now that the judges and juries who decide case law cannot possibly understand what they are doing, and- as the PKzip case suggests, we'll find ways around the court decisions to make them trivial. -- To UNSUBSCRIBE, email to [EMAIL PROTECTED] with a subject of unsubscribe. Trouble? Contact [EMAIL PROTECTED]
Re: Derivative effects.
Monique Y. Herman wrote: On 2004-01-24, Day Brown typed a lot of stuff. You're very clearly aware of the fact that most of the community, particularly most of the developer community, *wants* all of the safeguards and complexities that you find so inconvenient. Sure. Did I not make it clear that I was referring to the single user desktop and not a multiuser and/or networked system? If you really care so much for a single-user linux, perhaps the solution is to find other like-minded people and create your own distribution that satisfies your needs. I dont think I have the expertise. But of all the distros, I thought that Debian had the most flexible system and the most effective feedback to the developers to offer *options at setup* which dos/win users would expect as the default. By the way, a lot of us *do* run linux at home, in non-massive networked environments. But we're pretty happy with the way things work. If you see no need for improvement, that's fine with me. If, however, you want a larger user base for Debian, with functionality dos/win users would expect, then the *options* I have outlined will help. Newbies havta start out someplace, pissing them off with strange methods dont help. The CLI steps which Bijan cited may work, but newbies are unlikely to find it among all of the other stuff they need to read to learn to use Linux conveniently. That option needs to be in the install scripts. To quote Andreas:fdformat does not create a file system. then goes on to explain that this info is in the German man. Case in point. A dos/win user would not know that, has never seen the like, and has never been told he dont have 'permission' to access a floppy. Only a distro programmer team working in a network environment would not notice the *lack of functionality* to the single user desktop. A lot of the stuff you describe seems to be more RedHat-y ... maybe you should look there for some of the functionality you would like? Redhat is much worse. I wasted lots of hours trying to get RH 9 installed, gave up, then found out they have released a special edition for the VIA C3 CPU like mine. -- To UNSUBSCRIBE, email to [EMAIL PROTECTED] with a subject of unsubscribe. Trouble? Contact [EMAIL PROTECTED]
Re: Derivative effects.
On Sun, 25 Jan 2004 20:48:34 -0700, Paul E Condon wrote: Also, he says that it runs on the PDP-11 and the Interdata 8/32, which contradicts my memory that it was developed on an earlier model DEC computer. But he does say that work on UNIX started in 1971. so maybe my memory is OK. IIRC, original development was on a DED PDP-7 with, I believe, paper tape and 4K of user memory, or core, as we used to call it :) Purpose of the original development was to play Space War. It was then ported to a PDP-11 which, I think had a whopping 16K or so of user memory, which might be the box to which he is referring. Humble beginnings, indeed! -- paul It is important to realize that any lock can be picked with a big enough hammer. -- Sun System Network Admin manual -- To UNSUBSCRIBE, email to [EMAIL PROTECTED] with a subject of unsubscribe. Trouble? Contact [EMAIL PROTECTED]
Re: Derivative effects.
On Mon, Jan 26, 2004 at 01:41:30AM -0800, Day Brown wrote: [...] DR-DOS, since at least 5, have had taskswitching. Well, sort of. AFAICR, it was a bleeding edge feature, and it felt like one. You just didn't really expect it to work like we expect Linux to work. After all, it was just a DOS. This is not to start a flamewar, but rather to inform the reader the real meaning of the words sometimes isn't the obvious one. -- Jan Minar Please don't CC me, I'm subscribed. x 9 pgp0.pgp Description: PGP signature
Re: Derivative effects.
On Fri, Jan 23, 2004 at 10:43:56PM -0800, Day Brown wrote: Linux comes from Unix, which was designed for mainframes. windows comes from dos, which was designed for personal desktops. Well technically Unix was designed for mid-sized computers... And wasn't DOS designed for the workstation? The adaptation of DOS for personal use I associate with Windows 3.1, while OS/2 was a (object-oriented) GUI for the workstation. I kind'a miss DOS. Haines Brown -- To UNSUBSCRIBE, email to [EMAIL PROTECTED] with a subject of unsubscribe. Trouble? Contact [EMAIL PROTECTED]
Re: Derivative effects.
