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The L4 microkernel puts the Linux kernel to shame. There is a distro called Debian Hurd. Hurd is a set of servers that runs on Mach but is slowly being ported over to L4. The home page for the L4 Hurd port is here. There is also an L4Linux project that runs Linux as an app in user space over top of L4, more info on that is here

The L4 microkernel puts the Linux kernel to shame. There is a distro called Debian Hurd. Hurd is a set of servers that runs on Mach but is slowly being ported over to L4. The home page for the L4 Hurd port is here. There is also an L4Linux project that runs Linux as an app in user space over top of L4, more info on that is here

I agree - the language we use is powerful. If we have no word for a concept, then we lack the concept.

Or the word we use is highly loaded, which is perhaps worse. I don't generally agree with the FSF (although, oddly enough, I'm glad they exist), but I find this philosophy discussion to be apt.

Because the GPL is so frequently misunderstood...

And then later...

As noted above, the use of GPL code with code licensed from another party could, under certain circumstances, arguably obligate you to sublicense the other party's code under the GPL.

Wow! Excellent example of misunderstanding the GPL! There are *NO RESTRICTIONS* on the use of GPL'd code. Don't believe me? Check the GPL:

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.

What this means is that the *only* thing the GPL applies to is redistribution of code. If you simply use the code, you're free to do with it whatever you want (except redistribute it). So I'd recommend that you take your own advice and read the GPL before you start spouting off about what it's implications are.

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.

So a click through GPL is silly for end users. Use of the program is not restricted by the GPL so there's nothing for the user to agree to. It would seem sensible, if you're going to impose restrictions on someone, that you be required to tell them about the restrictions before they are required to abide by them. But in the case of using the software, there are no restrictions. So what is there to tell... except maybe to be nice and inform the user that they have a right to the source code to the program that they're using.

It's only when someone goes and gets the source code, with the intention of redistributing, where the GPL starts to come into play. Becuase, in that case, there are some restrictions that are being placed on the end user if they want to distribute the code. Of course, there should be no reason to require the end user to click to agree to them. The default copyright stance is that you have no rights to copy unless given permission to:

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.

So the question now becomes, when someone downloads the source code, does the source code have to come in a way that presents the GPL to the user prior to granting them access to the source code? And I think the answer is no. Because the default stance of copyright law is that you're *NOT* allowed to copy it unless given permission So if you didn't click through the license, then copyright law does not allow you to distribute it. Oh wait, look here's the GPL which governs the terms under which you can distribute it. In other words, in order to be allowed to distribute, you *MUST READ AND UNDERSTAND THE LICENSE*, because, by default, you don't have any right to distribute.

My personal opinion is that I'd like to not encourage click through licences. I'd rather see copyright licensing become less restrictive rather than more. I'd like to see things like the GPL less necessary, because ideas flow freely by their very nature, and are not artificially restricted by legal constructions.

Allowing open source licenses that require click through is basically saying that we should make the exchange of ideas more restrained by artificial legal contructions. It seems to me that the point of opensource is to promote the benefits of the free flow of ideas. And allowing licenses to require click through is well, not really the point.

But I'm sure that there's some fundamental flaw in my logic here. I leave it to you to point it out to me.

$.02

Read the article by Eben Moglen, the lawyer who, for the Free Software Foundation, actually enforces the GPL.

• Because there's nothing complex or controversial about the license's substantive provisions, I have never even seen a serious argument that the GPL exceeds a licensor's powers. But it is sometimes said that the GPL can't be enforced because users haven't ``accepted'' it.

  This claim is based on a misunderstanding. The license does not require anyone to accept it in order to acquire, install, use, inspect, or even experimentally modify GPL'd software. All of those activities are either forbidden or controlled by proprietary software firms, so they require you to accept a license, including contractual provisions outside the reach of copyright, before you can use their works. The free software movement thinks all those activities are rights, which all users ought to have; we don't even want to cover those activities by license. Almost everyone who uses GPL'd software from day to day needs no license, and accepts none. The GPL only obliges you if you distribute software made from GPL'd code, and only needs to be accepted when redistribution occurs. And because no one can ever redistribute without a license, we can safely presume that anyone redistributing GPL'd software intended to accept the GPL. After all, the GPL requires each copy of covered software to include the license text, so everyone is fully informed.

Have your lawyers read Eben Moglen on enforcing the GPL.

