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I dare you to compare:

http://www.kernel.org/pub/linux/kernel/v2.6/linux- 2.6.12.5.tar.gz
(keep in mind that most of this is driver code)

http://ftp.gnu.org/gnu/glibc/glibc-2.3.4.tar.gz
http://ftp.gnu.org/gnu/coreutils/coreutils-5.2.0.t ar.gz
http://ftp.gnu.org/gnu/bash/bash-3.0.tar.gz
http://ftp.gnu.org/gnu/grep/grep-2.5.1.tar.gz
http://ftp.gnu.org/gnu/tar/tar-1.15.tar.gz
http://ftp.gnu.org/gnu/gzip/gzip-1.2.4.tar.gz
http://ftp.gnu.org/gnu/sed/sed-4.1.4.tar.gz
http://ftp.gnu.org/gnu/findutils/findutils-4.2.23. tar.gz
http://ftp.gnu.org/gnu/gcc/gcc-4.0.1/gcc-4.0.1.tar .bz2
http://ftp.gnu.org/gnu/binutils/binutils-2.16.tar. gz
http://ftp.gnu.org/gnu/make/make-3.80.tar.gz
http://ftp.gnu.org/gnu/patch/patch-2.5.4.tar.gz
http://ftp.gnu.org/gnu/diffutils/diffutils-2.8.1.t ar.gz
http://ftp.gnu.org/gnu/gawk/gawk-3.1.5.tar.gz
http://ftp.gnu.org/gnu/bc/bc-1.06.tar.gz

I dare you to compare:

http://www.kernel.org/pub/linux/kernel/v2.6/linux- 2.6.12.5.tar.gz
(keep in mind that most of this is driver code)

http://ftp.gnu.org/gnu/glibc/glibc-2.3.4.tar.gz
http://ftp.gnu.org/gnu/coreutils/coreutils-5.2.0.t ar.gz
http://ftp.gnu.org/gnu/bash/bash-3.0.tar.gz
http://ftp.gnu.org/gnu/grep/grep-2.5.1.tar.gz
http://ftp.gnu.org/gnu/tar/tar-1.15.tar.gz
http://ftp.gnu.org/gnu/gzip/gzip-1.2.4.tar.gz
http://ftp.gnu.org/gnu/sed/sed-4.1.4.tar.gz
http://ftp.gnu.org/gnu/findutils/findutils-4.2.23. tar.gz
http://ftp.gnu.org/gnu/gcc/gcc-4.0.1/gcc-4.0.1.tar .bz2
http://ftp.gnu.org/gnu/binutils/binutils-2.16.tar. gz
http://ftp.gnu.org/gnu/make/make-3.80.tar.gz
http://ftp.gnu.org/gnu/patch/patch-2.5.4.tar.gz
http://ftp.gnu.org/gnu/diffutils/diffutils-2.8.1.t ar.gz
http://ftp.gnu.org/gnu/gawk/gawk-3.1.5.tar.gz
http://ftp.gnu.org/gnu/bc/bc-1.06.tar.gz

I dare you to compare:

http://www.kernel.org/pub/linux/kernel/v2.6/linux- 2.6.12.5.tar.gz
(keep in mind that most of this is driver code)

http://ftp.gnu.org/gnu/glibc/glibc-2.3.4.tar.gz
http://ftp.gnu.org/gnu/coreutils/coreutils-5.2.0.t ar.gz
http://ftp.gnu.org/gnu/bash/bash-3.0.tar.gz
http://ftp.gnu.org/gnu/grep/grep-2.5.1.tar.gz
http://ftp.gnu.org/gnu/tar/tar-1.15.tar.gz
http://ftp.gnu.org/gnu/gzip/gzip-1.2.4.tar.gz
http://ftp.gnu.org/gnu/sed/sed-4.1.4.tar.gz
http://ftp.gnu.org/gnu/findutils/findutils-4.2.23. tar.gz
http://ftp.gnu.org/gnu/gcc/gcc-4.0.1/gcc-4.0.1.tar .bz2
http://ftp.gnu.org/gnu/binutils/binutils-2.16.tar. gz
http://ftp.gnu.org/gnu/make/make-3.80.tar.gz
http://ftp.gnu.org/gnu/patch/patch-2.5.4.tar.gz
http://ftp.gnu.org/gnu/diffutils/diffutils-2.8.1.t ar.gz
http://ftp.gnu.org/gnu/gawk/gawk-3.1.5.tar.gz
http://ftp.gnu.org/gnu/bc/bc-1.06.tar.gz