Hi, * Haines Brown wrote (2004-01-25 13:21): On Fri, Jan 23, 2004 at 10:43:56PM -0800, Day Brown wrote: Linux comes from Unix, which was designed for mainframes. windows comes from dos, which was designed for personal desktops. Well technically Unix was designed for mid-sized computers... And wasn't DOS designed for the workstation? The adaptation of DOS for personal use I associate with Windows 3.1, while OS/2 was a (object-oriented) GUI for the workstation. Nope, OS/2 is the operating system and was supposed to replace DOS. The GUI is called Presentation Manager, and the first versions of Windows were in fact called Presentation Manager for DOS. The desktop is Workplace Shell and I'm still missing some of its features. I kind'a miss DOS. With a decent shell it might have been just endurable. Thorsten -- When bad men combine, the good must associate; else they will fall one by one, an unpitied sacrifice in a contemptible struggle. - Edmund Burke pgp0.pgp Description: PGP signature
Re: Derivative effects.
On Sun, Jan 25, 2004 at 01:44:02PM +0100, Thorsten Haude wrote: * Haines Brown wrote (2004-01-25 13:21): I kind'a miss DOS. With a decent shell it might have been just endurable. Like 4/dos? The radical libertarian in me enjoys the concept of an O/S where user apps can trash the system. Protection faults just seem anti-democratic. I'd love to see a modern equal-opportunity O/S :-) On the subject of operating systems and political systems... A fellow I worked with at Microsoft named Michael Parkes [1] (brilliant fellow) was explaining locking mechanisms in heap allocators to me. The NT heap is democratic -- it tries to be fair. The first waiter is the first to be signaled. His replacement heap, which scales on SMP like hell and is used in SQL Server, is only stochastically fair -- it makes no promises of fairness. When the lock is free -- this is his words -- he wakes 'em all up and says Have at it boys! First one in wins! There are no guarantees that you'll ever get the lock at all! It's not democratic at all. I forget the details, but it was powerful lesson to me. Brilliant guy. -- To UNSUBSCRIBE, email to [EMAIL PROTECTED] with a subject of unsubscribe. Trouble? Contact [EMAIL PROTECTED]
Re: Derivative effects.
On Sun, 25 Jan 2004 07:21:02 -0500, Haines Brown wrote: On Fri, Jan 23, 2004 at 10:43:56PM -0800, Day Brown wrote: Linux comes from Unix, which was designed for mainframes. windows comes from dos, which was designed for personal desktops. Well technically Unix was designed for mid-sized computers... And wasn't DOS designed for the workstation? The adaptation of DOS for personal use I associate with Windows 3.1, while OS/2 was a (object-oriented) GUI for the workstation. I kind'a miss DOS. Actually, I miss CP/M. I always thought that pip was a much better program name than copy :) -- paul It is important to realize that any lock can be picked with a big enough hammer. -- Sun System Network Admin manual -- To UNSUBSCRIBE, email to [EMAIL PROTECTED] with a subject of unsubscribe. Trouble? Contact [EMAIL PROTECTED]
Re: Derivative effects.
On Sun, Jan 25, 2004 at 07:21:02AM -0500, Haines Brown wrote: On Fri, Jan 23, 2004 at 10:43:56PM -0800, Day Brown wrote: Linux comes from Unix, which was designed for mainframes. windows comes from dos, which was designed for personal desktops. Well technically Unix was designed for mid-sized computers... And wasn't DOS designed for the workstation? Nope, Dos was for 16 bit PCs. It was like Unix's under-achieving relative :) 8.3 filenames, single-tasking, crappy shell,... I kind'a miss DOS. http://www.freedos.org Bijan -- Bijan Soleymani [EMAIL PROTECTED] http://www.crasseux.com signature.asc Description: Digital signature
Re: Derivative effects.
Thus spake Bijan Soleymani ([EMAIL PROTECTED]): On Sun, Jan 25, 2004 at 07:21:02AM -0500, Haines Brown wrote: On Fri, Jan 23, 2004 at 10:43:56PM -0800, Day Brown wrote: Linux comes from Unix, which was designed for mainframes. windows comes from dos, which was designed for personal desktops. Well technically Unix was designed for mid-sized computers... And wasn't DOS designed for the workstation? Nope, Dos was for 16 bit PCs. It was like Unix's under-achieving relative :) 8.3 filenames, single-tasking, crappy shell,... And what nobody has mentioned is that Unix was derived from Multics. Indeed, the original name was Unics, an even more obvious pun, but that was felt to be alittle too close. -- |Deryk Barker, Computer Science Dept. | Music does not have to be understood| |Camosun College, Victoria, BC, Canada| It has to be listened to. | |email: [EMAIL PROTECTED] | | |phone: +1 250 370 4452 | Hermann Scherchen. | -- To UNSUBSCRIBE, email to [EMAIL PROTECTED] with a subject of unsubscribe. Trouble? Contact [EMAIL PROTECTED]
Re: Derivative effects.
