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The LGPL allows both static and dynamic linking. But if they're statically linked, as you said, Sony would have to distribute the source code (of the libraries). Putting aside the issue of copyright infringement, their use of Lame could still wind up hurting them. Take a look at section 6 of the LGPL:

"As an exception to the Sections above, you may also combine or link a "work that uses the Library" with the Library to produce a work containing portions of the Library, and distribute that work under terms of your choice, provided that the terms permit modification of the work for the customer's own use and reverse engineering for debugging such modifications."

IANAL, but the above seems pretty self-explanatory--if they did statically link with Lame, they may have unknowingly signed away some of their DMCA "rights". At least, this would appear to put the folks who reverse-engineered the damned thing in the clear

Is there some license issue that's driving the KDE issue?

KDE is built on QT, a C++ framework released under the GNU General Public License (GPL), a free software license that has strong copyleft (forced sharing) protections meant to ensure that derivative code stays free.

Some corporations are raising hell against QT and KDE because the corporations want to make proprietary, non-free, closed-source software on the QT framework without compensating the makers of QT. Of course, those same corporations don't have to pay anything if their applications are free and open source. In this way, QT is actually encouraging companies to give back to the community, something beneficial for users as a whole.

Debunking KDE Myths does a good job disproving the FUD against KDE and QT.

Is there some license issue that's driving the KDE issue?

KDE is built on QT, a C++ framework released under the GNU General Public License (GPL), a free software license that has strong copyleft (forced sharing) protections meant to ensure that derivative code stays free.

Some corporations are raising hell against QT and KDE because the corporations want to make proprietary, non-free, closed-source software on the QT framework without compensating the makers of QT. Of course, those same corporations don't have to pay anything if their applications are free and open source. In this way, QT is actually encouraging companies to give back to the community, something beneficial for users as a whole.

Debunking KDE Myths does a good job disproving the FUD against KDE and QT.

A nice benefit of Apple's gcc is that it has supported Objective-C++ since Mac OS X 10.1. Unfortunately, I think that non-Apple versions of gcc cannot yet compile Objective-C++. Although it looks like support might be planned for gcc 4.1. Still, Objective-C code will need to be factored away from code that might require compiling with some compilers.

How can I write portable versions of Mac OS X apps when the Cocoa API doesn't exist outside of Mac OS X (don't tell me about YellowBox or what-have-you) and the language Objective C isn't supported outside of Mac OS X (Apple is killing off Cocoa's Java support)? Oh, and the Carbon API doesn't exist outside of Mac OS X either (but at least it uses a widely supported language). You mentioned a software company in the Northwest US, but what about the one in Cupertino? Apps written to their platform are no more portable than Windows apps.

The Cocoa API is semi-complete as part of GNUstep. GCC has built-in support for Objective-C.

As far a Carbon is concerned, for some time now I have been interested in statring a project to re-implement that API in a more open manner so that you could use the Carbon API under GNU/Linux or some other operating system. I just haven't had the time to give it much effort.

Besides that, apps that aren't able to take advantave of the underlying platform's unique features aren't sellable.

On this point I agree 100%. Most "portable" applications are lowest common denominator and support only the small subset of functionallity that is avaliable on all of the platforms and this makes for what is often an unpleasant experience.

It wasn't a post from RMS it was a post from you. I was asserting that you were conflating the words "open source" and the OSI (which continued to do in the parent to this post). As for RMS http://www.gnu.org/philosophy/free-software-for-fr eedom.html. Note in particular:

1) He talks about the "open source movement" not about open source

As for IBM if you agree that IBM had open source software that what are you disagreeing with? That they used the term? Go to www.share.org the IBM users group (1955).

