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Here we go. Under current law, Section 1201 of the law generally prohibits distributing or trafficking in any software or hardware that can be used to bypass copy-protection devices. Smith's measure would expand those civil and criminal restrictions. Instead of merely targeting distribution, the new language says nobody may "make, import, export, obtain control of, or possess" such anticircumvention tools if they may be redistributed to someone else. Like debuggers?

Hastening the launch date by a couple of weeks isn't too significant, but AMD certainly deserves to be congratulated for (apparently) leaving DRM out of their AM2 microprocessors. In contrast, Intel has succumbed to RIAA/MPAA pressure and betrayed their customers by stuffing Treacherous Computing down their throats.

I'm also happy to see that AMD has not put DRM into its AMD Live! technology, which competes with Intel's DRM-ridden Viiv. I'm sure AMD is taking a lot of heat from the entertainment cartel for not handcuffing users, and I hope they'll continue to keep their products DRM-free.

And let's not forget that AMD has been supportive of LinuxBIOS by actively ensuring that their motherboards can run it.

Another great essay by Richard Stallman in which he discusses the many dangers of DRM (aka. Treacherous Computing and Handcuffware) is:

Can you trust your computer?

Intel is pushing a technology called Treacherous Computing, which will prevent unsigned code from running on their hardware. So even if you have the source code, if you try to remove the DRM restrictions, the hardware will refuse to run the modified binary.

The Free Software Foundation admits that the anti-DRM provisions in the GPLv3 will not be enough on their own to prevent the nightmare scenario where users can't trust their own computers.

People who understand the dangers of Digital Restrictions Management at a technical level (ie.Free and Open Source software developers) should warn the general public to avoid buying DRM-crippled hardware. Consumers should know about the great variety of DRM-free computers and accessories built specifically to work with Linux, the KDE desktop, and other Free and Open Source applications.

On the music side, there are plenty of websites that legally sell DRM-free, RIAA-free music by independent artists. Consumers can use an iTunes-like application called Songbird to easily download songs from these sites.

As for movies, building a Linux media center works better than the DRM-crippled offering from M$FT. Just download MythTV and run it on a computer equipped with the pcHDTV HD-3000 card and the PVR-350 card -- these will capture both standard definition (NTSC) and Digital/Hi-Definition (ATSC/HDTV) signals.

Eben Moglen - a programmer who is now a Free Software Lawyer - has the answer!

http://www.gnu.org/philosophy/moglen-harvard-speec h-2004.html

OR watch the video here:
can copy this into Real Player "File->Open Location"
http://media.law.harvard.edu:8888/ramgen/jolt/spri ng_04/2004-02-23_ae_0630-0830.rm
Other videos (along with this listed here):
http://jolt.law.harvard.edu/speakers/

Q: But what about the software writer?

Moglen: Ah, the software. . .

Q: That's the kind of stuff I think I was more getting at with my question. So you have somebody who creates something useful but it has a zero distribution cost, and it's useful in a way that's not, not useful like celebrity, though I'm not sure, I don't think that's useful in some ways, but it's useful in the different sense that it takes a long time to create well.

Moglen: See, the programmers I worked with all my life thought of themselves as artisans, and it was very hard to unionize them. They thought that they were individual creators. Software writers at the moment have begun to lose that feeling, as the world proletarianizes them much more severely than it used to. They're beginning to notice that they're workers, and not only that, but if you pay attention to the Presidential campaign currently going on around us, they are becoming aware of the fact that they are workers whose jobs are movable in international trade.

We are actually doing more to sustain the livelihood of programmers than the proprietary people are. Mr. Gates has only so many jobs, and he will move them to where the programming is cheapest. Just you watch. We, on the other hand, are enabling people to gain technical knowledge which they can customize and market in the world where they live. We are making people programmers, right? And we are giving them a base upon which to perform their service activity at every level in the economy, from small to large.

There is programming work for fourteen-year-olds in the world now because they have the whole of GNU upon which to erect whatever it is that somebody in their neighbourhood wants to buy, and we are making enough value for the IBM corporation that it's worth putting billions of dollars behind.

If I were an employee of the IBM corporation right this moment, I would consider my job more secure where it is because of free software than if free software disappeared from the face of the earth, and I don't think most of the people who work at IBM would disagree with me.

Of all the people who participate in the economy of zero marginal cost, I think the programmers can see most clearly where their benefits lie, and if you just wait for a few more tens of thousands of programming jobs to go from here to Bangalore, they'll see it even more clearly.

There are a couple of free compilers to start with as well. The gcc/g++ ones to start with (http://gcc.gnu.org/). I find those to be a tad harder to setup but are completly free and you can look at the code under it (if thats what you want). There is also the visual studio compiler. There is a free learner edition (express) that comes with the gui and the SDKs are fairly straight forward to get and setup (http://msdn.microsoft.com/vstudio/express/default .aspx). I recomend the vs one if you are going to do any sort of directx stuff. Also if you are going to do that I would get a few COM tutuorials to get you into the groove of making and destroying objects.

