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I'd say that, generally, old-school hackers are more respectful of intellectual property than new-school hackers. (yes, that was a generality)

I reckon RMS is about as old-school as you can get, and he tends not even to like the term "intellectual property"...

Publishers and lawyers like to describe copyright as "intellectual property"---a term that also includes patents, trademarks, and other more obscure areas of law. These laws have so little in common, and differ so much, that it is ill-advised to generalize about them. It is best to talk specifically about "copyright," or about "patents," or about "trademarks." The term "intellectual property" carries a hidden assumption---that the way to think about all these disparate issues is based on an analogy with physical objects, and our ideas of physical property.....

Hey, what about these operations?!

I remember the old reliability test of Unix commands which showed that GNU versions were much less likely to crash or do odd things when given random or pathological input. I would have expected the same sort of results with free web browsers. Still, well done to Microsoft for making their HTML parsing code robust against this kind of bug.

It's a pity that, at the peak of the Linux desktop hype in the late 1990s, when evangelists predicted the near death of Microsoft, KDE and Gnome were rushed out of the door, and GNUstep development remained obscure.

Very true...

It is interesting to note that the new GNUstep Live CD was announced on GNUstep Core News in June:

What is it?
GNUstep Live CD contains a lot of software for GNUstep, a free implementation of the OPENSTEP framework (which was also the base as Cocoa in Mac OS X). Display Postscript is one of its powerful features. It includes an excellent application called Gorm for RAD (Apple Software Design Guidelines). More about the Objective-C Language.

Features
Software using GNUstep (Addresses, Agenda, AClock, Affiche, CamelBones, Camera, Charmap, Cenon, Connect, Cynthiune, DisplayCalibrator, EasyDiff, EdenMath, Gridlock, GMines, Gorm, Gomoku, GNUMail, GNUstep-icons, GNUWash, GWorkspace, HelpViewer, ImageViewer, LuserNET, MPDCon, ProjectCenter, PRICE, Poe, Preferences, PlopFolio, Preview, Renaissance, Stepulator, StepTalk, StepBill, Terminal, TalkSoup, TextEdit, ViewPDF, VolumeControl, Waiho, WildMenus, Zipper)

In development and not yet on the CD (3DKit, AgentFarms, Burn / CDPlayer, Duncan, Emacs on GNUstep, Encod, Expense, GTAMS, GRASStep GIS, GShisen, GNUstepWeb (WebObjects 4.x), GNUstepWrapper, ILogin, Installer, InnerSpace, LaTeX Service, Localize, MusicKit, MyWiki / MyLibrary, ModPlugPlay, Paje, Pixen, Popup, Position, Rhydot / Skfxdemo, RSS Reader, WebKit / SimpleWWW, Tryst)

The currently used window manager is Window Maker.
Rescue System (lde, gpart, parted, grub, raidtools, portmap, nfs-common, QTParted)
3d Software Blender, Wings3d, Games NetHack, Jump n Bump and SuperTux, LaTeX, TeXmacs, Emacs, GIMP2
Tools (screen, irssi-text, ngrep, tcpdump, openssl, ssh, imagemagick, netpbm, nail, iptraf, mc, gnupg, ibackup, cowsay, hdparm, feh, tetradraw)
The Debian GNU/Hurd K6 mini.iso for easy installation in /cdrom/hurd
C Compiler and development environment
Webbrowsers (dillo, links2), TV Software (xawtv, alevt)
Some music (www.chiptune.com, www.maktone.tk)

This is a very interesting project, though of course not as popular as Knoppix.

It was the first time that distributed free software development defected from its proven practice of implementing standardized, proven APIs and technology (like POSIX) and created major APIs of its own. [...] Imagine the massive development efforts on KDE and Gnome, including the massive rewrites of their codebases, would instead had gone into GNUstep, so that the GNU/Linux and *BSD desktop would be OS X/Cocao source compatibile today [and companies developing for OS X port their software to Linux basically with one more compiler run]...

