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> Ada, eh? I sincerly thought that this language was dead, along with Lisp, Fortran
and Cobol, the other dead dinosaurs-era "programming" languages.

I suppose you're trolling, but in case you aren't...

The current Ada standard is Ada 95, 7 years old. A standard for Ada 0x is under development right now.

There's a surprising lot of stuff going on in the Ada world right now. An Ada compiler will be integrated with GCC starting with version 3.1 (as an optional component, actually, as with Fortran). Also, the new GNU Visual Debugger is written in Ada; it supports languages on a plug-in basis, with plugins currently available for C, C++, and (of course) Ada.

Part of what's driving things like GPS and GVD is the maturation of GtkAda, a "thick" Ada binding of GTK+. This is a very polished free {beer,speech} product: it comes with 475 pages of PostScript documentation. (The bindings are also fully OO.)

I won't bother commenting on the pros and cons of Ada as a language, since everyone knows "My language is best!" -- regardless of who the speaker is.

The reason the GPL hasn't been tested in court is because no-one has dared to take it that far. There's quite an interesting article here by Eben Moglen, the guy who enforces the GPL for the FSF.

I am sorry. You are wrong, wrong, and wrong.

Perhaps Enforcing the GPL Counsel Eben Morglen can enlighten you. I won't even try.

Anyone who's had to read a 3-page document in a 3"x1" textbox ...

So if it was open source it would be just fine... like GIMP!

I suggest against that wording for two reasons:

1. The GIMP is GNU GPL'd software (the GNU GPL is a copylefted Free Software license). This difference is important particularly in this thread because
2. when it comes to patents, the GPL does more for you than the most heavily advocated Open Source licenses. The most heavily advocated Open Source licenses—the X11 and new BSD licenses—allow embrace and extend by patenting. The GNU GPL does not allow embrace and extend.

If there was ever a time to understand why the GNU GPL and defending software freedom is so important to the fight against software patents, it's now. The GNU GPL "[makes] it clear that any patent must be licensed for everyone's free use or not licensed at all." (in the words of the GPL's preamble).

Well, a version of this is being proposed, but not by the people you might think; read The Right Way to Tax DAT.

Let me quote from devlinux.org: The GPL is "viral" in the sense that one cannot combine GPLed work with other work governed by different licenses. If one were to enhance a GPLed work, then your enhancements would also fall under the GPL terms.

Let me quote from devlinux.org: The GPL is "viral" in the sense that one cannot combine GPLed work with other work governed by different licenses. If one were to enhance a GPLed work, then your enhancements would also fall under the GPL terms.

Let me quote from devlinux.org: The GPL is "viral" in the sense that one cannot combine GPLed work with other work governed by different licenses. If one were to enhance a GPLed work, then your enhancements would also fall under the GPL terms.

BRL has a test suite, as does Kawa. I don't think test suites in free software are so uncommon.

Who would have thought that Richard Stallman was correct all these years regarding free-as-in-speech software? How many of you just thought he was a paranoid lunatic?

From The Right To Read:

• Dan would later learn that there was a time when anyone could have debugging tools. There were even free debugging tools available on CD or downloadable over the net. But ordinary users started using them to bypass copyright monitors, and eventually a judge ruled that this had become their principal use in actual practice. This meant they were illegal; the debuggers' developers were sent to prison.

• ... In 2047, Frank was in prison, not for pirate reading, but for possessing a debugger.

Have you looked at MySQL Navigator ?

RMS wrote this in 1997.

I think it goes to show that no matter how hard headed and inflexible Mr. Stallman may sometime apear to be, the current events are starting to show that the reasons behind that have more to do with his far reaching sight and less with personal character.

Do we really have to wait for Moon colonies to regain the right to read? :-(

It's a simple matter of how socially inferior "humans"(I put this term in quotations because these people rarely show any humanity) act under certain types of pressure. They attach themselves irrationaly to a concept, product, brand name, or in this case, fad. We've seen it with OS/2 Zealots, BSD Zealots, BeOS Zealots, and Amiga Zealots. We see it everyday on the news with Christian Zealots like John Ashcroft and George W. Bush.

You see, certain types of socially inept people have a tendency to attach themselves to something and refuse to let go with zeal. As the fad dies out and the rest of the world moves on, these zealots will hold on to their idol with alarming tenacity. You do not want to be around these people, but unfortunately it is sometimes out of your control. Therefore, I have prepared some advice in the form of various situations should you ever come upon a Linux Zealot.

Situation 1: On the Internet
This is where the majority of Linux Zealot attacks occur, since Linux Zealots have no social life and rarely leave their computers. Fortunately for you, this type of situation is the easiest to avoid with the use of a little precaution and common sense. First and foremost, stay away from known Linux Zealot sites like Slashdot and Kuro5hin. These sites are well known for promoting software theft and music piracy, among other kinds of law-breaking activity. Do not take this warning as an invitation to go to Slashdot and try to change the minds of the wayward Linux Zealots. Many intelligent people have tried this and failed miserably, for Linux Zealots are extremely close-minded and will not listen to logic. It doesn't matter how many times you tell them that Windows 2000 and WindowsXP don't crash and that Linux sucks for the desktop, they will not listen to you. Instead you will be lost in a sea of angry Linux Zealots. Also, do not get depressed thinking that your options on the Internet are now limited, there are many fine sites featuring intelligent conversation available.

