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Re:Google should buy it by Anonymous Coward · 2005-09-07 05:24 · Score: 0 · on TrollTech to IPO?

The LGPL is detrimental for free software
Why you shouldn't use the Library GPL for your next library

Re:watch your TV in vi, like God intended by mattjb0010 · 2005-09-07 00:51 · Score: 1 · on First Episode of NerdTV Released

I feel your research into the topic of editor theology may be incomplete.

The answer is either here or here.

They state it as a goal but that's about it by SuperKendall · 2005-09-06 17:00 · Score: 1 · on GPL to be Modified to Penalize Patents and DRM

Look at it here, they do emntion that is a goal but don't seem to put any force behind stopping people from doing so if they wish.

Hypocrites by Geoffreyerffoeg · 2005-09-06 13:20 · Score: 1 · on GPL to be Modified to Penalize Patents and DRM

They rejected a moral license, so why are they making a political one?

Here's the relevant parts:

The restrictions in the HESSLA prohibit specific activities that are inexcusable: violations of human rights, and introduction of features that spy on the user. People might ask why we do not declare an exception for these particular restrictions--why do we stick to the general policy of rejecting all restrictions on use and on the functionality of modified versions? (emphasis mine)

If we were ever going to make an exception to our principles of free software, here would be the place to do it. But it would be a mistake to do so: it would weaken our general stand, and would achieve nothing. ... Also, at least under US law, a copyright-based source license can't restrict use of the program; such a restriction is not enforcible anyway.

The article doesn't say how they're going to enforce this, but either they can just rant about it in classic FSF style and get ignored, or they can restrict the license to people who don't patent, cause a great controversy, and make people stick with GPLv2 out of safety - while violating their own principles in the act.

By the way, this isn't Stallman that said this, it's the president of FSF Europe who's somehow even more radical than Stallman (I didn't think that was possible).

Re:Donating to freenet will not solve anything by Peaker · 2005-09-06 11:00 · Score: 1 · on Australian Court says Kazaa Users Breach Copyright

"Your" signifies who authored the code in this case. Code should not have ownership.

Re:What about software under older GPL? Re:Taxatio by dougmc · 2005-09-06 06:01 · Score: 4, Insightful · on GPL to be Modified to Penalize Patents and DRM

All software should be FREE!
So we're going to freely share it with everyone we agree with.

yea right kiddie, you are probably just another of those free software users who has never spent sleepless night behind a computer trying to make a living from it.

I suspect you missed the irony in the post you were referring to. Assuming that this is correct, I'll explain it to you :

At the very lowest level, the GPL is about `free' software. Not free as in beer, but free as in freedom (though free as in beer tends to come along with it as well.) However, the GPL is not the most `free' license out there. It puts signifigant restrictions on what you can do with the code, but these restrictions are generally something that companies and people can live with.

The idea is that these restrictions are needed to keep the software `free'. And while many disagree, many do agree that it's a good thing.

However, the idea that you can't use GPL software at all if you patent software or use DRM, well, that's nuts. That's about as un-free as possible, and I suspect that it will lead to people either 1) using the old version of the GPL or 2) discarding the GPL entirely for a BSD or other license.

Certainly, I don't expect any companies to decide not to patent software or use DRM just because of this new GPL.

RMS has done a lot of good things for the ideas of open source software and free software and such, and has personally given us several excellent pieces of software (like emacs, the King of Editors! :) But he's also sort of a fringe character, and has many kook-like characteristics. Pushing a GPL that doesn't allow the use of the software by certain people will only make his views even less relevant ...

Join us now and share the software indeed.

In any event, I don't think the post you were responding to was coming from your typical `warez puppy' mindset, which seems to be how you responded to it. It looked sarcastic to me.

Re:What about software under older GPL? Re:Taxatio by Mr+Z · 2005-09-06 05:56 · Score: 2, Interesting · on GPL to be Modified to Penalize Patents and DRM

The draft isn't yet written,

Oh, I'm sure there's plenty of drafts written, just none that RMS and company are ready to share. It seems like I've seen these articles pop up every 6 to 9 months over the past couple years. (Take a look at the dates on those links.)

I mean, I know some FSF projects move slowly, but at least they make some progress. (Of course, from Hurd's announcement to "It boots!" was 3 years, so they must be rather, uhm, methodical?)

As for this comment: "So if they keep to the same formula, patents and DRM may deprive you of the rights to distribute GPL3 software, but probably not to use it." Maybe, but maybe not. If nothing else, it's not 100% clear to me who the licence affects when it's based on copyright. Namely, does it apply to the person offering the copy, or the person receiving it? If GPL v3 takes aim at DRM and patents, it may restrict you from receiving a copy. (Seems unlikely though... I'm pretty sure copyright focuses on the person offering the copy.)

