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This is what RMS and other Free Software advocates mean when they say that the GPL actually frees software for others, rather than restricting it. The Linux kernel, GNOME, and other Free projects will never have this problem.

These requirements apply to the modified work as a whole. If identifiable sections of that work are not derived from the Program, and can be reasonably considered independent and separate works in themselves, then this License, and its terms, do not apply to those sections when you distribute them as separate works. But when you distribute the same sections as part of a whole which is a work based on the Program, the distribution of the whole must be on the terms of this License, whose permissions for other licensees extend to the entire whole, and thus to each and every part regardless of who wrote it.

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

Thus, the notion that the license implies that you can't use Borland C++ to compile a GPLed program is just silly. And if someone posted the story on that basis, this makes them irresponsible idiots.

What is, on the other hand, less clear, is what transformations C++ Builder can do on your code, and whether THAT could lead to Borland having the right to restrict what you do.

People may remember back to the days of Bison before version 1.24. From the Conditions for Using Bison:

As of Bison version 1.24, we have changed the distribution terms for yyparse to permit using Bison's output in non-free programs. Formerly, Bison parsers could be used only in programs that were free software.

The other GNU programming tools, such as the GNU C compiler, have never had such a requirement. They could always be used for non-free software. The reason Bison was different was not due to a special policy decision; it resulted from applying the usual General Public License to all of the Bison source code.

The output of the Bison utility--the Bison parser file--contains a verbatim copy of a sizable piece of Bison, which is the code for the yyparse function. (The actions from your grammar are inserted into this function at one point, but the rest of the function is not changed.) When we applied the GPL terms to the code for yyparse, the effect was to restrict the use of Bison output to free software.

In similar manner, if you use C++ Builder to generate code, as might be the case if you used the Drag'n'Drool interfacing to generate GUI code, it is plausible that Borland might have something to say about what you do with the code that was generated by their code generator.

A responsible person would, before submitting this story, try to verify some such information, rather than generating an irresponsible drive-by flaming of Borland. Of course, a responsible person would, before accepting the story for publishing, do some modicum of verification.

Few, of course, would accuse Slashdot of being a place for responsible people.

Article: ... Torvalds adopted a General Public License that said anybody could copy his code, change...

thinthief: Let's get our facts right! They are obviously referring to the GPL...

It is called the General Public License. Read it yourself:

http://www.gnu.org/copyleft/gpl.html

"GNU Public License" is technically incorrect.

Employee also agrees that all inventions/advancements developed or created by Employee while employed by the Company, are the sole property of the Company and may not be used independently for financial gain or advancement of the Employee.

in the contract, i was asked to sign, i send back this response:

i don't like this one at all, as it sounds, even the work i do at home, would be property of the company. I CAN NOT ACCEPT THIS!
i must be able to continue working on other open source projects at my discretion. neither do i like the fact that i may not use my own ideas as i wish. i have no problem that you uses my code however you want, but i want to be able to do the same.
i want to work for you because i want to advance myself, if i can not use my work for my own advancement, where is the point?
in the beginning you wrote:
> We are a 100% linux shop and believe in Open Source.
if that is true, then please allow me to continue to publish my own code as open source.

the paragraph was changed with out any further argument to this one:

Employee also agrees that all inventions/advancements developed or created by Employee while employed by the Company, are the sole property of the Company and will be published with the GNU General Public License Version 2.

other than that it's a standard contract, with a lot of legaleeze inside....
i have no idea though if that was looked over with the companies lawyers, i am guessing not, but i think it's worth a try...
if not there are other jobs.

greetings, eMBee.
--

Employee also agrees that all inventions/advancements developed or created by Employee while employed by the Company, are the sole property of the Company and may not be used independently for financial gain or advancement of the Employee.

in the contract, i was asked to sign, i send back this response:

i don't like this one at all, as it sounds, even the work i do at home, would be property of the company. I CAN NOT ACCEPT THIS!
i must be able to continue working on other open source projects at my discretion. neither do i like the fact that i may not use my own ideas as i wish. i have no problem that you uses my code however you want, but i want to be able to do the same.
i want to work for you because i want to advance myself, if i can not use my work for my own advancement, where is the point?
in the beginning you wrote:
> We are a 100% linux shop and believe in Open Source.
if that is true, then please allow me to continue to publish my own code as open source.

the paragraph was changed with out any further argument to this one:

Employee also agrees that all inventions/advancements developed or created by Employee while employed by the Company, are the sole property of the Company and will be published with the GNU General Public License Version 2.

other than that it's a standard contract, with a lot of legaleeze inside....
i have no idea though if that was looked over with the companies lawyers, i am guessing not, but i think it's worth a try...
if not there are other jobs.
--

...you even link to GPLed libraries then you need to release the source code to your software

Which means it's illegal to release a GPL'd plugin for Winamp, right? Winamp plugins are DLLs, which are dynamically linked to the closed-source audio player. Or would Winamp be part of the "operating system" the plugin runs on under section 3 of the GNU GPL?

