Slashdot Mirror

Hector Facundo Arena writes: "The Free Universal Encyclopedia and Learning Resource (GNUPedia) Web page is online today. GNUPedia is a project for the development of a free encyclopedia. You can read more in the Richard Stallman's project announcement document. We invite you to participate in the project and join the mailing lists"

Hector Facundo Arena writes: "The Free Universal Encyclopedia and Learning Resource (GNUPedia) Web page is online today. GNUPedia is a project for the development of a free encyclopedia. You can read more in the Richard Stallman's project announcement document. We invite you to participate in the project and join the mailing lists"

sPaKr asks: "Why do we still use LiLo? I have recently installed FreeBSD, and and the boot loader that comes with latest release seems very powerful: it allows me to navigate the disk, preload kernels and modules at boot time and if I make kernel changes but forget to make changes to the loader configuration file I can still boot into a stable system (even though this can be fixed by having a handy boot disk aka tomsrtbt). I have conducted a quick search and find that there are several replacement loaders for Linux, (ie. grub, uniload). Why is it that most distributions ship with LiLo when we can find stable and more feature-rich replacments?"

SubtleNuance asks: "Free Software's venerable leader has made an open appeal to the Internet community. RMS seeks information about instances where Free Software projects were impeded by a software patent. You can read his open letter at Linux Today. RMS specifically seeks 'cases where a free program has been withdrawn from use or interfered with'. Surely the /. community can come up with a few examples to aid Mr. Stallman's arguments. Parties with specific information are to send an e-mail to patent-examples@gnu.org "

carter asks: "I remember this article from a year back about the brave soul who got a web server running on the GNU Hurd. Due to the now-famous /. effect, I never got a chance to see it running, and now the server appears to be down for good. One year ago is like ancient history in hacker-time, so it makes me wonder: has anyone else had luck getting a web server going on the Hurd? Is anyone using the Hurd for anything resembling production use yet? Also, is the Hurd project closing in on a stable release? To look at the Hurd's seemingly ever-static home page, one would think that no major developments have happened since 1999, although I'm sure this is not the case." For those of you who are actually running it, what are your experiences of the system? Are there any any pitfalls in installation and operation that you can share for those brave folks who are planning on making the plunge in the near future?

Tim writes "Can you really use the LGPL for an application--that is, code that isn't part of a library? I've been reading over the LGPL again in preparation for licensing an application of my own, and I feel that the LGPL would best fit my needs/wants. However, section 2a of the LGPL makes it very clear that a work 'based on the Library' must 'itself be a software library.' Section 0 also makes it clear that a 'library' means 'a collection of software functions and/or data prepared so as to be conveniently linked with application programs (which use some of those functions and data) to form executables.' So, given all this, why is it taken for granted that you can release an application/executable under the LGPL?" It must be stated that applications link to libraries and are not based on them. I may be splitting a few hairs here, however. What do you think?

The GCC Steering Committee has issued a statement on the use of snapshots in distributions. This statement is clearly in response to Red Hat's use of gcc-2.96 in its Red Hat 7 release. They didn't like it very much, and there are compatibility problems. Worth a read. Credits for this news goes to Linux Weekly News.

JWhitlock writes " ZDNet reports that Yggdrasil Computing has released a Linux DVD Archive. It's a DVD9-ROM with the FTP archives of Metalab.org and GNU.org. It's all freeware source, no binaries, 8.3GB compressed, over 23 GB uncompressed. It has no distributions on it, so you have to have Linux first. From the website: "...you must be running Linux kernel 2.2.14, 2.3.28 or later in order to access files located more than four gigabytes into the DVD. Aside from that, your standard CD-ROM and iso9660 ("isofs") filesystem support that you use for accessing CD's will be sufficient to access this DVD. " You can only get it direct from their website" Remember the old infomagic set? That thing blew me away thinking "A whole gig!", but thats nothing compared to this stuff.

qbasicprogrammer writes: "Vital Source Technologies is now providing time-limited medical textbooks to universities. Password protected books as predicted in The Right To Read by Richard Stallman are finally becoming a reality." Starting on Oct. 28, (when the other part of the DMCA comes into effect), you could face a civil lawsuit and criminal penalties of up to five years in jail and a fine of $500,000 for reading someone else's textbook. See the NYU FAQ, the Advogato discussion, or the company crowing about new revenue opportunities.

Every once in awhile I enjoy posting a feature on the subject of software freedom. Many of us just take this stuff for granted, but as Slashdot has grown, many new readers come along who don't have the history with the subject that the old school has. This one talks about proprietary licenses and related subjects, and would be cool for a lot of the newer readers out there to check it out (I know you're out there! You email me and ask 'What's an RMS?'!)

The following was written by Slashdot reader Jonas Oberg.

Men Of Zeal

by Jonas Oberg

An increasing number of people today feel that the world ought to focus more on the freedom issues of free software rather than the technical or economical ones. Others feel that the issue of freedom scares people and that we should focus on practical benefits of free software, such as price or reliability.

The issue of freedom of software, or speech for that matter, does however scare some people at times. But mostly, the same people have little understanding of the foundation of our community, and often try to reap the benefits -- economically or technically -- from free software without understanding or caring about the freedom of others.

Although the community offers teaching of the nature and purpose of free software, it is often ignored and/or neglected, these newcomers still telling tales of piracy and intellectual property in the context of free software. They have been taught that sharing is wrong and that license fees feed the programmers who write the software. Having difficulty understanding the fundamental error in this reasoning is often the reason why these individuals fail to grasp even the basic concepts of free software.

By building walls around them and their software, they feel they protect their own rights to the software they have produced. But by hiring lawyers to create software licenses that imprison their users, they are themselves imprisoned by the same licenses.

The harm is not immediately visible. If they feel a need to build walls and their lawyers want to write new proprietary licenses, the community is not immediately hurt by this. We might have to work extra hard to reverse engineer their proprietary protocols and programs to implement free software equivalents or replacements, but history has repeatedly shown that cooperation makes this possible, even being obstructed by legal matters or having to avoid patents filed alongside the proprietary program.

The real problem comes if they later decide to jump on the steadily paced free software bandwagon by making a half hearted attempt to make their software workable on free software platforms. It's common that the community immediately cheers when corporation after corporation announces plans to port their software to a free platform, and even more so if or when they decide to release the source code for the software.

But we can not by default wholeheartedly embrace every company that attempts this. We have to look at each offering individually and decide for ourselves whether it would help to further our cause or hurt us in the long run. For every piece of software that is released under a non-free license to run on our free software platform, the temptation to sacrifice a part of our freedom in order to use this new software grows. This goes especially for software that includes the source code, but not the rights to use it freely, thus making the software as a whole non-free.

In time, some of the companies might be enlightened to change their business concepts and release their products as free software, but we should never have used their software or accepted it for use on our systems in the first place. By doing so, we sacrifice our own freedom for convenience. The alternative to using a non-free piece of software could be to use a program that is free software with limited capabilities compared to the non-free program.

It is important to understand the implications of sacrificing freedom and what implications it might cause to the ongoing development of free alternatives. If freedom is of the most importance -- and it should be at all times -- the choice is always quite clear. We have to work to teach those who join us that not only should they join us to maximize their profits, but also to contribute to the world and to help build a free software sharing community. Maximizing profits from free software is worthwhile and I encourage anyone with the opportunity to do so, but the money itself is not likely to stick around unless some of it is invested back into the community that made the profit possible in the first place.

"Experience should teach us to be most on our guard to protect liberty when the Government's purposes are beneficent. Men born to freedom are naturally alert to repel invasion of their liberty by evilminded rulers. The greatest dangers to liberty lurk in insidious encroachment by men of zeal and wellmeaning but without understanding." -- Justice Louis D. Brandeis

With a planned move to San Francisco next summer, last week saw San Jose's last Linux World Expo, at least for now. The future as always is stubbornly uncertain, but it's impressive that the serendipitous combination of Free tools (from GNU) and a Free kernel (from Linus) has inspired enough interest and prosperity to excite a larger group of people each year. If you've not had the chance to attend one of these expositions, we hope this article will give you a flavor of what it's like. Note: Here are a few pictures from the floor (Day 1 & Day 2) contributed by Sensei^); do you have any cool shots to link to in comments?

First, the prelude: If you've worked on the pre-show aspects of anything from a high-school play to a LAN party, you know all those booths, displays, people and computers don't materialize by themselves. For several days before the show floor opened on Tuesday, forklift crews zipped cargos of wooden, fiberglass, plastic, aluminum and steel cases from moving trucks to exhibit spaces. These contained banners, snap-together modules, computers, lighted signs -- and Yes, more gratis logo-imprinted toys than you can wave a TuxTops LED light at.

Spiderwebs of CAT-5 and electric cord (run beneath the show floor) sprouted from the centerpoints of many booths, with strands for each computer to be connected to the Net during the show. Rolls of padding and carpet came next, then the slow assembly of display booths. These ranged from no-nonsense fabric partitions that housed companies like TuxTops and Sendmail (and legions of volunteers from PerlMonks, the Simple End User Linux project, Flightgear, and many others), to elaborate constructions with motorized signs, projected lasers and huge illuminated logos. Note: Slashdot (the site) was put together last week mostly from the comfy chairs of the PerlMonks booth.

The "C" (as in conference) part of LWCE got started on Monday, and for the days that followed, attendees got instruction -- on everything from Linux security to evangelizing Free software to their bosses-- in half-day doses. Meanwhile, the setup work continued into the wee hours, as exhibitors raced the clock to make sure that at least their signs, if not their networks, were up for the next day. And at the OSDN booth (home of the red-carpeted Slashdot stage and beanbags), prep work included stacking thousands of boxed distributions of Debian, and attempted to pawn a few copies off on every passer by.

Tuesday morning, at a shade before 10:00, visitors willing to miss Michael Dell's keynote began to stream into the halls, on a quest to find new distros, old friends, and swag. It's amazing what companies will give away in order to snag a little nook in your brain. Besides the usual trinkets (keychains, T-shirts, stickers) and the distributions that a Linux show would be empty without, booth visitors were handed everything from knives (Sendmail) to cute monkeys (Helixcode) to embarrassing pictures of themselves (BSDi), as well as too many toys with embedded LEDs to bother counting. Rather than a full swag accounting (which would only annoy those unable to attend), let me just say that you won't hurt for toys when the chance presents itself. (CT:I just wanted to note that VA gave away 2300 pounds of shrink-wrapped boxed Debian. Like 5000 copies. It was beautiful)

The things on display around the LWCE floor were more interesting than the toys, though. (And unlike a museum, most were available for hands-on demonstration, not hidden behind glass.) Indrema showed a prototype player (not in the sleek black box you see on their Web site, but still sporting that cool blue LED) hooked up to a HDTV display, playing a very fast game of Quake. (CT:Actually it was an HDTV demo, they promised the real deal will be less vaporous before I have children) In the Intel booth were server clusters populated with quad Itanium processors, demonstrating failover when one system was rudely but intentionally shut down. The amazing-like-emacs-is-amazing Flightgear project showed a really nice looking demo which is enough incentive by itself to invest in a better video card for my system so I can play with it.

Both Helixcode and Eazel made their first LWCE appearance this time around, exciting for those filling their anti-FUD cannon for the perpetual "Linux is tough to use" argument. The Eazel folks showing off Nautilus seemed to be all but cackling as they showed off the smoothness of the zooming information available for documents and the cool music-integration abilities it contains. It would have been cool if they'd had some sample CDs, but they promise a developers' release soon. (CT:They also promised .deb's, but I'll believe it when I see it. The UI was awesome, I just hope that someone hacks in something like the GUI command line in EFM)

Considering that Sun was showing off the GNOME desktop on Solaris (hinting at its inclusion in stock Solaris systems sometime very soon, too) and that the GNOME project itself was not only in one of the small booths against the wall but the subject of a big announcement -- about the advent of the GNOME Foundation -- it looks it's showing up everywhere. Happily, there seems to be no shortage of room for window managers right now: the KDE folks were also there not only in their own booth, but showing up in software demonstrations all over the floor, as SuSE, Caldera and others demonstrated the very slick KDE 2.0. (Can't we all just get along, anyhow?)

SuSE, by the way, was the only distributor I noticed showing off Linux on Apple hardware, and their current distro was sweet and fast on a G4. Beyond the curious lack of Apples, and the obvious ubiquity of x86 machines, there were machines based on everything from microcontrollers to StrongArm, MIPS, Alpha, Itanium ... even the IBM S/390s which have gotten attention for the ridiculous number of concurrent Linux systems they can support.

For all the cool hardware and cusp-of-reality, bleeding-edge distros, it's interesting that the announcement which seemed to generate the most buzz of the entire show was the long-awaited release of Debian's Potato. Considering the reputation that Debian has for intelligent upgrading, stability, and diligence in guarding the license of the software which makes it up, it's not as surprising as it might otherwise be that Debian's new release made people sit up a bit more than the newest offerings from the large commercial distros.