--Joe

From the front page of fsf.org by dillon_rinker · 2005-09-06 05:10 · Score: 2, Insightful · on GPL to be Modified to Penalize Patents and DRM

"Free software is a matter of liberty not price. You should think of 'free' as in 'free speech.'"

They want to deny some people Freedom 0, the ability to run the software; never mind viewing or editing the source. I fail to see how curtailing some people's access to software moves the world closer to software freedom for all. This reaction is the sort of thing I expect from the pragmatic OSI folks, not the idealistic FSF folks.

Re:Hopefully not GPL'd by Nekkrist · 2005-09-06 02:58 · Score: 2, Informative · on Open Source Alternative for Skype

Although we had planned for no one outside of this company to ever use, let alone see the source code, we were now put in a difficult position. We could either give away our hard work, or come up with another solution.

From the FAQ found here you should be able to see that if you were not intending to distribute the program, then you wouldn't have to make the source code available to anyone. In fact you only have to make the source available to people you distribute the program to. It sounds like you need some more competant lawyers.

Q: If I know someone has a copy of a GPL-covered program, can I demand he give me a copy?
A: No. The GPL gives him permission to make and redistribute copies of the program if he chooses to do so. He also has the right not to redistribute the program, if that is what he chooses.

Re:Also by DataPath · 2005-09-05 07:24 · Score: 1 · on Comparing MySQL and PostgreSQL 2

Neither. Use ed!

Microsoft... why software should not have owners. by twitter · 2005-09-05 04:23 · Score: 1, Troll · on Google Lawsuit Exposes Microsoft Offshoring Deal

why is this significant again? Companies offshore all the time.

If you work for Microsoft, it's very significant. You may soon be fired as your job is done by two or three competent Chinese slaves. This is simply an enlargement of their Chinese that will cost 1,000 employees their jobs.

If use Microsoft, you might be concerned by your software's origin. Microsoft proudly claims to be a US company. That's getting harder for them to say. A few years ago, Microsoft swore in court that releasing the source code to Windoze would represent a national security risk. They have since sold peeks at that software to China and the former KGB. They have set up places in India and China to actually write their "product". So, owned in the US but made and developed in China. Nice.

This exposes the non-free software end game: slavery. Microsoft is non-free software. You can't share it with your friends, study it, improve it or even run it as you please. They have the backing of US and just about every other country's laws. They are also working on hardware, mostly made in China, that does not allow you to run anything else. With China's co-operation, they will win. China is also non-free, in the worst of ways and this is why it's so cheap to get things done there. Now, very few benefit from Microsoft's ownership of software and the intentional waste of the upgrade train. As Microsoft fires it's own employees, you will see that the ultimately only one or two owners with zero tech knowledge will benefit as the rest of us are stripped of choice, privacy, freedom of press.

It's ugly, very ugly.

Further reading can be found GNU:

Microsoft has never been your friend and friends that help you by screwing others will always turn on you. It's been said before and I'll say it again. Companies have obligations to customers, employees and share holders. A company that screws any one of these will eventually screw all three. It's all part of believing that it's OK to screw people.

Re:Because... by ajs318 · 2005-09-05 02:17 · Score: 1 · on MySQL and SCO Join Forces

Who needs MIN() and MAX() anyway? What's wrong with something like SELECT height FROM suspects ORDER BY height ASC LIMIT 1 ? Come to think of it, I probably would just use SELECT * ....., read the whole record into a numeric array and pull out the field I wanted. But that's just because I'm used to using the GPL version of MySQL, which isn't so much a database but a set of extensions for implementing special large associative arrays via an abstraction layer which resembles a programming language.

Anyway, the only people who don't like the GPL are the ones from whom it was meant to protect the rest of us -- the ones who want to take someone else's hard work which they intended to be for the benefit of all, then cage it up and profit from it.

Serious question for GPL-haters: Which of the Four Freedoms don't you believe in?

Re:what crap by Anonymous Coward · 2005-09-04 09:14 · Score: 5, Insightful · on MySQL and SCO Join Forces

> > ... rather, it forces proprietary developers to use MySQL under the proprietary license.

> Nothing forces anybody to do anything.

I see you are intentionally misinterpretting my words. So, here is the long version:

It [the GPL + proprietary licensing scheme] forces proprietary developers, if they want to include MySQL in their application, and if they don't want to GPL their own application, to use MySQL under the proprietary license.

> So by your logic, the GPL license forces proprietary developers to ignore the product altogether?

Of course -- unless they are prepared to GPL their own code. That's what the license says. Or are you saying that no one is "forcing" them to obey the license?