None of the above use the GNU C Library and GNU coreutils, which along with Linux and Bash are the most fundamental operating system pieces that combined make GNU/Linux a free clone of Unix.

None of the above use the GNU C Library and GNU coreutils, which along with Linux and Bash are the most fundamental operating system pieces that combined make GNU/Linux a free clone of Unix.

Stallman is consistent in saying that names are important.

What he said in this article is that "What names you're allowed to call a program is a side issue" (emphasis mine)

Stallman is consistent in saying that names are important.

What he said in this article is that "What names you're allowed to call a program is a side issue" (emphasis mine)

Stallman is consistent in saying that names are important.

What he said in this article is that "What names you're allowed to call a program is a side issue" (emphasis mine)

Who would have thought (or used a search engine to check) that GNU.org has an essay about this: What's in a name?

Once upon a time, somebody named Richard Stallman got pissed off because he needed to see the source code to a program so he could fix it, and the code author told him he was restricted by an NDA.
http://www.oreilly.com/openbook/freedom/ch01.html
He was so miffed at this that he went off and founded GNU (Gnu's Not Unix), meant to be a free version of Unix.
http://www.gnu.org/
"dedicated to eliminating restrictions on copying, redistribution, understanding, and modification of computer programs." But there was (and still is) one problem with the GNU operating system...it didn't have the kernel (the part of the OS that talks to the hardware at the lowest level), which project was known as the HURD
http://www.gnu.org/software/hurd/hurd.html
which is STILL "not ready for production use, as there are still many bugs and missing features."

Enter Linus Torvalds, who, unaware of the GNU project, undertook to write his *own* kernel upon which he would then put an operating system that was to be, you guessed it, a free version of Unix. Linus Torvalds and Richard Stallman got adjascent seats on an airplane with their luggage mixed up or something; however they met, they met, and with Torvalds' kernel and Stallman's operating system it was indeed the birth of the blues.

Fade out, fade in. Today, we have the Free (as in freedom *and* beer) Operating System that is part GNU, part Linux, and even part BSD (I stumble upon the occasional BSD program running on my Linux system ), and part everything else. In a commercial world, there'd be trademarks and copyrights and logos and every other byte of binary on your disk would be the stupid trademark/OS EULA/NDA warning of legal repercussions, etc. Windows users, get *any* hex editor, open *any* Windows program, you'll see "Microsoft" written in the ASCII somewhere: this is what I'm talking about. But this is Linux. Nobody really owns it all per se, because we basement hackers and renegade computer users and indignant MIT lab rats wrote it all ourselves, and don't really care about becoming millionaires or dominating the world about it, so long as we have our free system.

Once upon a time, somebody named Richard Stallman got pissed off because he needed to see the source code to a program so he could fix it, and the code author told him he was restricted by an NDA.
http://www.oreilly.com/openbook/freedom/ch01.html
He was so miffed at this that he went off and founded GNU (Gnu's Not Unix), meant to be a free version of Unix.
http://www.gnu.org/
"dedicated to eliminating restrictions on copying, redistribution, understanding, and modification of computer programs." But there was (and still is) one problem with the GNU operating system...it didn't have the kernel (the part of the OS that talks to the hardware at the lowest level), which project was known as the HURD
http://www.gnu.org/software/hurd/hurd.html
which is STILL "not ready for production use, as there are still many bugs and missing features."

