* RE: Why DRM exists [was Re: Flame Linus to a crisp!]
@ 2003-04-30 14:52 Downing, Thomas
2003-04-30 15:20 ` Larry McVoy
0 siblings, 1 reply; 19+ messages in thread
From: Downing, Thomas @ 2003-04-30 14:52 UTC (permalink / raw)
To: Larry McVoy; +Cc: Larry McVoy, Linux Kernel Mailing List
-----Original Message-----
From: Larry McVoy [mailto:lm@bitmover.com]
>On Wed, Apr 30, 2003 at 09:11:57AM -0400, Downing, Thomas wrote:
>> > The DMCA, DRM, all that stuff is just the beginning. You will respond
>> > with all sorts of clever hacks to get around it and they will respond
>> > with even more clever hacks to stop you. They have both more resources
>> > and more at stake so they will win.
>>
>> The point is that they don't (with a couple of clever and amusing
>> exceptions) respond with "even more clever hacks", they respond with
>> things like DMCA. This is also the danger of the motives behind DRM;
>> just pass a law making it a felony to produce, use, etc. hardware which
>> does _not_ enforce corporate controlled DRM.
>>
>> This is why in my first post on this topic I said it was a political
>> issue, not a technical one.
>>
>> > The depressing thing is that it is so obvious to me that the
corporations
>> > will win, they will protect themselves, they have the money to lobby
the
>> > government to get the laws they want and build the technology they
need.
>> > The more you push back the more locked up things will become.
>>
>> Unfortunately, this may very well prove to be true. But laying it at the
>> door of the open source community (or even piracy other than commercial
>> piracy, viz. China) is buying into the FUD that MPAA and RIAA spew.
>> Remember, that when the courts asked the MPAA to produce _any_ evidence
>> of harm from DeCSS, they were unable to produce _anything_.
>
> I'm probably the world's worst communicator because you're right at the
> edge of getting the point and then it gets missed again. I think you're
> outraged thinking that I'm saying the open source guys are all bad people
> or whatever. I'm not trying to make a bad/good argument, I'm trying to
> make a cause and effect argument.
No, I don't think you are 'the world's worst communicator'. First, I was
not alone in understanding you to say that the open source community as
a class were prone to theft. Now as to cause and effect, we may
disagree on causes (and as to that, did you here of what Nasrudin said
when the thief fell on him? - he fell off the wall, _my_ collar bone
is broken,) but the effect we do agree on.
> Take everything that I said which is not an action on the part of the
> corporations and just call it A. Ignore what A is or even if A exists
> or is true, whatever. Concentrate on what I claim to be the reaction.
> I tried to make the case that A is the cause, you got mad, the fact that
> the reaction is the problem is lost in the anger.
>
> Your post shows that you think that the reaction is bad and you even say
> that the reaction is likely. You vigourously disagree with my conclusions
> as to why the reaction is happening, I see that. OK, so let's try it
> with a question rather than a statement: why are things like the DMCA and
> DRM happening? It isn't the open source guys pushing those, obviously,
> it's the corporations. So why are they doing it?
>
> Your answer has to be interesting because it seems to me that they are
> doing it to protect their products, their product is sometimes content,
> sometimes programs, sometimes both. An answer which says that open source
> is not part of the cause also says that open source is irrelevant.
My A produces your B; I don't like B, so I won't A. This seems to be
your solution. Such simple reasoning is not always correct. For an example
we could only hope to emulate, Ghandi. Second, what is driving DRM
and DMCA is profits, and MPAA and RIAA see profits as at a maximum in
a pay-per-view world.
If this is not what you are saying, what do you see as a solution?
Or is it that you don't see any problems with what is being done with
DRM and DMCA?
> You can't be both a force and not a force.
I have no interest in being a force. I hope I can find the courage not
to submit to force.
^ permalink raw reply [flat|nested] 19+ messages in thread
* Re: Why DRM exists [was Re: Flame Linus to a crisp!]