I also recomend getting a book or two. Even if you just go to the library to get one. There are also a few companies that have released the source to their older stuff (Quake I/II/II, Freespace, etc...).

Above all have fun with it.

Even GNU systems will differ because of differences among CPU types--for example, difference in byte ordering and alignment requirements. It is absolutely essential to handle these differences. However, don't make any effort to cater to the possibility that an int or a pointer will be other than 32 bits. We don't support 16-bit machines in GNU.

A lot of gnu (and unix) code assumed 32 bit ints, 32 bit pointers. Could have been worse... a lot of early macintosh code used 24 bit pointers with the high 8 bits being used for flags and such... going 32-bit clean was painful.

first of all, the right to modify software is utterly useless to most people, because they don't have the skills.

as another poster already mentioned, if you mandate that software be free, you are sacrificing the freedom of one group of people "developers" for the freedom of another "users."

use OS, (and before you jump at me for using the wrong term, I'd like to point out that they're exactly the same kind of software - free software is open source, and OSS is by definition free

don't tell a professional publisher to use GIMP instead of photoshop when he's told you a thousand times that having the source code does nothing for him, and he needs some functionality that photoshop has and GIMP doesn't.

right now I'm advocating linux because I believe even to someone who can't program at all, it's a great option for an OS, and also because I do want more people using it, so that we can hopefully break the monopoly, and be closer to that ideal free market I mentioned.

Of course bash is oriented towards handling text files and has lots of limitations outside of that field (basic math operations require launching bc and storing results as strings in environment variables)

Bash does have the $(( expression )) syntax for basic math operations. It doesn't do floating point though.

Of course bash is oriented towards handling text files and has lots of limitations outside of that field (basic math operations require launching bc and storing results as strings in environment variables)

Bash does have the $(( expression )) syntax for basic math operations. It doesn't do floating point though.

How difficult is it to do any of the following?

1) dpkg -l "*" | grep -i mailman

2) blindly do apt-get install mailman and see what happens

3) search for mailman on the Debian website http://www.debian.org/distrib/packages If you put mailman in the searchbox it tells you where you can download it for 11 different computer architectures.

4) search for mailman on the web using google. The first link is http://www.gnu.org/software/mailman/index.html where you can download the source and look at the above average documentation on the site.

5) be a power user, and do a google search for debian mailman and the first link is http://packages.debian.org/stable/mail/mailman

Maybe I'm a Linux snob because I can install software on a Linux machine and know how to type keywords into google. But I believe that with 5 easy and well known methods of installing a very common and popular application should be enough for any competent computer user can handle. I believe that it is people like you that give Linux a bad name. Kinda like this bozo:

    http://www.centos.org/modules/news/article.php?sto ryid=127

There is JScheme, and Kawa.

Nvidia already needs documentation in order to write drivers. Releasing documentation that they already have would cost them VERY VERY little.

I bet that releasing that documentation would cost them a lot - almost as much as releasing the source code. There is no reason to think that the company internal documentation would be cleaner than the source code. They would have to get that documentation cleared by an army of lawyers and check if it contains any of their own intellectual property or any trade secrets from third parties. Then it would probably cost them to support this documentation, etc.

Futhermore, nvidia could choose to release docs for their cards which are no longer "state of the art" which would allow the community to take over maintainance and not give away "secrets" to their competitors (once the cards are out for 6 months or so, there are no "secrets" anymore that would harm their ability to compete.)

You are considering this from the wrong point of view. Think about it from the point of view of a company that wants to make profits. Doing what you suggest would encourage their Linux customers to keep on using obsolete cards, or maybe buy them second-hand from Windows users who have moved to more recent cards in the meantime. This would discourage these potential customers from buying their latest products and hope that a (closed source) driver is available or will be available soon.

This would be a very bad message for a company: their discontinued products (on which they cannot make profit anymore) would be competing more strongly against their current products. So it is not in their interest to release specs for anything that could still compete with their current products. They could probably do it for products that are really irrelevant now (say, 5 years old) but certainly not for products that are only 6 months old.

Note that I am playing the devil's advocate here, taking the point of view of a company interested in profit and not caring too much about being perceived as a good citizen in the tiny (but growing) open source and free software community. Alas, this is still the point of view of many companies.

The EULA on all of the programs that I use is very simple.

Here's a summary:

• Freedom 0 The freedom to run the program, for any purpose.
• Freedom 1 The freedom to study how the program works, and adapt it to your needs.
• Freedom 2 The freedom to redistribute copies.
• Freedom 3 The freedom to improve the program, and release your improvements to the public.

• Restriction 0: I may not distribute software covered under this EULA to others without giving them all the freedoms that I have.

Welcome to the beauty of the GNU GPL.

