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An interesting article written by a professor at the University of Toronto argues that next-generation programming systems will combine compilers, linkers, debuggers, and that other tools will be plugin frameworks, rather than monolithic applications.

This is not the next generation of programming systems but rather the present one for pretty much everyone except for those using Microsoft tools.

Programmers will be able to extend the syntax of programming languages,

Again, nothing new.

and programs will be stored as XML documents so that programmers can represent and process data and meta-data uniformly.

There is no way in hell that would ever happen. Ever.

It's a very insightful and thought-provoking read. Is this going to be the next generation of extensible programming?

No.

Now, I will read the entire article, but somehow, I am not holding my breath...

However, the GNU FDL has had some controversy within Debian, who have considered moving works licensed under it to the non-free section. Of course, this has undergone Much debate, with Richard Stallman under heavy fire.

That is not what copyright says. Copyright, at least here in the USA, says that your creative expression belongs to everyone (how could it be otherwise, once you express an idea, we all share it, and you have not lost it, unlike if we all take your car and you don't have it anymore). Copyright simply grants you exclusive control of your expressions for a limited time, in order to artificially inflate the value of your expressions and therefore encourage you to continue being expressive.

Although I generally think Richard Stallman is a bit extreme for my tastes, you really should read his short writing on "intellectual property".

There is. Maybe you should have read the other comments, or looked around a bit (another link)

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Yeah, but you get a free MCSE in every bag of Twisties. Unix Gurus cost a lot, think the Sun shines out of places it shouldn't, dress funny, smell funny, and have all sorts of strange ideas.

You may notice that the vast majority of OSS includes the same disclaimer. And I quote:
Except when otherwise stated in writing the copyright holders and/or other parties provide the program "as is" without warranty of any kind, either expressed or implied, including, but not limited to, the implied warranties of merchantability and fitness for a particular purpose. -- GPL

Is it any wonder people think Linux users are a bunch of flaming homosexuals when its fronted by obviously gay losers like these?! BSD has a mascot who leaves us in no doubt that this is the OS for real men! If Linux had more hot chicks and gorgeous babes then maybe it would be able to compete with BSD! Hell this girl should be a model!

Linux is a joke as long as it continues to lack sexy girls like her! I mean just look at this girl! Doesn't she excite you? I know this little hottie puts me in need of a cold shower! This guy looks like he is about to cream his pants standing next to such a fox. As you can see, no man can resist this sexy little minx. Don't you wish the guy in this pic was you? Are you telling me you wouldn't like to get your hands on this ass?! Wouldn't this just make your Christmas?! Yes doctor, this uber babe definitely gets my pulse racing! Oh how I envy the lucky girl in this shot! Linux has nothing that can possibly compete. Come on, you must admit she is better than an overweight penguin or a gay looking goat! Wouldn't this be more liklely to influence your choice of OS?

With sexy chicks like the lovely Ceren you could have people queuing up to buy open source products. Could you really refuse to buy a copy of BSD if she told you to? Personally I know I would give my right arm to get this close to such a divine beauty!

Don't be a fag! Join the campaign for more cute open source babes today!

$Id: ceren.html,v 7.0 2004/01/01 11:32:04 ceren_rocks Exp $

Is it any wonder people think Linux users are a bunch of flaming homosexuals when its fronted by obviously gay losers like these?! BSD has a mascot who leaves us in no doubt that this is the OS for real men! If Linux had more hot chicks and gorgeous babes then maybe it would be able to compete with BSD! Hell this girl should be a model!

Linux is a joke as long as it continues to lack sexy girls like her! I mean just look at this girl! Doesn't she excite you? I know this little hottie puts me in need of a cold shower! This guy looks like he is about to cream his pants standing next to such a fox. As you can see, no man can resist this sexy little minx. Don't you wish the guy in this pic was you? Are you telling me you wouldn't like to get your hands on this ass?! Wouldn't this just make your Christmas?! Yes doctor, this uber babe definitely gets my pulse racing! Oh how I envy the lucky girl in this shot! Linux has nothing that can possibly compete. Come on, you must admit she is better than an overweight penguin or a gay looking goat! Wouldn't this be more liklely to influence your choice of OS?

With sexy chicks like the lovely Ceren you could have people queuing up to buy open source products. Could you really refuse to buy a copy of BSD if she told you to? Personally I know I would give my right arm to get this close to such a divine beauty!