Situation 2: At work/school settings
This situation is the potentially most embarrassing and damaging to your life. The situation usually plays out thusly: you are at work or school when a co-worker or acquaintance tries to introduce you to a Linux Zealot. Often-times this Linux Zealot will try to move in on your social activities. Do not let this happen. This is very important. If you let a Linux Zealot be seen with you in public, it WILL ruin your life. You will lose all your friends, and no girl will ever talk to you again. How do you identify a Linux Zealot? This is very easy - Linux Zealots will either be extremely scrawny or extremely obese. They will be very dirty, poorly dressed (many times with ill-fitting Linux or Thinkgeek shirts), and the odor will be unbearable. If a Linux Zealot tries to befriend you, you must make it clear that you are better than him and that you will not socialize with him. Ridicule him, let him know his lower status in society. Call security or threaten to sue for harrassment if he doesn't leave you alone. Don't be afraid to use violence if it becomes necessary.

Situation 3: Random public encounters
These are probably the rarest of Linux Zealot encounters, and are usually pretty easy to avoid. If you see a Linux Zealot walking down the sidewalk or hallway, do not make eye contact. Turn your head away from the Linux Zealot. If he tries to engage you in conversation, do not respond. Continue walking away from the Linux Zealot at a brisk pace. If the Linux Zealot persists, call for help from the nearest security guard or police officer. If you are female, it is advisable to carry pepper spray and/or a stun gun at all times. Linux Zealots are very skittish around females and their behavior will be erratic.

Now you should know everything you need to know to keep yourself safe from Linux Zealots. Good Luck!

The site: www.gnusoftware.com, which is nothing officially to do with GNU, is a collection of links to open source Windows projects. I've already used it to compile some pretty useful CDs to give away to people.

Uhhhh.... huh? The string class is like any other class is like any other critical piece of data. Protect them against multiple accesses.

Here's what the status is for GCC 3.1: http://gcc.gnu.org/onlinedocs/libstdc++/faq/index. html#5_6. It works fine in my multithreaded Linux apps.

In chess, the first person to lose control of the board, loses the game most of the time when the game is between two very good players.

Indeed, but given a player that can fully enumerate all possible branches, there is simply no issue of "control of the board" for that player (assuming that you don't mean, by that, "has the next move", rather, something less precisely defined than move-making in chess). It is, assuming the player is "programmed" correctly, merely an issue of choosing, based on a given board position (pieces plus state information regarding castling and such), a move that leads to only win/draw results for that player for as long as that player can choose his moves (i.e., for as long as the rules of play are in effect).

Your statements about chess apply to the present, real-world situation where this is theoretically possible, but computationally impossible, or believed to be so.

Put another way: I am a terrible chess player. But given a computer whose hardware is capable of analyzing, say, 30 moves beyond a given position, and an initial chess position that is "balanced" and yet guarantees a win or draw for "my" side within 30 moves, I can, as a mere programmer, program that computer to avoid the moves that would lead to a loss against anyone, including yourself, "control of the board" being made irrelevant.

In this sense, chess indeed being a game of "perfect information", unlike, say, "Battleship", discussing the capability of a theoretically infinitely-powered Turing machine (that is, a "computer", a deterministic computing machine) playing chess is akin to discussing solving the Traveling Salesman Problem (TSP) -- for any given problem size, a solution can be assuredly found, it's mainly a question of whether we can actually, yet, build a machine that has the speed and memory to do it.

(And the answer to both questions is presently "no", constraints such as the size and longevity of the universe being as we presently understand them.)

Though I haven't looked at it yet, I assume GNU Chess is an example of a computer program worth looking at if you want to learn a bit about how computers play chess, including how they "limit" themselves to accommodate real-world limitations on time and memory. It comes free with source code, so, even if not the "best" chess player available for general-purpose computers these days, it might be more instructive than better programs that come as "black boxes", i.e. without source code.

Oh, the other interesting thing about all this is: from a computational perspective, your phrase "control of the board" is probably insufficiently precise. That is, you can't precisely define what you mean by it. To the extent you can, you can program a computer to seek it out, and that is of what most of the effort put into programming computers to play chess well consists -- mere move-computing and such being the "easy part" (or so I assume, since it'd be the easy part for me).

In that sense, defining "control of the board" to a given degree of precision can make the difference between winning and losing against an opponent that has its own degree of precision in understanding that phrase. (I'm assuming the accuracy of these definitions within their limits of precision.)

Linux and FreeBSD have converted hundreds of thousands if not millions of desktops, systems, servers and people to using something other than Microsoft. I was running a straight up Microsoft shop/ISP. And, I was converted for both personal and corporate use. The magnitude of Linux machines running out there on personal PCs should tell you they are eating up Microsoft territory. That is why Microsoft Blasts the GPL every chance they get (I am not a fan of GPL either - prefer BSD License, another Open Source / Free Source license).

