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This isn't quite true. People just need to insist on ownership. We are guilty of allowing commercial interests to lull us with making it easy at the cost of ownership.

There are plenty of gratis programs that implement limitations which work against the user over which the user has no control. There used to be a small program for detecting the "click of death" which was said to signal an imminent failure in an Iomega Zip drive (which were once much more popular). The program was written in assembly by a self-described security researcher and the user was allowed to download and run only the compiled executable for Windows but the program cost no money. That program had code in it that checked the date and would not run the program's main function if the program ran after a certain date. Had that program been free software (software the user is free to run, inspect, share, and modify) one could still make use of its routines today across operating systems. This might still be handy to people trying to retrieve data from Zip disks, for example. But the program was proprietary and carried a proprietary dependency (ran only on a proprietary OS).

So this teaches us that DRM (digital restrictions management) is a direct outcome of the power of a proprietor. The commercial factors are side issues; if we had free software to read the books, play the media, and do other things we could use them instead of the proprietary software each DRM implementation depends on and we could let commercial organizations sell us copies of free software and provide support and improved code at a fee. I'd happily pay for commercial support for free software I sometimes need fixed or improved. The real enemy is software non-freedom. And we need to speak out against those who claim that strongly copylefted free software will kill people (as automobile manufacturers have told people).

How much more important security is with a self-driving car where a hacker could literally drive a car

That sounds like another great reason to never get into a self-driving car. Even if someone you trust is at the wheel the software can easily remove them from gaining/retaining control of the car.

"Opening security code to other car manufacturers" (as per the language used in the /. headline) simultaneously exposes a problem with the open source development methodology (it's not about software freedom, users included) and points to a conflict self-driving car manufacturers and distributors aren't terribly interested to get you to consider—various authorities (police, FBI, etc.) want you in a vehicle they can more easily lock you into and commandeer.

Software freedom (the freedom to run, inspect, modify, and share published computer software) would work against outside controlling interests by giving you the keys (pun intended) to control your car to the limits of your expertise and willingness to learn or hire someone to work on your behalf. You could choose to let some authority control your car or you could edit out the code which gives anyone else that power and retain control of your car. After all, any free software activist will tell you it's your car therefore it's your computer in that car. We've seen what proprietary software interests think of your health and safety. I don't think we need to wait for more evidence that they don't have our interests in mind. We all deserve software freedom for all of our computers.

Without agreeing to or objecting to the specific number of deaths per year attributable to cheating on environmental testing compliance, it would appear that Brad Kuhn (former Exec. Dir. of the Free Software Foundation, current Distinguished Technologist at the Software Freedom Conservancy) was right in his article "Software Freedom Doesn't Kill People, Your Security Through Obscurity Kills People":

I heard a talk today from a company representative of a software supplier for the automotive industry. He said during his talk: "putting GPLv3 software in cars will kill people" and "opening up the source code to cars will cause more harm than good". These statements are completely disingenuous. Most importantly, it ignores the fact that proprietary software in cars is at least equally, if not more, dangerous. At least one person has already been killed in a crash while using a proprietary software auto-control system. Volkswagen decided to take a different route; they decided to kill us all slowly (rather than quickly) by using proprietary software to lie about their emissions and illegally polluting our air.

Meanwhile, there has been not a single example yet about use of GPLv3 software that has harmed anyone.

This is the time to cite the cheating scandal as a reason why car owners should actually own their car including the complete corresponding software for the car and the software build instructions. We know what happens when the manufacturers are allowed to use the power of a proprietor. It's time we get vehicles that respect our software freedom.

Without agreeing to or objecting to the specific number of deaths per year attributable to cheating on environmental testing compliance, it would appear that Brad Kuhn (former Exec. Dir. of the Free Software Foundation, current Distinguished Technologist at the Software Freedom Conservancy) was right in his article "Software Freedom Doesn't Kill People, Your Security Through Obscurity Kills People":

I heard a talk today from a company representative of a software supplier for the automotive industry. He said during his talk: "putting GPLv3 software in cars will kill people" and "opening up the source code to cars will cause more harm than good". These statements are completely disingenuous. Most importantly, it ignores the fact that proprietary software in cars is at least equally, if not more, dangerous. At least one person has already been killed in a crash while using a proprietary software auto-control system. Volkswagen decided to take a different route; they decided to kill us all slowly (rather than quickly) by using proprietary software to lie about their emissions and illegally polluting our air.