(CT: Also extremely impressive was the Pocket Linux booth, where they actually had iPaq's running Linux. The first dude that demoed the box to me was very nice, but what I really wanted to see was X11 running on it ... oddly enough, I encountered one of his cohorts in the bar later that night who showed it to me: X, xeyes, xterm, and twm running on an iPaq. When they get the wireless action going on these things I'm totally there ... I'll just need to hack minimalist interfaces onto pronto and my MP3 player software and use the thing as a portable X terminal on the local 802.11 wireless lan. Yum.)

Oh, and there were people on the floor as well -- close to 20,000, all told. I met some folks I've known previously only through IRC, and quite a few I might never have otherwise encountered.

It's interesting to see in the space of a few hours many of the smart people who you may experience vicariously through writings, speeches, code, art or IRC chatter -- and it also belies the idea that software celebrities of the Free software world are becoming celebrities of the traditional variety, since everyone from ESR to Jon "maddog" Hall (and Linus himself) are willing to talk to anyone who catches up with them long enough to say hello. The atmosphere (especially outside the mondo corporate-castle booths) is mellow and accomodating, and suprisingly so even within most of those castles. There were undoubtably personality conflicts at work, but it seems like most people have the good grace to deal nicely with each other for these few days at least.

At the close of each day, people shuffle out to drop laptops, T-shirts and bags of stuff at their hotels, then thousands of them show up to parties sponsored by companies from AMD to Red hat to VA, which are full-blown events in themselves. Mandrake's party, for instance, had go-go dancers in cages, which may be the most bacchanal thing I have ever witnessed. Ironically, though, many coders couldn't attend even events sponsored by their own companies, or thrown in the honor of their projects, because of strict carding policies. Wouldn't a chem-free party or two be a thoughtful way to include people?

(CT: This has been a consistent problem for several years. Although I know at "Someones" party (no names *grin*) they weren't carding, and I recieved many a happy note from fellow attendees proclaiming that they were able to get in. The parties themselves weren't bad: the OSDN/Potato release party was fun, with San & Zak spinning the tunes (next time we'll force CowboyNeal to scratch for us under threat of death). They had 2 buildings: one was a pool hall, where we tormented The Pope for nearly an hour, carefully distracting him, and then returning his balls to the table. He never noticed. We also met up with Nitrozac from After Y2k, and I snuck accross the street to the Eazel party for a bit, and got to meet Dave "You might remember me from cheat codes in some first person shooter" Taylor.) Attendeees mostly filed out for flights or drives home Thursday and Friday, but some are still in San Jose for the Intel Developers Conference, or otherwise enjoying the Northern California weather. It's a strange familiarity that many of them will feel when the next big conference rolls around, to see many of the same fellow attendees or workers -- of course, by the time the next big conference happens, perhaps we'll all be too excited by the release of 2.4 to notice.

tommyd writes: "In the discussion following this editorial at Freshmeat, Matthias Ettrich of KDE fame claims that it's OK for a commercial application to use GPL'd libraries. I've never heard such a claim before. It would certainly make this plea from RMS redundant (not to mention the LGPL), but could spell bad things for GPL'd software generally. What's the Slashdot community's opinion?"

Mike Hicks asks " The current state of fonts for XFree86 has been lamented many times by many people. The resolution and clarity of modern displays continues to get better, meaning that fonts designed for 75 and even 100 dpi are becoming small and unreadable. Not to mention the fact that many fonts are relatively poor -- many only have a single set of attributes. Most fonts that I come across are just normal, bold, or italic. It is very hard to find a new font set that has normal, bold, italic, and bold italic typefaces. Of course, a true Open Sourcerer would go out and make these fonts, but there are only a handful of font-creation utilities out there (and most of them are only good for bitmapped fonts). All seems nearly lost, but I re-discovered something this weekend. The METAFONT package was developed by Donald E. Knuth (et al) in the late 1970s in order to produce high-quality fonts for the Tau Epsilon Chi (T_EX -- now you know why it sounds like `blech') typesetting system." Has anyone used METAFONT for the express purpose of creating fonts for X11? How did it work out?

"After reading through Knuth's 1979 book, TEX and METAFONT: New Directions in Typesetting, it seems to me that METAFONT would be a good way to produce new fonts for X Windows (and console and printing..). I'm not certain if it's possible to produce PostScript Type 1 fonts from METAFONT (some say it isn't possible, while the GNU Font Utils package seems to be a way to do it), it would still be possible to create a large number of bitmapped fonts for various point sizes and display resolutions.

Well, I -think- it's possible...

Has anyone ever done what I'm describing? I haven't had much luck deciphering the documentation I've been able to find. Granted, I haven't yet plunked down $50 for a copy of The METAFONTbook, but even that reference may not be of any use, as it probably predates any widespread use of X Windows."

For years, the GNU Public License -- the copyleft which Linux has flourished under -- has lived a life that is close to charmed. Talk has surfaced of a possible upcoming court challenge to the GPL, but author Peter Wayner looks here slightly further into the future, speculating on what changes might preserve the GPL against other marketplace challenges as well. Richard M. Stallman has doubtless been wrestling with the issues presented here since before he released the GPL at all; I hope that Wayner's thoughts will raise discussion that will strengthen the GPL as it evolves.

For the last several weeks I've been thinking about the word "distribution" because the meaning of that word and the way we interpret are going to be one of the most important debates for the free software movement in the next several years. The problem is that a loose definition of the word opens up many loopholes in the GNU General Public License, both for corporations and average Internet users.

The word is crucial because it lies at the core of one of the most distinctive requirements of one of the most distinctive open source licenses. If you modify software protected by the GNU General Public License and then distribute the new version, you must also distribute the source code.

On the face of it, this requirement sounds pretty easy to satisfy. Every time you give someone a copy of the binary version of the code, you give them a copy of the source code. The two should travel together or at least in close proximity.

The main reason the clause is part of the GNU GPL is because Richard Stallman, the license's principal author, believes that anyone who drinks from the commonweal should give back. If you benefit from the sharing of others, then you should make sure to give something back.

But, if you dig a bit deeper, the notion of distribution becomes a convoluted. Some of the ways that people share software with each other may not really count as distributions.

The distribution requirement is one of the concessions that Stallman made to the users and their sanity. You don't need to share all of the changes you make to the code -- only the code you distribute. Sharing everything might unleash a painful process, one that would push too much untested code on the world. Do we really want everyone sharing their files everytime they save a copy to do a new compile? The compromise, which sounds reasonable, only requires you to share the source code when you share the software.

The problem is that the act of giving someone a copy is getting a bit harder to define, because of the new features embedded in operating systems, the near omnipresence of the Internet, and the new interest by corporations in the phenomenon of open source software. Many of these new wrinkles are confusing because they push the boundaries of both technology and license.

The biggest problem is that new features are making it easier and easier for two programs to work in synchrony without being formally linked together. You might use one piece of GPL protected software to edit files and one proprietary program to process them. The GPL embraces these sorts of bright lines between programs; mixing closed source programs with open source ones is not forbidden.

However, it's easy now for people to write scripts that link seemingly disparate programs -- thousands of them, even -- and then execute them in concert. I know one company that uses Adobe Photoshop to process images created by a proprietary, in-house tool. Is the software linked together? The process is entirely automated and works with no human intervention once initiated.

The line blurs elsewhere, too. On some cool multiprocessor machines, two supposedly separate and independent programs can execute on different processors and send messages back and forth. Where do we draw the line?

The process is getting even more confusing when the Web gets involved. Imagine one programmer who creates a tight weather prediction package for the Web that stores the forecast in a GPL-protected database. The programmer links all of the proprietary code together with the database. The result is a new package that extends the database and thus must be shared completely with the world according to the GPL. This is certainly fair. If anything, the GPL-protected database code is doing the bulk of the work. The programmer succeeded by standing on the shoulders of giants.

Now, consider a different programmer who, for the sake of example, stores the database of forecasting information on one Web server in California. The main website which dispenses the data to the world sits in NYC on the other end of a fast backbone. The main Web site uses the proprietary code to look up data in California before publishing it on the Web.

Should this programmer be forced to share the NYC code with the world? Let's say the programmer starts selling the package as a $10,000 proprietary package for adding cool weather graphics to a Web site. Anyone who buys it must install the GPL-protected database and make sure that it's always running. But are the two programs technically linked together? The California server might be GPL-protected, but does this extend to NYC? The NYC site certainly can't operate without the California server, right? What would happen if the server was right next door? What if it was running on the same machine under a different user's login?

Stallman anticipated this problem and offered a Lesser version of the GPL which would let people link with GPL-protected libraries without releasing the software to the larger program. But that lesser version, known by the acronym LGPL, is a bit rare.

I don't envy the people who try to make sensible decisions about what counts as a distribution and what doesn't. Stallman has done as good a job as he possibly can. He sensibly recognized that GPL-protected code was going to have to live in close proximity to non-GPL code. He realized that these programs might be linked together by shell scripts and other tools. But where do you draw the line?

The problem is being stretched as the world of corporate computing discovers open source software. In the past, the definition of "distribution" was easy because everyone was just an individual hacker. If you gave a program to your buddy, you distributed it.

But imagine that MegaSoft decides that it really needs an internal editing system for filling out proprietary MegaSoft paperwork. The programmers love Emacs so they take GNU Emacs and add a few tweaks for providing the user with forms. Some of it is written in Emacs LISP and some of it requires a few neat extensions to the basic Emacs module. Everyone loves the software and they start shipping it to all of the PCs in the corporations.

Is this a distribution? Some might argue that it isn't. A corporation is just a legal fiction for a single person. It's not much different than Bob the hacker writing the code for his own use. Bob doesn't need to share the source code until Bob starts giving it to Alice, the other hacker. By this argument, MegaSoft doesn't need to share the source unless MegaSoft ships the software to another company or non-employee. Even if there are 100,000 employees in MegaSoft, there hasn't been a distribution.

There are millions of problems with thinking of a corporation as a single hacker. What if the corporation splits in three like AT&T? Do all three get the code? Should only one? What if the corporation is aquired by SuperMegaSoft? Is this a distribution? What if the form-enabled Emacs was the only reason that MegaSoft was worth anything because the rest of MegaSoft wasted the rest of their VC money on a plan to sell clothing advice to fashion victims? (www.DrBoo.com)

But there are other problems with forcing corporations to share all of the code all of the time. Are corporate teams that much different than free software teams? Shouldn't they have the freedom to work for several months without distributing the changes? It saves us from buggy pre-alpha code and it saves them from repetitive bug reports. ("It crashes when I start it.") Where do we draw the line? Why can't they enjoy the same freedom as individual hackers to make a few, krufty changes to the source code and leave it at that?

There are deeper problems in corporations. By many measures, Tivo is a good example of the power of free software. The digital video recorder for television signals runs on top of the Linux kernel. The only reason anyone knows this is because Tivo gives Linux credit and it shares copies of the changes it made to the Linux kernel. In many ways, it's a model of a great corporate citizen in the world of free software.

But Tivo didn't share the source code to their television recording front end. It's a separate program running on the machine. No one's gotten in trouble for running proprietary code on top of a GPL-protected kernel.

The Tivo, though, is different. It starts up the proprietary code when it boots and the user has no way to communicate directly with the kernel. The user can't use any of the standard UNIX commands to control the machine. The user can't do anything that the proprietary front end doesn't allow. This will probably save millions of users the grief of reformatting their hard drive.

But is this really fair? If the user can't pry apart the Tivo front end from the Linux kernel, are the programs intertwined enough to become the same program? If so, shouldn't Tivo be releasing the source code to the front end as well?

There are deeper problems on the horizon. Some companies are now "loaning" or "renting" software. In some cases, you don't even keep copies on your local machine. You just download it from the server and use it for a bit.

Is this a distribution? On one hand, the user doesn't get to keep anything. On the other hand, who do we think they're fooling? The whole system is just ephemeral clouds of bits flying around. To think that anyone "owns" something as abstract as software is like saying that someone "owns" a cat.

In fact, we can take this one step further. What is the real difference between using the software on their server and downloading it? Is there much difference between using the Hotmail web-based email system or running Eudora on your desktop? There isn't much difference to the user, even though there are big legal differences. In one case, Hotmail still owns the software and it's all proprietary. In the other, Eudora sold you a copy. Well, maybe they sold you a license. Well, who really knows?

I won't try to find answers for any of the questions about distributions. This is, in some respects, a chicken's response. There are millions of ways to find things wrong with the world. A real leader would find solutions. But it's also important for these answers to come from the community at large. There should be a long debate that focuses on the needs of the users and the creators of free software.

The biggest problem is that the answers are more political than technical. It's easy to define what an piece of software should do if it, say, encounters a request to divide by zero. It's much harder to handle definitions of what is and is not a distribution.

