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I'm not encouraged when I see "x86 GCC 2".

x86?! Jesus Christ, that platform was obsolete back in 2005! We've had x86-64 for well over a decade now, and it has been the standard even for shitty consumer-grade hardware for just about as long.

GCC 2?! That's even worse than x86! My God, the latest release of GCC 2 was on March 16, 2001! GCC 2.0 was first released on February 22, 1992! Even GCC 3, which has long been considered obsolete, saw its latest release almost a decade ago, on March 06, 2006. GCC 5 was released earlier this year.

I know you'll give "compatibility" as the justification for why it's still targeting a long-obsolete platform, and using a long-obsolete compiler system. But that's just a failed excuse at this point.

If Haiku is to be a relevant operating system in 2015, then it needs to get its shit together. It needs to target the CPU architecture that has been in use for the past decade. It needs to use a compiler system released this century. This "x86 GCC 2" bullshit needs to end. We need to see "x86-64 GCC 5" or even "x86-64 LLVM/Clang".

RMS may be highly opinionated and abrasive, but at least he's out there pushing back at those that would take away rights.

These days so much of it is just spreading FUD rather than real issues though. Just look at The Javascript Trap and tell me why a normal user would care about that. It's a similar story with the anti-Windows, anti-iOS, anti-SaaS, etc... diatribes, we have had Windows for 20-something years and iOS for 8 years so you would think that if that fear-mongering were well founded then there would be countless concrete examples of non-trivial harm done by non-free software that could be referenced to convince users that it is a bad idea.

There's also this idea that freedom is "taken away", which we all know is rubbish, it's the same false argument the RIAA/MPAA use with "lost profits". If you receive a binary licensed under the GPL you are granted the right to the source code, you didn't have that before. If you receive a proprietary binary you are not granted the right to the source code, it is not a right you had before that has now been "taken away".

The free software idea is great but the message is unconvincing. It's all well and good to rip on somebody else's new product by spreading this fear that it is a vehicle for bad things to happen but taking the iPhone for example, has there really been any non-trivial harm to manifest from all these supposed problems?

Free software should have a lot to offer so it should be a positive message rather than a negative - somewhat abstract and unspecific - fear-mongering of its competitors. The freedom aspect should be a value-add to a superior product.

You give the GPL more credit than can provably be deserved.

There really isn't anything particularly good about the GPL. It isn't bad (usually),
it just isn't that great.

It doesn't prevent proprietary forks.

It violates KISS, a cherished engineering principle. Try grokking the GPL, then
try the same for, say, the MIT license.

It is wrought with complicated incompatibilities with other reasonable
open source licenses and with other versions of itself. In this case, the GPL
really is bad because it's counter-productive.

It tries to solve a problem that doesn't really exist; many companies actively
contribute to non-copyleft projects without any mandate from RMS.

It doesn't even support the ideals of the Four Freedoms any better than other
licenses. A company that owns the copyright of a GPL project can make it
closed-source just as easily as if it had any other license, and a non-GPL
project can be forked just as easily as a GPL project if that happens.

The GPL often gets credit for the success of a few great open source projects,
especially the Linux kernel. However, the role of the GPL in those projects'
success is far from clear, and it certainly discounts those projects; the
kernel really is a quality project regardless of licensing terms. It could
also be said that those projects were successful despite the GPL. It
would be difficult to prove either way.

I'm glad for RMS. He has done a lot of good with GNU software, especially
GCC. The GPL just really isn't one of his better accomplishments.

Basically its taking a "done" excecutable, reconstructing a form similar to the intermediate tree form the GCC backend uses, and then doing another optimization pass like GCC's backend does. What's new and unique here?

I think, and I'm not sure about this, that the original work is reconstructing an optimizable intermediate form. If anyone else has done it before I'm not aware of it, but I'm just a practitioner, not a CS researcher.

Most compilers, after code generation (and often after code analysis, while the code is in some machine-independent tree state that sounds much like their invented language here) perform their optimization runs.

This just sounds like its doing that. Sure, its source-language independent. But so is gcc's backend. Basically its taking a "done" excecutable, reconstructing a form similar to the intermediate tree form the GCC backend uses, and then doing another optimization pass like GCC's backend does. What's new and unique here?

.net is inferior to javascript

In what way?

One advantage of the .NET Framework is static typing. In a fully dynamic language such as PHP, Python, or JavaScript, you need to put unit tests into your program to make sure the correct types are getting passed in and out of functions. A language with static typing, such as C#, already ensures type safety. So it's like the compiler writes a lot of your unit tests for you.

The .NET Framework used to have the disadvantage of being a non-free platform, which put .NET programs in what FSF calls a "Java trap". But nowadays, a lot of the interesting parts of the .NET Framework are released under a free software license.

That is Mailman, and is fixed in Mailman 3.

Whatever you do, please please please use a well-known license. I'm am completely sick of having to read and grok screens full of leagalese and then go to The FSF list of licenses to see if there's something important I missed. I'm sure every license has some nuance that makes it better for some purpose or other, but I don't care.

