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Actually, I think the major defect in X11 is the focus model and things like grabs that are a huge pain in the ass to work with, and make little sense in the modern world (which window gets an input event for a multi-touch gesture for example? Actually, there's an X extension for that now...). The protocol itself is pretty clean and not particularly inefficient. The issue with compositing is that it might involve a few extra context switches, triggering things like TLB flushes... of course, the last couple of generations of x86-64 chips have tagged TLBs (albeit only designed for virtualization) so in theory even that expense could be mitigated. And then the compositor is probably just bypassing most of X anyway nowadays, so someone got the bright idea to get rid of X. I suspect a compositor-specific protocol for X might solve a lot of the problems (because, well, window managers performing compositing instead of having external compositors hints at a flaw in the way compositing fits in the X architecture).

So, instead of adopting very well grounded microkernel design principles for a next generation display server, the developers of Wayland are shoving everything into the kernel and a few shared libraries (smells like 80s UNIX design, if they had had shared libraries... because it is). It'll probably fail honestly.

That's not to say some major problems aren't being solved as part of the efforts tangentially related to Wayland (and it certainly makes a compelling demo for the modernized graphics stack)... the graphics stack before KMS and whatnot was heavily tied to X (or: was X), and you were doomed if you wanted to even attempt writing an alternative display server. Now at least modesetting is split into a separate module (although why it isn't in userspace is beyond me, but I see no reason why the tty/console layer shouldn't be in userspace, especially now that we have GRUB2 + multiboot + initrds and all of that magic so it's not like you can't load userspace components as part of loading the kernel... I'm weird), the OpenGL stack doesn't require GLX, etc. Hell, with Gallium3d AFAICT you can even implement a complete alternative to OpenGL if it's not your thing and have it more-or-less Just Work (tm) with hardware. Maybe Fresco wouldn't have died if things had been how they are now (we'll pretend they'd also avoid using CORBA, naturally).

Luckily all of this happens to benefit X11 too. And maybe someone will come along and write that fancy successor to X11 that doesn't suck now that all of this effort has been put into transforming the graphics stack from a ball of mud into a (well, for C) clean modular architecture.

To be fair, it IS illegal to play a dvd on an unlicensed system

No, it isn't, because playing is not copying. The argument that you need a "licensed" system to read data has no merit.

Of course, meritless legal arguments won't stop the feds from pointing guns at you. They've been carrying the unconstitutional "War On Drugs" forward for decades, and I expect the "War on Reading" and "War on Sharing" to just get worse and worse. Stallman was right.

Even simple little things, like the switch from "Shift-DEL / Shift-INS" to "Ctrl-X / Ctrl-V" for cut and paste, can become a major pain until you get used to them and retrain the muscle memories.

And further, the IT staff have to juggle all implementations. I juggle Windows/Mac/Linux in my job, so every once in a while I attempt to change to the last used GUI window by typing ctrl-a ctrl-a (a screen convention), or copy from a Mac GUI or Linux terminal using ctrl-c. Those little differences slow me down, but they would be enough to totally screw with some business people's heads. We all know people where we work who break down if an icon disappears from their desktop (bonus points if they created it in the first place). Changing an interface for the sake of change is a net loss of productivity.

* http://www.defectivebydesign.org/amazon-kindle-swindle
* http://www.gnu.org/philosophy/the-danger-of-ebooks.html

Perhaps it's not appropriate, but the FSF says it's not entirely meaningless for other cases either.

You mean GNU Network?

"Second, you're probably going to explain how Europe is the center of the world, etc. It's not. It's not even a continent."

I'm not interrested in dick-measuring contest anymore than you.

"All the EUPL can do is fragment the community"

As the EUPL allows one to re-license existing software under the GPL, this point is probably moot.

"Forth, translations? http://www.gnu.org/licenses/translations.html [gnu.org] lists Armenian, Chinese, Czech, Dutch, French, Galician, German, Italian, Serbian, Slovak. I'm sure it will grow to much much more than 22. And note "Chinese". This actually covers 20% of the world's population, if that is the criteria you want to argue with."