Enter Linus Torvalds, who, unaware of the GNU project, undertook to write his *own* kernel upon which he would then put an operating system that was to be, you guessed it, a free version of Unix. Linus Torvalds and Richard Stallman got adjascent seats on an airplane with their luggage mixed up or something; however they met, they met, and with Torvalds' kernel and Stallman's operating system it was indeed the birth of the blues.

Fade out, fade in. Today, we have the Free (as in freedom *and* beer) Operating System that is part GNU, part Linux, and even part BSD (I stumble upon the occasional BSD program running on my Linux system ), and part everything else. In a commercial world, there'd be trademarks and copyrights and logos and every other byte of binary on your disk would be the stupid trademark/OS EULA/NDA warning of legal repercussions, etc. Windows users, get *any* hex editor, open *any* Windows program, you'll see "Microsoft" written in the ASCII somewhere: this is what I'm talking about. But this is Linux. Nobody really owns it all per se, because we basement hackers and renegade computer users and indignant MIT lab rats wrote it all ourselves, and don't really care about becoming millionaires or dominating the world about it, so long as we have our free system.

Linux is a kernel, right?

When did Linux become the operating system?

I must have missed something, or was it just mass media brain washing that has caught on? But last time I looked, when I installed something like SuSE, Red Hat, or Debian, it was an operating system built on open source tools, which compirsed of the linux "kernel", some variant of the unix file system, a whole suit of gnu replacements for unix commands, and a range of open source packages from folk like Apache and such?

If we were to talk about perhaps Solaris, then indeed, we are talking about the Solaris kernel, the Solaris operating system tools which were all written from scratch, alebit with access to the source from BSD and SYS V variants, and agian a unix file system and some packages from folk like Apache and such, but in this case it's a complete solution from Sun and it's called Solaris.

The same can be said surely for the likes of OpenBSD, NetBSD, and FreeBSD, where they are complete systems, built around kernels, from scratch, although in each case they too lean heavity on the GNU replacements for Unix commands and tools.

Windows for example once refered to itself as Windows NT, where the NT part was essentially the kernel, designed and built by some smart folk who had a hand in the likes of OS/2 and VMS kernels and operating systems if I recall corrently, but it was clear that Windows was the GUI and NT was the underlying kernel.

Mac OS X even now is pretty open about the split between it's Mach kernel, Darwin core, and BSD / NeXT Step tools, but we don't call Mac OS X "Mach" do we - nope, it's OS X, or if you're like me and you favour what uname -a tells you, it's Darwin ;-)

I think Stallman summed it up pretty well when he ended the piece with:

quote:

Stallman thinks the issue of naming the product is not so clear cut. "Most of the time, when people call something 'Linux', it's the GNU system with Linux as the kernel. Maybe this policy will encourage people to call it GNU," Stallman told the Sydney Morning Herald. "I prefer to say GNU/Linux' so as to give the kernel's developer a share of the credit."

Now I do agree that GNU/Linux is perhaps a mouthfull, but on the other hand, I think it's particularly lame to refer to the GNU/Linux operating system as just Linux, so perhaps it's time for a new name, label, whatever, for whatever it is many of us run.

It could be like the Musician formerly known as Prince, now known as some Egyptian hyrogliph - we could have the operating system formerly known as Linux, now known as #$%^&#!?

It might actually be worth many of you taking time to read Stallman's FAQ on GNU/Linux over at:

http://www.gnu.org/gnu/gnu-linux-faq.html

It does go a long way to answering and clearing up much of what is in this horribly messy series of threads and sub threads, basically emotive and guess work, rather than fact.

