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Please jump in if I am misinterpreting, but I can't seem to see it any other way. Google offers a developer edition of the Android OS for a few extra dollars. It boasts a, "SIM-unlocked and hardware-unlocked device."

If this phone is only available to people who register with the Android Market, doesn't that mean that the regular consumer version is SIM-locked and hardware-locked?

If so, that would make it non-free software.

All licenses do not say the same thing about how to treat people. Free software licenses allow sharing and modification which is permission to build community. Proprietary licenses forbid these things. The politics of all licenses exist, but you're using the word "politics" to describe something you don't like. The practical problems of non-copylefted free software licenses are also well known. The danger isn't in seeing non-copylefted free software vanish ("BSD/MIT licensed code is in danger of being locked up, never to be seen again, regardless of the wishes of the original coder"), that's a misstatement of the argument. The danger for the user is that they will end up using a proprietary variant of a non-copylefted free software program losing their software freedom. Improvements to the non-free variant do not return to the free variant, so one ends up contributing to one's own competition. The free variant still exists but that variant is less capable and thus less desirable to those who don't value their freedom (which is why we need to teach people to value software freedom for its own sake). Non-free variants might also be better advertised.

All they are advocating is that Apple let more developers publish software for the iPhone platform.

More proprietary software for iPhone, which is not good enough for computer users. What Ballmer wants is to use the iPhone to become an iPhone user's new master. To get this, he argues with a tactic that flies over the heads of a lot of /. readers, the problem of the "freedom of choice": merely choosing one over another attempts to place all choices as equals. So once the choices are narrowed to remove software freedom, which is what's really important, one can pick from a choice of masters. Freedom of choice is usually a way to convince people to discard the choices that would most benefit users, and with computer software that is always software freedom—the freedom to run, inspect, share, and modify computer programs.

The FSF lays it out quite well in their essay "Freedom or Power?" which speaks to programmers about the social and ethical concerns of software:

Discussions of rights and rules for software have often concentrated on the interests of programmers alone. Few people in the world program regularly, and fewer still are owners of proprietary software businesses. But the entire developed world now needs and uses software, so software developers now control the way the world lives, does business, communicates and is entertained. The ethical and political issues are not addressed by the slogan of "freedom of choice (for developers only)". If code is law, as Professor Lawrence Lessig (of Stanford Law School) has stated, then the real question we face is: who should control the code you use--you, or an elite few? We believe you are entitled to control the software you use, and giving you that control is the goal of Free Software. We believe you should decide what to do with the software you use; however, that is not what today's law says. Current copyright law places us in the position of power over users of our code, whether we like it or not. The ethical response to this situation is to proclaim freedom for each user, just as the Bill of Rights was supposed to exercise government power by guaranteeing each citizen's freedoms. That is what the GNU GPL is for: it puts you in control of your usage of the software, while protecting you from others who would like to take control of your decisions. As more and more users realize that code is law, and come to feel that they too deserve freedom, they will see the importance of the freedoms we stand for, just as more and more users have come to appreciate the practical value of the Free Software we have developed.

All they are advocating is that Apple let more developers publish software for the iPhone platform.

More proprietary software for iPhone, which is not good enough for computer users. What Ballmer wants is to use the iPhone to become an iPhone user's new master. To get this, he argues with a tactic that flies over the heads of a lot of /. readers, the problem of the "freedom of choice": merely choosing one over another attempts to place all choices as equals. So once the choices are narrowed to remove software freedom, which is what's really important, one can pick from a choice of masters. Freedom of choice is usually a way to convince people to discard the choices that would most benefit users, and with computer software that is always software freedom—the freedom to run, inspect, share, and modify computer programs.

The FSF lays it out quite well in their essay "Freedom or Power?" which speaks to programmers about the social and ethical concerns of software:

Discussions of rights and rules for software have often concentrated on the interests of programmers alone. Few people in the world program regularly, and fewer still are owners of proprietary software businesses. But the entire developed world now needs and uses software, so software developers now control the way the world lives, does business, communicates and is entertained. The ethical and political issues are not addressed by the slogan of "freedom of choice (for developers only)". If code is law, as Professor Lawrence Lessig (of Stanford Law School) has stated, then the real question we face is: who should control the code you use--you, or an elite few? We believe you are entitled to control the software you use, and giving you that control is the goal of Free Software. We believe you should decide what to do with the software you use; however, that is not what today's law says. Current copyright law places us in the position of power over users of our code, whether we like it or not. The ethical response to this situation is to proclaim freedom for each user, just as the Bill of Rights was supposed to exercise government power by guaranteeing each citizen's freedoms. That is what the GNU GPL is for: it puts you in control of your usage of the software, while protecting you from others who would like to take control of your decisions. As more and more users realize that code is law, and come to feel that they too deserve freedom, they will see the importance of the freedoms we stand for, just as more and more users have come to appreciate the practical value of the Free Software we have developed.