Imagine the efforts on Knoppix would instead had gone into GNUstep Live CD... Imagine the development efforts on Linux would instead had gone into The Hurd... Just imagine... The entire computing world as we know it would be completely different. But what do we expect? People have no idea that GNU even exists, let alone the kernel development! Just few days ago Slashdot posted a story about the Seattle Times interview with Linus Torvalds with this opening paragraph: "Linus Torvalds [pronounced LEE-nus] started a revolution of sorts in the computer industry when he created the Linux operating system and decided to share it with fellow programmer

But I got somethin to say, never the less :)

- - -

I hit me to what one can/could associate 'gnuStep/OpenStep' to/with. Hurd.

And I want to make (perfectly) clear! - I'm not implying anything else then ' They didn't make/haven't made it, not even after 10+ years '.

Let me elaborate; They, gnuStep/OpenStep and Hurd, choose to go about a different path then any of their competitors - Whoose to say whom made the wisest choice? We don't know xor can't say - Though, what we can conclude is that most users (not developers) have choosen and choose to use not-them/their solution; for reason A-Z.

So, 10+ years have passed - It seems resonable/logical to, is in-order to, ask oneself three questions after such a long while:

• Why do users choose to travel not-our path?
• • Haven't you ever wondered, all these years, why they turn(ed) you down? Why they opt(ed) the other path(s)? etc..
• What do I think our/my path should be? keep current heading, change, ...etc?
  • I mean it's your, the developer(s), prerogative to choose what your projects mission should be - and noone can ask/demand anything more from yourself(s) then what you are willing (choose) to do.
• and finally (the Freud-question), Do you care what their choice is?
• • *picks up a flower, and starts to sing* Have ego/seek attention, the 'size of':
  • Ayers Rock, regular rock, moon, RMS, ... <Insert a few more objects/things> ... and repeat untill you pick the last petal =)

There's a quote " One in a million " - and I think its imply is sound, not every one/project makes it; some are bound to fail. " Que sera sera "

In the world there's plenty of room for both licenses. I personally like the purely academic spirit of the BSD license, and personally don't like the huge amount of politics that's contained in the GPL.
I obviously prefer open software, but closed sw is also ok, as long as it's *very* good software.
I'm thinking for example about photoshop and apps like that. If I were a professional image editor, if I had to deliver the *best* possible result, I'd prefer a closed source photoshop (or equivalents) than an open source gimp. I'm not criticizing: the gimp folks are doing a *great* job (and to think they're doing it for free), but the other one is just better. That's only an example, and that's why I think crusades against proprietary software are just plain stupid.

That's utterly false. Every distribution gives credit to the base system GNU and the Linux kernel. You sir, are not up on your facts.
http://www.kernel.org/ and http://www.gnu.org/ are good places to start.

The article says:
The complex system was ostensibly written in four months by Kryeziu alone, who claims it performs at about 80 percent of the speed of the PC host's hardware.

So he is saying he wrote the entire program.

The GNU GPL http://www.gnu.org/copyleft/gpl.html says:
2.a) You must cause the modified files to carry prominent notices stating that you changed the files and the date of any change.

It goes without saying if he claims to have written it he did not include this information, and he is in violation of the license in which PearPC was released.

I, and this is just my opinion here, interpret the GPL as encouraging developers to take others ideas to a new level, not stealing their code in attempt to make a profit.

a) FreeBSD is Berkeley Unix, Linux is a Unix-clone. They look similar to the average user, but deep inside they're two quite different things.

b) the media tend to identify Open Source OS's with Linux because of the community hype - GNU & Linux are about politics as well, thus they attract a wider range of people. BSD is a purely technical and academical thing. These different commitments are well reflected in the 2 licenses: BSD (much simpler and less restrictive) and GPL (an anti-proprietary political manifesto).

c) FreeBSD is quite widely used and, notwithstanding the lack of hype, its user base is growing pretty fast.

Nearly 2.5 Million Active Sites running FreeBSD

You have a curious definition of open source. Check the license for Sun' Java VM. It's not an open source license. There are some Java VM's which are open source, but I have yet to see what that is both certified as being Java and is open source. The language specification and the API aren't code, nor are they provided under a license which conforms to the open source definition.

Java doesn't require the JVM. Indeed, you can run it on the CLR. ;-) Take a look at gcj. No JVM there. Works just fine.

As for my comment about C.. that was sarcasm, intending to demonstrate the stupidity of the parent's assertion that Java and C# were flawed because he was able to do all he needed with PHP/Perl/C.

