coppro
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Well, my story starts out in one of those areas of computing that everyone hates: user access priveleges. My brothers were rightfully angry that Windows XP only offers two simple levels of user accounts: Administrator, and Limited. Problem is, way too many programs fail to work (and I suspect DROD would too due to Program Files access) because of this. And they know what they're doing, so its not like anyone is really afraid of them installing the wrong stuff, or able to stop them from doing so if they really care.

So I set out to find a remedy. Fifteen minutes of navigating the help system later, I find everything I need. I open up the admin tools and create a new user group. Then, I move my brothers into that group and go off to modify the access to the local hard drive and the registry, allowing them admin control over those (I know that with that access, you can do anything you want, but I've tried to manually modify the registry and that is kind of like trying to turn a needle sitting in the middle of a haystack around without prior knowledge of the needle's location, and without moving any piece of hay. And Windows would lock them out of any relevant settings dialogs, so I was fine there.

Now, I go and reboot. It works fine. I log in to my brother's passwordless account in order to test this system. It hangs big time on the login. I think that if I waited for half an hour, it might have finished logging him in. So I use the now-ubiquitous catch-all repair: I manually cut power, restart into safe mode, and preform a System Restore. It was then that I started thinking.

Why am I having to go through this long process of restarting my computer in a mode that only the computer-savvy have ever heard of, and then rolling back all of my computer's vital settings, just because I attempted to make my computer more usable? It suddenly hit me: the System Restore function, while occaisionally useful against worms and viruses, exists primarily for one purpose: A catch-all fix to all the bugs and holes in the OS. Of course, you don't catch that at first, because you always assume that the computer is always right and that you must have made a mistake, and that the computer is even more right because it has exactly the solution that you need for your problem. So my final realization can be summed up as such: Microsoft included System Restore into Windows XP in order to hide the ubiquitous flaws inherent in their operating system.

And don't get me started on having to pay for customer support.

gamer_extreme_101
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Ummm....yes and no.

First of all, I'd like to say that the whole user-account group thing has been greatly improved in the Vista beta. I find it to be almost equal to that of Linux/Unix permission setting. You can set accounts to be able to run specific programs rather than one of the two extremes.

Secondly, while I'll admit that Microsoft's OS' have more than their share of flaws, all of the worms, viruses, and spyware that hit Windows aren't officially Microsoft's fault. Yes, they do leave holes open, but in reality it is simply of case of "being a victim of their own popularity". Linux, Mac, and Unix systems can have all of these things hit their systems, but because Microsoft's OS is the most commonly used, scammers, spammers, and malware writers target Windows because they know that's how they will get the best success.

To criticize Microsoft for trying to prevent malware from fully infecting systems seems like a waste to me. Right now, in the Vista Beta, security seems like such a strong emphasis that it almost crosses the point of annoying. Even when running a program as an administrator, it pops up with a dialog clarifying that the application has permission to run as an administrator. A spyware detector is included in the Security Center, and the whole OS seems to be trying to be the most stable ever (It hasn't fully hit there yet, but this is a beta kernel, so I won't hold it against them).

Give them a bit of credit. To keep an OS as popular as this completely bug-free is impossible. Yes, it is a bit of a catch-all fix, but in the end, it's better than nothing.

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coppro
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gamer_extreme_101 wrote:
Ummm....yes and no.

First of all, I'd like to say that the whole user-account group thing has been greatly improved in the Vista beta. I find it to be almost equal to that of Linux/Unix permission setting. You can set accounts to be able to run specific programs rather than one of the two extremes.

Secondly, while I'll admit that Microsoft's OS' have more than their share of flaws, all of the worms, viruses, and spyware that hit Windows aren't officially Microsoft's fault. Yes, they do leave holes open, but in reality it is simply of case of "being a victim of their own popularity". Linux, Mac, and Unix systems can have all of these things hit their systems, but because Microsoft's OS is the most commonly used, scammers, spammers, and malware writers target Windows because they know that's how they will get the best success.