Meanwhile, there has been not a single example yet about use of GPLv3 software that has harmed anyone.

This is the time to cite the cheating scandal as a reason why car owners should actually own their car including the complete corresponding software for the car and the software build instructions. We know what happens when the manufacturers are allowed to use the power of a proprietor. It's time we get vehicles that respect our software freedom.

Who has caused the most damage for American citizens?

Software proprietors, regardless of nationality, current employment, or current residence. Brad Kuhn said it well in his blog post, "Software Freedom Doesn't Kill People, Your Security Through Obscurity Kills People".

More importantly for the public: the golden parachute and engineer's imprisonment does nothing to give affected cars (not just VWs) control of the cars they "own". The car's software should be published, sent to each registered owner in source and binary forms with complete build instructions and licensed under a free software license (I suggest the GPLv3 or later).

This means Brad Kuhn's warning still holds true: Software Freedom Doesn't Kill People, Your Security Through Obscurity Kills People and vehicle owners who want to keep their vehicle and make it abide by emissions laws without having to trust the parties that put them in danger in the first place can't do so. This is near to symbolic punishment in that it's very real for the individual engineer (nothing symbolic about that) but a way for the government and manufacturers say "Look! We're 'Doing Something'!" with no threat to their power to do this again. That power should be taken away from them and turned into freedom for the affected car owners so we can get cleaner air to breathe and verifiable operation out of what might otherwise be perfectly functional vehicles.

And this is all in pursuit of something nobody needs—third-party remote driving or proprietary software driving. As Bradley Kuhn has pointed out, software freedom doesn't kill people, your security through obscurity kills people. I'm no fan of the driverless vehicle but it's worth noting how one-sided it is; the party being left out of knowing how their vehicle will behave is the vehicle's owner. This is a recipe for bad outcomes and we already have evidence of one driverless vehicle killing someone and the VW proprietary exhaust scandal adding more pollutants killing people more slowly.

Eric "The Constitution guarantees due process, not judicial process" Holder has returned to working for Covington & Burling, whose clients include many of the banks Holder chose not to prosecute when he was Attorney General (despite considerable evidence) and as the Intercept points out, President-elect Trump has made America Goldman's again so if you voted for Trump thinking you were dodging the Goldman Sachs favoritism Hillary Clinton showed, that didn't work.

Your response strikes me as typical of programmers in that they don't recognize how their work can affect a great deal more people than almost all of the examples you cite. With the possible exception of mishandling food, none of the other examples come close to affecting the same order of magnitude of people as programmers can.

The recent VW emissions scandal is a perfect example: VW's proprietary software was used in around 11 million VW cars worldwide (that VW admits to) from model years 2009-2015. Comparable proprietary software was used in more cars of other makes and model years. VW's software apparently turned some VW cars into cars that never should have been sold. Other makes and models of cars are also showing bad signs of polluting too much and not being in line with regulations. The full scope of the damage has not been accounted for. Only centralized food processors working on very highly used ingredients have the potential for that kind of adverse impact.

This creates a situation that kills us slowly instead of quickly by polluting our air in ways our (admittedly inadequate) regulation framework was designed to disallow. Proprietary software cheated those tests by behaving radically differently in regular driving than in testing mode. These cars should all be taken back by their manufacturers at full cost to the manufacturer, giving the current owner a complete refund of whatever they paid for the car, and the manufacturer's higher-ups should pay with criminal penalties and huge fines because this is a serious environmental matter. Programmers know their software is widely used (some programmers even value the wide reuse of their code) but rarely do programmers brag that their software treats people ethically and well.

Being "aware of their moral compass" is too low a standard and something programmers have typically balked at besides. As Brad Kuhn points out, software freedom doesn't kill people, security through obscurity kills people, yet programmers today still debate the value of software freedom for its own sake instead preferring to either work on proprietary software outright, or choosing to value a non-free software-allowing right-wing corporate reaction to free software known as "open source". Read just about any /. thread today and you'll find plenty of technically literate people who balk at introducing ethics into the discussion, or try to explain away giving us all the means of helping ourselves via software freedom. Our best chance of finding and fixing the cheating car code is to require copylefted free software for all vehicles and make transfer of the complete corresponding source code and build instructions for said software with ownership of the vehicle. But we choose not to do our best motivated in part by those who would rather not enter into a moral discussion because they place business desires above how people ought to treat other people.

