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to me there's a Big Important Difference between free and Free.

I understand that difference. I find software under the the GNU General Public License to be Free because

• I am free to run the program,
• I am free to study and adapt the program,
• I am free to help people by making and distributing copies of the program, and
• I am free to adapt the program to the needs of others and release it to the public, even if the public happens to be in another country, such as the Republic of Namibia.

Restrictions are restrictions, as far as I'm concerned.

Do you disapprove of a "restriction" on cold-blooded murder? I sure do.

Remember, GNU/Linux, is protected by the gpl.

So while they technically "gave it away", there are restrictions that shouldn't be ignored.

Strings, they're everywhere.

Remember, GNU/Linux, is protected by the gpl.

So while they technically "gave it away", there are restrictions that shouldn't be ignored.

Strings, they're everywhere.

The degree of divergence between the two determines whether it is appropriate to send the bug report to either or both. In most (but not all) cases the distro will be lagging behind the OSS package bugfixes so it's very likely that it's already been fixed.

The real solution, of course, is to ditch all distros and build everything from sources yourself.

Why don't you try the GNU Free Software Directory? Take a look, there's some math packages here on it already!

Can't wait to see C# go the same path...

You mean like Mono and DotGNU?

• Ladder - a game
• Attesoro - a translation edtior
• Utilities - Java Libraries
• TulipChain - A open directory project browser

This move just means that open source implementations of Java are officially legal. It doesn't really bring them closer to being here now. Some of the interesting projects in this area are the GNU native compiler for Java and the GNU Classpath project. Neither are anywhere near being fully functional yet, but I'll give them time.

• Ladder - a game
• Attesoro - a translation edtior
• Utilities - Java Libraries
• TulipChain - A open directory project browser

This move just means that open source implementations of Java are officially legal. It doesn't really bring them closer to being here now. Some of the interesting projects in this area are the GNU native compiler for Java and the GNU Classpath project. Neither are anywhere near being fully functional yet, but I'll give them time.

OK, so if you're being pedantic, you can say that I got it wrong, because the Apple difference does mean that Open Source is a superset of Free Software, but that was an intentional move on my part, because it was bound to catch the attention of people like you who have totally failed to understand that the two terms refer to the same thing (pretty much).

Two terms that mean the same thing are worthless terms for a discussion--and not the sort of thing that people have flame wars over.

See the FSF's page on the issue for a better take on it. Especially, see Neal Stephenson's informal definition.

(On a side note, am I the only one who's irritated that both the FSF and the OSS people try to define by declaration and not exploration? Language evolves on its own--it does not do what special intrests want it to.)

Anyway, with all of that said--no, I'm not wrong. Let's look at my statements again:

Open Source is not a subset of Free Software; Free Software is a subset of Open Source.

It is possible to have OSS that is not Free Software. On the other hand, is it possible to have Free Software where you don't get the source code? (See freedom 1 from the FSF)

Free Software: Software that follows GNU's "software freedoms," including source code and redistribution rights, and sticky copyleft.

Let's see, "including source code" is freedom 1, and "redistribution rights" is freedom 2. I'll admit to being partially incorrect on the "sticky copyleft" line...

Open Source: Software that gives you the source code for the system. Mac OS's Darwin kernel is "Open Source", even though Aqua (and thus the OS as a whole) and most Mac apps aren't.

Why, that's Neil's exact wording.... and since by your own admission Darwin is OSS, the whole statement's correct, if possibly incorrect.

Unless YaST doesn't include code, it's OSS. If YaST doesn't include code, but doesn't do anything more than setup the software, it (the OS) might still be OSS.

This statement can get tricky depending on what literal definition of OSS you mean... but, again, that's hardly enough for me to be uneqivocabbly "wrong."

I guess I'm glad that something like this is available (rather than it not being available), but I have to wonder what the point of it is. The Open Source development model results in software that is provably superior to proprietary solutions (see Edgar Raymond's excellent essay, The Cathedral and the Bizarre for more info). This is why KOffice and GNOME Office are so great, despite their small development teams and short development cycles. So why would anyone even want to run M$ Office on a Linux workstation? No thanks, I'll stick to what works: AbiWord, Gnumeric, and Tux Racer!!

