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What about tuning in software? E.g., GNU radio

I also think the whole linking deal of the GPL license is too restrictive. Quoting from the GPL FAQ:

You have a GPL'ed program that I'd like to link with my code to build a proprietary program. Does the fact that I link with your program mean I have to GPL my program?
Yes.

Great, say I spend many months developing some great software and I want this program to read RAR files. I look around and find unrarlib, but if I simply link to that GPL'd source all my hard work has to be GPL even though GPL'd code compromises less than 1% of my program. So now I'm forced to either write my own RAR implementation or just drop that functionality altogether.I understand unrarlib could have been made LGPL or included another bit of legalese to allow linking, but I think that forcing code linked to GPL'd code to also fall under GPL is asking too much.

That's probably because of the clause required, advocating the great folk of BSD up until 1999. So up to a point, the GPL was more free (liberty) on a democratic standpoint. This and the popularity to those hobbyists is definitely more popular with Linux. The community is larger because they (linux community) have had since '91 to get out and BSD has been a newcomer to the field of '99. I for one would have definitely chose the GPL given the choice between the two.

Anyways, I project the BSD license as starting to gain recognition as this sort of info finds its way to the surface, and turning more towards public domain as we progress to the future. Afterall, isn't it required for us to act in such a way while all joining hands around a fire singing kum ba yah as opposed to worldwide destruction by nuclear forces...

Not at all; this apologist is referring to the inclusion, accidental or deliberate, of GPLed code into an existing proprietary codebase. Stallman is referring to a programmer who, in the course of hir job, modifies an existing free-software codebase. The employer cannot, in that case, distribute the modifications without GPL protection.

The hypothetical software described in the article -- a proprietary codebase linked against, say a GPL library or with some GPLed function pasted in, also can't be distributed. But the company is not required to release their entire source as free software -- they just have to remove the GPLed bits.

It fulfill the greatly-needed role of making the free-software-unfriendly Linux obsolete and ensuring that a kernel which fits GNU values becomes popular...

In what way you consider Linux to be "free-software-unfriendly"?

If I may quote the Free Software Foundation on the issue, "We use Linux-based GNU systems today for most of our work, and we hope you use them too." (source) And again, "if Linux were already available, and we were considering whether to start writing another kernel---we would not do it." (source)

The latter link is their page explaining why they didn't drop the Hurd when Linux matured. The reason is that they thought Hurd could become better than Linux, not that they had philosophical issues with Linux.

Sounds like the FSF thinks Linux fits GNU values. Why don't you?

It fulfill the greatly-needed role of making the free-software-unfriendly Linux obsolete and ensuring that a kernel which fits GNU values becomes popular...

In what way you consider Linux to be "free-software-unfriendly"?

If I may quote the Free Software Foundation on the issue, "We use Linux-based GNU systems today for most of our work, and we hope you use them too." (source) And again, "if Linux were already available, and we were considering whether to start writing another kernel---we would not do it." (source)

The latter link is their page explaining why they didn't drop the Hurd when Linux matured. The reason is that they thought Hurd could become better than Linux, not that they had philosophical issues with Linux.

Sounds like the FSF thinks Linux fits GNU values. Why don't you?

Since this is Slashdot, this will quickly turn into a stupid bashing of Intel in favor of gcc, since everyone likes Free stuff and hates corporations.

"Free stuff" and "corporations" are not mutually exclusive. Most of the work done on gcc is by people who are paid to work on it.

And everyone will talk out of their asses about how the Intel compilers couldn't possibly be faster than gcc.

There are still many interesting optimizations that gcc doesn't implement. A lot of work is being done on adding them to the tree-ssa branch, which hopefully will be merged into mainline gcc for 3.5.

So, I figured I'd throw out some real numbers:

It sounds like you're doing floating-point intensive number crunching code, which quite honestly is where icc should give the greatest benefit over gcc. On integer workloads they should be much closer. Number crunching gets a big boost from vectorization, and icc does automatic vectorization. GCC doesn't (though work is underway), and it won't use vector instructions at all unless you supply -mmmx, -msse, -msse2, and/or an -march option that specifies an appropriate CPU type. You can still get the advantage of vectorization if you're willing to code it explicitly.

the name means Wine is not a emulator, go figure.