Don't be a fag! Join the campaign for more cute open source babes today!

$Id: ceren.html,v 7.0 2004/01/01 11:32:04 ceren_rocks Exp $

Holy shit, that harmonica tune at the beginning is the Free Software Song.

Warning: Do not actually listen to if you value your ears.

Wrong wrong wrong. If somebody gives you software, you can use it from then on. Once the files are in your possession, you can use them, unless you've somehow signed a specific prior contract promising you won't.

If you don't plan to give out copies of the program, you have no need to agree to the GPL, or even read it.

Wrong. Go read the GPL before lying about it anymore.

Basically, the third option is geared towards people who maintain certain parts of the tree and get patches sent their way rather than straight to Linus. There will be a separate certificate provided to the maintainer.

Good points. It was always ingrained into me (as an engineering major) to document my sources for anything remotely borrowed. So it seems instinctually wrong not to require the contributor to cite explicitly his code's references. I considered that a sloppy developer could use the wrong source by mistake and infringe on someone else's copyrights. I'd feel a little easier if the intent of the certificate as well as each passage was explained in a preface like the GPL uses. It's always a good idea to be paranoid about copyright, I say. ;-)

The second option contains the phrase "as indicated in the file", which means that the origin is already recorded.

I interpreted that as saying that the license was in the file, not the original author's name or contact info. There could be cases where the copyright info changed or stripped such as the rumors of BSD code copied into Linux without proper attribution and vice versa. A "paper trail" could be used as defense against such accusations.

I can scarcely think of any more scalable system than LiveJournal. (Free software under GPL, more info at FSF/UNESCO Free Software Directory. For one person ranting about Howard Dean, perhaps, it is overkill -- that's more Moveable Type or whatnot's field. But if you are wanting two blogs, or three or four, or 3216504 and counting, LiveJournal would appear to be the simplest and most powerful way to do it. Also there are plenty of clients available...LiveJournal for Windows, Xjournal for OS X, and many others for all operating systems.

Especially when you are talking about FOSS software. Read here for some more reasons why licenses make a difference for authors and users alike.

Is it any wonder people think Linux users are a bunch of flaming homosexuals when its fronted by obviously gay losers like these?! BSD has a mascot who leaves us in no doubt that this is the OS for real men! If Linux had more hot chicks and gorgeous babes then maybe it would be able to compete with BSD! Hell this girl should be a model!

Linux is a joke as long as it continues to lack sexy girls like her! I mean just look at this girl! Doesn't she excite you? I know this little hottie puts me in need of a cold shower! This guy looks like he is about to cream his pants standing next to such a fox. As you can see, no man can resist this sexy little minx. Don't you wish the guy in this pic was you? Are you telling me you wouldn't like to get your hands on this ass?! Wouldn't this just make your Christmas?! Yes doctor, this uber babe definitely gets my pulse racing! Oh how I envy the lucky girl in this shot! Linux has nothing that can possibly compete. Come on, you must admit she is better than an overweight penguin or a gay looking goat! Wouldn't this be more liklely to influence your choice of OS?

With sexy chicks like the lovely Ceren you could have people queuing up to buy open source products. Could you really refuse to buy a copy of BSD if she told you to? Personally I know I would give my right arm to get this close to such a divine beauty!

Don't be a fag! Join the campaign for more cute open source babes today!

$Id: ceren.html,v 7.0 2004/01/01 11:32:04 ceren_rocks Exp $

In response to - "If you're designing an OS to run alongside others ..."

Isn't Fedora designing an OS to replace Windows and wouldn't it be the GNU Grub project who is designing an application to dual boot? I understand there might be a flaw in the Fedora install that manifests this problem, but the same problem in the reverse order has been there in Windows XP since the begining.

If Fedora was only designed to be a second option OS then what would be the point?

Windows normally won't boot if it is not on the primary master drive. To get it to boot from a secondary drive you have to use the map command in grub to trick it into thinking it is on the primary master drive. You can find more details about it in the GRUB manual.

I think the story submitter may think it's a problem to have multiple autotool versions installed, but I don't think he knows what the problem really is.

I'm sorry but i'm not sure you ever know what the problem is. In a perfect world you will only need to have the configure script in the package and it should build without having autoconf installed on the end-user's computer.
In real world that is not the case ...