While I understand the attraction of BSD (and its zillion variants), I've found that I can cover all use-cases for my own work with one of three licenses (in order of stringency)

1. GPL - For full-blown applications that I don't want some schmuck trying to swipe and close off to make themselves a profit off my work. This is the most well-known license in existence, so your users should know exactly what they are getting.
2. GPL with linking and inclusion exceptions - For reusable libraries. This allows a client to use my library in a non-GPL program of their own with whatever license they want. (But keeps the library itself GPL). Yes, this is supposedly what the LGPL is for, but it has issues with modern languages like C++ and Ada that use language features that amount to textual inclusion of library code in the client's program. The simple boilerplate exception verbiage in ECos fixes this problem, and otherwise leaves the license the well-known GPL.
3. CC0 - For stuff I want used as much as humanly possible, including incorporated into other people's programs if they like. CC0 is as close to "Public Domain" as it is legally possible to get in this day and age.

4. Now in the poster's case, you'd need to be very careful around the GPL. Check here to make sure all the licenses on all that other stuff is GPL compatible. If not, you can't use GPL. But even if you can, there's no guarantee those other licenses are all compatible with each other. This is why, again, developers should do their users a favor and stick to well-known GPL compatible licenses.

Whatever you do, please please please use a well-known license. I'm am completely sick of having to read and grok screens full of leagalese and then go to The FSF list of licenses to see if there's something important I missed. I'm sure every license has some nuance that makes it better for some purpose or other, but I don't care.

While I understand the attraction of BSD (and its zillion variants), I've found that I can cover all use-cases for my own work with one of three licenses (in order of stringency)

1. GPL - For full-blown applications that I don't want some schmuck trying to swipe and close off to make themselves a profit off my work. This is the most well-known license in existence, so your users should know exactly what they are getting.
2. GPL with linking and inclusion exceptions - For reusable libraries. This allows a client to use my library in a non-GPL program of their own with whatever license they want. (But keeps the library itself GPL). Yes, this is supposedly what the LGPL is for, but it has issues with modern languages like C++ and Ada that use language features that amount to textual inclusion of library code in the client's program. The simple boilerplate exception verbiage in ECos fixes this problem, and otherwise leaves the license the well-known GPL.
3. CC0 - For stuff I want used as much as humanly possible, including incorporated into other people's programs if they like. CC0 is as close to "Public Domain" as it is legally possible to get in this day and age.

4. Now in the poster's case, you'd need to be very careful around the GPL. Check here to make sure all the licenses on all that other stuff is GPL compatible. If not, you can't use GPL. But even if you can, there's no guarantee those other licenses are all compatible with each other. This is why, again, developers should do their users a favor and stick to well-known GPL compatible licenses.

Whatever you do, please please please use a well-known license. I'm am completely sick of having to read and grok screens full of leagalese and then go to The FSF list of licenses to see if there's something important I missed. I'm sure every license has some nuance that makes it better for some purpose or other, but I don't care.

While I understand the attraction of BSD (and its zillion variants), I've found that I can cover all use-cases for my own work with one of three licenses (in order of stringency)

1. GPL - For full-blown applications that I don't want some schmuck trying to swipe and close off to make themselves a profit off my work. This is the most well-known license in existence, so your users should know exactly what they are getting.
2. GPL with linking and inclusion exceptions - For reusable libraries. This allows a client to use my library in a non-GPL program of their own with whatever license they want. (But keeps the library itself GPL). Yes, this is supposedly what the LGPL is for, but it has issues with modern languages like C++ and Ada that use language features that amount to textual inclusion of library code in the client's program. The simple boilerplate exception verbiage in ECos fixes this problem, and otherwise leaves the license the well-known GPL.
3. CC0 - For stuff I want used as much as humanly possible, including incorporated into other people's programs if they like. CC0 is as close to "Public Domain" as it is legally possible to get in this day and age.

4. Now in the poster's case, you'd need to be very careful around the GPL. Check here to make sure all the licenses on all that other stuff is GPL compatible. If not, you can't use GPL. But even if you can, there's no guarantee those other licenses are all compatible with each other. This is why, again, developers should do their users a favor and stick to well-known GPL compatible licenses.

Whatever you do, please please please use a well-known license. I'm am completely sick of having to read and grok screens full of leagalese and then go to The FSF list of licenses to see if there's something important I missed. I'm sure every license has some nuance that makes it better for some purpose or other, but I don't care.

