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I would like to share with you a story - a story of pain, rejection, denial, loneliness, and perhaps, at the end, triumph and a happy ending. This story begins just three short years ago...

I was in my senior year of highschool, and as was the style at the time, I was very much interested in computers. I loved to take them apart, figure out how they worked, write programs with Microsoft's fine development environment, Visual Studio [microsoft.com]. As was also the style at the time, I loved to read webpages, in particularly, Slashdot.org [slashdot.org]. Perhaps you can guess what happened next. I began to slowly change - I developed an unhealthy obsession with computers, began to dislike and openly question America's policies, started shamelessly pirating music [napster.com] and software [gnu.org], and most dangerously, got turned on to that most deviant operating system of all - Linux.

Now I know many of you must be shaking your head in disgust at this point - "This must just be another one of those M$ trolls, hardee har har," but please, hear me out. This is very important.

As time went on, I got deeper and deeper in the Linux underground. I progressed through the various levels of "distros," from Mandrake, to Suse, to RedHat, finally to Debian, like a drug user going from harmless marijuana to cocaine and heroin. I thought I was so smart; I began sneering at other people who didn't use Linux - "Clueless Windo$e luzers," I would say. I was changing outwardly as well. I became a loner, hunched over the keyboard late into the night with the lights off, listening to my illegally downloaded music [kazaa.com]. All my friends left me after I broke their computers trying to install Linux on them. My hair grew long and unkempt, I stopped bathing and using deodorant, calling them "tools of capitalism and American greed." I got fired from my sysadmin job for installing slackware over the Solaris servers, and installing Debian over the Windows desktops. My bosses told me I cost the company hundreds of thousands of dollars, but I would not listen. "How could I be wrong, I'm using Linux?" I thought, "They must be M$ shills." You can see how far gone I was. No girls would look at me, let alone speak to me. I was in a world of pain, anger, and confusion [adequacy.org].

But, then one day, I took a long hard look at myself. I saw that something was wrong, but did not know what. I must confess, for a long time I denied what I knew deep down inside my heart - Linux was the cause of all my troubles. I saw what I had allowed myself to become. I was no longer a human being, I was a Linux Zealot. Instead of judging people by their thoughts, feelings, and actions, I judged them by their choice of Operating System. And so began the long road toward recovery...

I am still not fully recovered from my affliction, for you see, I have only one desktop machine, and cannot install Windows without losing much of my data. That's right, I am healthy enough to admit it, Linux is not for desktop use. I am planning my next desktop machine purchase, which will be an Apple iBook. The one good thing that came out of my years of torment is that I learned the power of Unix. Therefore, I will use MacOSX - a true Unix with excellent support and commercial software backing, something Linux will never have. By paying for my software from now on, I will be supporting the American economy. I want to help get America out of this economic tailspin [www.vasoftware] brought on by open source software [communism.org] and the dot com bust [fuckedcompany.com]. More importantly, I will no longer be an operating system zealot. I wi

Try the GNU/Hurd

Remember kids, Amazon would patent oxygen and license you the right to breathe if it could.

The untenable downside here is that it's one large step in the wrong direction for the public acceptance of DRM.

yes, this link does generate commissions at no extra cost to you

The hidden cost of this is supporting a company that will stifle software innovation by abusing a failing patent system.

Or you could purchase from a store that doesn't support a ridiculous software patents.

http://www.gnu.org/philosophy/words-to-avoid.html# Piracy

Publishers often refer to prohibited copying as ``piracy.'' In this way, they imply that illegal copying is ethically equivalent to attacking ships on the high seas, kidnapping and murdering the people on them.

If you don't believe that illegal copying is just like kidnaping and murder, you might prefer not to use the word ``piracy'' to describe it. Neutral terms such as ``prohibited copying'' or ``unauthorized copying'' are available for use instead. Some of us might even prefer to use a positive term such as ``sharing information with your neighbor.''

Sorry! I had to be that guy.

