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Quartz would actually be useful for many other projects, which is why Apple doesn't do it.

How? The source is only useful to people a) debugging the code, or b) interested in by-passing the API to shoot themselves in the foot by using internal, unpublished features. Apple keeps it closed source to maintain their competitive advantage in being the most visually appealing desktop experience, not to spite anyone.

but also learn Mac-specific stuff like Objective C in addition to the APIs.

This is uninformed rubbish. Objective-C is in the gcc compiler. Mac OS X uses the gcc suite. There is nothing "mac-specific" about Objective-C. The API has been around for over 10 years. It's called OpenStep, and if it has survived that long commercially, then perhaps it just might be worth learning. Lastly, we have source compatible OpenStep libraries for many other Unix OSs: GNUStep.

Speaking of third-party application support, it would be great if they'd ship GNU stuff whenever possible; getting free software to run compile on solaris can be painful sometimes because of incompatibilities between the sun ld and g++.

fix some of these bugs, sun!
I know that their own C/C++ compiler is supposed to be great at optimizing on their hardware, but since many customers will choose to not pay for it and just use gcc, they should pre-install all the GNU tools and libraries.

• hmm stupid noob question i guess... but what are some ways to download through http sans a browser?

• Open Source (GPL)
• Open Protocols (Jabber)
• Connectivity with AIM, ICQ, Yahoo! and MSN
• Multi-platform
• Secure connections (SSL)
• HTTP Proxies support

I had the same concern about libstdc++ and reported the ambiguous licence as a bug. The libstdc++ developers have since clarified that it's covered by a much less restrictive licence.

Like this?

Perhaps where you're standing is not the right place. (Third sentence, in parentheses.)

But you can't get the software without agreeing to their support terms. If you compile it from source, they claim distribution would violate their trademark rights. (Mandrake argued this before.)

Ok, I see two issues here. First, you can get all of the SRPMS (i.e., all of the source to build your own) from http://ftp.redhat.com/pub/redhat/linux/enterprise/ 2.1AS/en/os/i386/SRPMS/, which I located by going to the download directory for 9, going up a few directories, and selecting enterprise instead of 9. Not intuitive, but the source is technically available, as per the GPL.

On to your second point. The issue of trademarks being embedded into a GPL released program wasn't addressed in this article, and that may be an area worthy of an article of its very own. From the license agreement at http://www.redhat.com/licenses/rhel_us_2-1.html, I see (caps original):

THE "RED HAT" TRADEMARK AND RED HAT'S "SHADOWMAN" LOGO ARE REGISTERED TRADEMARKS OF RED HAT IN THE UNITED STATES AND OTHER COUNTRIES. WHILE THIS LICENSE AGREEMENT ALLOWS CUSTOMER TO COPY MODIFY AND DISTRIBUTE THE SOFTWARE, IT DOES NOT PERMIT CUSTOMER TO DISTRIBUTE THE SOFTWARE UTILIZING RED HAT'S TRADEMARKS. CUSTOMER SHOULD READ THE INFORMATION FOUND AT http://www.redhat.com/about/corporate/trademark/ BEFORE DISTRIBUTING A COPY OF THE SOFTWARE, REGARDLESS OF WHETHER IT HAS BEEN MODIFIED. IN ADDITION, IF CUSTOMER MAKES A COMMERCIAL REDISTRIBUTION OF THE SOFTWARE AND (A) IT DOES NOT FALL WITHIN AN EXCEPTION PROVIDED IN RED HAT'S TRADEMARK GUIDELINES, (B) IT HAS NOT ENTERED INTO A REDISTRIBUTION AGREEMENT WITH RED HAT, OR (C) IT DO NOT HAVE A TRADEMARK LICENSE AGREEMENT WITH RED HAT, THEN CUSTOMER MUST MODIFY THE FILES IDENTIFIED AS REDHAT-LOGOS AND ANACONDA-IMAGES SO AS TO REMOVE ALL USE OF IMAGES CONTAINING THE "RED HAT" TRADEMARK OR RED HAT'S SHADOW MAN LOGO. NOTE THAT MERE DELETION OF THOSE FILES MAY CORRUPT THE SOFTWARE.

I agree that this conflicts with the GPL s.6&7:

6. Each time you redistribute the Program (or any work based on the Program), the recipient automatically receives a license from the original licensor to copy, distribute or modify the Program subject to these terms and conditions. You may not impose any further restrictions on the recipients' exercise of the rights granted herein. You are not responsible for enforcing compliance by third parties to this License.