You're only required to provide source to people you've sold the software to. So you'd have to give the company that buys you the source. That is all.

Issues like this have been covered about a million times in the past. Try this for some more information.

The report also no makes no differentation between Open Source Software like FreeBSD, OpenBSD, and Apache; and Free Software which generally always refers to software under the GPL or LGPL. Like Linux, gcc, or GNATS.

And interestingly, Apple's "Public Source License" does have this requirement (so DoD couldn't use & modify APSL software in-house in the same way), and this is the main reason why the FSF doesn't consider it free.

Mac OS X 10.2 uses a custom version of GCC 3.1 according to this GCC mailing list announcement.
It was apparently tweaked to accomodate the GCC 2.95 C++ ABI for certain drivers and libraries.
I, for one, hope the GCC steering committee will allow them to add Objective C++ to the GCC main branch.

Any software project larger than "Hello World!" is going to be dependant upon libraries which are liscensed under the GPL. While the LGPL was created to address some of these issues, not every library is liscensed under the LGPL, so the problem still exists. This includes the very prevalant C++ library which includes the cin and cout operators which I'm sure every programmer has used at some point in his or her career.

Please see here, here, or here for documentation supporting my claims. The last link goes to an article written by Stallman himself addressing this problem, so please don't try and tell my that my information is based on Microsoft FUD.

Due to the viral nature of the GPL, any software compiled using GCC could be considered a "derivative work" of the GCC, thus forcing that software to be open-source under the terms of the GPL

Can I use GPL-covered editors such as GNU Emacs to develop non-free programs? Can I use GPL-covered tools such as GCC to compile them?

Yes, because the copyright on the editors and tools does not cover the code you write. Using them does not place any restrictions, legally, on the license you use for your code.

It's very important to understand just how restrictive the LGPL really is, and also the history and the motivations behind this.

You see, in the late 1990's, RMS -- flush with the success of Linux and other GPLed software -- wanted to eliminate the LGPL altogether. (He had always seen the LGPL as a temporary compromise to placate developers.) Now that some GPLed programs had gained momentum, he felt that it was time for the LGPL to go away. But there was so much outcry at the notion of doing this that RMS instead did two other things. First, he redubbed it the "Lesser GPL," and wrote several essays saying that the FSF did not recommend its use. Then, he published a new version of the license that was much, much more restrictive. Since the LGPL was generally known as allowing commercial use of the unmodified library, and many people did not read the new verbiage that was inserted into the new version, the majority of people did not notice the switch.

The "new" LGPL says that you are only exempt from providing the compiler, linker, etc. if they are included with the OS you are targeting. If they're not already included with the OS, you must supply them. Oh, and if they happen to be commercial software and you're not allowed to give them away, tough cookies. The same is true if you use a commercial library that you're not allowed to give away to everyone. You can't use the LGPLed code. Again, see Section 6 of the LGPL.

The LGPL doesn't preclude anybody from releasing a closed-source media player with this new codec, as long as they don't tinker with the codec itself.

That was generally true of the "old," or "library," GPL. But it is not true of the license used by the CODEC -- the "new" LGPL (which the FSF calls the "lesser" GPL).

Read it yourself, at this link. Section 6 says, in part:

For an executable, the required form of the "work that uses the Library" must include any data and utility programs needed for reproducing the executable from it. However, as a special exception, the materials to be distributed need not include anything that is normally distributed (in either source or binary form) with the major components (compiler, kernel, and so on) of the operating system on which the executable runs, unless that component itself accompanies the executable.

It may happen that this requirement contradicts the license restrictions of other proprietary libraries that do not normally accompany the operating system. Such a contradiction means you cannot use both them and the Library together in an executable that you distribute.