One easy way to help fix this is helping those who help us. Today the Linux kernel is used in a lot of products that end up in people's homes, listening and watching them all the time via cameras and mics controlled with proprietary software. It's hardly a stretch to imagine that non-technical customers are being spied on without their knowledge or consent. It's bad enough that Linus Torvalds' fork of the Linux kernel allows proprietary software (as opposed to GNU Linux-libre which does not), but GPL violations are rampant. We can help the Software Freedom Conservancy by funding their efforts to pursue GPL violations, and I hope you'll do so. We owe the entirety of free software routers to comparable efforts, freeing code from Linksys which we can apparently reuse in many other routers. That freed software and its derivatives makes routers more trustworthy, improv

Slashdot seems to me to be a proponent of the open source movement, the software development methodology that Bradley Kuhn rightly called "greenwashing" (another copy) the free software movement by talking about much the same software and licenses but without the freedom talk in order to placate business interests seeking to proprietarize software. Consider the case in this thread—defending copyleft—this clearly shows the difference between the two movements. The older free software movement wants to preserve software freedom while the younger open source movement was built to not discuss software freedom at all. Kuhn's personal blog post on this topic describes the situation very well and with no punches pulled.

When you come across someone who talks and works to defend software freedom, such as Richard Stallman, in a forum whose participants are (be they a proprietor's shill or genuinely describing their own view) devoted to supporting the kind of power over the user that strongly copylefted licenses, such as the GNU GPLs, were built to withstand you're going to find people using whatever namecalling and misrepresentative tactics they can come up with to try and malign Stallman (as if that would somehow reflect badly on software freedom). The complaints get weaker over time (remember when people used to complain that the GPL wasn't defensible in court?) so the objectors have to find other avenues to try and distract people into not thinking in terms of software freedom. It wouldn't matter if software freedom were proposed and initially championed by someone wholly objectionable; that wouldn't make software freedom a bad thing. Talking about Stallman instead of talking about software freedom is doing that distractionary work because the facts on the ground fail to back the case that we're better off without software freedom.

Slashdot seems to me to be a proponent of the open source movement, the software development methodology that Bradley Kuhn rightly called "greenwashing" (another copy) the free software movement by talking about much the same software and licenses but without the freedom talk in order to placate business interests seeking to proprietarize software. Consider the case in this thread—defending copyleft—this clearly shows the difference between the two movements. The older free software movement wants to preserve software freedom while the younger open source movement was built to not discuss software freedom at all. Kuhn's personal blog post on this topic describes the situation very well and with no punches pulled.

When you come across someone who talks and works to defend software freedom, such as Richard Stallman, in a forum whose participants are (be they a proprietor's shill or genuinely describing their own view) devoted to supporting the kind of power over the user that strongly copylefted licenses, such as the GNU GPLs, were built to withstand you're going to find people using whatever namecalling and misrepresentative tactics they can come up with to try and malign Stallman (as if that would somehow reflect badly on software freedom). The complaints get weaker over time (remember when people used to complain that the GPL wasn't defensible in court?) so the objectors have to find other avenues to try and distract people into not thinking in terms of software freedom. It wouldn't matter if software freedom were proposed and initially championed by someone wholly objectionable; that wouldn't make software freedom a bad thing. Talking about Stallman instead of talking about software freedom is doing that distractionary work because the facts on the ground fail to back the case that we're better off without software freedom.

Let's not also forget two other particularly powerful points made in the Free Software Foundation's (FSF) essay:

• "We understand that Mozilla is afraid of losing users. Cory Doctorow points out that they have produced no evidence to substantiate this fear or made any effort to study the situation."
• "More importantly, popularity is not an end in itself. This is especially true for the Mozilla Foundation, a nonprofit with an ethical mission. In the past, Mozilla has distinguished itself and achieved success by protecting the freedom of its users and explaining the importance of that freedom: including publishing Firefox's source code, allowing others to make modifications to it, and sticking to Web standards in the face of attempts to impose proprietary extensions."