As for software written in the name of the movement this goes back to the old GNU/Linux debate. TeX, X, most shells, most window managers, etc... were not explicitly written as part of the GNU movement; and may have had goals hostile to GNU. KDE for example uses the LGPL/GPL but has had a long history of hostile relations with RMS. Linus uses the GPL but considers himself part of the open source movement (he works for OSDL and is on the board of OSI). Apache explicitly rejected the GNU goals. That's why the mainstream business press rejects RMS's description of this as "free software", rather what is in common is a belief in code sharing and community.

GNU has nothing to do with open source. The GNU Project predates the open source movement by over a decade and started the free software movement, a movement with a different philosophy than the open source movement. RMS has spent a lot of time in his talks and essays explaining that the work he has done for the past two decades was not done in the name of open source.

One particular example of this came up recently. Lots of people miscredit GCC, the GNU Compiler Collection, as an "open source" compiler. RMS, the initial author of GCC, has said quite clearly that GCC is a free software compiler. RMS gently but forthrightly corrected CNet.com writer Stephen Shankland on this issue, but Shankland still got it wrong a few months later. Hopefully CNet can bring themselves to mention the phrase "free software" in the proper context as often as they mention "open source" in the proper context.

GNU has nothing to do with open source. The GNU Project predates the open source movement by over a decade and started the free software movement, a movement with a different philosophy than the open source movement. RMS has spent a lot of time in his talks and essays explaining that the work he has done for the past two decades was not done in the name of open source.

One particular example of this came up recently. Lots of people miscredit GCC, the GNU Compiler Collection, as an "open source" compiler. RMS, the initial author of GCC, has said quite clearly that GCC is a free software compiler. RMS gently but forthrightly corrected CNet.com writer Stephen Shankland on this issue, but Shankland still got it wrong a few months later. Hopefully CNet can bring themselves to mention the phrase "free software" in the proper context as often as they mention "open source" in the proper context.

The open source movement has made their name quite popular but I doubt you'll be able to find people who understand what it actually means. The FSF wrote about this in their essay on the differences between the two movements.

This is why we have the GNU to uphold the fundamental ideals of our movement, but to whom we strike a spake in the heart everytime we say 'open-source', betraying our truths for a term that is merely a buzzword to industry, who have little concept of what it means.

The http://www.gnu.org/philosophy/free-software-for-fr eedom.html article is a good one explaining why we shouldn't use "open-source" in stubborness, but appreciate our freedoms 0 through 3.

one shouldnt wonder why slashdot is trolling... I am surprised that noone has pointed out that these problems occur more frequently with O_pen S_ource than F_ree S_oftware:
http://www.gnu.org/philosophy/free-software-for-fr eedom.html

You're going to have to do more than that to compete with GNU Hello...

KDE is simply is not going to happen as a mainstream commercial desktop as long as Qt is available only under the GPL

QT is licensed GPL. The GPL is the best Free Software license because it contains strong copyleft provisions that require derivative works to also be Free and Open Source. This is in the interest of users (like me) so I have absolutely no problems with QT or anything else licensed under the GPL.

Why exactly do you care about proprietary, closed source, non-free software anyway? So you can lock users in your product, prevent them from making modifications, restrict their rights, control what they can and can't do with their computers? Proprietary software is immoral, and if that's what you're developing, then you SHOULD be penalized by having to pay licensing fees.

KDE is simply is not going to happen as a mainstream commercial desktop as long as Qt is available only under the GPL

QT is licensed GPL. The GPL is the best Free Software license because it contains strong copyleft provisions that require derivative works to also be Free and Open Source. This is in the interest of users (like me) so I have absolutely no problems with QT or anything else licensed under the GPL.

Why exactly do you care about proprietary, closed source, non-free software anyway? So you can lock users in your product, prevent them from making modifications, restrict their rights, control what they can and can't do with their computers? Proprietary software is immoral, and if that's what you're developing, then you SHOULD be penalized by having to pay licensing fees.