The community needs to weigh two different features of free software: On one hand, there's the fun of taking apart the source code and fixing it. On the other is the responsiblity for contributing back to the common code base. Stallman chose to tie these two together by requiring programmers who benefited from GPL protected software to share their source code when they "distributed" the new version.

The notion of distribution was a simple notion that worked well when the typical coder was just an individual hacker spinning code and sharing it with his buds. Now the game is bigger, and much more complicated. We need to find a new mechanism that balances the freedom to hack with the responsibility to give back. We need to find a better, more clearly defined line to draw.

For the record, here are my proposals:

1. Corporations (and everyone) should be required to release the modifications to their source code every six months to a year, if the modified versions are shared with more than, say, three people.

2. Two piles of code are considered linked if one will crash or cease to provide more than 90% of its functions without the other. Note that this doesn't mean that any piece of software running on a GNU/Linux machine is considered linked to the GPL-protected kernel. If the software can be moved to a different OS, then it doesn't depend on the kernel.

I think each of these proposals will create more questions than they answer, but I didn't want to be a chicken and dodge the question. Please let me know if you have similar thoughts or proposals.

Tune to http://www.wayner.org/books/ffa/ for information on Wayner's book on Free Software. It launches in July 2000.

For years, the GNU Public License -- the copyleft which Linux has flourished under -- has lived a life that is close to charmed. Talk has surfaced of a possible upcoming court challenge to the GPL, but author Peter Wayner looks here slightly further into the future, speculating on what changes might preserve the GPL against other marketplace challenges as well. Richard M. Stallman has doubtless been wrestling with the issues presented here since before he released the GPL at all; I hope that Wayner's thoughts will raise discussion that will strengthen the GPL as it evolves.

For the last several weeks I've been thinking about the word "distribution" because the meaning of that word and the way we interpret are going to be one of the most important debates for the free software movement in the next several years. The problem is that a loose definition of the word opens up many loopholes in the GNU General Public License, both for corporations and average Internet users.

The word is crucial because it lies at the core of one of the most distinctive requirements of one of the most distinctive open source licenses. If you modify software protected by the GNU General Public License and then distribute the new version, you must also distribute the source code.

On the face of it, this requirement sounds pretty easy to satisfy. Every time you give someone a copy of the binary version of the code, you give them a copy of the source code. The two should travel together or at least in close proximity.

The main reason the clause is part of the GNU GPL is because Richard Stallman, the license's principal author, believes that anyone who drinks from the commonweal should give back. If you benefit from the sharing of others, then you should make sure to give something back.

But, if you dig a bit deeper, the notion of distribution becomes a convoluted. Some of the ways that people share software with each other may not really count as distributions.

The distribution requirement is one of the concessions that Stallman made to the users and their sanity. You don't need to share all of the changes you make to the code -- only the code you distribute. Sharing everything might unleash a painful process, one that would push too much untested code on the world. Do we really want everyone sharing their files everytime they save a copy to do a new compile? The compromise, which sounds reasonable, only requires you to share the source code when you share the software.

The problem is that the act of giving someone a copy is getting a bit harder to define, because of the new features embedded in operating systems, the near omnipresence of the Internet, and the new interest by corporations in the phenomenon of open source software. Many of these new wrinkles are confusing because they push the boundaries of both technology and license.

The biggest problem is that new features are making it easier and easier for two programs to work in synchrony without being formally linked together. You might use one piece of GPL protected software to edit files and one proprietary program to process them. The GPL embraces these sorts of bright lines between programs; mixing closed source programs with open source ones is not forbidden.

However, it's easy now for people to write scripts that link seemingly disparate programs -- thousands of them, even -- and then execute them in concert. I know one company that uses Adobe Photoshop to process images created by a proprietary, in-house tool. Is the software linked together? The process is entirely automated and works with no human intervention once initiated.

The line blurs elsewhere, too. On some cool multiprocessor machines, two supposedly separate and independent programs can execute on different processors and send messages back and forth. Where do we draw the line?

The process is getting even more confusing when the Web gets involved. Imagine one programmer who creates a tight weather prediction package for the Web that stores the forecast in a GPL-protected database. The programmer links all of the proprietary code together with the database. The result is a new package that extends the database and thus must be shared completely with the world according to the GPL. This is certainly fair. If anything, the GPL-protected database code is doing the bulk of the work. The programmer succeeded by standing on the shoulders of giants.

Now, consider a different programmer who, for the sake of example, stores the database of forecasting information on one Web server in California. The main website which dispenses the data to the world sits in NYC on the other end of a fast backbone. The main Web site uses the proprietary code to look up data in California before publishing it on the Web.

Should this programmer be forced to share the NYC code with the world? Let's say the programmer starts selling the package as a $10,000 proprietary package for adding cool weather graphics to a Web site. Anyone who buys it must install the GPL-protected database and make sure that it's always running. But are the two programs technically linked together? The California server might be GPL-protected, but does this extend to NYC? The NYC site certainly can't operate without the California server, right? What would happen if the server was right next door? What if it was running on the same machine under a different user's login?

Stallman anticipated this problem and offered a Lesser version of the GPL which would let people link with GPL-protected libraries without releasing the software to the larger program. But that lesser version, known by the acronym LGPL, is a bit rare.

I don't envy the people who try to make sensible decisions about what counts as a distribution and what doesn't. Stallman has done as good a job as he possibly can. He sensibly recognized that GPL-protected code was going to have to live in close proximity to non-GPL code. He realized that these programs might be linked together by shell scripts and other tools. But where do you draw the line?

The problem is being stretched as the world of corporate computing discovers open source software. In the past, the definition of "distribution" was easy because everyone was just an individual hacker. If you gave a program to your buddy, you distributed it.

But imagine that MegaSoft decides that it really needs an internal editing system for filling out proprietary MegaSoft paperwork. The programmers love Emacs so they take GNU Emacs and add a few tweaks for providing the user with forms. Some of it is written in Emacs LISP and some of it requires a few neat extensions to the basic Emacs module. Everyone loves the software and they start shipping it to all of the PCs in the corporations.

Is this a distribution? Some might argue that it isn't. A corporation is just a legal fiction for a single person. It's not much different than Bob the hacker writing the code for his own use. Bob doesn't need to share the source code until Bob starts giving it to Alice, the other hacker. By this argument, MegaSoft doesn't need to share the source unless MegaSoft ships the software to another company or non-employee. Even if there are 100,000 employees in MegaSoft, there hasn't been a distribution.

There are millions of problems with thinking of a corporation as a single hacker. What if the corporation splits in three like AT&T? Do all three get the code? Should only one? What if the corporation is aquired by SuperMegaSoft? Is this a distribution? What if the form-enabled Emacs was the only reason that MegaSoft was worth anything because the rest of MegaSoft wasted the rest of their VC money on a plan to sell clothing advice to fashion victims? (www.DrBoo.com)

But there are other problems with forcing corporations to share all of the code all of the time. Are corporate teams that much different than free software teams? Shouldn't they have the freedom to work for several months without distributing the changes? It saves us from buggy pre-alpha code and it saves them from repetitive bug reports. ("It crashes when I start it.") Where do we draw the line? Why can't they enjoy the same freedom as individual hackers to make a few, krufty changes to the source code and leave it at that?

There are deeper problems in corporations. By many measures, Tivo is a good example of the power of free software. The digital video recorder for television signals runs on top of the Linux kernel. The only reason anyone knows this is because Tivo gives Linux credit and it shares copies of the changes it made to the Linux kernel. In many ways, it's a model of a great corporate citizen in the world of free software.

But Tivo didn't share the source code to their television recording front end. It's a separate program running on the machine. No one's gotten in trouble for running proprietary code on top of a GPL-protected kernel.

The Tivo, though, is different. It starts up the proprietary code when it boots and the user has no way to communicate directly with the kernel. The user can't use any of the standard UNIX commands to control the machine. The user can't do anything that the proprietary front end doesn't allow. This will probably save millions of users the grief of reformatting their hard drive.

But is this really fair? If the user can't pry apart the Tivo front end from the Linux kernel, are the programs intertwined enough to become the same program? If so, shouldn't Tivo be releasing the source code to the front end as well?

There are deeper problems on the horizon. Some companies are now "loaning" or "renting" software. In some cases, you don't even keep copies on your local machine. You just download it from the server and use it for a bit.

Is this a distribution? On one hand, the user doesn't get to keep anything. On the other hand, who do we think they're fooling? The whole system is just ephemeral clouds of bits flying around. To think that anyone "owns" something as abstract as software is like saying that someone "owns" a cat.

In fact, we can take this one step further. What is the real difference between using the software on their server and downloading it? Is there much difference between using the Hotmail web-based email system or running Eudora on your desktop? There isn't much difference to the user, even though there are big legal differences. In one case, Hotmail still owns the software and it's all proprietary. In the other, Eudora sold you a copy. Well, maybe they sold you a license. Well, who really knows?

I won't try to find answers for any of the questions about distributions. This is, in some respects, a chicken's response. There are millions of ways to find things wrong with the world. A real leader would find solutions. But it's also important for these answers to come from the community at large. There should be a long debate that focuses on the needs of the users and the creators of free software.

The biggest problem is that the answers are more political than technical. It's easy to define what an piece of software should do if it, say, encounters a request to divide by zero. It's much harder to handle definitions of what is and is not a distribution.

The community needs to weigh two different features of free software: On one hand, there's the fun of taking apart the source code and fixing it. On the other is the responsiblity for contributing back to the common code base. Stallman chose to tie these two together by requiring programmers who benefited from GPL protected software to share their source code when they "distributed" the new version.

The notion of distribution was a simple notion that worked well when the typical coder was just an individual hacker spinning code and sharing it with his buds. Now the game is bigger, and much more complicated. We need to find a new mechanism that balances the freedom to hack with the responsibility to give back. We need to find a better, more clearly defined line to draw.

For the record, here are my proposals:

1. Corporations (and everyone) should be required to release the modifications to their source code every six months to a year, if the modified versions are shared with more than, say, three people.

2. Two piles of code are considered linked if one will crash or cease to provide more than 90% of its functions without the other. Note that this doesn't mean that any piece of software running on a GNU/Linux machine is considered linked to the GPL-protected kernel. If the software can be moved to a different OS, then it doesn't depend on the kernel.

I think each of these proposals will create more questions than they answer, but I didn't want to be a chicken and dodge the question. Please let me know if you have similar thoughts or proposals.

Tune to http://www.wayner.org/books/ffa/ for information on Wayner's book on Free Software. It launches in July 2000.

Welcome again to Slashdot's continuing education program. Take a seat, say hello to your neighbor (using #slashdot might help), pretend we never said that other stuff. Here's another smidgeon of truth, clarification and equivocation we've spritzed over the usual mishmash of lies, intentional misstatements and strained obfuscation that is the Slashdot home page. Enjoy!

First, a word from our sponsor: We heard from the tireless Richard M. Stallman, nothing if not consistent in his argument, who wrote:

" Would you please post this? It is in response to the discussion of congressional hearings on Napster, but please post it however you think best.

I ask people to think twice before using the term "piracy" to describe sharing published information with other people. That word is a propaganda term used by the owners of information to convey the idea that sharing is wrong; when you use it, you aid their campaign.

Unless you believe that sharing information is the moral equivalent of attacking a ship and kidnaping the people on it, please don't use the term 'piracy' to describe sharing."

Thanks for the note, Richard. Now tell Lars ...

Birth of an island. Regarding the story posted this week about the ongoing study of an emerging island in the South Pacific, Bobity writes "Additional photos are posted at this site." Why can't we embed some networking cable before it cools completely?

So maybe 730 days from now ... In the ongoing battle for hearts, minds and desktops, fingers and livers of free software users, Helixcode and Eazel aren't the only ones to make cool strides lately. Per Wigren writes: "Kaiwal Software (Shane) Co., Ltd. and theKompany.com have just signed an agreement to sponsor two developers for 2 years in order to focus on developing KWord, the free word processor for the KDE office suite. " And since at this moment, KWord is probably the closest thing to DTP for Linux (excepting demo-only FrameMaker), that news makes me smile. But two years?! That's long term thinking.

Red wine? White Wine. Hot towel? Your hard drive, please, sir? Red wine? With all the intrusions of modern life, it's good to know that at least the computer on your desk at home can't be used by your employer to check who you've been writing e-mail to, and about what. Unless they can. tregoweth writes "MSNBC has a story about one of the Northwest Airlines employees whose hard drives were searched by Northwest's lawyers, as previously mentioned on Slashdot. The last paragraph of the article is chilling. " It also makes you think about the significance of all those "give employees free computer" programs from Ford, et al.