To criticize Microsoft for trying to prevent malware from fully infecting systems seems like a waste to me. Right now, in the Vista Beta, security seems like such a strong emphasis that it almost crosses the point of annoying. Even when running a program as an administrator, it pops up with a dialog clarifying that the application has permission to run as an administrator. A spyware detector is included in the Security Center, and the whole OS seems to be trying to be the most stable ever (It hasn't fully hit there yet, but this is a beta kernel, so I won't hold it against them).

Give them a bit of credit. To keep an OS as popular as this completely bug-free is impossible. Yes, it is a bit of a catch-all fix, but in the end, it's better than nothing.

I'm not complaining about the viruses. I'm just saying that it is of limited use because many viruses either have effects that the System Restore skips over, or the viruses themselves remain behind, waiting to reactivate. And I'm not saying that the user system is hopeless, I'm just complaining that modifying the access priveleges results in a system breakdown. Of course you cannot fix every bug and patch up every security hole, but you can do a whole lot better than this. I'm not saying that anything is a bad idea, I'm just saying that it seems to have been the easy way out.

eytanz
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Well, I think your premiss is basically unreasonable. The fact is, even if someone created a flawless OS, a feature like System Restore would still be pretty valuable - there's a whole lot of stuff that can destroy a particular system configuration regardless of how well the system is programed, such as hardware issues (say, a bad sector on the harddisk in the middle of a crucial file), user ignorance or incompentance, sabotage (which user controls can only protect against up to a certain point), and other things.

Thus, the ability to restore a system is a good thing. In my opinion, it should be part of an operating system, period.

As an analogy, imagine that a car company releases a car with a faulty brake system. You buy one of their cars, drive it, and get into an accident. Because of the airbag, however, you end up unharmed. What you're saying is like claiming "Company X only put airbags in the car because their brakes were faulty!" That's nonsense. There should be airbags even in cars that have perfect breaks, and Company X should not be vilified for doing one thing right, they should be vilified for what they did wrong.

Same with Microsoft.

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[Last edited by eytanz at 07-04-2006 10:11 PM]

AlefBet
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gamer_extreme_101 wrote:
Yes, they do leave holes open, but in reality it is simply of case of "being a victim of their own popularity". Linux, Mac, and Unix systems can have all of these things hit their systems, but because Microsoft's OS is the most commonly used, scammers, spammers, and malware writers target Windows because they know that's how they will get the best success.

There's something to this, a lot to this, and I won't say there isn't. But, it still brings to mind the Apache/IIS example. Apache is much more common than IIS, but IIS is still much more commonly compromised.

I think Windows's biggest problem is that it wasn't designed for today's environment. Is Microsoft at fault? Yes and no. When Windows (and DOS) were made, computers weren't connected in one vast network structure. And only one person could sit at a computer terminal at a time. Unix was designed with a multi-user network-oriented security model in mind, and targeted at the environments where that made sense. DOS/Windows was targeted at the home computer world where you only got a virus through running stuff off a floppy. Eventually the network connected all those computers and security became a critical missing piece of the infrastructure. Security needs to be designed into the product, and it wasn't originally, so it's been a long haul. Can Microsoft be blamed for not anticipating that? Some would say yes, and some would say no. But the virus/worm problem isn't simply a symptom of Windows's popularity.

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coppro
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AlefBet wrote:

gamer_extreme_101 wrote:
Yes, they do leave holes open, but in reality it is simply of case of "being a victim of their own popularity". Linux, Mac, and Unix systems can have all of these things hit their systems, but because Microsoft's OS is the most commonly used, scammers, spammers, and malware writers target Windows because they know that's how they will get the best success.

There's something to this, a lot to this, and I won't say there isn't. But, it still brings to mind the Apache/IIS example. Apache is much more common than IIS, but IIS is still much more commonly compromised.