The first time I saw a recursive acronym ("MUNG Until No Good") I thought it was very funny. But that was 20 years ago, and the joke's beginning to get stale.

How can people say BSD is dying when it has a mascot like this?! Linux needs to get its act together if it's going to compete with the kind of hot chicks and gorgeous babes that BSD has to offer!

You just can't take Linux seriously when its fronted by losers like these. Would you buy software from them? I don't think so! You Linux groupies need to find some 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. I mean are you telling me you wouldn't like to get your hands on this ass?!

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? Come on, you must admit she is better than an overweight penguin or a gay looking goat! Don't you wish you could get one of these? Personally I know I would give my right arm to get this close to such a divine beauty!

Join the campaign for more cute open source babes today!

> What I said was more like "I created it, therefore I should be compensated for my time and effort if I choose to allow you to use it."

In order to make this more interesting, would you care to explain exactly why do you think you're entitled to compensation?

You are an intelligent person so I assume that you can give an intelligent explanation.

And no, "because I invested time, effort and resources in it" does not count. See examples below.

Example #1:
I invested time, effort and resources in digging a 1000m^3 hole and filling it with used refrigerators. I should be compensated.

Example #2:
I created a work of art - a 15m high statue of GWB made entirely of bat guano. I don't understand why nobody wants to buy it (or pay to see it). I should be compensated.

Example #2b:
Hey, the guys from across the street made their own guano statue and sold it for $1K. It's not fair, I thought of it first! I should be compensated!

> Are you saying that I should not be compensated for my time and effort to create a work that you derive value from?

For the sake of argument, let's assume I say exactly that. Now please prove me wrong.

Oh, just in case it was not clear, calling me names or questioning my morals does not constitute proof, it does not even count as an intelligent reply.

In an otherwise thoughtful and well-meaning letter, Bob Young incorrectly states opinions that are widely published elsewhere and fails to take Darl McBride's view of theft (versus copyright infringement) to task. Instead, Young reaffirms McBride's conflation of theft and copyright infringement and seriously mistakenly summarizes RMS' ideas.

Consider this part from Young's letter:

Secondly, no one is arguing against copyright. Everyone agrees intellectual property, from trademark law to copyrights and patents, is a good thing.

Ok, so maybe Richard Stallman of the Free Software Foundation, the inventor of the GPL license, thinks it is not a good idea to copyright software. But even Richard thinks copyright has its place to enable authors to earn a living. Free markets are not so fragile that a new idea like the GPL can threaten them. The only thing that can threaten free markets in a democracy is fear. Fear can cause well-meaning governments to enact flawed legislation. The kind of legislation the DMCA represents. The DMCA is the equivalent of trying to stop break-and-entry of homes by making screwdrivers illegal. Breaking and entering should be illegal. Allowing honest citizens to own innocent tools that evildoers might use to break and enter must remain perfectly legal. It is the crook who should be sent to jail, not the tool nor the owner of the tool.

Everyone does not agree that "intellectual property" is a good thing. RMS, for instance, has said that he has no opinions on "intellectual property" except to point out the misleading consequences one arrives at from using the term and how it prejudices one's thinking to treat disparate areas of law like property. RMS has opinions on patents, separate opinions on copyright, and separate opinions on trademark law. RMS does not mix up his ideas into one jumbled whole called "intellectual property".

Furthermore, I have never heard nor read RMS say "it is not a good idea to copyright software" nor does young provide a source for this summary. RMS is against patenting algorithms used in the creation of computer software and most software programmers I've met are in agreement with him because so-called 'software patents' do such a profound disservice to their work. As RMS points out in his critique of the term "intellectual property", copyright and patents are not the same, in fact they differ more than they are alike. Copyrights and patents aren't acquired in the same way, they don't last for the same length of time, they don't cover the same things, policy concerning these two disparate sets of laws aren't governed by the same office, and defending against copyright infringement is not at all the same as defending against patent infringement. But you can see how someone who believes "[e]veryone agrees intellectual property, from trademark law to copyrights and patents, is a good thing" would arrive at such a mistaken conclusion about RMS' ideas and whether these laws are well received.

