Sections: Main page Security Kernel Distributions Development Commerce Linux in the news Announcements Back page All in one big page See also: last week's Back page page. |
Linux links of the weekDotComma is a slashdot-like site aimed at providing programming information to programmers. It is relatively new, and seems to mostly interested in PHP at this time. Linux Commentary is a site put together by Neil Brown; it contains a set of documentation on how parts of the kernel work. Covered thus far are the virtual file system (VFS) and the NFS server; pointers exist to some related documentation elsewhere. Section Editor: Jon Corbet |
December 30, 1999 |
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Letters to the editorLetters to the editor should be sent to letters@lwn.net. Preference will be given to letters which are short, to the point, and well written. If you want your email address "anti-spammed" in some way please be sure to let us know. We do not have a policy against anonymous letters, but we will be reluctant to include them. | |
Date: 23 Dec 1999 From: toon@moene.indiv.nluug.nl To: letters@lwn.net Subject: Elements of Programming Style On the front page of todays Linux Weakly News, you wrote: > Those of you lucky enough to have Kernighan and Plauger's The Elements of > Programming Style can imagine that Eric's book will be something similar, > but presumably (hopefully) without the Fortran code. I...must....not.... Awww - nuts I fail to see what's wrong with K&P using Fortran for their *examples*. It only shows that people who can really think - as opposed to those who can only code - can write clean programs in any language. I wouldn't be surprised if even COBOL programs from their hands would be easily understandable. Cheers, Toon Moene (mailto:toon@moene.indiv.nluug.nl) Saturnushof 14, 3738 XG Maartensdijk, The Netherlands Phone: +31 346 214290; Fax: +31 346 214286 GNU Fortran: http://egcs.cygnus.com/onlinedocs/g77_news.html | ||
Date: Tue, 28 Dec 1999 12:58:20 -0500 (EST) From: William Stearns <wstearns@pobox.com> To: Gracian Mack <gracian@redherring.com>, edit@redherring.com Subject: LinuxOne IPO - concerns Good afternoon, Gracian, I found your article about LinuxOne (*1) on Red Herring today. While it covered the financial aspect of the IPO quite well, it didn't seem to cover the concerns that the Linux community has raised about the company itself. I honestly can understand why you might decide to stick to numerical facts. However, would you at least consider looking at some of the concerns that have been raised? In a nutshell, LinuxOne has released a very small number of products. They appear to be almost entirely straight copies of the code released by RedHat Linux and Mandrake Linux. I did a comparison one afternoon of the LinuxOne Linux distribution and RedHat and Mandrake Linux; all but one of the packages making up that distribution were exact copies from RedHat or Mandrake; the sole changed package was the initial web page presented in the web browser which had become a mini-prospectus for LinuxOne. This tends not to support the claim that they provide additional value. Others have covered the additional concerns of the Linux community better than I can; please take a look at the following links to read more: http://www.samba.org/netfilter/linuxonescam.html http://news.cnet.com/news/0-1003-200-1505138.html http://technocrat.net/941620583/index_html http://news.cnet.com/news/0-1003-200-806525.html http://linuxtoday.com/stories/14322.html http://www.theregister.co.uk/991102-000009.html http://www.linuxworld.com/linuxworld/lw-1999-11/lw-11-linuxone.html I would be interested to hear your thoughts on the debate. Cheers, - Bill *1 http://www.herring.com/insider/1999/1228/inv-ipoweek.html --------------------------------------------------------------------------- Every program has at least one bug and can be shortened by at least one instruction--from which, by induction, it is evident that every program can be reduced to one instruction that does not work. (Courtesy of Weather-Man(a/k/a wormied dude, <worm@Thirdwave.NET>) -------------------------------------------------------------------------- William Stearns (wstearns@pobox.com). Mason, Buildkernel, named2hosts, and ipfwadm2ipchains are at: http://www.pobox.com/~wstearns/ -------------------------------------------------------------------------- | ||
Date: Tue, 28 Dec 1999 15:26:30 -0500 (EST) From: Seth Vidal <skvidal@nospam-phy.duke.edu> To: letters@lwn.net Subject: free code? free art? Below is the text of the message I sent to elliot rusty regarding his journal entry posted to lwn on dec 28th. URL:http://www.macfaq.com/journal/freedocumentation.html thanks -sv ---------- Forwarded message ---------- Date: Tue, 28 Dec 1999 15:16:46 -0500 (EST) From: Seth Vidal <skvidal@nospam-phy.duke.edu> To: elharo@metalab.unc.edu Subject: free code? free art? Hi, I read your journal entry regarding free documentation. I would like to note that it was well written but I would disagree with certain points of what you are saying. While much free software can be forked and separated from the original branch - and then distributed under another name or the same name (excluding trademark infringements) - a great deal of free software is people re-integrating ideas into an original tree - or making suggestions to sections etc. ie: if I we're to pick up one of your books and I had suggestions for improvments or grammatical problems or more verbose examples etc etc - I would submit them to you. You could choose to include them or ignore them - your option. I would make my changes available on the web for people who wanted them but not for all. Its like kernel development - if Linus thinks it sucks - then it sucks - and it won't get far. If he likes it he puts it in. The author's "voice" could most closely resemble tabbing and code organization in source code. Linus and others HATE bad formatting in the source - they either fix it when they come upon it or they send it back for fixing to the original author. either way formatting is maintained throughout the kernel. I agree with your points regarding Kai's power GOO - but would it not be better for him to open the source and allow user interface options to develop? - If he is really for non-standard - imaginative and innovative designs then he'll want to open it to all. The crux of this rambling email is that while you're correct that the voice is important, it is not true that the author loses ALL control over the format once the document is open sourced. It just means that others can help - and will need coaxing and convincing to alternative ideas. The reason so many open source projects work is b/c they have a very few people in charge who have a vision of what it should look like. They are willing to change their minds and visions - but they are also willing to be sticklers about certain features: You could be a stickler about the number or kind of jokes to make about microsoft or sun - but be willing to be bend on the type of and scope of the examples. It really can be great to have a collaborative effort. Thanks. -sv Seth Vidal skvidal@nospam-phy.duke.edu | ||
Date: Tue, 28 Dec 1999 14:12:25 +0530 From: Anand Srivastava <anand@aplion.stpn.soft.net> To: info@lawnewsnetwork.com, letters@lwn.net Subject: Has anybody patented Law yet. Hi, I guess its about time somebody should patent laws. Many laws are being used by governments over the world. I think US Govt would be willing to pay substantially for a law that they want to frame (rather they have to frame, because of various reasons). Here is another gold mine. Seriously, you would think that this is stupid. Likewise to us software people, single click order, is stupid. And a whole lot of similar patents, like the windowing patent. -anand | ||
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