While I understand the attraction of BSD (and its zillion variants), I've found that I can cover all use-cases for my own work with one of three licenses (in order of stringency)

1. GPL - For full-blown applications that I don't want some schmuck trying to swipe and close off to make themselves a profit off my work. This is the most well-known license in existence, so your users should know exactly what they are getting.
2. GPL with linking and inclusion exceptions - For reusable libraries. This allows a client to use my library in a non-GPL program of their own with whatever license they want. (But keeps the library itself GPL). Yes, this is supposedly what the LGPL is for, but it has issues with modern languages like C++ and Ada that use language features that amount to textual inclusion of library code in the client's program. The simple boilerplate exception verbiage in ECos fixes this problem, and otherwise leaves the license the well-known GPL.
3. CC0 - For stuff I want used as much as humanly possible, including incorporated into other people's programs if they like. CC0 is as close to "Public Domain" as it is legally possible to get in this day and age.

4. Now in the poster's case, you'd need to be very careful around the GPL. Check here to make sure all the licenses on all that other stuff is GPL compatible. If not, you can't use GPL. But even if you can, there's no guarantee those other licenses are all compatible with each other. This is why, again, developers should do their users a favor and stick to well-known GPL compatible licenses.

There is no "depends on how he's using it." If it doesn't have an LGPL interface header, you MUST release the code under GPL terms to use it.

(Sorry for the Clinton-esque answer) It depends on what you mean by "use". The problem with the original question is that there's not enough information to give a useful answer.. it's just fodder to get people talking with no real goal.

You can use GPL's software all you want, modify and recompile to your hearts content, and you don't have to release jack shit - unless you then distribute that stuff, and then only if you distribute it together (you can distribute your patches on their own with any license you choose).

That said, it sounds likely that the choices that NicknamesAreStupid made regarding various sources to include may not be very good choices, and they may be incompatible with his goals. Since he specifically mentioned the GPL (and especially since he didn't say LGPL instead), these compatibility pages should help:
http://www.gnu.org/licenses/li...
http://www.gnu.org/licenses/gp...
http://www.gnu.org/licenses/gp...

The FSF (Free Software Foundation) comments on GPL works within the Apple App store is also quite relevant:
http://www.fsf.org/news/2010-0...
http://www.fsf.org/blogs/licen...
http://apple.stackexchange.com... (see 2nd answer)

Essentially, if you do not hold the copyright for the GPL'd work you are including in your iPhone App that you want to put on the Apple App Store, then you're SOL.... the App Store agreements are incompatible with that (GPL says, "You may not impose any further restrictions on the recipients' exercise of the rights granted herein", but the the Mac App Store Terms of Service explicitly add other restrictions, such as "you may only install the software on five approved devices"). You might be able to get permission from the works authors, but that permission would be to distribute said code under a non-GPL license (possibly 3 clause BSD?)

There is no "depends on how he's using it." If it doesn't have an LGPL interface header, you MUST release the code under GPL terms to use it.

(Sorry for the Clinton-esque answer) It depends on what you mean by "use". The problem with the original question is that there's not enough information to give a useful answer.. it's just fodder to get people talking with no real goal.

You can use GPL's software all you want, modify and recompile to your hearts content, and you don't have to release jack shit - unless you then distribute that stuff, and then only if you distribute it together (you can distribute your patches on their own with any license you choose).

That said, it sounds likely that the choices that NicknamesAreStupid made regarding various sources to include may not be very good choices, and they may be incompatible with his goals. Since he specifically mentioned the GPL (and especially since he didn't say LGPL instead), these compatibility pages should help:
http://www.gnu.org/licenses/li...
http://www.gnu.org/licenses/gp...
http://www.gnu.org/licenses/gp...

The FSF (Free Software Foundation) comments on GPL works within the Apple App store is also quite relevant:
http://www.fsf.org/news/2010-0...
http://www.fsf.org/blogs/licen...
http://apple.stackexchange.com... (see 2nd answer)

Essentially, if you do not hold the copyright for the GPL'd work you are including in your iPhone App that you want to put on the Apple App Store, then you're SOL.... the App Store agreements are incompatible with that (GPL says, "You may not impose any further restrictions on the recipients' exercise of the rights granted herein", but the the Mac App Store Terms of Service explicitly add other restrictions, such as "you may only install the software on five approved devices"). You might be able to get permission from the works authors, but that permission would be to distribute said code under a non-GPL license (possibly 3 clause BSD?)

There is no "depends on how he's using it." If it doesn't have an LGPL interface header, you MUST release the code under GPL terms to use it.

(Sorry for the Clinton-esque answer) It depends on what you mean by "use". The problem with the original question is that there's not enough information to give a useful answer.. it's just fodder to get people talking with no real goal.

You can use GPL's software all you want, modify and recompile to your hearts content, and you don't have to release jack shit - unless you then distribute that stuff, and then only if you distribute it together (you can distribute your patches on their own with any license you choose).

That said, it sounds likely that the choices that NicknamesAreStupid made regarding various sources to include may not be very good choices, and they may be incompatible with his goals. Since he specifically mentioned the GPL (and especially since he didn't say LGPL instead), these compatibility pages should help:
http://www.gnu.org/licenses/li...
http://www.gnu.org/licenses/gp...
http://www.gnu.org/licenses/gp...