Brad Kuhn builds on these points in his essay discussing Mozilla's announcement: "Theoretically speaking, though, the Mozilla Foundation is supposed to be a 501(c)(3) non-profit charity which told the IRS its charitable purpose was: to "keep the Internet a universal platform that is accessible by anyone from anywhere, using any computer, and ... develop open-source Internet applications". Baker fails to explain how switching Firefox to include proprietary software fits that mission. In fact, with a bit of revisionist history, she says that open source was merely an "approach" that Mozilla Foundation was using, not their mission."

Speaking of how people criticize the FSF without reading what they say, the FSF is not an "open source advocate" despite /.'s insistence to the contrary such as is stated in this story's headline. The FSF and the free software movement predate the developmental methodology known as open source, and the FSF fights for values the open source movement sets out to deny, namely software freedom. The FSF has published more than one essay on this topic (1, 2) and RMS includes a clear and cogent explanation of this point in virtually every talk you'll hear him give. Archives of these talks are readily available online in formats that favor free software. Mozilla's choice here is another example of reaching radically different conclusions given different philosophies: Mozilla's open source choice versus a free software activist's choice to reject DRM for many valid reasons the FSF points out.

Well, vendor lock-in very nearly happened with Objective-C, but it is quite literally thanks to the GPL and the Free Software Foundation that that didn't happen (click to slides 8 to 11) back in 1989.

Sorry I expected more than you prompted with the quote.

Running perl -Dx (perl must have been compiled with -DDEBUGGING ) dumps the Perl op code tree that perl compiles the script into. There is some discussion of the architecture, some discussion of the tree, a example walkthru and some documentation of the facility, as well as work using the system.

But it looks like (especially in the last several years) more "Perl call graph" work focuses on lexically parsing the Perl source. Which to me seems a great waste of this fascinating facility. Even though the graph is of a stack machine, not dataflow exactly, it seems like an interesting facility to target with a graph editor.

Some negative reviews of the project's concept:

* Richard Fontana: http://opensource.com/law/11/7/trouble-harmony-part-1
* Bradley Kuhn: http://ebb.org/bkuhn/blog/2011/07/07/harmony-harmful.html
* David Neary: http://blogs.gnome.org/bolsh/2011/07/06/harmony-agreements-reach-1-0/

A good summary about potential underhandedness: http://ebb.org/bkuhn/blog/2011/06/01/open-office.html

Basically, while on the surface this appears like a community-friendly move, the fact that it is happening after the LibreOffice fork really puts it in a suspicious place. They had the opportunity to engage before the fork... why the sudden change of heart? Similar to the Hudson project, I suspect Oracle didn't believe the community could survive without them, and are now trying to recover from the community calling their bluff.

Key point though... OpenOffice (in my understanding) has absolutely no advantages to the LibreOffice fork. So the question that must be asked is why does Oracle want to relicense the code now? I would almost say this is a targeted attempt to splinter the community around LibreOffice. If you can take the OO.org code, make it proprietary and develop that... why would you give back to the community LGPL version... or the OO.org version for that matter?

A user can't sue a company violating the GPL, only the copyright holder can do that. It would be up to the Webkit developers to pursue a lawsuit if they chose to.

That's usually true, though there are exceptions. However, since Google uses Webkit extensively, they've almost certainly contributed to it and therefore hold copyrights on parts of it.

WebKit is extensively Apple code. The only part that is LGPL is WebCore and JavaScriptCore. The rest was originally all Apple. With the various ports, a collaboration between parties using the BSD license has ensued. WebKit2 is Apple. All the ports from WebKit2 comply with the BSD License or they don't use it. Read the damn source code once in a while to grasp how much actual Code Apple has provided with the BSD license for the world to use. It's a helluva lot of code. The same now goes for Google. Without these two parties who are competitors in the mobile space Mozilla and Opera wouldn't have gotten off their asses to catch up. Hell, the HTML 5 spec was written by Google and Apple when they submitted it.

I think you missed the point. I wasn't trying to invoke some kind of pissing contest about who contributed more code. The point is that if Apple has violated the LGPL by failing to release source of any part of Webkit, any of the other copyright holders of any Webkit code could potentially sue Apple for copyright infringement. It's extremely unlikely it would come to that, but the fact remains that just because Apple has contributed a lot to the project doesn't mean they can ignore the copyright licenses of other contributors.

A user can't sue a company violating the GPL, only the copyright holder can do that. It would be up to the Webkit developers to pursue a lawsuit if they chose to.

