Re: The sorry state of open source today

2007-04-20 Thread John Baldwin
On Friday 20 April 2007 04:08:05 am Radu-Cristian FOTESCU wrote:
> --- Tom Rhodes <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> wrote:
> > What was it that you said then?  I actually cannot remember.
> 
> Page 7: "Except for the *BSD family, whose members are either _*_backed_*_ 
by
> 501(c)(3) non-profit organizations like The FreeBSD Foundation or the NetBSD
> Project, or the task of individuals like Theo de Raadt for OpenBSD and Matt
> Dillon for DragonFly BSD (by the way, your donations to either of them are
> appreciated), the 500+ Linux distributions fall roughly into two main
> categories: the vast majority of the distributions are made by the
> enthusiasts, for the enthusiasts, and a given number of them are mainstream
> distros, supposed to be trustworthy and polished enough to satisfy both the
> corporate-minded user and the home user."
> 
> Backed != controlled.

Hmm, I think even "backed" might be a bit strong in the case of FF.  FF 
provides some assistance to FreeBSD such as sponsoring some development work 
(such as on Java) or travel vouchers for conferences, but they aren't the 
only ones doing that either.  Many companies also provide similar support to 
the FreeBSD project by employing or contracting developers, submitting code 
back to the project, donating hardware and colo space, etc.  I would still 
say that a significant chunk of work done on FreeBSD is done w/o any 
involvement from the FF at all (that is, not done on hardware donated to the 
FF by other parties, or sponsored by the FF, or done at conferences while 
being subsidized by FF travel grant, etc.).

Arguably, FreeBSD was "backed" more by the old WC-CDROM folks than anyone, 
certainly more than what the FF currently has done to date.

(Note: none of this is meant as a rip on the FF at all, just as observations 
of current practice.)

-- 
John Baldwin
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Re: The sorry state of open source today

2007-04-20 Thread Radu-Cristian FOTESCU
--- Tom Rhodes <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> wrote:
> What was it that you said then?  I actually cannot remember.

Page 7: "Except for the *BSD family, whose members are either _*_backed_*_ by
501(c)(3) non-profit organizations like The FreeBSD Foundation or the NetBSD
Project, or the task of individuals like Theo de Raadt for OpenBSD and Matt
Dillon for DragonFly BSD (by the way, your donations to either of them are
appreciated), the 500+ Linux distributions fall roughly into two main
categories: the vast majority of the distributions are made by the
enthusiasts, for the enthusiasts, and a given number of them are mainstream
distros, supposed to be trustworthy and polished enough to satisfy both the
corporate-minded user and the home user."

Backed != controlled.

> Next time write
> about dogs if you don't want all the attention.  ;)

Nay, because I love cats, and guess who is a cat lover too? ;-)

OK, moving on, I am back to better feelings now. The next week I have to
migrate my home Linux installations to FreeBSD and NetBSD. I have four
different Linhooks distros currently.

Cheers,
R-C



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Re: The sorry state of open source today

2007-04-20 Thread Tom Rhodes
On Fri, 20 Apr 2007 03:19:25 -0400 (EDT)
Radu-Cristian FOTESCU <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> wrote:

> --- Tom Rhodes <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> wrote:
> >
> > have expected a mix of positive and negative reactions.
> 
> Absolutely. But I have never said a word on the "control" -- what's this
> obsession on the control?! Are you so unhappy about NetBSD being _controlled_
> by TNF, that you really, really must to assert your independence?!

What was it that you said then?  I actually cannot remember.  But
I am probably the last person who ever needs to assert their
independence.  :)

> 
> It was only about the legal issues. While a developer or the abstract entity
> that is the Project may not be liable (or rather they are liable, but can't
> be reliably sued if the developers are outside the U.S.), I am afraid the
> Foundation is still an American subject, and all the possible attacks on the
> Project will be directed to the Foundation, from the legal standpoint.

I'm not a lawyer and won't discuss the legal points of who can
be sued for what reason etc.