The FSF (Free Software Foundation) comments on GPL works within the Apple App store is also quite relevant:
http://www.fsf.org/news/2010-0...
http://www.fsf.org/blogs/licen...
http://apple.stackexchange.com... (see 2nd answer)

Essentially, if you do not hold the copyright for the GPL'd work you are including in your iPhone App that you want to put on the Apple App Store, then you're SOL.... the App Store agreements are incompatible with that (GPL says, "You may not impose any further restrictions on the recipients' exercise of the rights granted herein", but the the Mac App Store Terms of Service explicitly add other restrictions, such as "you may only install the software on five approved devices"). You might be able to get permission from the works authors, but that permission would be to distribute said code under a non-GPL license (possibly 3 clause BSD?)

Oh, how /. has fallen when this is modded up. It must be GPL-compatible, it must not be GPL. The FSF keeps a list of compatible licenses though the general theme is "like GPL or freer", like it doesn't have to be a copyleft license. If he doesn't want to introduce any new license headaches he could just use the modified BSD license which is pretty much as minimal as it gets. Whether it resolves his license problems are another matter, the GPL demands the whole project must be compatible and I'd guess that Apple's code is not. So the lawyer is right it doesn't matter, it's probably a violation either way.

You beat me to it :-)

To the original poster:

The GPL is "viral" in that if you use even a smattering of GPLed code, you are required to release ALL of your code as GPL as well.

It concerns me that you state you use example Apple code. What license is it? ("has its own terms" is completely unhelpful).

In general, you're restricted to using a license that is the most restrictive. The liberal licenses like BSD and MIT can morph into anything pretty much. GPL is one of the most restrictive on redistribution (RMS would say it preserves user freedoms by restricting developer distribution, and I would tend to agree with it; just throwing that in there because I don't mean restrictive in a negative sense here, only that it was designed to prevent people from running off with the code without contributing back to the community, so you can't just re-release GPLed code under MIT like you suggested). Apple's license may be open source or not; furthermore, there are known open source licenses that are NOT compatible with the GPL, so its entirely possible that the Apple code may not be distributed together with the GPL code. For reference, see http://www.gnu.org/licenses/li....

It's possible your pro-bono advice is correct and this doesn't matter too much if you release it publicly and open source (it seems unlikely open source projects would sue other open source projects), but in case you ever plan on making money on this project (and even if you don't), to avoid any possible legal trouble you should choose the most restrictive license compatible with all licenses at play. Likely this means the GPL, but the wildcard is Apple. If you post the terms to it, we could probably help sort it out (with the usual IANAL caveat). Otherwise, you may need to rethink which libraries are included with your code and possibly even roll your own depending how niche it is.

That's a hard position to take here with all the opinionated freeloading IP burglars since when they are not whining about ISPs (ex. Comcast, ATT) limiting their content stealing abilities

How is it "content stealing" to view licensed video through Netflix? Or are you claiming that Netflix's license to the video it offers is invalid?

or criticizing anyone (ex. Microsoft) who wishes to turn a hard-earned buck for the quality software they produce at great expense

Most of us don't criticize wanting to earn a buck. We criticize anticompetitive methods of doing so, such as exclusive (or effectively exclusive) deals with all leading manufacturers of a particular class of hardware.

the residents spew their hateful anger at those (ex. Oracle) who wish to protect their IP

What is "IP"? Copyright, patent, trademark, and trade secret are very different beasts. If you mean copyright, say copyright. If you mean patent, say patent. If you mean trademark, say trademark. If you mean trade secret, say trade secret. Or did you mean stealing an IP address?

from downright theft

Copyright infringement and theft are distinct offenses. In the United States, the former is always federal, and the latter is generally handled by the several states, becoming federal only if goods are carried across state lines.

So that it immediately sticks out instead of using an alphabetical character which would probably be lost as "noise."

> The point is that it's not standard.

That's not the entire picture.

GCC Tokenization says this:

Punctuators are all the usual bits of punctuation which are meaningful to C and C++. All but three of the punctuation characters in ASCII are C punctuators. The exceptions are â@â(TM), â$â(TM), and â`â(TM). In addition, all the two- and three-character operators are punctuators

  In ASCII, the only other characters are â@â(TM), â$â(TM), â`â(TM), and control characters other than NUL (all bits zero). (Note that â$â(TM) is normally considered a letter.)

Why is $ even considered a letter in the first place? GCC gives this reason:

As an extension, GCC treats â$â(TM) as a letter. This is for compatibility with some systems, such as VMS, where â$â(TM) is commonly used in system-defined function and object names.

The more interesting question is why is Microsoft emulating this non-standard behavior?

> Macro names must follow the same rules as variable names, ie, letters, numbers, and underscores only;

That is an artificial rule; one would think that the preprocessor is supposed to be independent of the language. i.e. Why can I use C's preprocessor for a language like Perl ? The problem is that the pre-processor's definition of what constitutes a character token is too limited, it should only reject existing symbols that have are predefined operators (i.e. have a mathematical definition) and not blacklist other non-used symbols. If the preprocessor was properly written to do a search-and-replace then this wouldn't be an issue.