• CygWin. The Linux-like environment for Windows.
  Mozilla. Use this for mail, news, and browsing if you like.
  Firebird. for FAST browsing.
  WS FTP Light. A FREE, FTP client that works great.
  Filezilla. which is TRULY free and does sftp as well.
  PuTTY. a free SSH client for Windows.
  TTSSH. is a much less clunky ssh client than PuTTY.
  iXplorer. freeware secure FTP client
  VNC hello!? remote controll software.
  Tight VNClike the original, only FAST.
  GNU-EMacs for Windows. just trust me ;).
  Dev-C++a free C++ compiler for those who can't afford VS.
  NetHack. as someone here said, you MUST have NetHack installed on everything...
  Free-AV.free Anti-Virus software for Windows, (mandatory these days). or
  AVG Free edition. another free Anti-Virus software for Windows.
  Zonealarm. my favorite Personal Firewall,, really!. or
  Kerio. another firewall that some seem to like. or
  Sygate. yet another firewall. whatever floats your boat.
  Boingo. to see where the closest hotspot is, hehe.
  OpenOffice 1.1 the Microsoft Office KILLER :) {really!}
  Winamp 2.x for audio/video usage in Windows, stay away from the new one :).
  Mark's Adding Machine is much better than the Windows calculator.
  SpyBot Search & Destroy The best Ad-ware / Spyware removal tool we've found, "IE is unusable without".
  Ad-Aware another spy-ware app "alas poor Windoze."
  Trillian a favorite IM, since we're all chatters @ heart. or
  GAIM since trillian hogs resources, "bad piggy!".
  Gimp image creation/editing. Who needs Photoshop anyway?
  EnZip freeware Zip Utility, Stop nagging you WinZip!!
  Iview is a great little image viewer. or
  Irfanviewone of the best image viewer out there for Windows.
  Audacity is a great little sound editor.
  Virtual Dub. a great video editor.
  cDex gotta rip those cd's for the RIAA!
  MAME for games, period. Free. You can buy some ROMs, or *ahem* ask around. and finally
  XPantiSPY since XP is E-V-I-L.

And FINALLY, don't trust me! Trust the experts;

Go to the Pricelessware site maintained by the alt.comp.freeware Usenet group.
The

use openssh from cygwin

Does Cygwin OpenSSH have GUI configuration? PuTTY does.

use emacs AND vim from cygwin

Cygwin Emacs seems to have problems with key bindings. And does Cygwin Emacs support use of a pointing device without having to install Cygwin XFree86? Or is it a TTY app?

>Dev-C++ a free C++ compiler.

*cough* cygwin

Dev-C++ is an IDE that wraps GCC, either the GCC from MinGW or the GCC from Cygwin. Does Cygwin come with an IDE (and don't say Emacs)?

Here is my top ten list (in no particular order) for Windows. I'll let everyone argue about the Linux tools.
CygWin the Linux-like environment for Windows.
Mozilla naturally.... Use this for mail, news, and browsing if you like.
WS FTP Light a FREE, FTP client that works great.
PuTTY a free SSH client for Windows.
VNC remote controll software, NOTE: the location is no longer on the ATT Labs UK site.
GNU-EMacs for Windows. I usually install it, but use Vi more.
Dev-C++ a free C++ compiler. I use VC++ 6.0, but this is free, and I think it's pretty good.
NetHack You MUST have NetHack installed on everything...
Free-AV free Anti-Virus software for Windows.
Boingo to see where the closest hotspot is. (free) you don't need the service.

Sounds sorta similar to GNU Radio.
It's cool that as computers get faster, you can have software replace hardware :-)

Isaac Newton would have found a position somewhere where his eccentricity would have been accepted. The very nature of being eccentric leads itself to being adverse to accepting normalcy.

I'm confident that Newton would have found his way into a field that would have afforded him the opportunity to stretch his eccentricity. Will Bill Gates be remember 300 years from now, or will the the people behind new ideologies,concepts, or the creators of the next next social revolution be remember? Only history will tell us.

-B

See http://www.gnu.org/philosophy/words-to-avoid.html# IntellectualProperty.

Linux is NOT Unix. Do you even know what GNU stands for?

True, but then Linux is not even an operating system, it's the kernel. The entire operating system is really GNU/Linux (or maybe not). Clear as mud?

A moment ago, I entered "to be or not to be" without the quotes, and hit "I'm feeling lucky".

I got www.gnu.org.

You're so right, because there's just no way for you to download thousands of UNIX utilities and run configure, make, and make install, and have it run on OS X.

And aside from the command line, there just aren't any software products, just as you say. Basically, with Macintosh, you get a word process, e-mail client, browser, and that's it!

And there's really no hope of that ever changing, what with the crappy, hard-to-use development enviroment Apple has released for their platform, and the total indiffernce from the developer community regarding the platform.

It's a wonder more people don't share the "insight" you do.