> 
> You can't imagine how many injurious comments from Linux fanboys I had to
> delete, for just using about *BSD some words I can't reproduce here.

Trust me, I've been to a multi-state Linux event.  My imagination
is pretty good from that stand point.  Otherwise, parsing your
last sentence here is a bit difficult.

> 
> This is sad. I feel like I was seen as an "enemy", or as someone who said
> that the Project is "captive and controlled". I am not your enemy, I never
> was, and -- while I agree I could not afford to allocate more space for *BSD,
> hence what I wrote about FreeBSD is highly condensed  -- I know what I have
> wrote not.

It's better than being "an hero" to be honest.  Anyway, just
smile, nod, move on.  You wrote an article.  The title alone
is enough to get oss advocates up in arms, you were a public
figure for a week, yay, just let it go.  I know it hurts, it
sucks, but not everyone was negative about it.  Next time write
about dogs if you don't want all the attention.  ;)

-- 
Tom Rhodes
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Re: The sorry state of open source today

2007-04-20 Thread Radu-Cristian FOTESCU
--- Tom Rhodes <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> wrote:
>
> have expected a mix of positive and negative reactions.

Absolutely. But I have never said a word on the "control" -- what's this
obsession on the control?! Are you so unhappy about NetBSD being _controlled_
by TNF, that you really, really must to assert your independence?!

It was only about the legal issues. While a developer or the abstract entity
that is the Project may not be liable (or rather they are liable, but can't
be reliably sued if the developers are outside the U.S.), I am afraid the
Foundation is still an American subject, and all the possible attacks on the
Project will be directed to the Foundation, from the legal standpoint.

You can't imagine how many injurious comments from Linux fanboys I had to
delete, for just using about *BSD some words I can't reproduce here.

This is sad. I feel like I was seen as an "enemy", or as someone who said
that the Project is "captive and controlled". I am not your enemy, I never
was, and -- while I agree I could not afford to allocate more space for *BSD,
hence what I wrote about FreeBSD is highly condensed  -- I know what I have
wrote not.

Thanks,
R-C



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Re: The sorry state of open source today

2007-04-20 Thread Radu-Cristian FOTESCU
--- Matt Olander <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> wrote:
>
> It seems more like legitimate debate going on to me ;-)

Legitimate, granted. But I was hurt by the way he has put things.
Imagine how it is to have a blog with almost 2,900 posts written by me since
Aug. 12, 2005. This makes an average of 4.6 posts/day. From the 4,230
comments posted by readers over the time, some of them were very offensive
(hundreds), but just figure it that I had to reject hundreds of _very_
offensive comments.

I must be tired and writing such a polemical `feature' (essay) in 3 days was
exhausting. I was then very much surprised to see that the most coherent
attack (on both me and Jem -- `The sorry state of The Jem Report', remember?)
is coming from a FreeBSD developer.

> FYI, the FreeBSD Foundation has not yet signed off

Well, with or without the Flash agreement, 99.999% of the users will find
their way.

Thanks for your clarifications,
R-C



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Re: The sorry state of open source today

2007-04-19 Thread Tom Rhodes
On Thu, 19 Apr 2007 21:39:16 -0400 (EDT)
Radu-Cristian FOTESCU <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> wrote:

Hi!

> Really, folks, what makes you so aggressive?!
> 
> I was hurt, and disappointed. I was having higher expectations from the
> FreeBSD guys.
> 
> http://beranger.org/index.php?article=2858
> 
> R-C

I wouldn't take DES' comments to be that aggressive or take
much offense to them.  After reading over some of the emails
and his comments, in most cases it seemed more that he was
pointing out that the Foundation isn't in control of the
FreeBSD Project.  This is true.

There is, of course, a chance I missed a comment that was
offensive.  And if so, I'm sorry that it was missed; however,
you need to understand that you acted like a reporter.  You
placed yourself in a position as a "public figure" and in
a situation where people might disagree with what you had
to say.  Not everyone will like it.  Not everyone will agree
with you.  It's true that the negative attention will of
course be noticed much quicker and easier than the positive -
that's just life.