2003-04-30 14:52 Why DRM exists [was Re: Flame Linus to a crisp!] Downing, Thomas
@ 2003-04-30 15:20 ` Larry McVoy
2003-04-30 15:55 ` Jeff Randall
` (3 more replies)
0 siblings, 4 replies; 19+ messages in thread
From: Larry McVoy @ 2003-04-30 15:20 UTC (permalink / raw)
To: Downing, Thomas; +Cc: Larry McVoy, Linux Kernel Mailing List
On Wed, Apr 30, 2003 at 10:52:27AM -0400, Downing, Thomas wrote:
> No, I don't think you are 'the world's worst communicator'. First, I was
> not alone in understanding you to say that the open source community as
> a class were prone to theft.
I am too the worst communicator! :-)
My point wasn't about theft, it was about reimplementation.
I stand behind that point, what I've seen for more than a decade is
reimplementation after reimplementation. I'm not saying there is no
value to that or that it is illegal or that there are no improvements
(compare Unix diff to GNU diff if you want to see some imrovements).
There is tons of value in having free versions of useful tools.
There is also tons of value in the creation of new work.
What I haven't seen is a lot of revolutionary work. All of that seems
to come from commercial companies and at a pretty slow pace. There are
a lot of false starts, commercial failures, whatever. But a few slam
dunks as well.
As someone who has extensive first hand experience at large and small
commercial companies and in the open source world, it's my take that
the open source guys are better at the evolutionary approach (faster,
for sure) but worse at the revolutionary approach.
A key point is that you need a baseline to evolve. The open source guys
aren't producing that baseline as far as I can see, the new stuff comes
from other sources. That's not an absolute statement, there are exceptions,
but as far as I can see, it's a true statement most of the time.
Another key point is that it costs a boatload more to produce something
new than to reimplement something and the corporations know that. It
doesn't cost more because they are dumb, it costs more because they have
to try lots of new ideas and only a tiny percentage of them pan out.
So if you were the organization spending the money to produce something
new and you knew that it was going to be copied, wouldn't you do something
to protect that? And if a world wide group of volunteers sprang up and
got well organized and became productive at reimplementation techniques,
wouldn't you be concerned? I think you might. If you were a powerful
corporation, you might lobby Congress for more laws to protect your
works, you might start a "Trusted Computing" initiative to make sure
that the data was all encrypted so that only your programs could access
that data, etc.
> My A produces your B; I don't like B, so I won't A. This seems to be
> your solution.
I'm not sure I've proposed a solution, I doubt it. I don't have a solution,
I'm trying to shine a light on what I see as a problem. I was hoping that
you had a solution.
--
---
Larry McVoy lm at bitmover.com http://www.bitmover.com/lm
^ permalink raw reply [flat|nested] 19+ messages in thread
* Re: Why DRM exists [was Re: Flame Linus to a crisp!]
2003-04-30 15:20 ` Larry McVoy
@ 2003-04-30 15:55 ` Jeff Randall
2003-05-01 12:43 ` Jesse Pollard
2003-04-30 18:19 ` Timothy Miller
` (2 subsequent siblings)
3 siblings, 1 reply; 19+ messages in thread
From: Jeff Randall @ 2003-04-30 15:55 UTC (permalink / raw)
To: Larry McVoy, Downing, Thomas, Larry McVoy, Linux Kernel Mailing List
On Wed, Apr 30, 2003 at 08:20:41AM -0700, Larry McVoy wrote:
> My point wasn't about theft, it was about reimplementation.
> I stand behind that point, what I've seen for more than a decade is
> reimplementation after reimplementation. I'm not saying there is no
> value to that or that it is illegal or that there are no improvements
> (compare Unix diff to GNU diff if you want to see some imrovements).
> There is tons of value in having free versions of useful tools.
> There is also tons of value in the creation of new work.
>
> What I haven't seen is a lot of revolutionary work. All of that seems
> to come from commercial companies and at a pretty slow pace. There are
> a lot of false starts, commercial failures, whatever. But a few slam
> dunks as well.
Mosaic was pretty revolutionary for it's time.. as was Sendmail..
source was available for both from the start.
--
randall@uph.com "It's a big world and you can hit it with any airplane."
-- Flying, August 2000, Page 90.