That's usually true, though there are exceptions. However, since Google uses Webkit extensively, they've almost certainly contributed to it and therefore hold copyrights on parts of it.

WebKit is extensively Apple code. The only part that is LGPL is WebCore and JavaScriptCore. The rest was originally all Apple. With the various ports, a collaboration between parties using the BSD license has ensued. WebKit2 is Apple. All the ports from WebKit2 comply with the BSD License or they don't use it. Read the damn source code once in a while to grasp how much actual Code Apple has provided with the BSD license for the world to use. It's a helluva lot of code. The same now goes for Google. Without these two parties who are competitors in the mobile space Mozilla and Opera wouldn't have gotten off their asses to catch up. Hell, the HTML 5 spec was written by Google and Apple when they submitted it.

A user can't sue a company violating the GPL, only the copyright holder can do that. It would be up to the Webkit developers to pursue a lawsuit if they chose to.

That's usually true, though there are exceptions. However, since Google uses Webkit extensively, they've almost certainly contributed to it and therefore hold copyrights on parts of it.

How is this different from sending teams of lawyers and the court system against people who violate the GPL?

It's clear that people in this forum are of two completely different minds when it comes to copyright infringement, depending on who's doing the infringing and what's being infringed.

Going to SFLC isn't going in "guns ablazing." They themselves prefer to educate rather than sue, at least that's what I've heard on the podcast they do and in public writings from Bradley Kuhn.

Take this as an example:

"Don't go public first. Back around late 1999, when I found my first GPL violation from scratch, I wanted to post it to every mailing list I could find and shame that company that failed to respect and cooperate with the software freedom community. I'm glad that I didn't do that, because I've since seen similar actions destroy the lines of communication with violators, and make resolution tougher. Indeed, I believe that if the Cisco/Linksys violations had not been a center of public ridicule in 2003 when I (then at the FSF) was in the midst of negotiating with them for compliance, we would not have ended up with such a long saga to resolution."

http://ebb.org/bkuhn/blog/2009/11/08/gpl-enforcement.html

From TFA:
"GNOME Shell is the interface being developed for GNOME 3.0, which was delayed to spring 2011."

Probably then they are switching to Unity due to the schedule?

No. GNOME 3.0 still has the classic 2.x panel/desktop as fall-back option in case GPU drivers don't support Clutter. Canonical could've just used that if they fear Shell's instability/immaturity.

Maybe (just maybe) Canonical switches because they own the complete copyrights to Unity and according to http://ebb.org/bkuhn/blog/2010/10/17/shuttleworth-admits-it.html that's a business model Canonical aims for.

Slashdot readers might be interested to read the actual judgment as issued by the Court, which is available Conservancy's announcement of the decision. I also wrote a blog post about the decision that may be of interest.

— bkuhn, President, Software Freedom Conservancy

ie. they use the "open core" model like what the submitter hinted at: have an open source portion of your system but for any practical use you need to buy the 'professional edition'.

El reg had a small discussion about this a while back due to in part this blog post.

IMHO this is a business/marketing decision that will alienate open source fans. I have had to use similarly-licensed software in the past, don't think I'll actively pitch in with new features or submit bugreports for either the open or licensed version. You can make a business out of open source alone, you don't have to handicap your open source version to make your professional edition look better.

Thankfully this tactic should quickly lead to forks. For niche markets the community will need to rally in order to support the fork, but for that to happen you need a strong community, which tends not to develop around an open core product.

It was reported that the paper is to be presented at a peer reviewed conference. Anyway, even if the findings are accurate, it doesn't really impact the security of any productions systems. I've written a more extensive discussion of this issue, and how people jump to bad conclusions about academic articles like this one.

What the everlasting f*ck, guys?

Here, let me go dig up the Ubuntu motto or whatever you're calling it now.

The Ubuntu promise

Ubuntu will always be free of charge, along with its regular enterprise releases and security updates...Ubuntu core applications are all free and open source. We want you to use free and open source software, improve it and pass it on.

So they took a Free Software application out and replace it with a non-Free application from Google. What a great idea!

Although an office suite isn't necessary for one to run Ubuntu, being able to create and consume office documents is admittedly a very common task. Making UNR able to interoperate "right out of the box" seems like a very high priority.