Thanks for the enlightenment!

According to a section from the GNU Coding Standards, the GNU system is supposed to be a BSD clone: "With occasional exceptions, utility programs and libraries for GNU should be upward compatible with those in Berkeley Unix" in preference to System V. So now that *BSD is free, has the GNU OS project (apart from GCC, which *BSD uses) lost much of its reason for being?

And of course, GCC is under copyright by our good friends at Richard Stallman's Free Software Foundation (home of GNU).

It is interesting to note that every OpenBSD software, including OpenBSD itself, requires a Red Hat product, in fact owes its practical existence to Red Hat GCC. Pretty Cool.

I never said anything about them being evil, only ignorant or arrogant or short-sighted in their quest for "freedom."

Whatever you think about their license or their opinions, one of the reasons GNU won is because they made better products then the proprietary systems, as shown by the number of people who install GNU tools on their proprietary Un*x as well as by stuff like the fuzz tests.

They weren't the only people to want better, extended tools. While Brian Fox was writing bash, David Korn was writing ksh. While RMS was writing GNU Make, BSD people were writing pmake. The only difference between using gmake features and pmake features is that Linux, and with it gmake, is more common.

Also, it would be better to work around that Bobix bug by eliminating the use of that feature in the shell scripts, rather than adopt a more complex tool. Unless, of course, the bug is so horrendous that Bobix is trash, anyway, making those who chose it look foolish (if "Bobix" even exists, for that matter).

Bobix was any Unix. GCC developers have officially given up on compiling with HP/UX's cc, as it's buggy and doesn't support C89. The GCC target-specific installation instructions mention dozens of cases where "HP-UX version 8.0 has a bug in the assembler that prevents compilation of GCC." or "The Solaris 2 /bin/sh will often fail to configure libstdc++-v3, boehm-gc or libjava." It's an incredible job tracking all these bugs, much less trying to be bug-compatible with every version of Un*x ever released. GCC developers try, to some extent, to build on every C compiler and shell, but eventually punted on make, requiring GNU make. If you think that Joe Developer, who wrote a program with 300 users and 1 or 2 not running Linux or BSD, should going to worry about those bugs, I think that Joe has better things to do with his time.

It is interesting to note that every OpenBSD software, including OpenBSD itself, requires a Red Hat product, in fact owes its practical existence to Red Hat GCC.

I'm sure everyone has at least seen one article where they tell you to NEVER install software from a company you've either never heard of, or don't trust.

Which is silly advice that completely misses an important point. The key is software freedom. It doesn't matter who made the software, what matters are the freedoms to inspect, run, modify, and share the software so these kinds of problems can be minimized and trust can be earned.

Taken logically, if everyone behaved as those articles suggest, nobody would ever run software from organizations that start up tomorrow (and they might run proprietary software from older organizations even though proprietary software is inherently untrustworthy). We need the ability to leverage the freedoms of free software to make software trustworthy and useful. Shunning software because it comes from an unknown company isn't going to help us do that. Companies that used to be untrustworthy and try to become trustworthy by shipping Free Software should be supported.

"It seems to me that this is essentially an admission that Windoze as it comes from the box is not fit for use. Whatever the hell their EULA says, there has to be some implied fitness for use warranty on any product that people buy."

Really? What about section 11 of the GPL (note specifically the fitness clause)?

I was going to paste that section, but /. stopped me (the section is in all caps). Here's a link to the GPL, instead: http://www.gnu.org/copyleft/gpl.html.

Personnally, I agree with you, and think that section of the GPL is bunk (and probably the section most likely to be tossed, should it ever be tested in court). But as it stands, software can be sold or given away without a warranty of any kind. Hopefully this suit against MS will change that.

You are missing something.

As I understand the GPL, if the company in question wishes to pay any individual to work on code...code which they will be using "in-house," they CAN insist that those changes not be made public.

OK, I'm going to go out on a limb here, even though I only scored 77% on the GPL Quiz (and the only way I'll ever score Seven of Nine).

Yeah, you're right - even though the changes are covered under the GPL as a derivative work, if the company doesn't redistribute the binary then they don't have to give the source to anybody.

But I'm assuming the author probably wants to redstribute the changes - in which case he'd better be sure the company allows him to retain ownership of the changes or to redistribute. The author and the company that hires him need to agree on who owns the changes and how/if to distribute them.

Once again, this making-money-through-inane-patent-supporting post was brought to you by Slashdot's businest SpamBot troll, ccats.