^ permalink raw reply [flat|nested] 19+ messages in thread
* Re: Why DRM exists [was Re: Flame Linus to a crisp!]
2003-04-30 15:55 ` Jeff Randall
@ 2003-05-01 12:43 ` Jesse Pollard
0 siblings, 0 replies; 19+ messages in thread
From: Jesse Pollard @ 2003-05-01 12:43 UTC (permalink / raw)
To: Jeff Randall, Larry McVoy, Downing, Thomas, Larry McVoy,
Linux Kernel Mailing List
On Wednesday 30 April 2003 10:55, Jeff Randall wrote:
> On Wed, Apr 30, 2003 at 08:20:41AM -0700, Larry McVoy wrote:
> > My point wasn't about theft, it was about reimplementation.
> > I stand behind that point, what I've seen for more than a decade is
> > reimplementation after reimplementation. I'm not saying there is no
> > value to that or that it is illegal or that there are no improvements
> > (compare Unix diff to GNU diff if you want to see some imrovements).
> > There is tons of value in having free versions of useful tools.
> > There is also tons of value in the creation of new work.
> >
> > What I haven't seen is a lot of revolutionary work. All of that seems
> > to come from commercial companies and at a pretty slow pace. There are
> > a lot of false starts, commercial failures, whatever. But a few slam
> > dunks as well.
>
> Mosaic was pretty revolutionary for it's time.. as was Sendmail..
> source was available for both from the start.
Mosaic is/was derived from two sources - gopher for network communication
(derived from network news and/or e-mail) and SGML combined with display only
word processor applications (postscript and pdf previewers).
sendmail was derived from a message routing protocol originally using UUCP,
written to promote research in message routing, and flexibility to reduce the
re-implementation time required on earlier applications. (somewhere there is a
quote from Eric Allman along the lines of "...If I had known how popular it
would become I would have asked for a dime for each installation...")
Neither looked revolutionary at the time.
^ permalink raw reply [flat|nested] 19+ messages in thread
* Re: Why DRM exists [was Re: Flame Linus to a crisp!]
2003-04-30 15:20 ` Larry McVoy
2003-04-30 15:55 ` Jeff Randall
@ 2003-04-30 18:19 ` Timothy Miller
2003-04-30 19:20 ` Valdis.Kletnieks
2003-04-30 18:58 ` Why DRM exists [was Re: Flame Linus to a crisp!] Edgar Toernig
2003-04-30 22:43 ` Paul Mackerras
3 siblings, 1 reply; 19+ messages in thread
From: Timothy Miller @ 2003-04-30 18:19 UTC (permalink / raw)
To: Larry McVoy; +Cc: Downing, Thomas, Linux Kernel Mailing List
Larry McVoy wrote:
>
>
> My point wasn't about theft, it was about reimplementation.
> I stand behind that point, what I've seen for more than a decade is
> reimplementation after reimplementation. I'm not saying there is no
> value to that or that it is illegal or that there are no improvements
> (compare Unix diff to GNU diff if you want to see some imrovements).
> There is tons of value in having free versions of useful tools.
> There is also tons of value in the creation of new work.
>
Here's my example:
Years ago, I realized that when you used malloc(), your process size
would increase (of course), but when you used free(), your process size
would not shrink. This is still the case under Solaris. I understand
why it is the case, but I always wondered why someone didn't do
something to improve it. I mean, what a lazy, broken way of doing things.
Recently, I came to realize that glibc's implementation is really smart
about it and releases free'd memory back to the system. Wow! What
commercial vendor would EVER do something that intelligent? Under
Solaris, we had to do weird stuff involving mmap to get memory that we
could release back to the system. It was a pain. glibc does it
automatically!
Now, I have come to realize this because this 'intelligence' in glibc is
being a major thorn in my side. I wrote a program which relied on the
lazy behavior, and the performance is being killed by the overhead of
releasing the memory back to the system. But being a thorn in my side
doesn't make that improvement any less cool or genuinely unique to the
open source community.
A lot of times, what you'll see from commercial vendors is a set of
tools that work well. But only just well enough. They don't go out of
their way to improve things. They give you the same version of diff and
the same basic functionality from libc for years and years on end. The
open source community says, "You know what? This is lame. I'm going to
fix it and make it more useful for everyone."