Wow, now that strikes me as a lot of FUD. Do you work for Microsoft? Okay, I will deal with these complaints one at a time.

He said they'd found massive security issues with Linux

Okay, fine. But what operating system hasn't had massive security issues? It's the nature of the beast. If you've been paying attention to Slashdot lately, you'll know that even the ultra-secure OpenBSD has its share of security holes.

He said the reliability wasn't quite high enough for those mission critical items we performed

Well, given that this was in 1998, he may have had a point. But Linux has improved quite a bit since then. 2.2 was a very stable and reliable kernel, and since the 2.5 branch, I've been using the latest kernel on all of my high demand enterprise servers.

He said their was nobody to call when it broke

Yeah, except for Red Hat, SuSe, Caldera, Debian... Next!

He said that the haphazardly "open" way it had been developed practically guaranteed the existence of bugs

Yes, but they are shallow bugs. Read RMS's article, the Cathedral in the Bizarre, located here for more details.

He also said that the licensing issues prevented our lab from putting the results of our experiments in the public domain

Hahahahahahaahhaha. That's a good one. Maybe you haven't heard about the GPL, but under Linux's license you actually are required to release your experiments to the public. Try doing that in Windows!

I hope you are now educated and will not go believing any more FUD of this sort.

Your best bet is getting a book (I reccomend Teach Yourself Go), and playing 9x9 games until you get the hang of things. Then try one of the online servers: IGS or KGS. Have fun!

Surprised I haven't seen this yet, but there is a GnuGo project. I've played with it a little bit, it's okay in terms of AI, but definitely needs a lot of work. I played a palm adaptation of it, and the scoring was done incorrectly, and if you figured out the quirks of the AI you could beat it everytime.

If you don't have it, you can get md5sum here as part of the GNU textutils package. (It isn't shipped with many Unixes, including DEC Alpha Unix which I'm using right now, and thought this would be useful after finding that a Google search for "md5sum source code" was about as useful as a chocolate teapot...)

mmmm DDD is the bomb as far as I'm concerned. It's a front-end you can attach to multiple debuggers. Check it out, it's really nice.

Please consider also the opinion of Richard Stallman and the FSF. While most on this site are quick to dismiss Stallman as an idealist, his opinion still carries quite a bit of weight. For maximum success in the community, shoot for satisfying both the OSI definition of Open Source and the FSF definition of free software.

Your impression of the FSF's and Stallman's view of free software is tinged in favour of your arguments. Actually, here, licenses are listed which are considered to be free by those parties, with whom I agree on most points. These include some which you might consider more free (although this generalization of GPL-protesting slashdotters may, like all generalizations, be wrong), such as the BSD license and the absence of license of Public Domain software (which can be referred to as copycentre by those so inclined).

Many licenses are listed which are considered free other than the GPL, some actually incompatible with the GPL. These licenses are all free because they allow you to view, modify, and redistribute code under the same license. However, the GPL is not merely free; it is aggressively free. In other words, it prevents companies from closing code like Gosling did according to this Stallman speech.

This may be considered restrictive by some, especially those who find it inconvenient to have to reimplement a wheel already implemented under the GPL umbrella in their proprietary software, for which they, in turn, are not willing to provide the source code. However, on the whole, it has had a positive effect on the freedom of software; when some software projects were gotten rid of by their respective developers, the code could be reused by the free software community instead of left to fade into oblivion, and university students can prevent their universities from closing their code by using GPLed libraries.

While the GPL may be considered restrictive, it is compatible with the most common free software licenses and its benefit outweighs the harm done to the code-closers and to the few who need to combine, for example, BSDed code with GPLed code under the BSD license, or make it Public Domain.

At the moment, in the free software community (which, I must admit, is influenced heavily by the FSF and its rhetoric (rhetoric does not indicate falsehood, but merely a willingness and ability to persuade)), the GPL is accepted widely enough to avoid conflicts which could have arisen had several parties begun producing incompatible aggressively free software licenses and remained popular.

Your impression of the FSF's and Stallman's view of free software is tinged in favour of your arguments. Actually, here, licenses are listed which are considered to be free by those parties, with whom I agree on most points. These include some which you might consider more free (although this generalization of GPL-protesting slashdotters may, like all generalizations, be wrong), such as the BSD license and the absence of license of Public Domain software (which can be referred to as copycentre by those so inclined).