With respect to the term of copyright, Young notes that "[t]he Supreme Court case that you [McBride] misrepresent in your latest open letter demonstrates the Justices think too much of a good thing may no longer be so good" but doesn't understand how he is (in the FSF's words) "making an appeal to authority...and misrepresenting what the authority says" by talking about copyright infringement as theft.

If we accept the idea that property and ideas and expression are all one and the same, we allow ourselves to deny that new ideas are built on old ideas (or more generally, the future is built on the past). The limits of copyright law look very wrong and we champion the same goals as the Bonos and we buy into the hypocrisy exhibited by the Disney corporation. Then we lose the argument we are struggling to make with legislators.

In an otherwise thoughtful and well-meaning letter, Bob Young incorrectly states opinions that are widely published elsewhere and fails to take Darl McBride's view of theft (versus copyright infringement) to task. Instead, Young reaffirms McBride's conflation of theft and copyright infringement and seriously mistakenly summarizes RMS' ideas.

Consider this part from Young's letter:

Secondly, no one is arguing against copyright. Everyone agrees intellectual property, from trademark law to copyrights and patents, is a good thing.

Ok, so maybe Richard Stallman of the Free Software Foundation, the inventor of the GPL license, thinks it is not a good idea to copyright software. But even Richard thinks copyright has its place to enable authors to earn a living. Free markets are not so fragile that a new idea like the GPL can threaten them. The only thing that can threaten free markets in a democracy is fear. Fear can cause well-meaning governments to enact flawed legislation. The kind of legislation the DMCA represents. The DMCA is the equivalent of trying to stop break-and-entry of homes by making screwdrivers illegal. Breaking and entering should be illegal. Allowing honest citizens to own innocent tools that evildoers might use to break and enter must remain perfectly legal. It is the crook who should be sent to jail, not the tool nor the owner of the tool.

Everyone does not agree that "intellectual property" is a good thing. RMS, for instance, has said that he has no opinions on "intellectual property" except to point out the misleading consequences one arrives at from using the term and how it prejudices one's thinking to treat disparate areas of law like property. RMS has opinions on patents, separate opinions on copyright, and separate opinions on trademark law. RMS does not mix up his ideas into one jumbled whole called "intellectual property".

Furthermore, I have never heard nor read RMS say "it is not a good idea to copyright software" nor does young provide a source for this summary. RMS is against patenting algorithms used in the creation of computer software and most software programmers I've met are in agreement with him because so-called 'software patents' do such a profound disservice to their work. As RMS points out in his critique of the term "intellectual property", copyright and patents are not the same, in fact they differ more than they are alike. Copyrights and patents aren't acquired in the same way, they don't last for the same length of time, they don't cover the same things, policy concerning these two disparate sets of laws aren't governed by the same office, and defending against copyright infringement is not at all the same as defending against patent infringement. But you can see how someone who believes "[e]veryone agrees intellectual property, from trademark law to copyrights and patents, is a good thing" would arrive at such a mistaken conclusion about RMS' ideas and whether these laws are well received.

With respect to the term of copyright, Young notes that "[t]he Supreme Court case that you [McBride] misrepresent in your latest open letter demonstrates the Justices think too much of a good thing may no longer be so good" but doesn't understand how he is (in the FSF's words) "making an appeal to authority...and misrepresenting what the authority says" by talking about copyright infringement as theft.

If we accept the idea that property and ideas and expression are all one and the same, we allow ourselves to deny that new ideas are built on old ideas (or more generally, the future is built on the past). The limits of copyright law look very wrong and we champion the same goals as the Bonos and we buy into the hypocrisy exhibited by the Disney corporation. Then we lose the argument we are struggling to make with legislators.

"If any of this is true, I would hate to see SourceForge caught in the middle of something that could hurt them or its users."

SourceForge mention that their system is a good way to donate money to organisations such as the EFF.

It's worth noting however, that both the Free Software Foundation, and the Electronic Frontiers Foundation accept credit cards directly, without any sort of intermediary.

As for Debian, there's the Software in the Public Interest site, which is setup to handle donations to Debian, or to other Free Software projects.

If you have more time than money, consider the Help Wanted pages at SourceForge and Savannah (currently unavailable)

Already been done.

and remove the entire monetary component out of the industry?

that's not the only thing that's been removed.

...and the article doesn't claim *nobody* will, just that a huge team won't materialize out of nowhere. That's about right.