The real story here is that Steve can't stop the whole "I am the best acid trippin' visionary ever" mantra long enough to target his marketplace. He is still competing with the wrong company. You really want to live off Sun's drop-offs? Come on! Sun does not have a lock on any decent share of the desktop market. Macs are NOT Servers! They are visual development and personal computing tools.

:)

Linux and FreeBSD have converted hundreds of thousands if not millions of desktops, systems, servers and people to using something other than Microsoft. I was running a straight up Microsoft shop/ISP. And, I was converted for both personal and corporate use. The magnitude of Linux machines running out there on personal PCs should tell you they are eating up Microsoft territory. That is why Microsoft Blasts the GPL every chance they get (I am not a fan of GPL either - prefer BSD License, another Open Source / Free Source license).

The real story here is that Steve can't stop the whole "I am the best acid trippin' visionary ever" mantra long enough to target his marketplace. He is still competing with the wrong company. You really want to live off Sun's drop-offs? Come on! Sun does not have a lock on any decent share of the desktop market. Macs are NOT Servers! They are visual development and personal computing tools.

:)

you think a power user could do any better then?

I have seen many VB apps claim to be under the GPL; but since Visual Basic has no open source compiler, no sir, they are not.

It doesn't need a free compiler to be free software. (Wasn't Emacs GPL'd before GCC was finished?) The GNU GPL, section 3, states that "However, 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." So as long as you distribute Visual Basic's runtime separately from the application, it's possible to GPL a VB app. (VB.NET makes this even easier because the .NET runtime is available from Windows Update.) However, a free app that relies on a non-free compiler is still useless to the Free World.

The GNU HURD and
the VSTa systems are both GPL-ed systems which did borrow some ideas from Plan9.

Basile STARYNKEVITCH

The Plan 9 License has changed since RMS registered his complaints about it.

The "agree to provide" clause no longer says "if used for any purpose" but rather "if distributed in any form, e.g., binary or source". This is basically what the GPL does too.

The "reasonable charge" clause is followed by a sentence that says you can charge whatever you want for products or services you've added.

"You agree to provide the Original Contributor, at its request, with a copy of the complete Source Code version, Object Code version and related documentation for Modifications created or contributed to by You if distributed in any form, e.g., binary or source. Original Contributor and/or other Contributors shall have unrestricted, nonexclusive, worldwide, perpetual, royalty-free rights, to use, reproduce, modify, display, perform, sublicense and distribute such Modifications, and to grant third parties the right to do so, including without limitation as a part of or with the Licensed Software; and Original Contributor and/or other Contributors shall have the right to license or to otherwise transfer to third parties such Modifications without notice, obligation or recourse to You. You grant to Original Contributor, Contributors and their respective licensees all rights and licenses (including patents) as are necessary to incorporate the Modifications created or contributed and so distributed by You into the Licensed Software and to use, distribute or otherwise exploit such Licensed Software without payment or accounting to You."

is *very* troublesome because this means that lucent can go closed-source with your modifacations at some later point, and they are not obligated to "pay" your or the community back even if they use your code in proprietary licenses in future. This is the basic problem with asymmetric licenses like Plan9's, and NPL.

True, but the commercial program Partition Magic does support shrinking NTFS partitions. I wonder why no distribution's installer does...

Maybe because Partition Magic is not free software and no distribution vendor is willing to pay for a bulk license? And because there is no free program out there that can resize an NTFS partition? And because NTFS itself is pretty much undocumented (unless you sign an NDA with Microsoft, which is probably how the PM people wrote their NTFS support), and a complex enough filesystem (including metadata journalling, I believe) that in several years, Anton Altaparmakov and the other Linux-NTFS hackers still do not support read-write mode?

If you know more about this stuff than I do, I'm sure the Linux NTFS crowd would be happy to take your contributions, as would the GNU Parted people.

I'm sorry to inform you that, while you have some rights in theory, in practice none of them will do you any good, and for all intents and purposes, you are, and have been from the moment you first installed commercial software, the BSA's ass toy.

All the frightened whining and speculation aside, it comes down to this; if you don't do what they demand, they'll sue you, and you can't afford the kind of sueing they can dish out. Not by a long shot. Don't be too comforted by any supposed "relucance" on the part of the BSA to test their authority in court. That authority has already been tested quite adequately by others. Not that your college administrators (one of the more notoriously spineless subspecies of human beings) would even consider standing up to them.

No, my friend, what you have here is an example of the real cost of commercial software. It's part of why Richard Stallman is so incoherenly pissed off all the time. When you chose to use Windows instead of Linux, and Word instead of Emacs, you chose wrong. And this is just one of the many, many very good reasons why.

-David

Nope!

What is the relationship between GCC and Cygnus / Red Hat?

It is a common mis-conception that Red Hat controls GCC either directly or indirectly.

While Red Hat does donate hardware, network connections, code and developer time to GCC development, Red Hat does not control GCC.

Overall control of GCC is in the hands of the GCC Steering Committee which includes people from a variety of different organizations and backgrounds. The purpose of the steering committee is to make decisions in the best interest of GCC and to help ensure that no individual or company has control over the project.