On Sun, 25 Jan 2004 07:21:02 -0500 (EST), [EMAIL PROTECTED] (Haines Brown) wrote in message [EMAIL PROTECTED]: On Fri, Jan 23, 2004 at 10:43:56PM -0800, Day Brown wrote: Linux comes from Unix, which was designed for mainframes. windows comes from dos, which was designed for personal desktops. Well technically Unix was designed for mid-sized computers... And wasn't DOS designed for the workstation? The adaptation of DOS for personal use I associate with Windows 3.1, while OS/2 was a (object-oriented) GUI for the workstation. ..OS/2 is/was IBM's 2'nd major shot at PC OS'es, Microsoft killed it with their no-dualboot OEM licensing, I first saw it in an IBM laptop, (the thinkpad with the folding winged keyboard, I set it up for a client) where you had to _choose_ which OS to install, and which to wipe, the client made the mistake of making me choose Wintendo95. -- ..med vennlig hilsen = with Kind Regards from Arnt... ;-) ...with a number of polar bear hunters in his ancestry... Scenarios always come in sets of three: best case, worst case, and just in case. -- To UNSUBSCRIBE, email to [EMAIL PROTECTED] with a subject of unsubscribe. Trouble? Contact [EMAIL PROTECTED]
Re: Derivative effects.
On Sun, Jan 25, 2004 at 12:06:05PM -0800, Deryk Barker wrote: Thus spake Bijan Soleymani ([EMAIL PROTECTED]): On Sun, Jan 25, 2004 at 07:21:02AM -0500, Haines Brown wrote: On Fri, Jan 23, 2004 at 10:43:56PM -0800, Day Brown wrote: Linux comes from Unix, which was designed for mainframes. windows comes from dos, which was designed for personal desktops. Well technically Unix was designed for mid-sized computers... And wasn't DOS designed for the workstation? Nope, Dos was for 16 bit PCs. It was like Unix's under-achieving relative :) 8.3 filenames, single-tasking, crappy shell,... And what nobody has mentioned is that Unix was derived from Multics. Indeed, the original name was Unics, an even more obvious pun, but that was felt to be alittle too close. In Bell System Technical Journal v57 #6 part2, (July/Aug 1968) page 1948, D. M. Ritchie says ... a good case can be made that it (UNIX) is in essance a modern implementation of M.I.T.'s CTSS system. Previous to working on UNIX, Ritchie had worked on MULTICS, but he did not credit that in his retrospective article. The very strong impression I got from talking to people at Bell Labs at the time was that MULTICS was viewed by Thompson and Ritchie as an object lesson in how NOT to do software. Also, he says that it runs on the PDP-11 and the Interdata 8/32, which contradicts my memory that it was developed on an earlier model DEC computer. But he does say that work on UNIX started in 1971. so maybe my memory is OK. -- Paul E Condon [EMAIL PROTECTED] -- To UNSUBSCRIBE, email to [EMAIL PROTECTED] with a subject of unsubscribe. Trouble? Contact [EMAIL PROTECTED]
Re: Derivative effects.
On 2004-01-24, Day Brown typed a lot of stuff. ... You're very clearly aware of the fact that most of the community, particularly most of the developer community, *wants* all of the safeguards and complexities that you find so inconvenient. If you really care so much for a single-user linux, perhaps the solution is to find other like-minded people and create your own distribution that satisfies your needs. By the way, a lot of us *do* run linux at home, in non-massive networked environments. But we're pretty happy with the way things work. A lot of the stuff you describe seems to be more RedHat-y ... maybe you should look there for some of the functionality you would like? -- monique -- To UNSUBSCRIBE, email to [EMAIL PROTECTED] with a subject of unsubscribe. Trouble? Contact [EMAIL PROTECTED]
Re: Derivative effects.
