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Not correct either. You only have to provide the source code to a licensee

Grandparent was correct. Section 3 of the GNU GPL requires the offer for source code to be valid for "any third party" because according to Section 6, any third party can become a licensee by receiving binaries.

nothing legally binds you to keep your word that the work is unencumbered by copyright restrictions

Except for language in the typical nearly-public-domain free software license. If Alice can't get a license from you, she can get a license from Bob: "Permission is hereby granted, free of charge, to any person obtaining a copy of ... the Software to deal in the Software without restriction ... and to permit persons to whom the Software is furnished to do so" (emphasis by yerricde). The GNU GPL (a popular copyleft license for software) says it a different way: "Each time you redistribute the Program (or any work based on the Program), the recipient automatically receives a license from the original licensor". Unlike with a submarine patent, once this type of contract is in place, you can't just revoke the licenses at any time.

Of the top of my head, and with the help of my bookmarks:

• Bell Labs had a "libsafe" that provided versions of malloc et al: http://www.lucent.com/press/0400/000420.bla.html Unfortunately the link given in that press release no longer works.
• A quick scan through sorceforge and other open source project sites yields about 1.87E3 projects to replace Checker and StackGuard with kew1 Linux-only alternatives. (Why? Who knows.) Most of these projects seem not to have gotten any further than the project web page saying how 'leet they were going to be.
• One of the side branches in the GCC repository was the bounded pointers project, which was way cool. It was mostly working, too, until the author had to go work on something else.

• I personally had high hopes for the GCC BP project. If you feel like doing something that will earn you the admiration of millions, finish that code up. :-)

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 thankyou 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, erm, Perl is dying.

Your link fall down, go BOOM!.

Try this one http://www.gnu.org/philosophy/words-to-avoid.html instead.

Perhaps what the GPL needs is an companion document that answers the FUD in plain language - the explanatory answers from the quiz would be a good place to start.

The fact that the proponents of the GPL can dispel the FUD is not the point - the point is that they are being required to do so in the first place.

As you work on Windows systems, you might look at #develop which is a very flexible open source IDE for .NET. I presume you are running .NET anyway by now, as that is where VS is at now. It has among other nifty features a completely plugin-based architecture (see the SODA document for details) and user-definable backends, i.e. you can switch the compiler (and language of course) to whatever you like. Currently the MS.NET compilers and the SUN Java engine are implemented as backends, but if you want to use MONO for Windows, GCC or whatever, you can do it. And as you might guess from the last bit, porting to Linux is planned as soon as dotGNU and/or MONO are up and running :-)

Viega and Fleck's rebuttal is the best of the three rebuttals linked to in the blurb, but it has some problems too. The other two rebuttals (of which Miller's is the least valuable for reasons already mentioned in other threads under this story) don't take the time to understand the difference between the Free Software and Open Source movements and they use the term "Open Source" and "commercial" incorrectly.

There are some points in Viega and Fleck's rebuttal I'd like to address. Early on Viega and Fleck make reference to "open software, particularly that licensed under the GPL.". I don't know what "open software" is but given their apparent familiarity with the Free Software movement, I have to wonder why they would talk about the GNU GPL as something other than a Free Software license.

There are indeed cases where the GPL acts like a virus.

I find there are situations where the person distributing the software didn't give due diligence to the licenses involved and, upon learning the ramifications of distributing GPL-covered software, is eager to resolve the issue. There are situations where the people don't understand what freedoms Free Software refers to, and there are situations where people don't understand why copyleft is necessary and wise. Describing the GNU GPL as a "virus" is typical for people who criticize without understanding its terms or the Free Software movement's philosophy. Therefore it puzzles me why Viega and Fleck would choose to repeat such language.

Yes, it is true that the GPL may prevent companies from using code that is freely available to others. For example, in the past, Microsoft has used code issued under other free software licenses in its operating system, but it has never used software licensed under the GPL within one of its products. The reason, of course, is that the terms of the license are unacceptable to the company.

This is not true at all. Viega and Fleck are apparently unaware that Microsoft ignored their own advice and decided to distribute GNU GPL-covered software. This act alone takes virtually all the wind out of Microsoft and AdTI's anti-GPL arguments. Also being unacceptable to a company is quite different from being unable to distribute due to a clause in the GPL. The GPL has nothing that prevents Microsoft from sharing the software. It was their choice not to distribute GPL'd software until recently.

Ultimately, it makes little sense to us for anyone to complain about licensing restrictions imposed by the GPL. First, the vast majority of people who consume software are users, not developers. The GPL does not impact end-users whatsoever, only people who may wish to modify the code, or incorporate the code into their own works. For the wealth of organizations out there that simply wish to run software released under the GPL, there are no risks whatsoever. Such people are as likely to want to change a line in the Linux kernel as a line in Microsoft Windows XP. That is, they would prefer someone else do it.

I agree that it makes little sense for anyone to complain about the few restrictions imposed by the GNU GPL but I don't agree with the first reason Viega and Fleck give above. The impact to any user is there if that user distributes GPL'd works too. It is very easy for almost any computer user to copy software and distribute a copy to someone. This means the GPL (which largely has to do with distributing software) is relevant even for those that don't write software. It is important to understand the terminology of the GPL. The GPL's terms do not talk about "end-users" and "developers" but instead talks about those that "distribute" GPL-covered programs.

Microsoft complaining about the problems that keep them from embracing software released under the GPL is as silly as a free software author complaining about the fact that he or she cannot incorporate the source from Microsoft Word because it would violate both Microsoft's copyright and the license under which it distributes its product.

Actually the situations are not as comparable as this makes it appear. Microsoft was found guilty of antitrust violations regarding their software. There should be a punishment for violating antitrust law (even though in the Microsoft case it looks like there will be no real punishment). It would be fair and reasonable for Microsoft to lose access to their lock on the market so others can compete. Such a punishment need not force them to make their software Free Software as I outlined in my Tunney Act letter.