Damien

I think anyone who is anyone who knows anything about 16bit MCUs knows about the Motorola HC12 family and it's 8bit predecessor the HC11. The HC11/HC12 is well supported by GCC, binutils and friends (also check out http://www.gnu.org/software/m68hc11/) which is also nicely packaged under Debian/GNU unstable and testing.

HC12/HCS12 devices are extremely easy to debug and develop software for. There is a fantastic Java-based simulator here. If you don't have dev tools that natively understand Motorola's BDM (Background Debugging Module) protocol, you can use a second HC12 configured as a "pod" device interfaced via BDM pins to the target, which will get you a very powerful interactive debugging console via DBug12 (example session here).

I've been doing a lot of work with the 9S12DP256 device. It has 256KiB FLASH, 12KiB SRAM, 4KiB EEPROM, 112QFP, 16 10bit A/D channels, CAN, 2xSCI, 3xSPI, etc etc. and clocks up to 25MHz.

Although HC11s are cheap and easy to come by in 1off quantitites from various retailers, the only HC12s most have available (such as Farnell) are the newer HC9S12 devices such as the one I've just mentioned.

What's the problem with this? Well on paper, nothing. These are extremely powerful devices. I'm going to use the MC9S12A64 in production; these are just $9.80 USD from Arrow.

The problem is that what with the HCS12 core and the family's peripherals being relatively new, Motorola Semiconductor is restructuring (renaming to Freescale Semiconductor), there are a godawful huge number of bugs. The most crippling being so far, SCI interrupts being basically useless (can only rely on having one INTR configured), not to mention PLL config deficiencies, BDM defects, etc.

It isn't too bad if you read the erratta sheet FIRST before chasing your tail and banging your head off the desk.

From the HC11/HC12 GCC port pages, here's a list of tested evaluation boards. Of these I've worked with the Technological Arts Adapt912, which, whilst a fine board, is quite expensive.

For a HCS12-based device (actually uses the same IC I've discussed), check out the Adapt9S12, but again at $159 USD it isn't cheap. The best bargain I've found is the MiniDragon+ which actually has more packed on the PCB than the Adpat9S12 and is $89 USD for students/schools/hobbyists. And at still less than the Adapat9S12 price is the super-deluxe-mercedes decadance model the full Dragon12 evaluation board, with on-board LCD, 2xRS485 sockets, 2xRS232 sockets, 7segment displays, speaker, IR, etc.

I can highly recommend the evbplus.com (aka Wytec) boards, but in doing so I must disclose that I have recieved the MiniDRAGON+/Dragon12 (fr

Is it any wonder people think Linux users are a bunch of flaming homosexuals when its fronted by obviously gay losers like these?! BSD has a mascot who leaves us in no doubt that this is the OS for real men! If Linux had more hot chicks and gorgeous babes then maybe it would be able to compete with BSD! Hell this girl should be a model!

Linux is a joke as long as it continues to lack sexy girls like her! I mean just look at this girl! Doesn't she excite you? I know this little hottie puts me in need of a cold shower! This guy looks like he is about to cream his pants standing next to such a fox. As you can see, no man can resist this sexy little minx. Don't you wish the guy in this pic was you? Are you telling me you wouldn't like to get your hands on this ass?! Wouldn't this just make your Christmas?! Yes doctor, this uber babe definitely gets my pulse racing! Oh how I envy the lucky girl in this shot! Linux has nothing that can possibly compete. Come on, you must admit she is better than an overweight penguin or a gay looking goat! Wouldn't this be more liklely to influence your choice of OS?

With sexy chicks like the lovely Ceren you could have people queuing up to buy open source products. Could you really refuse to buy a copy of BSD if she told you to? Personally I know I would give my right arm to get this close to such a divine beauty!

Don't be a fag! Join the campaign for more cute open source babes today!

$Id: ceren.html,v 7.0 2004/01/01 11:32:04 ceren_rocks Exp $

Is it any wonder people think Linux users are a bunch of flaming homosexuals when its fronted by obviously gay losers like these?! BSD has a mascot who leaves us in no doubt that this is the OS for real men! If Linux had more hot chicks and gorgeous babes then maybe it would be able to compete with BSD! Hell this girl should be a model!