Wrong. You are not "free to do with it what you want"

http://www.gnu.org/licenses/gpl.html

5. You are not required to accept this License, since you have not signed it. However, nothing else grants you permission to modify or distribute the Program or its derivative works. These actions are prohibited by law if you do not accept this License. Therefore, by modifying or distributing the Program (or any work based on the Program), you indicate your acceptance of this License to do so, and all its terms and conditions for copying, distributing or modifying the Program or works based on it.

this is not about modifications, but about linking. Only a GPL program can link against a GPL library without violationg its license - see also the GPL FAQ here and here.

this is not about modifications, but about linking. Only a GPL program can link against a GPL library without violationg its license - see also the GPL FAQ here and here.

This is no myth. MySQL's client libraries are definitely GPL. If you link to them you must abide by the terms of the GPL.

True. However, the modified version need only be GPL'd if the modified version is distributed. From the FSF's GNU GPL FAQ:

The GPL does not require you to release your modified version. You are free to make modifications and use them privately, without ever releasing them. This applies to organizations (including companies), too; an organization can make a modified version and use it internally without ever releasing it outside the organization.

But if you release the modified version to the public in some way, the GPL requires you to make the modified source code available to the program's users, under the GPL.

ARM can hardly be considered an "open" architecture. Very old ARM architectures, yes. For some years, ARM (the company) have been aggressively blocking independent implementations of the later ARM architectures, even incomplete subsets, from being distributed.

You're not even allowed to write a software emulator for the application-level instructions!

That makes ARM one of the most closed, encumbered CPU architectures around, of those where you can read the documentation, in my book. At least with x86, MIPS, Power etc. nobody's been stopped from distributing software emulators.

-- Jamie

Yes, Windoze sucks like that but dual booting has worked since ... forever. Dual booting with lilo worked out of the box when I first tried it with Red Hat 5.x, back in 1997. I imagine it worked before that. Today, live distributions can fix GRUB on the fly, even if Windoze messes it up. NTFS resizing is safe and reliable. If the live CD boots, everything else usually works.

The news is that Apple managed to get something wrong that's been working for a decade. I half wonder if you could use Mepis to fix the mess. If you can't now, you will be able to in a few months.

My question is how does Microsoft plan to solve the hacking problem.

Once again proving the old adage that all computer programs evolve until they can handle email.

That's the law of software envelopment. cf. GNU Hello World, with integrated mail client.

Well, I haven't had the chance to read the exact Chinese wording but if I were a vendor looking to sell naked PCs, I'd simply use a superior OS.

That's right, simply burn 17MB CDLinux ISO (with Chinese language support) to a CD and "install" the disc into the CD-ROM drive. When the computer boots up, it will have a properly licensed operating system running. Should the consumer choose to install some other operating system *cough* *cough* they won't even need to format the hard drive or write over the partition tables!

Seriously, I think this is just a laughable edict that the Chinese Government has done to bolster trade with United States software firms. The factories in China are just going to distribute Linux or some other free operating system and even have instructions on how to install windows over it. The government knows this also and that's why it's happy to comply with something the US companies are asking it to do ... because it doesn't change anything. It just makes manufacturing boxes a bit more cumbersome.

Who knows, if the manufacturers use a nice enough version of Linux, they might cause quite a few people to convert?

9. License Must Not Restrict Other Software

The license must not place restrictions on other software that is distributed along with the licensed software. For example, the license must not insist that all other programs distributed on the same medium must be open-source software.

So when I look at the GPL secion 2 I can see 3 demands to which I must comply before my program can be distributed (a) You must cause the modified files to carry prominent notices stating that you changed the files and the date of any change., b) You must cause any work that you distribute or publish, that in whole or in part contains or is derived from the Program or any part thereof, to be licensed as a whole at no charge to all third parties under the terms of this License., c) If the modified program normally reads commands interactively when run, you must cause it, when started running for such interactive use in the most ordinary way, to print or display an announcement including an appropriate copyright notice and a notice that there is no warranty (or else, saying that you provide a warranty) and that users may redistribute the program under these conditions, and telling the user how to view a copy of this License.).

However, and this is where it gets weird, the section ends with a clear statement saying: "These requirements apply to the modified work as a whole. If identifiable sections of that work are not derived from the Program, and can be reasonably considered independent and separate works in themselves, then this License, and its terms, do not apply to those sections when you distribute them as separate works. But when you distribute the same sections as part of a whole which is a work based on the Program, the distribution of the whole must be on the terms of this License, whose permissions for other licensees extend to the entire whole, and thus to each and every part regardless of who wrote it.".

So if I have a free piece of software which I want to use in combination with a GPL licensed piece of software with my own modifications and my own additions I'm unable to do so due to the licenses. But doesn't this collide with the opensource definition itself? I have seen many threads on /. criticizing software projects and such saying they should not be allowed to call themselves opensource (or hint in that direction) due to them not complying fully with the opensource definition. I take it all of that is now different ?