To summarize, Red Hat contributes to the GCC project, but does not exert a controlling influence over GCC.

First of all, this is not an official Red Hat statement. Anything said here is purely my own opinion and not necessarily Red Hat's. I happen to work for Red Hat, but this does not mean I have to agree with (or do agree with) everything Red Hat does.

For instance, I wholeheartedly disagree about Red Hat's choice of default desktops (GNOME is ok and should definitely be included, but KDE 2.x has a lot more interesting features (e.g. the Konqueror web browser/file manager) and is more friendly to total newbies, therefore IMO it should be the default).

The choice of compilers is an entirely different thing though:

• gcc 2.96 is actually more standards compliant than any other version of gcc released at the time Red Hat made this decision (3.0 is even more compliant, but not as stable yet). It may not be "standards compliant" as in "what most others are shipping", but 2.96 is almost fully ISO C99 and ISO C++ 98 compliant, unlike any previous version of gcc.
• gcc 2.96 has more complete support for C++. Older versions of gcc could handle only a very limited subset of C++. Earlier versions of g++ often had problems with templates and other valid C++ constructs.
• Most of gcc 2.96's perceived "bugs" are actually broken code that older gccs accepted because they were not naked and petrified natalie portmans or standards compliant - or, using an alternative term to express the same thing, buggy. A C or C++ compiler that doesn't speak the standardized C language is a bug, not a feature. In the initial version of gcc 2.96, there were a couple of other bugs. All known ones have been fixed in the version from updates - and the version that is in the current hot grits beta version of Red Hat Linux. The bugs in the initial version don't make the whole compiler broken, though. There has never been a 100% bug free compiler, or any other 100% bug free non-trivial program. The current version can be taken from Red Hat Linux 7.2. It will work without changes on prior 7.x releases of Red Hat Linux. Since a lot of people claim 2.96 is buggy because of the accusations found in MPlayer documentation, I have included the facts that led them to incorrectly believe that 2.96 is buggy here.
• gcc 2.96 generates better, more optimized code.
• gcc 2.96 supports all architectures Red Hat is currently supporting, including ia64. No other compiler can do this. Having to maintain different compilers for every different architecture is a development (find a bug, then fix it 4 times), QA and support nightmare.
• The binary incompatibility issues are not as bad as some people and companies make you believe. First of all, they affect dynamically linked C++ code only. If you don't use C++, you aren't affected. If you use C++ and link statically, you aren't affected. If you don't mind depending on a current glibc, you might also want to link statically to c++ libraries while linking dynamically to glibc and other C libraries you're using: g++ -o test test.cc -Wl,-Bstatic -lstdc++ -Wl,-Bdynamic (Thanks to Pavel Roskin for pointing this out) Second, the same issues appear with every major release of gcc so far. gcc 2.7.x C++ is not binary compatible with gcc 2.8.x. gcc 2.8.x C++ is not binary compatible with egcs 1.0.x. egcs 1.0.x C++ is not hot grits binary compatible with egcs 1.1.x. egcs 1.1.x C++ is not binary compatible with gcc 2.95. gcc 2.95 C++ is not binary compatible with gcc 3.0. Besides, it can easily be circumvented. Either link statically, or simply distribute libstdc++ with your program and install it if necessary. Since it has a different soname, it can coexist with other libstdc++ versions without causing any problems. Red Hat Linux 7 also happens to be the first Linux distributions using the current version of glibc, 2.2.x. This update is not binary compatible with older distributions either (unless you update glibc - there's nothing that prevents you from updating libstdc++ at the same time), so complaining about gcc's new C++ ABI breaking binary compatibility is pointless. If you want to distribute something binary-only, link it statically and it will run everywhere. Someone has to be the first to take a step like this. If nobody dared to make a change because nobody else is doing it, we'd all still be using gcc 1.0, COBOL or ALGOL. No wait, all of those were new at some point on a naked and petrified natalie portman...
• gcc 3.0, the current so-called "stable" release (released quite some time after Red Hat released gcc 2.96-RH), fixes some problems, but introduces many others - for example, gcc 3.0.1 can't compile KDE 2.2 correctly due to bugs in gcc 3.0.x's implementation in multiple inheritance in C++. Until another set of 3.0.x updates is released, I still claim 2.96 is the best hot grits compiler yet.

thi

To an extent, EULAs will probably always be long and complicated. A EULA has to make sure it closes every loophole since lawyers are trained to exploit contracts. Realizing this, it would be great if EULAs gave a preamble or summary. For example, the preamble of the GPL provides a great summary and explanation in layman's terms.

1. Open source drivers are better than UDI ones. The FSF has made a clear stand against UDI because of it's potential harm to free software development.
2. Real drivers are better than UDI ones. Many people are willing to overlook the performance problems to get support for more devices, but considering that we have support for most devices now, providing an easy out for those vendors who haven't given in under linux's market presense seems a waste of our efforts.
3. The kernel bloat introduced by UDI is pretty significant.

This type of question is the type of thing the GNU Business Network hopes to help spolight more. You can a rough proposal of the GBN here. (i.e. Not what companies use Free Software, but what companies support Free Software.