The requirement to include all "utility programs" required to produce the product -- including the compiler, linker, etc. -- is not difficult to satisfy if the target happens to be an operating system that includes these tools. But if it's an operating system such as PalmOS, BeOS, MacOS, Windows, etc., which does not come by default with a complete set of developer tools, the requirement is not possible to satisfy. (I can't give away, for example, Metrowerks' compiler or linker with my product.) So, in fact, the new "Lesser GPL" has a hidden booby trap that makes it virtually impossible to produce products for many operating systems. (There are other problems with it as well, but this one alone is a show-stopper.)

What's more, as the text above points out, you're out of luck if you also use commercial code libraries in your product -- because, again, you can't give away someone else's product.

In short, the "new" LGPL is incredibly restrictive. I know for a fact that due to the restrictions mentioned above we could not include the CODEC mentioned in this item in our products.

--Brett Glass

12 years of devlopment and it still sucks!

Erik, don't troll. The Challenger accident was a mechanical failure, had nothing to do with software, but if you want a software project gone wrong example, I'll give you one: Gah NU/Hurd

I am no GPL expert either but you must provide source code 'upon request' if you license your work under the GNU GPL - most people release the code with the binary - this is true for the LGPL also.

The Linux Terminal Server Project would be a cheap base for your plan - one central high-spec server, with a load of low-spec workstations displaying the served (remote X) terminals.

This is exactly what I wanted to suggest. It's the best solution, especially in terms of maintainance work and fault-tolerance. Make sure to see this clip (RealPlayer unfortunately) to see how adding new computers to your lab would look like if you choose the LTSP way. Take a look at this links:

• LTSP -- Linux Terminal Server Project
• K12LTSP -- Linux Terminal Server Project in Schools
• K12OS -- Open Source in Schools
• K12Linux -- Linux in Schools Project
• GNU and Education
• SEUL/edu -- Simple End User Linux/Education
• KDE Education Project
• Debian Jr. Project

Good luck!

Or you could set up a website where people could just get a EULA free Operating System and all the trimmings.

Not that brave? Then you can help the Free Software Foundation to Maintain this site, which deals with the specifics of software licenses. I know, EULAs are typically used to extend copyright deprivation by contract agreement, but it all starts with the license, and most are contain unacceptable clauses like unilateral termination. That's right M$ and Apple can litterally take their software away for any reason they please.

If all of that's not really interesting, just use Slashdot's great search of it's reporting to chronicle your favorite non-free software's audacity and abuse. It's all fun and games till the BSA has the FBI bust down your door and throw you in jail. Don't touch that dial and don't remove that worm!

> Otherwise the division should be spun off as a research company, purely focussed on IP. IBM is a good example in point.

IBM may be a good example, but it is a bad model ethically and pragmatically example. Its patents hoarding heightens the barrier to entry, because basically to do real business in IT now you have to have enough fundamental patents to bargain on IBM out of paying them huge, confiscatory royalties on everything under the Sun.

Actually, according to Cringley's standards, IBM patents are part of the problem, not of the solution.

And remember, there is no such thing as IP!

You still don't understand the word "free" do you. I paid for Linux, as have many, many other people. What is so hard to understand about this. You can get Linux for free yes, but when it comes from a company you pay for it. Easy, no?

Actually it's much more than that: You deserve to be able to cooperate openly and freely with other people who use software. You deserve to be able to learn how the software works, and to teach your students with it. You deserve to be able to hire your favorite programmer to fix it when it breaks. .

But I believe that the first issue to address, in the current state of the software industry, is whether you are forced to use one specific hardware or software vendor.

If you work in any decent-sized company, agency, school, etc. chances are you are being forced to use one specific software vendor's applications, and that is MicroSoft. You have no freedom of choice of tools because, if your colleagues send you a file generated by M$Word or its siblings, you can't work with non M$ tools. That is one of the reasons why people can use Macs at work: because M$ Office runs on it, and they can't use GNU/Linux because there is no 100% M$Office-compatible solution running on GNU/Linux.

If you browse the web not using M$IE or M$Windows, you can't reach many pages which depend on M$ products - users can't reach them otherwise. Again, there is M$IE on Mac OS platforms, not on GNU-Linux.

Simple as that. Your freedom of choice is therefore limited by Micro$oft and its monopoly, gained by illegal practices.