> More license options means more choice, and choice is *good*.

What crap. You are intentionally misrepresenting the situation.

The dual licensing scheme used by MySQL and Trolltech _removes_ choice. It removes the choice of proprietary developers to use MySQL and Qt under an Open Source license. The LGPL license would have given them that choice.

Let's see what Richard Stallman had to say on this topic:

"Using the ordinary GPL for a library gives free software developers an advantage over proprietary developers: a library that they can use, while proprietary developers cannot use it."

"Using the ordinary GPL is not advantageous for every library. There are reasons that can make it better to use the Library GPL in certain cases. The most common case is when a free library's features are readily available for proprietary software through other alternative libraries. In that case, the library cannot give free software any particular advantage, so it is better to use the Library GPL for that library."

"This is why we used the Library GPL for the GNU C library. After all, there are plenty of other C libraries; using the GPL for ours would have driven proprietary software developers to use another--no problem for them, only for us."

MySQL and Qt are available under proprietary licenses. Therefore, rather than GPLing their own code, proprietary developers will simply use the proprietary license.

In other words, MySQL's and Trolltech's use of the GPL, instead of the LGPL, produces exactly the opposite effect to what Stallman prefers. The dual licensing scheme, rather than increasing the amount of Free software, simply encourages proprietary developers to use the proprietary versions of the libraries.

> This is like the argument against the BSD license: but... but... someone could develop their own closed source app!

That statement is completely illogical. It does not follow from what I wrote.

I am concerned about people who choose to run applications A, B, and C, becoming locked in to the underlying middleware, without realizing it. It happened before with Windows, and it could happen again with MySQL and Qt.

What you are saying is the exact opposite to what I wrote. I said that they should have used the _LGPL_, which _allows_ proprietary developers to use the code.

The advantage for the rest of us is that anyone who uses those proprietary applications are only locked in to those applications. What they avoid is the _Network Lock-in_ to the underlying middleware, which is much worse.

As to your last paragraph, I have no idea what it has to do with my original post.

I am advocating for people to be careful about the software they use, and to think about the long-term effects of the licenses for that software.

If you call that trolling, then I have to wonder what your agenda is.

Re:GNU Public License?! by Anonymous Coward · 2005-09-03 06:35 · Score: 0 · on Mambo Changes its Name to Joomla!

"The GNU General Public License (GPL)" appears to be correct. See the URLs for evidence. omgbbqwtf rtfa?
http://www.gnu.org/licenses/gpl.html
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/GPL
You sir have been corrected by a troll. Thank you and have a nice day.

But... by Anonymous Coward · 2005-09-02 21:36 · Score: 0 · on Linspire 5.0 Free For Limited Time

Is it Free?http://www.gnu.org/philosophy/free-sw.html

Re:eh? by Anonymous Coward · 2005-09-02 10:39 · Score: 0 · on Linspire 5.0 Free For Limited Time

No, you have to provide the source code plus all modifications, plus the source code to anything you make that uses that code. Nothing has to be free as in price tag.

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

Copyright irrelevant in 35 years by danila · 2005-09-02 05:40 · Score: 1, Interesting · on Lessig - Public Domain Dead in 35 Years

Seriously, since no one is discussing/considering retroactive cancellations of copyright, the only difference we may possibly make is having or not having some works from 1930s in PD soon. Even if we succeed in that, it won't help us much.

The piracy fight is much more important than the fight for public domain. Considering the current situation, the ability to copy works freely is much more important than the right to do it. It is important that we support the pirates (including commercial pirates who profit from distribution of copyrighted works) and ensure that we have the Right to Read intact, if only de facto.

In 35 years capitalism will be dead and intellectual property will be dead. It's lunacy to seriously consider the death of public domain (but it can still be a valuable attention-grabbing device). I can't see how proprietary software will withstand the assault of FLOSS or how publishers and studios will ignore the reality of instant anonymous piracy.

Just think! It's 35 years! 35 years ago first BBSs were starting, we used floppies to carry 120 kilobytes (if that) of data around, Internet was something no one heard of...

Do you think it's possible that we won't have dramatic changes in our digital communications systems? Do you think it's possible that we won't have ways to safely, anonymously and instantly access all human knowledge (liberated by pirates if necessary)? If yes, then you must be living in some other world than I do...

P.S. I enjoy learning immensely. Thanks to the Internet and the piracy I can watch any film I want, watch most good educational programs I want, listen to audio lectures on many topics, read any classic books, read many recent books, read encyclopedias and articles from most major publications. All for free. I still pay for some media - it's easier to get pirated games on DVD and there are still many books that aren't available online, but that's insignificant and its importance will only diminish over time.