Linux is a joke as long as it continues to lack sexy girls like her! I mean just look at this girl! Doesn't she excite you? I know this little hottie puts me in need of a cold shower! This guy looks like he is about to cream his pants standing next to such a fox. As you can see, no man can resist this sexy little minx. Don't you wish the guy in this pic was you? Are you telling me you wouldn't like to get your hands on this ass?! Wouldn't this just make your Christmas?! Yes doctor, this uber babe definitely gets my pulse racing! Oh how I envy the lucky girl in this shot! Linux has nothing that can possibly compete. Come on, you must admit she is better than an overweight penguin or a gay looking goat! Wouldn't this be more liklely to influence your choice of OS?

With sexy chicks like the lovely Ceren you could have people queuing up to buy open source products. Could you really refuse to buy a copy of BSD if she told you to? Personally I know I would give my right arm to get this close to such a divine beauty!

Don't be a fag! Join the campaign for more cute open source babes today!

$Id: ceren.html,v 7.0 2004/01/01 11:32:04 ceren_rocks Exp $

My guess is that they are talking only about things like this. I used to use a similar program back when I was taking English classes, in order to bring my papers down to an 8th-grade reading level.

These are encredibly easy to mess around with. For example, the fog index is:

Fog Index = 0.4*(words/sentences+100*((words >= 3 syllables)/words))

Which is roughly equal to the school grade reading level required for the essay. If I remember correctly, Associated Press articles are written to a 4th-grade reading level, which is why all of the paragraphs are only one sentence long.

Aha. GNU Halifax did the job wonderfully. I actually hadn't used it before. Another reason to love the plethora of software you get with Linux distros.

GNU Arch. It's not a distribution. It's a version control system like CVS or subversion.

I really hope Linus will change his mind and will finally start using CVS or Subversion like the rest of the GNU and Free Software community does.

Linux development is very decentralized, so Bitkeeper is much better suited to it than CVS or Subversion. The CVS and Subversion models are by their nature oriented toward having a single central repository, though there is a project to provide a wrapper for Subversion to support a decentralized model.

Reportedly arch has a model more like Bitkeeper, but I haven't tried it. I use CVS at work, and Subversion for my personal projects.

Eiffel's Bertrand Meyer is considered father of Design by Contract methodologies.

parted? I thought that was only used to fiddle with FAT...

Parted

I was thinking of the -mfpmath=sse,387 option in this instance. http://gcc.gnu.org/onlinedocs/gcc-3.4.0/gcc/i386-a nd-x86-64-Options.html#i386%20and%20x86-64%20Optio ns

If mplayer did this on non-i386-compatible platforms, and if it did this with a program for which there was complete corresponding source code available under a free software license, I'd say you have made an excellent point. However, I believe that the only reason mplayer plays RealMedia is because mplayer calls the same library Real's player does. Which makes mplayer little more than an alternative RealMedia front-end; the library which does the actual decoding work is no more trustworthy because it being called by mplayer than if it were called by Real's own front-end.

When mplayer is just another RealMedia front-end, mplayer's programmers effectively become a buttress of the RealNetworks monopoly (to borrow an excellent phrase from the FSF). This is precisely the point I was warning against in another thread.

If mplayer did this on non-i386-compatible platforms, and if it did this with a program for which there was complete corresponding source code available under a free software license, I'd say you have made an excellent point. However, I believe that the only reason mplayer plays RealMedia is because mplayer calls the same library Real's player does. Which makes mplayer little more than an alternative RealMedia front-end; the library which does the actual decoding work is no more trustworthy because it being called by mplayer than if it were called by Real's own front-end.

When mplayer is just another RealMedia front-end, mplayer's programmers effectively become a buttress of the RealNetworks monopoly (to borrow an excellent phrase from the FSF). This is precisely the point I was warning against in another thread.

It's interesting that this story is pitched as "100% Open Source" because that highlights the difference between open source and free software. This is a perfect example of how the open source movement is not about giving all people (including users) software freedom; this is a player program that depends on an uninspectable, unmodifyable, unportable binary core. This program in its entirety is being pitched as "100% Open Source" -- a clear invitation to become dependant upon RealNetworks for getting updates to the meaningful part of the player without regard to what the community has shown a predilection for doing time and again (in fact, just recently we had a front-page Slashdot story about how the Linux kernal was ported to yet another CPU, thus expanding its popularity while retaining and underlining the importance of software freedom).