I think Windows's biggest problem is that it wasn't designed for today's environment. Is Microsoft at fault? Yes and no. When Windows (and DOS) were made, computers weren't connected in one vast network structure. And only one person could sit at a computer terminal at a time. Unix was designed with a multi-user network-oriented security model in mind, and targeted at the environments where that made sense. DOS/Windows was targeted at the home computer world where you only got a virus through running stuff off a floppy. Eventually the network connected all those computers and security became a critical missing piece of the infrastructure. Security needs to be designed into the product, and it wasn't originally, so it's been a long haul. Can Microsoft be blamed for not anticipating that? Some would say yes, and some would say no. But the virus/worm problem isn't simply a symptom of Windows's popularity.

I never said that the virus/worm thing was any exceptional problem.

I'm just complaining that they used system restore to fix up holes that shouldn't have been there - and I'm talking about a single computer here. The Windows architecture has holes that exist because Microsoft spent too much time taking architecture that worked before, and attempting to add on to it, without looking at what was inherently wrong with in, and that System Restore (which is an excellent idea, don't take this the wrong way) is an excuse that they can use not to fix any of the holes that are present.

Banjooie
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Except they're fixing the holes, and aren't using it as an excuse?

'can' doesn't mean 'are'.

Tuttle
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Going back to the comment about programs not running as a limited user under Windows, that's almost invariably the app's fault.

Using DROD as an example (since people are familiar with it), if the Linux version installed itself as /bin/drod and expected its user data files to be /bin/droddata/data.dat, /bin/droddata/player.dat etc, two things happen: DROD only runs as root, and people blame DROD for trying to store user data in system bits of the filesystem instead of each user's home directory.

Exactly the same logic should be applied in Windows -- any app which plonks its data files under C:\Program Files and expects users to be able to change them is broken. That's what C:\Documents And Settings is for (although there are environment settings like %USERPROFILE% and %ALLUSERSPROFILE% to deal with the fact that it won't always be C:\Documents And Settings). You shouldn't need to tinker with permissions to make it work, because the app shouldn't be trying to do it in the first place.

But people don't blame the app, they blame Microsoft. There are some places where Windows should let a user do something but doesn't (like changing the time zone), but those are getting fixed.

For what it's worth, Vista has some rather neat trickery which lets an app think it's writing to C:\Program Files while it's actually being quietly redirected to a spot where the user does have permission to write. Ditto for HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE in the registry. So even if your apps are broken, they'll probably still work as a limited user.

eytanz
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coppro wrote:
I'm just complaining that they used system restore to fix up holes that shouldn't have been there - and I'm talking about a single computer here. The Windows architecture has holes that exist because Microsoft spent too much time taking architecture that worked before, and attempting to add on to it, without looking at what was inherently wrong with in, and that System Restore (which is an excellent idea, don't take this the wrong way) is an excuse that they can use not to fix any of the holes that are present.

I still can't see how system restore has anything to do with anything. If I read your original post right, the following happened:

- You were dissatisfied with the user-rights system readily available in windows.
- You tried to use more advanced tools.
- You then ran into a problem which may have been caused by a bug in windows and may have not, it's not possible to tell from your description.
- You used system restore to recover your system.

And from this last point you somehow reach the conclusion that Microsoft is trying to hide problems with their system by making it possible for users to recover from them?

Especially since what you're saying doesn't make any sense, at least not right now. Yes, XP's user-management system sucks. But as pointed out, that's partially why they're working on a better one for Vista. Will they succeed? I have no idea, but it's sort of a cheap shot to attack someone for not trying to solve a problem when they are very publicly trying to solve the very same problem. You're on firmer ground with whatever the problem was that caused your crash, except that you don't know what that is. But on the likely assumption that it is some problem with XP, for your point to hold you'd need the following to be true:

1 - Microsoft to deny there's a problem and/or refuse to fix it.
2 - Microsoft to claim that it doesn't matter because you can just use system restore.

Since neither of the above is true, either for your case (at least I assume you never actually communicated to Microsoft support about this) or in general - Microsoft releases patches to fix problems on a near daily basis, which again raises the question of why so many problems were there to begin with, but shows willingness to address them and not hide behind anything.

So, um, yeah. I just spent a lot of words to say basically the same thing as Banjooie above.