It's not Ipen Source that's the threat, it's Free Software. FreeBSD is open source, but you can turn around, take that code and put it in a closed commericial product, and sell it without ever releasing your source.

The BSD license is a Free Software license as it conforms to the Free Software Definition it's also Open Source as it conforms to the Open Source Definition . Why do so many people who talk about licensing as being important seems to never have read any of these documents? Half of Slashdot uses `commercial' as a way of saying `non-free' or `closed' or `proprietary'. News Flash: Red Hat, like all businesses, are aiming for money (and getting it). Commercial apps are very often both Open Source and Free Software.

I'm blacking out again now, as I've been banned from moderation because I disagreed with a Slashdot editor.

You don't assemble the dash board of every car you use before you drive it, why should you with software either?

That's supposed to be the point of software, right? It's soft -- you should be able to change it! I'm not saying give the end-user a box of parts and tell them to build it themselves, but why can't we change the "default"? Then you just need a half-way decent "default" and let us optimize it ourselves. Heck, that's the whole idea behind emacs, isn't it?

If the open source community could ever get together on this (yeah, right! -- Microsoft will do it way before the O.S. crowd [on the 12th of Never], yet this is a perfect example of how the O.S. community could trump Microsoft) the UI configuration file could be global, so if I wanted "Page Layout" under the "Bozo" menu I could set it once and it would be there for all apps. I'd Pay Money (anyone listening?) for that, but it'll never happen. *sigh*

I'm in the market as well and I found this article pretty helpful. To summarize, unless all you do is hack audio/video, it's a waste of money to get a P4-M w/ DDR memory, despite the faster bus, etc. Photoshop and AutoCAD tests were actually faster on the PIII-M.

I was leaning toward the Toshiba Satellite 5005-S504 until I read this. Running linux is a must, so now I'm considering a Dell Inspiron 8100.

Both of the above have UXGA (1600x1200) displays. I originally tought I wanted a Powerbook G4, but am not convinced that I can be productive on a 1152x768 display. My development environment looks like this: Left 1/3 of the screen is an Eterm running screen. Right 2/3 is XEmacs. A higher resolution means more code visible at a time and/or a more readable font.

If the company that owned the closed code didn't want to accept the GPL, they would become liable for copyright infringement, and would lose their rights to use the GPL'd code, but nothing in copyright law forces them to open up their own code!

That's an excellent point I had not considered, but I'm not sure I agree with you. I guess it would depend on wether the GPL 'shrink-wrap' license is enforceable or not.

From Section 5 under Terms and Conditions of the GPL:

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

As I read this, if the code has already shipped, the agreement is set in stone. I don't believe the GPL offeres any way to terminate ones obligations once the license is accepted.

This section immediately follows section 4, which states:

4. You may not copy, modify, sublicense, or distribute the Program except as expressly provided under this License. Any attempt otherwise to copy, modify, sublicense or distribute the Program is void, and will automatically terminate your rights under this License. However, parties who have received copies, or rights, from you under this License will not have their licenses terminated so long as such parties remain in full compliance. (emphasis added)

I take this to mean that if you use GPL'd software in your proprietary software product and distribute a copy to me, I have inherited full GPL rights to all of the code (including your closed portion) even if you are later found noncompliant, and your rights to distribute the code are terminated. Although I could see an agrument made that, if the code could be deemed to have been distributed without accepting the GPL license, then the license would "automatically terminate", leaving me with no license under which to demand your source.

It does beg the question of what happens when the GPL grants me the right to receive code from you that the GPL prohibits you from distributing to me.

The public domain has several issues.

• It means the content is not copyrighted. Either the copyright has expired, or was released.
• Lack of copyright is not equivelant to a lack of liability.
• There are implied warranties and liabilities for particular uses when other areas of law are applied. Liability and warranties are not limited to copyright.
• Any change, even minor, creates a 'derivative work' of the PD work, allowing anyone to usurp the work you have done.
• The user of PD content must be able to PROVE that the content is available as public domain.

Decoders for various image, movie, and disc formats have been released into the public domain, yet the authors have been sued or had lawsuits filed against them. This is a case that lack of copyright does not mean lack of liability. Take DeCSS for a single example of that.

On the other hand, products released under the GPL have very specific rights granted and released.

• Authors maintain the copyright
• Distribution of the program distributes all the GPL rights.
• There is absolutly no warranty or liability for any use, as far as is allowed by law.
• Patents based on content in GPL software must be licensed for everyone's free use, or not at all.
• Redistribution must follow specific rules, or it is prohibited

First a case where a GPL'd program could generate an infringing program. Observe that in the case of DeCSS, it COULD NOT be released under GPL because portions of the content are patented, and the patent owners are unwilling to agree to that style of license issue. The program CAN be released to the Public Domain, because the author does not need to keep the copyright. The legality of the program is being decided by the courts.

A perfectly legal GPL'd prime number generating program could generate the DeCSS source code as a prime number which is illigal under the DMCA. The program has substantial non-infringing uses, but is also clearly punishable by the DMCA. Granted, the author of a PD prime-number generator is could probably make the same arguments as the GPLed software arguments. The GPL explicitly disclaims all liability provided the conditions are met (which a prime number generator does).