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

The conflict is with the statement Each time you redistribute the Program ... , the recipient ... receives a license from the original licensor to ... distribute ... the Program subject to these terms and conditions. You may not impose any further restrictions on the recipients' exercise of the rights granted herein. That is to say, imposing a requirement that trademarked content must be removed from a distributed GPL'd package before redistributing is to impo

So you dont agree to the GPL license of the code you are using? That is a EULA.

Activities other than copying, distribution and modification are not covered by this License; they are outside its scope. The act of running the Program is not restricted, and the output from the Program is covered only if its contents constitute a work based on the Program (independent of having been made by running the Program). Whether that is true depends on what the Program does.

Here you go....

I'm not at all sure if Linux could pass, since it has, eg, a rename(2) system call in place of unlink.

I'm not at all sure what prompted that. Of course GNU/Linux systems support the unlink system call. You can see the GNU C library implementation of unlink and the Open Group specification of unlink. As GNU/Linux attempts to be compatible with Unix, it would be ridiculous for it to not provide unlink.

To be able to use the UNIX brand, a system must be certified to comply with the Single UNIX Specification (SUS). The SUS typically states what the interface and behavior must be, but not the exact implementation. From the above-mentioned documentation, the unlink system call seems to be compliant with the specification.

The real issue with GNU/Linux systems is certification. Even if they do provide a working implementation of SUS, each release must be certified by The Open Group as compliant. This is reportedly quite a lengthy, expensive process.

That said, there are probably aspects of a GNU/Linux system that do not conform to SUS, such as the varying threading implementations. Lately, however, Red Hat has been encouraging the use of NPTL, an implementation of POSIX Threads, so it is conceivable that someone might try to certify a particular GNU/Linux distribution as UNIX some time in the near future.

In my opinion it is not possible to say that the GNU General Public License is unenforceable.

First of all, the GPL is not an EULA.

Second of all, it doesn't forbit doing anything at all with the software, which isn't already forbidden by the copyright law. Everything the GPL does is giving the user more rights, while giving up some privileges of the author, i.e. those very privileges to not give the additional rights to the user, which are not given to the user by the copyright law itself.

The only possible way it could be illegal or invalid would be the case, if the rights which the author gives up, would be impossible to give up even if anyone wills to do it (e.g. some fundamental human right), while it is cetrainly not the case with the GPL.

In the context of SCO, the only way the GPL could go to court would be something like this: SCO says: "Yes, your honor, we used the GPL lincensed code in out proprietary software, but GPL is invalid, illegal, unenforceable, viral, evil, stupid, we didn't sign it, it's not legally binding, etc."

The fact is, that even if the GPL is perfectly OK, they didn't have to accept it, it's really up to them, so it doesn't matter if they say it's illegal, or that they simply rejected it. It doesn't matter at all.

What does matter is the fact, that after questioning or rejecting the GPL, the rest of the case is a classical ages-old example of violating the copyright law.

It is the very same situation, no matter if they used Linux while rejecting the GPL, they used a code without any explicit license with only a copyright notice "Copyright (C) XXX All rights reserved" or they illegally distributed some proprietary software, like, say, parts of Microsoft Windows or Sun Solaris.

When they don't like the terms of the GNU General Public License, then from their point of view, and from the court point of view, Linux is legally indistinguishable from Windows.

So, it doesn't even make much sense to wonder if the GPL is enforceable. The copyright law is enforceable and this is what really matters.

This, by the way, shows the genius of Richard Stallman, who hacked the copyright law with the GNU General Public License. I am talking about it now, but he already knew it all twenty years ago, while discussing the GPL (called GNU Emacs License during 1985-1989) with Mark Fischer, Jerry Cohen and other great copyright law experts.

As Stallman said in 1986 BYTE interview: "You could also see it as using the legal system that software hoarders have set up against them. I'm using it to protect the public from them."

80. Any software licensed under the GPL (including Linux) must, by its terms, not be held proprietary or confidential, and may not be claimed by any party as a trade secret or copyright property.

5. You are not required to accept this License, since you have not signed it. However, nothing else grants you permission to modify or distribute the Program or its derivative works. These actions are prohibited by law if you do not accept this License. Therefore, by modifying or distributing the Program (or any work based on the Program), you indicate your acceptance of this License to do so, and all its terms and conditions for copying, distributing or modifying the Program or works based on it.

