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Have you read Stallman's The Right to Read (mentioned earlier in a comment). Just how far do you think a successful lock-down model has to be pushed before that world becomes a reality, especially in education.

Even beyond that, To miss out on media is to miss out on culture and become an outsider. If Hollywood gets to specify the systems, decide who gets access to them and throw developers and engineers in jail for questioning the status-quo, then they're getting control over a lot more than just entertainment. They get a free stranglehold on a whole segment of the technology sector, if not the whole thing, and they have government mandated control over distribution which starts to look a lot like censorship.

To use your analogy, they're being handed the only keys to the house by mommy because they happened to scream loud enough about a turd. You may not think those keys are important as you play off by yourself, but come dinner time when you get locked out, you're going to be mighty hungry.

I oppose the illegal war in Iraq and the wiping out of my fair use rights and privacy rights by the demons spawned from DRM.

I also see where DRM can be a backdoor for corporate and government thieves to sneak in and steal a huge portion of even more important civil rights.

Check out Richard Stallman's "The Right to Read":
http://www.gnu.org/philosophy/right-to-read.html

How much quicker could we have had NeoOffice on MacOS if it were written in an easily-ported language like Java?

Some sort of non-gaming application that uses a graphics card. Having trouble thinking of one now, but I know they exist somewhere ;)

I have begun to think that most, if not all, free software applications ought to be written in Java or a reasonable facsimile. Ideally, a common language and runtime that all free software could target would be available that would allow immediate porting to take place.

Currently java would not be such a good choice for that due to the lack of a full free (as in freedom) implementation of the api.

See http://www.gnu.org/philosophy/java-trap.html

A Java GUI app is also a big turn off for anyone with an older machine.

Personally I have begun to think that most, if not all, free software ought to be written in the language most appropriate for the job it's doing.

If you were Apple, you would not fight this in court. Settling out of court, paying a patent license fee, or cross-licensing are all far less expensive than fighting this in court and, therefore, much more attractive ways to deal with this nuisance. Each of these outcomes individually or collectively are more likely to occur than seeing this through to the end in court.

Remember one of the examples we learned about in RMS' discussion of the problem with software patents (transcript): Briefly, Paul Heckel threatened to sue Apple over a patent he held which covered something in Hypercard; Apple initially brushed him off but when he threatened to sue Apple's users for patent infringement Apple listened up and paid him off.

It has to be pointed out that this is just another reason to not do business with Apple. /. readers bend over backwards to not find fault with Apple but Apple's actions harm users because Apple wields the same patent power that Contois Music Technology is using against Apple here -- Apple holds patents which cover font hinting which adversely impact free software users who want smooth fonts on the screen. Apple also claims patents on the "Enterprise Object Framework" which adversely impacts the GNUStep work and thus serves as another obstruction to free software users.

If you were Apple, you would not fight this in court. Settling out of court, paying a patent license fee, or cross-licensing are all far less expensive than fighting this in court and, therefore, much more attractive ways to deal with this nuisance. Each of these outcomes individually or collectively are more likely to occur than seeing this through to the end in court.

Remember one of the examples we learned about in RMS' discussion of the problem with software patents (transcript): Briefly, Paul Heckel threatened to sue Apple over a patent he held which covered something in Hypercard; Apple initially brushed him off but when he threatened to sue Apple's users for patent infringement Apple listened up and paid him off.

It has to be pointed out that this is just another reason to not do business with Apple. /. readers bend over backwards to not find fault with Apple but Apple's actions harm users because Apple wields the same patent power that Contois Music Technology is using against Apple here -- Apple holds patents which cover font hinting which adversely impact free software users who want smooth fonts on the screen. Apple also claims patents on the "Enterprise Object Framework" which adversely impacts the GNUStep work and thus serves as another obstruction to free software users.

If you were Apple, you would not fight this in court. Settling out of court, paying a patent license fee, or cross-licensing are all far less expensive than fighting this in court and, therefore, much more attractive ways to deal with this nuisance. Each of these outcomes individually or collectively are more likely to occur than seeing this through to the end in court.

Remember one of the examples we learned about in RMS' discussion of the problem with software patents (transcript): Briefly, Paul Heckel threatened to sue Apple over a patent he held which covered something in Hypercard; Apple initially brushed him off but when he threatened to sue Apple's users for patent infringement Apple listened up and paid him off.