I've been maintaining cscvs, a tool for breaking a CVS repository's history into changesets and (among other things) importing its contents into the GNU Arch revision control system. It's adopted a fair number of users (more as the documentation and such get better), and a number of developers have contributed patches. If I weren't quite so busy with my job right now, I'd have been able to help *another* developer with a bugfix he's asked for a hand in putting together (to fix mismangling of the repository locations of CVS repositories which have a delta between the path used in the CVSROOT and the one used in rlog output other than the single such case I'm currently fixing).

The other project my maintainership of which could be considered active within the past year would be the "Ticket Applet 2", a GNOME applet for showing and updating the status of ones' Kerberos ticket. It's received a quite major patch from one outside developer (providing compatibility with his alternate Kerberos implementation), and feedback from a number of users at my workplace -- but there was certainly no flood of support washing in the moment I put it up on freshmeat, and had I been expecting such I would have been mistaken.

I think the actual claim in the article is a lot more defendable than the little slashdot blurb -- to the point that the blurb really does both the readers and the author something of a disservice. (Indeed, the only one I completely disagree with is the argument that it isn't sometimes best to throw out working code for a complete rewrite should it become unmaintainable).

Does tools like UML help with this?

What tools does Linux have for creating regression tests?

Debian and Gentoo does this well. I'm not certain how the others compare.

The intent of the GPL is to provide "access" not ownership, yes.

The knee jerk reaction to the analogy that the GPL is like a communist licence, however, is absurd. It is very obvious that the GPL can not be equated to communism, as communism is a economic/political theory and the GPL is a software licence, but the intent in both is the benefit to all by the sharing of all.

If someone were to compare the GPL to Capitalism, Feudilism, Socialism, or an other economic/social "ism", the reaction of GPLites would not be so quick and forceful. The comparision would also not be very accurate.

Forget for a second your preconceptions about communism and try and accept the GPL / Communism analogy. Its not a perfect analogy, but it is a pretty good one. And not worthy of its own myth

Ed is the standard text editor, dammit!

Or are there actually some decent altruistic people out there who want to make the world a better place?

I humbly disagree. I have reviewed both my Eneterprise and Select agreements. For all intents and purposes, I own them. There are restrictions, but they can't take it back (unless I violate the restrictions).

As I am sure you understand very well, owning in this context means being able to tinker, to fix bugs, to change things if you don't like them.

nobody forces you to upgrade.

...

How many people (percentages) are still running their flavor of the version of linux that was released circa 95-96? How about since 2000?

Changing the file format so you can't read documents that other people send you is a pretty big force, I think. And how about leaving security holes wide open, not allowing anyone to fix them?

And indeed, I don't know anyone who has a GNU system (with whatever kernel) which is not fairly up to date. But with GNU (or at least with Debian), that is not a question of a system upgrade where the installation takes a day. It's comparable to running Windows update every now and then.

The fact that with Debian this results in a system which is up to date, while with Windows it merely results in not being too vulnerable simply means that Microsoft is doing something wrong (for the customer, that is. They do things very well as far as capitalism is concerned.)

Incompatible file formats? Modulo Access, Office has been compatible from 97-XP and, to my recollection, has always been forwadly compatible.

It takes time to remove forward compatibility, not to preserve it. The interesting point is if new documents open reasonably well in older versions. Read the PDF or PS specifications. They're full of notes saying how to handle undefined things. This means clients designed for version 1.0, not supporting colour, can display coloured documents very well (although without colour, of course). That is what compatibility in file formats is about.

Open Source is no saint when it comes to backward comptability either. There's no commercial requirement to do so. If it's too hard, or gets in the way of killer new functionality, the hell with backwards comptability.

Indeed, and rightfully so. But since the format is open, it is easy to write a program to convert an old file to the new format, if that would be needed. However, if backward compatibility is dropped, then it is probably either not useful to convert the files (for example the save files for a game), or it is not really possible. In the latter case, the functionality of the program changed a lot, and the new version is most probably a fork (for example gimp->filmgimp, although I don't think they broke any file format compatablity, but they could have.)