No, but you can create a printer on any Linux or Windows workstation that prints PS to a remote computer running GS that can convert the file to PDF for you (or any output that GS supports) and place it in thier home directory, email it back to them, place it on a web server for pickup etc... Instant document conversion and archiving of "printed" documents for one person or an entire office. If this printer is marked as the default in Windows, you can highlight a bunch of files, right click and select print. A poor mans batch conversion but it works well.

I use this at home and in an office environment at work. I also added jpeg and tiff "printers" in Samba also (gs -sDEVICE=tiffg4 -r100x100 for tiff, gs -sDEVICE=jpeg -r300x300 for jpeg)

See here and here if your interested, you can expand and add to this to suit your needs. I've found some good uses of this with Google.

Contrast this with RMS's version linked to in the article. Any reasonable person would respond positively to the parent poster's mail. Any reasonable person receiving RMS's mail would (i) forward it to their colleagues to laugh at (ii) reply with another, bigger Word attachment.

Have a look at the example GPL'ed program header: "Yoyodyne, Inc., hereby disclaims all copyright..."

Erm, the hell?

That's not an example GPL'd program header. The example from the GPL begins:

one line to give the program's name and an idea of what it does.
Copyright (C) yyyy name of author

This program is free software; you can redistribute it and/or modify it under the terms of the GNU General Public License...

You'll notice the fairly explicit statement of copyright.

What you've quoted is a copyright disclaimer that they suggest you as a programmer get from your employer. Thus if John Hacker writes Gnomovision in his spare time, the FSF suggests that he get his employer (Yoyodyne, Inc) to sign off that they have no claim on it. It's just a cover your ass document. This doesn't actually have much to do with the GPL, it would be a reasonable defensive step to take before you claimed copyright on any software you write outside of the scope of your job, even stuff you didn't plan on applying the GPL to.

No Windows Scripting language?
No problem.
Give them Guile, the official scripting language of the GNU project.
http://www.gnu.org/software/guile/guile.html

- Serge Wroclawski

Here's what I get from my Slackware 9.0 box:

$ ls -l test test1 test2
-rwxr-xr-x 1 redbeard users 11007 Jun 11 04:46 test*
-rwxr-xr-x 1 redbeard users 10967 Jun 11 04:46 test1*
-rwxr-xr-x 1 redbeard users 10959 Jun 11 04:46 test2*

My Red Hat 7.3 box gave me *exactly* the same file sizes as your results.

I have gcc 3.2.2 on the slackware box, and Red Hat responds to "gcc -v" with "gcc version 2.96 20000731 (Red Hat Linux 7.3 2.96-113)"

BTW, when is Red Hat going to stop shipping a bastardized copy of an unsupported development version of gcc? (see this page for details)

Richard Stallman

The whole GNU project is really one big hack. It's one big act of subversive playful cleverness...

Richard Stallman, Revolution OS (DVD)

One thing to remember with the whole "hack" quote is, coming from an MIT guy (which Stallman was) it has three possible connotations.

1) an act of breaking into something. Though most folks would use the term cracker here, SCO is probably pleased when people associate these negative connotations with Stallman's statement. The "subversive" part of the quote probably doesn't win many favors in big business or in the Bush regime.

2) a clever solution to a problem, sometimes Quick and Dirty just to get it out, othertimes smashingly elegant. SCO probably would say that Stallman meant the first Quick and Dirty, for its connotations of low quality. Stallman probably meant a lot more of the latter.

3) MIT calls pranks "Hacks". Well past the "shaving cream on someones hand while they sleep, feather on face to make them scratch" stage, these required inticate planning and timing. From the "playful" portion of his quite, I kind of feel Stallman meant more of this. In this case, the "hack" is on the closed source companies, which pissed him off because he couldn't get the source to change a printer driver that MIT actually had helped develop. He was further pissed off by Digital discontinuing the PDP-10, which threw MIT's computing plans a massive curveball. By making a computing system himself, he was able to bypass all these restrictions and have a useful system. The big "hack" was that this was useful, and joined his programming skills with his social views of sharing.

Even Windows is "Open Source".