Opensource is almost always mentioned with freedom in one sentence. That freedom goes both ways, it would be a good thing if more people started realizing that.

What you can see or hear can be easily replicated.

Unless the importation and interstate/interprovince sale of high-resolution sound cards and video cameras is regulated, such that a licensed and bonded audiovisual engineer must supervise each unit's use and storage. I see no reason why the situation described in The Right to Read could not happen tomorrow.

"OK, let's pretend that this is indeed so, for the sake of amusement."

Why "pretend" when we can *stablish*?
There: http://www.gpl-violations.org/

"That would mean that any contributor, to any GPL code is entitled to go after any corporation which somehow internally distributes some GPL code"

(http://gnu.teleglobe.net/licenses/why-assign.html )
"only the copyright holder or someone having assignment of the copyright can enforce the license. If there are multiple authors of a copyrighted work, successful enforcement depends on having the cooperation of all authors.
by Professor Eben Moglen, Columbia University Law School"

"...as it is unknown what GPL code is being used, until fully disclosed"

(http://lwn.net/Articles/73848/)
[the FSF way of enforcing GPL]
"First, they (the bad guys) release an infringing product. Second, SOMEBODY HAS TO FIND OUT THAT THY USE GPL LICENSED CODE. Then, one of the original authors has to push for license compliance.
[Editor's note: the following article was sent to us by Harald Welte, the leader of the Netfilter project.]"

(http://www.gnu.org/philosophy/enforcing-gpl.html)
"So what happens when the GPL is violated? With software FOR WHICH THE FREE SOFTWARE FOUNDATION HOLDS THE COPYRIGHT (either because we wrote the programs in the first place, or because free software authors have assigned us the copyright, in order to take advantage of our expertise in protecting their software's freedom), the first step is a report, usually received by email to . We ask the reporters of violations to help us establish necessary facts, and then we conduct whatever further investigation is required.
by Eben Moglen"

(http://www.gnu.org/licenses/gpl-violation.html)
"...But, WE CANNOT ACT ON OUR OWN IF WE DO NO HOLD COPYRIGHT. Thus, be sure to find out who the copyright holders of the software are before reporting a violation"

"OK, let's pretend that this is indeed so, for the sake of amusement."

Why "pretend" when we can *stablish*?
There: http://www.gpl-violations.org/

"That would mean that any contributor, to any GPL code is entitled to go after any corporation which somehow internally distributes some GPL code"

(http://gnu.teleglobe.net/licenses/why-assign.html )
"only the copyright holder or someone having assignment of the copyright can enforce the license. If there are multiple authors of a copyrighted work, successful enforcement depends on having the cooperation of all authors.
by Professor Eben Moglen, Columbia University Law School"

"...as it is unknown what GPL code is being used, until fully disclosed"

(http://lwn.net/Articles/73848/)
[the FSF way of enforcing GPL]
"First, they (the bad guys) release an infringing product. Second, SOMEBODY HAS TO FIND OUT THAT THY USE GPL LICENSED CODE. Then, one of the original authors has to push for license compliance.
[Editor's note: the following article was sent to us by Harald Welte, the leader of the Netfilter project.]"

(http://www.gnu.org/philosophy/enforcing-gpl.html)
"So what happens when the GPL is violated? With software FOR WHICH THE FREE SOFTWARE FOUNDATION HOLDS THE COPYRIGHT (either because we wrote the programs in the first place, or because free software authors have assigned us the copyright, in order to take advantage of our expertise in protecting their software's freedom), the first step is a report, usually received by email to . We ask the reporters of violations to help us establish necessary facts, and then we conduct whatever further investigation is required.
by Eben Moglen"

(http://www.gnu.org/licenses/gpl-violation.html)
"...But, WE CANNOT ACT ON OUR OWN IF WE DO NO HOLD COPYRIGHT. Thus, be sure to find out who the copyright holders of the software are before reporting a violation"

Oh boy. What a day. I would never have guessed that of all the KDE/Gnome arguments from day one, that KDE would be referred to as the one for power users. From that first taste I had in KDE Beta 2 (I think, well before 1.0), I knew this was quite the desktop. The APIs for Qt and KDE were a humongous savings from pure X11/Xt, and the desktop was nice to use to boot.

Then there came all the complaints comparing it to Win95, it's just a mimic of Microsoft, only noobs would want it, it's not powerful/configurable/etc as *wm. We don't need Windoze losers getting Linux anyway. Blah blah blah.

The licensing issue has been closed since Qt became GPLed, but detractors still complain. By the way, why is libreadline still GPL? No closed source programs can use it either. What do we say about that? Oh well, remake it yourself if you want to do it and keep the source closed. Keeping it and other libraries GPLed keeps everything more open and released as GPL.

