Linked by Thom Holwerda on Tue 19th Jun 2007 10:29 UTC, submitted by binarycrusader
Simon Phipps of Sun has responded to the recent criticism of Sun's openness, pointing out that even releasing information that they may already have costs a lot of money. "Jonathan asked me to look into this, to ensure we're pursuing an open path across all of Sun, not simply the software group. We take all input seriously, and we can't solve all problems for all parties, but we're committed to doing our best to faithfully engage with all the communities we serve, in the same spirit as the existing Open Source Ombudsman Scheme. With the support of my team and others in the community I'll try to build a new scheme that is fair and transparent."
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RE[6]: What is openness?
by phoehne on Tue 19th Jun 2007 21:52
in reply to "RE[5]: What is openness?"
Member since:2006-08-26
Actually, I do have a very modest 500 shares of Sun and am purchasing hardware for my business through their startup essentials program. I really like the turn Sun has made to open source. I am already paying a premium for some equipment through Sun, and the startup essentials discount brings it more in line with the rest of the market. (Their SATA drives are not cheap - almost $1 per Gig.)
One requirement I had for the platform we settled on (Solaris) is open source. I looked at FreeBSD and I already had a fair grounding in Linux. If Solaris were not open source, it would not be on the table. Part of the reason is we expect to host some of our contracting customer sites in house. ZFS and Zones are a large part of what drew us to Solaris, but it would have been a non-starter under closed source.
RE[7]: What is openness?
by binarycrusader on Tue 19th Jun 2007 22:02
in reply to "RE[6]: What is openness?"
Member since:2005-07-06
News
Linked by Thom Holwerda on 05/19/13 23:15 UTC
"This is my NeXTstation Turbo Color booting the Mac System 7.1 Operating System using a hardware add-on called 'Daydream'. The Daydream has a Mac ROM and a few custom ICs in it and hooked up to the NeXTs DSP port. Turns your NeXT into a full fledged 68k powered Mac." So cool.
Linked by Thom Holwerda on 05/19/13 23:11 UTC, submitted by Drumhellar
"The NetBSD Project is pleased to announce NetBSD 6.1, the first feature update of the NetBSD 6 release branch. It represents a selected subset of fixes deemed important for security or stability reasons, as well as new features and enhancements. Please note that all fixes in the prior security/bugfix updates (NetBSD 6.0.1 and 6.0.2) are also in 6.1."
Linked by Thom Holwerda on 05/18/13 21:06 UTC
"At the end of a week in which Electronic Arts confirmed it wasn't developing a thing for the Wii U, one of the software engineers in EA Sports' Canada studio, in a series of since-deleted tweets, disparaged the console as 'crap' and suggested Nintendo should give up on hardware altogether. 'The Wii U is crap. Less powerful than an Xbox 360. Poor online/store. Weird tablet', tweeted Bob Summerwill, listed as a senior software engineer at EA Canada, in a reply to a tweet posting a link about EA's no-Wii U news. 'Nintendo are walking dead at this point'." The Wii U is turning into the 21st century's Virtual Boy.
Linked by Thom Holwerda on 05/18/13 7:37 UTC
"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.
Linked by fran on 05/18/13 1:38 UTC
Appfour 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."
Linked by Thom Holwerda on 05/17/13 23:35 UTC, submitted by kragil
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."
Linked by MOS6510 on 05/17/13 22:22 UTC
"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."
Linked by Thom Holwerda on 05/17/13 22:15 UTC, submitted by Tom
"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.
Linked by Thom Holwerda on 05/16/13 21:41 UTC
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.
Linked by Thom Holwerda on 05/16/13 17:04 UTC
"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.More News »
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2005-07-06
Actually, you gave a product that performed poorly at 5 times the cost. That's a strawman.
I disagree. It doesn't really matter if the difference is $3 or $500. Depending on the person the difference may be irrelevant as long as a less expensive option exists.
In addition, you seem to gloss over the fact that 3% on a single system may not big a big deal, but if someone was purchaing thousands of systems that 3% can add up very quickly.
I'm certain that if you asked the average IT department who is purchaing 1,000 machines if they wanted them with a video card with an open source driver but it would cost them 3% more for their total invoice than it would if they opted for a driver with no source code they would choose the cheaper option.
That's my point about "perceived freedom"; it's all a matter of perception.
In the short run, that's fine, as they make their transition, but I think it will actually be in their shareholders best interest, in the long run, to do what customers want.
That's the for the shareholders and Sun to decide, not for people who think that small increases in price are acceptable for "perceived freedom." Remember that most of Sun's customers could care less if the source code is available for a particular driver for their hardware or not, they just want a completely supported, working solution.
While Sun's customers did want the source code for Solaris for other reasons, in this particular case, I do not believe the same necessarily applies.
Its also rather impolite, in my view, to force your particular view of "necessary freedoms" on a company who you do not represent as a shareholder or Customer (probably).
Personally, I could care less if the source code for a driver is available or not. Wherever possible, it is certainly nice to have that insurance, but it is not worth money to me.
In an ideal world, a Customer would be able to simply say "I would like to ensure my systems are fully open and am willing to pay a 3% premium."
Its the same situation Dell is having right now with some of their systems.
Nevermind that in some industries, the full specifications of hardware will never be available due to government or other regulations.
Edited 2007-06-19 21:02