That is factually incorrect and without that "fact" your entire argument falls part. Do a Google search for "Open Source Definition" and tell me how Windows complies. The definition is quite precise, at least as precise as that of "Free Software". I have never heard Microsoft or anyone else claim that Windows is under an Open Source license. Furthermore, if you do a search for "Free Software Definition" you'll find 4 freedoms defined. Those four freedoms are all supported by every one of the open source licenses. Furthermore, your idea that FSF's "interpretation" of FREE SOFTWARE is simple and universal is incorrect. There are many different types of free software.

Free software has become much more popular and successful since people started to sell it as "Open Source Software."

80. Any software licensed under the GPL (including Linux) must, by its terms, not be held proprietary or confidential, and may not be claimed by any party as a trade secret or copyright property.

Specifically, may not be claimed by any party as a trade secret or copyright property. GPLed code is a "copyright property", the entire licence depends on that. Asserting that the code cannot be bound by copyright is essentially the same as asserting that it's public domain. Have a look at the example GPL'ed program header:

Yoyodyne, Inc., hereby disclaims all copyright
interest in the program `Gnomovision'
(which makes passes at compilers) written
by James Hacker.

signature of Ty Coon, 1 April 1989
Ty Coon, President of Vice

I was looking into the Savannah GNU project, but the GForge project seems much further along, from a superficial glance I took after reading the threads here. Has anyone done an in-depth comparison of both projects?

Unlike the tar and bzip and gzip combinations, zip allows you to compress and archive in one step, this simplicity is why windows users (the vast majority of computer users) use it instead of some combination of unix programs.

This very same simplicity is exactly why I use things like a little z switch of tar. *sigh* Next time please check your "facts" before you start to spread such a misinformation. Thank you. The tar manual might help you with that.

A strong consesus is emerging around a new standard.

but unless I can suggest a specific mechanism for creating one, there's no way I should be granted a patent.

As far as I know, you patent innovation along with a viable process for realizing that innovation, not just an idea. You don't patent "the ability to use a machine to process cotton into cloth," you patent the unique innovations within your design of a machine that accomplishes this task.

The problem is, in the 90's, laws were passed that allowed you to patent a business model. That's why eBay can have a (ridiculous) patent on doing online auctions. Thank goodness no one patented online shopping, or else we'd have just one shopping website, and no competition. Amazon has come close by patenting "one click shopping", which patents any online shopping that takes only a single action by the user, rather than the two clicks it takes at any other site. Why do they deserve this patent? This is a natural innovation that anyone would have thought of. I cannot believe that at no point in time did any company think "you know, the interface for using our site has too many actions required by the user, let's reduce that down a bit." My company considers that with every piece of software they design.

1. Buy one of these routers
2. Reverse-engineer the firmware and check for GPL code (*)
3. Publish anything you believe in good faith to be GPL'ed
4. If anyone complains, point to the GPL and claim reasonable force as a defence {mentioning other less-benign tactics as a straw man}
5. Remember, even in a Crown court, you only have to convince 2 people out of 12.

You're thinking emacs.

You should be thinking Vim, though.

RH is composed from off-the shelf opensource binaries available to anyone with an internet connection. Seriously, the idea that Red Hat's collection is somehow better suited for your 'pushed-to-the-limit' servers than a self-compiled, self-configured system is pure FUD itself.

And sometimes, it is even worse. Do you recall Red Hat's horrible internally-released gcc 2.96 piece of crap? That one never made it through the rigours of open-source public testing, and was later exposed as producing incompatible binaries. Sweet, heh? Yet, Red Hat produced an entire release using that thing. I wouldn't TRUST my 'pushed-to-the-limit' servers to that kind of stuff. I get mine from the source.

If there is an issue or a nasty bug in any major package/project, I'll soon know about it because I keep myself informed. I do so because I consider myself a professional.

With a commercial distro, you'll know about a bug when they've fixed it (read "recompiled a new binary") on their time and on their dime. If your company has a reasonably-sized, competent staff, divide up the important projects (kernel, binutils, gcc, glibc, apache, etc.) amongst everybody. When a new version gets released, the caretaker of that project compiles it, and a week later after testing and checking the project's sourceforge page for any issues, the binary gets released company-wide. We keep our machines very lean -- we don't run crap just because it's included in some compiled-for-lowest-common-denominator-586 distro.

I'm calling the emperor's new clothes for what they are: a crutch for enterprise Linux newbies. By all means, if you're looking at your first company-wide rollout from Windows to Linux, get it. The high-cost and support are a good substitute for in-house expertise. But if that expertise doesn't ever manifest, then the IT department has some problems, doesn't it? If you've had experience with Linux or UNIX, forget it.

think TIFF may be dead too.