Without strong copyright law the GPL would be meaningless.

Apples and oranges. The GPL does not depend on the ability to get insanely high damages applied to broad classes of people, or to get ISPs to block network access, or any of the other crap the record labels have been trying to do.

You lost your argument right there... or at least you did for me because I stopped reading. See http://www.gnu.org/copyleft/ for more information. Basically, the GPL is founded in copyright law.

Of course the GPL is founded in copyright law. That does not in any way contradict what I said.

BSD zealots are quick to deny the "death" of BSD nowadays by pointing to the existence of OS X, which has supposedly given BSD "thousands" of users. Infact this is a myth propagated by Apple, eager to tout the "Industrial Strength Unix Foundations" of their new "Darwin" OS.

The kernel of Darwin is not the BSD kernel, but rather the Mach kernel, In fact, the core of Darwin is of a totally different design to BSD, being of an elegant microkernel structure rather than the monolithic structure that BSD still retains. It is strange that Apple would choose to tout that their OS is based on 4.4BSD, which even by BSD standards is obsolete by over 10 years.

Darwin includes totally rewritten filesystem and network support and does not use the BSD code here either. Infact, BSD code is only used in the OS as a "skin" to wrap the underlying OS in order to provide a virtual Unix-like environment, in much the same way as Cygwin wraps Windows.

Higher up in userland, adapted versions of the BSD tools are used for the Unix command line, an odd choice, considering
the GNU utilities are superior. Files are kept in odd places
and in many cases manpages are out of date. Many basic system services such as user authentication
are provided by Apple's own proprietary system rather than the traditional Unix methods. In general, the OS X command line is a lackluster and messy ordeal, and certainly radically unlike any BSD system.

In summary, OS X's "industrial strength Unix" foundations are a marketing myth, endlessly repeated by the hordes of Mac fanboys but having no basis in reality.

However much M$, Disney, RIAA, MPAA would like your to believe otherwise, the fact is that copying copyrighted material is perfectly legal in all Berne Convention countries, unless the copyright owner says otherwise. Even perfectly then it may be allowed but with restrictions.

The GPL, ISC, and CC licenses come to mind as overwhelmingly common examples. Act on the empirical facts not opinions, half-baked or otherwise.

If you restrict your thinking this much, you will not give yourself all the chances you might have. I am conducting my own experiments in related areas.

packet-in.org I presume? I'll check it out.

I have never seen this claim made by him. That it is unethical (or something similar) for someone to do this, perhaps, but not that you should not have the legal right to do this unethical thing.

Well, he makes that claim in an essay published on gnu.org. His statement seems pretty clear:

I shouldn't have the power to tell you not to do these things. No one should.

If you're so committed, why don't you have any free offerings? O'Reilly has tons of selections freely available online, and likely tons of books hidden in storage that are both out-of-print and never to return (at least without serious revision). Why not open up and share them?

The ePubBooks.com site says it wants ePub to be to books what MP3 is to music ... the only way that can happen is if there are tools to publish content, legal and questionable, and have free, questionable, and licensed media be easily shared. MP3 is what it is today because it was used for noncommercial purposes without restrictions. What resulted was a complete change in paradigm, putting the record stores almost completely out of business and then moving on to threaten the whole recording industry with a new model fronted by iTunes.

Is the book industry ready for such a transformation? You've got a bit of an advantage, with no easy way for users to "rip" books from bound tombs to ePub files, but that's only a temporary fix as user demand will push forward digital releases soon enough.

Brace yourselves and prepare. Is this the right path? Is there money to be made while still playing fair? Who will be the "iTunes" of books (and can they get there without DRM)? Take inspiration from Audible and friends, but also note the red flags waved around regarding what DRM does and why it is bad (and why even Apple ended up discarding DRM in the end).

