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The parent poster gets it exactly right, and the grandparent poster managed to give important and interesting evidence then reach the wrong conclusion.

To build on the parent's article, one specific example of a practical benefit free software gives us that open source software does not is the freedom to make private derivatives. Private derivatives are changed versions of programs one never distributes. The open source definition has nothing to allow users to make these, but the definition of free software requires that users have this right ("You should also have the freedom to make modifications and use them privately in your own work or play, without even mentioning that they exist. If you do publish your changes, you should not be required to notify anyone in particular, or in any particular way.").

This came up in the discussion around the early version of the Apple Public Source License. It was one reason that those versions of the APSL were not free software licenses, even though they qualified as open source licenses. The earlier revisions of the APSL required notifying a central authority—Apple—of any "deployed" APSL program.

As a result, the GNU Project commented on what Apple had picked up from the then year-old "open source" movement:

Aside from this, we must remember that only part of MacOS is being released under the APSL. Even if the fatal flaws and practical problems of the APSL were fixed, even if it were changed into a very good free software license, that would do no good for the other parts of MacOS whose source code is not being released at all. We must not judge all of a company by just part of what they do.

Overall, I think that Apple's action is an example of the effects of the year-old "open source" movement: of its plan to appeal to business with the purely materialistic goal of faster development, while putting aside the deeper issues of freedom, community, cooperation, and what kind of society we want to live in.

Apple has grasped perfectly the concept with which "open source" is promoted, which is "show users the source and they will help you fix bugs". What Apple has not grasped--or has dismissed--is the spirit of free software, which is that we form a community to cooperate on the commons of software.

I found the commentary to be apropos then and still find it to be informative and helpful today.

The parent poster gets it exactly right, and the grandparent poster managed to give important and interesting evidence then reach the wrong conclusion.

To build on the parent's article, one specific example of a practical benefit free software gives us that open source software does not is the freedom to make private derivatives. Private derivatives are changed versions of programs one never distributes. The open source definition has nothing to allow users to make these, but the definition of free software requires that users have this right ("You should also have the freedom to make modifications and use them privately in your own work or play, without even mentioning that they exist. If you do publish your changes, you should not be required to notify anyone in particular, or in any particular way.").

This came up in the discussion around the early version of the Apple Public Source License. It was one reason that those versions of the APSL were not free software licenses, even though they qualified as open source licenses. The earlier revisions of the APSL required notifying a central authority—Apple—of any "deployed" APSL program.

As a result, the GNU Project commented on what Apple had picked up from the then year-old "open source" movement:

Aside from this, we must remember that only part of MacOS is being released under the APSL. Even if the fatal flaws and practical problems of the APSL were fixed, even if it were changed into a very good free software license, that would do no good for the other parts of MacOS whose source code is not being released at all. We must not judge all of a company by just part of what they do.

Overall, I think that Apple's action is an example of the effects of the year-old "open source" movement: of its plan to appeal to business with the purely materialistic goal of faster development, while putting aside the deeper issues of freedom, community, cooperation, and what kind of society we want to live in.

Apple has grasped perfectly the concept with which "open source" is promoted, which is "show users the source and they will help you fix bugs". What Apple has not grasped--or has dismissed--is the spirit of free software, which is that we form a community to cooperate on the commons of software.

I found the commentary to be apropos then and still find it to be informative and helpful today.

[W]hile the term open source isn't explicitly used, I think the intent from article 4 is that open source software is what is desired.

Actually, Congressman Villanueva is very clear that software freedom is what he was after, what the bill seeks, and why he asks for free software by name ("software libre"). Read Villanueva's letter to Microsoft's rep who tried to reframe the debate in the same way.

The reason why Microsoft tried to reframe the debate away from software freedom and why Villanueva was so insistent that Microsoft not do so is clear—the open source movement dismisses software freedom. The open source movement does not stand for the same philosophy as the free software movement. Software freedom is what proprietors fear. They have no argument against it. As we see with Microsoft's reps talking to Massachusetts, they are constantly trying to frame the debate around the cost of software. As if what you pay for software is the single most important issue to consider. Congressman Villanueva and the rest of the free software movement know that this is not so ("It is also necessary to make it clear that the aim of the Bill we are discussing is not directly related to the amount of direct savings that can by made by using free software in state institutions."), therefore they don't stand for such misrepresentation. Properly, Villanueva also insists on calling proprietary software "proprietary" and not "commercial" as so many (even on /.) will do.