I doubt that. It has a lot of different formats, supported by almost anything graphics related, and is used in many different ways, it's not the best for all things but a decent choice for most. Faxing, scanning, and archiving of documents is probably the most common use with BW 1 bit lossless compression.
Color image storage at 24 bit raw or with lossless compression/LZW can provide a 'standard' format suitable for archiving also.

Getting off topic here but..
Ghostscript is a great tool for converting various inputs to TIFF, just specify the output device for what you need. Works great over the network for bulk conversion of PS print files to TIFF or PDF for scanless document storage.

I would be shocked if anyone tried to claim that the software ESR has written is even comparable in importance to the software RMS has written.

Then prepare to be shocked :). This puzzles me a bit - why is it that you (and quite a few others) seem to think that fetchmail is the only piece of software ESR has written? I mean, it doesn't take that much effort to have a look at his software list, and his projects list. Note the "past projects" - especially "I was heavily involved in the GNU Emacs 19 development (in fact, I was the primary Emacs-lisp library person for about two years during 1991-1993)." The software page also has this quote: "According to RMS's credit list, I appear to have more Emacs Lisp code in the standard Emacs distribution than anyone else but him."

He was also a primary developer on ncurses, and nethack... he's contributed to python... he's contributed quite a bit to the GNU/FSF project in general. Note: "I was one of the original GNU contributors back in 1982-83, and I've been at it ever since." And fetchmail and CML2 are by no means insignificant.

Fetchmail vs. the entire GNU collection [snip]; it's clear which is more important.

Did you seriously think that RMS wrote all of the GNU software himself???? The two most important projects that I believe RMS originated were GCC and of course Emacs (and probably GLibc and the GDB). But a hell of a lot of people have contributed to those (including ESR) - and I don't think RMS has done anything significant on most of them for a while.

I know it's nice and easy to give one high-profile developer all the credit for projects they originated... but that's just not the case here. RMS is an uber-hacker and has worked on a hell of a lot of great stuff - but so has ESR. I think the main distinction between the two is that while RMS originated more major software projects than ESR, Raymond's probably contributed to more.

Pete.

I would be shocked if anyone tried to claim that the software ESR has written is even comparable in importance to the software RMS has written.

Then prepare to be shocked :). This puzzles me a bit - why is it that you (and quite a few others) seem to think that fetchmail is the only piece of software ESR has written? I mean, it doesn't take that much effort to have a look at his software list, and his projects list. Note the "past projects" - especially "I was heavily involved in the GNU Emacs 19 development (in fact, I was the primary Emacs-lisp library person for about two years during 1991-1993)." The software page also has this quote: "According to RMS's credit list, I appear to have more Emacs Lisp code in the standard Emacs distribution than anyone else but him."

He was also a primary developer on ncurses, and nethack... he's contributed to python... he's contributed quite a bit to the GNU/FSF project in general. Note: "I was one of the original GNU contributors back in 1982-83, and I've been at it ever since." And fetchmail and CML2 are by no means insignificant.

Fetchmail vs. the entire GNU collection [snip]; it's clear which is more important.

Did you seriously think that RMS wrote all of the GNU software himself???? The two most important projects that I believe RMS originated were GCC and of course Emacs (and probably GLibc and the GDB). But a hell of a lot of people have contributed to those (including ESR) - and I don't think RMS has done anything significant on most of them for a while.

I know it's nice and easy to give one high-profile developer all the credit for projects they originated... but that's just not the case here. RMS is an uber-hacker and has worked on a hell of a lot of great stuff - but so has ESR. I think the main distinction between the two is that while RMS originated more major software projects than ESR, Raymond's probably contributed to more.

Pete.

I would be shocked if anyone tried to claim that the software ESR has written is even comparable in importance to the software RMS has written.

Then prepare to be shocked :). This puzzles me a bit - why is it that you (and quite a few others) seem to think that fetchmail is the only piece of software ESR has written? I mean, it doesn't take that much effort to have a look at his software list, and his projects list. Note the "past projects" - especially "I was heavily involved in the GNU Emacs 19 development (in fact, I was the primary Emacs-lisp library person for about two years during 1991-1993)." The software page also has this quote: "According to RMS's credit list, I appear to have more Emacs Lisp code in the standard Emacs distribution than anyone else but him."