It would be a great example of how Free Software can work, if Blender was Free Software.

It's not. It may not cost you in cash, but's binary-only and proprietary. Recheck the definition of "Free Software" please. (It's on GNU.org).

I discussed this with RMS a long time ago. He said that a GPL-only license would be sufficient.

What if RMS is wrong? The paragraph in question says:

• Finally, any free program is threatened constantly by software patents. We wish to avoid the danger that redistributors of a free program will individually obtain patent licenses, in effect making the program proprietary. To prevent this, we have made it clear that any patent must be licensed for everyone's free use or not licensed at all.

Now, suppose people write code based on this patents and the owner decides to revoke the GPL-use license. Fine, we can't write new code based on that patent any longer. But what happens to GPL code already written? So one can't use the algorithm but can re-use the code? Doesn't make sense. So, my interpretation is that when the GPL says "licensed for everyone's free use" what it means is that there may be no restriction or any room for future restrictions. From this angle, any patent, unless irrevocably free, doesn't fit the GPL.

emulator is, namely, that which emulates (tries to act like, but is not) an origial product.

So the second system to implement an API is the emulator? All X11 servers but the first implementation (incl. XF86) are emulators, right? And all Java VMs other than the first are emulators, right? And the GNU system is a UNIX® system emulator, right? Microsoft IIS is an NCSA-httpd (now Apache Server) emulator?

I'm myself a PHB and when one of my employees asked me to sign it, I did it without hesitation. You may have some trouble explaning to them the GPL concept, but throwing some Geek buzz-words around (like Linux), and pointing to some NASDAQ successes (RedHat) may help.

And another thing: encourage them to ask around in their social network.

Good Luck!

That means it won't be free. It probably can not be distributed on CDs because these can be considered commercial products (you usually pay for them). The code can not be reused in GPL programs since it adds restrictions which is not allowed by the GPL (for good reasons). Using code in any program under another license can be problematic since probably redistribution will be either explicitly or implicitly (through the non-commercial clause) restricted.

Still, it is "open source", since the source is open. That should give some insight why some people rather dislike using this term when referring to free software (especially RMS does, of course). "Open source" has a rather positive association with free software to the wider masses now. So now companies can publish non-free software and get an automatic market boost by claiming they are open source. They even made it to a Slashdot story, though they don't have anything the free software community might profit from (which the story poster consequently didn't realize, in order to support my point).

Actually, if you want a good text-based windowing system, use screen.

It sets up several different virtual "VT100s" that are easily switched between with a key combination (^A+X, where X is a letter cooresponding to a certain command you wish to use. C is spawn new window, N is switch between, K is kill window, D is detach from VT) and also lets you detach from it and logout, leaving whatever you had running easily accessible.

That right there is a nice feature because you don't have to drop everything into background mode. You could leave a tail -f /var/log/messages open in one window, and have apache pumping status info into another one, and have three or four epic's running in their own windows, even from a telnet or ssh connection.

And it will run under X, even though most people wouldn't do that. :)

GNU patch is a utility, part of a GNU system, that uses .diff files produced by diff to make modifications to a file.

The situation that shows best what kind of threat legal action against GPL violations could be is what NeXT tried to do with the GCC objective C extentions

Its not as definative as a win in court, but probably far less costly. Its still a feather in their cap and can be used in negotiations against future infringers. ("You really think you can win if we take this to court? NeXT didn't think so, so they folded".)

It is a good idea to read the FSF's copyright assignment form. Among other things, there is the following paragraph:

Upon thirty days' prior written notice, the Foundation agrees to grant me non-exclusive rights to use the Work (i.e. my changes and enhancements, not the program which I enhanced) as I see fit; (and the Foundation's rights shall otherwise continue unchanged).

So even after you have assigned copyright, you can ask for an licence to use the work (possibly selling your code as part of a proprietary application). And the FSF can't refuse this request, as that would break the contract, causing ownership of the code to revert back to you.

If you don't distribute the binaries, you don't have to distribute the source. See the second paragraph of section 0 of the GPL.

--

• If you have deep pockets, and can fight your own legal battles, this may be a non-issue.
• If you dislike the GPL or the FSF, then this is obviously a non-issue.
• If you specifically wish to take an opposite approach, of having each author of bits of the code base be responsible for copyright holding of "their bit," that takes a different approach. (As is true for the Linux kernel.)