The theme here is on what rights users have with the program, not how quickly it can be developed, how much money one can save, or how few bugs there are in the software. The free software movement has nothing against the development methodology that the open source movement stands for, but the free software movement says that the open source movement's philosophy isn't enough.

No, that's pretty clearly "free software", as per the RMS/FSF definitions. In fact, it seems to be taken almost directly from the FSF's "four freedoms".

Don't talk about what you don't know about if you're not asking about it.
It's not free software either.

For example, a good word processor provides tools to help with writing the document, such as outline modes or views. All the great typesetting in the world is useless if the words you are typesetting are poor.

And a good LaTeX editor (and there are more than one) provides a lot of the same sorts of thing, including structure views (an outline view), spell checking, section folding and so on. A good typesetting program takes care of all the finer points of layout and formatting (in prepared documentclasses) elegantly so you can get on with worrying about what you are writing rather than how you're presenting it. All the lovely WYSIWYG options are useless if they just keep you distracted from the actual content of what you are writing.

Jedidiah.

Q:A company is running a modified version of a GPL'ed program on a web site. Does the GPL say they must release their modified sources?
A:The GPL permits anyone to make a modified version and use it without ever distributing it to others. What this company is doing is a special case of that. Therefore, the company does not have to release the modified sources.

It is essential for people to have the freedom to make modifications and use them privately, without ever publishing those modifications. However, putting the program on a server machine for the public to talk to is hardly "private" use, so it would be legitimate to require release of the source code in that special case. We are thinking about doing something like this in GPL version 3, but we don't have precise wording in mind yet.

In the mean time, you might want to use the Affero GPL for programs designed for network server use.

Talk about hiding in a cave ;) Version 2 was released in June 1991. Version 1 was released in February 1989.

Talk about hiding in a cave ;) Version 2 was released in June 1991. Version 1 was released in February 1989.

I'd say around June 1991

How about 'Digital Restriction Mechanism'?

Over 27,900 Google hits for "digital restrictions management" say that you're just about right. FSF head Richard Stallman agrees.

Check out ncurses. It's amazing the improvements that have been made.

The kernel of Darwin is not the BSD kernel, but rather the Mach kernel, Infact, the core of Darwin is of a totally different design to BSD, being of an elegant microkernel structure rather than the monolithic structure that BSD still retains. It is strange that Apple would choose to tout that their OS is based on 4.4BSD, which even by BSD standards is obsolete by over 10 years.

Darwin includes totally rewritten filesystem and network support and does not use the BSD code here either. Infact, BSD code is only used in the OS as a "skin" to wrap the underlying OS in order to provide a virtual Unix-like environment, in much the same way as Cygwin wraps Windows.

Higher up in userland, adapted versions of the BSD tools are used for the Unix command line, an odd choice, considering the GNU utilities are superior. Files are kept in odd places and in many cases manpages are out of date. Many basic system services such as user authentication are provided by Apple's own proprietary system rather than the traditional Unix methods. In general, the OS X command line is a lackluster and messy ordeal, and certainly radically unlike any BSD system.

One of the goals of Perl 6 is to make non-trivial projects possible. That's good. The way it's being done is bad. Perl was once a lightweight, extremely flexible language. Now it's become a huge ugly monster. People wanted OO, so a nasty hack was bolted on top to allow some semblance of it. Now this nasty hack is being expanded. Sure, the code's different, but the basic form is the same. Kludge upon kludge upon kludge; I'd much rather have a nice, clean, pure language (and not one with loads of irritating whitespacethank you very much).

The same goes for the syntax. All the switching between $, @ and % is really irritating (ask a newbie how to get at the length of the keys array of a hash inside a hash, for example), and the changes proposed for 6 are just making this worse -- it seems that Larry, in his infinite wisdom, wants to prefix every data type with a different hard-to-type character. Perl was only designed for the three data types, and adding more is a mess.

Perl 6 is a complete rewrite, but it keeps all the mess which has accumulated over the previous versions. This is not good. Sure, my const int $var = 27; may look neat (in the same way that, say, Pascal does), but $var isn't entirely constant, or entirely an integer, it's just a hack which makes it sort of behave like one. It's like Ada all over again! The whole thing is an exercise in pseudo-computer science masturbation with little real purpose except to please the managers who dislike the one thing that makes Perl special.

On a similar note is regexes. I'm an avid fan of regular expressions simply because a nondeterministic finite automata is far more flexible than linear code. However, Larry must have been smoking that cheap $2 crack when he wrote this. Does he want Perl 6 to be flex or something?