Many licenses are listed which are considered free other than the GPL, some actually incompatible with the GPL. These licenses are all free because they allow you to view, modify, and redistribute code under the same license. However, the GPL is not merely free; it is aggressively free. In other words, it prevents companies from closing code like Gosling did according to this Stallman speech.

This may be considered restrictive by some, especially those who find it inconvenient to have to reimplement a wheel already implemented under the GPL umbrella in their proprietary software, for which they, in turn, are not willing to provide the source code. However, on the whole, it has had a positive effect on the freedom of software; when some software projects were gotten rid of by their respective developers, the code could be reused by the free software community instead of left to fade into oblivion, and university students can prevent their universities from closing their code by using GPLed libraries.

While the GPL may be considered restrictive, it is compatible with the most common free software licenses and its benefit outweighs the harm done to the code-closers and to the few who need to combine, for example, BSDed code with GPLed code under the BSD license, or make it Public Domain.

At the moment, in the free software community (which, I must admit, is influenced heavily by the FSF and its rhetoric (rhetoric does not indicate falsehood, but merely a willingness and ability to persuade)), the GPL is accepted widely enough to avoid conflicts which could have arisen had several parties begun producing incompatible aggressively free software licenses and remained popular.

Your impression of the FSF's and Stallman's view of free software is tinged in favour of your arguments. Actually, here, licenses are listed which are considered to be free by those parties, with whom I agree on most points. These include some which you might consider more free (although this generalization of GPL-protesting slashdotters may, like all generalizations, be wrong), such as the BSD license and the absence of license of Public Domain software (which can be referred to as copycentre by those so inclined).

Many licenses are listed which are considered free other than the GPL, some actually incompatible with the GPL. These licenses are all free because they allow you to view, modify, and redistribute code under the same license. However, the GPL is not merely free; it is aggressively free. In other words, it prevents companies from closing code like Gosling did according to this Stallman speech.

This may be considered restrictive by some, especially those who find it inconvenient to have to reimplement a wheel already implemented under the GPL umbrella in their proprietary software, for which they, in turn, are not willing to provide the source code. However, on the whole, it has had a positive effect on the freedom of software; when some software projects were gotten rid of by their respective developers, the code could be reused by the free software community instead of left to fade into oblivion, and university students can prevent their universities from closing their code by using GPLed libraries.

While the GPL may be considered restrictive, it is compatible with the most common free software licenses and its benefit outweighs the harm done to the code-closers and to the few who need to combine, for example, BSDed code with GPLed code under the BSD license, or make it Public Domain.

At the moment, in the free software community (which, I must admit, is influenced heavily by the FSF and its rhetoric (rhetoric does not indicate falsehood, but merely a willingness and ability to persuade)), the GPL is accepted widely enough to avoid conflicts which could have arisen had several parties begun producing incompatible aggressively free software licenses and remained popular.

Let me get this straight: in your posts you (repeatedly) call Stallman a propagandist, "inhumanly" arrogant and "dangerous, subversive in the bad sense of the word;" but you now claim you aren't engaging in ad hominem attacks on him because, after all, if you had really wanted to attack him you'd have called him a Communist...which you didn't. So in your mind, you haven't attacked Stallman at all.

To quote from the link I posted for you: "Ad hominem fallacies take a number of different forms, though all share the fact that they attempt to re-focus attention, away from the argument made and onto the person making it."

The point is that you try to discredit Stallman's ideas by saying bad things about him personally...things that are untrue, in my opinion. The fact that you could have said even nastier (in your mind) things about him doesn't change the fact that yes, you are attacking him.

I read Stallman's ideas incessantly...keeping a copy of those propaganda guides open beside me as I go.

Again, my suggestion was that you read Stallman's ideas and give them some thought, instead of just getting steamed because his ideas persuasively conflict with your entrenched world view. Keeping your mind closed to new ideas is a bad way to protect yourself from propaganda.

I would particularly suggest this essay.

Let me get this straight: in your posts you (repeatedly) call Stallman a propagandist, "inhumanly" arrogant and "dangerous, subversive in the bad sense of the word;" but you now claim you aren't engaging in ad hominem attacks on him because, after all, if you had really wanted to attack him you'd have called him a Communist...which you didn't. So in your mind, you haven't attacked Stallman at all.

To quote from the link I posted for you: "Ad hominem fallacies take a number of different forms, though all share the fact that they attempt to re-focus attention, away from the argument made and onto the person making it."