[Disclaimer: As I have stated numerous times before, I am OS-agnostic, believing in the best tool for the job]

I believe in the best tool for the job as well, but if it's not free software, then it is very unlikely to be a candidate. Note that I am one of the (few?) people who consider long term effects as well. If I use non free software, it may encourage others to do the same thing (or at least it will encourage them less not to), which is bad for the software I have at my disposal. I assumed that free software is better than non free if they are the exact same code as a fact, read the philosophy section of www.gnu.org for details if you haven't already.

Excuse me responding to me own post, but here's an October 2003 discussion thread on the issue of lack of (secure) multiple committer support in Arch as related to Xouvert. I did not see a simple resolution. Arch is intentionally vague on this subject seeing it as an installation/administrative issue that highlights Arch's architecural flexibility. Perhaps the Arch model just assumes a single master committer - but unfortunately most development projects I have worked on do not work that way. I see this issue chasing potential Arch users away until it is definitively resolved or adequately explained in the Arch FAQ. Does anyone know how this issue was ultimately resolved by the Xouvert project?

Make it something people *want* to spend the $$$ on.

This means getting away from the it's-all-about-your-convenience marketing and moving toward marketing that stresses other factors. I want to pay for work I can use in ways mainstream book/movie/music publishers don't allow.

Many socially progressive organizations and copyright holders know how hard this is to do--getting people to ask questions like where those ultra-cheap Wal-Mart t-shirts come from, how much the waitstaff at the local diner get paid, how much migrant farm workers make for an honest day's labor, and other related issues is very tough to do because there is a very well-organized media working to sell you on the idea that nothing matters except your immediate convenience. Questions about copyright and patent law (just to name a couple areas of law) are little different when it comes to establishing a new frame for debate.

Asking questions that step outside large publisher's framing of important issues, starting to talk about important issues from a new perspective is hard. We need more people to ask and talk about what copyright does, whether we are well served by the prejudice in the term "intellectual property" that encourages treating disparate areas of law like property, whether we are making a good trade-off with media we're not allowed to copy, share, or use to base derivative works on.

And I'm not at all convinced that Jobs or Apple is interested in asking these (ultimately more important) social questions.

1. Locate a frog at your local pet store, or net one in the local pond! You'll want to start small and work your way up to larger frogs.
2. Lube him and your eagerly awaiting anus thoroughly with your favorite anal lube!
3. Tie a string to one of his legs. You don't want him crawling up there and dying, out of your feeble reach!
4. Slowly stuff and work the frog in, he may fight you for a minute or two.
5. Enjoy as he squirms and slowly suffocates in your anal cavity.
6. Afterwards, have Michael eat the frog out of your ass! He'll even finance your frogs and maybe throw a tip your way!

• *_A_N_U_S_F_R_O_G_*
  A_________________A
  N_____(GO_LUNUX!!)N
  U__________/______U
  S______o..o_______S
  F_____(.--.)______F
  R__/\(.,...,)/\___R
  O^^___^^__^^___^^_O
  G_________________G
  *_A_N_U_S_F_R_O_G_*
  

Emacs Gnus

i would normally say "next!" here but there are sensitive souls out there (w/ whom i can identify completely) for whom re-inventing email clients is a touchy subject, ready to rail on and on about their latest 5MB grep-child. so i add this blurb around the "next!" to cushion the message somewhat. (also, slashdot bean-counting requires this verbosity, blech.)

LILO? dude, that's like, so 199^N^N^N^ er, debianish. that bacon's done moved over ages ago.

My apology for leaving out the link to the essay I referred to.

Also see this

Says this. Copyright law demands permission to base things on other things.

"aid that, I do agree that a good autoconf configuration is very hard to acomplish, mainly when you doing it for the first time."

I don't know of any aspect of computer programming that's both non-trivial and easy to accomplish, when you're going it for the first time.

If autoconf is so problematic and PITA, why use it in the first place? autoconf/make is more trouble than it's worth.

You know, I've never had that much trouble with it. I've never had more trouble than doing it by hand would have given me.

I've certainly never found a different system that saves me more time while maintaining the degree of portability required for most of our projects. I'm sure if we decided that "all the world's a PC," or even "all the world runs Linux," we could do it by hand, but that's not good enough.

Portable makefiles and small portability test programs is the right way to do it.

I couldn't agree more. That's why I use a generator of insanely portable makefiles (it's a tool called automake), and a tool which creates and runs small portability test programs (it's called autoconf).