As the good RMS says at his site regarding readline:
Releasing it under the GPL and limiting its use to free programs gives our community a real boost. ...If we amass a collection of powerful GPL-covered libraries that have no parallel available to proprietary software, they will provide a range of useful modules to serve as building blocks in new free programs. This will be a significant advantage for further free software development, and some projects will decide to make software free in order to use these libraries.

So quit bitching. Trolltech/Qt do more for the GNU community than Gnome does.

Anyway, it gives me a good chuckle to read that KDE is now only for power users.

http://www.gnu.org/licenses/gpl-faq.html#CanIUseGP LToolsForNF

If they don't allow using it (the environment, not the compiler) to develop commercial software, its license is not the GPL, unless I'm missing something.

"This is getting bothersome"

Yes, that's getting boresome.

So why don't we ask to the very sources ( http://www.gnu.org/licenses/gpl-faq.html#TheGPLSay sModifiedVersions )?

"The GPL says that modified versions, if released, must be "licensed ... to all third parties." Who are these third parties?

Section 2 says that modified versions you distribute must be licensed to all third parties under the GPL. "All third parties" means absolutely everyone--but this does not require you to *do* anything physically for them. It only means they have a license from you, under the GPL, for your version."

Now, I'll ask you again: Can you bring some authority to your interpretation about what "must be licensed to all third parties" means? I bring to you the interpretation from the FSF (which backs up the GNU Project). After all, maybe even you will accept this phrase is open to interpretation, since you and the GNU Project seem to have a different one. I am not a judge so I don't know what the outcome of a sue about this very point would be, but I can tell that neither the GNU Project (the author of that very paragraph) nor me (which is much less important, of course, but I wanted to point it out: I'm not echoing the GNU interpretation; I only looked for theirs after the fact you adopted a different one, or else I'd mentioned it much sooner), nor anyone else I had the chance to talk about this topics.

I think that although quite childish you diserve a "take that" now.

pine isn't even Free Software for pater's sake!

You cannot modify pine and distribute it; you have to make a patch of your changes, and distribute that along with a copy of the source code.

Mutt is superior (as is yahoo mail -except when it comes to pop3 access which is becoming less and less relevent every day)!

Quoted from http://www.gnu.org/philosophy/free-sw.html

1. The freedom to run the program, for any purpose (freedom 0).
2. The freedom to study how the program works, and adapt it to your needs (freedom 1). Access to the source code is a precondition for this.
3. The freedom to redistribute copies so you can help your neighbor (freedom 2).
4. The freedom to improve the program, and release your improvements to the public, so that the whole community benefits (freedom 3). Access to the source code is a precondition for this.

To be honest, I think a lot of the public perception of windows' weaknesses and apple's strengths come more from a sense of fashion and trend than from a position of sound logic. My main beef with both of them is that they force me into an uncomfortable role as a user, and that the main objective of the organization behind their production is to increase shareholder value. One might choose apple over windows because apple is more cool. One might choose Linux over either because it was more GOOD.

The rules are simple : reciprocate or fuck off.

That's what I dig about the BSD license. It comes without the attitude and ideological baggage. It actually is free software, no strings attached. It's not a shoehorn to get you to buy into a philosophy.

Most embedded systems are one big statically-linked executable. If you use any GPL code at all, you're required to place the entire work under the GPL. Not only that, but you must provide the tools needed to compile and install it. This is the bit that most GPL vendors miss -- Can you get the tools to compile and install the firmware for the Sony TV mentioned here?

For an executable work, complete source code means all the source code for all modules it contains, plus any associated interface definition files, plus the scripts used to control compilation and installation of the executable.
GNU GENERAL PUBLIC LICENSE, Version 2, June 1991

I do play by the rules, and when I'm doing embedded work I don't choose to give away the entire farm by incorporating GPL'd code in my product. I may not even be legally able to give away the tools, since they're probably not open-source themselves. Even the LGPL requires that you give away the tools so that the end-user can relink your binaries against a new version of the LGPL library.

I'll gladly fuck off rather than burden myself with all the GPL baggage.

• The dangers of software patents (transcript)
• GNU/Linux and the free software movement (his general talk)
• Copyright verses community in the age of computer networks
• GPLv3 (transcript)

There is also a page on GNU.org for audio recordings of (mostly) Richard's talks.

I see, I thought you were talking about the transition away from the non-free FreeQt license, when you were really talking about the transition from QPL to GPL; my bad.

The switch from FreeQt to QPL was much more important then the later switch to the GPL. I mistakenly believed that RMS's involvement, ended at this point, but I was wrong.

The difference with respect to X is this, RMS and others felt the QPL was causing some serious practical problems for the free software community, hence effort was expended to asking Trolltech to switch. Ironically, RMS was involved in the QPL debate to help with a practical problem, whereas suggesting a licensing change for X would be more about the general philosophy of copyleft. ( Why Copyleft?, What is Copyleft.)

The "I'm not even going to bother to talk to them I'm just going to insult them from afar with very emotive language until they use my own personal license" approach

Well, apparently he did talk to them. I have not seen any insults in any of his posts on the issue.

