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Why not ask the supermarket for free food, because their "licenses" suck so much. If anything you're a complete ass for making such a big deal out of something that I doubt will have any effect on you, as I seriously doubt you've contributed any code.

I admit HURD is an interesting project, but their web page hasn't been very active lately. Does anyone have any news on HURD?

Nothing that's not on their site :-(
For those who want to know what it's all about, here is a link to the official page about the HURD project

A bit far fetched perhaps, but here is another connection between HURD and Windows:
http://www.hurd.com
;-)

In this thread, and in many others in reply to this article, I see people once again rehashing the value of the GPL and copylefted vs. non-copylefting licenses. Have you forsaken your brains? Some of you responded to challenges to QT's license saying, "It's fine un-copylefted! We can still use it for free!" (and not to start a QT flamewar again; I've seen the same response for other licenses as well).

Now I see some of the exact same posters expressing fears that RedHat might, indeed, monopolize the market.

Don't you get it, people? It's the copyleft that keeps you free! Without a guaranteed future, you are right back in the path of a future microsoft. You cannot say the GPL's copyleft is irrelevant or invaluable on one hand and then fear the rising of another monopoly on the other. There is a specific reason why RMS crafted the GPL, for good or for bad.

Therefore, to those who fit the description of the hypocrite I just told about, and to anyone who has yet to do so, and especially to new linux users: go to http://www.gnu.org/ and read the founding principles and philosophies behind the GNU GPL. Whether you agree, disagree, or don't care, you need to at least understand it before you open your mouth in a public forum such as this.

If you wish to make such a concept more abstract (for the sake of allowing the government to regulate the extent to which one is allowed to do, copy, or make something someone else has already done), then you're talking ruling based on someone's mental representation of something. The "property" these laws seek to protect are the ideas (not specific implementations) of a product or method. They do not protect, say, John Thompson's Tappan gas range and oven. They protect the idea of the design of a _class_ of ovens. If John Thompson's gas range and oven were taken by force, without his notice (insert a conditional, prepositional phrase from your local legal definition of "theft" as it applies to real property), then it is theft. He no longer has the item; he is sad, and he calls the police.

Now, I hear your little voice saying, "just because nothing is lost doesn't mean it's not theft." Well, that's for the courts to decide. I don't have volumes 22-57 of the United States of America's Federal Guidelines on and About Intellectual Property and the Technicalities of Enforcement of Ownership (or any such encyclopediatic work). I do know that on an atomic level, "copying" electrons is in no way stealing them from their original creator. In fact, even if every electron in transit was accounted for, and since the transaction is voluntary (between the person who has in his possession the software and the person who wishes to copy the software) they are simply sharing electrons. If they're using magnetic media, they're sharing a pattern of electrons indirectly through settings in a floppy disk, a hard drive, etc. There is no loss of actual, concrete property. People do not sue over a loss of electrons from an unauthorized copying of an electronic work.

So without any actual property exchanging hands, we're down to ideas again. Why should someone have the right to reserve an idea? "I thought of this, did this, or created this first. I have a record of it, stamped with the date and time. I do not permit you to do a similar work under any circumstances under THREAT OF IMPRISONMENT." Who thought of this concept? What was he smoking?

"There is a valid, legal definition for intellectual property." I dispute its validity, but notice that I don't advocate an entire, complete and sudden disregard for intellectual property as its recognized by world governments. Humans are scared little herding animals, easily frightened, and they don't deal with sudden change that well. But it took a long time for humans to recognize that some people (because of the color of their skin) have a simple right to speak in public without permission from master.

Confusing Words and Phrases that are Worth Avoiding - GNU Project - Free Software Foundation (FSF): Intellect ual Property.

Maybe you should read some of the infos on www.gnu.org.

Hint: it's not what someone pays for something to be programmed, but what you can do with the resulting sources.

Free software does not mean that programmers are slaves. They are also free, and if they don't program what you want/need, you can try to motivate them to program that for you.

Also, this is nothing new. Happens all the time.

jerodd wrote:

The Hurd was originally started by GNU as part of their project to create a completely free Unix system. Linux did not exist back then, and Linus was still learning his multiplication tables. (Or maybe they are smarter in Finland by that age? I don't know.)

Um, according to the Free Software Foundation, HURD wasn't even started until 1990. Linux was well past his multiplication tables by then, I believe solidly in grad school.

The first release of HURD didn't happen until 1996, six years for an alpha release? That's slow even for a Cathedral project. Somehow I suspect that a lot of what happened in the early 1990's on HURD was talk, and most of the development didn't happen until Linux was on the map.

I think that HURD does offer some useful innovations, whether those innovations remain in a separate project like HURD, or get incorporated into Linux remains to be seen.

http://www.gnu.org/philosophy/dat.html

You can read the relevent part here.

This is actually true. The GNU operating system is an idea of RMS that dates back to the early 80s. The GNU Manifesto carries a 1985 copyright date, and he clearly states his intent to write a free Unix-like OS called GNU.

See also this page.

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This is actually true. The GNU operating system is an idea of RMS that dates back to the early 80s. The GNU Manifesto carries a 1985 copyright date, and he clearly states his intent to write a free Unix-like OS called GNU.

See also this page.

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