More and more, people where I work are switching over to using
GNU/Linux/x86 workstations rather than any of the alternatives,
primarily because the development environment and the basic tools are
just SO MUCH BETTER. (Sure, Sun's Workshop comes with some great
graphical tools, but who uses them? And it's expensive anyhow.)
I mean, when will Sun, IBM, or Compaq ever start shipping tcsh or bash
as the default shell? Don't they realize that people make typos and
would like to reedit the line they just typed? Why are they still in
the dark ages?
^ permalink raw reply [flat|nested] 19+ messages in thread
* Re: Why DRM exists [was Re: Flame Linus to a crisp!]
2003-04-30 18:19 ` Timothy Miller
@ 2003-04-30 19:20 ` Valdis.Kletnieks
2003-04-30 19:41 ` Timothy Miller
0 siblings, 1 reply; 19+ messages in thread
From: Valdis.Kletnieks @ 2003-04-30 19:20 UTC (permalink / raw)
To: Timothy Miller; +Cc: Linux Kernel Mailing List
[-- Attachment #1: Type: text/plain, Size: 623 bytes --]
On Wed, 30 Apr 2003 14:19:13 EDT, Timothy Miller said:
> I mean, when will Sun, IBM, or Compaq ever start shipping tcsh or bash
> as the default shell? Don't they realize that people make typos and
> would like to reedit the line they just typed? Why are they still in
> the dark ages?
Odd.. I use the vendor-provided 'ksh' on Solaris, AIX, and Tru64 (now an HP
product), and they all have supported re-editing the line just typed for
*years* (I can't prove it's over a decade, but I'm fairly sure it is).
Remember that a major reason for 'bash' being created was because of licensing
issues with the 'ksh' source.
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^ permalink raw reply [flat|nested] 19+ messages in thread
* Re: Why DRM exists [was Re: Flame Linus to a crisp!]
2003-04-30 19:20 ` Valdis.Kletnieks
@ 2003-04-30 19:41 ` Timothy Miller
2003-04-30 19:53 ` Valdis.Kletnieks
2003-04-30 19:55 ` viro
0 siblings, 2 replies; 19+ messages in thread
From: Timothy Miller @ 2003-04-30 19:41 UTC (permalink / raw)
To: Valdis.Kletnieks; +Cc: Linux Kernel Mailing List
Valdis.Kletnieks@vt.edu wrote:
> On Wed, 30 Apr 2003 14:19:13 EDT, Timothy Miller said:
>
>
>>I mean, when will Sun, IBM, or Compaq ever start shipping tcsh or bash
>>as the default shell? Don't they realize that people make typos and
>>would like to reedit the line they just typed? Why are they still in
>>the dark ages?
>
>
> Odd.. I use the vendor-provided 'ksh' on Solaris, AIX, and Tru64 (now an HP
> product), and they all have supported re-editing the line just typed for
> *years* (I can't prove it's over a decade, but I'm fairly sure it is).
>
> Remember that a major reason for 'bash' being created was because of licensing
> issues with the 'ksh' source.
I am vaguely familiar with that. It uses vi-like editing commands?
Sounds great. Why isn't THAT the default shell? Why are these
usability perks not a priority to commercial vendors? Why are they a
priority for open source developers?
^ permalink raw reply [flat|nested] 19+ messages in thread
* Re: Why DRM exists [was Re: Flame Linus to a crisp!]
2003-04-30 19:41 ` Timothy Miller
@ 2003-04-30 19:53 ` Valdis.Kletnieks
2003-04-30 19:55 ` viro
1 sibling, 0 replies; 19+ messages in thread
From: Valdis.Kletnieks @ 2003-04-30 19:53 UTC (permalink / raw)
To: Timothy Miller; +Cc: Linux Kernel Mailing List
[-- Attachment #1: Type: text/plain, Size: 388 bytes --]
On Wed, 30 Apr 2003 15:41:12 EDT, Timothy Miller said:
> I am vaguely familiar with that. It uses vi-like editing commands?
set -o vi or set -o emacs - your choice.