Bradley Kuhn was spot-on when he recently said "It seems clear that one of Canonical's top goals is to convince every Ubuntu user to rely regularly on new proprietary software and services". Bradley's solution to the problem? Go back to Debian.

My experience with Ubuntu has been, on the whole, a rather pleasant one, so I wish that Ubuntu would find a better solution to this problem. OOo might take up a certain amount of space on netbooks, sure, so perhaps they should install a stripped-down package that doesn't install extra fonts until you need them. Or maybe just prompt the user during the install, letting them know how much space OOo will take up?

I've been willing to deal with non-free drivers and binary blobs in the past, as that has sometimes been the only way to get key parts of my system up and running. But when the only limitation to using a completely Free program is a few hundred MB of disk space, in nearly all cases one could (and should) just get a little more disk.

Software Freedom is worth it!

Yes. The SFLC have consistently been proponents of working with violators in private whenever possible; see, for example:

http://ebb.org/bkuhn/blog/2009/11/08/gpl-enforcement.html

If they're resorting to a suit, it's likely only after making serious efforts to resolve the conflict some other way.

This: http://www.ebb.org/PickingUpPerl/pickingUpPerl.pdf guide is awesome if you want to learn Perl. Concise and articulate, it manages to explain all the major topics of Perl in 66 pages. I recommend working through the entire guide as quick as possible, don't worry about remembering everything as you can always come back to it later. I also recommend having the O'Reilly camel books (Learning Perl, Programming Perl, Perl Cookbook) handy when going through the guide. You can read the books here: http://www.jimsannex.com/Studies/CD_perl/index.htm but you better go out and buy the real thing, worth every penny!!! If your running Windows you'll need to download Perl and a good editor with syntax highlighting:

http://downloads.activestate.com/ActivePerl/Window s/5.8/ActivePerl-5.8.8.820-MSWin32-x86-274739.msi
http://www.crimsoneditor.com/

After you install perl open a command prompt and run ppm, this is your simple GUI gateway to CPAN packages (make a mental note). After you get a handle on basic perl checkout Perl/Tk (GUI Toolkit for Perl). The Tk packages are included and installed with ActivePerl... Here's your first Perl/TK program:

use Tk;
my $top = new MainWindow;
$top->configure(-title=>"My First Perl GUI Program");
my $lab = $top->Label(-textvariable=>\$labelText);
my $b = $top->Button(-text=>'Click Me!', -command=>sub {$labelText="Congratulations! it worked!" });
$lab->grid(-row=>0, -column=>0);
$b->grid(-row=>1, -column=>0);
MainLoop;

You can write in lots of nice languages for it, wheras Java afaik only has Java and Ruby.

No offense, but I guess you don't know much. Here are just a few of the available languages for the JVM:

• Smalltalk
• Pascal
• Modula-2
• Oberon-2
• Lisp
• Schema
• Python
• Perl
• TCL
• Logo
• Prolog

I first learn Perl with the aim of creating dynamics webpages. I learnt from the tutorial Picking Up Perl - this is great and taught my most I needed to know with regard to the language - but it didn't teach me how to use it for websites.

I picked up from code lying about how to read and write files, get post/get data, and so forth, and slowly built up into quite a good Perl programmer (I suppose. Not amazing, but quite fluent). This wasn't easy though and was slow. Why? I never got taught, all in one place, how to do that. I think this is what this book is trying to do - but with a much wider range than just CGI programs (although it doesn't seem to neglect it, either).

I tried to write my own tutorial for using Perl in webpages to try and help. I'm not going to link to it here though, because it is quite terrible (I was 14 when I wrote it).

After learning Perl, and being able to use it, there is always using the standard librarys. For this, PerlDoc has been so helpful to me.

on his website.

Wonder what his reaction is?

Nice. I'm planning on learning how to tie scripting (have decided on Perl yet but it's a contender) and databases this summer anyway. This book might make the decision as to what to use for me.

However, for those just picking up Perl for the first time I recommend the free ebook Picking Up Perl, and the ActiveState Perl Interpreter for Windows (this was a while ago-- if you are using Linux it probably aleraday has Perl installed). And then as it was Windows I was learning Perl on I used OpenPerl IDE. For Linux I recommend using Kate and Konsole.

Not trying to be off-topic here but I figure someone reading this may want to try out what this Perl thing is.

