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 weekMunitions. munitions is a cryptographic Linux software archive, "providing a high-availability, widely mirrored forum, hosted entirely in crypto friendly countries, for publication and distribution of cryptographic software as well as for fostering community interaction on related issues." Somewhere Near. GBdirect has announced its geographical search engine, called "Somewhere Near." The source to the engine will be released under the GPL "after it has been thoroughly debugged". The first deployment has been put to good use: creating a database of pubs in the U.K. Section Editor: Jon Corbet |
March 30, 2000 |
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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: Thu, 23 Mar 2000 16:38:20 +0000 From: Stuart Ballard <sballard@netreach.net> To: letters@lwn.net Subject: Re: Use of term "viral" in reference to the GPL In a letter published in the March 23 issue of LWN, Paul Collins writes: > The use of the term "viral" with reference to the GPL (and now the FDL) is > unfair and prejudicial. > > The GPL is not a virus. The GPL is written the way it is because otherwise, > others would be able to take away freedoms that you explicitly grant when > you choose to use the GPL. I have heard this argument many times and agree with it. However, I have not heard any suggestions of alternative terms for this property of the GPL. People are bound to continue using the term "viral" if there is no alternative, even if they disagree with the message it sends. Therefore, I would like to propose the term "infectious". Although this term sometimes has a negative meaning similar to "viral", it is also used of giggles, enthusiasm, smiles, yawns, happiness, determination, and many other positive characteristics. The word itself, therefore, is neutral; the interpretation of whether being "infectious" is a good or bad property of the GPL is left to the reader. For the record, I happen to think it is a good property. Stuart. | ||
Date: Thu, 23 Mar 2000 15:00:00 -0600 From: "John J. Adelsberger III" <jja@wallace.lusArs.net> To: letters@lwn.net Subject: a sense of perspective Recently, the old 'moral crusade vs pragmatism' argument has started in LWN's letters to the editor section. Already, both sides are making false statements and committing the fallacy of repetition(if I say it enough times, it will be true!) For all of the readers' sake, myself included, how about getting some perspective, people! For the pragmatists: as long as you are free to do what you think is best, what practical gain do you derive from endless flamewars? And for the moralists: remember that freedom does mean the freedom to disagree, and that that freedom is only truly important on the matters that mean the most to us. Constant bickering does not magically cause the creation or improvement of code, nor does it promote the adoption of that code. In fact, the only results are wasted time and upset participants. -- John J. Adelsberger III ETAONRISHDLFCMUGPYWBVKXJQZ jja@lusars.net | ||
Date: Thu, 23 Mar 2000 15:59:49 -0600 (CST) From: Dave Finton <surazal@nerp.net> To: letters@lwn.net Subject: I can't figure out Corel Corel, which as of late has made good decisions technology-wise. They took the time to cut down the bloat of WP7. Their Linux distribution is by many accounts a good piece of work, and they even got kudos for basing it off a non-corporate version of Linux (Debian). They've been announcing Linux ports of their major software packages, which brings to a good platform good commercial software packages (albeit proprietary ones). Even their much maligned merger makes sense from a technological standpoint. It combines together two businesses who specialize in nearly disjoint sets of the computing market. If Corel's fortunes were based solely on technological sound reasoning, their stock price would have been valued in the hundreds of dollars, rather than barely above 9 points on the stock market. Business-wise, of course, watching Corel bounce between stock scandals and sagging revenues has been a lot like watching a comedy of errors. For instance, I think the merger between Inprise and Corel would have made much more sense if they had both waited until they had at least built up stronger revenues. In other words if they had done this 6-7 years ago or had waited another 2-3 years before attempting the merger, I think the business world would have viewed this whole thing in a more positive light. Now it just seems like a couple of companies standing on their last legs trying to make a desperate grab at profits by any means possible. To be a little fair, I think Corel has done good things business-wise that signal a potential turnaround. But even Michael Coupland admits that he doesn't know when the "take-off" will occur. Why on earth would anyone risk something a big as a merger when he doesn't even know when his company will return to profitability? Corel needs to settle down a bit and get the ball rolling before pulling off these shinanigans. "If you build it, they will come" is not a bad long-term business plan, but even that, too, has risks. As most people who have been involved in the Linux community knows that sometimes it takes repeated proverbial beatings over the head to get the point across to potential customers (even now people don't take Linux too seriously even though it claimed the #2 position in the server market and is merely one percentage point behind the Mac in the desktop market). This sort of thing does take time. All in all, considering the good technological decisions Corel has made, I sincerely hope the company does experience their take-off Coupland keeps muttering about. Until then, I'll keep a skeptical attitude towards them. - Dave Finton --------------------------------------------------------- | If an infinite number of monkeys typed randomly at | | an infinite number of typewriters for an infinite | | amount of time, they would eventually type out | | this sentencdfjg sd84wUUlksaWQE~kd ::. | | ----------------------------------------------------- | | Name: Dave Finton | | E-mail: surazal@nerp.net | | Web Page: http://surazal.nerp.net/ | --------------------------------------------------------- | ||
Date: Fri, 24 Mar 2000 18:17:21 -0500 (EST) From: William Stearns <wstearns@pobox.com> To: comments@linuxone.net, info@linuxone.net Subject: Meta tags in use on the LinuxOne web pages Good afternoon, May I respectfully ask why the LinuxOne.Net web pages include these meta tags? Would it be safe to assume that you're hoping to get included in search results for these other Linux distributions? I offer my apologies in advance if there's a different reason why these trademarks are used in this fashion. (less than and greater than signs have been changed to asterisks so as not to confuse html capable displays). *html* *head* *meta name="description" content="The source for everything related to the LinuxOne distribution of Linux - the most powerful operating system for home or office."* *meta name="keywords" content="Linux, LinuxOne, kernel, S.O.,Distribution, Labs, Red Hat, Redhat, Caldera, OpenLinux, SuSE, S.u.s.e., applixware, news, resources, Operating, System, OS, KDE, GNOME, GNU, Server, Network, application, Penguin, Onestop, Free, Download, commerical, support"* *title*LinuxOne | One Stop For Linux*/title* [snip] For reference, from their respective web sites: Red Hat, ... and all Red Hat-based trademarks and logos are trademarks or registered trademarks of Red Hat, Inc. in the United States and other countries. ... You may use the following image on your web site as long as it is accompanied by a hyperlink to Red Hat's web site. If you want to use this image or other Red Hat trademarks for any other uses, please contact us. Caldera Systems, the C-logo, and OpenLinux are either registered trademarks or trademarks of Caldera Systems, Inc. ... Use of any other Caldera Systems trademark in commerce may be prohibited by law except by express license from Caldera Systems, Inc. SuSE is a trademark of SuSE Inc. Applix, Applixware, Applix Data, Applix Real Time, and Applix Builder are registered trademarks of the Company in the United States and certain other jurisdictions. Cheers, - Bill --------------------------------------------------------------------------- (Responding to this message indicates acceptance of the terms that your response and any future response on this topic may be republished in any form without conditions.) -------------------------------------------------------------------------- William Stearns (wstearns@pobox.com). Mason, Buildkernel, named2hosts, and ipfwadm2ipchains are at: http://www.pobox.com/~wstearns LinuxMonth; articles for Linux Enthusiasts! http://www.linuxmonth.com -------------------------------------------------------------------------- | ||
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