I see, I thought you were talking about the transition away from the non-free FreeQt license, when you were really talking about the transition from QPL to GPL; my bad.

The switch from FreeQt to QPL was much more important then the later switch to the GPL. I mistakenly believed that RMS's involvement, ended at this point, but I was wrong.

The difference with respect to X is this, RMS and others felt the QPL was causing some serious practical problems for the free software community, hence effort was expended to asking Trolltech to switch. Ironically, RMS was involved in the QPL debate to help with a practical problem, whereas suggesting a licensing change for X would be more about the general philosophy of copyleft. ( Why Copyleft?, What is Copyleft.)

The "I'm not even going to bother to talk to them I'm just going to insult them from afar with very emotive language until they use my own personal license" approach

Well, apparently he did talk to them. I have not seen any insults in any of his posts on the issue.

And the Linux kernel isn't very useful unless you have a shell like GNU bash, and you need command line tools like ls, cp, mv... all GNU provided. Thank you, RMS.

Don't forget the GNU C Library. This is a massive project, and it plays a very key role in allowing GNU to be a Unix replacement.

Somebody asked RMS how can software writers make enough money to live. RMS said that he would be in favor of a "free software tax" to pay the salaries of people writing free software.

How recently? If I recall correctly, this is an suggestion that dates back to the earlier years of the GNU project. It was used as an example (amongst many) that there are other ways to fund software development.

The tax approach is an ugly one, but I would still find it preferable to living in a proprietary world. Fortunately the free world has since demonstrated that it can flourish without this idea.

Actually that's an important point. RMS wants to maximise freedom for the USERS even at the expense of the PROGRAMMERS.

I would prefer not to live in a society that provides special powers for small group of people at the expense of the whole.

He is willing to constrain the freedom of a programmer,

If we abolish copyright on software, programmers will not have lost a freedom, a privilege/power will have been taken away. As for the 'freedom to withhold source', it is a freedom I'm willing to part with, just as I'm willing to part with the freedom to kill another human being. (I'm not saying I value the former restriction more so then the later) Every society has at least some restrictions on individual freedom for the benefit of everyone, the debate is on which ones. A freedom is not inherently a good thing, there are always costs to weight against the benefits. RMS engages in some pretty thoughtful cost-benifit analysis in Why Software Should Not Have Owners and Why Software Should Be Free.

That being said, we probably don't need a law requiring source distribution, abolishing software copyright would probably be sufficient. The cultural change accompanying this could turn source distribution into a social norm requiring no government enforcement.

because he wants all software to come with source code.

He wants a lot more then that! You should be able to make changes to that source code. You should be able to share those changes with others, which benefits them and it can benefit you if the others make and share an additional change that builds on your own.

There's more. Given a universal information processing machine, some bytes that make that universal information machine do something useful, and a friend who would like a copy, most normally socialized people will utilize the copying capability that this machine excels at. In cyberspace this kind of behavior is as natural as breathing is in the real world. RMS thinks it should be legal.

Also restricting the use of a program with a restriction like 'educational use only' or 'company with less then or equal to 5 employees only' is unacceptable too.

But in an interview he recommended some obscure Linux called Extremadura or something like that, because he had read somewhere that they only provided GPL software.

No, he would of read (incorectly) that they only provided free software.

And the Linux kernel isn't very useful unless you have a shell like GNU bash, and you need command line tools like ls, cp, mv... all GNU provided. Thank you, RMS.

Don't forget the GNU C Library. This is a massive project, and it plays a very key role in allowing GNU to be a Unix replacement.

Somebody asked RMS how can software writers make enough money to live. RMS said that he would be in favor of a "free software tax" to pay the salaries of people writing free software.

How recently? If I recall correctly, this is an suggestion that dates back to the earlier years of the GNU project. It was used as an example (amongst many) that there are other ways to fund software development.

The tax approach is an ugly one, but I would still find it preferable to living in a proprietary world. Fortunately the free world has since demonstrated that it can flourish without this idea.

Actually that's an important point. RMS wants to maximise freedom for the USERS even at the expense of the PROGRAMMERS.

I would prefer not to live in a society that provides special powers for small group of people at the expense of the whole.

He is willing to constrain the freedom of a programmer,

If we abolish copyright on software, programmers will not have lost a freedom, a privilege/power will have been taken away. As for the 'freedom to withhold source', it is a freedom I'm willing to part with, just as I'm willing to part with the freedom to kill another human being. (I'm not saying I value the former restriction more so then the later) Every society has at least some restrictions on individual freedom for the benefit of everyone, the debate is on which ones. A freedom is not inherently a good thing, there are always costs to weight against the benefits. RMS engages in some pretty thoughtful cost-benifit analysis in Why Software Should Not Have Owners and Why Software Should Be Free.