Disclaimer: Not a Perl fan at all, I actually perfer Python, but to each their own and as any Perl hacker can appreciate TIMTOWTDI! ;)

I busted out in laughter at this paragraph which followed a paragraph explaining how Cisco and the FSF were resolving the issue amicably. WTF, Forbes? Here's another way of looking at this: Cisco either didn't do it's homework on this router and now has to pay the consequences, or Cisco did it's homework and thanks to some stand-up folks at the FSF has to pay the consequences. If you're in the technology sector, and you're dealing with software, you ought to know what the GPL is about, period. Not just from a negative standpoint but how it can have a positive impact.

I know this Bradley Kuhn fella. He was a board member of the Cincinnati Linux Users Group. Very energetic, passionate, knowledgeable dude. Some would say a zealot, but he's just the kind of guy you want to give the GPL some "teeth."

Coding and maintaining a website does not provide any geek status anymore.
Actually, it does. Sure, anyone with the desire can create a website, but writing the code yourself using php instead of Front Page puts you far ahead of 90% of the personal sites on the web. Keep in mind that 90% of humanity still see computers as scary boxes, and writing any sort of code as advanced wizardry.

being a blogger of any sort is a count against geekness
Again, no. Sure, anyone who wants to can do a blog, but it's the wanting to that adds a few points. See above.

Free speech is good, but unrelated to geekness.
Agree, Free Speech is not limited to geeks, but it has always been a major facet of geek culture.

Again, being on TV doesn't related to geekness
Agree in general, but guesting on and guest-hosting "The Screen Savers" implies a level of technological sophistication. Being on TSS and ST:TNG aren't like being on "Charles In Charge".

Let's try another comparison: Wheaton vs Shatner.

Both were on Star Trek. To avoid 30 responses about the relative importance of the actors to the Trek universe, let's just say both were on the show and call it even.

Both have websites and blogs. Wheaton codes his from scratch using php, does all the design and content himself, and plays a certain role in the daily maintainance of the server itself. Shatner pays someone. Geekvantage: Wheaton.

I'd assume that Shatner has a PC. I have no idea what it runs, but I'd guess Windows. Wheaton proudly runs Linux. Geekvantage: Wheaton.

Wheaton worked on the Video Toaster. Shatner worked on TJ Hooker. Maybe Wil didn't lead a Dev team, but Shatner's never done anything more technological than shout "Phasers on stun!" Geekvantage: Wheaton.

Wheaton posts on Slashdot. Unless Shatner lurks, I seriously doubt he's reading this. Geekvantage: Wheaton.

Wheaton hosted Arena and guest-hosted The Screen Savers. Shatner hosted Iron Chef. Geekvantage: Wheaton.

Wheaton plays D&D, Illuminati, Grand Theft Auto, and collects vintage Atari 2600 games. Shatner did William Shatner's Splat Attack. Shatner's involvement in gaming consists of doing voices for Star Trek games and cashing the check. Check out his filmography and search for "VG". Geekvantage: Wheaton.

Final Summation: Wheaton

OK, I'll grant you that Wil's no Linus Torvalds, Richard Stallman, or Steve Wozniak, but he's no newbie either. I'd stack him up next to Neal Stevenson or Bruce Sterling on geek points. And if you wanted to put someone on Crossfire to represent geek culture as a whole, who better?

Finally, here's Wil Wheaton's geek code, pulled off his web site. You be the judge.

If I have a Cobol shop, a Perl shop, a Smalltalk shop, I can either port my existing code to the .NET implementations of these languages somewhat painlessly OR I can scrap all my existing code

I don't believe it would be that painless to reimplement on the .NET language themes. In just the same way these languages can be used on The Java Platform, i.e. for COBOL, Perl, Smalltalk and lots of other languages.

I might try VS.NET if I can run it on an open platform, but I usually just use Emacs, and I believe that for server-side applications, hardware and software vendor independence are the most important long term considerations.

- Brian.

And, coincidentally, I went to college with him, so I have to give him a plug :-)

T

Java limited people to one language, a language that many coders didn't like.

Which language would that be, then? Would it be BASIC, or COBOL or ADA or Python or FORTH or PASCAL or C or PERL or FORTRAN or LISP or Scheme or Smalltalk or one of these?

In fact, surprise, surprise, there are over 200 different programming languages you can use to write Java VM programs in.