My point was that none of these translations are official and thus can be misleading to a potential reader. The FAQ on gnu.org itself point to that fact and urge to refer to the english version for business use, hence my accusation of it being anglocentrist. I agree the EUPL care only about european languages and I agree too that's not an ideal situation. However, the merit of the EUPL is to put many languages on a equality basis. If someone's only care is free software, then there is nothing wrong with the GPL but if you take a broader look at the situation, you'll see that freedom is more than being able to hack software. It's also having access to localized software, something that many FOSS already get mostly right and also being able to use one's native language for legal matters and that's definitively something the GPL needs addressing in the future.

"GPLv3 was a global project, with input from hundreds of people around the world."
I fear it's becoming increasingly harder to resist to the globish sirens. Can you honestly tell me that nobody raised the same questionning I have right now?

Finally, thank you for bringing a bit of sanity in this discussion.

Sigh. I'm not sure whether you're misguided or a troll. Let's assume you're sincere. Who wrote the EUPL and with what motives? It's a rhetorical question, don't answer. Just understand that the biggest long term threat to any free software community is regulatory capture. Now compare the EU against the FSF and ask, which is more resistant to capture over the next decades? That by itself should be a clear reason to not use the EUPL or any other license produced by bodies that aren't extraordinarily independent and proven to be so.

Second, you're probably going to explain how Europe is the center of the world, etc. It's not. It's not even a continent.

Third, the GPL is a standard. That means lawyers around the world know it, and it interoperates. It's not about a better or worse license but about standards. All the EUPL can do is fragment the community (which starts to answer my first question, who wrote it and why. You are really too trusting.)

Forth, translations? http://www.gnu.org/licenses/translations.html lists Armenian, Chinese, Czech, Dutch, French, Galician, German, Italian, Serbian, Slovak. I'm sure it will grow to much much more than 22. And note "Chinese". This actually covers 20% of the world's population, if that is the criteria you want to argue with.

Lastly, and really, do I have to say this, your "anglocentrism" criticism is terrible, trollish, pointless. Are you just looking to annoy people? Or are you just entirely ignorant? I was president of the FFII at the time we contributed parts of the GPLv3 patent policy, and I can tell you formally, the GPLv3 was a global project, with input from hundreds of people around the world.

Whether you "approve" or not is irrelevant. But please, get your facts right before you act offended when people insult you.

Many softwares released under the FSF umbrella are great achievements with marvelous documentations. However it seems to me that using the GPL for the freedom of the peoples are shortsighted at best. Most Slashdot readers probably don't mind the english-only nature of the GPL but what good is a license for someone who can't understand it? There is 7 000 000 000 peoples on earth and 1 800 000 000(~26%) who understand english somewhat (only 380 000 000 (~0.05%) are native speakers). Yes, there is "unofficial" translation. But this clearly don't cut it. Would you redistribute software binding you to a license you don't understand or barely understand in it's official legal version? In fact, the FSF treat non-english speaker as second-class human, deprieving them of their right to be tied to a contract they understand merely for it's own convenience. I approve of free software and I like the copyleft ideals but I, for one, would be reluctant to redistribute GPL-ed software because of this reason. The GPL isn't freedom at all for most of humanity and the FSF don't give a shit.

There is at least one copyleft license that attempts to adress that shortcoming: the EUPL. This license is translated in 22 languages. It's a far cry from the thousands of languages of humanity but it's clearly a step in the right direction and it's far better than the anglocentrism of the GPL and the FSF. I would really like to see this license used more frequently.

Why is a proprietary competitor bound to NOT use any open source software?

All the software we use* and write is GNU AGPL licensed.

*Except for the programming language and its standard library.

Other companies hiring yours generally aren't going to care about that philosophy. They want to know that the program they paid for will work, be maintainable, and most importantly be done cheaper than the competitor.

I think people here have a reading problem.

Sigh. Of course they don't, but never I claimed they did. Quoting my own post:

we're able to benefit from a big open source community an deliver better tested software in less time and for less money.

I think we all know what the AGPL is.

And if you're worried we might not, you could give a link (like I just did, or this), instead of some random person's summary.

I was thinking [an operating system's job] was to facilitate the function of the device

For one thing, different people have different ideas of what "the function of the device" is. One "function of [a] device" is to allow the user to create additional "function[s] of the device". This is a function that Apple has tended to explicitly reject on an iPad or iPhone. (On the one hand, Codea, but on the other hand, C64 games that got pulled from the store because the user could reboot the virtual C64 to BASIC.)

for the consumer

Are you trying to imply something special by the word "consumer" as opposed to "user"?