Effectively, M$ has such power over the software industry and consumers as no other company has, even remotely. Having gained this power illegally, they should be punished.

The freedom of not choosing to pay Micro$oft any money is seriously undermined in the current software market.

Unfortunately, I don't personally know any software professional who can work and live 100% M$-free.

Do you know any GNU-Linux user or software developer who can get rid of all M$ products - no M$Windows, no M$Office, nothing even remotely installed on their PC, nothing ever paid to M$? Unfortunately, I don't personally know anyone in this situation.

So here's the problem: can you work 100% Apple-free in the software industry? Yes. 100% GNU-free? Yes. 100% M$-free? very difficult.

Therefore, fight Micro$oft!

But I believe that the first issue to address, in the current state of the software industry, is whether you are forced to use one specific hardware or software vendor.

If you work in any decent-sized company, agency, school, etc. chances are you are being forced to use one specific software vendor's applications, and that is MicroSoft. You have no freedom of choice of tools because, if your colleagues send you a file generated by M$Word or its siblings, you can't work with non M$ tools. That is one of the reasons why people can use Macs at work: because M$ Office runs on it, and they can't use GNU/Linux because there is no 100% M$Office-compatible solution running on GNU/Linux.

If you browse the web not using M$IE or M$Windows, you can't reach many pages which depend on M$ products - users can't reach them otherwise. Again, there is M$IE on Mac OS platforms, not on GNU-Linux.

Simple as that. Your freedom of choice is therefore limited by Micro$oft and its monopoly, gained by illegal practices.

Effectively, M$ has such power over the software industry and consumers as no other company has, even remotely. Having gained this power illegally, they should be punished.

The freedom of not choosing to pay Micro$oft any money is seriously undermined in the current software market.

Dont think so... heres the relevant snippet from the GPL

Thus, it is not the intent of this section to claim rights or contest your rights to work written entirely by you; rather, the intent is to exercise the right to control the distribution of derivative or collective works based on the Program.

In addition, mere aggregation of another work not based on the Program with the Program (or with a work based on the Program) on a volume of a storage or distribution medium does not bring the other work under the scope of this License.

Now, as currently released, with the tcp/ip implementation tightly bound to the rest of windows, the mere act of separating the tcp/ip code into dynamic libraries would not be sufficient to qualify as separate products under this license. However, you posed a "what if.." question and under the circumstances you set (paraphrasing as "tcp/ip code is GPL'd") then microsoft could have easily written a GPL'd implementation of tcp/ip for their target platforms and interface routines within windows that used it if it was present, ignored it if it wasnt. Nothing in the GPL would stop them copackaging the GPL'd code as a separate product on the distribution medium, even with an integrated installation method. The only requirement would be that windows would work just fine without it - which, as I seem to recall, it used to :)

Do you have any idea what you're talking about? And I quote (from your link!):

We classify a license according to certain key questions:

Whether it is compatible with the GNU GPL. (This means you can combine a module which was released under that license with a GPL-covered module to make one larger program.)

So, from the above we see that GPL compatible licenses are licenses for code which permit you to modify that code and redistribute it under the GPL, not licenses that are "equivalent" to the GPL.

You can do whatever the hell you want with public domain code, as it's under even fewer restrictions than code under the BSD license. This obviously includes redistributing it under the GPL. But just as obviously, you can't take GPL'ed code and release it under the public domain.

The original poster is quite right in that promoting public-domain software would make RMS mad and Bill Gates happy.

>Public domain is NOT the same as Free software. It's nowhere NEAR Free software.

If not, I have never (except on GNU.org) seen such bullshit

I don't see such BS even on GNU.org. According to the FSF, software released as source code under an abandoned copyright (i.e. in the public domain) or under a permissive license is still free software.

Public domain is NOT the same as Free software. It's nowhere NEAR Free software. With public domain, anyone can take my code and change the license and sell it to me with a restrictive license.

Permissive licenses (BSD, MIT, the so-called "public domain", etc.) are still free software licenses. They're just not copyleft licenses.