Note that contrary to fairly common paranoid fantasies to the contrary, the author can always retain a non-exclusive copyright, as per the assignment agreement:

Upon thirty days' prior written notice, the Foundation agrees to grant me non-exclusive rights to use the Work (i.e. my changes and enhancements, not the program which I enhanced) as I see fit; (and the Foundation's rights shall otherwise continue unchanged).

That said, I support doing copyright assignments to the FSF because it allows me to do the job I want to do. When I program for GNU, I don't want to deal with lawsuits, liability insurrance, and license agreements. Canada has a screwed up enough legal system without me trying to understand what happens in the USA (Much less the rest of the world). When the FSF takes over ownership of my program, I no longer need to worry about this. I also like the fact that the FSF can choose to change/modify the licensing as appropriate.

I'm also not without protection. Specifically two things: The GPL ensures that if the FSF does get corrupted, I am free to fork and continue (taking on the legal burden myself, or with whatever organization with which I choose to associate). I am also protected by specific provisions in the assignment form:

(d) FSF agrees to grant back to Developer, and does hereby grant, non-exclusive, royalty-free and non-cancellable rights to use the Works (i.e., Developer's changes and/or enhancements, not the Program that they enhance), as Developer sees fit; this grant back does not limit FSF's rights and public rights acquired through this agreement.

4. FSF agrees that all distribution of the Works, or of any work "based on the Works", or the Program as enhanced by the Works, that takes place under the control of FSF or its agents or successors, shall be on terms that explicitly and perpetually permit anyone possessing a copy of the work to which the terms apply, and possessing accurate notice of these terms, to redistribute copies of the work to anyone on the same terms. These terms shall not restrict which members of the public copies may be distributed to. These terms shall not require a member of the public to pay any royalty to FSF or to anyone else for any permitted use of the work they apply to, or to communicate with FSF or its agents or assignees in any way either when redistribution is performed or on any other occasion.

5. FSF agrees that any program "based on the Works" offered to the public by FSF or its agents or assignees shall be offered in the form of machine-readable source code, in addition to any other forms of FSF's choosing. However, FSF is free to choose at its convenience the media of distribution for machine-readable source code and may charge a fee of its choosing for copies.

The full text if you're interested can be found at the GCC site's contributing section. If there are cases where there are "extraordinary circumstances", the FSF is sometimes willing to do up special assignment forms to help. RMS normally just deals with those, however.

If you're interested in seeing the information given to maintainers of GNU packages, take a look at Information for Maintainers of GNU software on the GNU site, specifically the section on Copyrights.

(disclaimer: I program for GNU, I don't represent, work for, etc - My opinion only...)

That said, I support doing copyright assignments to the FSF because it allows me to do the job I want to do. When I program for GNU, I don't want to deal with lawsuits, liability insurrance, and license agreements. Canada has a screwed up enough legal system without me trying to understand what happens in the USA (Much less the rest of the world). When the FSF takes over ownership of my program, I no longer need to worry about this. I also like the fact that the FSF can choose to change/modify the licensing as appropriate.

I'm also not without protection. Specifically two things: The GPL ensures that if the FSF does get corrupted, I am free to fork and continue (taking on the legal burden myself, or with whatever organization with which I choose to associate). I am also protected by specific provisions in the assignment form:

(d) FSF agrees to grant back to Developer, and does hereby grant, non-exclusive, royalty-free and non-cancellable rights to use the Works (i.e., Developer's changes and/or enhancements, not the Program that they enhance), as Developer sees fit; this grant back does not limit FSF's rights and public rights acquired through this agreement.

4. FSF agrees that all distribution of the Works, or of any work "based on the Works", or the Program as enhanced by the Works, that takes place under the control of FSF or its agents or successors, shall be on terms that explicitly and perpetually permit anyone possessing a copy of the work to which the terms apply, and possessing accurate notice of these terms, to redistribute copies of the work to anyone on the same terms. These terms shall not restrict which members of the public copies may be distributed to. These terms shall not require a member of the public to pay any royalty to FSF or to anyone else for any permitted use of the work they apply to, or to communicate with FSF or its agents or assignees in any way either when redistribution is performed or on any other occasion.

5. FSF agrees that any program "based on the Works" offered to the public by FSF or its agents or assignees shall be offered in the form of machine-readable source code, in addition to any other forms of FSF's choosing. However, FSF is free to choose at its convenience the media of distribution for machine-readable source code and may charge a fee of its choosing for copies.

The full text if you're interested can be found at the GCC site's contributing section. If there are cases where there are "extraordinary circumstances", the FSF is sometimes willing to do up special assignment forms to help. RMS normally just deals with those, however.

If you're interested in seeing the information given to maintainers of GNU packages, take a look at Information for Maintainers of GNU software on the GNU site, specifically the section on Copyrights.

(disclaimer: I program for GNU, I don't represent, work for, etc - My opinion only...)