Re:Features vs speed by Too+Much+Noise · 2005-09-02 04:41 · Score: 1 · on No More Apple Mysteries Part Two

By the report the G5 processors are just as fast as the fastest x86.

Sorry, unsupported assertion. Opterons *50 aren't the fastest Opteron procs around, as some already pointed out. But nevermind that. Look at how gcc 4.0 lowers the x86 fp scores. Also, consider the fact that gcc 4.0.0 introduced changes in handling x86 vector code that apparently were not all for the better judging from the numbers (bugs too - see this one for instance) and that IBM made significant contributions on the Power/AltiVec side of gcc 4.

The one thing G5 seems to be doing better is fmadd - hardly a surprise, as SSE/SSE2/SSE3 have no single instruction equivalent. Otherwise, clock-for-clock the scores are not that impressive - and in fact, when using fdiv, some are rather weak: a 2.7GHz G5 about 25% slower than a 2.4GHz K8? Mind you, in raw flops a top-pumped Xeon would do better than the Opterons, too.

So...they did not have the right to read? by RAMMS+EIN · 2005-09-01 21:58 · Score: 4, Interesting · on Charges Against High School Hackers Dropped

Reading the students' story, it sounds almost like The Right to Read.

Student Story:

At a school board meeting ~ a year ago, opponents of the high school's Computer Initiative predicted that the administration would not be able to control the student's access to inappropriate internet sites...

It would allow the computer department to monitor student activity and it limited access to the network and internet. This configuration was protected by an administrative password and, as our administration discovered, the laptop could be easily reconfigured by curious students when the password was not secured...

At least one student figured it out and passed it along until ~ 80 - 100 of the students had access to it...

the Kutztown Police Department notified the parents of 13 high school students that their children were being charged with the crime of Computer Trespass. This offense is graded by the state as a felony of the 3rd degree.

Right to Read:

This put Dan in a dilemma. He had to help her--but if he lent her his computer, she might read his books. Aside from the fact that you could go to prison for many years for letting someone else read your books...

In his software class, Dan had learned that each book had a copyright monitor that reported when and where it was read, and by whom, to Central Licensing...

There were ways, of course, to get around the SPA and Central Licensing. They were themselves illegal. Dan had had a classmate in software, Frank Martucci, who had obtained an illicit debugging tool, and used it to skip over the copyright monitor code when reading books.

Re:I too... by MacDork · 2005-09-01 18:38 · Score: 3, Informative · on Mom, and Now Judge, Stand Up to RIAA

I am so sick of this argument, it makes me see red.

What part of my argument specifically is it that makes you 'see red'?

Give me just ONE example of where COPYRIGHT (NOT trademarks, and NOT patents) prevents innovation. Just one. In fact, I'll settle for a conceptual model. You see, I've heard this argument again and again, and I've never seen anybody actually manage to justify that statement about copyright stifling innovation.

You must be new here. I'll be happy to provide more than one. Music? Remixing has been affected. Internet radio has certainly been stifled by copyright law too. Of course, you can't mention copyright infringement without mentioning P2P. Here, the law puts Bram Cohen's BitTorrent in possible legal jeopardy because of what he said, not how his software works. That's tantamount to thought crime. Why is there no iTunes-like software for my DVD collection? Probably because circumventing CSS, or distributing software that does the same, is a felony in the US. Being an author, you'll find this interesting: Encryption researchers are afraid to publish their findings thanks to copyright law.

But it's not just music, software, movies, and books being affected, it's everything. A frickin' universal garage door opener manufacture got hit with a DMCA lawsuit. If you don't have bags of money sitting around, one lawsuit, regardless of whether or not you are victorious, can put you out of business. I could go on, but I think I've more than adequately met your requirements. Copyright in the USA has gotten way out of hand and is damaging innovation and invention in practically every industry.

In fact, it's COPYRIGHT that protects the open source movement from being downright raped by corporations like Microsoft!

I assume you are referring to the GPL. You do realize that the GPL was designed to be the anti-copyright, right? Allow me to quote the pertinent part:

The GPL, on the other hand, subtracts from copyright rather than adding to it. The license doesn't have to be complicated, because we try to control users as little as possible. Copyright grants publishers power to forbid users to exercise rights to copy, modify, and distribute that we believe all users should have; the GPL thus relaxes almost all the restrictions of the copyright system. The only thing we absolutely require is that anyone distributing GPL'd works or works made from GPL'd works distribute in turn under GPL. That condition is a very minor restriction, from the copyright point of view. Much more restrictive licenses are routinely held enforceable: every license involved in every single copyright lawsuit is more restrictive than the GPL.

In other words, if it weren't for copyright, there would be no need for the GPL. It exists because of copyright.