You want ePub to take off? Take out the DRM. Offer books for free. Make it easy for users to publish free (and non-free) ePub books. Make it more accessible on everything from desktops to portable devices: standard readers across platforms, F/OSS ePub software (readers, converters, writers, and RSS/RDF-to-ePub aggregators) that leads the way rather than just limping along, etc.

Yes, you will start by losing money, just like MP3 did. But in the end, there will be a better product that can be shared and loved by all. And there's still profit to be had, too.

She just doesn't get, yet, that the internet has two kinds of free and that the more something shouts it is free the less likely it is. How do you explain that firefox is free and safe but cursormania is free and not safe?

I think I would try that by explaining the difference between free as in freedom and free as in "we will sell your soul to our advertisers".

I disagree with this statement: "Understanding licenses isn't really an Open Source issue." .. For someone who doesn't understand the basic idea .. the GPL is undoubtedly even more confusing.

Only if you're a lawyer. It seams clear enough to me, I get 'a license from the original licensors, to run, modify and propagate that work', without responsibility for 'enforcing compliance by third parties with this License'

"The GPL, however, is a true copyright license: a unilateral permission, in which no obligations are reciprocally required by the licensor. Copyright holders of computer programs are given, by the Copyright Act, exclusive right to copy, modify and redistribute their programs. The GPL, reduced to its essence, says:

'You may copy, modify and redistribute this software, whether modified or unmodified, freely. But if you redistribute it, in modified or unmodified form, your permission extends only to distribution under the terms of this license. If you violate the terms of this license, all permission is withdrawn.'"

Hold on a second. Are you really arguing that if my actions cause the value of your property to decrease, that is equivalent to theft?

Yes, in cases where your actions run afoul of either legal or contractual obligations. I guess you missed the fact that all of my examples were illegitimate, either for legal reasons, or contractual obligation?

If you control the world's only known naturally occurring source of unobtanium, and I invent a process that produces artificial unobtanium your property has been devalued.

There's no law against producing unobtanium, unless it closely resembles certain nuclear-fissionable materials. Unless, of course, you have a legal contract with me involving "insider knowledge" or "non-competition". Otherwise, have at it!

If you buy a meal, and I'm sitting next to you with noisy and annoying friends, your purchase has been devalued.

Depending on the situation, you may be running afoul of local harassment, tresspassing, and/or noise ordinances. For example, if I'm trying to eat my meal in my living room, and I don't want you there? Otherwise, chatter away!

If you buy a HumVee and I write a book about how awful HumVees are, you might find it harder to sell your SUV.

It's usually not against the law to write a book about anything. There are laws about defamation, libel, and slander that you might want to consider.

As a consumer, I will decide what is in my best interest Thank You Very Much.

All the way to jail, if you are on a car lot with lots of shiny, new cars, and you decide that, while you don't want to pay for a HumVee, you are going to get one, anyway.

If my unwillingness to purchase certain media leads to the failure of that market, I'm quite ok with that.

Nobody's arguing with your right to not buy something. What's being argued is your right to have the thing you decided not to buy, anyway.

Of course, if you need hired thugs to convince people to buy your product, "market" doesn't really apply. "Racket" is the word you're looking for.

What about when those "hired thugs" are called "police" and they are inquiring about that shiny red HumVee in your front driveway that was recently found missing at the local car lot? Are you saying the civilization is a "racket"?

There are laws on copyrights that exist to grant rights to content creators. If you create content, you are free to waive those rights, and distribute your content free of charge. (As I am doing now, with this post) But if I don't want to allow free distribution of my created works, I can do so, and there are laws in place for this to happen.

As a programmer myself, I'm free to choose the GNU GPL license to distribute my works. (And I often do) Notice that it's a license: permission to do or not to do something. When I release something under the GPL, I'm limiting your right to use my works to those terms specified in the Gnu Public License, terms that are widely accepted in this particular corner of the Internet. But it's copyright law that gives me the right to limit distribution in this manner, and I bristle at the idea that you feel that these rights should be taken from me.

There's a difference between "deriving from a free software program" and "using the output of a free software program." You can use gcc to compile non-free programs, just like you can use OpenOffice to write a non-free report or book. In both cases, the product of the program is non-free, even though the program itself and any derivatives of the program have to be GPL. Bison 2.4.1 is plain GPL3. Flex isn't GPL at all. GCC is plain GPL (v2 and v3). Check out the GPL faq.