I won't be going on to use 6. It's a nice idea, but it's completely unnecessary. It won't make large projects any easier to manage (the language is still, at heart, an almighty hack -- an impressive one, but still a hack). It won't make OO any cleaner. It won't make development any faster. I'd prefer to use a language which has always been pure synthesis of science and engineering, not some half-baked imposter.

Perl 6 will be nice, but I'm guessing it will be the end of Perl. It can't do what it wants to do whilst still being based upon a nasty mess. There are now other options, which provide all of Perl's power and none of the mess. Sorry, but *BSD^H^H^H^H Perl is dying.

The GNURadio homepage shows samples of HDTV images received and decoded successfully. If we give up because we suspect opposition, we'll surely lose our rights. If we fight technologically and politically through organized action we may secure our rights.

• Sofware Defined Radio kits
• Elecraft kits
• PSK31
• APRS
• ARISS
• AMSAT

the gif patents have expired

Foreign counterparts to U.S. Patent 4,558,302 assigned to Unisys expired worldwide in mid-2004, but IBM holds a U.S. patent on LZW that does not expire until August 2006. Or is this one of the patents that IBM has donated to the free software community?

Nothing will ever top edit.com from the old MS-DOS days! Billy G and the crew should give it up. Long live edit.com!

You misspelled ed

Duh, I'm a clod.
Apple released a vi derivative 13 years ago. What was I thinking? Perhaps Apple will next go for an ed product?

Using my superior pattern recognition skills I've deduced that a iPod Pico will be forthcomming.

Apple has already bypassed the arcanely licensed pico by releasing the more modern and free nano. As you know, several years ago Apple introduced emacs. It is clear Apple's next product will be vi based.

"Now if you have a book published, it is usually NOT freely available."

You must be from the future where people are not free to read books at no cost.

You see, here we have something we call a library.

You may also be interested in GNU Robots. I wrote this several years ago, but stopped working on it in 2000 (it was complete, though.) The GNU Savannah site still lists me as project owner, but zeenix now does the development. He last checked in changes 2 weeks ago, so looks like it's still active.

I wrote GNU Robots because I had fond memories of the old Mac game, Chipwits. In Chipwits, you construct a "program" for a simple robot by setting down "tiles" or "chips" in a grid, where each "chip" contained a single action (check the space ahead of you, pick up an object, turn, move forward, etc.) There were T/F "chips" to make checks. Each "chip" was wired to the chips around it. This was a gentle introduction to the concepts of computer programming. I was already a programmer of sorts, but I found the game fascinating.

GNU Robots is a much simpler version of that, but (in theory) should be extensible to something like Chipwits. A robot program is written in Scheme, where you have functions available to make the robot turn, move, etc. You might be able to construct a programmer's GUI to set up a "tile" for each action, where each "tile" can be represented by Scheme code. And the wired connections to each "tile" can be represented by tail-recursion. I lacked the GUI programming knowledge to create this at the time, which is why I left it as a simple Scheme program. (If anyone out there is interested in doing this, many people will thank you for it.)

FYI: the Chipwits home page shows it as "coming soon" since 1999. So there's no hope in a return of the original.

From time to time, I have tried to learn emacs (seeing the benefits) but the learning curve seems so steep

Try the latest version (0.4) of Moe here.

From time to time, I have tried to learn emacs (seeing the benefits) but the learning curve seems so steep

Try the latest version (0.4) of Moe here.

Slashdot wasn't around to review:

GNU Emacs Manual, Sixth Edition, Version 18, March 1987, by Richard Stallman.

Really and honestly, if you need a good book on Emacs and want the money to go to a good cause, order a printed copy of the GNU Emacs manual from the FSF. It won't be $15 like this 1986 edition, but it's actually about that same price, adjusted for inflation.

(The FSF website says it's on sale right now!)

There's no reason why learning Emacs has to be intimidating, but it's misleading comments like this that make people believe that they don't understand Emacs.

Do us all a favor and compare the Emacs Manual Table of Contents with the Learning GNU Emacs Table of Contents.

The Emacs manual begins with an encyclopedic glossary of Emacs terms. 17 pages of terms, according to "Print Preview" in Firefox. Afterwards, you get index pages: a list of all the default keys, a list of all the default options (without even a link to a chapter explaining how to tweak an option), a command index (again, no info on how to run a command), a variable index (same deal), and a "concept index" full of links all over the manual. Finally you get to a very abstract section about how to interpret what's on the Screen, but still no information on how to actually use Emacs.