He was also a primary developer on ncurses, and nethack... he's contributed to python... he's contributed quite a bit to the GNU/FSF project in general. Note: "I was one of the original GNU contributors back in 1982-83, and I've been at it ever since." And fetchmail and CML2 are by no means insignificant.

Fetchmail vs. the entire GNU collection [snip]; it's clear which is more important.

Did you seriously think that RMS wrote all of the GNU software himself???? The two most important projects that I believe RMS originated were GCC and of course Emacs (and probably GLibc and the GDB). But a hell of a lot of people have contributed to those (including ESR) - and I don't think RMS has done anything significant on most of them for a while.

I know it's nice and easy to give one high-profile developer all the credit for projects they originated... but that's just not the case here. RMS is an uber-hacker and has worked on a hell of a lot of great stuff - but so has ESR. I think the main distinction between the two is that while RMS originated more major software projects than ESR, Raymond's probably contributed to more.

Pete.

I would be shocked if anyone tried to claim that the software ESR has written is even comparable in importance to the software RMS has written.

Then prepare to be shocked :). This puzzles me a bit - why is it that you (and quite a few others) seem to think that fetchmail is the only piece of software ESR has written? I mean, it doesn't take that much effort to have a look at his software list, and his projects list. Note the "past projects" - especially "I was heavily involved in the GNU Emacs 19 development (in fact, I was the primary Emacs-lisp library person for about two years during 1991-1993)." The software page also has this quote: "According to RMS's credit list, I appear to have more Emacs Lisp code in the standard Emacs distribution than anyone else but him."

He was also a primary developer on ncurses, and nethack... he's contributed to python... he's contributed quite a bit to the GNU/FSF project in general. Note: "I was one of the original GNU contributors back in 1982-83, and I've been at it ever since." And fetchmail and CML2 are by no means insignificant.

Fetchmail vs. the entire GNU collection [snip]; it's clear which is more important.

Did you seriously think that RMS wrote all of the GNU software himself???? The two most important projects that I believe RMS originated were GCC and of course Emacs (and probably GLibc and the GDB). But a hell of a lot of people have contributed to those (including ESR) - and I don't think RMS has done anything significant on most of them for a while.

I know it's nice and easy to give one high-profile developer all the credit for projects they originated... but that's just not the case here. RMS is an uber-hacker and has worked on a hell of a lot of great stuff - but so has ESR. I think the main distinction between the two is that while RMS originated more major software projects than ESR, Raymond's probably contributed to more.

Pete.

I would be shocked if anyone tried to claim that the software ESR has written is even comparable in importance to the software RMS has written.

Then prepare to be shocked :). This puzzles me a bit - why is it that you (and quite a few others) seem to think that fetchmail is the only piece of software ESR has written? I mean, it doesn't take that much effort to have a look at his software list, and his projects list. Note the "past projects" - especially "I was heavily involved in the GNU Emacs 19 development (in fact, I was the primary Emacs-lisp library person for about two years during 1991-1993)." The software page also has this quote: "According to RMS's credit list, I appear to have more Emacs Lisp code in the standard Emacs distribution than anyone else but him."

He was also a primary developer on ncurses, and nethack... he's contributed to python... he's contributed quite a bit to the GNU/FSF project in general. Note: "I was one of the original GNU contributors back in 1982-83, and I've been at it ever since." And fetchmail and CML2 are by no means insignificant.

Fetchmail vs. the entire GNU collection [snip]; it's clear which is more important.

Did you seriously think that RMS wrote all of the GNU software himself???? The two most important projects that I believe RMS originated were GCC and of course Emacs (and probably GLibc and the GDB). But a hell of a lot of people have contributed to those (including ESR) - and I don't think RMS has done anything significant on most of them for a while.

I know it's nice and easy to give one high-profile developer all the credit for projects they originated... but that's just not the case here. RMS is an uber-hacker and has worked on a hell of a lot of great stuff - but so has ESR. I think the main distinction between the two is that while RMS originated more major software projects than ESR, Raymond's probably contributed to more.

Pete.

Read section 3 of the GPL again. They are distributing binaries of GPL'ed software comercially, and thus must offer you the source in the same way they are distributing the binaries (which is by anonymous ftp).
See the GPL FAQ.

Read section 3 of the GPL again. They are distributing binaries of GPL'ed software comercially, and thus must offer you the source in the same way they are distributing the binaries (which is by anonymous ftp).
See the GPL FAQ.