Should exim be released under the AGPL rather than the GPL? I don't think it should, because it would place too much of a burden on users of the software without any real benefit to the open source and free software communities.

It wouldn't place a burden on most users, who don't modify the source, so aren't required to provide it. See section 13 of http://www.gnu.org/licenses/agpl-3.0.html though IANAL... MTAs perhaps should not be AGPLd, but in general I'd see the pain of making network service source available a challenge that could lead to good things. It would be cool if service deployment made it natural to expose source of the running application. I speculate that deployment from a DVCS will be a winner for such purposes.

In addition to software licenses, we have licenses like GFDL and CC-BY-SA, which are intended for books, software manuals, etc. That whole situation is a total botch. The GFDL (without any of the added options like invariant sections, etc.) is essentially philosophically and legally equivalent to CC-BY-SA. The fact that we have two licenses for a single purpose is not a good thing. For instance, I've written some physics textbooks that are copylefted. Sometimes I've taken diagrams and photos I did for the books and added them to WP articles. Other times I've taken photos from WP and put them in my books. What makes this all unnecessarily difficult is that although WP uses GFDL (for historical reasons, because CC postdates WP), various other people use CC-BY-SA. We all want to share, but the licensing creates problems. I've ended up dual-licensing my books for this reason, and as far as I can tell, this allows me to bring in either CC-BY-SA or GFDL materials. On the other hand, if other people want to use a photo from my book, they have to look in the photo credits section at the back, and they may find that it's a photo I got from someone else under GFDL, but their project is CC-BY-SA, so they can't use it. They might be able to switch their own project to a similar dual-license scheme to get around this, but that might not be possible; e.g., look at the Linux kernel, which could never change licenses even if Linus wanted it to, because there are too many copyright holders.

One thing I would suggest to anyone uploading pictures to WP or Wikimedia Commons is that you use their recommended licensing option, which is now dual GFDL/CC-BY-SA.

Another real problem in this area is the tendency of people to pick CC-BY-NC, with a noncommercial clause. I see tons of people doing this even for materials that have zero commercial value. For example, there's an innovative physics textbook from the 1970's that went out of print. Cool book, but it was just a little too controversial; the big sellers tend to be the plain vanilla ones that can make everyone in a university department happy enough to sign off on adopting it. It's been out of print for 30 years, and the rights reverted to the author. He scanned it and put it up on his web site as a PDF. I contacted him, told him how much I liked the book, and suggested that he put it under a CC license, because, e.g., otherwise it would have to disappear from the world on the day he got tired of paying a webhosting bill. He decided to do that, which is cool, but he picked CC-BY-NC, which means the book can never be used as the basis for further collaborative work. I think people have this emotional feeling that they don't want to risk having their work exploited commercially by someone else, because that would be a ripoff. The problem is that they don't seem to do a good job of realistically assessing the chances that that would happen. Although the guy I'm referring to is a published author, there are many other people who just don't have a realistic idea of what it's like to try to make a significant amount of money by writing. There are just too many people out there who think they have the next bestseller on their hands.

Obviously you need a license that matches your values. If you think the same way as Stallman, who has communicated his principles in such places as the biography Free as in Freedom and the Free Software Song, you'll chose his license. If, on the other hand, matters of "hoarding" don't worry you at all, you'll chose another license. The quest for the one true open source license is an unreasonable expectation that human beings all think the same.

It's good to see people speaking out against DRM, but I'm not sure if it's enough to stop the huge plans at work to push through stricter and stronger DRM.

Read this short story about the future with DRM. We are becoming frighteningly close to making it a reality.

I highly doubt the FSF said that given their list of words to avoid.
It was probably just paraphrased.

If you don't fulfill that you are not asking for a Free License, you are asking for an OPEN SOURCE license (which contrary to popular belief means ONLY that the source code is available, not that you automatically have the right to do with it as you please).

Your own link contradicts you:

The official definition of "open source software" (which is published by the Open Source Initiative and too long to cite here) was derived indirectly from our criteria for free software. It is not the same; it is a little looser in some respects, so open source supporters have accepted a few licenses that we consider unacceptably restrictive of the users. Nonetheless, it is fairly close to our definition in practice.

However, the obvious meaning for the expression "open source software" is "You can look at the source code," and most people seem to think that's what it means. That is a much weaker criterion than free software, and much weaker than the official definition of open source. It includes many programs that are neither free nor open source.