Regarding the copyright section (toward the end of the explication of Myth #5), Viega and Fleck say:

First, any creative work is automatically copyrighted. There is no need to register the copyright, though registration can make a copyright easier to defend.

In Berne signatory countries, yes (and this covers a lot of people), but not all countries are Berne signatory countries.

Myth #6: The GPL would not stand up in court (or, it is unclear whether it would).

During the MySQL vs. Progress Software case, the FSF reported "Judge Saris made [it] clear that she sees the GNU GPL to be an enforceable and binding license". But like Viega and Fleck reported, Eben Moglen said most GPL infringment situations don't go to trial, they are resolved with a few e-mails.

Other organizations such as IBM simply use free software for internal reasons in the course of doing business, where there would be no monetary harm in distributing their changes. In such cases, the free software is not directly related to the bottom line of their business, but releasing that software can create goodwill, and could potentially enable enhancements or other works that do add value in an indirect manner.

Actually they sell machines with operating systems based on Linux (and advertised these machines on mainstream US television). I don't know if they are GNU systems with Linux but in any case IBM is clearly distributing GPL-covered Free Software. Also they have distributed enhancements to Linux to add support for another file system. By now they may be doing more of which I am unaware.

Finally, Viega and Fleck offer a bit of undefended rhetoric in the end:

In the end, organizations should be making informed decisions on what off-the-shelf software may work for them based on the facts, not on fear, uncertainty and doubt spread by lobbyists from either camp.

The rebuttal doesn't cite precisely what FUD is coming from those in the Free Software movement (which I'm presuming is one of the "camp"s referred to here).

See the GNU GPL FAQ, they have an answer for this type of situation.

However, the Licence is legal binding, and the FAQ isn't.

Contrary to the Free Software community press on these articles, Microsoft loves the Open Source movement. They love it because it speaks to their interest: proprietorship. Microsoft wants people to follow the advice of that movement and release software under the licenses most heavily advocated by that movement—the X11 and new BSD licenses. Microsoft rails against the GNU GPL and the Free Software movement because they don't want users to have software freedom. They want everyone to use software they're not free to inspect, share, or modify. Microsoft is capitulating by distributing GPL'd works (not what you'd expect of the company that called the GNU GPL a "cancer") but few bother to expose how Microsoft isn't following its own advice. Microsoft doesn't have a good answer to the multiple ways the GPL enforces software freedom so we get another round of anti-GPL FUD and rebuttals that don't understand the difference between the Open Source and Free Software movements.

As the other poster said, it's the General Public License. Read it here.

Anonymous P2P with direct search by key is the answer. Like FreeNet but way more efficient. Please support it. GNUnet is for all, at it really has the potential to become the next generation in P2P.

Now I gotta go take a walk, because I am worked up. But man, this is the most blatant and desperate FUD I have read in a long, long time.

The only thing that worries me is that this kind of bull shit is everything that the average person will ever read about free vs. proprietary software. 99.999% of people won't ever read the evil GPL/LGPL, or anything about the FSF and GNU philosophy, about OSI, about open source and free software, et cetera.

Some time ago, I got a phone call from my friend, who said that his mother wants to talk with me about computers. She told me that her whole company office is down because of some e-mail worm or trojan and they have to install every software from scratch. She told me that her son told her that I could help her in choosing the most secure operating system.

Here I started to think: "Should I tell her to choose OpenBSD? I don't know, I'm not the expert with OpenBSD, so I wouldn't be able to help them so much as if they chose Debian, but maybe her staff would be more familiar with Red Hat..."

She interrupted my thinking process by continuing her question about the most secure OS:
— Do you think Windows 98 or maybe 95? I've heard that NT is the most secure OS, but I don't know.
I realized that she knows only about different Microsoft products...
— Well, if you want to have a secure environment and don't worry about all of those Internet worms and viruses, I wouldn't exactly recommend Windows — I said.
— What do you mean? Not Windows? But we need to have WWW and e-mail so I don't think we could work under DOS — she said.
— No, I wasn't talking about DOS. I personally prefer the OS called Debian GNU/Linux, it's not made by Microsoft, it's a very high quality OS and 1000s of professional applications. It has a UNIX security model, which...
— But we have already paid for Microsoft licenses.
— Don't worry, you don't have to pay anything for Debian, you can borrow my CDs and install Debian on as many computers as you like. You see, it's a free software and...
— Oh, no. We have to pay for the software in my company, we can't have pirate software here!
— No, you don't understand, Debian is a non-profit international organization collecting other people's free software, so you can legally use their software without paying for it. Most of the software is under the GNU General Public License and it says that you...
— Well, I would prefer to use a professional software from Microsoft, so please tell me again, which version of Windows is the most secure operating system?
— Then I'm sorry but I'm not a Microsoft software expert.

The moral is that few years ago I was telling everyone and his grandma to use Debian or free software in general, but now I care much less. Most of people won't forget about the pro-MS, anti-FS FUD propaganda, no matter what I say. Most of people believe in news from corporations like MSNBC and take them as objective. Similarly, most of people listen to POP music and the POP Star of the day — not Chopin, Mozart or Liszt.

So as long as I have my Debian I'm happy, no matter that most of people will never use Debian and will never listen to Liszt's Second Hungarian Rhapsody.

If one day I see that everyone uses Debian, I'll start wondering what's wrong with it. As Mark Twain once said: "Whenever you find you are on the side of the majority, it is time to pause and reflect."

Now I gotta go take a walk, because I am worked up. But man, this is the most blatant and desperate FUD I have read in a long, long time.

