Reply With QuoteWho wants a thin client with big brother recording all of the clicks and selling that to advertisers?However, Google Chrome OS mobile devices haven't exactly been flying off the shelves.
Senior Member
the DWG stuff is even worse than in the article
The LibreDWG situation is even worse than what's mentioned in the article:
People are actually not using the library (and therefore not developing on it) because the license is incompatible with the FOSS software out there:
the library is GPL3, but that's a showstopper for many projects because they're at GPL2 only.
See here for a very in-depth look at the situation both with the library and with the major CAD programs that would use the library:
What's up with DWG adoption in free software
The same site recently did a follow-up to their article to see how the situation has changed, if any: LibreDWG controversy: 2 months later
If you'd like to know what's going on in graphics and design part of the FOSS ecosystem, Libre Graphics World is one of the best sites in terms of coverage.
Senior Member
Who wants a thin client with big brother recording all of the clicks and selling that to advertisers?However, Google Chrome OS mobile devices haven't exactly been flying off the shelves.
Senior Member
If that were even remotely true wouldn't he post about Apple more often as it appears to be his desktop of choice?Originally Posted by XorEaxEax
Senior Member
Yeah, it's not like he is giving lots of coverage to the Apple sponsored llvm/clang development... Funny to hear that he runs OSX, puts some things in perspective I guess (if it is indeed true).
Senior Member
Well the number one problem was that the implementation is incomplete since there's not enough documentation for this proprietary format. Also the slow speed of development is stated by the devs (a bunch of brazilians) to be because they are all doing it on a volunteer spare-time basis.
Also how many CAD projects are there in need of this which are GPLv2 only, you said it was a showstopper for several projects? Personally I think stuff like libraries are better served by something like LGPL but above that I believe in the divine right of the code author to decide which licence suits his/her code best.
I agree with you on Libre Graphics World being a great site for those interested in FOSS graphics apps/development.
Senior Member
Looking at the article, they've checked with three projects: LibreCAD (which is a fork of the community edition of QCAD), FreeCAD, and Blender.
Senior Member
While I welcome a critical look at open source projects, including ones sponsored by the Free Software Foundation, Phoronix has proven to be nothing but negatively critical towards FSF while either ignoring the GPL license or treating it in the same way as they treat the FSF. In other words, the Phoronix website is full of blantantly biased reporting on these subjects, and I can only infer that the same applies to some other subjects which I don't follow as regularly. It's a shame, since these projects need to have the publicity in order to attract new contributors and keep existing ones. It is not healthy for any type of project to have a constant negative focus from some outside party like this website. It is entirely possible to on one hand be critical of a project but at the same time remain positive, and it is obvious that this distinction is lost by Michael for whatever reason when it comes to FSF and the GPL.
Phoronix
Since when did I hate the GPL? I don't hate it... I put out the Phoronix Test Suite and other software under the GPL (even GPLv3) myself.... I'm not sure why there's FUD that I hate the GPL.
I also don't explicitly hate the Free Software Foundation, it's particularly the high priority list that I don't like for a variety of reasons, most of which I have mentioned. For such a central organization, the FSF should do more to promote the projects on the list or find assistance for them in one way or another, revise the list to include more relevant projects to the widest audience of users (the CAD file and network router drivers IMHO don't really belong on there...), audit the list more vigorously, and that they and others should focus upon innovating in free software rather than just trying to replace proprietary software by more or less copying their features.
Michael Larabel
http://www.michaellarabel.com/
Senior Member
The innovation argument, OK, I'll buy that. But at the same time, I think 50% of the reason why Linux is still not "ready for prime time" is that the things people take for granted on Windows, are not available on Linux. So that basically means giving them what they had in terms of applications on Windows, so they feel at home. Once someone develops a perceived "requirement" to have some software, they won't be very willing to give it up. So that means things like:
- Games (specific games, not just generic games - although I think you are doing a better job than the FSF at championing that)
- Voice/video conferencing without having to set up your own server, and specifically, interoperability with Skype's network, if not a downright open source clone of their client
- Flash. It's still not going away because a few very high-demand websites keep using it (MLB is the one I need it for...). Even if you come up with something that works better than Flash, such as WebM video with HTML5 canvas, it's incompatible with Flash, and thus useless to anyone who needs Flash for some sites.