The expression "free beer" comes from the free software definition. And if my memory is correct, it also outdates the Simpsons.

Copyright, as was originally written in the constitution, was supposed to last for about 15 years in order for the creator/inventor to get some money from the work they created.

Actually, US copyright was set up to incentivize authors (not "creator[s]", or "inventor[s]"--a term that is typically used when discussing patent law, not copyright law) to write and publish more work. Copyright in the US was set up entirely for the benefit of the public. RMS has a very readable summary of the background of copyright and the common arguments used in discussions like these. It is aptly titled "Misinterpreting Copyright". It addresses virtually all of your points. I think you'll find that many of the ideas the GNU project expresses on these matters are quite interesting and worth repeating.

This was meant to be a very carefully balanced compromise between the needs of the individual and the needs of the group.

No, there is no "balance" being reached by copyright nor was there ever intended to be one. From the aforementioned text:

"It is often said that U.S. copyright law is meant to "strike a balance" between the interests of publishers and readers. Those who cite this interpretation present it as a restatement of the basic position stated in the Constitution; in other words, it is supposed to be equivalent to the copyright bargain.

But the two interpretations are far from equivalent; they are different conceptually, and different in their implications. The balance concept assumes that the readers' and publishers' interests differ in importance only quantitatively, in "how much weight" we should give them, and in what actions they apply to. The term "stakeholders" is often used to frame the issue in this way; it assumes that all kinds of interest in a policy decision are equally important. This view rejects the qualitative distinction between the readers' and publishers' interests which is at the root of the government's participation in the copyright bargain."

RMS' essay goes on to explain how the "balance" concept actually ends up reversing the underlying basis of copyright where, practically speaking, the public has to justify not giving publishers all sorts of new power under copyright law. This is exactly backwards from how copyright was intended to work--readers' interests are an end unto themselves, benefits for the publishers can only be justified so as to benefit the readers.

As a result I believe that it is more than moral to play a 15+ year old game without having to pay since if some greedy people didn't insist on changing the laws in their favor it would be in the public domain anyway.

Actually, you're shooting your own argument in the foot by conflating ethics with law. Ethical conduct does not spring from laws. Although the following comes from a discussion of the word "theft" as the word is commonly misapplied to describing illicit copying, I think one particular paragraph of that essay is valuable here:

"The idea that laws decide what is right or wrong is mistaken in general. Laws are, at their best, an attempt to achieve justice; to say that laws define justice or ethical conduct is turning things upside down."

Sharing is neighborly and good and we should not build laws or use terms that suggests sharing is bad (like when some people, thankfully not you, call others "pirates").

You are confusing physical property with intellectual property, they are not the same and should not be compared.

I'm glad to see more people talking about the difference between transferring physical property versus

Copyright, as was originally written in the constitution, was supposed to last for about 15 years in order for the creator/inventor to get some money from the work they created.

Actually, US copyright was set up to incentivize authors (not "creator[s]", or "inventor[s]"--a term that is typically used when discussing patent law, not copyright law) to write and publish more work. Copyright in the US was set up entirely for the benefit of the public. RMS has a very readable summary of the background of copyright and the common arguments used in discussions like these. It is aptly titled "Misinterpreting Copyright". It addresses virtually all of your points. I think you'll find that many of the ideas the GNU project expresses on these matters are quite interesting and worth repeating.

This was meant to be a very carefully balanced compromise between the needs of the individual and the needs of the group.

No, there is no "balance" being reached by copyright nor was there ever intended to be one. From the aforementioned text:

"It is often said that U.S. copyright law is meant to "strike a balance" between the interests of publishers and readers. Those who cite this interpretation present it as a restatement of the basic position stated in the Constitution; in other words, it is supposed to be equivalent to the copyright bargain.

But the two interpretations are far from equivalent; they are different conceptually, and different in their implications. The balance concept assumes that the readers' and publishers' interests differ in importance only quantitatively, in "how much weight" we should give them, and in what actions they apply to. The term "stakeholders" is often used to frame the issue in this way; it assumes that all kinds of interest in a policy decision are equally important. This view rejects the qualitative distinction between the readers' and publishers' interests which is at the root of the government's participation in the copyright bargain."

RMS' essay goes on to explain how the "balance" concept actually ends up reversing the underlying basis of copyright where, practically speaking, the public has to justify not giving publishers all sorts of new power under copyright law. This is exactly backwards from how copyright was intended to work--readers' interests are an end unto themselves, benefits for the publishers can only be justified so as to benefit the readers.