Book larnin' on the cheap: carlos_benj writes "I ran across this site today and thought slashdotters who'd had their interests piqued by the ArsDigita free university subject might want to take a look. Their educational philosophy is interesting but may not appeal to those more interested in accreditation than the acquisition of knowledge. The concept would be a definite boon to those with little money but access to the net. The fact that they will be partnering with industry could lend weight to their degree programs to help offset the lack of accreditation. "

From the Mixed Up Files of James Bond And John LeCarre: SEWilco writes "Over at HNN they noticed that the latest UK military laptop theft included non-classified details of how the next generation of fighter aircraft can be controlled from the ground. Oops. Meanwhile, the US State Department says 16 laptops are missing, although only one had classified information -- but that's only one Department.

We discussed the possibilities of remote controlled warcraft earlier, but Her Royal Highness has not participated in the discussion nor have there been any demands from her laywers."

Remember Michael Chaney? He's the Nashville-based Linux consultant who saved Microsoft's Hotmail service from a Christmas 1999 outage by kindly paying a $35 NSI registration fee for them. Michael has always humbly maintained that this little act of bacon-saving was more of a Slashdot thing than a personal act on his part. Now, in the same spirit of generosity, Michael has some suggestions for the World's Largest Software Company about how to back gracefully away from its most recent attempt to keep its proprietary Kerberos Protocol extensions secret while still appearing to "publish" them.

On Microsoft, Kerberos, Slashdot, and Trade Secrets

A few months ago at an NLUG meeting, I jokingly asked a presenter to reveal his root password to the assemblage, adding "it's just us, we won't tell anybody." The "us" in this case referred to the 50 or so people in the room, and we had a chuckle while the presenter wisely decided against giving us his password.

The point of this story is something that we all know to be obvious: the level of secrecy afforded a piece of information by a recipient of that information is directly related to the way in which the secret piece of information is passed along. A password freely given to all in a user group meeting wouldn't be held in much confidence by the people present; they wouldn't really consider it a secret.

Likewise, it's difficult for anyone to consider a document to be a trade secret if it's posted on a website for anybody to freely download. Yet this is precisely the manner in which Microsoft is distributing their "Microsoft Authorization Data Specification v. 1.0 for Microsoft Windows 2000 Operating Systems," which we know is nothing more than a slightly modified version of Kerberos.

In a click-through (aka "ignorable") license, Microsoft states that their specification is "confidential information and a trade secret," and that "you must take reasonable security precautions... to keep the Specification confidential." Who, exactly, must I keep from knowing this "secret" information? Presumably someone without internet access.

Contrary to [what seems to be] popular opinion within Microsoft, they have nothing to lose from making their products compatible with existing standards. As a matter of fact, strict compatibility actually raises the value of all products, including those from Microsoft. Given that fact, it makes no sense for Microsoft to create an incompatible version of Kerberos. And if they do make an incompatible version of Kerberos, it makes even less sense to restrict access to documentation concerning your "extensions." (I can imagine a Microsoft internal memo: "Embracement achieved, on to step two.")

So the situation as it stands is that Microsoft has released a document that they're claiming is a trade secret and copyrighted, parts of it have been posted to Slashdot, and Microsoft is pulling out the DMCA to get those posts removed. Given that Microsoft has made the information freely available, I can't imagine what this can gain for them.

But I really take offense to the fact that they go a step farther and request that a link be removed, and that instructions on bypassing their goofy EULA be removed. First, we've had plenty of discussions on here about the dangers of sites being forced to remove links; specifically at what level do we decide that a chain of links is no longer offensive. If I link to the Slashdot article that links to an "Unauthorized Copy of the Specification," is that a "crime?" How about a link to a link to a link? At some level, I'm sure I could find a chain that I could follow from Microsoft's own website to the offending Slashdot post (for those of you who wish to try, search for "samba" on Microsoft's site, it'll link to www.samba.org, try to find Slashdot from there).

As for posts "Containing Instructions on How to Bypass the End User License Agreement and Extract the Specification," I'd like to see someone from Microsoft explain how that constitutes a copyright violation, as J.K. Weston has stated (under penalty of perjury, no less). Self-extracting zip files are nothing new, J.K. Weston, nor is the concept of using WinZip to extract their contents.

The most offensive part of this whole ordeal, though, is that it's just been five months since Slashdot bailed Microsoft out when Network Solutions mistakenly shut off the passport.com domain on Christmas Eve. How soon Microsoft forgets! If it wasn't for Slashdot, it's likely that Hotmail would have been down for another day or more after Christmas, and that surely would have been a bigger blow, in terms of PR, than a bunch of Linux advocates solving their problems for them.

It's my not so humble opinion that Microsoft is in the process of making yet another major PR blunder. The company is famous for them, and it couldn't come at a worse time than as the Justice Department is trying to get them split up for doing exactly what they're doing right now: changing the specifications of an open protocol to reduce interoperability with other products.

Here's my advice to Microsoft: drop the silly EULA and make your Specification freely available under the terms of the new GNU Free Documentation License, or something like it. You'll gain some PR points, which you desperately need. This provides you with a way out that allows you to save face.

And my advice to anyone who talks to the press regarding this issue: remind them that it was Slashdot that saved Hotmail over Christmas.

- Michael Chaney

Justin Mason writes "Raph Levien, Advogato builder, GNOME and Gimp hacker, and general graphics guru, has made 19 patents available for free use by GPLed programs." Raph adds: "I hope to see the dithering code used in free inkjet drivers soon." It's great to see that kind of commitment; if a few hundred more people did that, think where we'd be. On behalf of my BSD-lovin' friends, I asked Raph why the GPL specifically and how he felt about about other licenses; for his reply, "read more"...

Raph responded:

For now, I'm only intending for the grant to extend to the GPL. One particular hazard I want to avoid is a potential proprietary licensee for the patent simply creating a "libraphspatent.so" (or "RAPHPTNT.DLL") that's licensed under, say, the X license, and then linking to their proprietary code. That scenario neither compensates me for the patents nor does it particularly help the cause of free software.

That said, I'm not by any means a GPL bigot. I've released quite a bit of code under less restrictive licenses in cases where I've felt the use of the code is more important than the other goals the GPL promotes. I just didn't see a way to make this grant extend to these other licenses without creating a serious hazard. There are some other people working to create patent pools for the benefit of free software generally, and I'm happy to work with them in this direction.

The Advogato article has more details on the grant itself and discussion of the consequences.

Wombchimp asks: "For all of us who program in Java, the development kit is vital to do the slightest piece of coding. But I seriously doubt that there is one person who has not made some custom utility class to fill a void in the JDK. Why is there no real widely known organisation to collate and develop an add-on development kit which could fill this void and collect a database of useful utility classes? Most sites seem to offer full blown applications, but the odds are it took some useful assistant classes to build it. The closest I've managed to find is the Giant Java Tree, which isn't really organised enough to see if what you want has already been coded, and Gnu's Java Library, which doesn't really have enough. What do you think? Is there some site already filling this gap? Or is this idea a waste of time? "

Richard M. Stallman is not everybody's best friend, but in my opinion he is the most unwavering believer in the concept of free software there has ever been. Check gnu.org to learn more about RMS (as he is commonly known) and his many good works. Then post your questions below. We'll select 10-15 of the highest-moderated ones Tuesday afternoon (US EDT) and forward them to RMS by e-mail. His answers will appear within the next week or so.

Richard M. Stallman is not everybody's best friend, but in my opinion he is the most unwavering believer in the concept of free software there has ever been. Check gnu.org to learn more about RMS (as he is commonly known) and his many good works. Then post your questions below. We'll select 10-15 of the highest-moderated ones Tuesday afternoon (US EDT) and forward them to RMS by e-mail. His answers will appear within the next week or so.

Computers in education are a hot topic these days. Some colleges require students to have computers, and it's doubtful you could get through college today without at least rudimentary computer skills. Increasingly though, the question is whether computers in high school and even grade school are helpful or harmful. Half the world thinks every kid should have a computer in school, the other half thinks schools should concentrate on reading, 'riting, 'rithmetic, and reducing class sizes. A third half thinks both those first two halves are wrong. We're going to take a look at two proposals for portable computing devices in schools and ask for some input.

We'll start with the state of Maine, where the governor recently announced a program to provide portable computing devices to every public school student in Maine in seventh grade. The students would keep the devices after graduation. The specifications envision something that isn't a dumb terminal (thin client is the politically-correct name these days), yet isn't a full-fledged laptop either. They're looking to spend less than $500/device, and get something that runs all day without recharging, connects seamlessly via a wired or wireless LAN at schools or libraries, yet can dial-up from home, won't break when dropped, etc. Given my knowledge of the state of portable computing, their specifications look pretty optimistic for the dollars they want to spend.

A different approach is exemplified by a proposal before the New York City Board of Education, the largest educational district in the country. They plan to provide standard laptops at a discount to every student above the fourth grade. How to pay for the program? Simple: all students will be directed to and through a Web portal for all of their schoolwork, which will be loaded with kid-targeted advertising. Apparently representatives from IBM and Toshiba have been lobbying the school board for the last nine months to get this plan approved; a cynical observer would suggest that they plan to make a few bucks from the $billion or more that would be spent on this plan. What's the best way to keep deals like this from turning into boondoggles and pork-barrel projects? What's the best way to keep kids from being bombarded with Nike advertisements during algebra class?

Conventional wisdom is that commercial off-the-shelf equipment is the best deal. That may not be true in these situations. One commenter pointed out that a specially designed red-and-blue laptop adorned with a NYC logo or something similar would be the perfect theft protection -- since you couldn't sell it to anyone, it's not likely to be stolen.

Some companies are already angling for this market. The people at Netschools are selling a system complete with ruggedized, kidproof laptops. And their internet access is pre-censored; how nice. By press time, Netschools hadn't responded to me with cost information about their systems, but my guess is: not cheap. Not cheap at all.

So Slashdot the Forum is open. Are laptops useful in education? People have looked at this question before, it's even been discussed on Slashdot before, but the jury still seems to be out. What's needed, a proprietary device that downloads homework or a real laptop that can do anything? How much money should be spent? What sort of device can you get for X amount of money? How can you get a device cheap enough for everyone to have one but rugged enough that it doesn't break the first time you drop it? Schools, naturally, want completely closed devices which students can't alter in any way; subversive folks like me and Lord Finkle-McGraw would probably prefer devices which students can alter - and which the more creative, hackerish ones will. How can you avoid the situation presented in Right to Read, where the students don't have the root password to their computers?

"You yourself said that the engineers in the Bespoke department -- the very best -- had led interesting lives, rather than coming from the straight and narrow. Which implies a correlation, does it not?"

"Clearly."

"This implies, does it not, that in order to raise a generation of children who can reach their full potential, we must find a way to make their lives interesting. And the question I have for you, Mr. Hackworth, is this: Do you think that our schools accomplish that? Or are they like the schools that Wordsworth complained of?"

Big Gaute writes "The final version of the GNU FDL (1.1) is now out. It contains a number of changes from version 1.0; for instance there is now a mechanism to make sure that the good name of an author is not used to endorse modified versions unless they so wish. " This comes shortly on the heels of the GNU FDL 1.0.

Anonymous writes, "RMS sent this letter to Tim yesterday. His stand is that Amazon "fired the first shot", so they can't say they are only being defensive. The Amazon boycott stands, of course. " This is an extension of the recent Bezos-O'Reilly conversation.

Anonymous writes, "RMS sent this letter to Tim yesterday. His stand is that Amazon "fired the first shot", so they can't say they are only being defensive. The Amazon boycott stands, of course. " This is an extension of the recent Bezos-O'Reilly conversation.

Bananenrepublik writes "The GNU Project has released the GNU Free Documentation License. It is meant 'to assure everyone the effective freedom to copy and redistribute it [the documentation], with or without modifying it, either commercially or noncommercially.'"

Bananenrepublik writes "The GNU Project has released the GNU Free Documentation License. It is meant 'to assure everyone the effective freedom to copy and redistribute it [the documentation], with or without modifying it, either commercially or noncommercially.'"

As Linux trade shows appear on the schedule, there's only one sure bet. The community will be attending in full force, and the amount of corporate money being thrown into these shindigs will consistently climb. While companies vie to present their finest hardware, software and hype to the public, organizations that provide Linux community spirit make an effort to collect charitable contributions to keep the spirit of Open Source and Free Software alive.

In a community that champions the freedom of software and super-low-cost solutions, money is scarce. Without a big PR and marketing budget to back them up, travel arrangements and sleeping accommodations are paid for by the same people who donate countless hours making Linux a better environment to work and play in. The guy that makes $7 an hour at his tech support job and codes Linux device drivers at night is most likely paying his own way.

The LinuxWorld Conference and Expo in New York City was the largest Linux trade show to date. With a massive show floor and big-name exhibitors, you could almost hear the money change hands. On the other side of the cash fence, the .org pavilion was filled with bleary-eyed developers fighting with machines, trying to get their latest nifty gadget to compile. Some of the exhibitors in the .org pavilion had a bowl out to accept donations from the public, who they've invited in to their community. The fact that the .org pavilion gave these people a chance to shine is a big step in the right direction on behalf of the sponsors. The "if you build it, they will come" mentality is graciously accepted on behalf of the community, and they show up in droves to get great exposure for their work.