> Sounds great. Why isn't THAT the default shell? Why are these
At least on AIX, it *IS*. Solaris and Tru64 the sysadmin can make it
the default shell easily enough.
You can't blame the vendors for this one.
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^ permalink raw reply [flat|nested] 19+ messages in thread
* Re: Why DRM exists [was Re: Flame Linus to a crisp!]
2003-04-30 19:41 ` Timothy Miller
2003-04-30 19:53 ` Valdis.Kletnieks
@ 2003-04-30 19:55 ` viro
2003-04-30 20:09 ` Timothy Miller
1 sibling, 1 reply; 19+ messages in thread
From: viro @ 2003-04-30 19:55 UTC (permalink / raw)
To: Timothy Miller; +Cc: Valdis.Kletnieks, Linux Kernel Mailing List
On Wed, Apr 30, 2003 at 03:41:12PM -0400, Timothy Miller wrote:
> I am vaguely familiar with that. It uses vi-like editing commands?
> Sounds great. Why isn't THAT the default shell? Why are these
> usability perks not a priority to commercial vendors? Why are they a
> priority for open source developers?
... and for $64000 question, could you get yourself vaguely familiar with
the notion of on-topic posting?
^ permalink raw reply [flat|nested] 19+ messages in thread
* Re: Why DRM exists [was Re: Flame Linus to a crisp!]
2003-04-30 19:55 ` viro
@ 2003-04-30 20:09 ` Timothy Miller
2003-04-30 20:21 ` [Pointless Waffle] " John Bradford
0 siblings, 1 reply; 19+ messages in thread
From: Timothy Miller @ 2003-04-30 20:09 UTC (permalink / raw)
To: viro; +Cc: Valdis.Kletnieks, Linux Kernel Mailing List
Could you explain to me how this is any more off-topic than the whole
DRM thread? I don't want to be a jerk about it, but my original
statement was directly in response to McVoy's ostensive assertion (as
interpreted by some people) that open source developers don't do
anything innovative whereas commercial vendors do.
So, was I off topic? Within the realm of the whole DRM discussion we've
been having, I don't think so. Was the whole DRM discussion off-topic?
Probably, and I apologize for adding to it. I will move on to more
relevant topics.
viro@parcelfarce.linux.theplanet.co.uk wrote:
> On Wed, Apr 30, 2003 at 03:41:12PM -0400, Timothy Miller wrote:
>
>
>>I am vaguely familiar with that. It uses vi-like editing commands?
>>Sounds great. Why isn't THAT the default shell? Why are these
>>usability perks not a priority to commercial vendors? Why are they a
>>priority for open source developers?
>
>
> ... and for $64000 question, could you get yourself vaguely familiar with
> the notion of on-topic posting?
>
>
^ permalink raw reply [flat|nested] 19+ messages in thread
* [Pointless Waffle] Re: Why DRM exists [was Re: Flame Linus to a crisp!]
2003-04-30 20:09 ` Timothy Miller
@ 2003-04-30 20:21 ` John Bradford
2003-04-30 21:00 ` Timothy Miller
0 siblings, 1 reply; 19+ messages in thread
From: John Bradford @ 2003-04-30 20:21 UTC (permalink / raw)
To: Timothy Miller; +Cc: viro, Valdis.Kletnieks, Linux Kernel Mailing List
> Was the whole DRM discussion off-topic?
It was certainly ironic that the subject was 'Why DRM exists', when it
clearly doesn't within the scope of the Linux kernel, and isn't on the
horizon for the Linux kernel either, which is what this mailing list
is intended for.
John.
^ permalink raw reply [flat|nested] 19+ messages in thread
* Re: [Pointless Waffle] Re: Why DRM exists [was Re: Flame Linus to a crisp!]
2003-04-30 20:21 ` [Pointless Waffle] " John Bradford
@ 2003-04-30 21:00 ` Timothy Miller
2003-04-30 21:57 ` [Pointless Waffle] Re: Why DRM exists [was Re: Flame Linus to John Bradford
0 siblings, 1 reply; 19+ messages in thread
From: Timothy Miller @ 2003-04-30 21:00 UTC (permalink / raw)
To: John Bradford; +Cc: viro, Valdis.Kletnieks, Linux Kernel Mailing List
John Bradford wrote:
>>Was the whole DRM discussion off-topic?