As a result I believe that it is more than moral to play a 15+ year old game without having to pay since if some greedy people didn't insist on changing the laws in their favor it would be in the public domain anyway.

Actually, you're shooting your own argument in the foot by conflating ethics with law. Ethical conduct does not spring from laws. Although the following comes from a discussion of the word "theft" as the word is commonly misapplied to describing illicit copying, I think one particular paragraph of that essay is valuable here:

"The idea that laws decide what is right or wrong is mistaken in general. Laws are, at their best, an attempt to achieve justice; to say that laws define justice or ethical conduct is turning things upside down."

Sharing is neighborly and good and we should not build laws or use terms that suggests sharing is bad (like when some people, thankfully not you, call others "pirates").

You are confusing physical property with intellectual property, they are not the same and should not be compared.

I'm glad to see more people talking about the difference between transferring physical property versus

Copyright, as was originally written in the constitution, was supposed to last for about 15 years in order for the creator/inventor to get some money from the work they created.

Actually, US copyright was set up to incentivize authors (not "creator[s]", or "inventor[s]"--a term that is typically used when discussing patent law, not copyright law) to write and publish more work. Copyright in the US was set up entirely for the benefit of the public. RMS has a very readable summary of the background of copyright and the common arguments used in discussions like these. It is aptly titled "Misinterpreting Copyright". It addresses virtually all of your points. I think you'll find that many of the ideas the GNU project expresses on these matters are quite interesting and worth repeating.

This was meant to be a very carefully balanced compromise between the needs of the individual and the needs of the group.

No, there is no "balance" being reached by copyright nor was there ever intended to be one. From the aforementioned text:

"It is often said that U.S. copyright law is meant to "strike a balance" between the interests of publishers and readers. Those who cite this interpretation present it as a restatement of the basic position stated in the Constitution; in other words, it is supposed to be equivalent to the copyright bargain.

But the two interpretations are far from equivalent; they are different conceptually, and different in their implications. The balance concept assumes that the readers' and publishers' interests differ in importance only quantitatively, in "how much weight" we should give them, and in what actions they apply to. The term "stakeholders" is often used to frame the issue in this way; it assumes that all kinds of interest in a policy decision are equally important. This view rejects the qualitative distinction between the readers' and publishers' interests which is at the root of the government's participation in the copyright bargain."

RMS' essay goes on to explain how the "balance" concept actually ends up reversing the underlying basis of copyright where, practically speaking, the public has to justify not giving publishers all sorts of new power under copyright law. This is exactly backwards from how copyright was intended to work--readers' interests are an end unto themselves, benefits for the publishers can only be justified so as to benefit the readers.

As a result I believe that it is more than moral to play a 15+ year old game without having to pay since if some greedy people didn't insist on changing the laws in their favor it would be in the public domain anyway.

Actually, you're shooting your own argument in the foot by conflating ethics with law. Ethical conduct does not spring from laws. Although the following comes from a discussion of the word "theft" as the word is commonly misapplied to describing illicit copying, I think one particular paragraph of that essay is valuable here:

"The idea that laws decide what is right or wrong is mistaken in general. Laws are, at their best, an attempt to achieve justice; to say that laws define justice or ethical conduct is turning things upside down."

Sharing is neighborly and good and we should not build laws or use terms that suggests sharing is bad (like when some people, thankfully not you, call others "pirates").

You are confusing physical property with intellectual property, they are not the same and should not be compared.

I'm glad to see more people talking about the difference between transferring physical property versus

I've been waiting for a vi v's emacs thread for this one. Stuff both of them OpenBsd uses Ed.

For those more interested in technology (than flames) read this article with Bill Joy about Ed.

While I agree that the RMS version is pretty bad, this version is much better.

I'm not quite with the "governments should make laws forcing Open Source down people's throats"

No person may have Free Software (or opensource code) shoved down his throat. Companies may have "Free Software" forced on them - but they're not people, and their interests in this case do not coincide with those of the people.

Anyhow, counter this with:
* I am not quite with the "governments should make laws forcing Freedom down people's throats"
The negative association is only added by the "throats" part, and there's no real reason not to force Freedom of (modifying and redistributing) Software, like other freedoms.

For everyone sake (and to preserve everyone's sanity) I certainly hope this isn't like RMS's free software song!