This points to a bigger problem though. Why is my source code limited to sub-set of ASCII? Why can't I include Unicode in comments?

That's a completely different issue and a question of immaterial rights. Not a question of banning on the reason for being morally questionable.

Bans for sex, bans for violence, bans for copyright (K.C. Munchkin), and bans for patent (In the Groove) are bans for very different reasons but still bans. This is in much the same way that copyright, patent, trademark, and trade secret are very different areas of law but still included in the umbrella term "immaterial rights" or "intellectual property".

I wonder how many games that will end up having hidden content (easter eggs) with some questionable material not visible when the game is approved.

The ESRB requires all disclosure of all Easter eggs that would materially affect the rating. Rockstar got in big trouble for the hidden "Hot Coffee" stuff in Grand Theft Auto: San Andreas.

It seems like catching SIGFPE and handling the floating-point/int div-by-zero cases specifically could help you work around this.

and then letting us know what the name of this package is so that we can be sure never to rely on it.

It seems like catching SIGFPE and handling the floating-point/int div-by-zero cases specifically could help you work around this.

As I understand it, the FSF sees a program that links library functions as a combined work - a derived work of the GPL'd library under copyright law. I can see that, since your program would not run by itself without the library code.

Where I disagree with them is that dynamically linking to a library makes a combined work. On the face of it, that would make any Windows app that used a system DLL into a derived work of Windows... thus forfeiting to Microsoft all your rights under copyright.

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

If the same blob was included in chip's ROM, nobody would think it's different from before right?

Yes, we would think it's different because it is different. When the functionality of that blob is in a ROM chip or circuitry, nobody can update it, including the proprietor, without hardware modification or hardware replacement. When the functionality is in software or any kind of reprogrammable device, the question becomes who is allowed to run, inspect, share, and modify that code. This is an important ethical distinction that the developmental philosophy of the younger open source movement was designed to never raise as an issue because that movement wants to pitch a message of cheap labor to businesses.

All the questions of software freedom enter the picture because you're dealing with software now. All the issues that the open source movement was designed not to raise (older essay on this topic, newer essay on this topic) the older free software movement raised over a decade before the open source movement began.

If this code were distributed as Free Software to its users, this could be great news for all of us (even the majority of computer users who will never fully take advantage of these freedoms because they're never going to become programmers). Programmers can accomplish wonderful practical benefits like putting in interesting features, fixing bugs, learning from the code, all while being friendly with others by giving or selling services based on improving that code, and helping to keep users safe from malware all along the way.

If this code is distributed as non-free user-subjugating software (a.k.a. proprietary software), the proprietor (Intel in this case) is the only party who can inspect, share, and modify that code. And users (regardless of technical ability) are purposefully left out of controlling their own computers, which is unethical.

If the same blob was included in chip's ROM, nobody would think it's different from before right?

Yes, we would think it's different because it is different. When the functionality of that blob is in a ROM chip or circuitry, nobody can update it, including the proprietor, without hardware modification or hardware replacement. When the functionality is in software or any kind of reprogrammable device, the question becomes who is allowed to run, inspect, share, and modify that code. This is an important ethical distinction that the developmental philosophy of the younger open source movement was designed to never raise as an issue because that movement wants to pitch a message of cheap labor to businesses.

All the questions of software freedom enter the picture because you're dealing with software now. All the issues that the open source movement was designed not to raise (older essay on this topic, newer essay on this topic) the older free software movement raised over a decade before the open source movement began.

If this code were distributed as Free Software to its users, this could be great news for all of us (even the majority of computer users who will never fully take advantage of these freedoms because they're never going to become programmers). Programmers can accomplish wonderful practical benefits like putting in interesting features, fixing bugs, learning from the code, all while being friendly with others by giving or selling services based on improving that code, and helping to keep users safe from malware all along the way.

If this code is distributed as non-free user-subjugating software (a.k.a. proprietary software), the proprietor (Intel in this case) is the only party who can inspect, share, and modify that code. And users (regardless of technical ability) are purposefully left out of controlling their own computers, which is unethical.

Reading this out-of-context, it actually sounds like a nullification of the basic tenets of the GPL, which states:

...if you distribute copies of [GPL licensed program], whether gratis or for a fee, you must pass on to the recipients the same freedoms that you received. You must make sure that they, too, receive or can get the source code.

In other words...

"No Party

...referring to the original GPL licensor.

may require the transfer of, or access to, source code of software owned by a person of another Party

...as in anyone who subsequently modifies the GPL'd code, thus creating their own copyrighted additions...

as a condition of providing services related to such software in its territory."