>
>
> It was certainly ironic that the subject was 'Why DRM exists', when it
> clearly doesn't within the scope of the Linux kernel, and isn't on the
> horizon for the Linux kernel either, which is what this mailing list
> is intended for.
>
> John.
>
>
Doesn't the lkml FAQ say that posts which complain about other posts
being off-topic are themselves off-topic?
<ahem> :)
^ permalink raw reply [flat|nested] 19+ messages in thread
* Re: [Pointless Waffle] Re: Why DRM exists [was Re: Flame Linus to
2003-04-30 21:00 ` Timothy Miller
@ 2003-04-30 21:57 ` John Bradford
0 siblings, 0 replies; 19+ messages in thread
From: John Bradford @ 2003-04-30 21:57 UTC (permalink / raw)
To: Timothy Miller
Cc: John Bradford, viro, Valdis.Kletnieks, Linux Kernel Mailing List
> >>Was the whole DRM discussion off-topic?
> >
> >
> > It was certainly ironic that the subject was 'Why DRM exists', when it
> > clearly doesn't within the scope of the Linux kernel, and isn't on the
> > horizon for the Linux kernel either, which is what this mailing list
> > is intended for.
> >
> > John.
> >
> >
>
> Doesn't the lkml FAQ say that posts which complain about other posts
> being off-topic are themselves off-topic?
>
> <ahem> :)
>
Oh, so we're just ignoring the other 95% noise on the list then :-).
Nothing short of this:
| |
___|___|__
| |
| X |
___|___|__
| |
| |
Your move.
seems to be considered off-topic these days.
John.
^ permalink raw reply [flat|nested] 19+ messages in thread
* Re: Why DRM exists [was Re: Flame Linus to a crisp!]
2003-04-30 15:20 ` Larry McVoy
2003-04-30 15:55 ` Jeff Randall
2003-04-30 18:19 ` Timothy Miller
@ 2003-04-30 18:58 ` Edgar Toernig
2003-04-30 22:43 ` Paul Mackerras
3 siblings, 0 replies; 19+ messages in thread
From: Edgar Toernig @ 2003-04-30 18:58 UTC (permalink / raw)
To: Larry McVoy; +Cc: Downing, Thomas, Linux Kernel Mailing List
Larry McVoy wrote:
>
> So if you were the organization spending the money to produce something
> new and you knew that it was going to be copied, wouldn't you do something
> to protect that?
I hope you have a license from your parents to use a copy of their genes...
^ permalink raw reply [flat|nested] 19+ messages in thread
* Re: Why DRM exists [was Re: Flame Linus to a crisp!]
2003-04-30 15:20 ` Larry McVoy
` (2 preceding siblings ...)
2003-04-30 18:58 ` Why DRM exists [was Re: Flame Linus to a crisp!] Edgar Toernig
@ 2003-04-30 22:43 ` Paul Mackerras
2003-05-01 1:03 ` Larry McVoy
3 siblings, 1 reply; 19+ messages in thread
From: Paul Mackerras @ 2003-04-30 22:43 UTC (permalink / raw)
To: Larry McVoy; +Cc: Linux Kernel Mailing List
Larry McVoy writes:
> What I haven't seen is a lot of revolutionary work. All of that seems
> to come from commercial companies and at a pretty slow pace. There are
Didn't the web start out as open source? Certainly it didn't come
from a commercial company. And the web is arguably the biggest
revolution in computing in the last 10 years.
Paul.
^ permalink raw reply [flat|nested] 19+ messages in thread
* Re: Why DRM exists [was Re: Flame Linus to a crisp!]