Donation cash seems to flow in the direction of the news of the day. While the DVD Copy Control Association barrels toward resolution on the distribution of the DeCSS code, conference folk emptied their pockets to help out the defendants in the case. At the Andover party at the China Club, Tucows Linux began accepting donations on behalf of the defendants to toss into the "DeCSS Legal Defense Fund." They collected $891 at that party, and Tucows matched them, bringing the total for the defense fund to $1,782. While they told everyone at the party that Tucows would double the cash, they had yet to clear it with Tucows President Elliot Noss. When they sheepishly approached Elliot after the party, Elliot was ecstatic and agreed to match the amount immediately. "This isn't about pirating movies but about engineering processes," he said, "Anything that stifles the people's ability to create is bad for consumers." Tucows cash aside, Linux kernel maintainer Alan Cox donated $10,000, exactly the amount of an award given to him by Slashdot earlier in the evening.

The Free Software Foundation is a well-known supporter of the Linux community. If it weren't for tools written for the GNU project or software distributed under the GPL license, Linux as we know it today would simply not exist. While the amount of money that was donated to the FSF last year is still in the hands of the auditors to be tallied and totalled, the FSF didn't add a lot to their coffers this last time out. The exact amount was not available at the time of this writing, but Leslie Proctor from the FSF assures me that it "wasn't enough to discuss."

On the other hand, Software in the Public Interest, Inc. received a decent amount at the show. SPI is a "blanket" non-profit organization devoted to helping out Open Source software projects, like Debian, GNOME and Berlin. Software in the Public Interest pulled down about $800 for the week, maybe a little bit more. I got the chance to talk to Darren Benham, treasurer for SPI, and I asked him how the donation at this show compared to other show they've attended. "I don't think there is a comparison. We only tracked donations at the last three Linux World Expos, and and they've been all over the map. The first one, we may have gotten two or 300 dollars total. At the last San Jose LinuxWorld Expo, we got closer to three thousand. The only way we collect money is by having something to offer. We had T-shirts at the LinuxWorld Expo in San Jose, we had some CD's at this one, and that's the only way we get any money at all from the expos." While being able to make money from donations is a great thing to continue the work, exposure is key. "We don't actually go to the expos to try and make money. We're there to get Debian out into the eyes of the public."

The first generation Internet promoted certain concepts of freedom that didn't exist elsewhere. This wasn't by accident. Internet protocols were designed to be open and accessible. As the Net enters its second generation, growing numbers worry whether it can stay as free. Net architecture becomes critical. Programmers are no longer technicians working on the margins, but are the principal designers of the world's most ascendant culture, the ones who will determine its future. So here's a series on that topic alternating between columns, your e-mail and your posts on Threads -- as long, short and useful a discussion as you want it to be.

Yo: This is the first of a series which will alternate between my columns and your responses. The talk will also go on in Threads. The duration of this topic can be as long - or as brief - as you want, entirely up to you. I'll post a column of representative e-mail responses. If you don't want to be quoted or ID'd, please say so in your messages.

For a generation of believers -- hackers, open-source programmers, MP3 and DVD adherents -- the Internet's most central ideology has been promoting a certain kind of freedom.

The Net has never been quite as accessible as many of its most passionate residents would like to believe. Many people can't afford it, others don't have the technological skills to use it well. Still, it is unquestionably freer than any other element of American culture.

In fact, the Net is so free it threatens, even traumatizes, institutions that have long clung to their prerogatives and to political and cultural power - journalism, industry, education, politics, the law, medicine.

This freedom is, to an enormous degree, a matter of accident and architecture rather than politics or ideology. The founders of the Net-a coalition of academics, engineers, early hackers and researchers - designed the Net and its protocols to be equally open to anyone with the right technology.

No medium had ever been designed so generously, casually or freely. In fact, the Net's architecture and protocols, as currently constructed and used, may be the most important model of free speech and equal access to information in history, certainly since the U.S. Constitution was adopted. (As a point of comparison, consider television, a medium intended to be open but quickly commercialized, and almost completely co-opted, by a handful of greedy media moguls, working the full co-operation of federal legislators and regulators.)

There is no Constitution for the Net, no bylaws or widely agreed-upon system or Constitution to protect widely agreed upon system to protect such rights as privacy, openness, and property.

Programmers are no longer technicians working at the margins of society. Like engineers before them, they are now, like it or not, among the principal architects of the world's most ascendant subculture. Issues like the Net's freedom, intellectual property and the flow of information and ideas rest in their hands, rather than in politicians or pundits.? The Net is well into its second generation, and it's changing.

Computing analysts and legal scholars increasingly believe that despite revolutionary advances like OS, the Net is moving away from its founders' vision. Although there's no single unifying architecture for cyberspace, the first-generation Internet more than fulfilled the early hackers insistence that information wants to be free. More information wants to be freer than anybody imagined.

But this has triggered growing political, cultural and economic conflicts, all likely to worsen in the coming years. Government is moving to establish Internet law, as in the Microsoft trial -- something it never bothered to do before. Companies battle to establish digital footholds. Media and cultural institutions - the media, Hollywood, Wall Street, the recording industry - demand legal measures to curb the Net's freedoms, fearing they undermine intellectual property, private content, and the marketing of products, information and culture, and the nature of capitalism itself.

Of course, almost almost everything about the Net, including the recent ascension of open source into a significant economic and cultural phenomenon, challenges the way hierarchical institutions have always operated. It has from the first. In the past few years, though, an entirely new kind of corporatist culture - shaped by behemoths like Microsoft and now AOL/Time-Warner - has come into being with resources, reach and power beyond any corporation before them.

These companies are all targeting the Internet as a primary source of profitability and growth. Not one of them - with the possible partial exception of IBM - has embraced or even flirted seriously with an open source model for doing business.

Microsoft, the inspiration and nearly-universal bete noir of the hacker/open source movement, is a stumbling giant now. But its legacy, Microsoftism, is thriving. It includes proprietary ideas about technology, a desire to dominate markets, a passion for mediocrity, an impulse to stifle individuality and competitive creativity. Call this new space The Corporate Internet, as an e-mailer named Gaeltact suggested.

Many of the architects of this evolving, second generation Internet come not from academe or engineering but from companies. They're beginning to build a different brand of architecture, focused on encryption, tracking software, closed spaces, patents and copyrights, and boundaries around intellectual property. The arrest of a Norwegian teenager for allegedly violating DVD software copyrights two weeks ago was a deliberately much-publicized warning, a symptom of these growing tensions. So are the recording industry's massively-funded efforts to develop powerful encryption technologies to thwart MP3 users and its growing legal confrontations with college and other music-dispensing Web sites. This is just a preview of many more conflicts to come.

Net and legal scholars like Harvard Law's Lawrence Lessig argue that the new architects will build in much greater levels of control. That is, in many cases, their mission. Traditional practices of capitalism and corporations depend on maintaining walls, on clearly-defined notions of content and property. The news on Slashdot, C-Net, Wired News and other techno-media, therefore, is increasingly about lawsuits, about efforts to stop the distribution of so-called intellectual property and block the spread of innovative software, about defining turf and collecting money.

Because so few non-geeks grasped the significance of the Internet early on, government officials, regulators, corporate executives and educators ignored it, allowing its architects and users to experiment and innovate. Now that everyone wants a piece of the action, the portents are troubling.

Education, journalism, business and politics are all highly constricted, not only by legal and economic concerns but by increasingly complex and volatile social pressures: the rise of a politically-correct ethos in public communications, encroachments on depictions of sex and violence. No newspaper will ever challenge the notion of God or challenge the fundamental structure of government and commerce.

In a sense, the architects of the Internet built a structure and space that enjoys a far stronger First Amendment that the framers of the Constitution provided (or that exists in most other countries, since the Net transcends the United States). As Lessig wrote, "Nations wake up to find that their telephone lines are tools of free expression, that e-mail carries news of their repression far beyond their borders, that images are no longer the monopoly of state-run television stations but can be transmitted from a simple modem."

Theoretical anonymity, de-centralized distribution, countless points of access, the sudden irrelevance of geography, sophisticated tools of encryption - these and other features of the Internet protocols made it virtually impossible to control speech on the Internet.

But Lessig adds, "there is no reason to believe that this initial flash of freedom will not be short-lived."

Lessig, along with high-tech journalists like Simson Garfinkel ("Database Nation: The Death of Privacy in the 21st Century," from O'Reilly), argues that new advances in technology, especially software, threaten both free speech and privacy. Marketers, medical institutions and insurers, and individual companies are gathering staggering amounts of data about individuals, students and employees.

This may shape up as one of the bitterest political struggles of the next generation, as an empowered army of technologically - advanced Netizens, programmers, geeks and nerds struggles to preserve privacy and the free nature of the Net, using tools most of us haven't begun to imagine. Some accessible examples of this experimental new architecture are weblogs (www.camworld.com); Slashdot's moderating sytem and Everything, a system (www.everything2.com) in which users can create nodes of information that link to one another -- almost like a neural communications system.

The issue really lies in the hands of the people who frequent sites like this one. Technology is volatile, fluid and inherently unpredictable. It often moves beyond technics and has broader social implications - Linux for example.

So this is an effort to talk about the second generation Internet. The idea, for anyone who wants to participate, is to begin to explore the kinds of ideas, software and hardware - the next generation of Internet architecture - that might preserve the original ideals and free nature of the Net and establish some broadly held rights and values.

This is virgin turf. As Lessig points out, the Net has taken conventional ideas about individual liberty and taken them farther than they've gone before. Some of the best guidelines might come from the recent and not so recent past. The GPL (General Public License: www.GNU.org), the open source programming license, has become a significant public document. This idea could be taken farther, and broadened. We could choose to do business only with sites and companies that subscribed to new understandings about freedom, openness and privacy.

Consider the ideas that predate primitive workstations with early computers. Or go back to the European cities of the eighteenth century. The philosophers of the Enlightenment undertook - without the means to communicate quickly with one another, let alone the rest of the world - a strangely relevant, eerily familiar program of secularism, humanity, and freedom. Their idea of freedom, as outlined by the historian Peter Gay, took a number of different forms: "freedom from arbitary power, freedom of speech, freedom of trade, freedom to realize one's talents, freedom of aesthetic response, freedom, in a word, of moral man to make his own way in the world." The Enlightenment took as its motto Emmanuel Kant's at-the-time radical "Sapere Aude" - Dare to Know. It's a shame none of them got to see the Net. Thomas Jefferson wrote passionately about a new kind of democratic culture in which ideas moved freely all over the globe. Ironically, many of these visions have come to life on the Net more powerfully than anywhere else.

This kind of discussion has at least two dimensions: First, what rights and freedoms to people want to preserve? And second, what kind of architecture - software and hardware -can do for this Internet generation what the Net protocols did for the last one?

The boundaries, length and nature of this discussion are up to you. You can take these starting points or reject them, add your own, change course, flame away, or ignore the conversation completely, in which case it will automatically vanish. Part two will be a representative sampling of e-mail, and of course, the conversation continues below on Threads.

Roger_Wilco writes "The GNU Web site is announcing that Spacetime Systems will now install GNU/Hurd as well as GNU/Linux. Hurd is Object Oriented, unlike Linux, so it may be a superior system in the long run."

Anonymous Coward writes "Space-Time Systems in Malvern, England, is now offering computers with GNU/Hurd pre-installed in parallell with the Debian GNU/Linux system. Please see this page for more information." Warning: the Space-Time Systems site loaded slowly when I checked it this morning. You may want to use the (slightly out-of-date) Google cached version for the moment.

Myddrin asks: "Recently there has been lot of discussion of databases, and who owns them. The US either is considering or passed a law saying a Database(and info contained there-in) is owned by the creating person/company. [I honestly can't remember.] At anyrate, this got me thinking of a the (possible) need for Database GPL (DGPL). Basically the same as the LGPL, but adding that the database host (i.e. the owner of the server hosting the specific instance of the db) can put restrictions on access allowing them to offset the cost of hosting the machine (administration, i'net connection, etc)." Any data in a database is content, just like information on a web page. Maybe an Open Content License might be a better idea? Thoughts? (More)

"...Examples of acceptable restrictions would be:

1. any program accessing this database must display the advert. provided,
2. a cost of $.000000001 per record returned
3. a nominal monthly subscription fee...

something like that. Very similar to the part of the (L)GPL that says you can charge a nominal fee for the materials of distrubution. The idea is that several competing servers could be set up, with multiple competing open and closed source clients running against it.