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[Last edited by eytanz at 07-05-2006 08:24 AM]

coppro
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But the important part here is the feeling. I don't plan to complain to Microsoft until after I see Vista in it's final form, and it may take much longer after that. I don't think it's going to be much of a problem now that Microsoft sees the open-source community (and Google too) as a potential threat now more than a nuisance. They realize that they have to stay ahead of everyone. They've done a great job, but as all too many of us can attest, its the fact that they feel cheated. When playing a role-playing game, you feel cheated if a meteor suddenly lands on the enemy that you just could have beaten with a smidgen of hope. And so really, I guess I could have phrased it better, but I feel cheated with System Restore. But I think that with Linux becoming ever stronger, Microsoft really realizes that much of the operating system needs redoing, and that they need to leave behind the style of merely adding things on to existing architecture, without really making sure it all fits together. I'm guessing that my problem was a combination difficulty of the NTFS security system, underlying access code, and the XP revisions to the system, and that's what made me feel the way I felt.

b0rsuk
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Prepare yourself for vista by reading this:

http://www.gnu.org/philosophy/can-you-trust.html

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Banjooie
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And once again, Generic Microsoft Sucks thread has Generic The World Is Doomed If We Don't All Follow Linux Webrant.

Ah, Trusted Computing. Linux geeks have been proclaiming it's just around the corner for..what, eight years now? It's almost looking like something they're making up just to spur hatred towards Microsoft, at this rate.

AlefBet
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Banjooie wrote:
Ah, Trusted Computing. Linux geeks have been proclaiming it's just around the corner for..what, eight years now? It's almost looking like something they're making up just to spur hatred towards Microsoft, at this rate.

Well, Microsoft has been claiming Vista is just around the corner for a while now too. Both haven't happened yet for pretty much the same reasons.

Edit: What I mean is Trusted Computing hasn't arrived yet, because Vista hasn't arrived. How can we have Trusted Computing if we're all still using Windows XP or lower?

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[Last edited by AlefBet at 07-06-2006 10:19 PM]

Banjooie
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See, what you people keep forgetting is that most businesses...I see a lot that are still using /windows 95/. I see many that are still using 3.1. Windows Vista is not going to come in and supplant everything, ever. Even excusing the businesses that use Linux.

I'm sorry, it isn't.


(For the record: I have nothing against Linux, it seems like a pretty cool OS.)

coppro
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Banjooie wrote:
See, what you people keep forgetting is that most businesses...I see a lot that are still using /windows 95/. I see many that are still using 3.1. Windows Vista is not going to come in and supplant everything, ever. Even excusing the businesses that use Linux.

I'm sorry, it isn't.


(For the record: I have nothing against Linux, it seems like a pretty cool OS.)

And my school uses 98 - but that's just because our schools are underfunded (big surprise)

eytanz
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Banjooie wrote:
See, what you people keep forgetting is that most businesses...I see a lot that are still using /windows 95/. I see many that are still using 3.1. Windows Vista is not going to come in and supplant everything, ever. Even excusing the businesses that use Linux.

I'm sorry, it isn't.

I think that statistically, most businesses use Windows 2000 or XP these days. Of course, a *lot* still use 95/98 or earlier.

But, that's not the issue, really. Many businesses aren't online, and many others have no need for anything more stable than windows 95 because they use their computers for non-critical uses. If all you use your computer is as a glorified typewriter, even if you have dozens of viruses it's nothing but an inconvenience.


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AlefBet
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Well, my point was that saying that people have been predicting for years that "Trusted Computing" would come and it still hasn't arrived, is not support for the proposition that it was never a real concern and was just made up to bash the big corporations. "Trusted Computing" could never be released as a service pack or add-on. It requires both new hardware and a new operating system, and since we haven't had a new mainstream operating system in over half a decade, of course TC hasn't been deployed yet. But, significantly, TC is one of the few features of Windows Vista that hasn't been completely cut. (It is true that some of the scarier parts of NGSCB have been pushed to whatever comes after Vista, if you can hold your breath that long.)