On Fri, Jan 23, 2004 at 10:43:56PM -0800, Day Brown wrote: Linux comes from Unix, which was designed for mainframes. windows comes from dos, which was designed for personal desktops. Well technically Unix was designed for mid-sized computers... I *never* get told I dont have 'permission' to access a floppy. which is what a dos/win user would expect. The Unix people run networks, and dont mess with floppies, so they dont notice the problem. Unless you tell it otherwise, it will default to the dos file system so you can take the floppy to a dos/win machine. Which is prolly why you want to use it anyway. With corel/debian, I dont havta 'mount' a floppy. Click on the gui file manager, and theres a + to click on for the floppy or cdrom; rw floppy access is the *default* just as a single user of dos/win would expect. I dunno why so many distros just dont get this either. You get the same thing in gnome, there's a little applet that you can add to click on and get cdrom/floppy inserted. Yes, Linux is terrific for networks. And if you are a sysad, by all means rely on it. If however, you are trying to run a single user desktop, then the whole business of having to logon and enter your password are a pain in the rectal orifice. With Corel, all I havta do is hit [CR] to accept the blank pw and bring me to my desktop. I'd prefer that it went automatically to my desktop like dos does, but it aint too bad. If I want root, I dont bother to login as root, but use su in a terminal. But lotsa distros just do not get it. Perhaps, as home networks become more common, this will be more acceptable, but even then, most of us in the home have our computer, and they have theirs, and we still dont need the logon process. I do the same thing for GDM and login for my Debian system at home. Have to modify the files: /etc/pam.d/gdm and /etc/pam.d/login to allow login without a password. GDM (the login program for gnome) can even auto-log you into your account, but I don't want that since other people also use my computer. Bijan -- Bijan Soleymani [EMAIL PROTECTED] http://www.crasseux.com signature.asc Description: Digital signature
Re: Derivative effects.
Day Brown wrote: Yes, Linux is terrific for networks. And if you are a sysad, by all means rely on it. If however, you are trying to run a single user desktop, then the whole business of having to logon and enter your password are a pain in the rectal orifice. The big problem with Corel is their relationship to SCO, who are actively trying to kill Linux as we all now know it. Of course, they won't be successful, but who wants to be in bed with the enemy. There are plenty of Linux distros (Knoppix, Mandrake, Xandros come to mind immediately) designed for the user desktop that address all of your login and mounting issues you brought up in your message. They're all generally much better quality than Corel also... you should try one of those if you like that level of desktop sophistication. Debian can be configured to do all of the things you mentioned also -- at least if you're willing to run testing or unstable for the later versions of KDE/Gnome. So most of your arguments about those items will just make people who know they're available on other distros chuckle. It just makes you look like you haven't done your homework/research lately. Nate Duehr, [EMAIL PROTECTED] -- To UNSUBSCRIBE, email to [EMAIL PROTECTED] with a subject of unsubscribe. Trouble? Contact [EMAIL PROTECTED]
Re: Derivative effects.
Nate Duehr [EMAIL PROTECTED] writes: The big problem with Corel is their relationship to SCO, who are actively trying to kill Linux as we all now know it. Of course, they won't be successful, but who wants to be in bed with the enemy. What relationship does Corel have to SCO? I remember that Corel had that big MS investment, but I don't recall them having any relationship with SCO. (Sure you aren't conflating Caldera with Corel?) The bigger problem with Corel is that their Linux development has been abandoned for years, and shows no sign of coming back. -- Alan Shutko [EMAIL PROTECTED] - I am the rocks. I don't want to play coach - we're losing.. -- To UNSUBSCRIBE, email to [EMAIL PROTECTED] with a subject of unsubscribe. Trouble? Contact [EMAIL PROTECTED]
Re: Derivative effects.