Reminds me of a story I read once but can't find right now. It's the future, and some college kid reads a book from a friend he needs for his degree but can't afford to buy. Reading another person's book is illegal, and he's stressed that the government will bust him and his girlfriend. ...
10 karma points to s/he who finds this story. It's perfect for this topic.

That ones easy, and I'm sure many here knows it:

"The Right to Read" by Richard Stallman.

(No, I'm not expecting any karma)

Jedidiah

the right to read

Stallman borrowed copiously from Gosling's innovations. Although Gosling had put GOSMACS under copyright and had sold the rights to UniPress, a privately held software company, Stallman cited the assurances of a fellow developer who had participated in the early MOCKLISP interpreter. According to the developer, Gosling, while a Ph.D. student at Carnegie Mellon, had assured early collaborators that their work would remain accessible. When UniPress caught wind of Stallman's project, however, the company threatened to enforce the copyright. Once again, Stallman faced the prospect of building from the ground up. -- "A Stark Moral Choice"

Unfortunately, running as a normal user won't do any good in a single-user system. After all, you have the right to access your own folders, and thus are still vulnerable to malware which installs there - you just can't pollute other users with it.

Linux isn't immune to this problem either. It was designed to sandbox users from each other, but a single normal user will find it difficult to sandbox individual processes. Any process running at my privileges can access all my files, install cron jobs to be run automatically at machine boot, etc.

A real solution is a fine-grained permission control. For example, a Web browser should be able to read it's configuration files and plugins/extensions, connect to any Internet address, and write to the bookmark file(s) and download and cache directorie(s). It shouldn't be able to do anything else. If there was an easy way to do this, even if the browser was compromised by a web site, there wouldn't be much that site could do. Especially if you could set the bookmark and configuration files to be stored as a "journaled" file, which would record the changes to it and allow returning to any given point in time. Obviously, you'd also need to move any downloaded files away from the download folder and check them with MD5/SHA1 checksums to avoid tampering (but how do you get that checksum, if you suspect your browser has been compromised ?)

I'd imagine something like this could be done with relative ease with Hurd, since one of it's design goals is to allow each user to replace parts of the operating system (even the file systems) with new parts without disturbing others. So you could install a translator to control access to your home directory or any subdirectories (but of course such translators can also be removed by programs runnign with your permissions - that's one permission that should be droppable).

An alternative way would be to allow users to build and set up "subusers" - simply add 32 bits to processes (and files) user id. The complete id would then be in the form of userid.subid. Userid.0 would have all the rights of the user, while userid.1 would be a "subuser" and have limited rights (the system would basically make userid.0 the root of his own home directory). This could also be generalized into a hierarchical authority tree, allowing individual programs to run parts of them as more restricted users (for example, a p2p-application could generate separate processes for managing file storage and network connectivity, allowing the part that touches the network to run without any access to filesystem and thus reducing the likelihood of a bug in it from causing damage).

To summarize: the traditional access controls are designed to protect users from each other. This is not enough. A single unprivileged user needs an easy way to make sandboxes for programs to run in. If the computer is a house divided with walls to different rooms for each user, then all those users need the ability to further subdivide their own rooms with more walls, and they must be able to make/remove those walls without help from the janitor (administrator).

Unfortunately, running as a normal user won't do any good in a single-user system. After all, you have the right to access your own folders, and thus are still vulnerable to malware which installs there - you just can't pollute other users with it.

Linux isn't immune to this problem either. It was designed to sandbox users from each other, but a single normal user will find it difficult to sandbox individual processes. Any process running at my privileges can access all my files, install cron jobs to be run automatically at machine boot, etc.

A real solution is a fine-grained permission control. For example, a Web browser should be able to read it's configuration files and plugins/extensions, connect to any Internet address, and write to the bookmark file(s) and download and cache directorie(s). It shouldn't be able to do anything else. If there was an easy way to do this, even if the browser was compromised by a web site, there wouldn't be much that site could do. Especially if you could set the bookmark and configuration files to be stored as a "journaled" file, which would record the changes to it and allow returning to any given point in time. Obviously, you'd also need to move any downloaded files away from the download folder and check them with MD5/SHA1 checksums to avoid tampering (but how do you get that checksum, if you suspect your browser has been compromised ?)