Your post is rightfully moderated as flamebait, but since your history is wrong I'll try to correct your misunderstanding: the open source movement started over a decade after the free software movement did (the GNU Project, which started the free software movement, began in 1984; the Open Source Initiative, which started the open source movement, began in 1997). So, if there's any "parasitic hijacking" going on, it would have to be the open source movement's doing.

The Free Software Foundation, not the OSI, writes the most important and popular licenses in the free software community—most notably the GNU General Public License, but also the GNU Lesser General Public License, and the GNU Free Documentation License. If these licenses are "open source" licenses at all it is only because they happen to meet the Open Source Definition. Merely complying with a set of terms is nothing compared to writing the licenses and building a community. But these licenses were all written explicitly to pursue software freedom (as the language of all of these licenses make abundantly clear). In fact, both released versions of the GPL were written before there was an open source movement. Software freedom for users is a framing of ethical issues which the open source movement doesn't engage in.

But I prefer to think of the two movements having different philosophies and understand the philosophies for what they are. This way I can better understand the choices the organizations that define the terms "free software" and "open source" make and place them in historical context.

True, pity that more people like Debian did not buy RMS's argument against the LGPL. I wonder if he himself does in the case of KDE!

KDE developers are from Germany, and SuSE is (was), too; Gnome, on the other hand, is pretty much a US development

How could you think that? Just because all the major US based distros prefer Gnome, the remaining major European distro (Mandriva) prefers KDE, and SuSE preferred KDE as long as it was European owned and switched shortly after becoming US owned!

Ubuntu, wwith South African ownership, seems to be making a genuine effort to make both KDE and Gnome work well - I use Kubuntu myself.

A disclaimer: I am a Unisys employee.

Unisys is definitely making a move towards widespread adoption of Linux (Red Hat and SuSE) as a development platform, and various other open source development tools (eg, Maven, Eclipse, various parts of Apache Commons, etc). Regardless of current marketing hype from Blackmore and McGrath (the CEO), this is very much a bottom-up driven initiative. Open source software is finding itself in an increasing number of Unisys solutions, to the occasional consternation of management. So what you're hearing from the Unisys management publicly now is "hooray, Open Source," but what you would have heard a few years ago was... well, nothing, unless you worked for Unisys, in which case you probably would heard "stay the hell away."

Note: when I say "finding my way into," I don't mean "being stolen." Unisys is being extremely careful as to what the various license requirements are for the things it's using, so developers and architects are cognizant of the implications of the GPL and other similar "sharealike" licenses where their efforts are concerned. My experience with the developers here has been that they are pretty agnostic about everything except efficacy - they just want the stuff to work, and they want to get it done right for as little money as they can spend. I find that to be a healthy attitude.

For a guy like me whose roots are pretty heavily in open software, there's more than a little irony here. You may recall Unisys' spat with the Free Software Foundation, or... well, really a whole bunch of people, including Accuweather, over software patent issues.

One last thing: Peter Blackmore has identified outsourcing as a major component of the Unisys strategy. He's not kidding. Tons of Unisys developers have been axed over the last few years, and much of the development activity has been given to Caritor employees, based either locally at Unisys offices, or in India. The ones I've worked with are good guys, but there's more than a little discomfort between the two groups. Many Unisys folks see his biggest impact on the company as having been the guy who sent Unisys jobs to India.

mod parent up. A very nice, terse way to say what I was about to spend a few paragraphs kvetching about. DRM on paper books, anybody? See http://www.gnu.org/philosophy/right-to-read.html if you haven't already. mt

Google searches text and gives you relevant quotes. The page itself might be available if it looked like the thing was related to what you were interested in to begin with. This service is mostly useful for finding books that might help your research, like a very good card catalog. If the book's copyright is expired, Google will save you the trip to the library, but not always yet. In my last search, I found a 2004 reprint of a book originally published in 1918. Gutenberg had the text.

The only other case I can think of is that someone might reference a book or a passage of a recent book. That might make me want to look at the book. Hopefully, the author would simply quote enough of the book to get their point across. If I really wanted more I'd go to the library.