There's a few syntax errors in that geekcode, but here's the decoded (valid) geekcode from the article

--

Using The Geek Code Decoder Page, here are three of Wil's OS codes, decoded...

L+>++++
I've managed to get GNU/Linux installed and even used it a few times. It seems like it is just another OS...

UL
I use GNU/Linux exclusively. I have a unix account to do my stuff in...

w++++>----
I have Windows, Windows 95, Windows NT, and Windows NT Advanced Server all running on my SMP RISC machine...

What's your geek code?

You didn't read his FAQ very carefully, did you?

-----BEGIN GEEK CODE BLOCK-----
Version: 3.12
GPA d--(---) s:- a- C++++ UL P>++ L+>++++ E-- W+++
N+ o- K- w++++>----
O-- M+ V-- PS++(+++) PE Y++ PGP++>+++ t++@($) 5
X+++ R++ tv-- b+++ DI+ D++
G++ e*>++++ h---- r+++ y+++
------END GEEK CODE BLOCK------

The decoder link he provides doesn't work. But if you go here, cut and paste will be your friend.

That said, there are over 160 languages apart from java which can be compiled to java bytecode. Jython is quite robust & can be used to create java applets w/ python. There's also a perl->java byte codes compiler under development. (Though maybe it's been abandoned? ...)

Bradley's gay ass homepage

On his homepage he states "ebb (TM) is a trademark of Bradley M. Kuhn. Application for a registered trademark is pending as of Tuesday, 27 July 1999 at 14:34:31 EDT."

I personally will not review a website with trademarked material because I can't steal it!! *cough* I mean if it isn't 100% free.

Just look at him, funny looking huh? goofy pic of Brad (sad thing is he put this pic as his main pic on his site)

Bradley's gay ass homepage

On his homepage he states "ebb (TM) is a trademark of Bradley M. Kuhn. Application for a registered trademark is pending as of Tuesday, 27 July 1999 at 14:34:31 EDT."

I personally will not review a website with trademarked material because I can't steal it!! *cough* I mean if it isn't 100% free.

Just look at him, funny looking huh? goofy pic of Brad (sad thing is he put this pic as his main pic on his site)

Your perljvm - The Perl to Java Virtual Machine Compiler is impressive. I believe you've the authority to answer this question.

Sun has its sole control to their Java VM, and the control is extended to other JVM versions. As Richard said, free software build on non-free platform/program is useless to Free World.

We had much expectation on kaffe. However, it has halted its development long time ago, since Microsoft made business deals with Transvirtual. The only free JVM is basically dead now.

I'd like to have your opnion on this: do you have Java in your vision of Free World?

Thanks!

It's geek code...look up the decoder here, and look up the source and key here. Go make yourself one :)

(To quote myself)
You can in fact write (and compile) code for JVM in Eiffel, Fortran, LISP, Visual Basic, Ada 95, Python, PERL, C, any language that GCC supports, and a whole slew of other languages (170 or so).

See the comments to cid 135 and this page.

BS! You can in fact write (and compile) code for JVM in Eiffel, Fortran, LISP, Visual Basic, Ada 95, Python, PERL, C, any language that GCC supports, and a whole slew of other languages.

In the future, keep your uninformed ramblings to yourself.

See the comments to cid#135this page.

Anyhow the Geek Code can be found at http://www.geekcode.com/

His code means:
He's a Geek of Computer Science
Dresses casually
A bit fat, but not too much
In his late 20's
Heavily into computers
A wicked Unix guru
Not so big on Perl
Thinks Linux is okay but not amazing
Uses emacs
Uses the web a fair bit
Reads some newsgroups
Loathes the usenet oracle
Is not enlightened about Kibo
Uses Windows but doesn't like it
Didn't care about OS/2 either
Hates the Mac (Between this and his Linux score we can tell he's a no-goodnik ;)
Likes Unix better than VMS
Apolitical
Financially conservative (pro taxes, pro welfare, anti military spending)
Interested in cypherpunk issues but no active
Doesn't use PGP
Likes Star Trek
Indifferent to Babylon 5 (now we really know about the no-goodnik issue ;)
Likes X-Files a lot
Plays some RPGs
Watches TV daily
Likes to read but doesn't frequently do so
Likes Dilbert
Likes DOOM a good bit
No longer so interested in the Geek Code
Has an MA
Married
Gender undisclosed, but gets a lot of it

My code can be decoded here