It has to be pointed out that this is just another reason to not do business with Apple. /. readers bend over backwards to not find fault with Apple but Apple's actions harm users because Apple wields the same patent power that Contois Music Technology is using against Apple here -- Apple holds patents which cover font hinting which adversely impact free software users who want smooth fonts on the screen. Apple also claims patents on the "Enterprise Object Framework" which adversely impacts the GNUStep work and thus serves as another obstruction to free software users.

"This is one of the attitudes that a lot of people have in the oss community that disturbs me the most. Not only between contributors of the same project but on things that came before."

When scientists publish their ideas which are formed based on the accumulated knowledge of others, are they asked to give up their copyright? I honestly don't know, that's a question not a statement. I know many publishing companies take copyright from book authors, but I don't know how academic journals work. Please notice I didn't say that it was any less significant either. That word "symbiosis" is the key.

"He wants people to buy his product from him not someone else that also has his code. He needs to make money to pay his mortgage, send his kids to college etc."

He should change his business model, because someone else may very well come along and offer a competing product at no cost, and with more freedom. He will simply be obsolete, living in a cardboard box, and starving with dumb kids. ;)

"how do you make money from open source software?"

I make money by charging for my time, not other people's products. Typically I hear about someone or some company that needs some piece of software, or I think it would be beneficial to them. I push as much free software that I am familiar with on him as I possibly can, and hope that he will need some revision to it with the understanding that he can go anywhere he likes to get those changes. Very often he comes to me to get them, because I have earned his trust. End users give me my bread and butter.

"I see Linus having a different view from RMS"

As with you and I, I see Linus as having a variation of the same idea that RMS has. Not a different one entirely. I'm not talking about hobbyists exclusively when I say that copyright assignments will discourage contributions. I'm also thinking of people who work at companies that compete with Sun. Think of IBM contributing code to OpenSolaris in the same magnitude that they have with Linux. They undoubtedly will make some contributions to OpenSolaris, but the assignment issue would keep them from adopting it as their main strategy. Put that in perspective of their current battle with SCO. Where would we be if Sun (or worse, SCO themselves) owned the copyright to JFS, NUMA, RCU, etc? Watching Linux be ripped to shreds by the vultures is where. The very fact that IBM still owns the copyright on those items is what gives them the right to relicense them under the GPL.

"I think Sun is doing pretty well adapting."

Me too, but they are by no means fully adapted, that's all I'm saying.

"If open source is so much better, where are the complete free javas?"

Up and coming. Sun's Java is not completely unfree either. The community source license has its problems, but it does also permit a great deal of freedom. It is less free than the two I mentioned though, and I believe they or some other project will make Sun's obsolete. Perhaps IBM will open their JRE, if they have the right to do so, who knows.

"Don't even get me started with IBM and open source though."

Hahahah, I'm very mistrustful of them too, but they have been a good citizen of the free software community thus far. That is very much my observation.

P.S. Very interesting points you bring up. I have to say this is one of the most pleasant discussions I've ever had on Slashdot. Thanks for that.

OS X is a complete operating system. KDE/GNOME are much smaller projects by comparison. If you want to consider the age of a software project to include all projects in which it was derived, then to be fair what everyone now refers to as "Linux" technically began in 1984 with the GNU project http://www.gnu.org/.

First, all programs get dumped together under /usr, making it nearly impossible to cleanly uninstall if it was compiled from source

Try GNU Stow - it solves this problem very nicely, keeping each software package in a separate directory and symlinking everything to the relevant PATH directories. Pity there isn't a linux distro that uses it, or even comes with it - it would make things *so* much easier ... :-(

True, but under /etc they are placed almost randomly. If you don't know the exact name of the configuration file you need (which may or may not be under a subdirectory...), you're out of luck.

At the end of an application's man page, there should be a section entitled "Files" which lists the location and names of the configuration files. That's not too difficult, is it? And there's always find or grep if that fails.

For these really different systems you point to, RELIABILITY is also a key point (and closely related to security). You think >1 year uptime for a BSD box chugging away in a basement is good? How about 17 years uptime? And that's when they pulled the plug, not when it died.

I think for really secure + reliable designs you should look at micro-kernel based systems like L4Linux or Gnu's HURD (also moving towards L4). Note: not saying these systems are ready now, because they're still under development, and may have a long way to go before they're 'done'.