On Saturday 24 January 2004 01:43 am, Day Brown wrote: There is one other example from computer history that applies to our power to control our own system: .zip. Years ago, the BBS networks were setup with archived files available with the .PAK extension. It was .arc . When Phil Katz crafted a new archive tool, he offered it to BBS users for free, to extract their .pak downloads. The corporate owners of PAK had the money and the lawyers, and found a judge who saw things their way, and sued Phil, saying that they owned 'pak' as a copywrite. Arc was released as source, before GPL was accepted by the community. Here is the original ARC license, in full: You may copy and distribute this program freely, provided that: 1) No fee is charged for such copying and distribution, and 2) It is distributed ONLY in its original, unmodified state. If you like this program, and find it of use, then your contribution will be appreciated. You may not use this product in a commercial environment without paying a license fee of $35. Site licenses and commercial distribution licenses are available. A program disk and printed documentation are available for $50. If you fail to abide by the terms of this license, then your conscience will haunt you for the rest of your life. PKARC was derived from the original ARC sources, in violation of the license. PK never released source. The original was just a fast ARC, then PK extended it to use different methods of compression, making it incompatible. The PK version had some critical parts hand coded in assembly language, and by far outperformed the original. So- Phil sent out an email to all the BBSes, announcing that his software would no longer be able to extract '.pak' files, and suggested that we all use .zip instead. PKZIP/PKUNZIP is still the defacto dos/win archive standard, and PAK INC... went out of business. Point being, that it was not up to the judge, nor the lawyers, it is up to us. PK's first change after losing the lawsuit was pak which was the same thing changed only to make it incompatible. Then it was replaced by zip. The source for zip was never released, but PK did release specs that someone could use to make another program that was compatible. The InfoZip package available on Debian, and WinZip are both non-PK, from the specs. At the time, I believed like the majority, that Henderson was just jealous of his competition, because he couldn't keep up. In hindsight, now I see it Henderson's way. How is this case different from GPL violations today? http://www.esva.net/~thom/philkatz.html http://www.was-ist-fido.de/doks/fnews/fido540.txt apt-get install arc -- To UNSUBSCRIBE, email to [EMAIL PROTECTED] with a subject of unsubscribe. Trouble? Contact [EMAIL PROTECTED]
Re: Derivative effects.
On Fri, Jan 23, 2004 at 10:43:56PM -0800, Day Brown wrote: Linux comes from Unix, which was designed for mainframes. windows comes from dos, which was designed for personal desktops. No. The original work on UNIX was done on a PDP 7, not a main frame. Its overall design was largely fixed before main frames gained the level of power that is today available in a desk top PC. Windows comes from early work on GUI done a Xerox Palo Alto Research Center (PARC). The trail of stealing ideas is too complicated to review here. The rest of this article is somewhat flawed by ignorance of history. [snip] -- Paul E Condon [EMAIL PROTECTED] -- To UNSUBSCRIBE, email to [EMAIL PROTECTED] with a subject of unsubscribe. Trouble? Contact [EMAIL PROTECTED]
Re: Derivative effects.
On Sat, Jan 24, 2004 at 06:28:17PM -0500, Al Davis wrote: You may copy and distribute this program freely, provided that: 1) No fee is charged for such copying and distribution, and 2) It is distributed ONLY in its original, unmodified state. How is this case different from GPL violations today? The GPL gives you the right to modify the program and distribute modified versions. That means that you'd be allowed to modify the program to make it run better. The major requirement of the GPL is that you have to distribute the source along with the binaries. The GPL also allows a fee to be charged. Bijan -- Bijan Soleymani [EMAIL PROTECTED] http://www.crasseux.com signature.asc Description: Digital signature
Re: Derivative effects.
On Fri, Jan 23, 2004 at 10:43:56PM -0800, Day Brown wrote: Linux comes from Unix, which was designed for mainframes. windows comes from dos, which was designed for personal desktops. One of the reasons I like to run the Corel version of debian, is that because they wrote software for the single user desktop for a decade or more, they intuitively understood what the single user wanted. Try knoppix, I thing it has all you are whining about and more in terms of setup. You can install it from the cdrom to the hardisk. I *never* get told I dont have 'permission' to access a floppy. which is what a dos/win user would expect. The Unix people run networks, and dont Thats distro specific, not linux specific. Mainstream debian just usually aims more at the technically inclined while other distros around it tend to go more in the novice direction. I don't know the new installer though and whether it gives you the options. mess with floppies, so they dont notice the problem. Unless you tell it otherwise, it will default to the dos file system so you can take the floppy to a dos/win machine. Which is prolly why you want to use it At least the gnome format tool defaults to fat iirc. anyway. With corel/debian, I dont havta 'mount' a floppy. Click on the gui file manager, and theres a + to click on for the floppy or cdrom; rw floppy