I'd imagine something like this could be done with relative ease with Hurd, since one of it's design goals is to allow each user to replace parts of the operating system (even the file systems) with new parts without disturbing others. So you could install a translator to control access to your home directory or any subdirectories (but of course such translators can also be removed by programs runnign with your permissions - that's one permission that should be droppable).

An alternative way would be to allow users to build and set up "subusers" - simply add 32 bits to processes (and files) user id. The complete id would then be in the form of userid.subid. Userid.0 would have all the rights of the user, while userid.1 would be a "subuser" and have limited rights (the system would basically make userid.0 the root of his own home directory). This could also be generalized into a hierarchical authority tree, allowing individual programs to run parts of them as more restricted users (for example, a p2p-application could generate separate processes for managing file storage and network connectivity, allowing the part that touches the network to run without any access to filesystem and thus reducing the likelihood of a bug in it from causing damage).

To summarize: the traditional access controls are designed to protect users from each other. This is not enough. A single unprivileged user needs an easy way to make sandboxes for programs to run in. If the computer is a house divided with walls to different rooms for each user, then all those users need the ability to further subdivide their own rooms with more walls, and they must be able to make/remove those walls without help from the janitor (administrator).

That's just a defence against RIAA. I doubt most P2P developers view copying music or software strongly immoral. They are more worried about this situation I think.

As for Kittridge, I hope is is not prosecuted legally not for his own sake, but as it will open the door to jail P2P authors and Linux DVD player writters. Morally he is sure responsible for spamming, but probably not for identity theft if he didn't specifically market his program for that purpose. As far as corporate moral responsibility in US, I agree with his last sentence:

Because of outsourcing [of software and system administration jobs], it's one of the only ways a hacker can make money

So if any presidential candidate wants to appear tough on crime, maybe he can talk about nipping it in the bud for the rest of this month...

Just to fight this stupid urban myth: The GPL doesn't say that. Please read at least the FAQ. kthx.

So what you're saying is, people should not have what they want?

Take a few minutes of your time to read about the history of GNU. Once you understand what the founding principle of the GNU project was (and still is), you'll see why having Linux licensed BSD-style is absolutely out of the question. GNU's and the GPL's sole purpose for existence is to counter proprietary software, and the barriers which proprietary software create.

Granted, Linux isn't actually part of the GNU project, but Linus, I think, chose to license the Linux kernel under the GPL because he believed in GNU's basic founding principles.

To expect Linus and the other contributors to suddenly do a complete 180 and allow Linux to become a proprietary product is absurd.

I assume you are just ranting and fighting with strawmen here. I don't care whether you like or dislike the announcements; if your arguments don't hold water, try to come up with better ones instead of referring with imaginary arguments "we people" allegedly use.

For those of you worried that Novell would only use this to protect their own customers, the GNU GPL states:

7. If, as a consequence of a court judgment or allegation of patent infringement or for any other reason (not limited to patent issues), conditions are imposed on you (whether by court order, agreement or otherwise) that contradict the conditions of this License, they do not excuse you from the conditions of this License. If you cannot distribute so as to satisfy simultaneously your obligations under this License and any other pertinent obligations, then as a consequence you may not distribute the Program at all. For example, if a patent license would not permit royalty-free redistribution of the Program by all those who receive copies directly or indirectly through you, then the only way you could satisfy both it and this License would be to refrain entirely from distribution of the Program.

Well, he comes right out and EXPLAINS why you'd buy this over an iPod - he only runs Linux. Last I checked, iPods weren't doing much of anything under Linux.

When was the last time you checked?

"It plays Oggs" doesn't exactly make up for the "It suffers from a well known and widespread flaw that forces the user to beat the crap out of it in hopes that it will correct itself and not die under the pummeling" angle.

You don't even need a Java VM. With newer versions of GCC you can mix Java and C/C++ Code.

C# is just one option for .NET eh?
Hmm... if only there were some other languages that could be compiled to JVM bytecode.

Neither are open source.

Don't want to get into a religious argument here. Being 100% open source is not always a benefit.

Both require virtual machines.

Really?

Despite being marketed as portable, but have portability issues.

"They're not perfect, so toss 'em out!" Great argument...

We don't really need them.

Yeah, we don't really need Perl of PHP either. I do all of my web pages in assembler.

They're closely tied to their respective companies.