Objectivism: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Objectivism_(Ayn_Rand)
Libertarianism: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Libertarianism

Libertarianism doesn't believe in laissez-faire capitalism. In general, Libertarians are strict constitutional constructionists (definition here http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Strict_constructionism if you don't know what that means either).

Really, Objectivist views, particularly when expressed as if they were Libertarian views, do a disservice the philosohical distintion, and, since generally Objectivist viewpoints are abhorred by anyone who buys the idea of Rousseau's (definition here http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Social_Contract in case you need it), which includes the majority of the population -- including most Libertarians, who will support the idea of public assistance, if only, as one pundit put it, "to keep less well off people from having an incentive to steal our stuff".

Objectivists are generally those people who don't understand the difference between "Character" and "Charactertures", and don't realize that Rand's protagonists and antagonists aren't representative of real people: real people are much more complex and multifaceted.

I really am beginning to think that people need to have passed a political philosophy class before they are permitted to read her books, so they at least realize that they are getting a philosophy along with the story.

Maybe people should also have to read The GNU Manifesto http://www.gnu.org/gnu/manifesto.html in order to realize the GPL is an instrumentality of that manifesto, rather than something which exists separate from it, before they are permitted to contribute code to a GPL'ed project (disclosure: I've personally contributed plenty of code to GPL'ed projects, but I did it with an understanding of the philosophical basis and emergent properties of that basis).

Then install debian.

Stallman's organization maintains a list of approved distributions.

Debian is not there, so he won't recommend it.

Because Debian lists repositories where you can install non-free stuff, he rejects it. I guess Stallman uses windows to watch YouTube stuf. Ditto for Fedora, (ATI and Nvidia and Flash are non open and can be installed, and therefore the distribution is rejected). Sigh, I don't want to live in a sealed box

As usual with all other topics, check out what Debian has been doing for more than a decade. Pretty much every release this century has some dedication to devs who died since the last release.

Smaller projects has done that as well. But of course not on every release. For example check out Lilypond 2.12.

Stallman's organization maintains a list of approved

The scary part is that there are people who actually *care* if something is RMS approved.

The open source movement would be much better served if that whack-job would keep his lunacy to himself.

Then install debian.

Stallman's organization maintains a list of approved distributions.
Debian is not there, so he won't recommend it.

Interesting one to me; the GPL is itself under copyright and asserts that it shall only be copied and distributed, not changed (except by, say, section-7 exceptions); but see also "Can I modify the GPL and make a modified license?". Of course, the GPL is No Ordinary EULA(tm), and only requires you to agree to it when modifying or "propagating" the work.

Interesting one to me; the GPL is itself under copyright and asserts that it shall only be copied and distributed, not changed (except by, say, section-7 exceptions); but see also "Can I modify the GPL and make a modified license?". Of course, the GPL is No Ordinary EULA(tm), and only requires you to agree to it when modifying or "propagating" the work.

Why should copyright apply if they are just calling the API and not redistributing or copying the kernel code?

Well, there's a discussion with this post as the beginning, which appears to me, a non-lawyer, as if it's discussing whether the "derivative work" part of copyright law would apply to a work that is making calls to copyrighted code.

If the answer is "yes", then copyright presumably would apply if you're making calls to copyrighted code, which is what NVIDIA are doing.

If the answer is "no", then copyright presumably wouldn't apply, which would presumably not only let NVIDIA off, but also presumably render the GPL no more powerful than the LGPL - the LGPL covers something that seems to me fairly obviously "making a derivative work" (taking the code of a library, modifying it, and making a new library from it) but doesn't cover making calls to an unmodified copy of the library.

The FSF believe that

If the program dynamically links plug-ins, and they make function calls to each other and share data structures, we believe they form a single program, which must be treated as an extension of both the main program and the plug-ins. This means the plug-ins must be released under the GPL or a GPL-compatible free software license, and that the terms of the GPL must be followed when those plug-ins are distributed.

and I suspect a GPLed OS kernel loading kernel modules would be considered as "a program dynamically [linking] [a plug-in]", and using DMA-BUF involves the plugin making a call to the program (i.e., the Linux kernel, in this case). As I understand it, the license for the Linux kernel has an exception that allows some non-GPLed kernel modules, but the point being discussed here is that DMA-BUF is not one of the "calls to the program" that are allowed to non-GPLed modules.