Oh wait, these same greed heads have already assaulted the libraries. See here. It's always amazing how greedy and stupid people can be. RMS was right again. How else can you get people deep into debt over school books besides charging per word?

You don't know what you're talking about. I've installed and run Linux on probably 70 different machines from el-crappo PCs, high end PCs, laptops, low and middle end servers... Runs beautifully on all of them. You should try it some time.

richard stallman is the guy that made this all possible. His vision is to give everyone NEXTSTEP by duplicating software from 1988 that steve jobs had and rebranding it GNU/Mach GNU/Hurd and using the GNUSTEP and windowmaker software to accomplish his task. Someday we'll have free NEXTSTEP.

See above: This is complete rubbish. For Stallman's vision, see gnu.org and fsf.org.

IIRC it's because they want to use treacherous computing.

So you see the linux system is flawed in one sense.. the kernel is not tied to the userland (software that you run).

You don't know what you are talking about. Both BSD and Linux interface with 'userland' the same ways, through device drivers and the C library.

There's an effort among the BSD zealots to replace every GNU program with a BSD licensed replacement.

Such people are in the minority. The GNU Core Utilities are generally regarded as superior to their BSD counterparts. Indeed it was the builtin limitations of BSD utilities motivated many of the standards to which GNU software is written. May I also point out that BSD uses the GNU compiler stack. It won't be easy to purge BSD of that, unless you still fancy programming in old style C on the PDP-11.

Its a big pissing match. You can love linux and not like the GNU and i think most people fall into this category that give kudos to linux.

The only ones left pissing are the BSD fanboys. The GNU/Linux folks are too busy.

If this weren't true, everyone would be working on GNU/Hurd right now.

Stallman himself has said that he wouldn't have pursued Hurd if the Linux kernel has been available when the Hurd project was launched. There is no controversy.

Actually, Hurd is moving to the L4 Microkernel. This is (I think) the same kernel used by EROS/Coyotos but I'm not positive. I do know that the Coyotos developers have been contributing to the L4/Hurd project lately, and that they are working on adding some of the features of the latter to the former. Development on the Mach microkernel based Hurd has essentially been dropped as of about 2 years ago.

I've been a long-time Hurd "interested party" and I actually have the old GnuMach version installed and bootable. I hacked the GNU Pth package to make it compile in Hurd so I could build the Dillo browser and surf the web from Hurd X11 several years ago. I dutifully submitted my patch upstream and it was incorporated into the source :-)

I periodically compile L4/Hurd and boot it up to see where it's at. I just like fooling around with weird operating systems more than anything. I know enough to be able to compile, install, and boot the things, but I've found I don't know the first thing about kernels from following the L4/Hurd mailing list. Its interesting stuff, but I don't have the CS background to really understand a lot of the concepts being discussed.

My guess, L4/Hurd might be minimally functional within a year or two on a very limited set of hardware. You can sort of boot it into debug mode now, and the libc is becoming functional slowly, but it's really basic right now.

the "or any later version" clause is NOT in the GPL

But the example for how to apply the GPL will do #2. And if you don't include any notice in your program, then you are bound to #3. Guess what percentage of coders release their code under one of those two because they didn't realize the #1 was even an option.

The linux kernel does not, for example.

/* Rewritten by Rusty Russell, on the backs of many others...
Copyright (C) 2001 Rusty Russell, 2002 Rusty Russell IBM.

This program is free software; you can redistribute it and/or modify
it under the terms of the GNU General Public License as published by
the Free Software Foundation; either version 2 of the License, or
(at your option) any later version.
...

Get ready to get poked in the eye, linux users!

GNU takes everything way too seriously?

Well duh!

If I modify the GPL license the result is a (valid) non GPL license.