Really?

> in my town, the old horse & cart transports have died out too. Is this because of high-speed road
> access and a youth culture that uses some of the most sophisticated automobiles available?

And don't forget this parallel, covered here on slashdot.

Of course, everyone says "but it's illegal to download music" and it's not illegal to drive a car. This is true and it's even a valid point...

On the other hand, market dynamics can't be ignored here, and there is something fundamentally new here that needs to be recognized. The internet makes it possible to publish all kinds of information for free.

In the past this was not possible - for printed words, you needed a printing press. To publish music, you needed the equipment to make records or CDs. When cassettes became popular it became possible to make cheap copies, but cheap != free, and there was also degradation on every copy so it wasn't quite the same.

You don't have to think about it for too long to realize that the artificial scarcity imposed by copyright laws is not going to be very compelling to people. If my buddy is interested in hearing a song and I can send it to him for free, it's human nature to want to be nice to my friend and it costs me "nothing" to do it - why would I not oblige?!

If you want to argue about the morality of the issue, think about it this way... If my buddy was dying of hunger and I had a way to give him free food, would it be moral or immoral to give him the food? How much more abstract is it to fulfill the desire for a song? I don't think it's that abstract. Stallman argues the same thing one of his philosophy articles. Is it radical to want to please your friends, or is it simply human nature?

Lets say that you want to argue the morality issue directly.... "But you're depriving the author of their income." First off, I did not take anything from the author. The most that you can argue is that I have deprived them of potential income. We don't know if my friend would have purchased with a non-zero cost. In fact there is probably no way to know.

Secondly, lets say my buddy goes out and buys the used CD which is totally legal. The author does not benefit from this transaction either, yet somehow it's a morally "better" solution? That seems strange to me.

Thirdly, as a fan of someone's music, what action can I take that is better for an artist than to expose others to their art? It's hard to sell concert tickets, CDs, website memberships, or whatever without exposure. Up until recently exposure meant radio and MTV but technology is changing that. The question is how can the artist benefit from the change, not how to preserve the status quo?

Lastly, also from a moral standpoint, what did the publisher or record company do for my buddy? Nothing that he can put his finger on. Yet if he goes and buys the CD, they get most of the cash?! How many artists would be better off with a paypal button on their website that people could use to donate money directly to them if they like their music? I have no clue, perhaps most would be better off, perhaps they would die of starvation. I don't know how you answer that one.

In my mind, thinking all of this through, you come to a conclusion. The conclusion is that people who traditionally have made money publishing content are suddenly not producing products any more, they are providing a service. Think about the business models for open source and you see this. Apply the same logic to musicians (since their "product" can now be published at zero cost as well) and suddenly you see the new business model that works.

Musicians can derive their income from ticket sales. They could also provide some kind of value in memberships to their websites. (Disc

Imagine if you get an email from your boss telling you to do something that you think is risky; a month later, when it backfires, you can't use the email to show that the decision was not yours. "Getting it in writing" doesn't protect you when the order is written in disappearing ink.

Imagine if you get an email from your boss stating a policy that is illegal or morally outrageous, such as to shred your company's audit documents, or to allow a dangerous threat to your country to move forward unchecked. Today you can send this to a reporter and expose the activity. With treacherous computing, the reporter won't be able to read the document; her computer will refuse to obey her. Treacherous computing becomes a paradise for corruption.

...

Programs that use treacherous computing will continually download new authorization rules through the Internet, and impose those rules automatically on your work. If Microsoft, or the US government, does not like what you said in a document you wrote, they could post new instructions telling all computers to refuse to let anyone read that document. Each computer would obey when it downloads the new instructions. Your writing would be subject to 1984-style retroactive erasure. You might be unable to read it yourself.

I suspect your Windows RT provider is in violation of the RT Linux patent.

FSMLabs, Inc owns the RT Linux patent. Timesys has unrelated technology based on patching the stock kernel, similar to what Montevista does but not as good.

BSD runs fine with just the posix utilities and libraries.

Besides for something to be gnu all of it needs to be gnu. Go read the license?