Copyright law controls copying. If they aren't copying anything but just the API bits which are necessary to use the API

I guess the question, which I'm not sure has been resolved in a court case, is whether calling a particular implementation of an API constitutes embodying a substantial amount of copyright-protected code taken from the implementation in question.

(Do I have an opinion on this? Seeing people who sound as if they might at least know something about the law debating that point in the thread mentioned above firmly convinces me that the right opinion for me to hold is "the answer is whatever the courts end up deciding it is, at least until that decision gets overruled".)

I understand that you are completely fine with Tivoization (in that you don't want a license to restrict that), but the GPLv3 does do some other important things. As a user, I really like ending Tivoization, but I understand your position.

More compatible with Apache and other licenses
New ways to provide source (torrenting, the internet)
Better path to compliance (if someone doesn't initially)
Much stronger patent language

More here: http://www.gnu.org/licenses/quick-guide-gplv3.html

So very sorry but I must take exception with this. The "substantial amount of math" comes down to the 4 basic operations. Even partial differential equations come down to it with lots of looping. Really good programmers are not mathematicians for the most part. Really good programmers understand the machine and mathematicians dream up equations that do "something" and then explain in terms that can be translated into code.

No reason to apologize, without exceptions we wouldn't have any conversations, discussions or debates. I find it incredibly interesting that you seem to consider some parts of programming to be mathematics and you can even go so far as to say that "really good programmers are not mathematicians for the most part." I will quote Donald Knuth since he is much wiser than I:

Therefore the idea of passing laws that say some kinds of algorithms belong to mathematics and some do not strikes me as absurd as the 19th century attempts of the Indiana legislature to pass a law that the ratio of a circle's circumference to its diameter is exactly 3, not approximately 3.1416. It's like the medieval church ruling that the sun revolves about the earth. Man-made laws can be significantly helpful but not when they contradict fundamental truths.

Understanding the machine is very important as well but any programmer should know mathematics first and foremost. I use logic daily in writing boolean expressions in any language I use and on top of that, De Morgan's Law has saved me countless of hours of rederiving truth tables. Furthermore the knowledge of when to use a hash map versus any other collection and the run time of my code is so deeply seated in mathematics that I would find myself writing code that works very easily in my unit tests but might take days or weeks to run on real world data. Your assertion that mathematics in computing ends at the "four basic operations" is laughable.

And as to the bit about functional -v- object oriented languages, your tipping your "coding snobbery" hand a bit

"Coding snobbery"? How is it when you collect all the tools out there that are available (most free of charge) you're suddenly exhibiting code snobbery?! I'm not telling you to always use it, I'm not saying it's the silver bullet. I'm just saying that in some cases it makes sense to use it!

and indicating you are the kind of person who just wants to play with the newest toys.

I am absolutely floored by this mentality. There is no silver bullet in software development.

All the languages out there are mostly based on C and no one has yet been able to come up with anything that is actually better, but is rather simply a derivative. Yes syntactic sugar abounds but strip that away and you have C.

Surely you're not suggesting that one language is just "better" than any other language at everything. Could you explain to me how it is that the family of Lisp languages that began appearing around 1958 are "syntactic sugar" on top of C that was written between 1969 and 1973? Are you telling me that Lisp, Scheme, Haskell, etc are all just variants of C with syntactic sugar?! And Prolog's development in 1972 was based on C as well?

Functional languages are almost pure syntactical sugar as the underlying code that is generated is still the basic loop and branch that applies to all languages regardless of their style and name.

It turns out there are very inte

all the compiler stuff is merged into GCC as of 4.7 http://gcc.gnu.org/gcc-4.7/changes.html

Not even MIT teaches LISP anymore

So what? That was just an example. Someone who can write a program but who does not know how to use a spreadsheet program is going to be OK, except in cases where their teachers fail them for not using Microsoft's software.