The point is that you try to discredit Stallman's ideas by saying bad things about him personally...things that are untrue, in my opinion. The fact that you could have said even nastier (in your mind) things about him doesn't change the fact that yes, you are attacking him.

I read Stallman's ideas incessantly...keeping a copy of those propaganda guides open beside me as I go.

Again, my suggestion was that you read Stallman's ideas and give them some thought, instead of just getting steamed because his ideas persuasively conflict with your entrenched world view. Keeping your mind closed to new ideas is a bad way to protect yourself from propaganda.

I would particularly suggest this essay.

If you read what RMS has written, and check out the link, you'll find that for once, he comes across in a way that isn't embarassing to most geeks.

Actually, in general if you read what RMS has written, you'll find out that there is a tremendous difference in what Stallman says and what people say he says.

I find almost all of RMS' public utterings, whether written or spoken, to be as lucid and reasonable as this little piece. It is imperative however that you get his views firsthand, as people have a bad habit of quoting him out of context or misunderstanding him completely. Sometimes this is inadvertent, sometimes this is deliberate.

Check the GNU philosophy page for RMS' views straight from himself.

One of the precepts of the Itanium architecture is that the onus for preformance is moved from the chip to the compiler. Chip performance is much more compiler dependent that with traditional architectures. Compilation times are much slower and optimiztion techniques are often based on brute force techniques such as used by GNU superopt, running through all the permutations of op-codes which can be packed into a VLIW word.

I disagree with much of what Stallman has said and written over the years. It wouldn't bother me so much were it not for his continued use of evocative propaganada in his writings.

What seems to "bother" you is that Stallman has advanced persuasive arguments in favor of an idea that conflicts with your existing world view. Rather than rethink that world view in light of the new information, you emotionally reject it as "propaganda." This is, in fact, a very human reaction. It is often difficult for people to accept new ideas, even good ones, that conflict with their entrenched existing ideas. This is particularly true when the person in question has an economic interest in maintaining their current world view, as you do.

In your post and in your essay, you spend a great deal of time attacking Stallman and his ideas as "propaganda," without rebutting those ideas. This is called an argumentum ad hominem attack ("against the man") and is considered a very poor argument--I'll resist the urge to call it "propaganda." And no, simply stating that you hold some particular belief as fundamental (e.g. "I believe that the owner of a computer program has the right to sell it") is not a rebuttal.

When I see an author trying to persuade me emotionally rather than through reason or logic, it makes me suspicious.

Indeed. These are emotional issues to those who understand them; DRM legislation, for example, could potentially have a devestating long-term impact on our society. I find Stallman's ideas to be exceptionally well-reasoned and logical. Clearly, you react to them very emotionally; I suggest you read Stallman's ideas again and give them some thought.

I stand corrected (till I see). I could easily believe he'd keep his cool; tis more of a question of phrasing.

Watch really sleezy politicians, they have this skill. It's what keeps them alive.

I'll go see him in person sometime, As long as he doesn't sing.

Armed with my new ideas about "free as in free speech" I decided to write a manifesto for Free Music. I shared an early draft of it with my brother and suggested to him that we release our recordings on a free music license. He did not like the idea at all, and was disturbed by the manifesto.

I went back to my computer, opened up the document in OpenOffice and read through it again. I realised that the arguments I had adapted from GNU were just too extreme to be embraced by the uninformed public, especially by the artist community. I wanted my manifesto to be persuasive to the average musician, not just to those who happen to have read all of the philosophy section of the GNU website. I think a more effective way to "evangelize" open source projects is to emphasize the superiority of the development model for human creativity projects.

So now I'm not sure what to think of RMS. His views are extreme, and they don't sell very well to the average person. But extremeism is needed, so let him do all that he can to further the cause.

Armed with my new ideas about "free as in free speech" I decided to write a manifesto for Free Music. I shared an early draft of it with my brother and suggested to him that we release our recordings on a free music license. He did not like the idea at all, and was disturbed by the manifesto.

I went back to my computer, opened up the document in OpenOffice and read through it again. I realised that the arguments I had adapted from GNU were just too extreme to be embraced by the uninformed public, especially by the artist community. I wanted my manifesto to be persuasive to the average musician, not just to those who happen to have read all of the philosophy section of the GNU website. I think a more effective way to "evangelize" open source projects is to emphasize the superiority of the development model for human creativity projects.