Public domain is NOT the same as Free software. It's nowhere NEAR Free software. With public domain, anyone can take my code and change the license and sell it to me with a restrictive license.

Permissive licenses (BSD, MIT, the so-called "public domain", etc.) are still free software licenses. They're just not copyleft licenses.

Public domain is NOT the same as Free software. It's nowhere NEAR Free software. With public domain, anyone can take my code and change the license and sell it to me with a restrictive license.

This is the kind of religious crap that makes the GPL suck.

his means that you can't make software that is intentionally incompatible with other stuff, because people can just look at the source and make new, compatible software.

Have you ever even bothered to look at the list of GPL compatible licenses? And I quote:

Public Domain. Being in the public domain is not a license--rather, it means the material is not copyrighted and no license is needed. Practically speaking, though, if a work is in the public domain, it might as well have an all-permissive non-copyleft free software license. Public domain status is compatible with the GNU GPL.

BSDL is a good answer, but it's not the only one. The best answer from a US Govt point of view should be as close to public domain as possible, but non-US users may need explicit permission. That would best satisfy the "national interest", IMO.

I use the GPL on my projects. However, the GPL is not intended to benefit everyone equally. It is intented to give an edge to free software developers. I believe this is a good thing for developers and companies to do of their own free will. I do not, however, think that it is right for our government to exclude proprietary software developers from public works.

The following is a quote from "Why you shouldn't use the Library GPL for your next library":

Proprietary software developers have the advantage of money; free software developers need to make advantages for each other. Using the ordinary GPL for a library gives free software developers an advantage over proprietary developers: a library that they can use, while proprietary developers cannot use it.

Again, let me stress that I use the GPL, I like the GPL, I think more developers should use the GPL. But our government should not provide preferential treatment for one group of software developers over another. We don't like it when congress gives preferential treatment to Disney, and it is not appropriate for us to request preferential treatment over Adobe.

No. The ones that receive binaries from the original customers have the right to get the sources from those customers, not from the company that put it out originally.

What? Please back up your position with a citation from the GNU GPL or the GNU GPL FAQ.

I'll back up my position. From the GPL (my emphasis):

You may copy and distribute the Program (or a work based on it, under Section 2) in object code or executable form under the terms of Sections 1 and 2 above provided that you also do one of the following: ... 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

From the GPL FAQ:

What does this "written offer valid for any third party" mean? ...

"Valid for any third party" means that anyone who has the offer is entitled to take you up on it.

If you commercially distribute binaries not accompanied with source code, the GPL says you must provide a written offer to distribute the source code later. When users non-commercially redistribute the binaries they received from you, they must pass along a copy of this written offer. This means that people who did not get the binaries directly from you can still receive copies of the source code, along with the written offer.

The reason we require the offer to be valid for any third party is so that people who receive the binaries indirectly in that way can order the source code from you.

No. The ones that receive binaries from the original customers have the right to get the sources from those customers, not from the company that put it out originally.

What? Please back up your position with a citation from the GNU GPL or the GNU GPL FAQ.

I'll back up my position. From the GPL (my emphasis):

You may copy and distribute the Program (or a work based on it, under Section 2) in object code or executable form under the terms of Sections 1 and 2 above provided that you also do one of the following: ... 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

From the GPL FAQ:

What does this "written offer valid for any third party" mean? ...

"Valid for any third party" means that anyone who has the offer is entitled to take you up on it.

If you commercially distribute binaries not accompanied with source code, the GPL says you must provide a written offer to distribute the source code later. When users non-commercially redistribute the binaries they received from you, they must pass along a copy of this written offer. This means that people who did not get the binaries directly from you can still receive copies of the source code, along with the written offer.

The reason we require the offer to be valid for any third party is so that people who receive the binaries indirectly in that way can order the source code from you.

No. The ones that receive binaries from the original customers have the right to get the sources from those customers, not from the company that put it out originally.

What? Please back up your position with a citation from the GNU GPL or the GNU GPL FAQ.

I'll back up my position. From the GPL (my emphasis):

You may copy and distribute the Program (or a work based on it, under Section 2) in object code or executable form under the terms of Sections 1 and 2 above provided that you also do one of the following: ... 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

From the GPL FAQ:

What does this "written offer valid for any third party" mean? ...