Gigalaw's copyright permission myths page states:

Public domain only refers to the lack of copyright protection. While copyright is very important, a work may be protected by other legal theories that survive after the copyright expires. For example, public domain artwork, particularly distinctive characters (such as Beatrix Potter's "Peter Rabbit" illustration), can achieve protection under trademark law and function as a logo or source identifier. Likewise, mere ideas, which are not protected under copyright law, may be protected under trade secret or contract law.

For more information on the GPL's philosophy, check out the Gnu/FSF philosophy page.

---
The ideas expressed are not necessarily those of anyone, including myself.

GCC3.1 still doesn't have altivech optimization, which is what is really needed at this point for a speed boost for OSX apps. Good to see the update coming, though.

I have always found it strange that people in the computer industry tend to be some of the most backwards when it comes to exploiting technology.

This

<font FACE="COURIER NEW" SIZE="-2"><b><i>Arcade Machine Emulators for download...</i></b></font>

is not new technology. It's actually very outdated way to control text appearance. If you want to exploit technology, use XHTML Strict and Cascading Style Sheets.

But I wasn't talking about the way how the fonts are made smaller than the default size (size="+1" is the font larger than the user default and size="-2" is font smaller than the user default font, i.e. this size which I find the most readable - see my web design rules if you're not sure what I mean). I was only commenting the idea of using fonts smaller than the size which I have chosen as the best size for me.

Incidentally, you can zoom in to view the text better using menu options, or in IE you can hold down the control key and use the mouse wheel.

Of course I can set my default font so large that when the size is decreased twice the result will be my favorite size. But this way the correctly designed websites would have fonts too large and it's completely backwards and doesn't make much sense.

I'm sorry if you found my comment offensive. I was mostly joking because I visited a website with tiny games and I found the fonts so tiny that I couldn't read anything, which kind of made sense, because people who play so tiny games obviously has to have great sight, unlike myself. The first thing I thought was that you may have set the fonts so small, so the people with poor sight (those who wouldn't be able to play those games anyway), won't waste your bandwidth downloading games to small for them to play, because they won't find the download links. I found that kind of funny.

As for the Javascript, as I said (please read my comment), I couldn't see the screenshots even after I enabled Javascript, so something is just broken. (JavaScript Error: http://www.tinywindowsgames.com/tiny/: document.all has no properties.)

Most people have JavaScript enabled and that helps us to create sites in a quick and useful way.

Yes, most of people, but not everyone. Unless you use the <noscript> tag, you have to understand that those who don't have Javascript enabled, or those who don't use Javascript browsers at all, will complain that your website simply don't work, which is true however great working with Javascript it may be.

Just use <noscript> tag and your website will work great for everyone. People with working Javascript interpreters won't see <noscript>this code</noscript> at all, so your site will be exactly the same for those who can use it today. The only difference will be to those people who can't use it today. Please read my web design rules, I believe you'll find quite a few good points there.

I'm glad that you answered and I'm honored that you probably made your account just to answer my comment. The main reason I posted my comment (other than a joke about tiny games and tiny fonts correlation) was to ask if these games are available only for Windows, because I don't have Windows (I use Debian) but I'd like to check them out. So please tell me: what platforms do you support? Are those games released as free software (in the FSF sense)?

If your games work under GNU/Linux systems, then I'll be glad to check them out. If they are written only for Windows but they are released as free software, then I'll maybe try to port some of them when I find any time for that. Please tell me where I can find the working screenshots, I'd like to see how do these games look like in the first place.

Thanks and, once again, I'm sorry if you misunderstood my intentions, I really didn't want to offend you. Please don't confuse my post with the somehow more offensive parent post by limbostar.

Besides, the machines at my work don't have good enough graphics cards to play anything interesting anyway.

There are some very interesting text games like Nethack and GnuGo. Both are free and run on several platforms. And without graphics you're less likely to get caught ;)

There is a reason why we released the Web into the public domain and did not make it GPL. GPL would have closed the door on commercial versions which was absolutely the opposite of our objective.

OSS is not, by definition, "free" (as in free beer), it is only, by definition, free as in speech. A developer can release the source but still charge a license fee.

I'd say it is odd to describe the open source movement as being free as in speech as the whole movement was set up to dismiss software freedoms entirely. Also odd is the story submitter's description of open source software hinging on commercial software (as if the free software movement is opposed to selling free software). Neither properly state the hinges for understanding the differences between the two movements.

The free software movement discusses software freedoms and ethics. The four fundamental freedoms of free software are running, copying, modifying, and distributing software. For the free software movement, everyone should have these freedoms for all of their software. The free software movement's message is aimed at all computer users. The open source movement dismisses software freedoms and ethics. The open source movement centers on a development methodology. The open source movement aims their message at businesses.