They do all need to write papers

I do not doubt that, but if you have the choice between preparing people for lightweight writing using Word or writing in general using LaTeX, why would you choose Word? Engineers, math majors, etc. need more than what Word gives them; humanities majors need less than what LaTeX gives them. If we are teaching people to use Word, we are not preparing them for technical disciplines or for research; if we teach people LaTeX or something similar, we are not failing to prepare them for non-technical disciplines.

know how to do Boolean searches in google

Which takes all of one day to teach.

insert footnotes in papers

\footnote{Here is a footnote}

Not hard to do, not hard to teach, not hard to learn.

Not play around in the CLI in latex

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/LyX

https://www.gnu.org/software/auctex/

http://www.tug.org/mactex/

There are plenty of TeX or similar GUI front ends. Nobody needs to play around; I use AucTeX for almost everything I do.

Wake up

That is an ironic thing to hear from someone who says things like this:

All statistics today is done with Excel

Hm...

http://www.indeed.com/q-Statistics-Spss-jobs.html

http://www.indeed.com/q-SAS-jobs.html

http://www.indeed.com/q-R-Statistics-jobs.html

https://www.nytimes.com/2009/01/07/technology/business-computing/07program.html?pagewanted=all&_moc.semityn.www

In fact, I have several friends who work as statisticians, and not any one of them uses Excel or any spreadsheet package on a day to day basis.

There is no spoon / IP

http://www.gnu.org/philosophy/not-ipr.html

If you are really that obsessed with getting it from them because technically maybe it requires them to put it on there own servers you have a serious problem.

Well, GNU has a serious problem with people not putting it on their own servers.

The only thing that might have made this an issue is if they got the source code from a party which does not distribute it publicly and then linked to it.

Wrong, and also wrong. See above link.

Actually having the source code published is NOT required.

And, wrong again. But don't take my word for it, follow my link above and let the FSF explain it to you in a FAQ that you should read before making such idiotic statements, whoever you are besides a coward.

Stallman and his followers* would never suggest you replace anything with open source.

http://www.gnu.org/philosophy/open-source-misses-the-point.html

*Yours truly firmly included

While you didn't explicitly say it, you implied it because of the implicit assumption that what you write is relevant for the question at hand. The fact that you accept that BSD is open source (which is just accepting a fact, so nothing special) is only relevant to your accepting or non-accepting of NVidia's driver if that driver is under the BSD license. And BTW, Stallmann accepts BSD as free software license. He just doesn't recommend it.

Why not? If I download AOSP and compile it for a handset, and mode no changes, why can't I just link to google's AOSP site.

Because it's not up to you, the GPL license text explicitly covers this scenario in section 3, specifically section 3.c. You are only allowed to say "go get it at Debian" for non-commercial distribution and only if you received the program in object code or executable form with such an offer. "Such an offer" refers to if Debian has given you a written offer as stated in section 3.b: "Accompany it with a written offer, valid for at least three years, to give any third party, for a charge no more than your cost of physically performing source distribution, a complete machine-readable copy of the corresponding source code,[..]"

See a reminder of the role of free software in education. You can focus your donation on a particular concern, too.

Free Software in Education

Fully agree. And there's nothing that makes me more sick than using words like 'Free software' and 'software freedom', when the FSF does not believe in your freedom to use proprietary software. Their jihad is all about demonizing non-GPL licenses, and their software is synonymous w/ lame features that hardly do anything. As an example, one would think that GNU Network is actually a GNU tool that implements and enables all networking tools needed by a GNU system into that system. It's not - it's just RMS's dream to 'to encourage the development of free network services and web applications that are free software that can replace existing, proprietary services and create new ways for people to communicate in freedom'. Whatever that means.

Except maybe GNU Cash and GNUSTEP, I've yet to see any examples of any good GNU software. Whenever I see a software w/ the GNU name on it, I think of poor quality software whose only 'advantage' is that it's under GPL 3.0. In addition to shitting on that brand name, it's brought down the image of those poor wildebeests.

No, the GPL doesn't work like this. Having violated the GPL on this code, Twin Peaks are no longer licensed. They cannot reacquire a license simply by coming back into compliance. They need to explicitly be relicensed by the copyright holder (Red Hat), who are not likely to do so in this case.