Furthermore, not to further offend you, I read the name of
your article: "The sorry state of open source today" as more
anti-open source comments from Microsoft drones and was a little
unhappy until DES pointed out what it really was.

Just take the good with the bad and just move on, you should
have expected a mix of positive and negative reactions.

Thanks,

-- 
Tom Rhodes
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Re: The sorry state of open source today

2007-04-19 Thread Matt Olander

Radu-Cristian FOTESCU wrote:

Really, folks, what makes you so aggressive?!

I was hurt, and disappointed. I was having higher expectations from the
FreeBSD guys.

http://beranger.org/index.php?article=2858

R-C


Hi R-C,

You have definitely blogged an interesting piece! I hardly think that 
Dag's coherent rebuttal regarding a few points he disagrees with and a 
readers mail to advocacy@, while digesting your article, demonstrate how 
aggressive FreeBSD developers can be, as you state in that post.


It seems more like legitimate debate going on to me ;-)

FYI, the FreeBSD Foundation has not yet signed off on the Flash 
re-distribution agreement with Adobe and there is no guarantee that they 
will. While I don't see any strong reasons why it shouldn't be signed, 
installing Flash on FreeBSD is painless and there might not be a great 
deal of reasons to change the way the system currently works.


best,
-matt

--
Matt Olander
CTO, iXsystems - "Servers for Open Source"  http://www.iXsystems.com
Public Relations, The FreeBSD Project http://www.FreeBSD.org
BSD on the Desktop! http://www.pcbsd.org
Phone: (408)943-4100 ext. 113 Fax: (408)943-4101
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Re: The sorry state of open source today

2007-04-18 Thread José Manuel Molina Pascual

Yes, it's true that I've been posting as I was reading, in fact he
seems to have good feelings with the *BSD family.

Anyway, the chapter "bugs in the free" is a total nonsense.

On 4/18/07, Dag-Erling Smørgrav <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> wrote:

"José Manuel Molina Pascual" <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> writes:
> What can be said about a guy that repeats "Our friends, the software
> patents" in several chapters.

If you think he favors software patents, you need to read the article
again - carefully.  He does play the devil's advocate early on, but he
comes down squarely against them.

DES
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Re: The sorry state of open source today

2007-04-18 Thread Dag-Erling Smørgrav
"José Manuel Molina Pascual" <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> writes:
> What can be said about a guy that repeats "Our friends, the software
> patents" in several chapters.

If you think he favors software patents, you need to read the article
again - carefully.  He does play the devil's advocate early on, but he
comes down squarely against them.

DES
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Re: The sorry state of open source today

2007-04-18 Thread José Manuel Molina Pascual

Hi, I've never posted to the advocacy list but as I read the post this
guy wrote. well, no comment.


I've only read the chapter "bugs in the free", it seems to me that
this gut is the typical "Security by obscurity", this phrase:

"Security fixes are indeed benefiting for having the code in the open,
but this also has a price: security advisories are issued more often
than ever, as everyone can dig for weaknesses" is very clear, in fact
it says that is better to get binary code and trust it.

I think that what he does not say is that many development languages
are going to the "code once run anywhere" paradigm, via intermediate
files runnable under a virtual machine (being Java its maximum
exponent) or interpreting ASCII code (ruby, Perl, PHP..), and
what it happens with these languages is that the "closed" application
you get is by no means closed to those guys who are capable today of
look for weaknesses in open source code. It can be argued that for
instance Java classes can be obfuscated but this obfuscation can not
stop a determined developer, there are very good tools that let you
analyze code, it's true that it will take you more time but it can be
done, ¿aren't the drivers for the Intel 3945ABG wifi chipset evolving?
¿has intel released the specs?.