1. By "something" do you mean a piece of GPLed software? That's true, but . . .
2. . . . Being "GNU" and being distributed under the terms of the GPL are orthogonal. The Emacs manual is GNU, but not GPLed. SquirrelMail is GPLed, but not GNU. And . . .
3. . . . being GNU means that the Free Software Foundation holds the copyrights, and has made the software part of their system.
4. The license explicitly permits the aggregation of GPLed and GPL incompatible software. Nobody but you has a problem mixing GNU and non-GNU at the application level.
5. 
   
   
   So, the question remains; should a system be known by the same name as its kernel? Or should it have a moniker that indicates its more complete heritage?
   
   -Peter
   
   PS: Debian has created a BSD version of their GNU system, they call it , which seems perfectly appropriate to me.

how does Asterisk compares to GNU/Bayonne

As anyone installed either software on a large scale ?

Interesting? Where's the "funny" moderation here?

Nearly 20 years ago, RMS wrote a nice parody of what the AC was talking about. See his man(1) page for the GNUecho command.

Needless to say, GNUecho's source would also be far too big for this contest.

Now would someone please add a "funny" mod to the parent?

> In the original "C bible", Kernigan & Ritchie gave us the program:
>
> main() {
> printf("Hello, world!\n");
> }

Unfortunately, a real hello world in C (http://ftp.gnu.org/gnu/hello/) is too large for this competition.

Although thefreedictionary.com leaves a kinda weird taste in my mouth as well, it's important to remember that what they're doing is (as I understand it) not only completely legal, but encouraged under the FDL.

So think of it as an advertising-supported mirror. If wikipedia ever runs into a major cash crunch, it might be helpful to have a second source for those articles around.

And some bright spark has even sported a q&d script to help use them with OO.o docs.

Whats wrong with being a communist? 1.3 billion Chinese can't be wrong ...

Oh, and whats this about Muslims not being free? I know several Muslims who are very clear on the point that they don't need the US to fix their problems for them.

As far as many Muslims were concerned, Saddam was a problem, yes, but he was their problem. These people are pragmatists. Why the hell did you have to blunder your way through the country, killing thousands of women, children and hapless soldiers armed with nothing more than AK-47s and a few rocket propelled grenades?

Goddamn you Americans and your insistence that you know best! You can't even run a fair election on your own soil, yet you want to bring your breed of democracy to the rest of us! You're a bunch of hipocrites that are going to ruin the world for everyone else!

Well, I have something to say to you. Fuck you!

NO WONDER YOU HAVE 80% OF THE ARAB WORLD AFTER YOUR BLOOD!

Its arrogant idiots like you that are fucking everything up.

I think that at this point it's pretty obvious what I am talking about. I even provided you with information on exactly what type of system I was talking about implementing. I really don't think you're this obtuse, so you can stop your trolling.

Were you talking about a purchase

No.

or it's NOT a purchase, in which case it ain't nothing but a link.

No, I'm not talking about a link either. Even if I was talking about a link, that's been patented too!

But that's really not the important part. It doesn't really matter what I implement, and since you seem to be having such a hard time understanding exactly what it is that I want to implement, we'll use your example instead.

You want to talk about playing DVDs, so fine, let's talk about playing DVDs.

I can't order mandrake that can play DVDs out of the box either - but it takes about sixty seconds to make it able to do so.

And you think that's no big deal? On other platforms and with commercial Linux players, I can play DVDs immediately. You know why? Because these implementations have players that have a legal CSS license.

The reason you can't play them by default is, because the Content Scramble System (CSS) is the intellectual property of the DVD Copy Control Association, and it is illegal to implement CSS without purchasing a license for the patent.

Mandrake does not have a CSS license, and neither do the makers of any of the open source software in the Mandrake distribution. Because of this, they can't ship a working DVD player unless they purchase a license. The open source DVD player projects also can't ship a working DVD player without violating intellectual property laws.

On Mandrake, I have to install libdvdcss, which is illegal in some parts of the world. This opens the user up to intellectual property litigation.

So, fine, you're happy with installing your illegal library on your computer and spending time to try to get it to work. CSS, though, is a very small part of DVD playback, and it has caused tons of litigation already. Now, think about the other things involved that are patented, like MPEG. What if you had to download an illegal library for that to?

Suddenly, you have to install several libraries on your own, because Mandrake can't ship IP encumbered libraries (this would open them up to litigation). Instead, you open the end-user up to litigation. I'm sure end-users will love that and it will make them want to use open source software all the more.