It has been the norm for the resolution of GPL violations that the violator comes back into compliance and then is relicensed, because Free Software organizations are generally more interested in cooperation than conflict, but there is no legal requirement for Red Hat to follow this norm.

You can read the GPL here:
http://www.gnu.org/licenses/gpl-2.0.html
http://www.gnu.org/licenses/gpl-3.0.html

No, the GPL doesn't work like this. Having violated the GPL on this code, Twin Peaks are no longer licensed. They cannot reacquire a license simply by coming back into compliance. They need to explicitly be relicensed by the copyright holder (Red Hat), who are not likely to do so in this case.

It has been the norm for the resolution of GPL violations that the violator comes back into compliance and then is relicensed, because Free Software organizations are generally more interested in cooperation than conflict, but there is no legal requirement for Red Hat to follow this norm.

You can read the GPL here:
http://www.gnu.org/licenses/gpl-2.0.html
http://www.gnu.org/licenses/gpl-3.0.html

Are they intending to use clause 8 to then say that they are in violation? I read the IT World article but didn't really gether how they were intending to use the GPL to fight back other than just saying "you distribute a work based on the GPL and aren't in compliance." In which case (if indeed true) all they would have to do to settle that matter would be to release their source.

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

Here's even more reasons to stay away from kindles http://www.gnu.org/philosophy/the-danger-of-ebooks.html

I think that an ebook reader is a very cool gadget as long as it doesn't come with these caveats. And will do much more than just read ebooks. Certainly not going buy one of these.

I'm talking about applications and especially binary firmware blobs in the kernel. Also, less clueless users who don't know what GNU is. (such as apparently the submitter of this story)

You can help.

It's not really a buffer overflow priviledge escalation, it's more like classes with methods that should be private being marked public.

-fno-access-control

Muahaha...

There is no "IP" or "intellectual property. There is only copyright, trademarks, and patents. Sell also: http://www.gnu.org/philosophy/not-ipr.html

BTW, on the issues of "intellectual property" I happen to completely agree with Richard Stallman on this issue. Don't get caught up in the kool-aide of the term "intellectual property" when it really can get more confusing than it really is.

Patents can't be helped, but they can be licensed for something like this. Any patent license can also be "sent through" to any non-profit "subsidiary" set up by any company who cares, if they want to set up a non-profit that is community operated. In other words there doesn't need to be any cost and it can easily be taken care of if the original company wants to be engaged and see that it happens.

Trademarks may have some value to the original company and can even be retained. There is no reason why trademarks necessarily are even needed by an open source project and it may even be useful to create new trademarks for the derivative game that is open sourced. This wouldn't even be a problem at all. Trademarked named within the game (kind of like how "Captain Kirk" is trademarked by Paramount Pictures) could even be changed if necessary. That is a trivial issue that wouldn't have any impact at all on the game itself.

As for copyrights, I would call that an incredibly stupid company who didn't secure commercial reproducibility rights for a game including for any successive company. Artwork can be redone (for textures, skins, and background music) if necessary but could still be reassigned if necessary. Just think of what would happen if the company was purchased in a merger situation.... the same situation would apply for turning a for-profit company into a non-profit. If some specific kinds of copyright license is needed for key parts of the game engine, licenses could be granted to a non-profit company as easily and that same non-profit company could be seen as the legal heir to those rights as well.

In short, I find all of the excuses that "IP rights" wouldn't apply in this situation... assuming that the original copyright holder of the game itself is willing to at least try to pass the game off as an open soruce game under control of a non-profit foundation. Perhaps not Richard Stallman style of open source, but pretty dang close and comparable to Netscape's transition to Mozilla and the Mozilla Foundation (another example of a proprietary company who successfully switched to an open source foundation in spite of "intellectual property" concerns).

This has also been done by ID Software, where John Carmack has also turned his older games over to the community under open source licenses.

The argument about competition with future games is perhaps a bit more valid. The problem with that argument is that turning an old game that you want to shut down because it isn't profitable to run any more (the only rational reason to shut down the game in the first place) is that it also is using yesterday's technology and programming techniques. It really isn't progressing into the future and exploiting new technologies like new video rendering hardware or new kinds of user interfaces. While games like Doom have been ported to exploit some newer hardware (to give an example), it still has a dated feel and is more like walking through a museum rather than anything which realistically competes against games being developed by the current generation of programmers.