That said, I support doing copyright assignments to the FSF because it allows me to do the job I want to do. When I program for GNU, I don't want to deal with lawsuits, liability insurrance, and license agreements. Canada has a screwed up enough legal system without me trying to understand what happens in the USA (Much less the rest of the world). When the FSF takes over ownership of my program, I no longer need to worry about this. I also like the fact that the FSF can choose to change/modify the licensing as appropriate.

I'm also not without protection. Specifically two things: The GPL ensures that if the FSF does get corrupted, I am free to fork and continue (taking on the legal burden myself, or with whatever organization with which I choose to associate). I am also protected by specific provisions in the assignment form:

(d) FSF agrees to grant back to Developer, and does hereby grant, non-exclusive, royalty-free and non-cancellable rights to use the Works (i.e., Developer's changes and/or enhancements, not the Program that they enhance), as Developer sees fit; this grant back does not limit FSF's rights and public rights acquired through this agreement.

4. FSF agrees that all distribution of the Works, or of any work "based on the Works", or the Program as enhanced by the Works, that takes place under the control of FSF or its agents or successors, shall be on terms that explicitly and perpetually permit anyone possessing a copy of the work to which the terms apply, and possessing accurate notice of these terms, to redistribute copies of the work to anyone on the same terms. These terms shall not restrict which members of the public copies may be distributed to. These terms shall not require a member of the public to pay any royalty to FSF or to anyone else for any permitted use of the work they apply to, or to communicate with FSF or its agents or assignees in any way either when redistribution is performed or on any other occasion.

5. FSF agrees that any program "based on the Works" offered to the public by FSF or its agents or assignees shall be offered in the form of machine-readable source code, in addition to any other forms of FSF's choosing. However, FSF is free to choose at its convenience the media of distribution for machine-readable source code and may charge a fee of its choosing for copies.

The full text if you're interested can be found at the GCC site's contributing section. If there are cases where there are "extraordinary circumstances", the FSF is sometimes willing to do up special assignment forms to help. RMS normally just deals with those, however.

If you're interested in seeing the information given to maintainers of GNU packages, take a look at Information for Maintainers of GNU software on the GNU site, specifically the section on Copyrights.

(disclaimer: I program for GNU, I don't represent, work for, etc - My opinion only...)

You've never purchased software by downloading it?

Actually, no, I don't think I have. But I don't buy very much software -- almost all the software I use is free software. (And no, this doesn't mean warez. I used to do the warez thing when I was a lot younger, but I don't any more.)

As for paying for intangable goods, do you have cable tv? Ever used pay per view? Ever go to a concert? Ever go to the movies?

But I'm not buying the music or other content in these cases. I'm paying for a service. In the case of cable TV (I have it; or rather it's in my wife's name and I pay the bills ;-) ), I'm paying for the service of having audio/video content streamed into my house over a wire. I'm not paying for the actual content. No, I've never used Pay Per View, but that's even more obviously a service instead of an intangible good. Yes, I've gone to concerts -- I'm not paying the musicians for a copy of their song; instead, I'm paying them for the service of performing in my presence. Movies are also a service -- I'm paying for the privilege of seeing a film before it's available on video cassette, on a larger screen and with a better sound system than I have at home. When I go to see a movie, I'm clearly not purchasing a copy of the film!

Where do you draw the line? Is /. a service or a product? Is it something different?

Slashdot is clearly not a product -- I haven't paid any money or exchanged anything of value for it. I'd say it's a service.

The basic distinction is whether, at the end of the transaction, anything has changed ownership. If I buy a video cassette at K-Mart, then I own that copy of the movie that's on it. If I rent the same video cassette from Blockbuster, and then return it, then I don't own the copy of the movie that was on the video cassette -- I just paid for the privilege of watching it for a limited time. So the video cassette from K-Mart is a product, and the one from Blockbuster is a service.

Would you pay for a 'pay per listen' service is it charged a fixed monthly fee, ala cable tv or internet access, and allowed unlimited listening to CD quality music anywhere anytime, but didn't allow copying? I might based on the price and the selection.

If it were truly "pay per listen", no, I wouldn't. I don't want anyone tracking my listening habits that closely. That gives me the creeps.

If what you're talking about is a digital music subscription service that works just like cable TV (several dozen channels of music, you listen to whatever you want whenever you want), then yes, I'd consider it -- depending on the terms and conditions, and the price and quality, etc. But the selection would have to be huge because the drawbacks (someone else is controlling which content gets played, and they'll probably have commercials and those horrible fucking disc jockeys (make them die!!)) are obvious. It's what we're trying to get away from. Go turn on commercial FM radio some time and listen to how awful it has become. Or better yet, don't -- it really is bad.