I actually think the technologies behind Trusted Computing form a very cool concept. If when you bought a computer you were also given the keys that correspond to that computer sufficient to allow you to authorize what software you want to bootstrap the machine, I think it would be a very handy idea. It could give meaningful security to kiosk location terminals (so you can't just pop a CD in the computer and power cycle it to take control of the machine and clone the hard drive, for example), and it could allow IT departments to effectively control what software runs on company machines (reducing the risk of rogue installations of, for example, peer-to-peer programs that may result in the intentional or inadvertent compromise of corporate secrets). This could be really valuable in hospitals or military installations.

Unfortunately, that one piece of the puzzle -- giving the owner of the hardware the keys necessary to authorize software -- seems to be what the big backers of TC don't want to do.

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Mattcrampy
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Meh, I don't trust it. They have their own reasons for doing things, and although the Trusted Computing stuff is scary there is no way consumers will let them get away with it now that the market for computers has stopped growing. It's FUD.

And besides, how close is GNU to the Free Software Foundation? The FSF are a bunch of dogmatics, convinced that open-sourcing everything will make the world a better place - a world where you need sponsors to make a living from coding instead of an employer, a world where far less people can get a job coding. Or maybe I'm bitter that the GPL deliberately does not play well with closed-source.

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AlefBet
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Mattcrampy wrote:
Meh, I don't trust it. They have their own reasons for doing things, and although the Trusted Computing stuff is scary there is no way consumers will let them get away with it now that the market for computers has stopped growing. It's FUD.

I think there are too many pronouns here. Who are the "they"s (the ones that have their reasons and the them that won't get away with it), and what is the "it" they won't get away with? (I'm not trying to be dense here. There are several possibilities.)

And besides, how close is GNU to the Free Software Foundation?

I'm not sure what you mean by GNU or "close" here.

The FSF are a bunch of dogmatics, convinced that open-sourcing everything will make the world a better place - a world where you need sponsors to make a living from coding instead of an employer, a world where far less people can get a job coding.

If I didn't know better, I'd think this was a troll. In any event, it's awkward to respond to without getting into hypotheticals and ideologies.

Or maybe I'm bitter that the GPL deliberately does not play well with closed-source.

I'm not sure why this is an issue. Closed source licenses are in some instances designed directly (sometimes deliberately, sometimes not) to not work with each other. Why should someone releasing their code as open source not have similar latitude about their usage terms as well, as long as the terms aren't unconscionable?

Anyway, the GPL is one OSS licence (of several) that has terms that are difficult to abide by in a proprietary code product. Some of Microsoft's licenses are examples (among others) of licenses that don't work in a copyleft project. Picking one or the other and saying they're bad because they don't play nice with what I want is rather arbitrary. Copyleft is a big item now because it does some things very well. Proprietary programming is so firmly entrenched because it does some things well. What the market finally settles on doesn't have to be dictated by zeal and animosity.

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jamie
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And I hope people reading this thread don't think OSS==Linux.

The BSD philosophy is much less political, and doesn't have the restrictions that Matt mentioned about the GPL

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Mattcrampy
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jamie wrote:
And I hope people reading this thread don't think OSS==Linux.

The BSD philosophy is much less political, and doesn't have the restrictions that Matt mentioned about the GPL

Just like to second that - open source in general is a great thing to have, and really diversifies the software available and gets competition going - for instance, Mozilla's work reinvigorating the browser wars is only going to make browsers better for everyone. There are, as well, many different ways of making your work open source, and as it stands it's really only the GPL that draws my ire.

The reason for that is, as I read it, if you use code licensed under the GPL you may only use it in other projects licensed under the GPL - it appears from a legal standpoint that you're allowed to segregate your program, have part of it be under GPL and part under a different license (open or closed), but I don't like the idea of the wall between open and closed. I always figured open source to be a well of collective knowledge more than a way to show people your code.

It seems my philosophy on open source is closer to BSD than GPL.