"Valid for any third party" means that anyone who has the offer is entitled to take you up on it.

If you commercially distribute binaries not accompanied with source code, the GPL says you must provide a written offer to distribute the source code later. When users non-commercially redistribute the binaries they received from you, they must pass along a copy of this written offer. This means that people who did not get the binaries directly from you can still receive copies of the source code, along with the written offer.

The reason we require the offer to be valid for any third party is so that people who receive the binaries indirectly in that way can order the source code from you.

In addition to our WAN/LAN I also run a medium size phone switch (195 nodes / 16 IP Phones / 2 PRIs for switched access / 1 dedicated Long Distance T1). When you get to the corporate level you're buying a solution; not building one in house, because phones are essential to the day to day operation of the company. Period. I think generically when you say phone switch you're referring to everything telco past the demarc; switch T1s/PRIs, operate internal digital stations, provide analog lines, route calls, manage security, reporting/tracking/billing, Voicemail, Auto Attendants, Hunt Groups, Digital Faxing- the whole 7 layer enchilada. Few corporations are going to allow their IT departments to go the Slashdot way w/ so much on the line. A modern phone switch must reliably scale to thousands of nodes including IP devices, support Unified Messaging (receiving faxes & voice mails through PC), have reporting right out of the box, must be easy to use, and work on the first cut over. While the word 'easy' is certainly a very relative word- in my experience most geeks (a word of complimentary endearment in my vocabulary) can easily master telco while the reverse is not often true. Believe it or not, in the old days these were sometimes the roles of separate administrators / departments.

You're right that *nix is a perfect fit for all of this; remember Unix was invented at Bell Labs. The auxiliary applications are there; to support your phone switch you need to reliably record and report all activity across your switch for billing, acct. tracking, etc. I would guess that *nix runs the backbone.

If you'd like you can become a dealer for the company that claims to have 'the world's first Linux technology based voice processing' including Unified Messaging.

By the way I think that Bayonne is encompassed in the umbrella project of GNUComm; hopefully it's just a matter of time before someone finishes the Embedded Linux Phone Switch. As an incentive to anyone who develops and releases a free system: even used handsets cost big money for a particular phone switch; pick wisely 'cause you're most likely stuck with it for a little while. Caveat: you will most likely be pushed out of the market by softphones.

Since you're in the market and I just went through this myself contact me off list and I'll share my experience with Inter-Tel Technologies which is one of the fastest growing companies in the US (short version: no I don't work there and overall positive).

In addition to our WAN/LAN I also run a medium size phone switch (195 nodes / 16 IP Phones / 2 PRIs for switched access / 1 dedicated Long Distance T1). When you get to the corporate level you're buying a solution; not building one in house, because phones are essential to the day to day operation of the company. Period. I think generically when you say phone switch you're referring to everything telco past the demarc; switch T1s/PRIs, operate internal digital stations, provide analog lines, route calls, manage security, reporting/tracking/billing, Voicemail, Auto Attendants, Hunt Groups, Digital Faxing- the whole 7 layer enchilada. Few corporations are going to allow their IT departments to go the Slashdot way w/ so much on the line. A modern phone switch must reliably scale to thousands of nodes including IP devices, support Unified Messaging (receiving faxes & voice mails through PC), have reporting right out of the box, must be easy to use, and work on the first cut over. While the word 'easy' is certainly a very relative word- in my experience most geeks (a word of complimentary endearment in my vocabulary) can easily master telco while the reverse is not often true. Believe it or not, in the old days these were sometimes the roles of separate administrators / departments.

You're right that *nix is a perfect fit for all of this; remember Unix was invented at Bell Labs. The auxiliary applications are there; to support your phone switch you need to reliably record and report all activity across your switch for billing, acct. tracking, etc. I would guess that *nix runs the backbone.

If you'd like you can become a dealer for the company that claims to have 'the world's first Linux technology based voice processing' including Unified Messaging.