For example, from that URL:

quote:

Why do you call it GNU/Linux and not Linux?
Most operating system distributions based on Linux as kernel are basically modified versions of the GNU operating system. We began developing GNU in 1984, years before Linus Torvalds started to write his kernel, and we developed a larger part of the resulting system than any other project. In fairness, we ought to get equal mention.

quote:

Why is the name important?
Although the developers of Linux, the kernel, are contributing to the free software community, many of them do not care about freedom. People who think the whole system is Linux tend to get confused and assign to those developers a role in the history of our community which they did not actually play. Then they give inordinate weight to those developers' views.
Calling the system GNU/Linux recognizes the role that our idealism played in building our community, and helps the public recognize the practical importance of these ideals.

quote:

From TFA:

Stallman thinks the issue of naming the product is not so clear cut. "Most of the time, when people call something 'Linux', it's the GNU system with Linux as the kernel. Maybe this policy will encourage people to call it GNU," Stallman told the Sydney Morning Herald. "I prefer to say GNU/Linux' so as to give the kernel's developer a share of the credit."

You know, I wouldn't have a problem with RMS trying to get "GNU" in there if he didn't want to put it on the front of the name. The way he wants it, the name sounds like "GNU Linux", so it sounds like a product of the FSF ("GNU Emacs", etc.)

Whenever it comes to that naming issue, I prefer Linux/GNU instead. As RMS states on the GNU site, "the whole system is basically GNU, with Linux functioning as its kernel" and "Many people have made major contributions to the free software in the system, and they all deserve credit." So Linux/GNU should be just as good as GNU/Linux.

Except that the GPL license itself is copyrighted:
http://www.gnu.org/licenses/gpl.txt

Copyright (C) 1989, 1991 Free Software Foundation, Inc.
      51 Franklin St, Fifth Floor,
      Boston, MA 02110-1301 USA
Everyone is permitted to copy and distribute verbatim copies of this license document, but changing it is not allowed.

The poster wants to deny users the freedom to modify the MultiMAD program ("[...] as long as the tool itself is not modified for them to run"). Thus, MultiMAD is to be licensed under a non-free license.

The GNU GPL is a free software license; it allows users to modify the licensed program and to distribute those modified versions.

They will not be able to make commercial applications based off of your code, and they can make all the plugins they want, closed or open source, so long as they don't modify the host application's (MultiMAD's) code.

The GPL is not anti-commercial software development, it's pro-free software development and distribution. The moment a GPL'd program is used in a business context (such as distributing copies of GPL'd programs for a fee), that program becomes "commercial". Commercial and non-free are not the same thing. Not being able to change MultiMAD means denying users a freedom they ought to have. The GPL denies users the ability to distribute non-free derivatives. These are not the same issues and there's a good reason why the GPL does this--in order to preserve software freedom for derivatives, there had to be a choice between what was valued more and the FSF values giving more users software freedom.

This is wrong. Any plugins that are loaded by a GPL program must be GPL.
http://www.gnu.org/licenses/gpl-faq.html#GPLAndPlu gins

Just stay out of the template visual designer and you'll be alright. Use the open with context menu to open as[pc]x files with your favorite text editor such as textpad or emacs.

IMHO, once you get off of the visual designer, then VS.NET and Eclipse are about the same in quality.

Your reply focuses mostly on cost, which is something we in the Free Software Movement are not focused on. Cost is a shallow reason to switch to free software.

Try thinking about the ethics of refusing to share something that is useful and easy to copy. Would you say to your friends, "sorry I won't give you a copy." ?

Think about the ethics of denying someone access to software source code. You are denying them control over their own devices and communications, you are taking away any possibility of customizations being created for their specific needs, you are making it impossible for problems to be fixed, and you are preventing them from co-operating with other people to make it better. To do so is wrong.

Read the link I provided, and some other articles from the Philosophy of the GNU Project page.

Free software is a matter of liberty not price.

Java isn't

That's right, there's no open source Java solutions. You also can't download the source code.

Oh wait...

Java isn't

That's right, there's no open source Java solutions. You also can't download the source code.

Oh wait...

So you can live in a world where everyone is free to share and modify software. A world were we are nice to each other instead of hoarding useful information from each other.

By + + + J.C. Pizarro + + + ATH OK.

future of cross-platform development

You know, after a while, ignorance isn't even amusing anymore. gcc, nasm, qt, gtk, wxwidgets, more, then even more perl, python, ruby, ... ... ...
 

use gnu screen. that way your jobs are attached to the screen, not the window manager.