The only thing that worries me is that this kind of bull shit is everything that the average person will ever read about free vs. proprietary software. 99.999% of people won't ever read the evil GPL/LGPL, or anything about the FSF and GNU philosophy, about OSI, about open source and free software, et cetera.

Some time ago, I got a phone call from my friend, who said that his mother wants to talk with me about computers. She told me that her whole company office is down because of some e-mail worm or trojan and they have to install every software from scratch. She told me that her son told her that I could help her in choosing the most secure operating system.

Here I started to think: "Should I tell her to choose OpenBSD? I don't know, I'm not the expert with OpenBSD, so I wouldn't be able to help them so much as if they chose Debian, but maybe her staff would be more familiar with Red Hat..."

She interrupted my thinking process by continuing her question about the most secure OS:
— Do you think Windows 98 or maybe 95? I've heard that NT is the most secure OS, but I don't know.
I realized that she knows only about different Microsoft products...
— Well, if you want to have a secure environment and don't worry about all of those Internet worms and viruses, I wouldn't exactly recommend Windows — I said.
— What do you mean? Not Windows? But we need to have WWW and e-mail so I don't think we could work under DOS — she said.
— No, I wasn't talking about DOS. I personally prefer the OS called Debian GNU/Linux, it's not made by Microsoft, it's a very high quality OS and 1000s of professional applications. It has a UNIX security model, which...
— But we have already paid for Microsoft licenses.
— Don't worry, you don't have to pay anything for Debian, you can borrow my CDs and install Debian on as many computers as you like. You see, it's a free software and...
— Oh, no. We have to pay for the software in my company, we can't have pirate software here!
— No, you don't understand, Debian is a non-profit international organization collecting other people's free software, so you can legally use their software without paying for it. Most of the software is under the GNU General Public License and it says that you...
— Well, I would prefer to use a professional software from Microsoft, so please tell me again, which version of Windows is the most secure operating system?
— Then I'm sorry but I'm not a Microsoft software expert.

The moral is that few years ago I was telling everyone and his grandma to use Debian or free software in general, but now I care much less. Most of people won't forget about the pro-MS, anti-FS FUD propaganda, no matter what I say. Most of people believe in news from corporations like MSNBC and take them as objective. Similarly, most of people listen to POP music and the POP Star of the day — not Chopin, Mozart or Liszt.

So as long as I have my Debian I'm happy, no matter that most of people will never use Debian and will never listen to Liszt's Second Hungarian Rhapsody.

If one day I see that everyone uses Debian, I'll start wondering what's wrong with it. As Mark Twain once said: "Whenever you find you are on the side of the majority, it is time to pause and reflect."

Now I gotta go take a walk, because I am worked up. But man, this is the most blatant and desperate FUD I have read in a long, long time.

The only thing that worries me is that this kind of bull shit is everything that the average person will ever read about free vs. proprietary software. 99.999% of people won't ever read the evil GPL/LGPL, or anything about the FSF and GNU philosophy, about OSI, about open source and free software, et cetera.

Some time ago, I got a phone call from my friend, who said that his mother wants to talk with me about computers. She told me that her whole company office is down because of some e-mail worm or trojan and they have to install every software from scratch. She told me that her son told her that I could help her in choosing the most secure operating system.

Here I started to think: "Should I tell her to choose OpenBSD? I don't know, I'm not the expert with OpenBSD, so I wouldn't be able to help them so much as if they chose Debian, but maybe her staff would be more familiar with Red Hat..."

She interrupted my thinking process by continuing her question about the most secure OS:
— Do you think Windows 98 or maybe 95? I've heard that NT is the most secure OS, but I don't know.
I realized that she knows only about different Microsoft products...
— Well, if you want to have a secure environment and don't worry about all of those Internet worms and viruses, I wouldn't exactly recommend Windows — I said.
— What do you mean? Not Windows? But we need to have WWW and e-mail so I don't think we could work under DOS — she said.
— No, I wasn't talking about DOS. I personally prefer the OS called Debian GNU/Linux, it's not made by Microsoft, it's a very high quality OS and 1000s of professional applications. It has a UNIX security model, which...
— But we have already paid for Microsoft licenses.
— Don't worry, you don't have to pay anything for Debian, you can borrow my CDs and install Debian on as many computers as you like. You see, it's a free software and...
— Oh, no. We have to pay for the software in my company, we can't have pirate software here!
— No, you don't understand, Debian is a non-profit international organization collecting other people's free software, so you can legally use their software without paying for it. Most of the software is under the GNU General Public License and it says that you...
— Well, I would prefer to use a professional software from Microsoft, so please tell me again, which version of Windows is the most secure operating system?
— Then I'm sorry but I'm not a Microsoft software expert.

The moral is that few years ago I was telling everyone and his grandma to use Debian or free software in general, but now I care much less. Most of people won't forget about the pro-MS, anti-FS FUD propaganda, no matter what I say. Most of people believe in news from corporations like MSNBC and take them as objective. Similarly, most of people listen to POP music and the POP Star of the day — not Chopin, Mozart or Liszt.

So as long as I have my Debian I'm happy, no matter that most of people will never use Debian and will never listen to Liszt's Second Hungarian Rhapsody.

If one day I see that everyone uses Debian, I'll start wondering what's wrong with it. As Mark Twain once said: "Whenever you find you are on the side of the majority, it is time to pause and reflect."

Now I gotta go take a walk, because I am worked up. But man, this is the most blatant and desperate FUD I have read in a long, long time.

The only thing that worries me is that this kind of bull shit is everything that the average person will ever read about free vs. proprietary software. 99.999% of people won't ever read the evil GPL/LGPL, or anything about the FSF and GNU philosophy, about OSI, about open source and free software, et cetera.