So now I'm not sure what to think of RMS. His views are extreme, and they don't sell very well to the average person. But extremeism is needed, so let him do all that he can to further the cause.

All OS softwares should license as easy as this:


You can do whatever you want with this software, including making money and making yourself filthy rich. However, if you modify and improve this software, you must make your modification available to anyone who requests it, including the source code of your modification, and without imposing any extra conditions.

And if you are caught distributing this software, you'll receive a pad on the back for doing the good job.


Ah well, just a simpler version of this

Valgrind is reinventing the wheel. There already exists the tool Checker GCC which does the exact same thing.

I'm not sure why, but I find it amusing to picture the author trying to find bugs in Valgrind, actually using Valgrind.

Perhaps it shouldn't seem as funny to me in days when Subversion is self-hosting, and GCC compiles itself.

-Sou|cuttr

You could write your code in Java (shuder!), and then use the Java frontend to GCC to compile it down to a blazingly fast 100% native-code binary. And you can do it all without ever using non-free software (unlike Sun's compilers/JVMs).

The democratic and anti-corporate nature of the Green movement is very much in line with the values of the free software/OSS movement.

As for not winning elections, over 100 Greens hold local office throughout the US. The two things that stand between us and higher office are the fact that we are actively prevented from taking part in public debates and the "first past the post" voting system (which has many fully Constitutional alternatives).

Well, 3.2 hasn't been released yet, but that hasn't stopped Red Hat from including it in their Rawhide release.

gcc-3.2-0.1.i386.rpm

I assume it's a pre-release, and they intend to move to a full release before Rawhide becomes 8.0. That should be a relatively safe bet for them, considering not only their unique position in regards to gcc, but also that the GCC web page cites an expected release date for 3.2 as being 2002-07-2x.

Goddammit, I'm getting VERY tired of the way every criticism is immediately labeled "FUD." FUD is a very specific meaning: fear, uncertainty, and doubt. There was no fear, uncertainty, or doubt in my post. Just criticism of what I consider a disturbingly misguided philosophy. If I were spouting FUD, I'd say something like, "Are you really sure you want to base your business on the work of a bunch of anti-business, anti-capitalist zealots who oppose property rights on principle and who would love nothing more than to establish a world in which nobody could own anything, and therefore everything (except the people, of course) could be 'free?'"

That would be FUD. My comments aren't FUD. They're just an opinion that differs (strongly) from yours.

Rather, he beleives quite strongly that software should be free.

And I believe, quite strongly, that software is an inanimate object, and as such, cannot be "free" in the sense that RMS uses the word. The very use of the word "free" (in the sense of "having liberty of self-determination") to apply to a thing or idea is deliberately misleading and wrong.

But RMS has defined what he considers free quite explicit.

I could define my butt as something that monkeys fly out of, too, but that wouldn't make it so. Basically what Stallman has done is to take a big word, rich in positive connotation-- freedom-- and twist its meaning to apply it to his particular brand of "you can and can't do this" philosophy. And that's WRONG of him. That's using a word incorrectly. It's not a matter of definitions; it's a matter of correct and incorrect.

If you have a difference of opinion, then you could of course email Stallman himself.

But why would I do that? Stallman is the source of the problem. He's made up his mind. He is lost, gone, as far as I'm concerned. The important people are the impressionable young Slashdot readers who might run across a "software should be free" rant and get the idea that piracy is okay, that copyright and other intellectual property rights are injust, and that it's okay to take software and music and movies without paying for them. Those are the people that I'm concerned with.

Now, let me explain specifically why RMS's ideas are (1) wrong, and (2) bad.

First, know that I make my living by writing and selling software. That is, I write it, and my company sells it. We don't sell support, or training, or services. We sell software, plain and simple. This should tell you something about my point of view.

Now, on to the argument. The following are points on which RMS and I do not see eye-to-eye.

I believe that personal gain is a perfectly legitimate motivation. Just like anything else, too much of it is a bad thing. But to the extent that one's actions don't violate any laws, social norms, or moral or ethical guidelines, acting in one's own best interest is entirely appropriate.

I believe that the creators of computer programs own their creations. This is no different than any other type of creation. If I weave a basket, I own that basket. If I bake some bread, I own that bread. If my friend and I build a house together, we own that house jointly, unless we agree to some other arrangement. And if I write a computer program, I own that program's source code.