The EFF and SCOTUS: bad combination by typical · 2005-09-01 12:48 · Score: 1 · on Blizzard/Vivendi 2, bnetd 0

The problem is that if the EFF gets this before the Supreme Court, they're going to stick some idiot up there who has to be ideologically pure instead of willing to do whatever it takes to win battles. Last time, IIRC, it was Larry Lessig arguing against the DMCA. Instead of just fighting the DMCA, Lessig had to try to fight the whole goddamn copyright reform war in one go, and argue that the copyright extensions of 1831 and 1909 were unconstitutional and should be retroactively rolled back. Now, that's just stupid. No Supreme Court is going to pass that. It would cause *chaos* in the business world. There are *vast* pragmatic issues. So by adopting an impossible cause, Lessig punched a hole in the bottom of his boat, killed the battle against the DMCA.

Don't get me wrong. I think that Larry Lessig qualifies as a good guy, someone out doing good work. But his arguments up there sounded something like a somewhat muted Stallman -- maybe visionary, inspiring flame in a crowd, but sure as hell not going to pass muster before a bunch of crochety Justices.

The EFF needs some people willing to be a lot more Machivellian, less ambitious, and less idealistic if it intends to compete with the competition, which doesn't have any of its idealistic hangups.

Start our "Thank You" notes to GNU by jackDuhRipper · 2005-08-31 08:35 · Score: 1 · on Microsoft Stalling TCG Best Practices Document?

> it's all part of the desensitizing of DRM

Agreed that that's part of it. And, as we slip down that slope where there are hardware- and OS-level mechanisms determining what we can and cannot view, hear and run, let's please thank the heavens and stars for GNU, the FSF and the thousands of players who've given us the ability to circumvent these things.

I personally don't get too up in arms about "some DRM." I think, e.g., FairPlay is pretty fair for consumers. Currently.

I no longer hear (m)any rants about CPU IDs. It's not because it's no longer there - it's because - per the parent post - we're desensitized.

From my PoV, a little governing of our digital Freedoms is acceptable if it means there's incentive for entities to build and offer good services. I thank heavens for the eternal vigilance we're all provided by the likes of GNU and FSF because they're the ones who've made possible the tools that can help us decide for ourselves when others decide to clamp down too tightly (and that threshold will differ for diferent individuals).

Much to learn about software freedom. by jbn-o · 2005-08-30 10:32 · Score: 1 · on Jonathan Zdziarski Answers

Jonathan Zdziarski makes many claims with nothing to back them up, then draws incorrect conclusions based on those claims.

One of the things I've heard, which doesn't make much sense to me, is the idea of changing the GPL to deal with 'use' rather than 'distribution', which would affect companies like Google and Amazon.

Where did he hear this? The FSF understands that setting conditions for running software is not allowed under US copyright law:

"At a fundamental level, the APSL makes a claim that, if it became accepted, would stretch copyright powers in a dangerous way: it claims to be able to set conditions for simply *running* the software. As I understand it, copyright law in the US does not permit this, except when encryption or a license manager is used to enforce the conditions. It would be terribly ironic if a failed attempt at making a free software license resulted in an extension of the effective range of copyright power."

Zdziarski continues:

The argument seems to be that some people feel building your infrastructure on open source should demand a company release all of their proprietary source code which links to or builds on existing GPL projects.

First off, the GNU GPL was written by the Free Software Foundation with an eye toward software freedom, and it was written well before there was such a thing as the "open source" movement. Eben Moglen and Richard Stallman made it very clear that software freedom, not mere "open"ness, would be the measuring stick by which the GPL3 would be judged a success. Hence, the GPL is properly credited as a free software license. This is important not only to tell the truth about who wrote the GPL and why, but to understand what it says and why. Software freedom is the very thing the open source movement was build to not discuss. To this day, the Open Source Initiative (which coined the term "open source", defined it, and determines which licenses comply with its terms) belittles the FSF in their FAQ as "ideological tub-thumping". Which movement you side with (if either) is your business. But it should be important to be fair to the differences that exist between the movements. One practical difference between the two movements is that free software licenses guarantee private derivatives ("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."), OSI-approved licenses do not guarantee private derivatives, hence the FSF's unwillingness to give their imprimateur to the early revisions of the Apple Public Source License.

Second, no American company can legally distribute proprietary derivatives of GPL'd software. If they don't like this, they should write their own software or find something under a license which they can build on and distribute without also distributing their changes.