Is there a license that allows this kind of thing, or should I be working on one? "

apsmith wrote in wondering what software makers (like Microsoft) will be doing with their software versioning now that we've passed the year 2000 milestone. It's a humorous look at software versioning and it poses some interesting questions. What do you do when you cease using a sensible versioning system in favor of marketing hype (ala "Windows 2000")? Click below for the full text.

apsmith asks: "As I just heard that Microsoft is naming the next version of its database SQL Server 2000 it got me wondering - what happens to all these software products with big "version numbers" in a couple of years when 2000 seems like ancient history? Will we see more factor-of-20 leaps to Office 65535, Windows 1048575, etc? Merely modifying the fourth digit of the version number seems too insignificant to make upgrading seem worth the hassle - does Windows 2008 catch your eye any differently than Windows 2005?

It's not just Microsoft products that seem to have written themselves into a corner with high version numbers, though they are probably the worst. But even Emacs is up to version 20. Sun pushed Solaris from 2.6 to 7. RedHat at 6.1 is somehow way beyond the Linux kernel. At the other extreme is the model that Donald Knuth took for TeX, with the version numbers slowly approaching Pi (the latest teTeX distribution has TeX version 3.14159) but TeX hasn't changed much in the last 10 years either, so a lot of extra pieces have evolved around it to keep it functional.

In the real non-hyped world it seems any version number over 5 or 6 implies it's about time to switch to a new product or start over from scratch. There are countless examples - from recent history think of libc6 -> glibc2 (a bit of a mess there), HTML 5 -> XHTML, or perhaps even Netscape 5 -> Mozilla. Or is that just a geek's view of the universe? How should we be numbering our products these days? And what is Microsoft going to do after 2000? "

Every year I pick a new years resolution and ever year it doesn't come true. This year I've opted to set my sights low so I can greatly increase the chance of suceeding for once. This year my resolution is to continue converting oxygen into carbon dioxide. Read on to learn what resolutions RMS, ESR, Jon Katz, CowboyNeal, Mandrake and others have for the year 2000.

Jason Haas from LinuxPPC has the following resolutions: "248x768 @ 85 Hz, Merge my world domination plans with Linus's tree, Kawasaka W650:It will be mine (a Virago would be ok), Restart akido, and mv competition to /dev/null

Jon Katz , Slashdot's favorite gasbag says " I wish for Walt Disney to thaw himself out, climb out of his Cryogenimatronic Vault, show up at Walt Disney World and wreak havoc on the corporate weenies who desecrated EPCOT, his model city of tomorrow. Maybe join with the Seattle protesters and touch off a war against corporatist weenies everywhere. "

Emmett Plant is the latest editorial addition to the Slashdot Authors roster. His resolution is "to start a company called 'EmmettLinux,' which will be responsible for creating no product whatsoever. We will employ a highly-paid staff of fifty people who will show up every day and start throwing money into a furnace. I hope to IPO by March and use the cash to hire 2,000 more moneyburners and open an office in Hong Kong. I will leave soon after, selling all of my stock and retiring to the Bahamas."

Chris J. DiBona , Linux Community Evangelist for VA Linux Systems, President of SVLUG, and Grant Chair for LI, has resolved the following: ".Sleep is high on my list, but I really just like to have more time to read, this year has been pretty hard-core. I'd also like to spend more time learning power supply electronics, dc-dc transformers and such. I'm already pretty good with the digital side of things, but this is a big gap in my knowledge. Can I give more than two? I'd also like a puppy. A puppy with an X10 Cam mounted on its collar so I can put a "puppy cam" online."

Rusty Russell , kernel hacker and mad genius wishes to Learn to cook. Or trade kernel code for food. Or buy a fire extinguisher.

Eric S. Raymond is perhaps better known simply as esr... and if you don't know who he is, well, ouch. He resolves to " Catch up with my email and cut down on my traveling. It's nice to be needed, but 50% time on the road is getting ridiculous..."

Raster aka "That Enlightenment Guy" who is the only living person with more typos than me resolves simply to use procmail to allow more sleep time.

Mandrake resolves "I really need to start taking better care of my body. I haven't really worked out in about a year - and I eat too much garbage (junk food / fast food), and I REALLY need to stop drinking coke. I go through 2liters like most people drink cans of coke. I don't think it'll happen any time soon - but hopefully I'll at least be a little healthier by the end of the year."

Trae McCombs , aka X, aka MC, aka 'That Linux.com guy' resolves to "Learn to eat more foods, Incorporate working out into my lifestyle, Work less than 14hrs a day, Be kinder to others, Listen more, Talk less, Learn to code, Read more, Keep true to my ideals..."

Scott Draeker , the President of Loki Entertainment Software resolves to release a first tier Linux game which is not available for windows. Hard to argue with that one.

Kurt DeMaagd , aka The Pope, aka Rob's Roommate and the BSI number cruncher has the following:

1. Combat bimetallism and establish the gold standard for currency.
2. Negotiate the DeMaagd-Hay-Pauncefote treaty, allowing the U.S. to unilaterally construct an isthmian canal.
3. Establish an American protectorate in Cuba.
4. Suppress the Boxer uprising.

Mind you if you look closely at Kurt's resolutions, you might notice that they look strikingly similiar to President William McKinley's adminstration's high points. I'm going to have to up kurts medication.

Illiad , creator of the ever popular User Friendly comic strip says "I resolve to only take responsibility for those choices that I have control over. That means I have to give up on the idea of educating the technically-resistant, the doublespeak-inclined, and the village idiot."

Richard M. Stallman , founder of the Free Software Founding and the GNU Project gave us suggested resolutions for Slashdot readers: They are 1. Do not install any non-free software your computers and 2. Do not buy from Amazon until they stop using software patents for aggression.

CowboyNeal , the man, the myth, the legend. The guy who responds when users can't figure out how to login. The guy who maintains the slashboxes. And the guy who inhabitants the living room in the Geek Compound, resolves that he shall "Shower Every Week, whether I needs it or not." All of the co-workers in this office who have orafactory functionality thank him. It doesn't matter to me much either way.

Jim Jagielski , aka jimjag or jim@apache.org or jim@jaguNET.com, resolves to call sleep(28800) a lot more often.

Nitrozac is the creator of After Y2k... which as best as I can tell means she's about to work herself out of a job. But regardless she says "If civilization manages to hold on to its tenuous existence, I'd like to find a cure for Agalmatophilia, and have others join me to rid the world of this illness that causes so much needless suffering. If civilization crumbles, my Post-Apocalypse Resolution is to learn how to do 16-bead graphics on my abacus, so I can continue the comic. ;-)"

And finally (thank god because my wrists are tired) is Jeff "Hemos" Bates , a man who needs no introduction (but he does need a solid smack to the head).He says "With the coming of El Ano Neuvo, I resolve that I'm going to continue my battle against the dread forces of The Krull Invasion. I think that I might also try to learn some grammar. Per'aps. And maybe I'll learn how to spell a few more words as well".

Jacob Javits Convention Center, Manhattan,NY Tonight the Free Software Foundation gave out its Second Annual Award for the Advancement of Free Software. The nominees were introduced by our own CmdrTaco, fetchingly clad in a light blue plaid shirt. The awards themseleves were presentd by Richard M. Stallman, who wore a wonderfully fuzzy, warm-looking red, white, grey, and blue sweater. (More below)

The awards were given out in conjunction with theBazar, a gathering of Open Source experts, boosters, and devotees featuring a number of tutorials on assorted Open Source and GNU/Linux-related topics.

Last year's Award for the Advancement of Free Software went to PERL-meister Larry Wall. This year the three finalists were Donald Knuth, John Gilmore, and Miguel de Icaza.

And the winner was (drum roll please) Miguel de Icaza!

Miguel lent the proceedings a moment of extra drama by arriving - literally - at the second his name was announced, right after RMS said he was not there and could not, therefore, be expected to make a speech. But there he was, and the speech was both brief and charming.

A surprise award was also given to Blockstackers, which has donated a significant amount of money to the Free Software Foundation. This award was accepted by a shocked - and literally blushing - Rob Malda.

We join the Free Software Foundation in congratulating Miguel de Icaza.

See pictures of the award ceromony and participants here.

Jacob Javits Convention Center, Manhattan,NY Tonight the Free Software Foundation gave out its Second Annual Award for the Advancement of Free Software. The nominees were introduced by our own CmdrTaco, fetchingly clad in a light blue plaid shirt. The awards themseleves were presentd by Richard M. Stallman, who wore a wonderfully fuzzy, warm-looking red, white, grey, and blue sweater. (More below)

The awards were given out in conjunction with theBazar, a gathering of Open Source experts, boosters, and devotees featuring a number of tutorials on assorted Open Source and GNU/Linux-related topics.

Last year's Award for the Advancement of Free Software went to PERL-meister Larry Wall. This year the three finalists were Donald Knuth, John Gilmore, and Miguel de Icaza.

And the winner was (drum roll please) Miguel de Icaza!

Miguel lent the proceedings a moment of extra drama by arriving - literally - at the second his name was announced, right after RMS said he was not there and could not, therefore, be expected to make a speech. But there he was, and the speech was both brief and charming.

A surprise award was also given to Blockstackers, which has donated a significant amount of money to the Free Software Foundation. This award was accepted by a shocked - and literally blushing - Rob Malda.

We join the Free Software Foundation in congratulating Miguel de Icaza.

See pictures of the award ceromony and participants here.

Leslie Proctor writes "The Second Free Software Foundation Awards will be held in New York at theBazaar Tuesday, December 14th at 7pm. Finalists for the award, honoring advancement of free software, are: John Gilmore, Miguel de Icaza and Donald Knuth." We ought to have a short report on the ceremony (and who won) up shortly after the event; CmdrTaco, Hemos, and I are all here in NYC, laptops in hand.

Matt Braithwaite writes "Answering RMS's call for free documentation, Karl Fogel has written a book on CVS that is free (GPLed) and available online. (The paper version has additional non-free material.) " Also, edinator wrote to say that ORA has put the Using Samba text online. Some old news there, but, hey, some light figure for after eating turkey.

The original concept of free, Open Source software was that of programmers writing software they wanted for themselves and sharing it with their peers like poets writing work that only other poets would ever read. Now Open Source and free software are getting major attention. There is suddenly an adoring public out there beyond the footlights. And the presence of this audience is changing the entire Open Source "movement." (more below)

Coming Out of the Programming Closet
I remember the first time I suggested an improvement to a piece of free, Open Source software. The testy response I got was, "Learn to program and do it yourself." This attitude was similar to that displayed by what I call "academic writers," whose fiction and poetry is so obscure that no one reads it except other academics.

But in the last few years, I've noticed a slow change in attitude among the Open Source and free software developers I know personally. More and more of them seem to be thinking in terms of writing software that is useful to others, not just what they want for themselves.

There is nothing wrong with this. Artists need audiences. So do techies. Sure, it's nice to write a "deep" piece of fiction that only top-rung English professors will appreciate, but it's also nice to write something that a whole bunch of people will read and understand, and perhaps even write you a letter or e-mail now and then that says "Thanks. Nice work."

Playing an instrument, reading a poem or performing a dramatic work on a stage in a theater full of adoring fans is certainly more gratifying than doing it alone, in private, or strictly in front of other musicians or actors.

Let's not veer off into the skeptical-but-valid "Is programming really an art?" question. Let's just say that it is a skill that takes both talent and practice, and that not everyone can do it well. In this way, if no other, it is similar to acting, singing, and other performing arts. And there is no reason talented programmers shouldn't get the same level of recognition as talented actors and musicians.

Will Success Spoil Rock Codeson?
It depends on what you call "success." By monetary standards, Bill Gates is more "successful" than Alan Cox a million times over. But I know who I'd rather invite over for a beer, and I'm sorry, Bill, it's not you. I can also think of dozens of actors and musicians whose work I think is wonderful, but who have never been (and may never be) nearly as famous or rich as others for whom I have no respect.

To go back to the theatrical metaphor, there are plenty of marvelous shows that run for months in off-Broadway and off-off-Broadway theaters without taking in one percent of what a big-time musical like Cats can earn on a single weekend night. But the small theatrical productions often have better acting than what you see in the "major" shows. The music is often more interesting. Scripts in low-budget shows are often far superior to the blanded-down words used in productions with millions of dollars invested in them, that have been tested and revised in so many out-of-town tryouts that somuch life has been squeezed out of them that all they have to offer is glitz and glitter with little or no underlying value. The soul of theater, if you will, is in people working out on the edge, going beyond the norm, thinking with their hearts instead of reading market research studies and holding "focus group" sessions with audience members.

There is beauty in putting your heart into a creation, and there is beauty in watching others respond to that creation. Whether that creation is a song or a piece of code hardly matters; the "click" that comes from connecting with an audience can and should be there in either case. Actors generally recognize this, which is why there are dozens of small stage theaters in and around Los Angeles where screen actors perform - almost always unpaid - works that would never make it onto TV or into movie theaters. There is commercial success, and there is satisfaction. The two are not always the same.