(Note that we have deferred the problem again to another layer, but gnu screen is "as stable as any terminal multiplexor I have used, maybe more". :) )

http://www.gnu.org/software/screen/

I've been hoping something like this would come along, as it will sort out those who support the freedom of open platforms from those who support their own freedom to steal copyright material.

You can think all you want that DRM will just prevent pirating, but that's not the case. If the big companies get what they want, you won't be able to open up Word documents in OpenOffice anymore, you won't be able to rip a cd and then transfer it to a second computer. Your computer might randomly decide to delete anything it thinks is pirated. If your computer isn't DRMed, you won't be able to watch DVDs on it or do internet banking or anything else that you can possibly be prevented from doing. They're even trying to make hardware that will not allow nonDRMed OSs to run on it. While there will be a DRMed Linux (unfortunetly) whether through Sun's initiative or someone elses, if DRM hardware is too widespread then say goodbye to small groups coming out of nowhere to make kick-ass distros like Ubuntu. Hell, you'll probably have to say goodbye to Ubuntu itself. There's probably a lot more that DRM could or will do, but the point is that it is not compatible at all with the idea of Free/Open Source Software. DRM is about putting into practice the crazy idea that you don't own music, software, movies, you just license it and they can take it away from you anytime they want. To think that it will just hurt the pirates is being naive.

More information on DRM and its newest form, "Trusted Computing": http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Digital_rights_manage ment http://www.gnu.org/philosophy/can-you-trust.html http://www.cl.cam.ac.uk/~rja14/tcpa-faq.html

One CD-ROM vendor found that in their "Linux distribution", GNU software was the largest single contingent, around 28% of the total source code, and this included some of the essential major components without which there could be no system. Linux itself was about 3%. So if you were going to pick a name for the system based on who wrote the programs in the system, the most appropriate single choice would be "GNU".
But we don't think that is the right way to consider the question. The GNU Project was not, is not, a project to develop specific software packages. It was not a project to develop a C compiler, although we did that. It was not a project to develop a text editor, although we developed one. The GNU Project's aim was to develop a complete free Unix-like system: GNU.

Many people have made major contributions to the free software in the system, and they all deserve credit. But the reason it is an integrated system--and not just a collection of useful programs--is because the GNU Project set out to make it one. We made a list of the programs needed to make a complete free system, and we systematically found, wrote, or found people to write everything on the list. We wrote essential but unexciting components because you can't have a system without them. Some of our system components, the programming tools, became popular on their own among programmers, but we wrote many components that are not tools.(...)
When Linus Torvalds wrote Linux, he filled the last major gap. People could then put Linux together with the GNU system to make a complete free system: a Linux-based version of the GNU system; the GNU/Linux system, for short. The earliest Linux release notes recognized that Linux was a kernel, used with parts of GNU: "Most of the tools used with linux are GNU software and are under the GNU copyleft. These tools aren't in the distribution - ask me (or GNU) for more info.

One CD-ROM vendor found that in their "Linux distribution", GNU software was the largest single contingent, around 28% of the total source code, and this included some of the essential major components without which there could be no system. Linux itself was about 3%. So if you were going to pick a name for the system based on who wrote the programs in the system, the most appropriate single choice would be "GNU".
But we don't think that is the right way to consider the question. The GNU Project was not, is not, a project to develop specific software packages. It was not a project to develop a C compiler, although we did that. It was not a project to develop a text editor, although we developed one. The GNU Project's aim was to develop a complete free Unix-like system: GNU.