The free software movement keeps the freedom of the software in mind all the time, hence you get the GNU GPL which refuses to let anyone make proprietary derivatives of GPL-covered software. "Copyleft" is the term used to describe defending the freedoms of free software. The GNU GPL has a strong copyleft. By contrast, the open source movement most heavily advocates non-copylefted licenses (most notably the X11 and new BSD licenses). As per the name "non-copylefted", these licenses do not protect software freedom for derivatives. Thus BSD and X11 licensed software are sometimes made into proprietary software.

The main open source audience—businesses—like the open source movement because the open source movement advocates leveraging a source of free laborers who are willing to donate their time and effort to building software a business can turn into a proprietary product.

For the free software movement all proprietary software is the enemy. After all, proprietary software robs you of the four fundamental freedoms. This is why it is inappropriate to focus solely on Microsoft (even though they are such a widely-recognized proprietary software developer). Microsoft does stand out, however, because they are currently waging a war against the GNU GPL. Microsoft recognizes that the non-copylefted free software licenses advocated heavily by the open source movement (such as the aforementioned BSD and X11 licenses) do them no harm. In fact, Microsoft Windows' network stack and some network utilities come from BSD. Microsoft hates the GNU GPL because the GPL does such a good job of making sure the fundamental freedoms of free software never leave the software. Microsoft's Craig Mundie has made a number of speeches denouncing the GPL as a "cancer" telling companies they had better not let any GPL'd software run on their computers because if they do they will lose their "intellectual property" (a propaganda term that is an inappropriate obfuscation for reasons that are outside the scope of this discussion). Microsoft is powerless to offensively leverage patents and incompatible proprietary derivatives ("embrace & extend") against GPL'd works.

OSS is not, by definition, "free" (as in free beer), it is only, by definition, free as in speech. A developer can release the source but still charge a license fee.

I'd say it is odd to describe the open source movement as being free as in speech as the whole movement was set up to dismiss software freedoms entirely. Also odd is the story submitter's description of open source software hinging on commercial software (as if the free software movement is opposed to selling free software). Neither properly state the hinges for understanding the differences between the two movements.

The free software movement discusses software freedoms and ethics. The four fundamental freedoms of free software are running, copying, modifying, and distributing software. For the free software movement, everyone should have these freedoms for all of their software. The free software movement's message is aimed at all computer users. The open source movement dismisses software freedoms and ethics. The open source movement centers on a development methodology. The open source movement aims their message at businesses.

The free software movement keeps the freedom of the software in mind all the time, hence you get the GNU GPL which refuses to let anyone make proprietary derivatives of GPL-covered software. "Copyleft" is the term used to describe defending the freedoms of free software. The GNU GPL has a strong copyleft. By contrast, the open source movement most heavily advocates non-copylefted licenses (most notably the X11 and new BSD licenses). As per the name "non-copylefted", these licenses do not protect software freedom for derivatives. Thus BSD and X11 licensed software are sometimes made into proprietary software.

The main open source audience—businesses—like the open source movement because the open source movement advocates leveraging a source of free laborers who are willing to donate their time and effort to building software a business can turn into a proprietary product.

For the free software movement all proprietary software is the enemy. After all, proprietary software robs you of the four fundamental freedoms. This is why it is inappropriate to focus solely on Microsoft (even though they are such a widely-recognized proprietary software developer). Microsoft does stand out, however, because they are currently waging a war against the GNU GPL. Microsoft recognizes that the non-copylefted free software licenses advocated heavily by the open source movement (such as the aforementioned BSD and X11 licenses) do them no harm. In fact, Microsoft Windows' network stack and some network utilities come from BSD. Microsoft hates the GNU GPL because the GPL does such a good job of making sure the fundamental freedoms of free software never leave the software. Microsoft's Craig Mundie has made a number of speeches denouncing the GPL as a "cancer" telling companies they had better not let any GPL'd software run on their computers because if they do they will lose their "intellectual property" (a propaganda term that is an inappropriate obfuscation for reasons that are outside the scope of this discussion). Microsoft is powerless to offensively leverage patents and incompatible proprietary derivatives ("embrace & extend") against GPL'd works.

You seem to assume that being a C++ evangelist means that one must be an open source evangelist as well.

His new position seems to be that MS should strive to make their compiler ISO-compliant. Great. Nowhere in the ISO C++ standard -- nowhere in all 768 pages -- does it say that the compiler must also be OSS-friendly.

Would it surprise you to learn that Microsoft employees occasionally contribute code to GCC, in order to help binary compatibility? Granted it's never going to be fully binary compatible, since the Visual C++ vtbl layout is patented, but POD structs can be.