...and then decides to distribute it or provide online services which use it.

errr, so i want to send a communication, ok? it's supposed to be private, right? but it's a web service: facebook could, at any time (even under secret fascist subpoena) change or be forced to change (without informing us) the user interface so that the encrypted message is no longer encrypted, but is in fact entirely in cleartext.

you might think, "ok, well, surely we could then just have a messenger service or app which does the job, and we could trust that, right?" and the answer is "well no, absolutely not you can't... not unless the entire source code is available, and a chain of trust is established that guarantees a verifiable and traceable compile and distribution chain".

which, basically, means you need a software libre distribution (such as debian) because those have full source available, and GPG-signing right the way from the developers (whose identities are verified via key-signing parties that involve showing proof of ID on each signing), all the way through to distribution where a "Release" file containing the MD5 checksums of every package is, once again, GPG-signed by provably verified individuals.

the bottom line is that just because facebook *says* it's secure doesn't actually make it so, and announcing "yeah we provide a secure encrypted email service" is actually a dangerous DISSERVICE. you can't *EVER* guarantee that the servers have been compromised, and web browser *implicitly* trust what the servers give them to run.

the best thing that facebook could do is provide a programming API via which encrypted emails *may* be sent, and then sponsor software libre teams such as mutt, and everyone else, to provide 3rd party (entirely software libre) applications that deliver *and receive* encrypted mail. the only hurdle to get over there would be whether the software libre teams would view working with facebook to be endorsement of SaaSS (service as a software substitute - http://www.gnu.org/philosophy/...) which i can guarantee in advance that any GNU project will *not* do.

The GNU Affero General Public License version 3 was designed to preserve user freedom and flexibility even when software runs on a leased server. It ensures that users can obtain and improve the software that they are using even when they are currently running it on someone else's computer. That way, if a particular service goes out of business, its customers can spin up an instance on their own servers with little interruption.

The GNU Affero General Public License version 3 was designed to preserve user freedom and flexibility even when software runs on a leased server. It ensures that users can obtain and improve the software that they are using even when they are currently running it on someone else's computer. That way, if a particular service goes out of business, its customers can spin up an instance on their own servers with little interruption.

The GNU Affero General Public License version 3 was designed to preserve user freedom and flexibility even when software runs on a leased server. It ensures that users can obtain and improve the software that they are using even when they are currently running it on someone else's computer. That way, if a particular service goes out of business, its customers can spin up an instance on their own servers with little interruption.

And that might be the push needed for me to try out IceCat (formerly IceWeasel) https://www.gnu.org/software/g...

Bullshit. vim is an equivalent tool to emacs (except it has a decent editor :-).

Obviously false since Emacs' display engine can do a whole lot more. There is, for example, no vim equivalent to preview-latex.

["Consumer" arose] When [viewers] stopped paying up front for the content.

When did original works of authorship become "content" to fill a box?

Quite right about how Digital "Rights" Management is a propaganda term designed to frame the issue as though it's okay to take user/reader rights away from them in the switch from one means of seeing media to another. But Mozilla has always framed its work as "open source". So one should expect with "open"ness -- the open source movement is, as Brad Kuhn pointed out recently, the greenwashing movement it was defined to be. The Free Software Foundation has long pointed out how "open source" differs from "free software" (older essay, younger essay). The younger open source movement accepts proprietary software and the older free software movement does not because open source was defined as a proprietor-friendly response to the user freedom-seeking social movement.

Quite right about how Digital "Rights" Management is a propaganda term designed to frame the issue as though it's okay to take user/reader rights away from them in the switch from one means of seeing media to another. But Mozilla has always framed its work as "open source". So one should expect with "open"ness -- the open source movement is, as Brad Kuhn pointed out recently, the greenwashing movement it was defined to be. The Free Software Foundation has long pointed out how "open source" differs from "free software" (older essay, younger essay). The younger open source movement accepts proprietary software and the older free software movement does not because open source was defined as a proprietor-friendly response to the user freedom-seeking social movement.

Quite right about how Digital "Rights" Management is a propaganda term designed to frame the issue as though it's okay to take user/reader rights away from them in the switch from one means of seeing media to another. But Mozilla has always framed its work as "open source". So one should expect with "open"ness -- the open source movement is, as Brad Kuhn pointed out recently, the greenwashing movement it was defined to be. The Free Software Foundation has long pointed out how "open source" differs from "free software" (older essay, younger essay). The younger open source movement accepts proprietary software and the older free software movement does not because open source was defined as a proprietor-friendly response to the user freedom-seeking social movement.

I don't want the web to support encryption against users by third parties.
Once that is readily available, and accepted by users (read: today), the freedom of users is endangered.
You can read a deeper analysis of the consequences of such a situation http://www.gnu.org/philosophy/...
When I first read that, it seemed a bit stupid that people would let their freedom go so easily, but now it's closer to real. The implications of DRM are way beyond video, the problem is that once DRM is standard and everywhere, restricting the flow of information becomes a lot more convenient.
The web was, for a few years, like the internet itself, it routed around censorship. Right now, everything is heading the other way. It's just sad, looks like we are going to keep loosing freedom.

No thanks. I won't use any distro that isn't Stallman approved. You obviously don't respect freedom.