Many people have made major contributions to the free software in the system, and they all deserve credit. But the reason it is an integrated system--and not just a collection of useful programs--is because the GNU Project set out to make it one. We made a list of the programs needed to make a complete free system, and we systematically found, wrote, or found people to write everything on the list. We wrote essential but unexciting components because you can't have a system without them. Some of our system components, the programming tools, became popular on their own among programmers, but we wrote many components that are not tools.(...)
When Linus Torvalds wrote Linux, he filled the last major gap. People could then put Linux together with the GNU system to make a complete free system: a Linux-based version of the GNU system; the GNU/Linux system, for short. The earliest Linux release notes recognized that Linux was a kernel, used with parts of GNU: "Most of the tools used with linux are GNU software and are under the GNU copyleft. These tools aren't in the distribution - ask me (or GNU) for more info.

Go here: http://www.gnu.org/prep/standards/html_node/Tradem arks.html which says the following:

2.3 Trademarks

Please do not include any trademark acknowledgements in GNU software packages or documentation.

Trademark acknowledgements are the statements that such-and-such is a trademark of so-and-so. The GNU Project has no objection to the basic idea of trademarks, but these acknowledgements feel like kowtowing, and there is no legal requirement for them, so we don't use them.

What is legally required, as regards other people's trademarks, is to avoid using them in ways which a reader might reasonably understand as naming or labeling our own programs or activities. For example, since "Objective C" is (or at least was) a trademark, we made sure to say that we provide a "compiler for the Objective C language" rather than an "Objective C compiler". The latter would have been meant as a shorter way of saying the former, but it does not explicitly state the relationship, so it could be misinterpreted as using "Objective C" as a label for the compiler rather than for the language.

I would like to mention two interesting points about common law trademarks and the GPL, but first..

IANAL. Also I personally believe this trademark initiative is wrong-headed, mainly because it has led to at least one tragedy (thelinuxapprentice.com, now down directly due to the scary dunning letters in Australia).

Also it has nothing to do with quality assurance, mainly it is a defensive tactic and as such *should* be maintained, but not by someone making a living at this, and not including calculations on how to maximize what the traffic will bear. The trademark should be sold for $1 or the minimum, regardless of whether it will make the trademark seem worthless, because of the innate reason the community needs defense and minimum burden.

The amount of money involved is very significant outside the U.S., and even in the U.S. a million dollar per year company could use the $10K to buy 20 $500 pcs, or hire a talented professor to do important research part time, etc. Where does it say they have a million bucks to burn?

It is also a barrier to entry to a market that has major distros with Linux in the name, and Linux has also become a generic term.

However I would submit that linux (with a lower case "l") or maybe vmlinuz? does talk about the kernel. So capitalized should be okay.

It does seem that the initiative violates Clause 1 of the GPL,
though the later part of the GPL seems to suggest it might simply forbid you from using or distributing the otherwise unencumbered software.

Okay about common law trademark. Google it. I found this link and this link which look interesting. While perhaps not as strong in terms of protection, it would seem that if you have a popular program used in many states or countries online, it is already trademarked in a sense.

If true, this would mean that the idea of having to force people to purchase liscenses is bogus, since surely Linux is well known by now.

It also would render more transparent this unfortunate expedition of Linus' which as he says, was explicitly created so as to control how linux is used (what can be called linux).

I would have a little less problem if it was automatically accepted as long as you are really making something with the linux kernel in it, or even if it was not the linux kernel but it ran well-known "linux" applications, KDE, etc.

In this sense, there is no need for such a wide-ranging crusade for trademarks. All you need is for a nice-sized fund to be created to hire a lawyer in case somebody truly evil shows up and tries to destroy linux by FUD based on use of the linux name. Otherwise, I think they should just skip trademark enforcement, not worrying about so-called dilution. The POINT of linux is dilution in that you can use it to do anything you want! Why don't you just put something about that in the GPL and be done with it? If it isn't really linux, then tell people about it. How much money will it really cost per year to do a minimum reasonable job using inexpensive people? Anybody with a real answer? Any reason why it even has to be based in the first world?

I'm too lazy to dig for the link, but check recent /. stories for the one on the school that is ditching textbooks for electronic versions. Time limitied, DRM, electronic versions...