Some time ago, I got a phone call from my friend, who said that his mother wants to talk with me about computers. She told me that her whole company office is down because of some e-mail worm or trojan and they have to install every software from scratch. She told me that her son told her that I could help her in choosing the most secure operating system.

Here I started to think: "Should I tell her to choose OpenBSD? I don't know, I'm not the expert with OpenBSD, so I wouldn't be able to help them so much as if they chose Debian, but maybe her staff would be more familiar with Red Hat..."

She interrupted my thinking process by continuing her question about the most secure OS:
— Do you think Windows 98 or maybe 95? I've heard that NT is the most secure OS, but I don't know.
I realized that she knows only about different Microsoft products...
— Well, if you want to have a secure environment and don't worry about all of those Internet worms and viruses, I wouldn't exactly recommend Windows — I said.
— What do you mean? Not Windows? But we need to have WWW and e-mail so I don't think we could work under DOS — she said.
— No, I wasn't talking about DOS. I personally prefer the OS called Debian GNU/Linux, it's not made by Microsoft, it's a very high quality OS and 1000s of professional applications. It has a UNIX security model, which...
— But we have already paid for Microsoft licenses.
— Don't worry, you don't have to pay anything for Debian, you can borrow my CDs and install Debian on as many computers as you like. You see, it's a free software and...
— Oh, no. We have to pay for the software in my company, we can't have pirate software here!
— No, you don't understand, Debian is a non-profit international organization collecting other people's free software, so you can legally use their software without paying for it. Most of the software is under the GNU General Public License and it says that you...
— Well, I would prefer to use a professional software from Microsoft, so please tell me again, which version of Windows is the most secure operating system?
— Then I'm sorry but I'm not a Microsoft software expert.

The moral is that few years ago I was telling everyone and his grandma to use Debian or free software in general, but now I care much less. Most of people won't forget about the pro-MS, anti-FS FUD propaganda, no matter what I say. Most of people believe in news from corporations like MSNBC and take them as objective. Similarly, most of people listen to POP music and the POP Star of the day — not Chopin, Mozart or Liszt.

So as long as I have my Debian I'm happy, no matter that most of people will never use Debian and will never listen to Liszt's Second Hungarian Rhapsody.

If one day I see that everyone uses Debian, I'll start wondering what's wrong with it. As Mark Twain once said: "Whenever you find you are on the side of the majority, it is time to pause and reflect."

Now I gotta go take a walk, because I am worked up. But man, this is the most blatant and desperate FUD I have read in a long, long time.

The only thing that worries me is that this kind of bull shit is everything that the average person will ever read about free vs. proprietary software. 99.999% of people won't ever read the evil GPL/LGPL, or anything about the FSF and GNU philosophy, about OSI, about open source and free software, et cetera.

Some time ago, I got a phone call from my friend, who said that his mother wants to talk with me about computers. She told me that her whole company office is down because of some e-mail worm or trojan and they have to install every software from scratch. She told me that her son told her that I could help her in choosing the most secure operating system.

Here I started to think: "Should I tell her to choose OpenBSD? I don't know, I'm not the expert with OpenBSD, so I wouldn't be able to help them so much as if they chose Debian, but maybe her staff would be more familiar with Red Hat..."

She interrupted my thinking process by continuing her question about the most secure OS:
— Do you think Windows 98 or maybe 95? I've heard that NT is the most secure OS, but I don't know.
I realized that she knows only about different Microsoft products...
— Well, if you want to have a secure environment and don't worry about all of those Internet worms and viruses, I wouldn't exactly recommend Windows — I said.
— What do you mean? Not Windows? But we need to have WWW and e-mail so I don't think we could work under DOS — she said.
— No, I wasn't talking about DOS. I personally prefer the OS called Debian GNU/Linux, it's not made by Microsoft, it's a very high quality OS and 1000s of professional applications. It has a UNIX security model, which...
— But we have already paid for Microsoft licenses.
— Don't worry, you don't have to pay anything for Debian, you can borrow my CDs and install Debian on as many computers as you like. You see, it's a free software and...
— Oh, no. We have to pay for the software in my company, we can't have pirate software here!
— No, you don't understand, Debian is a non-profit international organization collecting other people's free software, so you can legally use their software without paying for it. Most of the software is under the GNU General Public License and it says that you...
— Well, I would prefer to use a professional software from Microsoft, so please tell me again, which version of Windows is the most secure operating system?
— Then I'm sorry but I'm not a Microsoft software expert.

The moral is that few years ago I was telling everyone and his grandma to use Debian or free software in general, but now I care much less. Most of people won't forget about the pro-MS, anti-FS FUD propaganda, no matter what I say. Most of people believe in news from corporations like MSNBC and take them as objective. Similarly, most of people listen to POP music and the POP Star of the day — not Chopin, Mozart or Liszt.

So as long as I have my Debian I'm happy, no matter that most of people will never use Debian and will never listen to Liszt's Second Hungarian Rhapsody.

If one day I see that everyone uses Debian, I'll start wondering what's wrong with it. As Mark Twain once said: "Whenever you find you are on the side of the majority, it is time to pause and reflect."

Since always. Have a quick gander at this link, or this one and there you have it, straight from the, uh, wildebeest's mouth.

Since always. Have a quick gander at this link, or this one and there you have it, straight from the, uh, wildebeest's mouth.

[...] Or do you think that the Corporate Suits see this as another reason to stick with Microsoft because the Open Source movement behaves childishly when dealing with internal conflicts.
--
MacOS X: UNIX for people that bathe daily.

'Nuff said...

(Btw: RMS is a member (founder) of the Free Software movement, not the Open Source movement, for God's sake! You may want to visit FSF and OSI websites to get some clue about it.)