This explanation is where the argument falls down. The new BSD license (or the MIT X11 license which is quite similar) still have requirements for those who distribute derivative works. The requirements are not many, but they are not zero either.

In particular, you may certainly not "do whatever you want" with the source code or any derivative works. The only way to have that power is to either write your own code or base your work on something in the public domain. And even then you cannot "do whatever you want" with any code which implements patented ideas (one of the significant shortcomings of the new BSD and MIT X11 licenses) for which you don't have the appropriate patent license(s).

Furthermore, stealing is not copying. What we're discussing here is not theft, but copyright infringement (I also brought up patent infringement). Those who have the power (yes, power not freedom) to sublicense are not stealing anything, even if the derivative distributor does something that is against the copyright license.

This explanation is where the argument falls down. The new BSD license (or the MIT X11 license which is quite similar) still have requirements for those who distribute derivative works. The requirements are not many, but they are not zero either.

In particular, you may certainly not "do whatever you want" with the source code or any derivative works. The only way to have that power is to either write your own code or base your work on something in the public domain. And even then you cannot "do whatever you want" with any code which implements patented ideas (one of the significant shortcomings of the new BSD and MIT X11 licenses) for which you don't have the appropriate patent license(s).

Furthermore, stealing is not copying. What we're discussing here is not theft, but copyright infringement (I also brought up patent infringement). Those who have the power (yes, power not freedom) to sublicense are not stealing anything, even if the derivative distributor does something that is against the copyright license.

vbuzzer has modified their ToS under section 2.1

We own all the intellectual property rights of the software and these are protected by copyright and trade marks. The separate Instant Messenger subsystem contains code of Miranda Instant Messenger and is covered by the GNU General Public License which can be accessed at http://www.gnu.org/copyleft/gpl.html

I think the free software version will be called BASH.

It's because of their position on software patents: they patented 1-Click shopping (Pat. 5,960,411), which everybody sees as trivial, and then starting a turf war by suing Barnes and Noble for it.
Before, when the New York Times had complained that they were infringing on its trademark by offering 50 percent discounts on titles that were on the newspaper's bestseller list, they sued them.

It's because of their position on software patents: they patented 1-Click shopping (Pat. 5,960,411), which everybody sees as trivial, and then starting a turf war by suing Barnes and Noble for it.
Before, when the New York Times had complained that they were infringing on its trademark by offering 50 percent discounts on titles that were on the newspaper's bestseller list, they sued them.

if you contribute to any GNU programs you have to assign copyright to the FSF

I think this helps explain why Sourceforge is huge, and Savanah isn't. And why of the 2402 projects on it, only 291 are "Official GNU software". I fear OpenSolaris will suffer the same fate. I wouldn't do it, I'd wait for the fork, and contribute to that.

9. The Free Software Foundation may publish revised and/or new versions of the General Public License from time to time. Such new versions will be similar in spirit to the present version, but may differ in detail to address new problems or concerns.

Each version is given a distinguishing version number. If the Program specifies a version number of this License which applies to it and "any later version", you have the option of following the terms and conditions either of that version or of any later version published by the Free Software Foundation. If the Program does not specify a version number of this License, you may choose any version ever published by the Free Software Foundation.

You can very much use it within a company, modify it, and not release anything publicly. That is a commonly understood legal fact, stated by the GPL Faq. http://www.gnu.org/licenses/gpl-faq.html#TOCIntern alDistribution

First, this is a question for a competant copyright lawyer. You should not base business decisions on the musings of /. posters. That said, I'll pitch in my two cents because I think it should spark something for you to do some research on.

You have pointed to a non-existant page at Microsoft, so reading the terms you referred to is not as easy as following the link. However, regardless of what these terms are, if I were in your shoes, I would first want to know: is Microsoft's claim of being able to set terms by which screenshots are used based on some law? If they have no grounding in law, then their terms are useless, no matter how "easy" they make it for publishers to acceed to their request. You make it sound like your publisher is simply letting Microsoft tell them how to run their business, by blindly accepting and working within the limits drawn up by Microsoft then using that (possibly bogus claim of power) as a means of framing the debate for copyright holders in the free software world.

Questioning Microsoft's power is critical to answering your question because if Microsoft's claims are based on nothing but their desire to control you and your publisher, then you'll find that there is nothing for the free software community to do. Hence, asking the free software community for screenshot licensing terms is a moot point.