Then check out RMS' short story The Right to Read

  -Charles

Whether to infringe upon someone's copyright is far more complex than that. Free software licenses use copyright law to do something ethical -- allow users the freedoms they need to be good neighbors. Non-free licenses use copyright law to restrict users freedoms to share and modify, thus making users unable to help themselves or their neighbors.

There is also a tough position which isn't addressed by a view of copyright law which says that since the copyright holder's power can be used as they wish, it is sacrosanct or beyond question regardless of how it is used. If a friend asks you for a copy of a proprietary program that you don't have a license to share, you can either choose to abide by the law and not be a good friend by not sharing, or you can disobey the law and distribute a copy. This is not a position anyone should ever have to be in, hence free software.

The FSF's former executive director, Brad Kuhn, has a far better response for why people should not engage in copyright infringement of proprietary computer software without a license. At about 1h42m into the talk, he says that people should see the full costs to them for obtaining and using proprietary software. If you get the software without paying the license fee, you don't see the impact it has on you and others around you. You should not be shielded from the true costs of what proprietary software imposes on you.

You can fool some of the people all the time or all of the people sometimes but never sometimes some of the people. Yes, I am talking about The People whom you are trying to restrict. I know that when Apple has DRM we can ignore it but come on, Sun isn't nearly as cool as my Mini Mac! Wake up people. There is no such thing as "open" Digital Restrictions Mandatory. No way. It's cool that Holland in Europe blocks DRM in Euro Congress but this is not enough. DRM in the US is harmful for everyone because where is Hollywood? In the US. We can't let THIS happen.

Have you heard of free speech? Read here gnu about free speech and free beer

postfix is clearly written and well commented ANSI C, one of the better examples around.

milter-greylist is also reasonably clearly written ANSI C.

gnu wget is written in ANSI C and seems reasonably well commented and clearly written.

But what I find most stupid is the philosophy behind it. Why make something so complex for free? I'm an excellent software engineer, good software is hard to make, it's beyond art, takes incredible amounts of education, hardwork and talent, and it should be kept proprietary and one should be paid to make it. I shouldn't have to run around asking for donations and shouldn't have to live in my mom's basement to get by.

and giving away software for free is not helping anybody except big corporations who save even more money.

I see quite a bit of BSD licensed code in there or usage thereof. Any BSD license with an advertising clausal is incompatible with the GPL (see http://www.gnu.org/licenses/license-list.html) still Quake3 is licensed under the GPL. Wouldn't this be a problem?

Anything

I can't believe no one has brought up The Right To Read. I know people like to dismiss RMS as a crank, but here we are -- what seemed like paranoia becomes more true every day.

The way to do it would be to use a software defined radio (SDR), I know that several manufactors are looking to use SDR for their latest UMTS (3G) basestations, and eventually for the phones as well. http://www.gnu.org/software/gnuradio/ would be a good starting point, but you would need some specilised hardware to work at GSM frequencies.

I guess the community faith here has been broken again, but by Linus himself?

What community faith? The community you are talking about values sharing software. You can't share names without causing confusion.

What is next, GNU being trademarked (it is) and similar fees for GNU projects?

Why not? The FSF had to issue a statement regarding Gnutella because it latched onto GNU's name.

Licensing fees like this only serve one purpose: To keep potential competition out of the marketplace and to "raise the bar" for any potential entrants.

Except it does no such thing. You don't have to pay any fees, just don't name your product "Linux".

This is totally against anything the Free Software/Open Source community has ever stood for

If the Free Software community is so keen on sharing names, why did they ask for Gnutella to be renamed? If the Open Source community is so keen on sharing names, then how come one of the first things the OSI did was try and trademark the mark "Open Source"?

>> In other words, you must NOT pretend that Mambo
>> is yours, and you must NOT charge people for
>> Mambo iteself.

> I thought that GPL software could be sold as
> long as the source was attached.


Yes, and you're right. You can sell the software for whatever price you'd like, but you MUST keep it under GPL licence which means you have to provide the source and the people who paid you money can again sell it or give it away. You CAN'T relicence the program if you don't have the COMPLETE copyright for it.