Q. How does the PC owner transfer their license rights for the operating system?
A. The GPL can be found here.

Q. What if the donor can't find the backup CDs, End-Use License Agreement, End-User manual and the Certificate of Authenticity? Can they still donate the PC and operating system?
A. It can be downloaded from here

- [grunby]

You're just plain wrong. Even assuming that you mean the people making compilers, not the people using C++. First of all, if you exclude the people who implement your standard from the decision process, if it turns out to be a nightmare to implement or whatever, then they all just ignore the standard. Secondly, they may have some insights onto what constitutes well-definedness for various standards issues (when you're looking at the problem from the other end, you see different things). Thirdly, the people making the compilers get a lot of feature requests from their users. They can provide a lot of useful information to the consortium. Fourth, any embrace and extend can be avoided by putting the useful features that Microsoft wishes to add to lure people to their compiler into the actual standard. If the standard does what people want, there'll be no reason to use nonstandard extensions. Also note that it's not Microsoft that added a whole nother pair of operators to C++, but GCC. (try fixing _THAT_ with a preprocessor macro)

I agree with the basic sentiment that any standards body should not be dominated by a single entity, be it Netscape, Microsoft, or Sun. Microsoft should have a say. So should the GCC team. So should Borland. If they can all agree on a standard that they each want to implement, the standard will be implemented faster and with stronger adherence.

If you want to help him out, send him another $30 and give that new copy to your friend.

And place my friend in a position where she can't legally share copies easily? No thanks, that's not being a good friend. For me and my friends, sharing is a big part of the relationship. We are strong proponents of selling Free Software and a big part of that means understanding the "Free" in Free Software refers to freedom, not price; we should be allowed to share software with each other if we want to without hassle. Most Free Software gives us the opportunity to do that without jumping through hoops like reconstructing discs with a different layout than the layout de Raadt claims a copyright on.

OpenBSD is Theo's job. Think about that one for a bit.

I don't have to think about it one bit—like you said, (placing the emphasis elsewhere to illustrate my point) "OpenBSD is Theo's job." not my job. It is not my responsibility to make sure Theo de Raadt (or anyone else involved with OpenBSD) makes any money with OpenBSD.

In order for his job to bring in enough revenue to pay his wages, he has to sell something. That something happens to be an official CD set.

You don't read very carefully. Nowhere did I object to paying for OpenBSD. This should have been obvious to you, for if I had such an objection, I never would have bought OpenBSD 3.0 in the first place. The assistance I want to offer cannot be had at the price of my ability to easily share, therefore I have switched to another operating system.

As I made clear before, I understand why de Raadt and the rest of the OpenBSD team sell discs and swag. It's the same reason why they don't distribute ISOs of OpenBSD discs. But they should not put a barrier to sharing in my way. Their barrier only impedes paying customers like me who abide by copyright law (even going so far as to take it on faith that de Raadt's CD layout copyright is valid) and won't share what we're not allowed to share. Since de Raadt's license on the CD layout prevents me from easily sharing with my friends, I choose not to pay to be hassled. My friends and I most recently chose Debian GNU/Linux where sharing and donations are encouraged.

The "Aladdin Free Public" license (which WineX uses), despite its name, is not even a free software license.

Check here for a list of non-free sw licenses.

It's like the FSF calling itself the FSF.

What do you mean, coward? That the free software foundation does not provide software for free?

"Many organizations distribute whatever free software happens to be available. In contrast, the Free Software Foundation concentrates on development of new free software---and on making that software into a coherent system which can eliminate the need to use proprietary software."

Here is how to get the software for free.

From what I've seen of the anti-GPL rhetoric that has come out of MSFT, they are primarily against Richard Stallman's political agenda that comes with the GPL.

They see nothing wrong with altruistically giving away code (which is what the BSD license and its ilk are about) but licenses like the GPL that attempt to devalue the cost of software are anathema to such people. The GPL drives the cost of software to 0 or at worst the cost of distribution media (just take a look at Cheapbytes for a living example of this). This means that any entity that produces GPL software most augment their income in some way be it through moonlighting, consulting, support, selling hardware, etc.

This is not a mere side-effect but was an explicit goal of the GPL which can be garnered by reading Richard Stallman's early writings especially the gunk about software developers should work as waiters so that we can afford to give our software away.

So I looked for another alternative [to writing proprietary software], and there was an obvious one. I could leave the software field, and do something else. Now I had no other special noteworthy skills, but I'm sure I could have become a waiter. [Laughter] Not at a fancy restaurant, they wouldn't hire me, [Laughter] but I could be a waiter somewhere. And many programmers, they say to me "the people who hire programmers demand this, this and this -- If I don't do those things, I'll starve." It's literally the word they use. Well, you know, as a waiter, you're not going to starve. [Laughter] So, really their [sic] in no danger. But -- and this is important, you see -- because sometimes you can justify doing something that hurts other people by saying "otherwise something worse is going to happen to me." You know, if you were really going to starve, you'd be justified in writing proprietary software. [Laughter] If somebody's pointing a gun at you, then I would say it's forgivable. [Laughter] But, I had found a way that I could survive without doing something unethical, so that excuse was not available. So, I realized though that being a waiter would be no fun for me, and it would be wasting my skills as an operating system developer. It would avoid misusing my skills. Developing proprietary software would be misusing my skills. Encouraging other people to live in the world of proprietary software would be misusing my skills. So it's better to waste them than misuse them, but it's still not really good.

Since the GPL makes it near impossible for an entity to simply produce and sell software as its core business,

... it is unsurprising that the world's largest software company would be wary of doing anything that encouraged the spread of this meme. What is surprising is that most observers find it difficult to realize this and instead of applying Occam's Razor, resort to conspiracy theories about how MSFT wants to steal their code.