Now who would implement these open source libraries? Nobody in a country with strong IP laws is going to be able to, so that leaves out the U.S., Canada, Europe, Australia, etc.

Furthermore, no company is going to want to use these open source libraries in their operation, because it opens them up to litigation. For example, I'm sure that small companies would love to be sued by Microsoft for using a version of Sendmail with Sender ID.

So, how exactly are patents good for open source again?

This is the exact fucking point I made TWICE now... You REALLY don't pay attention, do you?

No, it's you who don't pay attention very well. The point I have been making is that you can have legal action taken against you if you violate someone's intellectual property regardless of whether you are a for profit or non-profit entity. Furthermore, since there are so many software patents, you can do so, unknowingly. If you are an open source project, and violate someone's intellectual property, your project is pretty much finished.

First of all, I did not say, "one click option for download". What I referred to was a one-click option for purchase, which is covered by a patent owned by Amazon.

Secondly, what you are describing, a "one click option for download", is not a URL, but a hyperlink. A URL is an address of a resource, while a hyperlink is the object you click on to download the resource.

Furthermore, the hyperlink is patented.

Now do you see how difficult it is to write software without violating someone's intellectual property? It doesn't matter whether you are a private company or an open source project, you can still be taken to court if you violate patent law. Why do you think that GNU doesn't use GIFs? Here's a hint:

If we released such a program, Unisys and IBM might think it wiser (for public relations reasons) not to sue a charity like the FSF. They could instead sue the users of the program, including the companies who redistribute GNU software. We feel it would not be responsible behavior for us to set up this situation.

No, I'm not twelve but these "points" you seem to be attempting sure have me convinced you are.

May I remind you that you're the one who can't seem to use polite, logical arguments backed by evidence to refute my supposedly jejune "points".

First of all, I did not say, "one click option for download". What I referred to was a one-click option for purchase, which is covered by a patent owned by Amazon.

Secondly, what you are describing, a "one click option for download", is not a URL, but a hyperlink. A URL is an address of a resource, while a hyperlink is the object you click on to download the resource.

Furthermore, the hyperlink is patented.

Now do you see how difficult it is to write software without violating someone's intellectual property? It doesn't matter whether you are a private company or an open source project, you can still be taken to court if you violate patent law. Why do you think that GNU doesn't use GIFs? Here's a hint:

If we released such a program, Unisys and IBM might think it wiser (for public relations reasons) not to sue a charity like the FSF. They could instead sue the users of the program, including the companies who redistribute GNU software. We feel it would not be responsible behavior for us to set up this situation.

No, I'm not twelve but these "points" you seem to be attempting sure have me convinced you are.

May I remind you that you're the one who can't seem to use polite, logical arguments backed by evidence to refute my supposedly jejune "points".

While I can sympathize with you having to read the same objections repeatedly, this information is repeated for a good reason: it is not a part of the public's common understanding of computers and it should be. Common computer users are under threat too even if they don't know it (I refer you to Paul Heckel's threatening Apple Hypercard users with patent infringement if Apple didn't see things his way; RMS talks about it in his talk on the danger of software patents when Heckel attended one of RMS' talks). Read the transcript:

We are not the only ones threatened by software patents. All software developers are threatened by software patents and even software users are threatened by software patents. For instance, Paul Heckel, when Apple wasn't very scared of his threats, he threatened to start suing Apple's customers. Apple found that very scary. They figured they couldn't afford to have their customers being sued like that, even if they would ultimately win. So the users can get sued too, either as a way of attacking a developer or just as a way to squeeze money out of them on their own or to cause mayhem.

I doubt most people know that they could be violating the law even though they are using purchased software. I doubt most people know that some patent-unencumbered alternatives exist (Ogg Vorbis instead of MP3, for example) and work well (even on portable digital music players). We need to repeat these stories and spread awareness of free alternatives so people won't be threatened or lose a patent infringement lawsuit.

The main way to teach people new ideas is through repetition. So it behooves us to repeat the patent horror stories to help the newcomers to the free software community learn why they won't find MP3 encoders or decoders with free software OSes, for instance. It also serves as a reminder why one should use a free software system despite occasional practical difficulties--we want the freedom to share and modify software.

