Linked by Thom Holwerda on Fri 30th Oct 2009 22:42 UTC
Mozilla has released the first beta release of Firefox 3.6, which comes with some nice Windows 7 integration features. More specifically, the Firefox 3.6 beta integrates with the new taskbar in Windows 7.
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RE[6]: Comment by tobyv
by ari-free on Sat 31st Oct 2009 23:55
in reply to "RE[5]: Comment by tobyv"
Member since:2007-01-22
Member since:2008-08-19
You've described one of the reasons why so many businesses avoid open source software like the plague. There's formally-defined license terms, any reasonable business person would assume "I've complied with the terms of the license, so everything's A-OK."
That should be nothing unusual to businesses, though - the differences between 'legal' and 'socially acceptable' extend far beyond the Open Source communities. Dubious expenses claims by politicians, for example - they might be within the letter of the law, but the public don't find that to be much of an excuse. Or the tax avoidance that several NZ banks are getting beaten up over - legal, but unacceptable to the public.
RE[7]: Comment by tobyv
by BallmerKnowsBest on Sun 1st Nov 2009 23:53
in reply to "RE[6]: Comment by tobyv"
Member since:2008-06-02
"You've described one of the reasons why so many businesses avoid open source software like the plague. There's formally-defined license terms, any reasonable business person would assume "I've complied with the terms of the license, so everything's A-OK."
That should be nothing unusual to businesses, though - the differences between 'legal' and 'socially acceptable' extend far beyond the Open Source communities. Dubious expenses claims by politicians, for example - they might be within the letter of the law, but the public don't find that to be much of an excuse. Or the tax avoidance that several NZ banks are getting beaten up over - legal, but unacceptable to the public. "
Except that Freetards will go into torches-and-pitchforks mode over actions that no reasonable person would consider "unacceptable." Witness all the whining about Google, or Mark Shuttleworth, etc, because they're supposedly "not giving enough back to the community."
The lesson there is: you can spend millions (billions?) of dollars and man-hours on efforts that benefit the "community" - but if you're a business and you don't bend over backwards to appease their every single self-indulgent whim, then be prepared to be labeled as evil.
Member since:2006-01-03
Nobody is morally forced to contribute back, neither companies nor individuals, having or not having the skill to do it. Those are ideas that you and others are trying to read in what I originally wrote. Not contributing back is just fine, as long as the license allows it.
I'm saying that if you do publish your changes but can't be bothered to push those changes upstream, then upstream developers also have no obligation to go around wasting the time they have to, you know, actually develop, searching for stuff that you could easily bring to their attention.
Implying that all the burden should be on upstream developers, and that it's their interest to incorporate your changes because you don't want to spend 10 minutes writing an email and creating a patch _is_ bad practice. They are not your servants.
I don't follow the cult of Stallman, far from it. If you don't want to contribute, fine. But if you try to push all the work to those that are creating, for free and in their spare time, the stuff you use, that's freeloading.
News
Linked by Thom Holwerda on 05/21/13 22:06 UTC
"The first killer app was VisiCalc. This early spreadsheet turned the Apple II from a hobbyist toy to a business computer. VisiCalc came with room for improvement, though. In addition, a new architecture and operating system, the Intel-based IBM PC and MS-DOS, also needed a spreadsheet to be taken seriously. That spreadsheet, released in early 1983, would be Lotus 1-2-3, and it would change the world. It became the PC's killer app, and the world would never be the same. On May 14, IBM quietly announced the end of the road for 1-2-3, along with Lotus Organizer and the Lotus SmartSuite office suite. Lotus 1-2-3's day is done." Impressive 30 year run.
Linked by Thom Holwerda on 05/21/13 21:45 UTC
"There's a disconnect between how Apple CEO Tim Cook sees his company's tax strategies and how some members of the US Senate view it. That became clearer than ever today after Cook and two other Apple executives testified before Congress, explaining why they're holding most of their international income in Irish subsidiaries like Apple Operations International, which declare no tax residency anywhere in the world. AOI hasn't filed a tax return anywhere in the world for the last five years, yet it earned $30 billion in income from 2009 to 2012, according to a Senate report released yesterday." Just because something is legal, doesn't mean it's just. Apple, Google, Microsoft, and many more - these companies might not be breaking any laws, but it's obvious to anyone that what they are doing is scummy.
Linked by Thom Holwerda on 05/21/13 15:53 UTC
The new WebKit Opera for Android has been released. "Opera 14 for Android is built on top of Chromium 26, with a total overhaul of the UI in native code, making it fit well with the latest Android design guidelines. Go get the build from Google Play or point your browser to m.opera.com, and give it a spin!"
Linked by Thom Holwerda on 05/20/13 22:43 UTC
The Verge pointed me to a blog post by Leap Motion - which reveals how their Kinect-like motion control works with Windows 8. "From the second you plug in your Leap Motion Controller, you'll be able to browse the web and interact with your computer just by moving your hands and fingers in the air. With Leap Motion technology and Windows, you can do everything that's possible with multi-touch inputs - without actually touching anything. This also means that existing applications in Windows 7 and 8 will respond to your natural hand and finger movements. Soon, we'll show you how Leap Motion will work with Mac OS X." Quite cool.
Linked by Thom Holwerda on 05/20/13 21:50 UTC
PocketNow interviews Marc Dillon, and there's an interesting note about why Jolla is keeping the display properties under wraps: "We're leaving some of those details out because we do understand that there are a lot of really big players in the market and they tend to take certain components in the market and dominate them. We created the ability to actually be able to run Sailfish on multiple hardware displays and be able to swap components, so this is part of the demand and supply planning phase. We are committed to this industrial design which is a 4.5-inch display, an 8 megapixel camera on the back and a front-facing camera at the front, and the exact specs of the display we'll provide when we're close to delivery." Something you rarely hear anything about.
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."More News »
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2008-06-02
You've described one of the reasons why so many businesses avoid open source software like the plague. There's formally-defined license terms, any reasonable business person would assume "I've complied with the terms of the license, so everything's A-OK."
But NOOOOOOO, there are these additional unspoken obligations that exist only the minds of the "community." Despite being vague and undefined, hordes of angry GNU/Freetards will rake anyone over the coals if they don't meet those imaginary "obligations." And when you boil it down, most of the "obligations" are along the lines of "give me anything I want for free, and by the way what's taking you so long?"
So you have a community where the collective sense of self-entitlement is only exceeded by its collective anti-commerce mentality. Most businesses take one look, and run in the opposite direction (as they should).