I believe that the owner of a computer program has the right to sell it. Specifically, the owner has the right to require everybody who uses the program to give the owner some money in return. In that situation, the owner of the program is entitled to receive that amount of money from every person who uses the program.

I believe that, in the above situation, if a person uses the program without paying the owner, the user is stealing the use of that program from the owner. I believe that this is theft, plain and simple.

I believe that all of the aforementioned things are true in an absolute sense, despite any possible harmful effects that may be attributed to them. The doctrine of personal property naturally implies scarcity and inequity. That doesn't make it any less so. Any discussion of a world in which the doctrine of property does not govern men's affairs moves out of the applied and into the abstract, and so is outside the scope of my interest. In other words, there's a time and place for talking about how things should or could be, but in discussing matters of policy or normative guidelines of behavior, it's far more important to talk about how they are.

And finally, I believe that freedom (speaking of freedom for people, here, not freedom for inanimate objects or ideas) includes, as the Founders said, the rights of "life, liberty, and property." I can't accept any philosophy that opposes property rights but advocates freedom. That just doesn't make sense.

So it should be clear by now that RMS and I couldn't disagree much more than we do. If that were the extent of it, then everything would be fine, and I would simply try to ignore RMS as much as possible.

But that's not the extent of it. The more I read RMS's writings, the more I find that they have moved out of the realm of pure philosophy and into the arena of hard-core propaganda. Consider the first two paragraphs of "Why Software Should Not Have Owners."

Digital information technology contributes to the world by making it easier to copy and modify information. Computers promise to make this easier for all of us. Not everyone wants it to be easier. The system of copyright gives software programs ``owners'', most of whom aim to withhold software's potential benefit from the rest of the public. They would like to be the only ones who can copy and modify the software that we use.

Notice the use of language here. RMS carefully and deliberately establishes, at the very beginning of his essay, an "us-verus-them" situation. He describes owners-- notice his use of quotation marks, a subtle trick to discredit the term-- as being people who "aim to withhold software's potential benefit from the rest of the public." This kind of statement is wildly inaccurate and incomplete. It's also one tiny mustache away from being a great example of Godwin's Law. This is propaganda, plain and simple.

The rest of it carries on in the same vein-- ownership and property rights are inherently evil-- for page after page. Here's a particularly telling example from the same document:

All four practices [of the Software Publisher's Association] resemble those used in the former Soviet Union, where every copying machine had a guard to prevent forbidden copying, and where individuals had to copy information secretly and pass it from hand to hand as ``samizdat''.

RMS is quick to associate the Software Publisher's Association with totalitarianism and oppression. He uses this rhetorical technique time and time again in his writings to cast aspersions on his opponents by associating them with well-known evils. Here he associates the assertion of ownership rights with blasphemy:

The term ``creator'' as applied to authors implicitly compares them to a deity (``the creator''). The term is used by publishers to elevate the authors' moral stature above that of ordinary people, to justify increased copyright power that the publishers can exercise in the name of the authors.

This kind of rhetorical misdirection is found throughout RMS's published writings. When I see an author trying to persuade me emotionally rather than through reason or logic, it makes me suspicious.

So first, I disagree with RMS's ideas. Then, I am personally concerned by the tone and technique of his writings. But the last straw, for me, is what I consider to be the deliberate and calculated misapplication of the words "free" and "freedom."

RMS's definition of the term "free software" is so counter-intuitive and complex that it requires its own web page to define. It basically boils down like this: "free software," under RMS's definition, is quite thoroughly restricted in its use and distribution.

This is especially true of software like GNU Readline. Readline is a library; programmers are supposed to link the Readline library to their programs and call Readline functions from within their code. Readline is licensed under the GPL, and as such, any software that is linked to it must also be licensed under the GPL. (Note that this is distinctly different from the LGPL, although that license has serious restrictions as well.)

I have personal experience with this. Two years ago I was assigned the task of rewriting a large portion of one of my company's products to remove dependencies on Readline. The details of the GPL had not been sufficiently understood by our company's legal department, and approval had been given to use Readline in our program. Naturally we had no intention of releasing our software under the GPL, so we had no choice but to remove Readline from our program completely. This cost us a deadline, and several weeks of work.