—

Hell, same thing for just about any skilled work that combines technical expertise with creativity EXCEPT FOR PROGRAMMING.You never even tried to look around for musicians, mappers, texture painters, modelers and animators that put their work on the net for free did you?

If you look at the work that went into some of the commercial quakeIII engine games (sof-ii,jediknight-ii,startrek something) then you will know that there are people out there who can do more and better in a three to ten people teams in their spare time!
The process of going to good gpl games will be in two steps:
- getting (gamecontent commercial like quake 1/2?) games with sufficient gameplay to iron out the bugs in the engine, get the physics for gameplay that feels good and get the and tools to build for it

- getting the current hl/ut/q3a modders to come to the new engine and build good games from scratch, they have what it takes (just play some of the free single player half-life maps and look at the models build for half-life multiplayer mods)

No "financial incentive"? Well some people think there is not reason to write gpl code for free and therefore there will never be any good gpl code, I dont think this is the case and looking at the mappers and animators working on all of the populair mods out there who work mostly becouse they know their work will get spotted and get them a job I have high hopes of games equivalent in size to the current mods getting made available for free as in beer.

btw: When you go looking for programmers you can find them on every street corner (although not linus level ofcourse) but when you want people who know how to make games where do you look? The best of the modding community has proven to be a great place to start your search, moddelers and mappers know that!

Uh, no, completely right. See section 2b of the GPL: You must cause any work that you distribute or publish, that in whole or in part contains or is derived from the Program or any part thereof, to be licensed as a whole at no charge to all third parties under the terms of this License. I don't see any way around that. Of course, there is the possibility of dynamic linking with the library to get around the GPL, which was debated here a number of months ago, but without the library, the program would effectively be unusable, so I don't know if that would work.

I'll probably get modded way down for this, but hell, my karma is only 14 anyway.. I generally agree with the idea of the FSF, just not all of the means. The idea that "By releasing libraries that are limited to free software only, we can help each other's free software packages outdo the proprietary alternatives. The whole free software movement will have more popularity, because free software as a whole will stack up better against the competition." [http://www.gnu.org/philosophy/why-not-lgpl.html] is a good one, but I think it partly fails in that there will always be commerical software, or ever shareware. The GPL is basically incompatible with the idea of making money off of personal work. True, maybe programmer's should just program for the fun of it, for the joy of it, for the intellectual curiosity of it, yadda, yadda, yadda. But some also want (and need) to do it to eat.

Requireing all GPL software to be released in source form basically nullifies the idea of making any kind of income off of software, unless either (1) your clients are very generous, or (2) the software is very good. Hell, it might be that the better the software is, the fewer people will pay for it (but the people who do pay may pay more, I don't know if that would balance - has anyone done any economic/psycholofical studies of payment and the GPL?) That statement in favor of the GPL over the LGPL also presupposes that there is a large base of easy to use, compelling free software out there already. As I see it, there isn't. Oh, there is if you want to go that way phiposophically, but not otherwise. To make a very bad real-world analogy: the combustion engine I don't believe that the internal combusion engine would have achieved the dominence it did if it were GPL'd immidiately after being invented. (bad analogy for one becasue the ICM is a physical product). Oh, it would have, someone else would have just "reinvented" it. The GPL offers a "freedom" of sorts with respect to knowledge, but it also places very severe restrictions on anyone trying to make a guaranteed income-stream of of something (the counter-argument, of course, is that the software will be pirated anyway if it's any good). The restrictions of the GPL are stict enough, that I believe it will drive away perhaps as many people as it attracts.

One might say, well, you could always ask the person to dual-license, but (1) the author may be unwilling to do that, not becasue it doesn't make sense (economically or in a real-world sense) but on philosophical grounds alone, and (2) it's not clear how this works if the original work is itself a derived work from other GPL code. The FSF has gathered an enourmous amount of steam in the computing community ("psychohistorical inertia" as Prof. Seldon might put it ;-), and that steam will work to deflect certain economic realities from entering consideration, which, which while perhaps being "unpleasent" are nonetheless real in the world we live (just as was and is true with communism and capitalism as social systems) Paul Guyot, who has worked for over a year on a Apple Newton ATA driver (which was been mentioned on Slashdot at one point), refuses to work on GPL projects. I don't know all his reasons, but one main one is that GPL software tends to be hard to compile, hard to use, hard to configure, and generally you have to be a gear-head to get anything done with it (okay, that last reason was my little flourish, but you get the idea). There are some notable exceptions: GIMP for one, and it's offspring MacGIMP. But then, I haven't installed or used MacGIMP yet. How do I know that somewhere in it I won't get an inscrutable error having to do with the Fink under-structure? In addition to working for a year on this driver with a basically undocumented operating system, he has killed two development units. Do you think that someone who has invested that kind of time, energy, and money is going to release under a license that forces him to give up any propect of making money off of it? I don't, and neither does he.

To the end of his objection the lack of good documentation of GPL software that he sees, he has drafted a license that seeks to address this, the Kallisys Reflexive License which requires that all modifications have documentation of source code changes, but does not require source code to be released. It is incompatible with the GPL, becasue the GPL requires strictures on the code beyond the KRL. This is the GPL's "freedom". (of course, the same could be said of communism, and some have described the FSF as neo-communist)

One very interesting thing I note about the GPL is this: in section 3b, it states: [distirbute in executable code if you] 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 [...] This seems backward to me. The idea whould be that you can charge money for it (or "force people to pay" if you prefer) for a specified period of time, after which it must become open-source. This would prevent abandon-ware. If this sane alternative had been adopted by the major computer companies back in the seventies and eighties, Paul wouldn't have had to work for a year on his driver, becasue the Newton source would be out by now!