Also! I needed to clarify this:

Meh, I don't trust GNU. GNU have their own reasons for doing things, and although the Trusted Computing stuff is scary there is no way consumers will let the consortium developing Trusted Computing get away with implementing TC now that the market for computers has stopped growing. It's FUD.

As for how involved the GPL is with GNU, nevermind, I looked it up.

If I didn't know better, I'd think this was a troll. In any event, it's awkward to respond to without getting into hypotheticals and ideologies.

Sorry for the troll, but I'm sort of annoyed at those that suggest that closed source no longer has a purpose now that open source is around. I'm taking obscure legal matters far too seriously.

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coppro
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GNU General Public Liscence not make sense?

As a followup: I recently noticed that my computer couldn't access SSL. I thought it was an unintended side-effect, but it was just my firewall.

AlefBet
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Just now I read an article that Groklaw pointed me too that I thought some of you migt be interested in reading, which I think is pertinent to this comment:

Mattcrampy wrote:
The FSF are ... convinced that open-sourcing everything will make the world a better place - ... a world where far less people can get a job coding.

The article can be found here, and says that a surprising amount of people working on OSS are getting paid to do it.

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trick
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You guys know DROD is Open Source, right ?



- Gerry

golfrman
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gamer_extreme_101 wrote:

Linux, Mac, and Unix systems can have all of these things hit their systems, but because Microsoft's OS is the most commonly used, scammers, spammers, and malware writers target Windows because they know that's how they will get the best success.

that's not quite true, it is much harder to create a virus that can work on a mac or linux etc. than on a pc, it's not just because pcs are more popular

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Alneyan
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Mattcrampy wrote:
Sorry for the troll, but I'm sort of annoyed at those that suggest that closed source no longer has a purpose now that open source is around. I'm taking obscure legal matters far too seriously.

Were you specifically talking about the FSF here? (I'm not sure you had a specific target in mind) The FSF is not the only group promoting the view that "free/open is better"; the OpenBSD developpers seem to share the same view, in so far as open software is the way to go for security *provided* that people are working on the code. I have heard a few Linux advocates that almost seemed to think that "source code available for all automagically maintains itself and fixes its own bugs in the process", which, oddly enough, is a good deal less convincing than the continual auditing of code (I think FreeBSD also does that, and I wouldn't know about NetBSD).

The main difference between the GPL camp and the BSD followers seems to be the goal of being open in the first place. The FSF promotes the idea of "freedom for all" (at the expense of the initial developper), so that openess is a means to an end, whereas the BSD folks (and some of the others aforementioned) see openess as an end in itself. I don't think the picture is quite that clear cut, though.

I don't see the FSF, as in the organisation, as being particularly political. They certainly have an ideology, and some of their members are quite vocal (Stallman wpuld be the obvious example). As an organisation, I'm not sure the FSF has that much of a clout. While the ideology *could* be extended beyond software, the FSF itself is not going that way: I haven't heard them supporting open hardware, and they plainly state on the GNU website licence page that "We don't take the position that artistic or entertainment works must be free, but if you want to make one free, we recommend the Free Art License", which sounds quite like the carpet statement to me (what in the nine hells is a "work" in this sentence? I could make a case of "work" including software here).

So, the FSF mostly focuses on software (or a subset of software), and follows that line in their interpretation of the GPL. The GPL is sometimes used beyond software, but I don't think it is linked to the FSF itself. Along the same lines, the FSF encourages the spliting of software and documentation, with documentation being less important in their reasoning (the GFDL licence is not nearly as protective as the GPL, but if the GPL is such a good thing, why not extend it to documentation?). The GFDL is also, of course, incompatible with the GPL, and, of course, means yet another licence hanging around, as if we didn't have enough of them already. I think it is more advocates of free software than the FSF or the GPL themselves that are really being political (Debian has a quite interesting and uncommon organisation, among others).