2003-04-30 22:43 ` Paul Mackerras
@ 2003-05-01 1:03 ` Larry McVoy
2003-05-01 12:27 ` Stephan von Krawczynski
` (2 more replies)
0 siblings, 3 replies; 19+ messages in thread
From: Larry McVoy @ 2003-05-01 1:03 UTC (permalink / raw)
To: paulus; +Cc: Larry McVoy, Linux Kernel Mailing List
On Thu, May 01, 2003 at 08:43:47AM +1000, Paul Mackerras wrote:
> Larry McVoy writes:
>
> > What I haven't seen is a lot of revolutionary work. All of that seems
> > to come from commercial companies and at a pretty slow pace. There are
>
> Didn't the web start out as open source? Certainly it didn't come
> from a commercial company. And the web is arguably the biggest
> revolution in computing in the last 10 years.
Well, http was from CERN and Mosaic was from a University, right?
And yes, I'd agree 100% that the Web is absolutely the biggest deal
in computing in the last 10 years, in fact, I think you could argue
that it is the biggest deal in computing pretty much ever.
On the other hand, Google is probably the most useful way to use the
web at that was absolutely a for profit commercial venture.
And as much as I dislike Microsoft, I'd argue that the middleware layer
that they provide which makes all the windows apps work together is
maybe even a bigger deal than the web. Unix has been trying to build
something like that for decades and never has. Neither Gnome nor KDE
matches what they have, not a chance. And the reason is that that
layer is the computing version of ditch digging, it's not sexy, it's
not math, it's just a pile of grunt work, a huge pile. And Microsoft
did it and not all the Unix guys plus all the open source guys have
anything remotely as useful.
Don't get me wrong, I think Microsoft as an OS company is the worldest
biggest joke. Anyone who thinks that socket "handles" are different
than file "handles" just doesn't get the abstraction at all. It's
pathetic, amazingly so. But they got the application support layer
pretty right or at least very useful and workable.
--
---
Larry McVoy lm at bitmover.com http://www.bitmover.com/lm
^ permalink raw reply [flat|nested] 19+ messages in thread
* Re: Why DRM exists [was Re: Flame Linus to a crisp!]
2003-05-01 1:03 ` Larry McVoy
@ 2003-05-01 12:27 ` Stephan von Krawczynski
2003-05-01 13:11 ` Jesse Pollard
2003-05-01 17:40 ` Jan-Benedict Glaw
2 siblings, 0 replies; 19+ messages in thread
From: Stephan von Krawczynski @ 2003-05-01 12:27 UTC (permalink / raw)
To: Larry McVoy; +Cc: paulus, lm, linux-kernel
On Wed, 30 Apr 2003 18:03:17 -0700
Larry McVoy <lm@bitmover.com> wrote:
> Don't get me wrong, I think Microsoft as an OS company is the worldest
> biggest joke. Anyone who thinks that socket "handles" are different
> than file "handles" just doesn't get the abstraction at all. It's
> pathetic, amazingly so. But they got the application support layer
> pretty right or at least very useful and workable.
... and that may be the reason why such a lot third party vendors make big
bucks on selling applications competitive to w.rd or ex.l or <name-one> - the
perfectly working and documented application support layer ...
</sarcasm>
(in case one didn't notice)
Regards,
Stephan
^ permalink raw reply [flat|nested] 19+ messages in thread
* Re: Why DRM exists [was Re: Flame Linus to a crisp!]
2003-05-01 1:03 ` Larry McVoy
2003-05-01 12:27 ` Stephan von Krawczynski
@ 2003-05-01 13:11 ` Jesse Pollard
2003-05-01 17:40 ` Jan-Benedict Glaw
2 siblings, 0 replies; 19+ messages in thread
From: Jesse Pollard @ 2003-05-01 13:11 UTC (permalink / raw)
To: Larry McVoy, paulus; +Cc: Larry McVoy, Linux Kernel Mailing List
On Wednesday 30 April 2003 20:03, Larry McVoy wrote:
[snip]
> Don't get me wrong, I think Microsoft as an OS company is the worldest
> biggest joke. Anyone who thinks that socket "handles" are different
> than file "handles" just doesn't get the abstraction at all. It's
> pathetic, amazingly so. But they got the application support layer
> pretty right or at least very useful and workable.
And it is the biggest source of security problems that has ever existed.