RTFF: http://www.gnu.org/licenses/gpl-faq.html#ModifyGPL

And to those who'll reply now and tell me that I can't modify the GPL because the license as such is itself copyrighted to the FSF... I insist that that's irrelevant, as a license is not a creative work but rather a technical description of the terms the author offers you the software under.

Whether you legally have the right to modify licenses by default is irrelevant, as it is explicitly permitted for the GPL.

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

You have already given the world the four software freedoms to your code. A new license can not take that away from your users because they would chose to keep the old license. What more can they take from you? What have you thought of that my innocent mind can not?

You can't push a rope and you can't make a man work. If you don't like the changes to the GPL you can publish all of your new code under any other license you like. Code grows quickly or dies. It will soon be useless without a maintainer.

There are ***many*** GPL-compatible free software licenses:

Eclipse happens to be incompatible:

"For example, it requires certain patent licenses be given that the GPL does not require. (We don't think those patent license requirements are inherently a bad idea, but nonetheless they are incompatible with the GNU GPL.)"

Hey, maybe this will get more people interested in the Hurd, since they appear pondering a change to a EROS/Coyotos microkernel thingy.

I've just took a look at then Sofia-SIP stack. One of the most horribile pieces or code i've saw lately. I mean even oSIP which is the most rubbish SIP stack from the free world look way better than this.
I won't compare it with YASS (Yate SIP stack) which is a piece of art if you compare it with SIP stack.
I can't belive that in this days someone will write code in the way Sofia-SIP is writte. Just compare how complicated it is.

http://voip.null.ro/cgi-bin/cvsweb.cgi/yate/contri b/ysip/ - Yate SIP stack

http://savannah.gnu.org/cgi-bin/viewcvs/osip/osip/ - oSIP

http://cvs.sourceforge.net/viewcvs.py/sofia-sip/so fia-sip/ - Sofia-SIP

I think in the end that what Nokia did was just to throw some rubbish code arround hoping to get some more bug fixes.

GNUstep is released under the LGPL ( see http://www.gnu.org/copyleft/lesser.html ), that means it has no effect on the applications based on it.

regards, Lars

They are free as in freedom.
Go read http://www.gnu.org/philosophy/free-software-for-fr eedom.html and learn, kid.

nVidia has been doing this for a while now. In fact, there are finally getting to be interesting implementations like GNU software radio on GPUs:

An Implementation of a FIR Filter on a GPU

If Firefox proponents don't begin to mention software freedom, there will be another reason for MSIE 7 users to stick with MSIE and not download the latest version of Firefox. After all, on Microsoft Windows it is easier to use MSIE than to download and install a replacement web browser. Microsoft can implement all sorts of features that Firefox has today or will get soon, but Firefox respects the user's freedoms to run, inspect, copy, and modify the software and MSIE doesn't. It would be a shame to let this advantage go as if it is less important than feature lists. Paying attention to software freedom is what got us the community that has given us so much. As the FSF has warned us:

Today many people are switching to free software for purely practical reasons. That is good, as far as it goes, but that isn't all we need to do! Attracting users to free software is not the whole job, just the first step.

Sooner or later these users will be invited to switch back to proprietary software for some practical advantage. Countless companies seek to offer such temptation, and why would users decline? Only if they have learned to value the freedom free software gives them, for its own sake. It is up to us to spread this idea--and in order to do that, we have to talk about freedom. A certain amount of the ``keep quiet'' approach to business can be useful for the community, but we must have plenty of freedom talk too.

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

Clarifying freedom 0, it includes the unambiguous statement,

The freedom to use a program means the freedom for any kind of person or organization to use it on any kind of computer system, for any kind of overall job, and without being required to communicate subsequently with the developer or any other specific entity.
[emphasis mine]

That clearly means technical portability, and also prohibits "DeActivation" features (phone home to decide whether to run) in any free product. But even if one ignores the portability requirement, "DeActivation" features of the operating system, for instance, revoke freedom 0 for anything running on that O/S. (Perhaps there is a loophole for editions of Windows that don't include DeActivation.) I am sure Richard Stallman has much more to say about this.