Debian GNU/Hurd 2015 released! Details.

It is with huge pleasure that the Debian GNU/Hurd team announces the release of Debian GNU/Hurd 2015.

This is a snapshot of Debian "sid" at the time of the stable Debian "jessie" release (April 2015), so it is mostly based on the same sources. It is not an official Debian release, but it is an official Debian GNU/Hurd port release.

Read the announcement email.http://www.gnu.org/software/hurd/

This argument is very easy to understand, so it's a great starting point.

The first targets for a campaign for free software apps should be educational institutions and public services.

GNU.org has a good list of proprietary software packages with spyware:

https://www.gnu.org/philosophy...

I'll open with a (perhaps the only) positive - Good on Apple for releasing the ResearchKit as open source. That said, there are still a LOT of barriers here.

First of all, while ResearchKit is open source, it is still predicated on iPhone sensors and the like, so in this way it is proprietary. Now, perhaps with time and effort it can be expanded to allow the same sort of thing to be done on Android devices, but as of right now it is effectively proprietary. However, this leads into a bigger issue: Standardization AND privacy for health data and metrics.

Right now we have a horrible platform when it comes to medical data and privacy. Despite HIPAA and the mandate to move to electronic medical records, these were horrible half measures that in many ways did more harm than good by not being specific enough. For instance, the idea between EMRs was that any doctor, hospital, pharmacy etc.. should be able to transfer and use data from any other. HA! Fat chance. Why? Because of our old friend that has fouled up accessible quality medical care for years - the unregulated profit motive, and its friend: proprietary lockdown!

EMR systems, even for a small office based practice, cost hundreds of thousands of dollars. We're talking millions for hospitals or other larger centers or networks. And yet, they're all horribly modular and insular. Each EMR has their own proprietary data formats which are incompatible with modules from most other EMRs...or at best, require an expensive format-shifting module. For many physicians, EMRs are more trouble, not less - as they have to deal with tons of incompatible formats and halfassed implementations. I don't even want to get into the ICD-9 > ICD-10 > ICD-11 shift... All these systems do for now is leech money from providers and create a cottage industry of training, upgrades, and modules to sell. It does not improve patient care; at times it can be a threat to it.

The only proper solution will take an act of Congress, sadly. To require a single, completely open, unencumbered, universal, extensible, privacy respecting/encrypted, format for electronic medical records (and all facets thereof, from scheduling, to patient information, notes, etc..) - and then stipulate that all public insurance programs (ie Medicare etc..) will ONLY accept said format. Thus, you can use any EMR provider that you want, but they will all support the universal OpenEMR format. This is the only way to bring the original impetus behind switching to EMRs to fruition. I'd love to see the government mandate that the formats of GNU Health ( https://health.gnu.org/ ), the Free Software EMR would be used as a baseline for required standardization, as well as using a solution used GnuPG to help encrypt said records (patients have public and private keys as do physicians/practitioners, allowing complete control and traceability who has access to protected health info, who's making changes, and when). Until then, we shouldn't expect Apple or anyone else to have a myriad of applications that monitor and ostensibly involve themselves in the patient's health, yet report unknown and unknowable amounts of data in random forms to all sorts of individuals and somehow consider them to be in the best interest of the patient.

The other half of this equation is privacy; sadly something it seems we're losing more and more each day. Patient health data is already hugely mined and monetized; your pharmacy is selling your data to insurance companies and pharmaceutical companies. These same industries are buying your browsing habits and what you search, to try to figure who has X condition that will cost them money. The amount of privacy that a user can give up more or less unknowingly (or cryptically hidden behind innocuous seeming requests and permissions) simply by installing an application for iOS/Android is enormous - expanding this to health any further is a nauseating prospect in my mind. Lets not forget that even when som

I'll stand by you in at least calling for people to stop shitting on content creators.

I'll stop pooping on "content creators" once people stop using that horrid term "content creator" to refer to what the law calls "authors and publishers". "Content" connotes "something to fill a box" more than creative works of authorship, and "creator" compares authors to deities.

Now in the early centuries of printing, and still I believe in the 1790s, lots of readers wrote copies by hand because they couldn't afford printed copies. Nobody ever expected copyright law to be something other than an industrial regulation. It wasn't meant to stop people from writing copies, it was meant to regulate the publishers. Because of this it was easy to enforce, uncontroversial, and arguably beneficial for society.

It was easy to enforce, because it only had to be enforced against publishers. And it's easy to find the unauthorized publishers of a book—you go to a bookstore and say “where do these copies come from?”. You don't have to invade everybody's home and everybody's computer to do that.

It was uncontroversial because, as the readers were not restricted, they had nothing to complain about. Theoretically they were restricted from publishing, but not being publishers and not having printing presses, they couldn't do that anyway. In what they actually could do, they were not restricted.

It was arguably beneficial because the general public, according to the concepts of copyright law, traded away a theoretical right they were not in a position to exercise. In exchange, they got the benefits of more writing.