If you're talking about a huge Napster-like repository of music hosted by the record companies, from which we can hear any song we want on demand, for a flat monthly/yearly/whatever fee -- then this is better, but suffers from the privacy concerns I expressed above. In my own cynical mind, I already envision this thing spewing commercials at me in between songs, or with continuous flashing, animated banner ads. Or probably both. And with no anonymity, they'd be sure to psycho-analyze me based on my listening habits, cross-reference with their good ol' buddies over at double-click, and develop a personalized propaganda program just for me. And did I mention, they'd have my credit card number?

(And they'd probably mix DJ voices right into the song streams, like radio does. That could be automated pretty easily, I think. Will we never be free of the laughing stupidity of those idiots?)

So, how do we get professional music in the future without becoming mind-slaves to the machine? Every way I think about it, it ends up just like radio did, but worse.

(Have you read Stephenson's The Diamond Age? (You must have; I think it's required reading for all slashdot users....) Every manufactured item in that society is built by nanotechnology. Unless you pay an arm and a leg for a custom version of something, it's got commercials on it. The main character was promoted because he developed chopsticks that had commercials on them (in Mandarin Chinese, which is written vertically). The side-effect of this is that most of the people walk around like zombies, completely immersed in an endless sea of advertisements and propaganda, no longer capable of independent thought.)

Sorry for the paranoia. Something to think about, though. Maybe I'll at least give you a good laugh....

Therefore, by modifying or distributing the Program (or any work based on the Program), you indicate your acceptance of this License

Compiling is modifying. Linking is modifying (otherwise, there would be no need for Lesser GPL). Any irreversible transformation is modifying in the eyes of the law (tarballing or zipping is "mere aggregation," not modifying, because it can straightforwardly and automatically be undone).

So by compiling the program, you modify it and accept the License including without limitation the NO WARRANTY provision. The only way a program can be executed without being compiled would be:

• if it's in an interpreted language such as Scheme or Perl, or
• if it comes as precompiled binaries, in which case its installer is probably considered clickwrap.

Therefore, by modifying or distributing the Program (or any work based on the Program), you indicate your acceptance of this License

Compiling is modifying. Linking is modifying (otherwise, there would be no need for Lesser GPL). Any irreversible transformation is modifying in the eyes of the law (tarballing or zipping is "mere aggregation," not modifying, because it can straightforwardly and automatically be undone).

So by compiling the program, you modify it and accept the License including without limitation the NO WARRANTY provision. The only way a program can be executed without being compiled would be:

• if it's in an interpreted language such as Scheme or Perl, or
• if it comes as precompiled binaries, in which case its installer is probably considered clickwrap.

...and receives no protection under UCITA.

GNU GPL is a non-shrink-wrap license. (However, if you are using InstallShield instead of RPM to install your packages, it is shrink-wrap.) Non-shrink-wrap licenses have no protection under UCITA.

GNU GPL is a non-shrink-wrap license. (However, if you are using InstallShield instead of RPM to install your packages, it is shrink-wrap.) Non-shrink-wrap licenses have no protection under UCITA.

GRUB offers the best boot loader in the business. Caldera offers it in eDesktop. As well, I believe a BSD or two use it.

btw, I'm a bit biased as I work for Caldera.

If you want a way to add regular expression functionality to your servlets, import the gnu regexp package. Very handy, as are many of the other packages on the page.

tsteel

As a professional IT consultant working for one of the top names in the software industry I am working on a detailed report into the "open source" phenomenon (thanks to various people for pointing out that it is not freeware per se) as started by Linus Torvalds with his Linux operating system some six years ago. I browse this forum for insights into the Linux user and developer communities.

Allow me to correct you a bit further. "Open Source" is essentially a marketing program (on practical grounds rather then idealogical) for "free software". Richard Stallman started the free software movement when he started the GNU Project in 1984 with the aim of creating a freely-distributable reimplementation of Unix.

Linus Torvalds significantly popularized free software with Linux (which he started in 1991). Linus provided the last missing piece of the hitherto incomplete GNU system -- the kernel. It's a critical component, but bear in mind that without the prior work of the GNU project, Linux wouldn't be where it is today.

The "Open Source" movement was created in response to Netscape's announcement in January 1998 that they would release the source code to their browser. The relabeling has been very effective, as can be seen in events of the past two years. Netscape's source code release has been viewed by some as less successful, but Mozilla is alive and well, and has made very significant progress since the original source code release. Jury's still out on this one; my personal belief is that Netscape will be making a comeback in the browser marked based on the Mozilla efforts.

Anyway, my question is, is there a fully-featured open source RDBMS out there? Your help is appreciated.

You might want to check out PostgreSQL. It's an object-oriented RDBMS with SQL support as well as transactional integrity. It used to be considered only suitable for academic use, but much work has been done in the last 5 years, and from what I've heard it's one of the most solid free databases out there...