Perhaps a company like NCSoft is just a shell of a company with mainly lawyers and not many engineers. That can't be helped and if they can't improve over previous generations of software, they are a stagnant company ready to go bankrupt in the near future. I certainly don't expect to be seeing them in a decade if that is the case, so they will simply implode taking all of their games down with them into the corporate graveyard if they don't open up stuff like this. I

So this must be the one to rule them all.

Probably wouldn't happen with a better editor

I think you meant to link to ed when you mentioned a better editor.

Probably wouldn't happen with a better editor

I think you meant to link to ed when you mentioned a better editor.

about pair programming was how it was described that "one would be thinking while the other one typed". Huh?! Shouldn't both programmers be thinking? Maybe their editor wasn't designed very well and the one typing had to concentrate on typing too much. Probably wouldn't happen with a better editor

I was originally aligned with Wikimedia Commons, ie BY and BY-SA are cool. As a big proponent of copyleft, BY-SA was the obviously superior choice of the two.

Then on IRC somebody commented that he actually preferred the NC clause. That made me think that I wouldn't like to have to pay for stuff but on the other hand I would like to be able to sell the stuff made by others.

The FSF/GNU uses the ND license extensively on their website. https://www.gnu.org/licenses/license-list.html#OpinionLicenses

So all in all, I nowadays think the NC and ND have their place and uses. What makes me happy though is that the CC license chooser clearly guides the user towards the BY and BY-SA which should be used for most cases. To quote Tim O'Reilly (via Cory Doctorow): Obscurity is a far greater threat to authors and creative artists than "piracy".

If you want to try playing with a simulation of Quantum Computing, you can check out my tutorial that shows you how to do Gover's Algorithm using QCF on Octace.

Defining digital freedom isn't new, so maybe the GOP should look to the four freedoms of the GPL:

* the freedom to use the software for any purpose, * the freedom to change the software to suit your needs, * the freedom to share the software with your friends and neighbors, and * the freedom to share the changes you make.

http://www.gnu.org/licenses/quick-guide-gplv3.html

Of course that doesn't fit with controlling your neighbors morality or allowing corporations to own the internet.

It doesn't include much provision for software companies to exist at all. So no political party is going to support it. And no government is going to support it either, in any broad sense.

Defining digital freedom isn't new, so maybe the GOP should look to the four freedoms of the GPL:

* the freedom to use the software for any purpose,
* the freedom to change the software to suit your needs,
* the freedom to share the software with your friends and neighbors, and
* the freedom to share the changes you make.

http://www.gnu.org/licenses/quick-guide-gplv3.html

Of course that doesn't fit with controlling your neighbors morality or allowing corporations to own the internet.

There are over 200 music players on Freshmeat. Why? That's ridiculous.

I'd thing my response would have given a hint about that, but: it's because 200 people (or small groups of people) were interested in making a new music player, because it's fun. How is that bad for you? As I said before, forcing them to choose between improving "the one certified music player" and not writing free software at all would accomplish nothing except killing all their fun, and maybe preventing the (very rare, admittedly) creation of a great new software.

The FSF (and the BSDs) could quite easily release software by developers under their aegis once it was tested and audited.

The FSF and the BSDs don't make the majority of free software, and have no control over what most free software developers do.

What I am in favor of is somebody putting the brakes on this crazy clown car called software before it gets totally out of control. WE DON'T NEED ALL KINDS OF NEW SOFTWARE. We just need better, more refined software.

Again, a lot of people who write free software do it because it's fun, and they distribute it for all kinds of reasons; among them, the hope that it will be useful for someone. But no one has to use them, and if you read most free software licenses (GPL and BSD, for instance), you'll see clearly that they offer NO WARRANTY (yes, it's usually written in all caps, as you can see here, in section 15 and here in all versions listed).

Since you don't have to use this software, and it's free, and no one is being deceived about it, why is it important to you whether it's being written or not?

You're welcome but you might want to read some history to know that open source is but a marketing campaign for free software. That's what this is all about and that's what matters.

http://www.gnu.org/philosophy/open-source-misses-the-point.html

It's ok, RMS actually hates Debian.