I agree with the FSF's intentions, and their opposition to software patents, DRM, etc, etc. But in my mind, it goes to far. Freedom should also be about choice. People should not be forced into releasing source, and large corporations are not going to be in the near future (as one other Slashdotter said, "the GPL gives Apple layers hives"). As a way to prevent abandonware like the Newton, Quickdraw 3D (now basically, but not completely, a moot point), OpenDoc, etc, etc (I'm sure that companies other than Apple also have some very interesting stuff buried in their vaults, never again to see the light of day..)

Putting together a "compromise" organization like this would not be easy - witness now Rosetta - the printing recognizer for the Newton - will finally see the light of day in MacOS X "Jaguar" as InkWell. If my idea of a standard "abandonware clause" had been adopted with a three year limit, this would be impossible, and Apple would be in the same trap I accuse the GPL of foisting on programmers. I think the FSF has taken the easy way out, opting for an extremem communist-style "solution". But real-life, and the real-world (even the ones we create ourselves) are messy, and not ammenable to easy but extreme solutions, like pure social communism (Soviet Union), or pure social capitalism (the US in many ways), or, I fear, the FSF.

Further, a single economical helmet can cover four of these analog holes at once!

I humbly suggest the most cost-effective and reliable solution to the copyright industries' troubles will be DRM helmets, bolted onto each dutiful consumer at the neck. When these helmets sense watermarked audio or video within earshot/eyeshot, they check their local license manager and instantly "fog up" if payment has not been delivered.

This will especially teach people not to listen to unauthorized copies of music while driving.

By fastening suitably-small DRM helmets onto children at an appropriately-early age, the citizenry's consumptive habits can be "arrested" (along with cranial volume) at a revenue-maximizing developmental stage. I'd guess this is around age 13, but I'm open to the latest research. Give and take is what policymaking is all about.

So step up to the plate, senators, lobbyists, and titans of industry. Write this into the next rev of the CBDTPA. We can call it the SNEHNEA: "See No Evil, Hear No Evil Act". Why try to haphazardly plug billions of analog holes, when you can just cap the problem at its far fewer human endpoints? (The end-to-end design principle is your friend!)

If we can put a man on the moon, then surely we can cage every American's mind.

[Intellectual Property Disclosure: The "DRM Helmet" and the "Cranial Arrest Adolescent DRM Helmet" may be covered by patents granted or applied for by Gordon Mohr. Licensing will be available on unreasonable and discriminatory terms.]

Urrgh...just imagine a touring concert of free software gurus? RMS on lead vocals... Linus on guitar...? Playing the Free Software Song I suppose?...

That particular post on ZDNet is correct in a way.

Under GNU/GPL, the software is free in a sense of freedom to use, modification, and distribution, among others. Re: Definition of Free Software.

I made this reference due to the fact that people keep on arguing that OSS is profitable. Yes, it is... but not in the manner that puts your organization's balance sheet in the black.

Take an example of an organization that improves on a GNU/GPL product so well and so much that it is finally sellable. Can this company then distribute this modified (albeit heavily) software at a price? Some would argue that they can, but if you read carefully the definitions of Copyleft, then you will know that they can't.

GNU/GPL can be described as viral in its implementation. A work on a software released as GNU/GPL, must be released as GNU/GPL as well. No matter how much you re-wrote the codes, no matter how much better your version is than the original. It is still GPL'd.

The same principles that protect OSS is also the same principles that hinder it to become commercially viable (as in selling them).

It's true that there are OS projects that has generated profits, but most (if not all) of the revenue comes from support and consultation... and not from the software itself.

Just my opinion, if I'm wrong in any way, please point me to the right direction.

That particular post on ZDNet is correct in a way.

Under GNU/GPL, the software is free in a sense of freedom to use, modification, and distribution, among others. Re: Definition of Free Software.

I made this reference due to the fact that people keep on arguing that OSS is profitable. Yes, it is... but not in the manner that puts your organization's balance sheet in the black.

Take an example of an organization that improves on a GNU/GPL product so well and so much that it is finally sellable. Can this company then distribute this modified (albeit heavily) software at a price? Some would argue that they can, but if you read carefully the definitions of Copyleft, then you will know that they can't.

GNU/GPL can be described as viral in its implementation. A work on a software released as GNU/GPL, must be released as GNU/GPL as well. No matter how much you re-wrote the codes, no matter how much better your version is than the original. It is still GPL'd.

The same principles that protect OSS is also the same principles that hinder it to become commercially viable (as in selling them).

It's true that there are OS projects that has generated profits, but most (if not all) of the revenue comes from support and consultation... and not from the software itself.

Just my opinion, if I'm wrong in any way, please point me to the right direction.

You wrote: This lack of leadership wasn't by design - Linux was, as Linus will tell you, never expected to come as far as it did when he started it. We (the community) spontaneously sprang forth and Developed... and developed and developed...

Now, I have no intention to start a flame war, but— This is exactly that kind of thing which I'm sure makes the GNU folks mad. Yes, Linus never expected to come as far when he started in 1991 — but I wouldn't be so sure about Richard Stallman when he wrote the GNU Project announcement in 1983, he seems to have expected quite a lot in my opinion.

Why, because people do need money to live. So many people seem to think that if all software is free software that for some reason business customers will pay them plenty of money out of kindness or for "support", Some may well pay token fees for support but undoubtedly the total size of the software industry will shrink dramatically, which means less money, less jobs and lots of people looking for alternative work think MacDonalds. No offence to Richard Stallman I have a lot of respect for what he says and believes, but in the GNU Manifesto he says that programmers should work as waiters and code in there free time is at best naive and at worst insulting.

Exacly why should programmers be producing software that business's will use to make money and not share in that? The entire idea seems very much inline with 60's communism, Clearly at least some kind of compromise must be made. hardly seems like the American dream to me?

What will companies think about paying per-seat licensing and having to manage all the licensing nightmares associated with it when most of what they are buying is under the GPL?