Robert Storey of DistroWatch paraphrased a speech by Stallman as follows:

Freedom Zero would seem to be a no-brainer. Even proprietary software allows you to run it as you like, right? Actually, not necessarily. More and more, we are seeing programs which - if you bother to read the fine print before you click on "I agree" - impose restrictions on the user. Windows XP, for example, insists on "product activation" which is tied to the hardware - change your motherboard, and it might stop working. Or consider Oracle, popular database software which is licensed "per processor" - buy one copy, install it on a dual-processor machine and you will be in violation of your licensing terms. There are other proprietary programs which expire after a certain date, or can only be run a limited number of times, or are deliberately crippled in some other way (you might as well call it "crippleware").
[emphasis mine]

Openz has a similar take:

The purpose of these protection mechanisms is ostensibly to minimise software 'piracy', but the reality is that it doesn't have any effect whatsoever on piracy and really an attempt to maximise revenue by restricting how people use the software.
[emphasis mine]

The opposite of freedom is restriction. It's not possible to run on Windows alone and claim freedom under GNU's definition. It's doubly impossible if you're talking about DeActivated Windows such as XP.

An Anonymous User has written about what this means in reality:

• Activation often has problems with some hardware and OS configurations. It is infuriating when something that does not affect the program itself prevents it from running because the stupid activation scheme cannot deal with it properly.
• Upgrading hardware and re-installs can easily become a nightmare when involving software requiring acti

However, as a special exception, the source code distributed need not include anything that is normally distributed (in either source or binary form) with the major components (compiler, kernel, and so on) of the operating system on which the executable runs, unless that component itself accompanies the executable.

The reason some people complain about open source on proprietary systems is the software requires those systems to be present. This is equivalent to OpenOffice.org requiring Sun's Java binaries rather than GCC's, say. Thus, the argument to be made is equivalent to the one made by Richard Stallman in Free But Shackled - The Java Trap.

That's why we have different Open Source licenses. There's the GPL, LGPL, BSD, etc.

Each is tailored to a different situation. And let's not get into a debate about Open Source vs. Free Software. Not again. Please. For the curious, read this and this, instead. Or just do a search for open source vs free software.

I'm surprised at how few serious *NIX Administrators I know are using GNU Screen. For some reason, it seems that the majority of them have not yet discovered the sheer power of the console window manager. It allows me to manage dozens of virtual windows all within the same terminal. In addition to eliminating the need to window-switching on my local machine, it also allows me to perform complex select, copy, and paste operations using only my keyboard. WIthout using a mouse, I can select and copy text in one window, advance into another window, and paste the text. The best part is that if my DSL drops or I decide to reboot my computer, all of my screened sessions stay on the server, leaving my work in exactly the same place as it always was, and with a nice scrollback history. I couldn't work without it.

Word processing is Word but ed is the standard text editor!

There's always GNU Hurd and Gnu herds

Yet another proprietor trying to separate you from your software freedom. From the FSF:

"Sooner or later these users will be invited to switch back to proprietary software for some practical advantage. Countless companies seek to offer such temptation, and why would users decline? Only if they have learned to value the freedom free software gives them, for its own sake. It is up to us to spread this idea--and in order to do that, we have to talk about freedom. A certain amount of the ``keep quiet'' approach to business can be useful for the community, but we must have plenty of freedom talk too.

At present, we have plenty of ``keep quiet'', but not enough freedom talk. Most people involved with free software say little about freedom--usually because they seek to be ``more acceptable to business.'' Software distributors especially show this pattern. Some GNU/Linux operating system distributions add proprietary packages to the basic free system, and they invite users to consider this an advantage, rather than a step backwards from freedom."