As a professional IT consultant working for one of the top names in the software industry I am working on a detailed report into the "open source" phenomenon (thanks to various people for pointing out that it is not freeware per se) as started by Linus Torvalds with his Linux operating system some six years ago. I browse this forum for insights into the Linux user and developer communities.

Allow me to correct you a bit further. "Open Source" is essentially a marketing program (on practical grounds rather then idealogical) for "free software". Richard Stallman started the free software movement when he started the GNU Project in 1984 with the aim of creating a freely-distributable reimplementation of Unix.

Linus Torvalds significantly popularized free software with Linux (which he started in 1991). Linus provided the last missing piece of the hitherto incomplete GNU system -- the kernel. It's a critical component, but bear in mind that without the prior work of the GNU project, Linux wouldn't be where it is today.

The "Open Source" movement was created in response to Netscape's announcement in January 1998 that they would release the source code to their browser. The relabeling has been very effective, as can be seen in events of the past two years. Netscape's source code release has been viewed by some as less successful, but Mozilla is alive and well, and has made very significant progress since the original source code release. Jury's still out on this one; my personal belief is that Netscape will be making a comeback in the browser marked based on the Mozilla efforts.

Anyway, my question is, is there a fully-featured open source RDBMS out there? Your help is appreciated.

You might want to check out PostgreSQL. It's an object-oriented RDBMS with SQL support as well as transactional integrity. It used to be considered only suitable for academic use, but much work has been done in the last 5 years, and from what I've heard it's one of the most solid free databases out there...

> the FSF still hasn't approved the QPL as a real OSS license?
Oh, dear. The Free Software Foundation deal with Free Software. They dislike OSS as watered-down, bastardized version of Free Software. They has never approved anything as OSS, and they will never do: it's not their role.
Oh, and I just look on FSF's comment about various licenses and they say: [the QPL] is a non-copyleft free software license incompatible with the GNU GPL [except if you] resolve the conflict [...] by adding a notice like this to it:
As a special exception, you have permission to link this program with the Qt library and distribute executables, as long as you follow the requirements of the GNU GPL in regard to all of the software in the executable aside from Qt .
They say it's a Free Software license. So the dude's point is non applicable.
Furthermore, saying "Qt is evil" is trolling, or flaming, or just displaying stupidity in public, but not debating.

Stealing MP3s is illegal... the bottom line is that it is theft, plain and simple. Argue it any way you want but it is still theft.

Who am I "stealing" the MP3 from? Did Metallica serve it up to me personally from their Napster server, and when I downloaded it, they didn't have it any more? I don't think so.

Copyright infringement is NOT theft.

There's nothing being stolen. Sure, it's a crime, it's illegal publishing, but that's very different from stealing - the first amendment doesn't protect stealing but it certainly protects publishing! Metallica's recordings are not their "property". The phrase intellectual property makes you think that; don't let yourself be mind-controlled like that. You buy the CD, you own it, you can do whatever you want with it (use it as a frisbee if it's a recent Metallica pop album). You just can't republish the recording because that would be copyright infringement.

But there's no stealing happening anywhere with Napster. Using that word at all just serves to amplify RIAA spin. (Heh, I love the English language, "amplify RIAA spin".)

The real war here is between free speech and the fat wallets of the media empires and the IP laywers (who works for who there, eh?). I personally think it's ironic that the first amendment says "Congress shall pass no law... abridging the freedom of speech..." but the constitutional basis of copyright is "The Congress shall have Power... To promote the Progress of Science and useful Arts, by securing for limited Times to Authors and Inventors the exclusive right to their respective writings and discoveries;" so a must not is being superceded by a may. The Constitution doesn't say there has to be any copyright law at all, only that there can be.

And is "No Leaf Clover" really a "useful Art"?? I kinda dig that song but I'm not sure how "useful" it is. :)

Eventually the market will evolve where they are cheaper.

Where do you live, that CD prices have been going down? When did that start exactly?

"C'mon, the only payment the author/sponsor is asking for is two lines of text on boot up"

Counting the 12 names on the credits-page of the reiserfs web site, at 2 lines per contributor, that's 24 lines. This reminds me of the FSF's note on why the BSD advertising clause became a Bad Thing.

But, regarless of the degree of severity of annoyance-features, speaking as a free-software-developer: why does someone intentionally add inconvenience for their users? Actually, hell--I'll ask that just as a software-developer. To say something like, `you can only use my software if you keep this CREDITS-file on-disk at all times, and read it before every invokation of the software', is mean and wrong. And, no, it doesn't matter how much inconvenience or annoyance my users are willing to tolerate, I'm writing software for them to help make their world better.