This man is the classical example of corporate guy, can't live if the
tools he uses aren't provided by IBM, Oracle, Microsoft...


Maybe he's paid by Microsoft.

On 4/18/07, Scott Long <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> wrote:

Dag-Erling Smørgrav wrote:
> The subject refers to an editorial by Radu-Cristian Fotescu, which was
> published on the author's own website and in The Jem Report:
>
> http://beranger.org/feature/sorryfeature.php
> http://www.thejemreport.com/mambo/content/view/309/
>
> The article contains several factual errors regarding FreeBSD.  I have
> posted a rebuttal on my blog:
>
> 
http://maycontaintracesofbolts.blogspot.com/2007/04/sorry-state-of-jem-report.html
>
> DES

I'll rebut you're rebuttal =-)

You're absolutely correct about feature-based vs time-based being a
problem.  However, KSE was NOT, I REPEAT NOT, the major nor the second
major reason for the FreeBSD 5.x problems.  5.x releases suffered from
the following problems that were much larger and much more immediate:

- ULE and the modularized scheduler
- PREEMPTION
- ATA
- UFS2
- Immature locking model, too much Giant

Now, I'll entertain that the KSE development caused hurt feelings among
some developers, but that was a professionalism issue, not a technical
issue.  I also do agree that M:N is a nice academic theory that has run
into real-world roadblocks, and that FreeBSD seems to be better off in
the end with 1:1 threads, just like most other OSes.  But KSE was a
stepping stone to get there; without it, who knows when we would have
moved passed libc_r?  It was a definitely a painful step, but it would
have been much more painful to not have any alternatives to libc_r.  I'm
glad that the project and certain developers in it had the courage to do
it AND to stick with it to resolve the tough problems.

Scott



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Re: The sorry state of open source today

2007-04-18 Thread José Manuel Molina Pascual

What can be said about a guy that repeats "Our friends, the software
patents" in several chapters.


--
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Re: The sorry state of open source today

2007-04-18 Thread Scott Long

Dag-Erling Smørgrav wrote:

The subject refers to an editorial by Radu-Cristian Fotescu, which was
published on the author's own website and in The Jem Report:

http://beranger.org/feature/sorryfeature.php
http://www.thejemreport.com/mambo/content/view/309/

The article contains several factual errors regarding FreeBSD.  I have
posted a rebuttal on my blog:

http://maycontaintracesofbolts.blogspot.com/2007/04/sorry-state-of-jem-report.html

DES


I'll rebut you're rebuttal =-)

You're absolutely correct about feature-based vs time-based being a
problem.  However, KSE was NOT, I REPEAT NOT, the major nor the second
major reason for the FreeBSD 5.x problems.  5.x releases suffered from
the following problems that were much larger and much more immediate:

- ULE and the modularized scheduler
- PREEMPTION
- ATA
- UFS2
- Immature locking model, too much Giant

Now, I'll entertain that the KSE development caused hurt feelings among
some developers, but that was a professionalism issue, not a technical
issue.  I also do agree that M:N is a nice academic theory that has run
into real-world roadblocks, and that FreeBSD seems to be better off in
the end with 1:1 threads, just like most other OSes.  But KSE was a
stepping stone to get there; without it, who knows when we would have
moved passed libc_r?  It was a definitely a painful step, but it would
have been much more painful to not have any alternatives to libc_r.  I'm
glad that the project and certain developers in it had the courage to do
it AND to stick with it to resolve the tough problems.

Scott



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Re: The sorry state of open source today

2007-04-18 Thread Dag-Erling Smørgrav
The subject refers to an editorial by Radu-Cristian Fotescu, which was
published on the author's own website and in The Jem Report:

http://beranger.org/feature/sorryfeature.php
http://www.thejemreport.com/mambo/content/view/309/

The article contains several factual errors regarding FreeBSD.  I have
posted a rebuttal on my blog:

http://maycontaintracesofbolts.blogspot.com/2007/04/sorry-state-of-jem-report.html

DES
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