The O'Reilly book begins with "Emacs Basics", an easy-to-follow guide to the beginnings of Emacs. It looks more like the Emacs tutorial in a plain text format.

The Emacs "Manual" is a gigantic man page. It's not a "manual" in the sense that you're supposed to sit down and read it as a first introduction to Emacs. It's not a guide for people to read. It's a reference guide for you to go find information you already knew was there.

I'll admit, the built-in tutorial is a much better introduction, but it leaves you at the novice level. You know how to push the cursor around, but you know *nothing* about how to set options, what a variable is, how to set them, etc. To get from here to there requires hours of reading random info pages to try to find what you're looking for. Nothing like reading a clear manual.

Never recommend that a newbie to Emacs read the Emacs Manual. The Manual is for Intermediate users wishing to become Advanced. The Tutorial is for novices. For those wishing to get to the Intermediate level, this O'Reilly book isn't a half bad choice.

There's no reason why learning Emacs has to be intimidating, but it's misleading comments like this that make people believe that they don't understand Emacs.

Do us all a favor and compare the Emacs Manual Table of Contents with the Learning GNU Emacs Table of Contents.

The Emacs manual begins with an encyclopedic glossary of Emacs terms. 17 pages of terms, according to "Print Preview" in Firefox. Afterwards, you get index pages: a list of all the default keys, a list of all the default options (without even a link to a chapter explaining how to tweak an option), a command index (again, no info on how to run a command), a variable index (same deal), and a "concept index" full of links all over the manual. Finally you get to a very abstract section about how to interpret what's on the Screen, but still no information on how to actually use Emacs.

The O'Reilly book begins with "Emacs Basics", an easy-to-follow guide to the beginnings of Emacs. It looks more like the Emacs tutorial in a plain text format.

The Emacs "Manual" is a gigantic man page. It's not a "manual" in the sense that you're supposed to sit down and read it as a first introduction to Emacs. It's not a guide for people to read. It's a reference guide for you to go find information you already knew was there.

I'll admit, the built-in tutorial is a much better introduction, but it leaves you at the novice level. You know how to push the cursor around, but you know *nothing* about how to set options, what a variable is, how to set them, etc. To get from here to there requires hours of reading random info pages to try to find what you're looking for. Nothing like reading a clear manual.

Never recommend that a newbie to Emacs read the Emacs Manual. The Manual is for Intermediate users wishing to become Advanced. The Tutorial is for novices. For those wishing to get to the Intermediate level, this O'Reilly book isn't a half bad choice.

The GNU Emacs Manual available for free at http://www.gnu.org/software/emacs/manual/ is excellent. Printed versions are available too.

Emacs also comes with a built-in tutorial that is a good interactive introduction to Emacs.

If you are considering learning Emacs, yes, it can seem like an intimidating task. The interface and commands are nothing like what people are used to today. But it is certainly worth the effort learning Emacs and getting used to it.

It's my understanding that you can link a GPL library w/o the requirement to release your source.

Your understanding is wrong.

Try to say "I should get less than some people", it is logically equivalent but somehow much harder to pronounce :-)

No, they should get more. Less is the free equivalent of more, and this person doesn't believe in free software :)

Then Mr. Gates, how do you explain even a field as subdued and quant-- Amaeture Radio, is able to create tons of software

http://www.qsl.net/kf8gr/linsoft.html

for their community and the public.

And they do this by incorporating it into a mainstream Linux product, Knoppix

http://hamshack-hack.sourceforge.net/

which is a Live CD.

You can also see here, William, http://www.gnu.org/software/gnuradio/doc/exploring -gnuradio.html

how an amazzzing project is allowing people to program their computers to tune into any frequencies on the radio spectrum WITHOUT the use of a radio, but by using OSS type software only!!

These are just some of the examples of what the OSS community can and HAS done, with only one of the smaller more obscure industries on the earth..

Which begs the question, just how much MORE is going on, BillyBouy, than your MicroFud article is attemping to preach. :)

read this

E-books don't deserve to become mainstream so long as they are implemented in a way that makes readers lose the freedoms they have with paper books, which appears to be the main concern for publishers who push for e-books. The publishers and proprietary software development businesses are hoping you'll make this decision on price and forget about what you're losing along the way.

RMS has postulated that some publishers would prefer to get us used to e-books where lending, copying, reselling, and other freedoms are not allowed. Then, after we're used to e-books being available, paper books can be discontinued leaving only e-books. Thus a new regime can be established where people become used to the lesser freedom they have with e-books without really noticing the switch and people will be less likely to question that loss in freedom.