They had been rooted for a month before they realized anything. Have you installed any software from projects hosted there in the last month?

configure --help

To understand the concept, you should think of "free" as in ``free speech,'' not as in "free beer.'' ;-)

Can you please provide evidence of this claim?[that the FSF doesn't like copyrights]

The case of programs today is very different from that of books a hundred years ago.[...] a person who enforces a copyright is harming society as a whole both materially and spiritually; [...] a person should not do so regardless of whether the law enables him to.

* gratuitous reference to Woodstock vinyl recordings

** yes I know you can get SRPMs. I'm talking about the kind of copying one would do normally, if one wasn't forced to jump through these hoops.

The "code for checking" is all just a bunch of macros. Believe me, the slowdown you see isn't the shell reading a bunch of lines of text.

Some points that might speed things up:

• Some shells suck. The generated configure is designed to not require any modern shell features (in case you run it on some ancient piece of crap), so you can use whatever stripped-down streamlined implementation of Bourne shell you want. (Assuming the developers of whatever package you're installing haven't used such features themselves, and most don't, for the same reasons that autoconf recommends.)
• Some shells really suck. Under Solaris and AIX, for example, /bin/sh is such a flaming piece of shit that people running non-trivial configures are advised to run configure with a different shell.
• If you're getting the same results for commonly-used tests, strip them out of the generated cache, keep the cache around, and when you go to run a new package, preload the cache. (Can be tricky, but is usually safe. Just cache the safe stuff like, "checking if CPU is on fire... no".
• On recent Linux systems, a big slowdown is the part at the very end, when files like Makefile and config.h are being created. These are basically huge sed operations. Recent versions of sed and glibc have really taken a performance hit in this area. (Depends on your distro. Some sed's are compiled with their own regex engine, some use glibc's. There're more details, but I'm pressed for time.) You might try timing the last part (running config.status over and over to get an average time), then putting a different sed in your PATH and trying again. I found old versions of "ssed" to really kick ass.

As far as I can tell, the GPL is really an avenue for a developer to contribute to the community while still KEEPING his rights to the code he produced. Is this not a valid conclusion? It seems the GPL still protects the copyrights of the developers to the code they produce. In fact, the fact that the GPL demands that the code to anything released thereunder be distributed prevents someone from using someone else's code without it being known.

From the GPL:
"1. You may copy and distribute verbatim copies of the Program's
source code as you receive it, in any medium, provided that you
conspicuously and appropriately publish on each copy an appropriate
copyright notice and disclaimer of warranty;

2. You may modify your copy or copies of the Program or any portion
of it, thus forming a work based on the Program, and copy and
distribute such modifications or work under the terms of Section 1
above, provided that you also meet all of these conditions:

a) You must cause the modified files to carry prominent notices
stating that you changed the files and the date of any change. "

So if I develop a piece of software, I can decide to GPL it, and allow other to see the code, use it in their own efforts, or improve upon it. I can also decide to use some other license, if I don't want these things to occur. Shouldn't this be my own choice?

The FSF Savannah server has been hacked. The statement indicates a similar attack vector as the exploit against the Debian systems. However, it had been hacked nearly a month ago and was not detected until December 1st. For those that are not familar with it, Savannah is the FSF version of Sourceforge, hosting both GNU and non-GNU Free Software projects. It has not yet been determined whether any of the projects' source code has been modified. Read the full statement for details. One thing is certain though, with Debian, Gentoo and now the FSF being exploited in the same month, the open source/free software community is clearly under attack.

in other news, the GNU has now been hacked too with the same exploit that got debian. And hours after submitting it, it's still not on /. for some reason.

security is a sham, it's worse than we imagined.

Why is the GNU ftp and CVS compromise not yet front page news? WTF ?!

OpenSource is a philosphy of saying "Look at this neat-o code I/we created. You can use it, learn something from it or improve it but just follow this license (which generally keeps with the same philosphy.)"

That's actually more like the definition of Free software.

File formats are nothing but file formats.

File formats are often patented. I remember a few people who used to troll Slashdot, making semi-founded claims that MP3s were illegal, using sites like this as evidence.