Well, actually it's not the case. GPL is not an EULA so as the end users they can do whatever they want, without even the need to accept the license:

"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 [...]

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."

Those companies would have to accept the GPL only if they wanted to redistribute the software, and even then, they would have much more licensing nightmares with the proprietary parts of the system, since they are not allowed to redistribute them under any condition at all, unlike the copylefted software.

RMS seems to be fundamentally afraid that all his claims about open source software are wrong. If it's as good as he claims, then why is he worrying about this. United Linux should get steam rolled by higher quality and cost-efficient software from other places.

You seem to confuse the FSF's stanpoint about free software represented by Richard Stallman with the OSI's open source point of view.

What will companies think about paying per-seat licensing and having to manage all the licensing nightmares associated with it when most of what they are buying is under the GPL?

Well, actually it's not the case. GPL is not an EULA so as the end users they can do whatever they want, without even the need to accept the license:

"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 [...]

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."

Those companies would have to accept the GPL only if they wanted to redistribute the software, and even then, they would have much more licensing nightmares with the proprietary parts of the system, since they are not allowed to redistribute them under any condition at all, unlike the copylefted software.

RMS seems to be fundamentally afraid that all his claims about open source software are wrong. If it's as good as he claims, then why is he worrying about this. United Linux should get steam rolled by higher quality and cost-efficient software from other places.

You seem to confuse the FSF's stanpoint about free software represented by Richard Stallman with the OSI's open source point of view.

Because nothing guarentees the data getting to their carefully guarded servers is valid if their communication protocol is weak.

What I would love to see is the Atlas protocol from The WorldForge Project being used by big online games vendors. Atlas-C++ library (the C++ implementation of the Atlas protocol) is licensed under The GNU Lesser General Public License.

Here's the Atlas Mission Statement:

Atlas provides a standardized system for conducting networked communications between clients, servers, database apps, and other such tools and utilities, specifically for communications necessary to establish and interact in computerized multiplayer roleplaying games, realtime strategy games and other online virtual environment simulations.

It would be nice if Atlas was being used (and developed) by many different games as a lingua franca of online gaming. With the LGPL there's no reason not to use Atlas-C++ in proprietary products. Also I think many commercial games vendors could learn a lot from the WorldForge people (like never trusting the client, etc. — see: The Engineering Section of Worldforge).

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 thankyou 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, erm, Perl is dying. Larry is buggering it up the ass without lubricants, just like Shoeboy is doing to Larry's daughter.

Wow. I'm used to people saying that free software is a bad business model and an unsound practice. I don't think I've ever encountered such a vehement, emotion-charged stand, though. In all seriousness, why do you "hate it, haite, hate it" so much?

Thanks for asking in a civil manner. I'm pleasantly surprised. ;-)

Before I get into this, please understand that I'm not really looking for an argument. If you disagree with my ideas, you're naturally welcome to say so, but if you do you probably won't get a satisfactory response out of me. I apologize in advance for any frustration this may cause.

(Much of this comes from reading this, and RMS's other writings. Any misunderstanding on my part of RMS's philosophy is all his fault. Just kidding.)

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.

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 your program. We will therefore call it 'free.'"

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, hate, hate" RMS's beliefs, the GNU organization, and the Free Software Foundation, and to vocally oppose all that they stand for.

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

Wow. I'm used to people saying that free software is a bad business model and an unsound practice. I don't think I've ever encountered such a vehement, emotion-charged stand, though. In all seriousness, why do you "hate it, haite, hate it" so much?

Thanks for asking in a civil manner. I'm pleasantly surprised. ;-)

Before I get into this, please understand that I'm not really looking for an argument. If you disagree with my ideas, you're naturally welcome to say so, but if you do you probably won't get a satisfactory response out of me. I apologize in advance for any frustration this may cause.

(Much of this comes from reading this, and RMS's other writings. Any misunderstanding on my part of RMS's philosophy is all his fault. Just kidding.)

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.

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 your program. We will therefore call it 'free.'"

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, hate, hate" RMS's beliefs, the GNU organization, and the Free Software Foundation, and to vocally oppose all that they stand for.

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

For a good introduction to what RMS is saying, try the philosophy section of GNU's website, particularly the "GNU manifesto."

In short, RMS is one of the most prominent figures in the open source community. He founded the and now insists that everything that even sat next to GNU software in the refrigerator must now be called GNU/whatever it used to be called. The fact that this only complicates matters needlessly has been addressed, and I think he's decided to quit it.

If you need to know more than that, see this for a fairly good idea who RMS is.

RMS's homepage is at http://www.stallman.org/

Please Do Not Feed the Trolls. Odds are you're going to get a resonse that purports RMS to be the goatse.cx guy or something. I can neither prove nor disprove these claims, so you'll have to draw your own conclusions.

Richard Marie^H^H^H^H. Stallman, major figure in the free software realm.
Founder of the GNU Project and the Free Software Foundation.

Everything2 is helpful for these types of questions.

Nary a mention of the GPL in the entire article text.

There doesn't need to be. The GNU GPL is not the only Free Software license available.

Since I don't read Chinese I'm hesitant to attempt to interpret the stated intention of the news report. Is there an official English translation anywhere?

The Chinese translation of "Free Software" listed by the GNU project does not appear to be marked up correctly so user agents will render it with the correct font (I see it as "zi4you2 ruan3jian4" in the markup with no suggestion to use an a different language from that of the rest of the document).

Nary a mention of the GPL in the entire article text.

There doesn't need to be. The GNU GPL is not the only Free Software license available.

Since I don't read Chinese I'm hesitant to attempt to interpret the stated intention of the news report. Is there an official English translation anywhere?

