Understanding Fear of the Gnu, Mar 01, 2001

Can the GPL (general public license) be declared invalid and illegal in court? That is a question that can only be answered after the arguments have been played out. With so much open source software so widely available, from chess programs to server systems, it is difficult to imagine what kind of sweeping action would be required to suppress it and how that would affect the price of development applications.

What a week for Microsoft. The legal process starts to win the trial for the company, God's surgical earthquake strike on Bill Gates misses, and according to the IDC numbers just out the Windows world domination campaign is still going swimmingly - or is it?

I really like what Richard has to say, and certainly have many reservations about some of Microsoft's business practices, but at the same time, I have been disappointed by how quick members of the free software and open source communities have been to assume the worst in Jim's remarks. As Tevye says in Fiddler on the Roof, if we live by an "eye for an eye and a tooth for a tooth...before long, the whole world will be blind and toothless."

While digital motion pictures such as Dinosaur may have captured the public's imagination, much of the work from Walt Disney Feature Animation (known as "WDFA") continues a tradition that began with Snow White in 1937. Hundreds of artists still spend up to five years creating hundreds of thousands of hand-drawn images for full-length features. What has changed--and continues to evolve--is the computerized production process, and in that realm WDFA is breaking ground with Python in a bold new application.

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