Now if you trade away something you have no possible use for, and you get something you can use in exchange, it's a positive trade. Whether or not you could have gotten a better deal some other way, that's a different question, but at least it's positive.

So if this were still in the age of the printing press, I don't think I'd be complaining about copyright law. But the age of the printing press is gradually giving way to the age of the computer networks—another advance in copying technology that makes copying more efficient, and once again not uniformly so.

Here's what we had in the age of the printing press: mass production very efficient, one at a time copying still just as slow as the ancient world. Digital technology gets us here: they've both benefited, but one-off copying has benefited the most.

We get to a situation much more like the ancient world, where one at a time copying is not so much worse [i.e., harder] than mass production copying. It's a little bit less efficient, a little bit less good, but it's perfectly cheap enough that hundreds of millions of people do it. Consider how many people write CDs once in a while, even in poor countries. You may not have a CD-writer yourself, so you go to a store where you can do it.

This means that copyright no longer fits in with the technology as it used to. Even if the words of copyright law had not changed, they wouldn't have the same effect. Instead of an industrial regulation on publishers controlled by authors, with the benefits set up to go to the public, it is now a restriction on the general public, controlled mainly by the publishers, in the name of the authors.

In other words, it's tyranny. It's intolerable and we can't allow it to continue this way.

As a result of this change, [copyright] is no longer easy to enforce, no longer uncontroversial, and no longer beneficial.

It's no longer easy to enforce because now the publishers want to enforce it against each and every person, and to do this requires cruel measures, draconian punishments, invasions of privacy, abolition of our basic ideas of justice. There's almost no limit to how far they will propose to go to prosecute the War on Sharing.

It's no longer uncontroversial. There are political parties in several countries whose basic platform is “freedom to share”.

It's no longer beneficial because the freedoms that we conceptually traded away (because we couldn't exercise them), we now can exercise. They're tremendously useful, and we want to exercise them.

Copyright policy issues are about which bargains benefit the public, not about what rights publishers or readers are entitled to.

The copyright system developed along with the printing press. In the age of the printing press, it was unfeasible for an ordinary reader to copy a book. Copying a book required a printing press, and ordinary readers did not have one. What's more, copying in this way was absurdly expensive unless many copies were made—which means, in effect, that only a publisher could copy a book economically.

So when the public traded to publishers the freedom to copy books, they were selling something which they could not use. Trading something you cannot use for something useful and helpful is always good deal. Therefore, copyright was uncontroversial in the age of the printing press, precisely because it did not restrict anything the reading public might commonly do.

But the age of the printing press is gradually ending. The xerox machine and the audio and video tape began the change; digital information technology brings it to fruition. These advances make it possible for ordinary people, not just publishers with specialized equipment, to copy. And they do!

Once copying is a useful and practical activity for ordinary people, they are no longer so willing to give up the freedom to do it. They want to keep this freedom and exercise it instead of trading it away. The copyright bargain that we have is no longer a good deal for the public, and it is time to revise it—time for the law to recognize the public benefit that comes from making and sharing copies.

Stallman was right. Although in his story, it was about books, not babies or cars.

https://www.gnu.org/philosophy...

Are you under the mistaken impression that "open" means the source code is also free to re-use and distribute? It does not, contrary to how the FSF would like to redefine "open".

That's a misrepresentation of FSF's stance. They are the ones who grumble about using the term "open source", because they feel it's too loose, for exactly the reasons you have described.

Did you have directory delete permissions?

http://savannah.gnu.org/projects/gnucobol

Sometimes theory doesn't live up to reality.

Yes, I've hurd that before.

> You are once again speaking incorrectly. I suspect that you have not read Richard Stallman's "GNU Manifesto". I'll summarize it for you without the rationalizations and justifications: "I hate copyright. So I have written the GPL to fuck over copyright *using* copyright.";

No, I'm afraid that _you_ are speaking incorrectly. Don't paraphrase it, there's no need. It's at https://www.gnu.org/gnu/manife.... In particular, read the Review the paragraphse surrounding this statement:

        > The copyright system was created expressly for the purpose of encouraging authorship. In the domain for which it was invented—books, which could be copied economically only on a printing press—it did little harm, and did not obstruct most of the individuals who read the books.

That manifesto is not a "all information should be free!" or an "I hate copyright" document. It's a well reasoned analysis of the purposes and benefits versus the costs, of copyright restrictions for software.

Different how?

They are going for compliance, however. They have a compliance table listing the features supported:

https://gcc.gnu.org/projects/c...

that page also links to the library compliance table.

Clang/LLVM receives finance and contribution (and therefore an element of control) from Apple. Its also BSD licensed. These are not bad things at all, but its great that GCC, which GNU licensed, is an alternative.

Are you joking? You cannot maintain a modern big compiler without strong industry support.

Take a look at GCC Git browser. With a quick blush you can see that a lot of commits are coming from Red Hat, Suse, Oracle, Samsung, ARM, and so on.