I've found a very sparce selection of downloadable Go games for GNU/Linux, (GNU Go is the only one I know of). I'm surprised there's not more renderings of this awesome ancient game.

Still, when you got a four-demensional rubik's cube goin' on, life is pretty good :)

Can someone plz send me a link to a trainer for this. Thx. also no-cd version much appericated.
Here's a free version
L0L!!! I R T3H FUNNEE!!!

In my example, the corporation was distributing, releasing, and publishing the derivative works. By "making changes", I meant "distribute a derivative work".

The GPL only applies to distribution.

The GPL applies to copying. You must agree to the GPL when making a copy (modified or not), regardless of whether you distribute it. See the 3rd word of GPL section 3, and the 4th word of GPL section 4.

No need to release anything if you don't change anything, to comply with the GPL.

You may be thinking of the LGPL instead, which relaxes redistribution requirements.

No need to release anything if you don't change anything, to comply with the GPL.

You may be thinking of the LGPL instead, which relaxes redistribution requirements.

It's absolutely not copyright GNU (GNU is software, and can't hold copyrights). It's also not copyright FSF (the GNU organization), because they have their own non-Linux kernel to work on.

Instead, the Linux kernel is copyright the many individuals who contribute to it. Most prominently, Linus Torvalds.

The pre-Raymond version of the Jargon File - the Hacker's Dictionary - is available here:

The Original Hacker's Dictionary.

This is more a historical work than anything else, as it documents the language of what Levy calls the "first generation hackers", the ones who worked in the AI labs at Stanford and MIT. Those communities died during in the 80s (which was, of course, the event that provided the impetus for the GNU project.) The Hacker's Dictionary has a genuine and honest flavor that the modern Jargon File lacks, which is probably inevitable, since the Jargon File covers the modern internet-based "hacker" community - a vaguely-defined entity that has even become confused over the meaning of the word "hacker". It's therefore not surprising that ESR feels he can get away with sprinkling the Jargon File with Raymondisms.

Bugtraq is one of those 11 companies. (Bugtraq is part of Symantec)

A challenge: create an Open alternative to BugTraq

I have registered the domain names opentraq.org and opentraq.net. I am willing to have them resolve to DNS servers belonging to a group of volunteers who wish to start and maintain an Open alternative to the BugTraq website. (GNU? Mozilla? Anyone else interested?)

I will continue to renew the registration as long as someone wants to continue the project. If necessary, I may be willing to transfer ownership at no cost after the project becomes established and is maintained by a reputable (i.e., non-commercial) group of volunteers.

On the other hand, if the routine were LGPL, the company could use and benefit from it, [...]

Probably not, if you're statically linking in the LGPL code. Section (6) of the LGPL states that if you statically link an LGPL work you must provide your own "work that uses the Library" in source or object form, such that the end-user could modify the LGPL code and re-link with your application.

On top of that, you must also include any data and utility programs needed for reproducing the executable. Thus, any makefiles or custom shell scripts must be provided along with your object code.

Even if this isn't going to give advantage to your competitors, it's a major pain in the ass for you. You now have a bunch of extra deliverables (the LGPL source, your objects, your makefiles and custom tools) that you have to give your customer. You also have to test this package, to be sure that they can modify the LGPL code and re-link properly.

You don't have all these hassles if you're dynamically linking, but that's not always an option. Embedded systems are almost always statically linked, for example.

Sorry. It's way too much to go through unless you're going to make your own code open source as well. But then, that's the whole point of the FSF, isn't it? Y'know, for a group claiming to promote "free as in freedom", they certainly place a lot of restrictions on you...

that country exists w/o borders; immigrate today!

that country exists w/o borders; immigrate today!

that country exists w/o borders; immigrate today!

They are publishing source code for the virus. It IS the same thing. It may not be the ORIGINAL source but it is the source for the virus.

To claim any text transformable into a given program is that program's "source code" dilutes the meaning of the term to the point of uselessness.

it must be possible to relink the product with later libraries

This can also be accomplished by giving customers source code to your program. When you do that, the source code can still be proprietary. Just because the customer got one copy of the source from you, doesn't mean it has to be GLPed and redistributable.

Under LGPL section 6, there are other ways to comply with the "ability to re-link to new versions of LGPL libraries". Many corporations would prefer option 6c, which only requires them to supply object files if requested within 3 years (after all, few customers will have the technical knowhow to actually wish to make that request)