There are multiple mail readers written for emacs; there is a news reader; a few web browsers; an interface to IRC (and with bitlbee, AIM/Yahoo/Jabber &c.); music players; calendaring.

The programming modes are excellent; the interface to make and gdb is second to none; the integration with a developer's environment is superb.

emacs is the r0x0r:-)

First, to all you Slashdotters out there - I'm not trying to feed the trolls - this post looks legit to me - I'm just trying to help someone navigate what I'm sure you realize is very confusing - the Open Source world.

I'm posting anonymously because this isn't really the proper place to discuss this (don't ask me what the proper forum is - it probably isn't on Slashdot, although you might try the Ask Slashdot section), so this will very likely get modded down. Also, let me say from the beginning that I am still learning Linux myself, but I know several people who are bona fide experts, and am fairly familiar with the basics of the open source community. A full primer on open source and Linux is far beyond the scope of this post - I suggest spending some time with Google and perhaps Wikipedia for more in-depth information. Your IT consultant may also be a good resource since he or she installed Firefox on your computer.

First, let me say that - in my opinion, others would disagree - Linux is going to be more complicated for a non-technical user than Windows. My experience has been that Linux is more complicated and harder to install and operate. I would venture to say that to run Linux, you will need an expert of some sort - either you must become an expert yourself, or you must get an expert to help you. You can do this by hiring an expert, or by purchasing support for the version of Linux you use. Be sure, however, not to confuse software with support. There is such a thing as software that you don't have to pay for. You will probably always have to pay for support for that software, no matter what operating system you use. Everyone has their own opinion on what operating systems require the most support (my personal opinion is that Linux requires more support than Windows); many people will agree that if you want to minimize the the amount of support that you need, you would be well advised to look at Apple's OS X.

I'm not familiar with Redhat's business plan, but I do know that they cannot (legally) charge for the portion of Linux that is licensed under a legal contract called the GPL (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gpl/, http://www.gnu.org/licenses/gpl-faq.html). I think (but don't quote me) that what they charge for is their add-ons to the core Linux operating system and for support of the operating system. Novell does a similar thing with SUSE Linux - although I know for a fact that you can download SUSE Linux for free - remember, that's just the actual software you get for free, no support is included (http://www.novell.com/products/linuxprofessional/ downloads/suse_linux/index.html). The bottom line is that you can get good, stable, production-ready versions of Linux that are totally free, and not maintained by any commercial entity. Some of the best known are Debian (http://www.debian.org/), Ubuntu - a derivitave of Debian (http://www.ubuntulinux.org/), and Gentoo (http://www.gentoo.org/). As for the "source" (or source code) of Linux or any other Open Source software, this is not something that will do you any good unless you are an advanced user. A discussion of what source code is goes far beyond a Slashdot post - suffice it to say that it isn't something you need to worry about at this point, and that you will need to become much more experienced with Linux before it will help you at all. Suffice it to say that source code is helpful because if a programmer has the source code to a piece of software, he or she can modify that software and make whatever changes he or she wishes. This is why open source software can be modified by anyone, whereas with commercial software, the source code is almost always a heavily guarded

Is there a more suitable IDE that works with most popular OSS (and not so OSS) languages including XML, SQL, CSS, PHP, Perl, Java, and C/C++?

Yes.

This:
http://www.gnu.org/software/sourceinstall/article. html
makes source installs on an RPM system somewhat easier.

You can almost always get back to a pre-source install state by uninstalling (using the GUI), and then refreshing the RPMs.

"Years ago, free software developers noticed this discomfort reaction, and some started exploring an approach for avoiding it. They figured that by keeping quiet about ethics and freedom, and talking only about the immediate practical benefits of certain free software, they might be able to ``sell'' the software more effectively to certain users, especially business. The term ``open source'' is offered as a way of doing more of this--a way to be ``more acceptable to business.'' The views and values of the Open Source movement stem from this decision.

This approach has proved effective, in its own terms. 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 Mozilla Foundation doesn't discuss software freedom when they discuss their software, and their silence encourages their users to remain quiet on the issue as well never learning what software freedom is or how it makes a difference in their lives. The Mozilla Foundation talks about how they support choice in the browser marketplace and they talk about how their browser is more secure than others. Neither of these are terribly compelling reasons to switch to Firefox because they're, respectively, not true and not a competitive advantage. Now that Microsoft Internet Explorer will gain some of the features Firefox touts (tabbed browsing, increased standards conformance, increased security, etc.) users will have little reason to stick with Firefox.