While I can sympathize with you having to read the same objections repeatedly, this information is repeated for a good reason: it is not a part of the public's common understanding of computers and it should be. Common computer users are under threat too even if they don't know it (I refer you to Paul Heckel's threatening Apple Hypercard users with patent infringement if Apple didn't see things his way; RMS talks about it in his talk on the danger of software patents when Heckel attended one of RMS' talks). Read the transcript:

We are not the only ones threatened by software patents. All software developers are threatened by software patents and even software users are threatened by software patents. For instance, Paul Heckel, when Apple wasn't very scared of his threats, he threatened to start suing Apple's customers. Apple found that very scary. They figured they couldn't afford to have their customers being sued like that, even if they would ultimately win. So the users can get sued too, either as a way of attacking a developer or just as a way to squeeze money out of them on their own or to cause mayhem.

I doubt most people know that they could be violating the law even though they are using purchased software. I doubt most people know that some patent-unencumbered alternatives exist (Ogg Vorbis instead of MP3, for example) and work well (even on portable digital music players). We need to repeat these stories and spread awareness of free alternatives so people won't be threatened or lose a patent infringement lawsuit.

The main way to teach people new ideas is through repetition. So it behooves us to repeat the patent horror stories to help the newcomers to the free software community learn why they won't find MP3 encoders or decoders with free software OSes, for instance. It also serves as a reminder why one should use a free software system despite occasional practical difficulties--we want the freedom to share and modify software.

I think some nerds don't want to be associated with a herd of any kind.

He should have called us a "herd of nerds" :)

The story said:

trusted chips will eventually be used by software manufacturers to make sure the computer's owner does not do anything with the software which the manufacturer does not want to permit.

The computer manufacturer, such as IBM, is largely irrelevant, except to the extent that they may eventually offer hardware that will refuse to run operating systems they don't approve of. Since IBM supports Linux, it doesn't seem likely that they will build machines that can't run Linux, but many other vendors have hitched their wagons more firmly to Microsoft.

This is often true.

The write-in option at my workplace has allowed me to donate to the FSF for several years using only its address:

Free Software Foundation, Inc.
59 Temple Place - Suite 330
Boston, MA 02111, USA

Usually I still give about 2/3 of my donation to the local United Way - there's a lot of worthy and underfunded organizations under that umbrella.

Some corporations have matching gifts policies to leverage your donation.

For example, in 2004, the Microsoft Matching Gifts program helped someone or some people in their donation of 500-999 to the Free Software Foundation.

Next thing you know, your iPod will only work with iTunes.

for real irony how about the FSF

If I could run it 100% Windows Free I would, but the University I'm due to transfer to next year insists on everyone running Windows 98SE/ME/2000/XP, Office2000 or XP, and SPSS. Aside from SPSS I'd be totally fine being Windows Free but so far I have found no way to either run SPSS in Linux (neither Codeweavers nor the regular WINE project can do it at this point) but there are SPSS workalikes that are Linux native. Hopefully by the time I have to deal with stats I'll be able to convince my math prof to let me use either RProject or PSPP instead. I am so ready to ditch Windows once and for all.

No matter how good Gnome and KDE have gotten, if the .net and JAVA software is lacking (Mono is not nearly complete, and is exactly fighting this catch-up game, JAVA is a nifty SUN Trap)

Between gcj, Kaffe, JamVM, SableVM, all driven by the GNU Classpath library, experimental stuff like Jnode, and the massive wealth of Java code in projects like Eclipse and those driven by the Apache Foundation..

I'd say that Free java is alive and kicking. Yeah, it still hasn't become usable with respect to AWT/Swing. But most of the core is there, even up to some 1.4 stuff. (and work on 1.5 features is underway)

I don't buy the "catch-up game" argument. Most people don't write programs for the absolute latest and greatest. Platforms tend to reach a certain level of maturity which is 'good enough' for most people, and then it slows down. I think that soon enough, the free Java implementations will be able to compete with Sun's.

For example, how many compilers can you name which fully implement the C99 standard?

Everything is a catch-up game... it's just a question of what the game looks like. MS can arbitrarily change things in the Word file format just to screw with people. APIs don't work that way though, you don't change an API unless you have to.

Can't gcc compile java code directly to native binary code?

Does this mean that one could make a shared library out of the java code for C-programmers to use?