Jeremy Allison (of Samba fame) has resigned from Novell in protest over the Microsoft-Novell patent agreement, which he calls 'a mistake' which will be 'damaging to Novell's success in the future'. His main issue with the deal, though, is "that even if it does not violate the letter of the licence, it violates the intent of the GPL licence the Samba code is released under, which is to treat all recipients of the code equally." He leaves the company at the end of this month.
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Member since:2006-04-21
Mr. Allison leaves one company that has many patents (and appears to be moving away from the idea of patents) to another that is actively creating more and more patents??
Jeremy must be pro-patent after all. Probably upset that Novell isn't more pro-patent. 
Not sure what motivates Mr. Allison. I'm going to guess he's just a hot-head. Mad because Novell did a deal with Microsoft (didn't matter what kind of deal).
OK, name one company that ISN'T creating software patents (hint: even Redhat is doing it, if only for protective purposes). If there are none, then the only way he could choose not to support a company is by not working. Do you seriously think that would improve the situation?
In contrast, he is moving to a company that is not "circumventing" the GPL and is openly releasing this and that as FOSS.
Member since:2005-07-07
Mr. Allison leaves one company that has many patents (and appears to be moving away from the idea of patents) to another that is actively creating more and more patents??
Jeremy must be pro-patent after all. Probably upset that Novell isn't more pro-patent.
Not sure what motivates Mr. Allison. I'm going to guess he's just a hot-head. Mad because Novell did a deal with Microsoft (didn't matter what kind of deal).
Why do I get the feeling that cjcox is NotParker or at least new NotParker? One being suspended few days ago and one posting his first post at the same level of intellectual misinterpretation of his own twisted misinterpretation called thoughts.
For gods sake...
What would patents have in common with JA working for some company? I guess you think it goes like this:
[company]: We'd like to hire you
[JA]: How many patents do you own?
[company]: A lot...
[JA]: Well, company XYZ that offered me job, has 34534 patents. Can you beat this number?
No, it doesn't matter deal was with MS, otherwise he wouldn't spend better part of his life to work on interoperability with their systems.
No, he's not hot head, if you'd know a little bit about JA, you'd know that he's everything but that.
btw. congrats to Jeremy on having stance and personality
Member since:2006-12-14
Mr. Allison leaves one company that has many patents (and appears to be moving away from the idea of patents) to another that is actively creating more and more patents??
Exactly!
And
* Google supports the chinese governments' censorship
* Google releases the "google search bar" which should be better called "google spy bar" since it loves to -- indeed -- "search" your computer but phone home to google and tell them about what it found out.
* they release a lot of proprietary software.
In contrast:
* Nearly every software company does so: software patents + proprietary software (even most of the FLOSS companies, as mentioned in other postings here)
* Google has its "Summer of Code" which I think is a great contribution to the community
* Google releases some great FLOSS projects from time to time (like its Web developer kit)
So I think, all in all, this whole thing shouldnt be seen to black and white. See also my posting below.
Member since:2006-12-14
"In NixOS, the entire operating system - the kernel, applications, system packages, configuration files, and so on - is built by the Nix package manager from a description in a purely functional build language. The fact that it's purely functional essentially means that building a new configuration cannot overwrite previous configurations. Most of the other features follow from this." Interesting approach. A Linux distribution, sure, but with some very refreshing ideas about system configuration.
Google added, among other features, C/C++ support to its new version of AIDE. From Android-IDE, "Now you can write parts of your app or your whole app in C/C++ on your device. AIDE supports the Standard Android NDK toolchain (GCC 4.6 + Bionic, STL, ...). No changes are necessary if you want to build an app developed on a PC with Eclipse. C/C++ development is fully integrated: Build errors appear in the error list and files can easily be navigated to with Go to file. The editor supports C/C++ syntax highlighting."
Ars nails it: "The answer is that Google did announce what amounts to a fairly substantial Android update yesterday. They simply did it without adding to the update fragmentation problems that continue to plague the platform. By focusing on these changes and not the apparently-waiting-in-the-wings update to the core software, Google is showing us one of the ways in which it's trying to fix the update problem."
"It is good for programmers to understand what goes on inside a processor. The CPU is at the heart of our career. What goes on inside the CPU? How long does it take for one instruction to run? What does it mean when a new CPU has a 12-stage pipeline, or 18-stage pipeline, or even a 'deep' 31-stage pipeline? Programs generally treat the CPU as a black box. Instructions go into the box in order, instructions come out of the box in order, and some processing magic happens inside. As a programmer, it is useful to learn what happens inside the box. This is especially true if you will be working on tasks like program optimization. If you don't know what is going on inside the CPU, how can you optimize for it? This article is about what goes on inside the x86 processor's deep pipeline."
"It was the only moment I heard regret slip into Otellini's voice during the several hours of conversations I had with him. 'The lesson I took away from that was, while we like to speak with data around here, so many times in my career I've ended up making decisions with my gut, and I should have followed my gut,' he said. 'My gut told me to say yes.'" The world would've been a much different place - Apple would have been less dependant on Samsung for its chips, which probably would've meant less money for Samsung to develop its Galaxy business.Glass is getting some love at Google I/O as well. New applications have been released - Facebook, Twitter, Evernote, Elle, Tumblr, and CNN. Perhaps more interesting: the newly announced Google Glass Developer Kit will allow offline applications and direct hardware access - great for hacking and expanding Glass' potential. This kit will really allow hackers to put Glass through its paces.
"But Beck and Merrill decided that simply banning toxic players wasn't an acceptable solution for their game. Riot Games began experimenting with more constructive modes of player management through a formal player behavior initiative that actually conducts controlled experiments on its player base to see what helps reduce bad behavior. The results of that initiative have been shared at a lecture at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology and on panels at the Penny Arcade Expo East and the Game Developers Conference." Absolutely fascinating stuff. I'm a League of Legends player, and to be honest, the community isn't nearly as bad as some make it out to be. I'm happy Riot games has the guts to employ science to address the issue.
"Android and iOS, the number one and number two ranked smartphone operating systems worldwide, combined for 92.3% of all smartphone shipments during the first quarter of 2013 as Windows Phone crept past BlackBerry for 3rd place. According to the International Data Corporation Worldwide Quarterly Mobile Phone Tracker, Android smartphone vendors and Apple shipped a total of 199.5 million units worldwide during 1Q13, up 59.1% from the 125.4 million units shipped during 1Q12." Windows Phone doubles from a few to twice few, iOS loser market share as its growth is slower than that of the overall market. BlackBerry continues slide into irrelevance."According to the latest research from our Wireless Smartphone Strategies service, global Android smartphone profits reached US$5 billion in total during the first quarter of 2013. Samsung dominated and captured an impressive 95 percent share of all Android smartphone profits." Wow."During its Keynote today, Google announced new features coming to its flagship search function - you know, that thing we all started using Google for. VP Amit Singhal spent some time discussing what Google's search functionality will eventually morph into. Google's strategy is summarized by three words: answer, converse, and anticipate. Singhal explained that many of the pieces of these upcoming changes can already be seen in products that Google has recently introduced - namely, Google Knowledge Graph and Google Now, with perhaps a splash of Google Glass, too." I hold on to my hat every time Google changes Search. It's such a vital product in my daily life.
Member since:
2006-12-21
Mr. Allison leaves one company that has many patents (and appears to be moving away from the idea of patents) to another that is actively creating more and more patents??
Jeremy must be pro-patent after all. Probably upset that Novell isn't more pro-patent.
Not sure what motivates Mr. Allison. I'm going to guess he's just a hot-head. Mad because Novell did a deal with Microsoft (didn't matter what kind of deal).