The Chinese translation of "Free Software" listed by the GNU project does not appear to be marked up correctly so user agents will render it with the correct font (I see it as "zi4you2 ruan3jian4" in the markup with no suggestion to use an a different language from that of the rest of the document).

Merging free-software and proprietary software is already a shame, but here we are a step higher!

You may be confusing "proprietary" software and "commercial" software. There's nothing wrong with selling free software. Just look at the fsf's category list.

Personally, I think these guys may have finally found a way to profit directly from Free software; namely, the software is free, but they charge for the service of compiling it. To me, that sounds just fine.

Face it people: nobody's freedom is being denied by this, so it's only offensive if you choose to be offended.

Regardless, this system doesn't even work for GPLed code anyway. The GPL rests on copyright law, and copyright law protects derivative works. Since compiled binaries are derivative works, the GPL applies to them, and the UnitedLinux folks can't stop me from purchasing one copy of their software and giving the GPL'ed binaries to my 300 million closest friends.

The real Freedom problem here, assuming there is one, relates to non-copyleft software. And hell, we all knew that already, didn't we? If the authors of a piece of code that has made its way into UnitedLinux didn't give it a copyleft license, then they have allowed this to happen. They have no right to bitch and moan about it, and we should bitch and moan at them, not the UnitedLinux folks.

> true freedom is all or nothing

So we can’t agree. You are stating the anarchist’s position. If we were anarchists we would go the BSD route, not the copyleft one.

> people like the KKK and the black panthers would be put in prison on the sole bases of their views.

If their views is that you must kill and restrict other people’s freedom, that would be fine with me. But this would be a form of censorship, and the discussion is over software licensing. Off-topic and ad hominem.

> Blind faith

Wrong definition. Zealot is one who cares too much. Zeal is caring.

> no it is not always a good thing.

I agree zeal is not always a good thing, it depends on its subject. I said it is good in itself, perhaps I should have been more careful and stated that it is neutral. But I still think that, the object being good, zeal is good in itself. Overshooting it is bad, as overshooting by definition is bad.

> If you don't want to make money fine

I never mentioned money.

> why deny someone else the FREEDOM?

That’t the point, why? Because it is wrong denying freedom, copyleft consists in making sure everyone has freedom by denying the right of denying freedom.

> When it is the other way around (software piracy) people in the slashdot community instantly try to rationalize it.

Didn’t got your point. What is the other way round? What piracy has got to do with this? Who’s defending “Slashdot community”? This is about GNU GPL, RMS and UnitedLinux rumoured use of a per-seat license.

> But, say (and this is reaching) the init program used by this OS is proprietary, not the GPL'd version.

You have a point here! This poses other questions: for instance, would such OS be still GNU/Linux?

> The publisher is certainly within their rights to require per-seat licensing of said proprietary init binary.

Correct. And of incurring the ire of everyone but Bill Gates.

> To say otherwise, to claim that the GNU software can ONLY be run on all-GNU platforms, would require the removal of all GNU software from any 'un-pure' OS, and that's just NOT gonna happen anytime soon.

That’s what 3, item (c) is for: ”as a special exception, the source code 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.’. I can imagine GNU GPL 4 yanking that off, since by then GNU/Hurd and GNU/Linux may have already driven all proprietary OSs to legacy status

Speaking as a software developer (both free and corporate/IT), as long as they make their source available, I really don't care if they make the binaries available. The idea behind UntiedLinux seems to be that they're going to be based on the Linux Standard Base. Well, that's great, the LSB is an open standard, so I don't need their binaries to develop my code.

With the source code available, I could build my own binary version, if I cared that much and were willing to dedicate that much time/that many cycles to it. But I don't care.

If I were worried about other people making money off my code, I'd either make it proprietary, or use a semi-free no-commercial-use license. But I'm not.

If this were some whacky, customized system, with all kinds of special oddnesses everywhere, I might find it a little annoying to not have binaries (assuming they want me to support my software on their system). But if it's just a standard Linux system, it's really no big deal to me. I'll take source-with-no-binaries over binaries-with-no-source any day of the week, thank you very much. Especially when their system is already close enough to what I'm running right now.

Dude that song was funny as well. How can anyone not pick on RMS after hearing that?

GPL covers rights to source, not binaries.

Not true. Section 6 of the GPL states:

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.

My ability to redistribute GPL'd code is granted by the original licensor, not the guy who I happened to get it from. They guy who I happened to get it from doesn't have the right to impose any additional restrictions, like per-seat licensing.

Also, section 3 says:

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

So this means that I have these rights whether I decide to re-release the binary or the source code form of the program. I just have to make sure that if I re-release the binary form, I also make available the source code. But I'm not restricted from re-releasing a binary. Which means, per-seat licensing restrictions are a violation of the GPL.

But, IANAL, so I may have an overly simplistic interpretation. It seems pretty clear to me, though.

I also think that Freedom in Software is more important than recognition for the GNU Project.

If RMS disagrees with me on that last point, I'd like to see him admit it publicly!

RMS, what's the problem here? It is clear to me that if you don't want your work redistributed for a fee, you are using the wrong license!

Huh? RMS is actively encouraging people who redistribute GPL'd software to charge as much as possible.

Only RMS, or a mindless idiot, could possibly agree with ALL of RMS' views.

Since I am not RMS, I guess this makes me a mindless idiot. ;-)

I also think that Freedom in Software is more important than recognition for the GNU Project. If RMS disagrees with me on that last point, I'd like to see him admit it publicly!

Of course, I cannot speak for RMS, but I assume that he'd agree wholeheartedly. In his article What's in a name?, he explains the reasoning behind his request to call GNU/Linux "GNU/Linux".

Tell you something, sonny, nobody is perfect. Not RMS, nor Ghandi or George Washington.

There's just something funny about comparing RMS to Ghandi or Washington.

:wq