A friend of mine recently bought a used computer with Windows 95 on it, and he wanted to reinstall the system to try to fix some broken aspects of the system. He had a perfectly legal Windows-95 installation-disc. When the installation-routine asked for the registration number, we typed it in, and it was rejected. We tried other numbers, and they were all rejected until we reformatted the drive and had a fresh go at it.

A while back, I discovered that Microsoft Word refused to open multiple file with the same name simultaneously, even if they were in different directories.

The amount of intentional difficulty that had been built into these systems is just mind-boggling.... That is not the right thing to do.

XML can't replace proprietary document formats. That's like asking if ASCII could replace proprietary document formats. XML and ASCII are not really file formats. They simply don't do the same job as file formats.

If you have ever used lex or yacc, then you'll know what I mean when I say that XML parsers essentially do the job of lex, but not of yacc. An XML parser is little more than a scanner which breaks a file into chunks to simplify the next level of processing. The XML parser gives the illusion of hierarchical processing that lex can't do, but it's an illusion nonetheless.

Your example of Word formats changing is a perfect one. If Word95 used XML, Word97 could still be incompatible if it used different elements and attributes.

So no, XML will not replace proprietary file formats. XML + proprietary DTD specifications + proprietary semantics could replace proprietary file formats. Is this an improvement? Probably. Will it make backward (or forward, or sideways) compatibility problems go away? Nope.
--
Patrick Doyle

XML can't replace proprietary document formats. That's like asking if ASCII could replace proprietary document formats. XML and ASCII are not really file formats. They simply don't do the same job as file formats.

If you have ever used lex or yacc, then you'll know what I mean when I say that XML parsers essentially do the job of lex, but not of yacc. An XML parser is little more than a scanner which breaks a file into chunks to simplify the next level of processing. The XML parser gives the illusion of hierarchical processing that lex can't do, but it's an illusion nonetheless.

Your example of Word formats changing is a perfect one. If Word95 used XML, Word97 could still be incompatible if it used different elements and attributes.

So no, XML will not replace proprietary file formats. XML + proprietary DTD specifications + proprietary semantics could replace proprietary file formats. Is this an improvement? Probably. Will it make backward (or forward, or sideways) compatibility problems go away? Nope.
--
Patrick Doyle

No, the hard part of any project is to get the ball rolling. This RMS did in the 70's when he wrote emacs. Then he went on to write GCC. Two essential tools in software creation, an editor, and a compiler. Go write a compiler come back and tell me that a monolithic kernel is so difficult to implement. the FSF would have come out with their kernel years ago if they did not attempt such an ambitious project. HURD is a much more advanced project than Linux. Linux is warmed over reused technology. If HURD ever gets done people will drop the Linux kernel like a hot potato. Linus is a great pitchman, and a fair coder, but he's no Stallman. The difference is in vision. Linus will attempt to copy something, RMS will see what could be, and create it.

Really I don't think that RMS has anything left to prove in the software development world. A thousand years from now he'll still be a legend, just from his accomplishments to date. So I can understand him wanting to break ground in new, more political arenas.

"GNU/Linux" is RMS self-aggrandizement, and is worthy of a marketing droid.

I think this is proof that a greater than 60 point IQ differential makes communications impossible. Not everyone can understand RMS, oh well... By the way, for laughs go add up the code that Linus has contributed, and the FSF code in a typical Linux distribution. You might be suprised that it's all FSF software but the kernel!

Something tells me that if you stated this in front of Linus he'd either laugh, or bitch slap you to the ground, depending on how many beers he had in him.

Sometimes methinks the FSF goes after violators in a much less overt way by pressuring the company for a donation of money or equipment in exchange for not going to court.

Anyone seen this happen to their company?

timbu

Guess what, kids -- It is the responsibility of the original author to enforce the conditions laid out in the GPL. Not Slashdot, not the FSF, and not the GNU Project. Lets suppose Evil Company X steals your code...do you have the resources in place to defend the GPL yourself? There will probably be a day in the not-too-distant future when a company simply decides to muscle its way past the GPL and reap the harvest of yours, and everyone else's work for their own benefit.

Quoting from the GNU Project's own document on how to deal with possible GPL violations:

"The copyright holder is the one who is legally authorized to take action to enforce the License."

Read: No income, no money. No money, no lawyer. No layer, no lawsuit. No lawsuit, no safety. No safety, no Linux. Be careful what you release, folks..You may not be able to prevent someone from making money off your work.

Bowie J. Poag

You will be able to view a protected lyrics document, but will not be able to print the lyrics.

(Go read The Right to Read even if you think RMS is a fruitcake. It brings up some good points on this topic.)

People might be aware of this, but I thought I would pass it along anyway - There is a GNU/Chess program. I believe that the playing ability of the computer depends on the processing power fo the computer (it has been a few years since I played it).