Those of you with a weak stomach might not want to click on Stallman singing.

Those of you with a weak stomach might not want to click on Stallman singing.

Don't get me wrong, I have this feeling that there will never be an open source implementation of java, and so I'm rooting for python

The biggest thing standing in the way is the lack of libraries. There are VMs and compilers available but the huge class library takes longer to replicate. The GNU Classpath project seems to be coming along nicely. I don't think the project will be abandoned any time soon either because lots of other projects depend on it.

Although the shouting in the title definitely makes it LOOK like a troll...

Guys, I got a problem. This isn't related to this topic exclusively, but for ALL Gnu articles here... Okay, here it is. The icon for "Gnu is not Unix" here at Slashdot doesn't really look like a Gnu at all. It looks like a giant penis carrying a security blanket. Really. Take a close look at it. Are those two big red balls supposed to be feet? What does that logo MEAN?

We need to change that logo to something that doesn't have hidden meanings. I suggest the typical Gnu head (no pun intended) that RMS uses on his website.

[...] so that it continues to serve its purpose with the right balance between the copyright holder and the consumer of the material.

That is not its purpose. Copyright exists for the benefit of the public. Consider reading this essay by Richard Stallman. Many of the points you raise are responded to (almost directly) in this essay.

This ignores the fact that doing so is still commercially damaging to the copyright holder, and thus depriving them of the compensation that copyright is supposed to guarantee in exchange for offering their work to the world.

The public does not bear the onus of responsibility to showing that publishers won't be hurt if we change copyright in some way. From Stallman's essay, talking about the difference between the copyright bargain and the "balance" between the public and authors or publishers:

As a practical matter, the consequence of the "balance" concept is to reverse the burden of justification for changes in copyright law. The copyright bargain places the burden on the publishers to convince the readers to cede certain freedoms. The concept of balance reverses this burden, practically speaking, because there is generally no doubt that publishers will benefit from additional privilege. So unless harm to the readers can be proved, sufficient to "outweigh" this benefit, we are led to conclude that the publishers are entitled to almost any privilege they request.

Since the idea of "striking a balance" between publishers and readers denies the readers the primacy they are entitled to, we must reject it.

Furthermore, although Stallman's point trumps this one: commercial publisher's loss of income is largely assumed, not proven. There is not and never was a "guarantee" of income under copyright. Copyright was supposed to be a mechanism for incentivizing authors to publish more work--a behavioral change that benefits the public. Stallman clearly explains how copyright does not exist for the sake of authors and publishers, it exists for the sake of the public. Thus, when we consider copyright it is paramount to consider the public's needs. Not publisher's needs, not author's needs, the public's needs.

a) Accompany it with the complete corresponding machine-readable source code, which must be distributed under the terms of Sections 1 and 2 above on a medium customarily used for software interchange; or,

b) Accompany it with a written offer, valid for at least three years, to give any third party, for a charge no more than your cost of physically performing source distribution, a complete machine-readable copy of the corresponding source code, to be distributed under the terms of Sections 1 and 2 above on a medium customarily used for software interchange; or,...

Q: Does the GPL allow me to charge a fee for downloading the program from my site?
A: Yes. You can charge any fee you wish for distributing a copy of the program. If you distribute binaries by download, you must provide "equivalent access" to download the source--therefore, the fee to download source may not be greater than the fee to download the binary.

By downloading this software you agree to the terms of its use. With each copy of software from theKompany.com you are purchasing the right for a single person to use it on a single computer. You are not allowed to distribute the application or modify it in any way. The source is not provided and the application is provided "as is" with no warranty given or implied. Use of the software is at your own risk, however theKompany will make its best effort to support the software.

a) Accompany it with the complete corresponding machine-readable source code, which must be distributed under the terms of Sections 1 and 2 above on a medium customarily used for software interchange; or,

b) Accompany it with a written offer, valid for at least three years, to give any third party, for a charge no more than your cost of physically performing source distribution, a complete machine-readable copy of the corresponding source code, to be distributed under the terms of Sections 1 and 2 above on a medium customarily used for software interchange; or,...

Q: Does the GPL allow me to charge a fee for downloading the program from my site?
A: Yes. You can charge any fee you wish for distributing a copy of the program. If you distribute binaries by download, you must provide "equivalent access" to download the source--therefore, the fee to download source may not be greater than the fee to download the binary.