No, the problem is the complete lack of respect for his intellectual property rights

I do not lack respect for the basic ideas of copyrights. Neither do I lack respect for the basic ideas of patents. (The details of their implementation in the United States, on the other hand...) However, I do lack respect for the use of the misguided generalization of "intellectual property," which lumps copyrights, patents, trademarks, trade secrets, and publicity rights together as if they were anything like one another. The thinking behind "intellectual property" rhetoric can cause only confusion. So if you want to say "copyright," say "copyright."

Some thoughts on that by a man wiser than I To sum it up, maybe we should treat software like we do music. Or was it the other way around? :-)

http://savannah.gnu.org/statement.html

Good lord, ANOTHER BREACH?

The majority of people are reading their email on desktop systems with high resolution colour graphics, so why shouldn't emails be able to take advantage of these capabailities?

Because minorities have rights as well. Not everybody reads e-mail on a desktop system; many read e-mail on handheld devices. In addition, not everybody can get broadband.

there shouldn't really be any difference between an email body and a document.

Problem with your reasoning is that less clued people hear "document" and think .doc, the extension of Microsoft Word's secret format. Ecch.

surely it is better to have one single database of contact information that any compatible application can share.

What prevents a worm or other spam trojan from registering as such a "compatible application"?

You'll notice that Stallman uses the term as "Digital Restrictions Management" in his essay. Stallman is, as we all know too well, pretty obsessed with what the choice of word conveys.

Otherwise, I thought that using the term "User Hostile Software" was a pretty good term for the whole thing. This describes exactly what seperates DRM, Palladium, TC, FairPlay etc from previous software. Or maybe FUCKware (where FUCK stands for "Futile Unnecessary Control Keeping").

Per subject. In a CVS-based project, only trusted committers are permitted write access to the repository -- giving it out blindly is asking for someone to exploit pserver's many security holes -- and many operations (such as submission and merging of 3rd-party patches) need to be handled manually.

I far prefer Arch, as it is largely designed to model the development process used for Free Software. (BitKeeper's distributed functionality permits it to be used in a similar manner). Anonymous contributors can create their own private branch, held on their own computer, and commit to that branch or merge submissions from others into it; they then can request that the project maintainer merge from this private branch into his or her own (which is presumably used for cutting release builds).

The distributed development model has use in other situations as well -- it means a developer on a commercial product can create a private branch on his or her laptop and work offline while still keeping changes revision controlled; arch similarly makes it trivial for a company to maintain a branch for changesets (yes, *changesets*, not *file revisions*) which have succesfully passed their automated testing process or the QA department's scrutiny.

CVS does poorly at modeling such processes, and I think it unfortunate that its name has become synonymous with OSS development.

(And yes, I'm a bit biased. For that matter, I'm currently the sometimes-maintainer of a piece of software, cscvs, which among other things has the ability to build changesets from a CVS repository and import them into Arch).

Copyright (C) 2002 Richard Stallman.

Verbatim copying and distribution of this entire article is permitted without royalty in any medium provided this notice is preserved.

Incidentally, the original article included a few footnotes, and is available on GNU's site.

Oooh! Oooh! This is is an easy one - can I take it?

From the GNU General Public License :
1. You may copy and distribute verbatim copies of the Program's source code as you receive it, in any medium, provided that you conspicuously and appropriately publish on each copy an appropriate copyright notice and disclaimer of warranty; keep intact all the notices that refer to this License and to the absence of any warranty; and give any other recipients of the Program a copy of this License along with the Program. (emphasis mine)

Granted, this applies to the distribution of copyrighted material, not simple use. I would assume that, having received GPL'd code, you could remove all comments in your local storage medium before your own personal use -- so it's not an answer in the spirit of your question, but an important consideration nonetheless.

You've never heard of GNU Radio, have you?

How can people say BSD is dying when it has a mascot like this?! Linux needs to get its act together if it's going to compete with the kind of hot chicks and gorgeous babes that BSD has to offer!

You just can't take Linux seriously when its fronted by losers like these. Would you buy software from them? I don't think so! You Linux groupies need to find some 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. I mean are you telling me you wouldn't like to get your hands on this ass?!

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? Come on, you must admit she is better than an overweight penguin or a gay looking goat! Don't you wish you could get one of these? Personally I know I would give my right arm to get this close to such a divine beauty!

Join the campaign for more cute open source babes today!