Yet another proprietor trying to separate you from your software freedom. From the FSF:

"Sooner or later these users will be invited to switch back to proprietary software for some practical advantage. Countless companies seek to offer such temptation, and why would users decline? Only if they have learned to value the freedom free software gives them, for its own sake. It is up to us to spread this idea--and in order to do that, we have to talk about freedom. A certain amount of the ``keep quiet'' approach to business can be useful for the community, but we must have plenty of freedom talk too.

At present, we have plenty of ``keep quiet'', but not enough freedom talk. Most people involved with free software say little about freedom--usually because they seek to be ``more acceptable to business.'' Software distributors especially show this pattern. Some GNU/Linux operating system distributions add proprietary packages to the basic free system, and they invite users to consider this an advantage, rather than a step backwards from freedom."

Yet another proprietor trying to separate you from your software freedom. From the FSF:

"Sooner or later these users will be invited to switch back to proprietary software for some practical advantage. Countless companies seek to offer such temptation, and why would users decline? Only if they have learned to value the freedom free software gives them, for its own sake. It is up to us to spread this idea--and in order to do that, we have to talk about freedom. A certain amount of the ``keep quiet'' approach to business can be useful for the community, but we must have plenty of freedom talk too.

At present, we have plenty of ``keep quiet'', but not enough freedom talk. Most people involved with free software say little about freedom--usually because they seek to be ``more acceptable to business.'' Software distributors especially show this pattern. Some GNU/Linux operating system distributions add proprietary packages to the basic free system, and they invite users to consider this an advantage, rather than a step backwards from freedom."

That seems roughly accurate, although I'm not so sure the .NET equivalent of bytecodes retain as much information as their Java counterparts. This is really a function of implementation and not language. Compiled Java (like GCJ and its commercial predecessors) has been available for years. Running C in a VM isn't commonly done either, but is definitely possible. I'm sure you realize this, I just didn't want people to be mislead by your post.

Thats absolutely right. Since the dawn of time humans have been trading in a free competitive market economy, sharing ideas, changing (modding) their tools to better suit themselves and their needs, and overall pushing forward technology and innovation.

The US of A, became powerful, just like Britain before it, by having a competitive free market economy where ideas are shared and move everyone forward. But now the US is leading the world in restrictive laws and monopolies on ideas - i.e. restricting others from using ideas.

This trend is indeed bad for all of society. For society to improve, it must be able to freely share ideas and to change (mod) and their tools in the way the people see fit.

These restrictive practices will become evident within a generation how negative an effect it can have on society and the USs technological lead.

And some links:

1.1 Free Matter Economy, Part 1:
http://www.freesoftwaremagazine.com/free_issues/is sue_07/free_matter_economy/
1.2 Free Matter Economy, Part 2:
http://www.freesoftwaremagazine.com/free_issues/is sue_08/free_matter_economy_2/

2.
A Groklaw article complete with discussion:
http://www.groklaw.net/article.php?story=200510251 65105685

3.
An Economist article:
http://www.economist.com/printedition/displaystory .cfm?story_id=5014990

4.
Slashdot discussion on Economist article:
http://yro.slashdot.org/article.pl?sid=05/10/23/17 37218&tid=187&tid=155

5.
The GNU Organisation for the development of software, its official stance on the negative effect of IP on software development:
http://www.gnu.org/philosophy/not-ipr.xhtml

6.
A longish non-academic article, but starts getting to the point eventualy:
http://www.reason.com/0303/fe.dc.creation.shtml

7.
A pdf:
http://levine.sscnet.ucla.edu/papers/pci23.pdf
( http://levine.sscnet.ucla.edu/papers/pci23.htm )

8.
Discussion on the above pdf:
http://activeclub.homeip.net/forums/view.php?bn=ac discussions_activeclubreflections&key=1046014645

I'm surprised this isn't an Ask Slashdot question, because that's normally the category questions with bleeding obvious answers like this one are asked. The only right answer? Zero.

This kind of analysis comes up from time to time. It will come up again. I'll take OpenOffice.org over the proprietary alternatives because OpenOffice.org is free software.