That aside, I don't see the BSD side as being solely focused on just better software. OpenBSD strikes me as being stricter on certain requirements than any mainstream Linux distro I know of (check their Lyrics page, for example). If memory serves, OpenBSD doesn't carry more than user-land firmwares (Debian has a few binary drivers in kernel-land), has been rewriting some software when the licence was found to be inadequate, has questionned licences the FSF and Debian found adequate (last time I toyed with OpenBSD, there was no Apache 2.0 there; it looks like the situation is still the same now), and has been quite involved in getting open hardware. The FSF did give their award to Theo de Raadt in 2004, and they might have a better relationship with OpenBSD than with Debian these days.

I think the chief difference between the GPL and the BSD licence is their safeguards. The GPL rests on copyright or civil law, and uses copyright provisions, albeit in a reversed manner, whereas the BSD licence is closer to the public domain than to an actual licence. Instead, the BSD model seems to be more empowering, and more based on trust with regards to support for further development (the end product of GPL code will be more restricted than BSD, where the one thing to do is credit the original developpers). Note that the GPL seems about as permissive as BSD licence if you are *not* redistributing the program: you can do pretty much what you want with GPL code so long as it is not publicly distributed (copyleft only kicks in with full force at this stage). In the Ideal World, I think I would prefer a BSD-style licence over the rooted-in-law GPL (hmm, I'd better watch out or I'll become more vocal than Jamie at that rate). In the Less than Ideal World, I would prefer to keep the two licences strong and kicking, just in case.

Or I'm just rambling. Or stuff. Definitively rambling it seems.

jamie wrote:
And I hope people reading this thread don't think OSS==Linux.

Heh, that's the main thing I like with the FSF label of GNU/Linux. While I don't have an opinion regarding the merits of their claim (I wasn't born to begin with when GNU started out, so my knowledge is third-hand at best), I do like the reminder that Linux just isn't synonymous with "everything not related to MacOs X or Windows out there", and that somehow most people use software rather than kernel calls. Of course, that covers only Linux, but that one seems the most overreaching name out there (I have yet to see someone using "*BSD" to cover more than the operating system taken as a whole).

I also like Unix-like or a similar name for the same purpose, applying this time to the diversity of related operating systems out there (Unix isn't a wholly accurate name here, but still). I'm not overly fond of the (F)OSS label, though. In any event, I would prefer that Linux doesn't make "OSS" stand for "Operating System Specific".

Znirk
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Alneyan wrote:
[The FSF] plainly state on the GNU website licence page that "We don't take the position that artistic or entertainment works must be free, but if you want to make one free, we recommend the Free Art License", which sounds quite like the carpet statement to me (what in the nine hells is a "work" in this sentence? I could make a case of "work" including software here).

And neither the FSF nor copyright law would disagree with you there. Software isn't necessarily "artistic" or "entertainment", though.

b0rsuk
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:=)

Ok, my post wasn't exactly meant as troll, but it worked like one. It was more of an accident, but the discussion is amusing. Almost like How I envy american students.

As far as I know, GPL is not recommended for things other than code simply because its wording gets unclear when applied to other kinds of work. This is to make the job easier for lawyers.

By the way...
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/BSD_and_GPL_licensing
Check the bottom links, too.

As you may have guessed, I prefer GPL licence, for example because it's harder to bash competition with it. Microsoft is said to use some software with BSD licenses. So it's indirectly supporting abuse of monopoly ( I know monopoly itself isn't illegal ). What's the benefit for me ? And simply I like the whole community idea.

____________________________

http://www.gamasutra.com/features/20051128/adams_01.shtml

coppro
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golfrman wrote:

gamer_extreme_101 wrote:

Linux, Mac, and Unix systems can have all of these things hit their systems, but because Microsoft's OS is the most commonly used, scammers, spammers, and malware writers target Windows because they know that's how they will get the best success.

that's not quite true, it is much harder to create a virus that can work on a mac or linux etc. than on a pc, it's not just because pcs are more popular

Partially because more people devote their time to finding security holes that allow access to a bigger percentage of the computer-useing populous.

trick
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coppro wrote:
Partially because more people devote their time to finding security holes that allow access to a bigger percentage of the computer-useing populous.

*cough*

- Gerry