The root of our disagreement seems to be over the definition of open source. There are 2, you are using one and I am using the other.

What the English words would naturally suggest is that "open source software" is software with sourcecode available.

The Open Source Definition is the definition endorsed by ESR, the guy who coined the term. This definition is almost exactly (but not quite) the same as The Free Software Definition endorsed by RMS, the guy who coined that term.

Man, this is a mess.

The root of our disagreement seems to be over the definition of open source. There are 2, you are using one and I am using the other.

What the English words would naturally suggest is that "open source software" is software with sourcecode available.

The Open Source Definition is the definition endorsed by ESR, the guy who coined the term. This definition is almost exactly (but not quite) the same as The Free Software Definition endorsed by RMS, the guy who coined that term.

Man, this is a mess.

There are two licenses. One is commercial and the OSI-approved is here.

Commercial is not the opposite of freesource; proprietary is.

Open source or free software?

Same thing. Except in rare cases. The concept of "open source software" is a fork of the concept of "Free software", expect with slightly lower standards. diagram

An evaluation would be nice.

I looked for it on the FSF list of license summaries but didn't see it.

There are two licenses. One is commercial and the OSI-approved is here.

Commercial is not the opposite of freesource; proprietary is.

Open source or free software?

Same thing. Except in rare cases. The concept of "open source software" is a fork of the concept of "Free software", expect with slightly lower standards. diagram

An evaluation would be nice.

I looked for it on the FSF list of license summaries but didn't see it.

but most of the embedded systems I have work on require hard-realtime and I tend to choose very conservatively on embedded projects.

To mention another, RTEMS is a open-source real-time OS with a decent pedigree and commercial support available. (The page is a shameless rip-off of GCC's.)

There's also Red Hat's eCos but I don't think they support it anymore.

Michael Tiemann's name is in at least one file in the gcc source code
Judging from this changelog there have been various people from cygnus who have contributed.

Michael Tiemann's name is in at least one file in the gcc source code
Judging from this changelog there have been various people from cygnus who have contributed.

Innovation like this underscores the need for relying on free software (or, put differently, the problem with relying or recommending non-free software). It's an easy trap to get into when you use an i386 GNU/Linux distribution (as most GNU/Linux users do, I suspect) because there are so many opportunities to get hardware that only fully work with non-free software (like nVidia video cards that require non-free kernel driver software to operate fully). When you become dependent on non-free software you lose portability which prevents easily moving to interesting hardware like this one. Non-free video and audio codecs are similar; if you base your work on some Microsoft library for decoding audio or video you won't easily be able to read those files on a non-i386 platform.

Software proprietors won't supply the wide range of support the free software community does. Software proprietors won't give you the power to provide your own support or buy it from programmers and sysadmins in the free marketplace.

Cygnus primarily provided support, but I think they also did some development. Maybe someone can elaborate?

In my mind, Cygnus is a good example of how a small company can survive on just dealing in Free Software. Many people need support, or perhaps need custom-made changes to Free Software.

AFAIK, Cygnus is now part of Red Hat, and Michael Tiemann is CTO of Red Hat.

Is it any wonder people think Linux users are a bunch of flaming homosexuals when its fronted by obviously gay losers like these?! BSD has a mascot who leaves us in no doubt that this is the OS for real men! If Linux had more hot chicks and gorgeous babes then maybe it would be able to compete with BSD! Hell this girl should be a model!

Linux is a joke as long as it continues to lack sexy girls like her! I mean just look at this girl! Doesn't she excite you? I know this little hottie puts me in need of a cold shower! This guy looks like he is about to cream his pants standing next to such a fox. As you can see, no man can resist this sexy little minx. Don't you wish the guy in this pic was you? Are you telling me you wouldn't like to get your hands on this ass?! Wouldn't this just make your Christmas?! Yes doctor, this uber babe definitely gets my pulse racing! Oh how I envy the lucky girl in this shot! Linux has nothing that can possibly compete. Come on, you must admit she is better than an overweight penguin or a gay looking goat! Wouldn't this be more liklely to influence your choice of OS?

With sexy chicks like the lovely Ceren you could have people queuing up to buy open source products. Could you really refuse to buy a copy of BSD if she told you to? Personally I know I would give my right arm to get this close to such a divine beauty!