access is the *default* just as a single user of dos/win would expect. I dunno why so many distros just dont get this either. Both kde and gnome support that if the distro set up permissions and fstab correctly, again I think knoppix defaults to that, don't know about the new installer. Yes, Linux is terrific for networks. And if you are a sysad, by all means rely on it. If however, you are trying to run a single user desktop, then the whole business of having to logon and enter your password are a pain in the rectal orifice. With Corel, all I havta do is You can set gdm to require password even if one is set for selected local users. It can even log in a given user automatically either on first startup, on each startup or after a delay. hit [CR] to accept the blank pw and bring me to my desktop. I'd prefer that it went automatically to my desktop like dos does, but it aint too bad. If I want root, I dont bother to login as root, but use su in a terminal. But lotsa distros just do not get it. Perhaps, as home networks become more common, this will be more acceptable, but even then, most of us in the home have our computer, and they have theirs, and we still dont need the logon process. And please dont tell me that I am ignoring security safeguards. If someone accesses this 'terminal' in my own house, I have a *family* problem, not a computer problem. This is not a problem that Linux distro programmers could not fix, but they themselves work at 'terminals' on networks and rely on passwords and authentication, and they just dont get it. What about logging on to the Internet. You don't think that its trivial to log in to your computer when you are logged on. A password makes it somewhat harder to do that. And look into the gdm option I mentioned which allows you both the convenience of a password login protected account and password-less local login. I've had the corel deluxe cds for years, put them away because as much as I liked it, with only 32megs of dram, it churned the hell out of the hard drive and kept crashing. But now I've got 384, and the only buggy problem is the netscape 4.7 that came with it. Which I'd like to replace, but there seems to be problems with my apt-get, a beautiful idea in principle, but perhaps of obsolescence in the sources.list file, or whatever, has yet to get me anything Sounds like your sources.list are not pointing in the right direction. Look in www.debian.org for a list of mirrors and apt-get setup. successfully. And here again DOS has been using .zip files for years. I downloaded BasicLinux (BL-2.zip) and unzipped it into the /BLINUX directory of my FAT-32 dos drive, and ran LOADLIN from the dos prompt. It loads BL into a ramdisk, and gives me the bash prompt from a DOS drive. Which is really neat if I ever need to access an ext2 partition or drive to copy my personal data onto the dos drive before trying to repair a trashed Linux. But as this example shows, when I download a .zip archive, I know I have the tools to deal with it. With Linux there are so many different archive formats, and more seem to be invented on a regular basis, that I dont have the confidence that I am not, as I have so many times before, been wasting my time. The main two are gzip and bzip2 to compress and tar to put several files into one file. The other variants are usually only used for specific reasons and all of them have their use. zip and rar are also supported, and you shouldn't worry, the tools will probably be around as long as linux is (and probably after it evolved into the next whatever
Re: Derivative effects.
On Saturday 24 January 2004 07:11 pm, Bijan Soleymani wrote: On Sat, Jan 24, 2004 at 06:28:17PM -0500, Al Davis wrote: You may copy and distribute this program freely, provided that: 1) No fee is charged for such copying and distribution, and 2) It is distributed ONLY in its original, unmodified state. How is this case different from GPL violations today? The GPL gives you the right to modify the program and distribute modified versions. That means that you'd be allowed to modify the program to make it run better. The major requirement of the GPL is that you have to distribute the source along with the binaries. The GPL also allows a fee to be charged. Good point. My point was that both are the same in that the issue was that a free program with source distributed is illegally forked and taken proprietary.It is an example of a case that GPL is designed to prevent. Remember .. this happened at a time when GPL was not well known. The more usual was a shareware license, like arc. Perhaps if it was originally released under GPL this would not have happened. -- To UNSUBSCRIBE, email to [EMAIL PROTECTED] with a subject of unsubscribe. Trouble? Contact [EMAIL PROTECTED]
Re: Derivative effects.
Alan Shutko wrote: Nate Duehr [EMAIL PROTECTED] writes: The big problem with Corel is their relationship to SCO, who are actively trying to kill Linux as we all now know it. Of course, they won't be successful, but who wants to be in bed with the enemy. What relationship does Corel have to SCO? I remember that Corel had that big MS investment, but I don't recall them having any relationship with SCO. (Sure you aren't conflating Caldera with Corel?) The bigger problem with Corel is that their Linux development has been abandoned for years, and shows no sign of coming back. Oops! You're right. I mixed up the companies. You're also right about Corel -- dead dead dead. :-) Nate Duehr, [EMAIL PROTECTED] -- To UNSUBSCRIBE, email to [EMAIL PROTECTED] with a subject of unsubscribe. Trouble? Contact [EMAIL PROTECTED]