With source code available, it might be a place to start.

Pilot Light? Check!

One thing that gets me about the OSS community is the over-reliance on C.

Petrol(UK->US Translation - Gasoline)? Check!

I mean look at Gnome and GTK+, it based on some ugly C struct kludge to enable pseudo-object-orientation!

Flame-throwers are go!!

And then there is KDE 2.0 based on even uglier preprocessor commands.

I mean WTF is going on. The method of production in OSS is innovative, but the resulting programs end up being MS ripoffs. We need some true innovation regarding what we develop and the tools we use to do so. Because lets face it, most app level programming would really benefit from C++, or even something like Eiffel and the concepts of design by contract. Using pre/post conditions and invariants as in B notation, one can almost guarantee the correctness of one's program. (Eiffel and B were both in part developed by Betrand Meyer, he also played a hand in Z notation).

There is also an interesting project called EDMA That is trying to create an enviroment in which objects can be inherited from after they are built, a bit like CORBA, but IMO better.

void SelfPromotion {

I am in the early stages (i.e. thinking a lot and getting myself confused) of developing a Dynamic Object Enviroment to support reflection and better models of code reuse through selective "pilfering" of code and structure from other objects (Classes don't exist, only instances, although instances may share code). No links, or anything much to speak of as yet.

}

Anyway I digress, we should start thinking about the tools we are using, and ensure that they are suited to the job. For most things, the performance benefits of C, are not really crucial WRT anything outside the Kernel.

Cheers,

faichai

I think this is an unfair generalisation. The vast majority of code I work with is clean, well-designed, and adheres to one of the style and coding standards out there. That includes the kernel sources, Glib, Gtk+, the Gnome libs, python, Perl, and loads of others.
If you mean that the vast majority of small applications are complete crap, you could be right. But don't knock the single programmer who need to scratch an itch. If enough people are interested in his or her project, they'll help - including design and style improvements and suggestions.

The OSS community needs to establish some quality standards. Linux code is relatively new, but this is going to bite everyone in the butt as the code gets modified more and more, and software rot starts to rear its ugly head.

Seems to be doing just fine so far - the OSS community is pretty aggressive about coding standards already.

• The Gnome Developer's site has some strongly worded docs on style, consistency, robustness and correctness for prospective developers.
  
• /usr/src/linux/Documentation/kernel-coding-style .txt has Linus's words on the subject of style.
• The GNU coding standards have also been around for a while.

Mark my words: Unless coding standards get real important soon, OSS is going to collapse under its own weight. "As long as it works" is not good enough.

Whereas of course closed-source software is bound to survive since all development houses rigidly enforce coding standards?
Bollocks. Been there, done that, shipped it because it compiled. In the bazaar model and peer review style of the OSS world, you can't get away with crappy code or bad design for very long. If your project's well designed, maintainable, useful and easy to read as well as being robust, it will survive. If not, then you can't get away with shipping only binaries to some poor customer.

CDNow, Amazon, etc, etc.

• Amazon: boycotting them because of their stupid one-click patent
• CDNow: Uses TroubleClick for banner ads, and they 404 me if I'm blocking ad.doubleclick.net in /etc/hosts
• Barnes & Noble: Oh, there it is! And with short snips of the first five tracks, there's hardly a chance that a fella will unwittingly buy a disc full of shit.

Verdict: BN.com rocks.

Remember that there are other bootloaders such as GRUB. It already has broken this limit a long time ago, and it has _so_ much functionality, eg:
Reads ext2fs (there's even a cat command!)
Loads HURD
Can load a kernel by TFTP (I think)
Nice menu interface
...
See the website for a more complete analysis.

Remember that there are other bootloaders such as GRUB. It already has broken this limit a long time ago, and it has _so_ much functionality, eg:
Reads ext2fs (there's even a cat command!)
Loads HURD
Can load a kernel by TFTP (I think)
Nice menu interface
...
See the website for a more complete analysis.

Remember that there are other bootloaders such as GRUB. It already has broken this limit a long time ago, and it has _so_ much functionality, eg:
Reads ext2fs (there's even a cat command!)
Loads HURD
Can load a kernel by TFTP (I think)
Nice menu interface
...
See the website for a more complete analysis.

RMS wrote a paper on why we must fight UCITA. He writes that free software cannot disclaim warranty because its license is not a shrinkwrap license.

I do see a way around this: the first time a user runs the program (during the install phase, or when it's creating it's .ini file or dot-folder), present the "ABSOLUTELY NO WARRANTY" section of the GNU GPL and add "In using this software, you agree to so-and-so clause of the GNU GPL; if you do not agree, uninstall this software."

RMS doesn't seem to agree.