By downloading this software you agree to the terms of its use. With each copy of software from theKompany.com you are purchasing the right for a single person to use it on a single computer. You are not allowed to distribute the application or modify it in any way. The source is not provided and the application is provided "as is" with no warranty given or implied. Use of the software is at your own risk, however theKompany will make its best effort to support the software.

a) Accompany it with the complete corresponding machine-readable source code, which must be distributed under the terms of Sections 1 and 2 above on a medium customarily used for software interchange; or,

b) Accompany it with a written offer, valid for at least three years, to give any third party, for a charge no more than your cost of physically performing source distribution, a complete machine-readable copy of the corresponding source code, to be distributed under the terms of Sections 1 and 2 above on a medium customarily used for software interchange; or,...

Q: Does the GPL allow me to charge a fee for downloading the program from my site?
A: Yes. You can charge any fee you wish for distributing a copy of the program. If you distribute binaries by download, you must provide "equivalent access" to download the source--therefore, the fee to download source may not be greater than the fee to download the binary.

By downloading this software you agree to the terms of its use. With each copy of software from theKompany.com you are purchasing the right for a single person to use it on a single computer. You are not allowed to distribute the application or modify it in any way. The source is not provided and the application is provided "as is" with no warranty given or implied. Use of the software is at your own risk, however theKompany will make its best effort to support the software.

~~~

Ahem...

ed, man! !man ed

This pro-software-patent troll brought to you by ccats.

Unfortunately, that missing code is required to be released under the GPL.

From the GPL:

These requirements apply to the modified work as a whole. If identifiable sections of that work are not derived from the Program, and can be reasonably considered independent and separate works in themselves, then this License, and its terms, do not apply to those sections when you distribute them as separate works. But when you distribute the same sections as part of a whole which is a work based on the Program, the distribution of the whole must be on the terms of this License, whose permissions for other licensees extend to the entire whole, and thus to each and every part regardless of who wrote it.

From gnu.org:
It is not ready for production use, as there are still many bugs and missing features.
and
the support for character devices (like sound cards) and other hardware is mostly missing. Although the POSIX interface is provided, some additional interfaces like POSIX shared memory or semaphores are still under development.
NO SHARED MEMORY OR SEMAPHORES? What kind of kernel is that?

Thanks for trying though

This is not particularly important since Y is a work in progress, but you can see use of a GCC C extension in Y's button.c:

static struct WidgetTable buttonTable =
{
c: &buttonClass,
reconfigure: buttonReconfigure,
paint: buttonPaint,
pointerButton: buttonPointerButton,
pointerMotion: buttonPointerMotion,
pointerEnter: buttonPointerEnter,
pointerLeave: buttonPointerLeave
};

That's not necessarily a bad thing - I think GCC is one of the best compilers around. The only issue here is that that particular named struct member syntax construct has been deprecated since GCC 2.5 and may be dropped in the future. If I understand the GCC docs correctly I think the alternate C99 syntax would be:

static struct WidgetTable buttonTable =
{ .c = &buttonClass, .reconfigure = buttonReconfigure, .paint = buttonPaint, .pointerButton = buttonPointerButton, .pointerMotion = buttonPointerMotion, .pointerEnter = buttonPointerEnter, .pointerLeave = buttonPointerLeave
};

But I could be mistaken.

Is it plain-old-GPL, or is it GPL with an exception like that of Guile? In general, a window system cannot become popular unless some sort of proprietary software can be published for the platform. Some disciplines such as prepress image editing need patented algorithms whose owners aren't willing to license them royalty-free; only proprietary software can implement these algorithms.

I'm not saying Linux is bad, and I'm definately not saying all software not owned by the FSF is bad. What I'm saying is that I care about the philosophy that the FSF preaches. And they're having a hard time getting it through to the people as long as the people think "Well the system is called Linux and Linus made it all by himself". I know that's not how it is. You know too. But most people don't. And since Linus does not clearly tell the press about it, most people will not know about it as long as Linux is needed to run GNU. I mean, why listen to RMS, if he seems to be contradicting Linus? Linus created the whole system, he should know.

For the sake of clarity: I don't know of Linus ever claiming he created the whole sytem. But he says things like "I'm in the center of it all" (about the kernel) when he knows very well the journalist and all the readers think he's talking about the operating system.

And speaking of L4ka, That's exactly what we're currently working on. Probably most things from Mach Hurd can be ported fairly easily to it, so the effort that was put in there is not wasted.