I'd rather have a slow free software office suite than a faster proprietary office suite. If I cared enough to fix this in OpenOffice.org, I could do it or hire someone to do it for me. But I'll never fully learn what the proprietary alternatives do when they run, I'll never be able to fix the things I don't like about the proprietary software, and I'll never be able to help my community by sharing improved versions of the proprietary software. I want fast programs but not at the expense of my software freedom.

When this issue is framed in the terms the open source movement uses, proprietors can often gain (or keep) a client. This movement doesn't object to proprietary software, it claims that when more programmers have access to the program's source code and are allowed to change it, the program may see some improvement. This philosophy is one which places business priorities first. The social and ethical effect on the public—the helplessness one feels with programs they can't inspect, change, or share—is reduced to "ideologial tub-thumping" by the Open Source Initiative, which started the open source movement and defines the term "open source". Free software, on the other hand, places a philosophical focus on caring about society, not chiefly business interests. The free software movement talks about giving me the freedom to decide how the program should work for me. This stresses placing the limitations of what I can do on me: I get to choose how much programming I want to learn and I get to decide someone else to do for me. And, most importantly, the free software movement celebrates the spirit of voluntary cooperation, what keeps society from being a dog-eat-dog jungle. I don't object to the open source movement's priorities in themselves, but I don't think they go far enough to help improve society, and I do think it is computer user's job to care about what kind of society we are allowed to have.

then WHY THE HELL DON'T THEY ALL GET IT?

Would you believe that most people are perfectly capable of reading lowercase letters?
Anyways, your question is indeed valid: why don't all distros have device recognition?

The answer, in short, is that the different distros serve different needs. Not everyone wants automatic device recognition--for example, there's no need for it at all on devices that only come in one hardware configuration.

If PClinuxOS has a reduced memory footprint due to not having device recognition, then WHY THE HELL DON'T THEY ALL GET IT?

(the gAim (sic) story)

That's very fascinating. I'm sure the gaim developers would like to know about it--I'm sure they'll agree it's a bug and in clear violation of their human interface guidelines. Better yet, report it to the GNOME usability experts--maybe they'll suggest using bitlbee (through, say, xchat) as the preferred IM client, who knows.

This package I simply couldn't find

Right. If it's an issue, why don't you collect packages from the official repositories (switching package management system if that matters)? Truth is, it's not important enough to you. What you've failed to see is that using GNU/Linux is an investment. Initially, you invest O(1) time to learn how it works, then you use what you know to save O(n) time. Big win, if you get it. You seemingly didn't.

Here's a popquiz for windows users:
How do you download all documents (tree-wise) below http://www.gnu.org/philosophy/
How do you rename all files named foo.bar to foo0.bar?
How do you replace foo.bar with foo0.bar in the above mentioned files?
How do you make your computer automatically update all installed programs at 2:17 AM every friday?
How do you remotely connect to your machine?
How do you add logo.png to *.png in the lower right corner?
How do you make sure no one alters or deletes the files not stored in a "My Documents" folder?
How do you fork(2) in a non-NT kernel?

Here are my solutions, using only the stuff one can reasonably expect to find on a default installation:
manually, manually, manually, manually, manually, you can't, you can't.
For almost any real OS: wget, rename, sed, ssh, pildriver, chmod, fork.

pathetic 0.1% market share

Please don't pull numbers out of your ass, they'll get your faeces all over them.

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All in all, I'll write you off as someone who thought he understood what all this "lun1x" thing is all about, expected it to be exactly like Microsoft Windows, and was shocked to find that it actually a well-designed OS.

I hope you're going to like shelling out lots your bitterly earned money on a load of poorly-designed insecure resource-hogging DLL-hell-inducing aesthetical piece of roadkill made by a criminal company which most unethically disrespects your privacy for reasons of their own economical gain.

You are not important.