Most of the "free software" writers I know make their livings writing commercial software or from some sort of programming-related consulting. But, like auto mechanics who build race cars on weekends for fun, when they go home they work on projects of their own choosing.

Mechanics who prove their creds on the racetrack always have their pick of the best "shop" jobs. Actors who get good reviews in small stage productions tend to get steady work in movies and TV. And a programmer who has gained recognition by doing excellent free software development is likely to have his or her pick of jobs. In this sense, fame gained by writing free software has direct financial value, and if it is widely-used software, not something that will be used only by a few other programmers, that value is increased substantially.

Building a Portfolio
When an actor, musician or writer goes looking for a job, he or she is expected to show potential employers or freelance clients samples of previous performed or published work. If that work has been performed or published to great public acclaim, so much the better.

Right now, programmers, like auto mechanics, are in short supply. A resume that says you have worked for So-and-So inc. for X amount of time, and have experience with Y language (or for the mechanic, on Z make of car) will get you in the door and will probably land you a decent job. And if you're satisfied with that, fine. The world needs ordinary grunt-work coders and ordinary "do brake jobs all day" mechanics. But in either field, the plum jobs go to those who can point to extraordinary individual accomplishments.

For the mechanic, the best proof of accomplishment has traditionally been the winning race car. For the programmer, the stellar proof of personal accomplishment is a popular piece of free software.

Look at Miguel de Icaza. A few years ago he was an obscure listing in the Linux Source, best known for his work on Midnight Commander. Today he's running a well-financed startup, and I'm sure he didn't have to look very hard for backers. But his work on Midnight Commander and other free software projects, even before Gnome made him famous, was more than enough to guarantee him not only an excellent living as a programmer, but complete freedom from "industrial-style" code writing for the rest of his life.

I suspect we'll see a lot more energetic, imaginative young programmers following in Miguel's footsteps instead of going into the highest-paying jobs they can find as soon as they can find them. Will some of them be doing this so that they can reap great financial rewards later? Of course! Not everyone can be a saint like Richard M. Stallman; Jean-loup Gailly, previously best-known as the principal author/maintainer of gzip, is now CTO of MandrakeSoft. And I'm sure there are countless others whose free software fame is getting them not only kudos but excellent salaries. And there's nothing wrong with that.

Passing Batons
We can sit around and cry about how free software developers are being "corrupted" by fame and money, but it's pointless. For one thing, just as the mechanic who gets promoted to shop foreman can still build race cars on his own time, and successful movie actresses often do unpaid stage acting on the side, there's no reason for people who use free software work as a springboard to fortune to give up their prior love. And many don't. They keep on doing what they always did, after work, on their own time. (And a few exceptionally lucky ones actually get to develop free software all day long for pay, but they're still a rare breed.)

But today's free software developers are not the be-all and end-all of the idea. Free software is starting to produce enough success stories that even if all of today's luminaries end up working for Microsoft, Adobe, and other big proprietary development houses within the next decade, plenty of new ones will come along, as hungry for applause as any group of talented young actors and singers.

And as more free software developers realize that by treating users as adoring fans - not as annoyances - they can earn even more applause, there will be more users. And more applause. And more developers. And if this upward spiral can become self-perpetuating, in a few years movie stars may be asking free software developers for their autographs instead of the other way around.

The original concept of free, Open Source software was that of programmers writing software they wanted for themselves and sharing it with their peers like poets writing work that only other poets would ever read. Now Open Source and free software are getting major attention. There is suddenly an adoring public out there beyond the footlights. And the presence of this audience is changing the entire Open Source "movement." (more below)

Coming Out of the Programming Closet
I remember the first time I suggested an improvement to a piece of free, Open Source software. The testy response I got was, "Learn to program and do it yourself." This attitude was similar to that displayed by what I call "academic writers," whose fiction and poetry is so obscure that no one reads it except other academics.

But in the last few years, I've noticed a slow change in attitude among the Open Source and free software developers I know personally. More and more of them seem to be thinking in terms of writing software that is useful to others, not just what they want for themselves.

There is nothing wrong with this. Artists need audiences. So do techies. Sure, it's nice to write a "deep" piece of fiction that only top-rung English professors will appreciate, but it's also nice to write something that a whole bunch of people will read and understand, and perhaps even write you a letter or e-mail now and then that says "Thanks. Nice work."

Playing an instrument, reading a poem or performing a dramatic work on a stage in a theater full of adoring fans is certainly more gratifying than doing it alone, in private, or strictly in front of other musicians or actors.

Let's not veer off into the skeptical-but-valid "Is programming really an art?" question. Let's just say that it is a skill that takes both talent and practice, and that not everyone can do it well. In this way, if no other, it is similar to acting, singing, and other performing arts. And there is no reason talented programmers shouldn't get the same level of recognition as talented actors and musicians.

Will Success Spoil Rock Codeson?
It depends on what you call "success." By monetary standards, Bill Gates is more "successful" than Alan Cox a million times over. But I know who I'd rather invite over for a beer, and I'm sorry, Bill, it's not you. I can also think of dozens of actors and musicians whose work I think is wonderful, but who have never been (and may never be) nearly as famous or rich as others for whom I have no respect.

To go back to the theatrical metaphor, there are plenty of marvelous shows that run for months in off-Broadway and off-off-Broadway theaters without taking in one percent of what a big-time musical like Cats can earn on a single weekend night. But the small theatrical productions often have better acting than what you see in the "major" shows. The music is often more interesting. Scripts in low-budget shows are often far superior to the blanded-down words used in productions with millions of dollars invested in them, that have been tested and revised in so many out-of-town tryouts that somuch life has been squeezed out of them that all they have to offer is glitz and glitter with little or no underlying value. The soul of theater, if you will, is in people working out on the edge, going beyond the norm, thinking with their hearts instead of reading market research studies and holding "focus group" sessions with audience members.

There is beauty in putting your heart into a creation, and there is beauty in watching others respond to that creation. Whether that creation is a song or a piece of code hardly matters; the "click" that comes from connecting with an audience can and should be there in either case. Actors generally recognize this, which is why there are dozens of small stage theaters in and around Los Angeles where screen actors perform - almost always unpaid - works that would never make it onto TV or into movie theaters. There is commercial success, and there is satisfaction. The two are not always the same.

Most of the "free software" writers I know make their livings writing commercial software or from some sort of programming-related consulting. But, like auto mechanics who build race cars on weekends for fun, when they go home they work on projects of their own choosing.

Mechanics who prove their creds on the racetrack always have their pick of the best "shop" jobs. Actors who get good reviews in small stage productions tend to get steady work in movies and TV. And a programmer who has gained recognition by doing excellent free software development is likely to have his or her pick of jobs. In this sense, fame gained by writing free software has direct financial value, and if it is widely-used software, not something that will be used only by a few other programmers, that value is increased substantially.

Building a Portfolio
When an actor, musician or writer goes looking for a job, he or she is expected to show potential employers or freelance clients samples of previous performed or published work. If that work has been performed or published to great public acclaim, so much the better.

Right now, programmers, like auto mechanics, are in short supply. A resume that says you have worked for So-and-So inc. for X amount of time, and have experience with Y language (or for the mechanic, on Z make of car) will get you in the door and will probably land you a decent job. And if you're satisfied with that, fine. The world needs ordinary grunt-work coders and ordinary "do brake jobs all day" mechanics. But in either field, the plum jobs go to those who can point to extraordinary individual accomplishments.

For the mechanic, the best proof of accomplishment has traditionally been the winning race car. For the programmer, the stellar proof of personal accomplishment is a popular piece of free software.

Look at Miguel de Icaza. A few years ago he was an obscure listing in the Linux Source, best known for his work on Midnight Commander. Today he's running a well-financed startup, and I'm sure he didn't have to look very hard for backers. But his work on Midnight Commander and other free software projects, even before Gnome made him famous, was more than enough to guarantee him not only an excellent living as a programmer, but complete freedom from "industrial-style" code writing for the rest of his life.

I suspect we'll see a lot more energetic, imaginative young programmers following in Miguel's footsteps instead of going into the highest-paying jobs they can find as soon as they can find them. Will some of them be doing this so that they can reap great financial rewards later? Of course! Not everyone can be a saint like Richard M. Stallman; Jean-loup Gailly, previously best-known as the principal author/maintainer of gzip, is now CTO of MandrakeSoft. And I'm sure there are countless others whose free software fame is getting them not only kudos but excellent salaries. And there's nothing wrong with that.

Passing Batons
We can sit around and cry about how free software developers are being "corrupted" by fame and money, but it's pointless. For one thing, just as the mechanic who gets promoted to shop foreman can still build race cars on his own time, and successful movie actresses often do unpaid stage acting on the side, there's no reason for people who use free software work as a springboard to fortune to give up their prior love. And many don't. They keep on doing what they always did, after work, on their own time. (And a few exceptionally lucky ones actually get to develop free software all day long for pay, but they're still a rare breed.)

But today's free software developers are not the be-all and end-all of the idea. Free software is starting to produce enough success stories that even if all of today's luminaries end up working for Microsoft, Adobe, and other big proprietary development houses within the next decade, plenty of new ones will come along, as hungry for applause as any group of talented young actors and singers.

And as more free software developers realize that by treating users as adoring fans - not as annoyances - they can earn even more applause, there will be more users. And more applause. And more developers. And if this upward spiral can become self-perpetuating, in a few years movie stars may be asking free software developers for their autographs instead of the other way around.

The original concept of free, Open Source software was that of programmers writing software they wanted for themselves and sharing it with their peers like poets writing work that only other poets would ever read. Now Open Source and free software are getting major attention. There is suddenly an adoring public out there beyond the footlights. And the presence of this audience is changing the entire Open Source "movement." (more below)

Coming Out of the Programming Closet
I remember the first time I suggested an improvement to a piece of free, Open Source software. The testy response I got was, "Learn to program and do it yourself." This attitude was similar to that displayed by what I call "academic writers," whose fiction and poetry is so obscure that no one reads it except other academics.

But in the last few years, I've noticed a slow change in attitude among the Open Source and free software developers I know personally. More and more of them seem to be thinking in terms of writing software that is useful to others, not just what they want for themselves.

There is nothing wrong with this. Artists need audiences. So do techies. Sure, it's nice to write a "deep" piece of fiction that only top-rung English professors will appreciate, but it's also nice to write something that a whole bunch of people will read and understand, and perhaps even write you a letter or e-mail now and then that says "Thanks. Nice work."

Playing an instrument, reading a poem or performing a dramatic work on a stage in a theater full of adoring fans is certainly more gratifying than doing it alone, in private, or strictly in front of other musicians or actors.

Let's not veer off into the skeptical-but-valid "Is programming really an art?" question. Let's just say that it is a skill that takes both talent and practice, and that not everyone can do it well. In this way, if no other, it is similar to acting, singing, and other performing arts. And there is no reason talented programmers shouldn't get the same level of recognition as talented actors and musicians.

Will Success Spoil Rock Codeson?
It depends on what you call "success." By monetary standards, Bill Gates is more "successful" than Alan Cox a million times over. But I know who I'd rather invite over for a beer, and I'm sorry, Bill, it's not you. I can also think of dozens of actors and musicians whose work I think is wonderful, but who have never been (and may never be) nearly as famous or rich as others for whom I have no respect.

To go back to the theatrical metaphor, there are plenty of marvelous shows that run for months in off-Broadway and off-off-Broadway theaters without taking in one percent of what a big-time musical like Cats can earn on a single weekend night. But the small theatrical productions often have better acting than what you see in the "major" shows. The music is often more interesting. Scripts in low-budget shows are often far superior to the blanded-down words used in productions with millions of dollars invested in them, that have been tested and revised in so many out-of-town tryouts that somuch life has been squeezed out of them that all they have to offer is glitz and glitter with little or no underlying value. The soul of theater, if you will, is in people working out on the edge, going beyond the norm, thinking with their hearts instead of reading market research studies and holding "focus group" sessions with audience members.

There is beauty in putting your heart into a creation, and there is beauty in watching others respond to that creation. Whether that creation is a song or a piece of code hardly matters; the "click" that comes from connecting with an audience can and should be there in either case. Actors generally recognize this, which is why there are dozens of small stage theaters in and around Los Angeles where screen actors perform - almost always unpaid - works that would never make it onto TV or into movie theaters. There is commercial success, and there is satisfaction. The two are not always the same.

Most of the "free software" writers I know make their livings writing commercial software or from some sort of programming-related consulting. But, like auto mechanics who build race cars on weekends for fun, when they go home they work on projects of their own choosing.

Mechanics who prove their creds on the racetrack always have their pick of the best "shop" jobs. Actors who get good reviews in small stage productions tend to get steady work in movies and TV. And a programmer who has gained recognition by doing excellent free software development is likely to have his or her pick of jobs. In this sense, fame gained by writing free software has direct financial value, and if it is widely-used software, not something that will be used only by a few other programmers, that value is increased substantially.