That being said, we probably don't need a law requiring source distribution, abolishing software copyright would probably be sufficient. The cultural change accompanying this could turn source distribution into a social norm requiring no government enforcement.

because he wants all software to come with source code.

He wants a lot more then that! You should be able to make changes to that source code. You should be able to share those changes with others, which benefits them and it can benefit you if the others make and share an additional change that builds on your own.

There's more. Given a universal information processing machine, some bytes that make that universal information machine do something useful, and a friend who would like a copy, most normally socialized people will utilize the copying capability that this machine excels at. In cyberspace this kind of behavior is as natural as breathing is in the real world. RMS thinks it should be legal.

Also restricting the use of a program with a restriction like 'educational use only' or 'company with less then or equal to 5 employees only' is unacceptable too.

But in an interview he recommended some obscure Linux called Extremadura or something like that, because he had read somewhere that they only provided GPL software.

No, he would of read (incorectly) that they only provided free software.

I looked it up (and also rounded up by 2%, filthy liar that I am):

If we tried to measure the GNU Project's contribution in this way, what would we conclude? One CD-ROM vendor found that in their ``Linux distribution'', GNU software was the largest single contingent, around 28% of the total source code, and this included some of the essential major components without which there could be no system. Linux itself was about 3%. So if you were going to pick a name for the system based on who wrote the programs in the system, the most appropriate single choice would be ``GNU''.

Rereading that, it doesn't say it's a typical distro, just an example, my mistake. The point is that a big chunk of very important code came from GNU. So in reference to the post I was responding to, GNU didn't just contribute a license, they contributed a lot of programming too.

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He's allowed to say whatever the hell he wants to say. As do I and you. I was merely expressing my opinion that these outbursts hurt him and his cause more than they help him. That's all.

Did you mean that you do?

No, not really. Without things like Java and advanced graphics drivers and real applications his vision is bust, because "the GNU system" can't expand and grow and take away market from Sun and Microsoft and everyone else. Or what exactly is his goal then? To just bitch about everything?

The beauty is that he actually blames Sun and Linus and everyone else for the inabilities of the people who follow him to provide alternatives to these "dirty" versions of Really Useful Things That Everyone Would Really Like To Have. Otherwise these wouldn't be issues to him at all. Perhaps you don't understand the importance of Java. I think he does.

I bet Linus will never speak to him again.

I bet he's pretty fed up with Stallman's constant broadsides, but I'm pretty sure he's perfectly capable of deciding if he's going to "speak" to Stallman or not.

While RMS of course is right that the free Java implementations out there don't yet implement all of Sun's features, things are REALLY beginning to look bright lately! The GNU Classpath project, which can be used with free VMs such as JamVM now even include most of Swing and AWT. For those that prefer working in a familiar environment, the version of GCJ that shipped with GCC 4.1.0 introduced a new enough (late-2005, I believe) checkout of the GNU Classpath that most of Swing and AWT were available.
When I started a mandatory course in Java at my university this semester, I was really demotivated by the fact that I would have to develop on a non-free and also unfamiliar platform. Then I discovered GCJ, and I was able to live in a free and familiar world of using the GNU toolchain for everything. Midway through the semester, we started using Swing, and I thought I had reached the end of how far free software could take me. But lo and behold, GCC 4.1 was released at the right moment. What I'm trying to say is: For those of you who want a free Java platform, you really should investigate what's new in the GCJ that ships with GCC 4.1. Or if speed isn't the most important thing to you, an even more feature-complete free Java can be obtained by using a recent GNU Classpath with a free VM such as JamVM.

While RMS of course is right that the free Java implementations out there don't yet implement all of Sun's features, things are REALLY beginning to look bright lately! The GNU Classpath project, which can be used with free VMs such as JamVM now even include most of Swing and AWT. For those that prefer working in a familiar environment, the version of GCJ that shipped with GCC 4.1.0 introduced a new enough (late-2005, I believe) checkout of the GNU Classpath that most of Swing and AWT were available.
When I started a mandatory course in Java at my university this semester, I was really demotivated by the fact that I would have to develop on a non-free and also unfamiliar platform. Then I discovered GCJ, and I was able to live in a free and familiar world of using the GNU toolchain for everything. Midway through the semester, we started using Swing, and I thought I had reached the end of how far free software could take me. But lo and behold, GCC 4.1 was released at the right moment. What I'm trying to say is: For those of you who want a free Java platform, you really should investigate what's new in the GCJ that ships with GCC 4.1. Or if speed isn't the most important thing to you, an even more feature-complete free Java can be obtained by using a recent GNU Classpath with a free VM such as JamVM.

To be more precise, Gates added fuel to the fire that made Open Source / Free Software the force to be reckoned with. Many years before Microsoft became an important force in the world of computing, Richard Stallman at the MIT AI lab experienced that now famous spat with proprietary printer software from Xerox, which is similar to your own experiences with Microsoft software, that eventually led to the creation of the GNU Project. Gates basically, with his heavy handed attitude, made this an issue that affected everyone.