Before Firefox and the Mozilla suite were available, one could choose from a variety of browsers including Netscape Navigator, Microsoft Internet Explorer, and Opera. Having a choice in the marketplace only requires two alternatives, but here were at least three. Thus choice was satisfied. Choice is a very weak and easily subverted criteria as well—none of these web browsers were free software. In practical terms, this means that none of the users of these browsers had any chance to learn what these programs were really doing on their computers, nor any chance to change what those programs were doing if they learned the program was not doing what they wanted the program to do. Finally, this means that if users figured out a way to change the program (extremely difficult to do because most users only have a binary), users had no legal way to share their improved version with their community. The users were kept unable to help themselves or their community.

Microsoft Internet Explorer will continue to come with Microsoft Windows and Firefox will continue to be a download away. Coupled with the lack of any discussion on software freedom, this means that as MSIE gains more features that make it more competitive with Firefox, there is less reason for any MSIE user to switch away from MSIE.

Instead of speed clicking hundreds of links (??) you might want to look at tools more suited to whatever it is you're doing such as wget...

The term StudlyCaps is similar - but not necessarily identical - to CamelCase. It is sometimes used in reference to CamelCase but can also refer to random mixed capitalization

>yes I still don't know how to uninstall a generic
>packages..like when I download something, untar;
>make; make install : where can I find out where it
>put all it's stuff?

For source packages, try GNU Source Installer:
http://www.gnu.org/software/sourceinstall/sourcein stall.html

Then you can say:

$ sourceinstall --add whatever.tar.gz

or

$ tar -zxvf whatever.tar.gz
$ sourceinstall --add whatever/

and then you can get the list of all installed files:

$ sourceinstall --check whatever

But you do not need it if you just want to remove it:

$ sourceinstall --remove whatever

If you want the whizzy GUI you can run

$ sourceinstall

without args.

Jeez, how you younguns forget! In my day, we had style and diction, and we liked it. None of that fancy-schmancy parsing irregular grammar, just pattern match a few of the worst cases, throw out a few statistics, and wow!
Of course, that was when the line printer was state of the art, and you had to cut your printout into sheets to turn your English assignment in, and two or three nroff submissions could bring the PDP 11-44 to its knees...

The FSF has a program called Diction. It's not perfect but it's better than nothing right now.

http://www.gnu.org/software/diction/diction.html

You missed the jist of the grandparent's remark. The grandparent poster realizes what you said but was pointing out how "intellectual property" ("IP") is overbroad. This case is actually, according to the grandparent, limited only to trademark law.

This is part of the reason why discussing anything in terms of "intellectual property" is a bad idea. People don't really understand what they're talking about and the term is also used as a way to speak overbroadly. If we are to mount an effective critique of these disparate laws, as is called for so frequently in the instances that reach /. readers, we cannot afford to lose sight of the many elements which separate the diverse laws referred to by "intellectual property". Lawyers and courts know the difference between, say, copyright and patent infringement. As these cases increasingly involve ordinary people, not just businesses, it behooves people to learn how these laws work so they can defend their interests.

The summary for this story is another good example of why the phrase 'intellectual property' should be avoided.

The company does not 'claim to own the intellectual property to GMail'. It has a trademark claim. This is completely different and unrelated to any copyright interest, patent held, or trade secret. Lumping them all together as 'intellectual property' which can then be 'infringed' in some vague way just muddies the issue.

Yup!

It wouldn't happen through Microsoft controlling the media; it would happen through Microsoft and the media working together voluntarily. They're one and the same, after all!

Moreover, even the government is helping them with stuff like the DMCA. Once the DRM systems are in place (did I mention that Vista will require HDCP, which is nothing more than DVI+DRM?), Microsoft will be in complete control, and will be capable of disallowing any content that Big Media doesn't want you to see.

Then, when you break the DRM in order to get it anyway, they sic the Government on you because of the DMCA (either that, or declare you a "ter'rist" and use the PATRIOT act instead).

By the way, read this. It's the example I always give to people who have a hard time visualizing what it'll be like once all this happens. Pay special attention to the "Author's note" at the end.

That's actually "4.0.1".

Another incompatibility [with the Academic Free License] comes from its "Mutual termination for Patent Action" clause. Putting aside the difficult question of whether this sort of clause is a good idea or a bad one, it is incompatible with the GPL.

The freedom to run the program, for any purpose (freedom 0).