The text of the GNU GPL is an excellent example of this point: in the GPL, the most commonly used free software license, you'll find the text that reads "Activities other than copying, distribution and modification are not covered by this License; they are outside its scope.". This is because the FSF put a lot of work into writing a license that is actually based on copyright law, enforcible around the world wherever there is a copyright regime (because, at the basic level at which the GPL is written to work, these copyright systems are quite similar). The FSF, and all GPL licensors, draw strength from working so closely to what copyright law actually gives copyright holders power to work with. Microsoft, on the other hand, claims powers in its licenses which I doubt they have the power to enforce, such as their claim of prohibitng you from using FrontPage (Microsoft's web page editor) to make webpages which disparage Microsoft.

I would also question the validity of Microsoft's screenshot licensing terms because I'd wonder if a screenshot is not simply the output of a process, something which the FSF claims is "legally impossible" for a copyright holder to control. The GPL has proven to be legally defensible (both because lawyers agree it is defensible and therefore encourage their clients not to bring suit based on the GPL, and in the few cases which have gone to court), hence I tend to trust the FSF's interpretation of copyright law.

In the meantime, consider producing works under licenses such as the GPL, the GNU Free Documentation License, the Free Art License, or a Creative Commons license with a "share-alike" provision. This is not perfect, but this would use copyright restrictions for preserving freedom. Those wanting to produce works under permissive licenses would have an advantage denied to the producers of proprietary-licensed works.

It is also worth considering the role of money in politics.

In the meantime, consider producing works under licenses such as the GPL, the GNU Free Documentation License, the Free Art License, or a Creative Commons license with a "share-alike" provision. This is not perfect, but this would use copyright restrictions for preserving freedom. Those wanting to produce works under permissive licenses would have an advantage denied to the producers of proprietary-licensed works.

It is also worth considering the role of money in politics.

No. The GPL requires nothing of users. It does place significant demands on re-distributors.

Please verify this for yourself here. I worry that this misperception is a common deterrent to more widespread acceptance. I'm sure this is behind some of the anti-OSS bias at my company

Of course it will.

It will also keep other programs from running. It will be a trusted program, like WMA is a "trusted" format. How else will something so suck crush something so much better?

My question is where does this Reg author buy his crack? You have to smoke some really good stuff to believe the "facts" about this vaporware. Let me quote and disassemble the nonsensical notion that a program that uses more cpu and transmits more bits is somehow faster than one that does not:

Microsoft Research's approach gets around this [a missing last piece problem I've never seen getting a torrent] by re-encoding all the pieces, so that each one that is shared is actually a linear combination of all the pieces, fed into a particular function.

So it will require active CPU processing for the error correction every byte transmitted where bit torrent does not, but maxes out my download speed anyway. Brilliant! But wait, there's more:

Once you have downloaded a few of these, you can generate new combinations from the ones you have, and send those out to your peers.

I'm doing this error correction on my uploads as well. So what will this take, four times the CPU time as simply sending the files I receive?

This means no one peer can become a bottle neck, since no piece is more important than any other. It also means overall network traffic is lower, since the same information doesn't have to travel back and forth multiple times.

Say what? When has redundant error correction ever produced less size? What's this "multiple travel" problem? When I get six people sending me the same packets, that's six times the likely hood that I get it and this is what makes bittorrent work, no?

Only Microsoft can spin 20 year old error correction concepts, and announce the "best p2p application ever" before they have a working demonstration. I can hardly wait till they put it out. The same dumb asses that verbatim repeated M$ marketing, "XP is stable because it's based on NT which is like, solid," will be clogging the networks trying to share top 40 WMA files bloated to six times their natural size.

Why oh why does anyone pay any attention to what Microsoft promisses?

GUG - the GIMP User Group, derived from

GIMP - the GNU Image Manipulation Program, derived from

GNU - a recursive acronym for GNU's Not UNIX.

If you thought that was impressive, how about the HURD. HURD stands for "HIRD of Unix Replacing Daemons", and HIRD stands for "HURD of Interfaces Representing Depth". That's TWO MUTUALLY RECURSIVE ACRONYMS!

Yes, NASA are definitely behind the times.

GUG - the GIMP User Group, derived from

GIMP - the GNU Image Manipulation Program, derived from

GNU - a recursive acronym for GNU's Not UNIX.