Those are only a few examples, but you'll see that most of the things on the FSF's list are just reimplementations of proprietary products. Well, yeah, that's kind of a no-brainer to me: people are going to keep using Windows until they can run all of the programs they want to run on Linux, and most people aren't going to settle for running Windows in a VM (that's pretty much a cop-out anyway).
Soooo... why exactly is innovation important? Even if we offer 1000 awesome applications that are extremely innovative and extremely desirable for end-users, if they're not the same ones that users specifically want, then they basically aren't going to fly.
Well, I take that back in part. For service-oriented "client" programs, such as a Skype client, a Ventrilo client, a Flash player, etc., providing a reimplementation that is compatible at the network layer with the proprietary app, is acceptable. So there we don't have to depend on the original publisher to voluntarily bring their software to Linux, we just have to write a client that works. Still, it's not really innovation, but it is what people want.
I agree on the relevancy of certain items on the list, but I think you're basically barking up the wrong tree. The main issue here is that the FSF is not a software development organization. They pitch an ideology, and software licenses, and that's basically it. The FSF doesn't write software.
You could probably try to get GNU involved, as they are a software development organization -- but GNU itself does not exactly have a lot of developers just standing around idle, ready to pour resources into projects. If anything, the absence of progress on these items is an indication that FOSS is not advancing as quickly as we'd like -- and that's not an issue that is specific to the FSF, that is an issue that is running across the entire ecosystem.
And you yourself admitted that the PowerVR driver would be very desirable. That it hasn't made progress isn't the FSF's fault, because again, they're not a software development organization.
BTW, the Open Source Initiative doesn't even have a high priority projects list. Maybe that's a good thing, because they can't get criticized by people for putting out ideas and not being able to implement them themselves.
Senior Member
Jølle Jønnson
Now that you have snapped your whip, I am sure they will all be finished..
I don`t see why anyone isn`t talking about low-latency linux. Patches to improve responsiveness is greatly discussed, but that doesn`t even matter in a non-low-latency environment. If people knew they could do extremely responsive low-latency audio/video in linux, I am sure they would come. That was afterall the big critique of microsoft, back in the days of amiga/atari/acorn. You would come to MS world, and there would be 50ms latencies (if you were lucky). windows was written for wordprocessing probably yes, and still seems to carry a lot of that mindset. However what happens when low latency audio becomes available? The whole softsynth thing, and standalone studios in a PC happened then. This was kind of featured earlier, with modules on the amiga/etc. And the DSP trend can already be heard on the Atari Falcon. But it didn`t really happen bigtime, before MS windows could have low latencies.
So where was their minds all this time? And why do they not carry this to the extreme? So we all can be free of how this or that old system, was better.
Now ofcourse linux is much better than windows at low latencies. And people are hailing wayland as an improvement of responsiveness. But THAT also requires low-latency kernels, to have any effect on responsiveness. Infact, the kind of supersmooth graphics that Mark Shuttleworth of Ubuntufame, is known to want, is already there, with low-latency kernels. Wayland will be an improvement yes, but we already have supersmooth graphics.
So why aren`t low-latency config kernels more of a buzzword? That seems to be key to everything here.
Personally I would like to see an opensource sequencer, that can compete with Logic Audio. Something that can sequence both video and audio. If you had that, on a low-latency linux, I think many would use linux. Probably a whole lot of the youtube crowd, and similar crowds to amigastyle "demo" crowds. That would again, become the producers of new media, hopefully professionally.
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