These restrictions are carefully hidden under the banner "free software." Orwell could have taken lessons from RMS's use of newspeak here. "This license seriously restricts what you can and can't do with this program. We will therefore call it 'free.'"

The GPL is a software license, nothing more. And like all licenses, it gives the user of the software certain rights, and spells out certain restrictions. That's all it does. In the case of the GPL, the rights include things like, (in paraphrase) "You have the right to compile and run this software. You have the right to redistribute this software without changing it. You have the right to change this software without redistributing it." And so on. The restrictions are simpler: "You may not redistribute this software under another license."

How software licensed under the GPL is more "free" than other software is lost on me. I get more rights with GPL'd software than I do with some other software, but I get fewer rights than I would with BSD-licensed software. So how is it free?

That's where the doublethink comes in. See, the GPL restricts the rights of the user in order to preserve the "right" of the software itself to be "free."

In order to make that sentence work, you have to twist your definition of the words "right" and "free" so far that they're in danger of breaking. That's not right, and it's my biggest problem with RMS and his group.

This has gone on far too long, so I'll just stop here and sum up.

1. RMS and I do not agree on the basic assumptions of his philosophy.

2. RMS's writings are laced with rhetorical propaganda techniques that simply could not have crept in there by accident. This leads me to wonder why he chooses to resort to these techniques if he truly believes himself to be in the right, and to suspect that we might not know everything about his true agenda.

3. RMS's use of the word "free" to describe GPL-licensed software is deceptive. This blatant use of the word "free" in a misleading way really makes me angry.

All of these things, plus a few I didn't take the time to mention, have led me to hate RMS's beliefs, the GNU organization, and the Free Software Foundation, and to vocally oppose them.

(Now I sit back and watch my karma evaporate.)

8. If the distribution and/or use of the Program is restricted in certain countries either by patents or by copyrighted interfaces, the original copyright holder who places the Program under this License may add an explicit geographical distribution limitation excluding those countries, so that distribution is permitted only in or among countries not thus excluded. In such case, this License incorporates the limitation as if written in the body of this License.

"I'm not sure if you intended this to have a positive or negative connotation, or any connotation at all."

Actually, the whole post was simply how I felt the relationship between Apple and the free software community would end up. Issues about intellectual property are going to be what divides them.

Now I'll offer my own opinion.

"But in the interest of being fair, Apple came by their intellectual property the hard way: by tucking in and innovating the hell out of the personal computer."

You're right. Apple is smart. But intellectual property is merely a form of power, a power that can be used for Great Good, Great Evil, and Great Wealth, some times all three at the same time.

Free software, ultimately is a rebellion against that form of power.

"Every time Apple sends a cease-and-desist letter to some kid who posted an Aqua theme for windowmanager-you-like on the web, I let out a little cheer, because it means Apple still cares about doing it right."

Thats a scary position to take. And funny if it wasn't so serious. This kind of power is a destruction of liberty.

"When people like RMS say things like, ``software should be free,'' and ``intellectual property patents are bad,'' they're not speaking in specific or limited terms."

Actually, the free software definition can be found here.

And I agree with the other reply to your post with the definition of monopoly.

I'm not sure if Apple and the GNU/Linux community are as compatible as you might think, for the following reasons:

1. Apple at times seems rather militaristic about its intellectual property. Unless Apple gets a change in attitude, this will continue to piss off free software people.
2. In a sense, the GPL is a force against the spirit of intellectual property, even though it uses this system. The purpose of the GNU GPL is to allow and protect free software.
3. For the core free software people, the APSL is almost, but not quite free software since it has a disrespect for the privacy of the developers of the software. See here for the FSF position.

But I imagine that the Apple and free software community will get along for the most part, mostly because the enemy of my enemy is my friend. They both share specifc goals in common including:

1. They both want to unlock the Microsoft monopoly of the operating system.
2. So far, it seems Apple doesn't have any DRM plans and in fact, their advertising seems to show some kind of rebellion against this technology.

However, there is a very large risk with the free software community getting too friendly with Apple and Co. Nobody wants to see one monopoly simply replaced with another. And if Apple managed this position, their monopoly would be much stronger. With the control over the hardware as they do, they'd have no one to publish specifications of the hardware.

In other words, if Apple was in Microsoft's position right now, a free software rebellion couldn't happen. GNU/Linux would simply not exist.

Sounds like a problem with an easy enough fix...