If you thought that was impressive, how about the HURD. HURD stands for "HIRD of Unix Replacing Daemons", and HIRD stands for "HURD of Interfaces Representing Depth". That's TWO MUTUALLY RECURSIVE ACRONYMS!

Yes, NASA are definitely behind the times.

That's why wget is your friend.

A: Treacherous computing

http://www.gnu.org/philosophy/can-you-trust.html

The Linux community gauges everything in terms of fear and threat.

We don't fear anything. Us geeks will survive together with Linux even if the commercial world turns its back to us.

Fear of getting physicallly beaten. Fear of having their lunch money stolen. Fear of still being a virgin when they turn 30.

Ah. So, how does it feel now that you're pumping gas (or is it ass? hehheh...) in bumwipe Alabama when we are working together, side by side on something that will revolutionize software business...

a game of D&D but this form of real human interaction is rare.

As you say, what else is D&D if not human interaction? I wouldn't call a drunken jock party human interaction.

Why can't we all just get along without worrying about what threatens us? Hmmm?

I take it you mean proprietary $oftware theatens us? Well, you're right. You wouldn't be posting here if someone had been bugging the founding fathers of the internet with crap like intellectual property rights. Sometimes one is confronted by something so hideous, so outrageous that you can't just lie down and live a life of an appeaser. This is war. If free software does not prevail, there will be no software to hack in the future. Is that what you want, eh?

http://www.gnu.org/copyleft/gpl.html

What I should have typed was would they support not have GNU in the nextgen license name i.e. "GNU General Public License".

He's more likely to be talking of GCC, cross-compiling, and the Qt and WxWindows toolkits.

.Net (in the form of Mono )is making significant progress on non-Windows platforms as well.

Utilities
Dvorak Assistant - Lets you change the Windows keyboard layout without administrator access. Useful for school lab computers.

Free Dvorak Tutor Software
KP Typing Tutor (Windows)
GNU Typist (*nix)

Online Dvorak Tutorials
A Basic Course in Dvorak - No frills tutorial, just make sure you repeat the lessons until you're actually proficient. You won't learn anything drilling through them only once.
dvorak.nl tutorial - Very slick, remaps the keys for you if you want (convenient if you can't use Dvorak Assistant). Non-english languages available. Works better for experienced Dvorak typists.

Pico rules!

Pico is not free software. See "The license of PINE" at
http://www.gnu.org/licenses/license-list.html

Nano is free software.

Are you so sure that Mr. Stallman believes no such thing?

Read "Why Software Should Not Have Owners," by -- you guessed it -- Richard Stallman.

So which is it -- that Mr. Stallman wants owners to be able to protect the integrity of their creative work, or that authors relinquish ownership of their creative works?

You. can't. have. both.

who pays for all the time and materials required to produce a code?

The same people who pay for all the time and materials required to produce any other piece of legislation. The taxpayers bought the code, and they should have the right to read and copy it.

Then license it under the GNU Free Documentation License, the purpose of which "is to make a manual, textbook, or other
functional and useful document "free" in the sense of freedom: to assure everyone the effective freedom to copy and redistribute it, with or without modifying it, either commercially or noncommercially."

If a creative work is meant to be "free," and the GPL is Mr. Stallman's creative work, let's see him put his money where his mouth is.

"[I]s it ethical forcing everyong to conform to a single license? Is it ethical condemning others who choose not to conform to the said license?"

Fact check: RMS and his organization don't do either of those things.

Generally, no. If what you want to do is distribute proprietary derivatives (as is the wont of so many proprietors who base their work on new BSD or MIT X11-licensed code), then that's a power not a freedom. If what you want to do is share and modify the code in such a way that you distribute the same freedoms you had, then you are choosing not to leverage that power, but the power remains. But in the latter case, if you want to do this so that you only share with those that share with you (using copyright power to enforce a "share and share alike" situation), you should seek a copylefted free software license. Given the over moderation of your post (your question isn't actually insightful), I see that the BSD-licensing fans have moderation power today.

It is expected that the GPL3 will say something about patent licensing, perhaps telling distributors of GPL3-licensed works that they can't use patents to take away any of the rights the GPL3 grants to licensees. When the GPL3 comes out it will be interesting to see if there's another revision of the BSD license that covers software patents, something the current BSD licenses say nothing about.