Free has many meanings, some of which (namely, freedom) are more important than others. Moreover, when a no-cost trinket is being used to entice you into giving away your freedom, then it's really not free at all, in any sense of the word.

my, don't I feel foolish =P http://www.gnu.org/copyleft/gpl.html

• Knoppix, live linux boot CD ("rescue"), http://www.knoppix.org/
• Unix Rosetta Stone, table to convert linux vs bsd vs unix, http://bhami.com/rosetta.html
• GNU screen, switch between shells in one login, priceless via ssh, http://www.gnu.org/software/screen/
• GNU stow, simple package management for ANY posix system, http://www.gnu.org/software/stow/
• vim, not vi (I depend on ^P and a real undo history, note emacs is not so great for sysadmins who need quick changes on dozens of architectures), http://www.vim.org
• sudo, especially when giving a group permission as a non-root user as in my /. post groups + sudo can allow installation rights , http://www.sudo.ws/
• wiki, which tells people how to do things without bugging the sysadmin, (any wiki is good, I use mediawiki), http://www.mediawiki.org/
• CVS/Subversion, note changes in important configuration files (cvs is for older Unixes that can't run svn), http://subversion.tigris.org/
• rdesktop, remotely log into windows Remote Desktop/Terminal Services, http://www.rdesktop.org/
• fail2ban, drop traffic to attacking IPs (ie, failed logins) for small intervals, http://fail2ban.sourceforge.net/

• Knoppix, live linux boot CD ("rescue"), http://www.knoppix.org/
• Unix Rosetta Stone, table to convert linux vs bsd vs unix, http://bhami.com/rosetta.html
• GNU screen, switch between shells in one login, priceless via ssh, http://www.gnu.org/software/screen/
• GNU stow, simple package management for ANY posix system, http://www.gnu.org/software/stow/
• vim, not vi (I depend on ^P and a real undo history, note emacs is not so great for sysadmins who need quick changes on dozens of architectures), http://www.vim.org
• sudo, especially when giving a group permission as a non-root user as in my /. post groups + sudo can allow installation rights , http://www.sudo.ws/
• wiki, which tells people how to do things without bugging the sysadmin, (any wiki is good, I use mediawiki), http://www.mediawiki.org/
• CVS/Subversion, note changes in important configuration files (cvs is for older Unixes that can't run svn), http://subversion.tigris.org/
• rdesktop, remotely log into windows Remote Desktop/Terminal Services, http://www.rdesktop.org/
• fail2ban, drop traffic to attacking IPs (ie, failed logins) for small intervals, http://fail2ban.sourceforge.net/

Soooooo not using an interpreted or JiT'd language when you have to pay $1 per CPU hour....

Perhaps not JITted code, but for long running processes, a modern mixed-mode JVM like hotspot can kick the pants off a similar C/C++ program. So using the latest Java VM may actually save you money by executing your code as efficiently as possible. You can probably get pretty close with a static compiler by optimizing specifically for the machines that Sun uses, but it would be hard to beat out a runtime JVM that knows the current execution path of the code.

Does gcj work on solaris/Opteron?

It should work. But you'll be running with 32 bit instructions, which will probably slow you down considerably.

Chances that HURD will be completed just before Vista release.

No, some patents affect a small number of manufacturers, for instance, hence they're merely industrial regulations—the patents involved in manufacturing cars are an often-cited example. These are quite different from software patents because people in their homes do make and distribute software which is covered by software patents. Different kinds of patents have different effects on society.

However if you want to argue that patents are not a good idea, you'll have some interesting company: the FTC and the Australian Government. According to a presentation by Ciarán O'Riordan at an event held on 2005-11-18 at the European Union offices, "the United States of America told us that software patents are a bad idea". In a 350-page report from the FTC "in 2003, they published their Report on Innovation, which was a 350 page report about the patent system - every aspect of the patent system in the USA.". According to this presentation, every aspect of the American patent system was critiqued and the FTC's "entire conclusion was negative. This wasn't a report just on software patents, this wasn't a response to anything in particular, and they didn't have an axe to grind, but simply for software they found that their was no benefit.". O'Riordan has a /. account, so perhaps he'll address this point in this thread.

Prior to this talk, and this FTC report, RMS gave a talk on the danger of software patents in which he pulls back the focus from patents on algorithms used in software and talks briefly about all patents:

In the 1980's the Australian Government commissioned a study of the patent system. The patent system in general, not software patents. This study concluded that Australia would be better off abolishing the patent system because it did very little good for society and cause a lot of trouble. The only reason they didn't recommend is that international pressure. So one of the things they cited was that patents which was supposed to disclose information so that they would no longer be secret or in fact useless, for that purpose, engineers never looked at patents to try and learn anything because it's too hard to read them. In fact they quoted that an engineer saying "I can't recognize my own inventions in patents".