Don't be a fag! Join the campaign for more cute open source babes today!

$Id: ceren.html,v 7.0 2004/01/01 11:32:04 ceren_rocks Exp $

Is it any wonder people think Linux users are a bunch of flaming homosexuals when its fronted by obviously gay losers like these?! BSD has a mascot who leaves us in no doubt that this is the OS for real men! If Linux had more hot chicks and gorgeous babes then maybe it would be able to compete with BSD! Hell this girl should be a model!

Linux is a joke as long as it continues to lack sexy girls like her! I mean just look at this girl! Doesn't she excite you? I know this little hottie puts me in need of a cold shower! This guy looks like he is about to cream his pants standing next to such a fox. As you can see, no man can resist this sexy little minx. Don't you wish the guy in this pic was you? Are you telling me you wouldn't like to get your hands on this ass?! Wouldn't this just make your Christmas?! Yes doctor, this uber babe definitely gets my pulse racing! Oh how I envy the lucky girl in this shot! Linux has nothing that can possibly compete. Come on, you must admit she is better than an overweight penguin or a gay looking goat! Wouldn't this be more liklely to influence your choice of OS?

With sexy chicks like the lovely Ceren you could have people queuing up to buy open source products. Could you really refuse to buy a copy of BSD if she told you to? Personally I know I would give my right arm to get this close to such a divine beauty!

Don't be a fag! Join the campaign for more cute open source babes today!

$Id: ceren.html,v 7.0 2004/01/01 11:32:04 ceren_rocks Exp $

Wait, you mean Hurd is still vaporware?

Linux doesn't monitor your internet activity and report back to it's creators without your knowledge as a standard practice.

That really depends on what software you install and run. If you run non-free software, you can't be sure what it is doing. It doesn't matter if this is non-free kernal modules or userspace applications like RealPlayer, Netscape, and Opera. An entirely free software system gives you the freedom to inspect your system (in addition to other freedoms which are also valuable) and change it to suit your needs. It's up to you to decide what's more valuable to you--the freedoms of free software, or the allure of non-free software.

• Walmart
• The US Army
• The US Department of Defense
• The citizens of the USA
• People of Earth

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help
?
?
?
quit
?
exit
?
bye
?
hello?
?
eat flaming death
?
^C
?
^C
?
^D
?

---
Note the consistent user interface and error reportage. Ed is
generous enough to flag errors, yet prudent enough not to overwhelm
the novice with verbosity.

OSI CPL
GPL compatiable
Common Public License Version 1.0
This is a free software license but it is incompatible with the GPL.

The Common Public License is incompatible with the GPL because it has various specific requirements that are not in the GPL.

For example, it requires certain patent licenses be given that the GPL does not require. (We don't think those patent license requirements are inherently a bad idea, but nonetheless they are incompatible with the GNU GPL.)

w0rd. RTFGPL. Quit FUDdin' around. Saying apps that run on Linux are subject to the GPL is like saying all Windows apps are subject to Microsoft's EULA. The parent post was right, you are an ignorant... well, why should women have to bear the burden entirely here? an ignorant dickhead!

1. 7. If, as a consequence of a court judgment or allegation of
2. 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.
   

1. We wish to avoid the danger that redistributors of a free program will individually obtain
2. patent licenses, in effect making the program proprietary. To prevent this, we have made it clear that any patent must be licensed for everyone's free use or not licensed at all.

1. This patent license shall apply to the combination of the Contribution and the Program if, at the time the Contribution is added by the Contributor, such addition of the Contribution causes such combination to be covered by the Licensed Patents.
2. 
   The patent license shall not apply to any other combinations which include the Contribution.

for some reason, i don't think it's a coincidence that both their sf projects are under a non GPL-compatible license.

Do you really think the future is going to sway against copyright?

With laws like the DMCA, and technologies like Palladium on the horizon, I'm not so sure myself. What do you think is going to keep us out of the future Stallman outlines in the Right to Read?

What happens when it becomes criminal to interface a "free" system with a proprietary one? Microsoft already appears to be gearing up for this on Palladium with a beefed up patent portfolio. (DVD's and CSS are one tiny hole in free software currently, but whats to stop the same mechanisms from creating more significant holes?)