By the way I think that Bayonne is encompassed in the umbrella project of GNUComm; hopefully it's just a matter of time before someone finishes the Embedded Linux Phone Switch. As an incentive to anyone who develops and releases a free system: even used handsets cost big money for a particular phone switch; pick wisely 'cause you're most likely stuck with it for a little while. Caveat: you will most likely be pushed out of the market by softphones.

Since you're in the market and I just went through this myself contact me off list and I'll share my experience with Inter-Tel Technologies which is one of the fastest growing companies in the US (short version: no I don't work there and overall positive).

He certainly managed to shock many with his rendition of the GNU song. Alas he has never managed to shock himself because otherwise we would not have the same ol' Dick Stallman.

take the GPL quiz, They must send you a copy, only email or only over the internet. Suitable is taken to mean by the same delivery method as you recieved the binaries, e.g. Post.

also from the FAQ's
" You're supposed to provide the source code by mail-order on a physical medium, if someone orders it. You are welcome to offer people a way to copy the corresponding source code by FTP, in addition to the mail-order option, but FTP access to the source is not sufficient to satisfy section 3 of the GPL.

When a user orders the source, you have to make sure to get the source to that user. If a particular user can conveniently get the source from you by anonymous FTP, fine--that does the job. But not every user can do such a download. The rest of the users are just as entitled to get the source code from you, which means you must be prepared to send it to them by post.

If the FTP access is convenient enough, perhaps no one will choose to mail-order a copy. If so, you will never have to ship one. But you cannot assume that.

Of course, it's easiest to just send the source with the binary in the first place. "

" "Valid for any third party" means that anyone who has the offer is entitled to take you up on it.

If you commercially distribute binaries not accompanied with source code, the GPL says you must provide a written offer to distribute the source code later. When users non-commercially redistribute the binaries they received from you, they must pass along a copy of this written offer. This means that people who did not get the binaries directly from you can still receive copies of the source code, along with the written offer.

The reason we require the offer to be valid for any third party is so that people who receive the binaries indirectly in that way can order the source code from you. "

Yes, it is legal to make a GPLed project only available for pay.

The fact a product is GPLed means basically two things:

• If you give someone a copy of the binary to the project, you have to either give them a copy of the source with it, or else provide them the source code upon request.
  If you give someone a copy of the product, they are allowed to give it away to anyone they like, and you cannot stop them.

One of the goals of Perl 6 is to make non-trivial projects possible. That's good. The way it's being done is bad. Perl was once a lightweight, extremely flexible language. Now it's become a huge ugly monster. People wanted OO, so a nasty hack was bolted on top to allow some semblance of it. Now this nasty hack is being expanded. Sure, the code's different, but the basic form is the same. Kludge upon kludge upon kludge; I'd much rather have a nice, clean, pure language (and not one with loads of irritating whitespace thank you very much).

The same goes for the syntax. All the switching between $, @ and % is really irritating (ask a newbie how to get at the length of the keys array of a hash inside a hash, for example), and the changes proposed for 6 are just making this worse -- it seems that Larry, in his infinite wisdom, wants to prefix every data type with a different hard-to-type character. Perl was only designed for the three data types, and adding more is a mess.

Perl 6 is a complete rewrite, but it keeps all the mess which has accumulated over the previous versions. This is not good. Sure, my const int $var = 27; may look neat (in the same way that, say, Pascal does), but $var isn't entirely constant, or entirely an integer, it's just a hack which makes it sort of behave like one. The whole thing is an exercise in pseudo-computer science masturbation with little real purpose except to please the managers who dislike the one thing that makes Perl special.

On a similar note is regexes. I'm an avid fan of regular expressions simply because a nondeterministic finite automata is far more flexible than linear code. However, Larry must have been smoking that cheap $2 crack when he wrote this. Does he want Perl 6 to be flex or something?

I won't be going on to use 6. It's a nice idea, but it's completely unnecessary. It won't make large projects any easier to manage (the language is still, at heart, an almighty hack -- an impressive one, but still a hack). It won't make OO any cleaner. It won't make development any faster. To put it bluntly, Perl scripts will still look less beautiful than our friend Mr Goatse. I'd prefer to use a language which has always been pure synthesis of science and engineering, not some half-baked imposter .