They argue that the open source community hasn't benefited from companies like Google and Amazon. Well, from a source code perspective that might be somewhat true - but if you take into consideration the fact that we all have a good quality, freely accessible search engine, cheap books, and employment for many local developers (many of whom write open source applications), the benefits seem to balance out the deficiency. Does anybody remember what the world was like before Google? None of us do, primarily because we couldn't find it - we couldn't find much of anything we were looking for on the Internet as a matter of fact, i

Much to learn about software freedom. by jbn-o · 2005-08-30 10:32 · Score: 1 · on Jonathan Zdziarski Answers

Jonathan Zdziarski makes many claims with nothing to back them up, then draws incorrect conclusions based on those claims.

One of the things I've heard, which doesn't make much sense to me, is the idea of changing the GPL to deal with 'use' rather than 'distribution', which would affect companies like Google and Amazon.

Where did he hear this? The FSF understands that setting conditions for running software is not allowed under US copyright law:

"At a fundamental level, the APSL makes a claim that, if it became accepted, would stretch copyright powers in a dangerous way: it claims to be able to set conditions for simply *running* the software. As I understand it, copyright law in the US does not permit this, except when encryption or a license manager is used to enforce the conditions. It would be terribly ironic if a failed attempt at making a free software license resulted in an extension of the effective range of copyright power."

Zdziarski continues:

The argument seems to be that some people feel building your infrastructure on open source should demand a company release all of their proprietary source code which links to or builds on existing GPL projects.

First off, the GNU GPL was written by the Free Software Foundation with an eye toward software freedom, and it was written well before there was such a thing as the "open source" movement. Eben Moglen and Richard Stallman made it very clear that software freedom, not mere "open"ness, would be the measuring stick by which the GPL3 would be judged a success. Hence, the GPL is properly credited as a free software license. This is important not only to tell the truth about who wrote the GPL and why, but to understand what it says and why. Software freedom is the very thing the open source movement was build to not discuss. To this day, the Open Source Initiative (which coined the term "open source", defined it, and determines which licenses comply with its terms) belittles the FSF in their FAQ as "ideological tub-thumping". Which movement you side with (if either) is your business. But it should be important to be fair to the differences that exist between the movements. One practical difference between the two movements is that free software licenses guarantee private derivatives ("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."), OSI-approved licenses do not guarantee private derivatives, hence the FSF's unwillingness to give their imprimateur to the early revisions of the Apple Public Source License.

Second, no American company can legally distribute proprietary derivatives of GPL'd software. If they don't like this, they should write their own software or find something under a license which they can build on and distribute without also distributing their changes.

They argue that the open source community hasn't benefited from companies like Google and Amazon. Well, from a source code perspective that might be somewhat true - but if you take into consideration the fact that we all have a good quality, freely accessible search engine, cheap books, and employment for many local developers (many of whom write open source applications), the benefits seem to balance out the deficiency. Does anybody remember what the world was like before Google? None of us do, primarily because we couldn't find it - we couldn't find much of anything we were looking for on the Internet as a matter of fact, i

Much to learn about software freedom. by jbn-o · 2005-08-30 10:32 · Score: 1 · on Jonathan Zdziarski Answers

Jonathan Zdziarski makes many claims with nothing to back them up, then draws incorrect conclusions based on those claims.

One of the things I've heard, which doesn't make much sense to me, is the idea of changing the GPL to deal with 'use' rather than 'distribution', which would affect companies like Google and Amazon.

Where did he hear this? The FSF understands that setting conditions for running software is not allowed under US copyright law:

"At a fundamental level, the APSL makes a claim that, if it became accepted, would stretch copyright powers in a dangerous way: it claims to be able to set conditions for simply *running* the software. As I understand it, copyright law in the US does not permit this, except when encryption or a license manager is used to enforce the conditions. It would be terribly ironic if a failed attempt at making a free software license resulted in an extension of the effective range of copyright power."

Zdziarski continues:

The argument seems to be that some people feel building your infrastructure on open source should demand a company release all of their proprietary source code which links to or builds on existing GPL projects.

First off, the GNU GPL was written by the Free Software Foundation with an eye toward software freedom, and it was written well before there was such a thing as the "open source" movement. Eben Moglen and Richard Stallman made it very clear that software freedom, not mere "open"ness, would be the measuring stick by which the GPL3 would be judged a success. Hence, the GPL is properly credited as a free software license. This is important not only to tell the truth about who wrote the GPL and why, but to understand what it says and why. Software freedom is the very thing the open source movement was build to not discuss. To this day, the Open Source Initiative (which coined the term "open source", defined it, and determines which licenses comply with its terms) belittles the FSF in their FAQ as "ideological tub-thumping". Which movement you side with (if either) is your business. But it should be important to be fair to the differences that exist between the movements. One practical difference between the two movements is that free software licenses guarantee private derivatives ("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."), OSI-approved licenses do not guarantee private derivatives, hence the FSF's unwillingness to give their imprimateur to the early revisions of the Apple Public Source License.

