Posts by Doctor Syntax

Re: For a contrarian take

One instance given was that supposed efficiencies were due to the fact that the WFH employees were working longer to get the work done. The true comparison should have been between the WFH extended hours vs the total employee WFO time of office hours plus commuting time.

Re: employees were happy (31%), motivated (30%) and excited (27%) to be in the office

When you know the conclusion you want why let facts get in the way?

I don't think I'd want a case of musk. It would probably be both vinegary, bitter and corked. Quite undrinkable.

"Many shop owners would live upstairs but in many cities, they've passed ordinances against that "

I keep saying that the present mess was actually planned. It wasn't planned to become a mess but that was the result of well-meaning post-war legislation to separate living and working space. It was built to avoid the slums built round sometimes heavily polluting industry. What happened was that commuting replaced heavy industry as the polluters.

Re: If RH can't do this...

"That has not seemed to happen"

It might start to happen now.

Re: What they've achieved

"it's consistently been the debian ones which are far easier to maintain"

You're apt to find that.

Re: Popcorn time?

The GPL is bothered with more than ensuring that the software's source code is made available to the customer/licensee. It's bothered about it being made available with the right to redistribute without further restrictions.

That is written into the GPL, including an obligation not to impose such restrictions on those to whom copies of code are supplied. The question here is whether the business relationship under which RH provide GPLed code implying such a restriction on their customers.

Re: "Certified"

"I find it hard to understand who is inconvenienced by these moves."

You mean apart from those building the Rocky & Alma downstream distros?

1. Companies who use RHEL in production because they need support* but who also run a downstream rebuild for training, testing and/or development boxes because they don't need support on those. Are they going to have to pay more for those secondary functions? This is the risk for RH. If the matching downstream builds aren't available those customers are going to have to reconsider whether RHEL is still the best choice for production.

2. The certifying** application vendors who certify against RHEL because its existing place in the OS market has made it a valuable market place for applications. If this makes their customers wish to look elsewhere they are going to have to do the same. The testing against a platform is expensive. Maintaining multiple versions if testing reveals that's required is expensive***.

3. The customers of the vendors of the certified products who might not have a problem per se with running RHEL but will have one if their vendor switches platforms.

* Support is what provides the customers' perceived value for money.

** In regulated application areas certification of the S/W they use is an external requirement that the customer needs to meet.

*** "Inconvenience" isn't the issue; it's the cost.

"Obviously this is not expressly written into the GPL or in the RHEL software licence."

What is expressly written into the GPL is that (a) it applies to derivatives, (b) the recipient of GPL code, if redistributing it, is bound to pass on the GPL with the code and (c) is not allowed to add further restrictions if they do and (d) is entitled to remove them if they have been added.

In this both Red Hat and their customers are recipients. RH as a recipient is bound by the GPL and if it modifies the code the resulting derivative is still covered by GPL, must provide the modified code if required and should not add further restrictions.

The question is then whether these contractual terms for RHEL are an implied further restriction.

Re: 'Company'? What 'company'?

That "Reading Comprehension 101" is certainly needed because it's very clear indeed in the context that the company is Red Hat. In case "Big Purple" went over your head IBM which took over Red Hat is often referred to as Big Blue and, as mixing red and blue gives purple, the resulting amalgam is commonly referred to hereabouts as Big Purple.

Re: Ignoring the big issue

It would take a court case to determine for sure whether it is 100% compliant or not. The question would be whether this is an implied instance of those additional restrictions that the GPL says should not be applied and may be removed if they are.

Re: Easy PR?

ISTR that when 5G (or was it 4 or 6 or whatever?) being mooted it was said that because the range was so small the base stations could be like WiFi and instead of erecting the sort of masts they're now putting up they would be many unnoticeably small boxes similar to WiFi base stations on lamp-posts etc.

This morning I went to give a wheel-chair bound friend a lift. Being built on a steep hillside the bottom of her drive is well below road level. While waiting for her to manoeuvre out of the house I happened to look up & realised just how over-towering the newly installed 5G mast is. It's just over the garden wall but the garden wall is a retaining wall against the road so the effective height is getting on for 30m.

They are monstrously intrusive constructions. Their designers should have been sent back to their drawing boards CAD screens and told to start again. Forget brain frying & spreading Covid nonsense - aesthetics are a completely adequate reason to object.

Re: Let us hope that we can ignore licensing

"at least in the US"

Other places exist.

Re: recipients of their binaries

"They'd have to sue you, and that's different. Defending yourself is not the same as bringing suit against a big, deep pocketed company."

To which the response might be cease and desist letters from various copyright owners for being in breach of the licence for the software they're distributing.

Re: Unique keys

"but admittedly practical in everyday life."

Until it gets taken in a data heist. Do they have provision for changes?

Re: Unique keys

And have at least 3 characters 1 charaacter

FTFY

Re: Unique keys

Ed It whould have been better.

Re: Unique keys

Or the former secretary general of the United Nations, U Thant

Re: Unique keys

I have a design rule: Any assumption you make about what a system will have to do will become a limitation of that system.

Names are an outstanding example of that.

Re: Unique keys

"Not everyone in the world has an 'English' name, or naming conventions."

And possible naming conventions also include single letter names so imposing rules to try to enforce full names and eliminate the use of initials will fall foul of that.