Some companies go to great lengths to make sure they have the complete copyright for the code they release and then they have the possibility to have the software as GPL and as a commercial licence (e.g. the competitor to Mambo: eZ publish or QT). But even they can't take back code that they've once licenced under the GPL.

I really dislike people who spin things like the mambo people. It's clearly stated in the GPL FAQ.

It does a disservice to the GPL licence because people get confused. And it only discourages people who don't know the GPL well enough.

Bull. Of course you can sell the software. Only after that you cannot make them pay for the source. From the GPL FAQ:

Does the GPL allow me to sell copies of the program for money?
Yes, the GPL allows everyone to do this. The right to sell copies is part of the definition of free software. Except in one special situation, there is no limit on what price you can charge. (The one exception is the required written offer to provide source code that must accompany binary-only release.)

http:www.lsb.orgLinux Standard Base

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

"So you can imagine our suprise when we were informed by a lawyer that we would be required to publish our source code for others to use. It was brought to our attention that Linux is copyrighted under something called the GPL, or the Gnu Protective License. Part of this license states that any changes to the kernel are to be made freely available. Unfortunately for us, this meant that the great deal of time and money we spent 'touching up' Linux to work for this investment firm would now be available at no cost to our competitors."

You might want to check out DROPS, the Dresden Real-Time Operating System at http://os.inf.tu-dresden.de/ . With some coding you can use Linux device drivers, but they are separated into their own L4/Fiasco task (L4 is a second generation microkernel family). Thus a device driver may crash, but only parts of the system using it are affected. And as every task may have its own address space it is quite resilient against various security problems.

Another very promising project is L4/Hurd (http://www.gnu.org/software/hurd/hurd-l4.html), which will eventually produce a modern UNIX-like operating system for which it will be a joy to write drivers, filesystems, you name it. :)

No, GNU's not UNIX.

Every once in a while its refreshing. Fullscreen the browser and it's similar to reading an article from a periodical (or Magazine, yes that's where zine comes from, damn kids /grumpy old man.)

I thought it was stylistic, and more to the point it made me turn the page past this article to the next. For contrast, you can just open the http://www.gnu.org/ site to balance out your Web Shui. There all better.

Currently there is a campaign to keep Europe free from a software patent system similar to that of the US.
You will find all the explanation, arguments and links you need (even of the Pro lobbyists) at
http://www.nosoftwarepatents.com/en/m/basics/index .html

As for my explanation: software is merely a compilation of thousands of smaller expressions in order to mimic something that already exists in real life. It's an idea, and idea's can not be patented, only manufacturing processes. Even if you would be granted to write software covered by a patent, then you will have to go thru all the research, exerimenting, analysis, coding, testing, debugging, and refining steps to get your product out of the door. This is not the case with regular manufacturing related patents. Software has -and needs only - Copyright. That's enough.

Of course there is the GPL [ http://www.gnu.org/licenses/gpl.html ] or "Copyleft". And my guess is that Open Source and GPL is are two of the reasons why the Powers That Be want Software Patents so bad.

Of course it is stupid to think of a patent for the idea to issue a "Gift Certificate". There is no such patent.
So why should the idea of delivering a "Gift Certificate" through a web application (=software) be patented? Insane.

I systematically keep a paper catalog of my Compact discs. And I have a page where I consistently keep a list up to date with all songs from 1975. So I have prior art to a smart playlist.

Someone on this topic posted a nice comment:
"You'll die through your own weapons."

vi? pfft

From the article:

"DMCA only applies to copyrighted works, and they [FedEx] were basically making trademark-related claims, so it was completely outrageous," said Lauren Gelman, associate director of the Stanford center.

A good time to remind us of why RMS insists on having different opinions about the public policy questions raised by disparate laws (including trademark, copyright, and patent law) with different histories and purposes; the alternative he rejects is lumping these laws together into "intellectual property".