Perl 6 will be nice, but I'm guessing it will be the end of Perl. It can't do what it wants to do whilst still being based upon a nasty mess. There are now other options, which provide all of Perl's power and none of the mess. Sorry, but *BSD^H^H^H^H Perl is dying. Larry is buggering it up the ass without lubricants, just like Shoeboy is doing to Larry's daughter.

Stupid mistakes in Linux results in a kernel panic with the output sent to the syslog (9 times out of 10 bad code doesn't kill the entire Kernel, so no waiting on the machine to restart), so I definately think that Linux has the upper hand as far as handling poor kernel space code.

You may like developing the GNU Hurd drivers then, which are basically a user-space programs, so they're as easy to debug as any other applications, and they won't crash the whole system. Of course it may not make much economical sense for your company to actually develop Hurd drivers for every piece of hardware you make (but would be nice of course), maybe just not yet, but you may be interested from the technical standpoint. It's a driver developer nirvana, in my opinion. Check out this papers: Towards a New Strategy of OS Design by Thomas Bushnell and The Hurd Hacking Guide by Wolfgang Jährling.

Stupid mistakes in Linux results in a kernel panic with the output sent to the syslog (9 times out of 10 bad code doesn't kill the entire Kernel, so no waiting on the machine to restart), so I definately think that Linux has the upper hand as far as handling poor kernel space code.

You may like developing the GNU Hurd drivers then, which are basically a user-space programs, so they're as easy to debug as any other applications, and they won't crash the whole system. Of course it may not make much economical sense for your company to actually develop Hurd drivers for every piece of hardware you make (but would be nice of course), maybe just not yet, but you may be interested from the technical standpoint. It's a driver developer nirvana, in my opinion. Check out this papers: Towards a New Strategy of OS Design by Thomas Bushnell and The Hurd Hacking Guide by Wolfgang Jährling.

Stupid mistakes in Linux results in a kernel panic with the output sent to the syslog (9 times out of 10 bad code doesn't kill the entire Kernel, so no waiting on the machine to restart), so I definately think that Linux has the upper hand as far as handling poor kernel space code.

You may like developing the GNU Hurd drivers then, which are basically a user-space programs, so they're as easy to debug as any other applications, and they won't crash the whole system. Of course it may not make much economical sense for your company to actually develop Hurd drivers for every piece of hardware you make (but would be nice of course), maybe just not yet, but you may be interested from the technical standpoint. It's a driver developer nirvana, in my opinion. Check out this papers: Towards a New Strategy of OS Design by Thomas Bushnell and The Hurd Hacking Guide by Wolfgang Jährling.

"Free as in beer" means free in the same sense as "FREE BEER!!!!" signs, i.e. it doesn't cost you anything. Of course, such signs often lie, but that's not the point. Free as in speech means you can do basically whatever you want with it, a la GNU GPL, which says essentially:

"you can copy this program as much as you want, edit source code, redistribute it, reverse-engineer it, sell it, etc, but anything you give/sell to other people based on this must be licensed under the GPL, except that you can put warrantees on it, too."

You might have to pay for a GPLed program (eg RedHat Linux), but you can go and give free-as-in-beer (or even not free-as-in-beer) copies to all your friends, as long as you give them the GPL too. Free-as-in-speech is also known as copyleft.

take a look at Plan 9

Lucent's Plan 9 operating system has a bug in its license:

The licenses and rights granted under this Agreement shall terminate automatically if (i) You fail to comply with all of the terms and conditions herein; or (ii) You initiate or participate in any intellectual property action against Original Contributor and/or another Contributor.

This effectively gives the Plan 9 contributors an unlimited non-exclusive license to use any copyright, patent, or trademark belonging to any licensee. For instance, if you install Plan 9, the license gives Lucent the right to violate the GPL on all software that you have developed, to pirate music you've written and recorded, and to pass off its products as yours.

Read more about the bugs in Plan 9

unix command line errors
haiku errors