Since the point of being 'open' is that an NDA becomes pointless -- it's all published publically anyway; what's the point of keeping the secret?

Specifications of audio codecs tell what is a conforming bitstream and how to decode it. They do not tell how to encode a waveform efficiently; that can be covered by trade secrets or by non-essential patents.

You seem to be confusing a patent with a copyright.

Free software is most often licensed under copyright, but in order for free software to be truly free, as defined by FSF, its use has to be free of any exclusive privilege owned by a third party: "The freedom to run the program, for any purpose (freedom 0)."

And Dolby's patents are only valid in the countries that recognize them as valid.

You bring up Mongolia, but doesn't Dolby own counterpart patents in most developed countries that are markets for MPEG-4 audio technology (i.e. USA, Canada, EU members, and Japan)?

All the patents do is make it illegal for someone to use or sell the implementation within the United States.

If end users aren't free to sell a copy of a program due to a patent, then it's not free software until the patent runs out.

"which would enable users to do everything from the command line that can be done from the graphical interface"

I'll belive it when I see it

Sure, see it here, now

You hit the nail on the head. OSS is not place for for power struggles.

The GNU GPL version 3 will be the first revision of the GPL anyone involved in the open source movement will have had anything to do with. It's ahistorical to call the GPL anything to do with "open source" except that the OSI set their terms for license approval widely enough to allow the GPL to get the OSI's stamp of approval. Nobody at the OSI wrote the GPL and that organization (and the movement it started) didn't exist when the GPL was written. The FSF wrote the GPL (most notably, Richard Stallman) and RMS points out very clearly that the free software movement is distinct from the open source movement. There are very good reasons why you will find no references to "open" anything and numerous references to software freedom in the GPL.

Even if this discussion concerned "open source software", proprietors would disagree that "OSS is not the place for power struggles" because proprietors wield power over their users all the time and don't like it when there is a suitable replacement for their program licensed to its users under more amenable terms. Proprietors spend millions of dollars on lobbyists who convince legislators to make anti-free software law. The power struggle for letting users control their computers has been going on for over 20 years now.

Besides, I've never understood how there can be a single codified GPL. It defies legal precedent.

What you're saying here makes no sense. The GPL is a license (that's what the "L" stands for), and there are two revisions of this license. Licensors have the power to choose the terms under which they wish to license their copyrighted work to others. Licenses are written because otherwise it is hard for licensees to know what their rights are concerning the copyrighted work.

What do patents have to do with copyrights ?

Some products can be viewed both as an original work of authorship and as a new and useful invention. The maker of such a product will often seek exclusive privileges under both patent and copyright law to restrict others from making the product. Publishers of entertainment works may hire an artist to create and fix on paper the likeness of a cartoon character and then use that likeness as a mark to identify the origin or certification of goods. These areas of overlap between patent law and copyright law (especially for computer programs) and between copyright law and trademark law (especially for entertainment franchises) have led to the use of the confusing term "intellectual property" to describe the entire spectrum of exclusive rights granted on new and distinctive elements of a good.

Feh. Let's not get too arrogant here. At best, they gave a name to the movement and publicized it. I'm not denigrating what they did do, but don't overstate it. The only reason it could even attempt to start is because there was already an existing sub-culture of sharing code. Go take a look at Stallman's own words: http://www.gnu.org/gnu/thegnuproject.html Read that first section: "The first software-sharing community"

Check out the French Translaton page linked to from the FSF Unofficial Translations page, it looks like FSF Europe is currently pursuing, as of a few months ago, an official French translation with legal council in France.

Google, always quicker to the punch, already lists FSF and Debian pages on Freedom as hits 2, 4, and 9 of a search for Libre ;-)

True, however the majority of software installations have the users clicking through boilerplate TERMS AND CONDITIONS and explicit denials of FITNESS FOR PURPOSE, whereas the GPL opens up with a friendly preamble.

I think that might, just might, cause a few people to actually read it, and become aware of the motivations of the Free software movement ... if even one person does, isn't it worth the inconvenience of an extra click?

(I also note that the copyright on the GPL itself only allows verbatim copying, while I believe some software products have trimmed out the preamble. I can certainly understand the desire to trim out the "Ty Coon, President of Vice" silly example bit at the end, but it looks like that may not be allowed... My original thought still stands.)

Radius

One word for you: HURD.

Someone should call RMS. The Ancient Torahs aren't compatible with the FDL