Writing to our elected officials is important. We also need to remember that there are some very good organizations that really understand these issues and are out there fighting for our rights every day. They need and deserve our support.

Even small donations will make a difference. There are a lot of us, people; once we get into the habit of putting our money where our mouths are, the **AA's will be in deep trouble.

If you can afford it, consider donating $100 a year to each of these organizations, as I do. It's really worth it.

- The Free Software Foundation
(click on "Donate", or volunteer, or contribue hardware or expertise)

- Electronic Frontier Foundation

If you're using GNUnet they won't be able to determine who actually has the file(s) in question.

Once this network gets up to a significant size they would have to practically take down the entire internet to stop it.

GNUnet - Completely encrypted and completely anonymous file sharing. It's designed to be resistant to attack, let's see them go after that once it's up to a few million nodes. ;)

Check out GNUnet.

Completely encrypted and completely anonymous P2P file sharing. You can even cache the content of other nodes on the network based on ratings.

If this does pass, it will definitely be a good test of the anti-DoS and anti-traffic analysis design. :)

Seconded!

You might want to have a look at the GNU Emacs on Windows FAQ for details of Windows specific things, and oddities.

The GCC developers are obviously embarased that ABI bugs was found after 3.0 was releases.

...also VMS, yes VMS (don't know if it usable)


But not for long. According to GCC 3.3 ChangesVMS is obsoleted, which I think means they are going to remove it for the next release after that.

Of course, in GCC 3.1, which is the GCC branch used in Jaguar, VMS support is still there. :)


PS this message use UTF-8.

It will indeed be a good day when UTF-8 has replaced ISO-8859-* and various other encodings. Actually, I read that the Red Hat 8.0 beta is supposed to use UTF-8 as its default charset, so maybe it'll happen sooner than we think!

primvm postvm (aka first post aka fp). This post claimed for first posts. The contents of this post is subject to the Gnu General Public License (GPL) avaiblabe at www.gnu.org

Stallman, time to change that logo!

Well, I think its more of a 'free' cookbook than most other cookbooks. As it is being put under the GNU Free Documentation License. So you should be able to modify, copy it, re-distribute it, etc. Much like all the GNU open source software which is out there.

Great. First, laws are passed to limit guns. Now they're being passed to limit GNUs...

> I saw some statistics for 3.1, it takes TWICE as long to compile, and the resulting binaries are slightly slower at linking.

Firstly, why don't you site a source rather than, I saw this once somewhere... It's much more helpful in a discussion. According to the GCC 3.1 changelog "# The preprocessor is 10-50% faster than the preprocessor in GCC 3.0." The preprocessor is GCC 3.0 is known to be slower than the preprocessor in 2.95.3, so this doesn't mean that GCC 3.1 compiles faster than 2.95.3. However, code compiled with GCC 3.1 is is up to 8.2% faster than code compiled with GCC 3.0 and code compiled with GCC 3.0 is up to 2.1% faster than code compiled with GCC 2.95.3.

There are tradeoffs between runtime speed and compile time speed. The better, faster code optimizations you want, the longer it's going to take to compile. But how often do you compile the same program many times? I'd MUCH rather have slower compile times than slower program speed.

Programs compiled with GCC 3.1 can be up to 10.3% faster than programs compiled with GCC 2.95.3. That's just enough that you'll notice the difference (though it won't be huge). Plus, GCC 3.1 complies much more closely with the C++ ABI. This will improve even more so with GCC 3.2.

Remember, this is only a BETA! The final version is expected to have the GCC 3.2 compiler.

Cheers!

Short answer: the gcc crew is lazy, inconsiderate, or both.

The C++ ABI keeps changing because they are fixing bugs in the current compiler and C++ Standard Library.

You can look up the reasons for the compiler-side ABI changes here

The GNU implementation of the Standard C++ Library has been woefully uncompliant until work was begun on the 3.x version of the library (which was first included in the 3.X versions of the compiler and RedHat's 2.96 version of the compiler).

So, the real reason why they keep breaking binary compatibility (and it's usually only C++ compatibility) is that they are NOT lazy, but working VERY HARD to create a standards-compliant compiler and library.

Depends whether you're talking about the compile and link times (mainly significant for developers), or the speed of the resulting run-times (significant for EVERYBODY).

Also, your comments don't seem to tally with what it says on the official GCC 3.1 changes page.

I wonder what image format GNU.ORG will use on it's website, now...