Second, no American company can legally distribute proprietary derivatives of GPL'd software. If they don't like this, they should write their own software or find something under a license which they can build on and distribute without also distributing their changes.

They argue that the open source community hasn't benefited from companies like Google and Amazon. Well, from a source code perspective that might be somewhat true - but if you take into consideration the fact that we all have a good quality, freely accessible search engine, cheap books, and employment for many local developers (many of whom write open source applications), the benefits seem to balance out the deficiency. Does anybody remember what the world was like before Google? None of us do, primarily because we couldn't find it - we couldn't find much of anything we were looking for on the Internet as a matter of fact, i

Right to read by xmda · 2005-08-30 04:56 · Score: 2 · on Libraries Use DRM to Expire Audiobooks

It is now time again for reminding you all of what might happen if this goes too far:

http://www.gnu.org/philosophy/right-to-read.html

There is no "IP" by tepples · 2005-08-30 02:08 · Score: 1 · on Libraries Use DRM to Expire Audiobooks

other goods like, for example, a Ferrari, have MUCH higher percentage of their cost covering the development of the IP prior to manufacturing. Moving to the digital world doesn't change that in the slightest.

Yes it does. The processes that go into building a Ferrari automobile are patented, while most works distributed under digital restrictions management are copyrighted. This is important because the scope and duration of exclusive rights under patent and copyright are drastically different. Believing that what's good for the patent goose is good for the copyright gander is a confusion that results from the overuse of the phrase "intellectual property".

Obligatory link by Anonymous Coward · 2005-08-30 00:07 · Score: 1, Informative · on Libraries Use DRM to Expire Audiobooks