One of the reasons the UNIX implementation (corba and others) haven't worked
real well is:
1. complexity of usage
2. nonportability (a version on SUN will tend to fail to communicate with one
on HP)
3. security verification.
M$ hasn't had to deal with #2 (since all the world is intel ((their view)),
and obviously doesn't deal with #3. #1 is handled by not allowing people to
use it (the cause of so many "undocumented interfaces"), and instead force
the use of interfacing languages that ignore #2 and #3.
^ permalink raw reply [flat|nested] 19+ messages in thread
* Re: Why DRM exists [was Re: Flame Linus to a crisp!]
2003-05-01 1:03 ` Larry McVoy
2003-05-01 12:27 ` Stephan von Krawczynski
2003-05-01 13:11 ` Jesse Pollard
@ 2003-05-01 17:40 ` Jan-Benedict Glaw
2 siblings, 0 replies; 19+ messages in thread
From: Jan-Benedict Glaw @ 2003-05-01 17:40 UTC (permalink / raw)
To: Linux Kernel Mailing List
[-- Attachment #1: Type: text/plain, Size: 1330 bytes --]
On Wed, 2003-04-30 18:03:17 -0700, Larry McVoy <lm@bitmover.com>
wrote in message <20030501010317.GB8676@work.bitmover.com>:
> On Thu, May 01, 2003 at 08:43:47AM +1000, Paul Mackerras wrote:
> > Larry McVoy writes:
> And as much as I dislike Microsoft, I'd argue that the middleware layer
> that they provide which makes all the windows apps work together is
> maybe even a bigger deal than the web. Unix has been trying to build
> something like that for decades and never has. Neither Gnome nor KDE
> matches what they have, not a chance. And the reason is that that
Now, after using Linux (and some other Un*xes as well:) I wouldn't
compare Windows to Gnome or KDE. I'd better compare Windows to sh, awk,
sed, ... The best thing ever seems to be '|', '&&' and '||' :-)
> layer is the computing version of ditch digging, it's not sexy, it's
> not math, it's just a pile of grunt work, a huge pile. And Microsoft
Nothing sexy there, but some simple sh scripts are damn neat to that:)
MfG, JBG
--
Jan-Benedict Glaw jbglaw@lug-owl.de . +49-172-7608481
"Eine Freie Meinung in einem Freien Kopf | Gegen Zensur | Gegen Krieg
fuer einen Freien Staat voll Freier Bürger" | im Internet! | im Irak!
ret = do_actions((curr | FREE_SPEECH) & ~(IRAQ_WAR_2 | DRM | TCPA));
[-- Attachment #2: Type: application/pgp-signature, Size: 189 bytes --]
^ permalink raw reply [flat|nested] 19+ messages in thread
end of thread, other threads:[~2003-05-01 17:27 UTC | newest]
Thread overview: 19+ messages (download: mbox.gz / follow: Atom feed)
-- links below jump to the message on this page --
2003-04-30 14:52 Why DRM exists [was Re: Flame Linus to a crisp!] Downing, Thomas
2003-04-30 15:20 ` Larry McVoy
2003-04-30 15:55 ` Jeff Randall
2003-05-01 12:43 ` Jesse Pollard
2003-04-30 18:19 ` Timothy Miller
2003-04-30 19:20 ` Valdis.Kletnieks
2003-04-30 19:41 ` Timothy Miller
2003-04-30 19:53 ` Valdis.Kletnieks
2003-04-30 19:55 ` viro
2003-04-30 20:09 ` Timothy Miller
2003-04-30 20:21 ` [Pointless Waffle] " John Bradford
2003-04-30 21:00 ` Timothy Miller
2003-04-30 21:57 ` [Pointless Waffle] Re: Why DRM exists [was Re: Flame Linus to John Bradford
2003-04-30 18:58 ` Why DRM exists [was Re: Flame Linus to a crisp!] Edgar Toernig
2003-04-30 22:43 ` Paul Mackerras
2003-05-01 1:03 ` Larry McVoy
2003-05-01 12:27 ` Stephan von Krawczynski
2003-05-01 13:11 ` Jesse Pollard
2003-05-01 17:40 ` Jan-Benedict Glaw
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