Building a Portfolio
When an actor, musician or writer goes looking for a job, he or she is expected to show potential employers or freelance clients samples of previous performed or published work. If that work has been performed or published to great public acclaim, so much the better.

Right now, programmers, like auto mechanics, are in short supply. A resume that says you have worked for So-and-So inc. for X amount of time, and have experience with Y language (or for the mechanic, on Z make of car) will get you in the door and will probably land you a decent job. And if you're satisfied with that, fine. The world needs ordinary grunt-work coders and ordinary "do brake jobs all day" mechanics. But in either field, the plum jobs go to those who can point to extraordinary individual accomplishments.

For the mechanic, the best proof of accomplishment has traditionally been the winning race car. For the programmer, the stellar proof of personal accomplishment is a popular piece of free software.

Look at Miguel de Icaza. A few years ago he was an obscure listing in the Linux Source, best known for his work on Midnight Commander. Today he's running a well-financed startup, and I'm sure he didn't have to look very hard for backers. But his work on Midnight Commander and other free software projects, even before Gnome made him famous, was more than enough to guarantee him not only an excellent living as a programmer, but complete freedom from "industrial-style" code writing for the rest of his life.

I suspect we'll see a lot more energetic, imaginative young programmers following in Miguel's footsteps instead of going into the highest-paying jobs they can find as soon as they can find them. Will some of them be doing this so that they can reap great financial rewards later? Of course! Not everyone can be a saint like Richard M. Stallman; Jean-loup Gailly, previously best-known as the principal author/maintainer of gzip, is now CTO of MandrakeSoft. And I'm sure there are countless others whose free software fame is getting them not only kudos but excellent salaries. And there's nothing wrong with that.

Passing Batons
We can sit around and cry about how free software developers are being "corrupted" by fame and money, but it's pointless. For one thing, just as the mechanic who gets promoted to shop foreman can still build race cars on his own time, and successful movie actresses often do unpaid stage acting on the side, there's no reason for people who use free software work as a springboard to fortune to give up their prior love. And many don't. They keep on doing what they always did, after work, on their own time. (And a few exceptionally lucky ones actually get to develop free software all day long for pay, but they're still a rare breed.)

But today's free software developers are not the be-all and end-all of the idea. Free software is starting to produce enough success stories that even if all of today's luminaries end up working for Microsoft, Adobe, and other big proprietary development houses within the next decade, plenty of new ones will come along, as hungry for applause as any group of talented young actors and singers.

And as more free software developers realize that by treating users as adoring fans - not as annoyances - they can earn even more applause, there will be more users. And more applause. And more developers. And if this upward spiral can become self-perpetuating, in a few years movie stars may be asking free software developers for their autographs instead of the other way around.

First submitted by piman, "The GNU Project opened an interesting programming humor page today (11/20/99). To quote: 'designed to provide some laughs to the working hackers'. Hey, I laughed." Some were "cute" :)

figlet writes "The Diamond Sutra is the 'World's Earliest Dated Printed Book.' It was discovered in China in 1907 and now resides at the British Library." The colophon reads: "Reverently [caused to be] made for universal free distribution by Wang Jie on behalf of his two parents on the 13th of the 4th moon of the 9th year of Xiantong. (May 11, 868 A.D.)" Apparently this was version 0.001 of the GPL.

Slashdot's received a lot of submissions about RIAA actions recently, and the actions of colleges taken after the RIAA sent them nasty letters. One of the interesting things about this is that the RIAA is apparently not listing any specific offenders, just sending general warnings to any and all colleges with computer networks. Under the Digital Millenium Copyright Act, copyright holders acquired several new rights, with the promise they wouldn't abuse them. They're abusing them. (More...)

A good example is a demand letter to a Swiss university, ETH Zurich, which demands that the school immediately terminate all web pages with illegal MP3 files (illegal is of course a judicial decision; the letter presumes that all MP3s are illegal); that the school provide names and home addresses of all students with MP3 files hosted on the school's servers; that the school provide the date that those MP3 files were first hosted (for every MP3 on every server); and that the school provide the IP address for every machine anywhere on the internet which downloaded a MP3 file from the school's servers.

The letter closes with a carrot: we'll adjust our monetary demands based on how well you comply with this letter. Better hope your IP address doesn't appear too many times in those web server logs.

We can probably assume that the demands to U.S. schools are much the same - far-reaching, extortionate letters which are not specific about any particular infringement alleged to be occurring, but which are intended nonetheless to scare the universities into cracking down on their students. The terms of the compromise of the Digital Millenium Copyright Act were that the RIAA and related groups would do the policing of their copyrights - if they found a specific file that they alleged was unlawfully infringing, they have a procedure to follow, specific information to provide about the specific infringing file, and the ISP (college or whatever) is supposed to "do their part" by deleting/removing said file if the paperwork is correct. ISPs and colleges are not supposed to do the grunt work themselves - that results in the kind of overbroad crackdowns that we've seen. This was the subject of specific negotiations during the process of creating this law.

But the RIAA, of course, would prefer that schools and ISPs do their cracking down for them. So they send these general scare letters, hoping to trigger a reaction.

Scare tactics work. Universities scan through student computers, trying passwords on protected directories. The new Rio players will incorporate all of the RIAA's desired protections against copying of MP3 files - the price of settling the RIAA's lawsuit. The next target is Napster.

RIAA will now be filing suit against Napster, an application which effectively functions like a single purpose IRC server, connecting people who want to share MP3 files, whether legally or not. (There's a linux port of Napster; better download it quick.) Some schools, like Oregon State University, are so scared they're blocking all access to Napster servers from school systems. In the ideal world, Napster should probably win - the RIAA could monitor their servers and demand that infringing users be eliminated, but the service equally provides people with an avenue to share legal MP3 files, and this significant non-infringing use is all that is needed under copyright law. The article I just linked to and a nice Wired story both show Napster feebly trying to insist on their duties under the DMCA, saying that the RIAA needs to tell them in writing about specific instances of infringement - but the RIAA doesn't care about the law.

Napster, of course, has no money to fight a lawsuit. This is exactly what happened to the Rio: they won in court, but since the RIAA planned to appeal the suit and drain more money out of Diamond Multimedia, they settled by promising that future Rio's would include the RIAA's copyright protections. Like the Dentist's extortion tactics in Cryptonomicon[1], RIAA lawsuits are equally powerful whether they are on solid legal grounds or not - Napster will lose this suit, whether they win or lose, because the RIAA can afford the money to fight it and Napster cannot. So presumably Napster and RIAA will come to some agreement, settle the lawsuit, and Napster's next generation will incorporate the RIAA's demanded copyright protection system.

Just remember, RIAA CEO Hilary Rosen says she loves the idea of Napster to build communities, "but not on the backs of huge mega-corporations with billions of dollars of revenue quarterly."[2]

The RIAA is hardly the only abuser. The Business Software Alliance, essentially a front group for protecting Microsoft's copyrights, does similar things with regard to "pirated" software. (What a PR genius it was who thought of describing all copying of software as piracy! Probably the same person behind the "cyber-squatter" label for anyone who owns a domain that a company covets.) The BSA is now raiding homes of people accused of copying software.

The idea behind copyright is to expand the amount of information available to the public by creating a government-mandated monopoly on reproducing it - for a limited time (28 years maximum, at the beginning - today the maximum copyright term could be over 150 years). Copyright has always has the inherent give-back to society - the work would pass out of protection, and then anyone could copy it and use it as they saw fit. But copyright is now essentially unlimited - over the last twenty years, the length of the copyright period has increased by forty years, so that essentially no materials produced since World War I have entered the public domain. In about 15-18 years, copyright holders will again be petitioning Congress to extend the copyright term, so that entities like Mickey Mouse never enter the public domain. The extension is now being challenged as unconstitutional, but the challengers lost in District Court and it's far from certain that this suit can succeed.

In today's world, it's customary to speak of copyright as some sort of innate right. It isn't. It's there for the betterment of society, but its functioning, today, contributes nothing to society - all it is is a government-sanctioned monopoly transferring money from your pocket to others, with nothing ever given back - and no possibility of give-backs until 2019, under current law.

We need to rethink copyright. It's not a fundamental right of corporations to receive a 95-year government monopoly. Businesses plan on a five-year cycle - if something isn't forecast to make a return on investment in five years, it doesn't get done. A five-year grant of copyright to corporate authors would serve just as well in promoting the development of new material, and would bring a tremendous amount of material into the public domain, which is copyright's true intent. With a much smaller amount of material actually under copyright, enforcement of it would be far simpler and more straightforward.

But naturally this would cost certain companies a lot of money - they're used to wallowing in their government-granted monopoly. Disney has made back their costs for creating Mickey Mouse billions of times over, but they're used to the cash flow now and would be willing to buy an entire Congress to protect it. The Digital Millenium Copyright Act was passed with the aid of a great deal of subterfuge, but most importantly, a great deal of campaign contributions. Now you can be a criminal not just for actually copying anything, but for making a "device" (hardware or software) which facilitates copying - we're talking five years in Federal prison. Imagine doing five years in Federal prison so that Congress can protect their campaign donations, errr, I mean, Disney's cash flow.

We're extremely close to the day when debuggers are illegal. Through threats, strategic campaign donations, and outright extortion practiced on upstart companies, copyright-holders like the RIAA are building copyright protection into the very infrastructure of computing.

Making changes in this system requires a fundamental commitment from the U.S. populace that it be changed. The commitment doesn't exist yet, but as more and more people experience the power of copyright to affect what they can and cannot publish online, and the abuses of the companies dedicated to protecting copyright beyond the terms of the increasingly-protective law, perhaps it will in the future.

Some slashdot readers will no doubt say, "Open source, you idiot!" Open source is a reaction to these problems, not a solution to them. Despite the open source phenomenon, the trend is toward more and more works being locked up, and locked up permanently, behind laws and cryptographic protocols. It shouldn't have to be a war between words, pictures and code that is always free to use and words, pictures and code that is locked up for all eternity - we should demand that the social contract envisioned in the Constitution be fulfilled by forcing copyright holders to give back to society, whether they want to or not.

-- Michael Sims

[1] Gratuitous Cryptonomicon reference provided free of charge.

[2] Quote may not reflect Rosen's exact words, but does reflect her intent.

Malcolm Spence wrote in to tell us that gnu.org has posted a list of nominees for their 1999 Free Software award. Includes lots of names you would expect and a few that maybe you wouldn't.

Malcolm Spence wrote in to tell us that gnu.org has posted a list of nominees for their 1999 Free Software award. Includes lots of names you would expect and a few that maybe you wouldn't.

LordXarph was skimming through the book "Microsoft Windows NT Network Administration" he came across a passage claiming that a strange piece of behavior under NT (it could be even called a bug) was due to its compliance to POSIX rules. Now I don't know whether the problem is true or not, but I was hoping someone well versed in NT and POSIX systems might answer his question instead. Click below for more.

"Ok, Whilst skimming through the book I came across the following passage:

PROBLEM: A user deletes a file, even though that user was assigned the No Access permission for the file.

In UNIX file systems, users who have the Write permission to a folder can delete files in the folder. Because Windows NT supports POSIX programs that are designed to run on UNIX file systems, the NTFS Full Control permission allows users to delete files in a folder even if the user has the No Access permission for the file.

(For those not versed in NT, "No Access" is a "special" permission that overrides everything if access conflicts arise. If a user attempts to access a folder, but any one of the groups he is a member of has No Access to the folder, it's Permission Denied no matter what his other permissions are) Now, first of all, I'm unfamiliar with POSIX, but as far as my memory serves, I can't think of ANY mode resembling No Access in any OS other than NT. Second, A friend of mine (who is somewhat more versed in Unix environments than I am) says that it sounds like NT's Full Control permission is similar to root, and, of course, why the hell would root be denied access to ANYTHING?"

Now this sounded fishy to me so I tried this on my Linux box, removing a directory called ".temp.dir" which had some random contents I had floating in my home directory. The results were as expected:

rm: .temp.dir: Permission denied
rm: .temp.dir: Directory not empty

I'm using fileutils v3.16, but I'm sure this behavior dates back earlier than this version.

So can someone clarify this. Does POSIX actually have this behavior, or is this actually a bug in NT?

Andy Tai writes "From the GNU website, the Free Software Foundation is asking for nominations for the 1999 Free Software Award. Nominations are due October 8. Richard Stallman, Linus Torvalds and Larry Wall are not eligible since they have been already awarded. More information can be found on this page. "

Andy Tai writes "From the GNU website, the Free Software Foundation is asking for nominations for the 1999 Free Software Award. Nominations are due October 8. Richard Stallman, Linus Torvalds and Larry Wall are not eligible since they have been already awarded. More information can be found on this page. "

z4ce wrote in to say that the GNU project is hiring if you were thinking to yourself "Self, I have too much spare time". They're looking for a sysadmin in the Boston area.