RMS' essay, The Right to Read. What was dismissed as a paranoid rant years ago is coming true before our eyes.

~~~

Right to Read... by Gopal.V · 2005-08-29 23:05 · Score: 1 · on Libraries Use DRM to Expire Audiobooks

Have you ever read right to read ?. To me it's scary that what I own can't be shared with my kin.

This is all the thin edge of a wedge. Once DRM becomes standard and status-quo - this will start flowing into more things than just returning audio books automatically. The essential point of libraries was to solve the scarcity of books, which never occurs with such digital media.

It would be a good idea to remember what Freedom is - it's the freedom to do anything, but the consequences are yours to face. If the government starts such a pre-crime prevention, it comes close to a facsist utopia - we are not the first to be tempted by such a dream.

After all God didn't put a fence around the forbidden fruit, did he ?.

Re:Flash sucks anyway by coaxial · 2005-08-29 18:23 · Score: 0, Flamebait · on Flash EULA Doesn't Fit the Times

Yes, but why would they bother when they're already readily available for both major (win and macosx) and atleast one minor (linux) OS.

Oh wait. You want the source to look cool, because let's be honest, you're not actually going to be modifying it or even looking at.

All hail St Ignucius and sing the hymn.

Re:LGPL by thegrassyknowl · 2005-08-29 10:58 · Score: 1 · on License for Open-Source Software w/ Plugins?

You cannot modify the text of the GPL document. The GPL license document text is a copyright work, with a copyright notice on it. The GPL license text is Copyright by the FSF.

Where did you come up with this?

You are allowed to use all of the GPL terms without the preamble, see here.

Why LILO instead of GRUB by RedHat+Rocky · 2005-08-29 01:32 · Score: 1 · on The Boot Loader Showdown

Personally, I prefer LILO because I prefer the way it handles things. The config file is straight forward and most importantly, doing remote kernel upgrades is a lot less prone to failing with LILO's -R option.

I do note that GRUB has finally added a "boot once" option, as documented here:

http://www.gnu.org/software/grub/manual/html_node/ Booting-once_002donly.html#Booting-once_002donly

I think this is a good example of what could be improved in GRUB; having to set the next-boot-default by an index number in the config file rather than using the nice label. UI does matter.

People complain that one has to run 'lilo' after updating the kernel, etc, but they are missing the point of why that is good; lilo does all kinds of sanity checks. With GRUB, sure you get a menu for when you've goofed something in the config file, which you typically find out when on the next reboot. But that menu doesn't help much when the machine is 600 miles away without console access.
Guide a non-linux person over the phone through GRUB's menu? No thanks.

Re:Actually, ignorance is a factor. by ultranova · 2005-08-28 20:07 · Score: 1 · on Stallman Claims Linux Trademark Doesn't Matter

You completely missed the point. How many pieces of software out there have been GPL'd despite the fact that they have no value, and nobody would ever make a proprietary fork of it? How can a company "rip you off" when your software isn't worth anything to begin with? I didn't say the GPL wasn't good, or that it shouldn't be used. I simply said its main feature doesn't matter for lots of software, and people use it anyways, making their software less useful.

If these pieces of software have no value, and no one wants to put them under proprietary licenses anyway, how does GPL'ing them decrease their usefulness ? And for that matter, how can they have no value if they are usefull ? No software has value besides it's usefulness for something.

And as I briefly mentioned in my original post, thinking that the GPL only screws closed source users of your software is ignorant. Take for instance pike, a programming language released under the GPL, LGPL and MPL. Random bits of code that have no monetary value, but are licensed under the GPL cannot be used in pike, and the developers have to waste time writing replacements, or trying to track down the authors of the long since abandoned code to ask for a different license.

Again you state that these bits of code have no value. Again you immediately afterwards state that they are usefull, and therefore do have value after all, since using them would relieve the developers of pike from the burden of rewriting similar code from scratch. Which one is it - do they have value or not ?

The people writing these random GPL things are hurting open source developers.

Really ? How ? Surely you aren't saying that the existance of these bits of code makes the pike teams efforts harder ? Or are you implying that not helping pike team is equal to harming them ?

Either way your statement just doesn't make sense.

If their goal was to try to make everything in the world GPL like RMS, then that's fine, its exactly what the author wanted. But in lots of cases the developer simply wanted to make their code available to other people, and in that case their needs would probably have been better served by a different license.

It could simply be that they want to make their code available to other people, and be able to get back whatever nice additions/bugfixes those others might come up with. GPL accomplishes this nicely.

That's my point. The whole reason readline is GPLd is not to be provide free software to people, but to push his agenda. That's fine, its his choice. But developers who don't share his views and only want to provide free software end up pushing his agenda too, accidently, simply by GPLing their various and sundry minor code bits. And notice, all that GPLing readline has done is made it so people wrote a free replacement.

You keep on painting a picture of authors of GPL'd software as poor victims of some sinister cult, who got in not knowing what they were doing. As this is clearly a nonsensical picture, I must wonder if you have an agenda to push ?

He is still trying to redefine free. In english it has two meanings, without cost which isn't relevant here. And the second meaning is the state of being free as in freedom. He has chosen to try to make free mean "having my particular restrictive license". Obviously freedom is the lack of restrictions, so the GPL does not provide freedom.

Strange. GNU, Stallman's pet project, lists 28 licenses as "GPL-Compatible, Free Software Licenses" and 35 licenses as "GPL-Incompatible, Free Software Licenses" in their web page. Stallman calling 63 other licenses "free" doesn't seem compatible with your claim that he's trying to redefine "free" to mean "GPL'd".

Re:Software freedom requires modification rights. by jbn-o · 2005-08-28 14:45 · Score: 1 · on License for Open-Source Software w/ Plugins?

Just a few minutes before making the parent post, you said I was right and that you hadn't made yourself clear. Now you're saying I'm taking your words out of context. That is confusing because you're addressing the same issue--granting users the freedom to modify MultiMAD for plugins.

Yes, I would prefer to not have any MultiMAD forks, but I can live with that, so it would be free software. On the other hand, what I definetely want to forbid is plugins that need to fork MultiMAD to run.

Users can't have it both ways. Either users have the freedoms of free software or they don't. They don't have free software if they are forbidden to change MultiMAD for a particular purpose.

Perhaps you would benefit from spending some time reviewing why free software is important (I suggest the many essays at www.gnu.org/philosophy/). I suggest this because I think after some time collecting your thoughts you will recognize that your fork of MultiMAD serves the users best when it can compete with the other forks out there. You might even discover that users appreciate cooperative developers and welcome programs which are licensed to share and modify. The GPL would be fine for this task because it will increase the chances you have to incorporate any distributed derivative of MultiMAD into your fork.

Happy hacking.

Re:Okay...How do I install these things... by hdante · 2005-08-28 09:40 · Score: 1 · on The Boot Loader Showdown

People already answered with some apps. The idea is that Windows or DOS install a very simple boot loader in MBR that actually calls the boot loader of some tagged partition (the 'DOS-active' partition). This information should be difficult to find because it's not a Linux thing. Anyway, there's a linux software that creates such a boot sector: mbr. I couldn't find it anywhere but at debian.

Now for the 'get my disk space back' thing, this is both a not-so-easy thing and pretty much requested thing, that already has some interesting software

Re:AMD64 by Anonymous Coward · 2005-08-28 08:41 · Score: 0 · on The Boot Loader Showdown

RTFM:
http://www.gnu.org/software/grub/manual/grub.html
Especially note "map" "rootnoverify" and "makeactive".