Since that obvious meaning for "open source" is not the meaning that its advocates intend, the result is that most people misunderstand the term.

The term open source was coined by the OSI and has always, since its inception, referred to the OSI's Open Source Definition. It has never meant merely that the source code is available. This is a simple misunderstanding, just like misunderstanding "free software" as meaning "software available for no cost".

I don't see the problem with piracy to be honest. Any commodity that can be copied freely is (monetarily) worthless. They just need to realize there is going to be no money in album sales, etc. and this might mean that there are less bands, movies, etc. but I think that is better than a future of heavy DRM and giving Free money to the **AA (see blank media taxes).

drew,

I've been assuming that the FSF wouldn't support a licence that didn't allow redistribution. The Free Software Definition specifies the following freedoms:

• The freedom to run the program, for any purpose (freedom 0)
• The freedom to study how the program works, and adapt it to your needs (freedom 1). Access to the source code is a precondition for this.
• The freedom to redistribute copies so you can help your neighbor (freedom 2).
• The freedom to improve the program, and release your improvements (and modified versions in general) to the public, so that the whole community benefits (freedom 3). Access to the source code is a precondition for this.

What I'm looking for is a licence that allows all freedoms except 2 (the freedom to redistribute). That's because freedom 2 is utterly incompatible with the production of commercial software, except where that software is consultingware, or tied to expensive hardware in some way.

As an aside: in his article Why Software Should Not Have Owners, Stallman completely misunderstands the point of the voluntary interaction between individuals that underpins a free society:

Whether you give a copy to your friend affects you and your friend much more than it affects me. I shouldn't have the power to tell you not to do these things. No one should.

In fact, if you want to use software, then the owner of the software may nominate the terms under which you use it. Obviously you are free to accept or decline, but once you've accepted, you must abide by the terms of the agreement.

Everyone should have the power to set the terms of an agreement - and the power to accept or decline that agreement.

Firstly, if you are restricting the redistribution then what you are asking for is not "Libre". Redistribution is one of the four freedoms of a Free Software License. If you don't fulfill that you are not asking for a Free License, you are asking for an OPEN SOURCE license (which contrary to popular belief means ONLY that the source code is available, not that you automatically have the right to do with it as you please).

Anyay, what you are asking in the summary can be done. It is (fairly) common to grant clients the right to use the source code for approved purposes. The Torque game engine has one such license. Several web-based "Enterprise" application I use at work have such licenses. I don't believe any of those use any particular standard license. I would suggest beginning your search here. Perhaps I should have just used Let me google that for you.

Firstly, if you are restricting the redistribution then what you are asking for is not "Libre". Redistribution is one of the four freedoms of a Free Software License. If you don't fulfill that you are not asking for a Free License, you are asking for an OPEN SOURCE license (which contrary to popular belief means ONLY that the source code is available, not that you automatically have the right to do with it as you please).

Anyay, what you are asking in the summary can be done. It is (fairly) common to grant clients the right to use the source code for approved purposes. The Torque game engine has one such license. Several web-based "Enterprise" application I use at work have such licenses. I don't believe any of those use any particular standard license. I would suggest beginning your search here. Perhaps I should have just used Let me google that for you.

Serious question: What is glibc doing that you don't think it should be doing?

• Customizing printf with user-defined format codes.
• strfry and memfrob

Serious question: What is glibc doing that you don't think it should be doing?

• Customizing printf with user-defined format codes.
• strfry and memfrob

Serious question: What is glibc doing that you don't think it should be doing?

• Customizing printf with user-defined format codes.
• strfry and memfrob

PGO in GCC: http://gcc.gnu.org/install/build.html#TOC4

This is about using PGO when compiling GCC, not about using PGO *with* GCC. I guess one could learn a bit by studying the internals, but there are probably better materials available than that.

GCC does everything MSVC does, and more

This is simply not true. From the chart, Microsoft has Fastcall, disabling exception handling, simple member functions, and GCC does not. Additionally, the chart also incorrectly states that Microsoft does not have an option for fast but imprecise floating point. It does.

On the flipside, MSVC++ has whole program optimization, which GNU calls LTO. LTO doesn't exist for GNU yet. See here:

http://gcc.gnu.org/wiki/LinkTimeOptimization

Scroll down and read. Pretty much, LTO looks to require a new C/C++ parser. That's not going to happen overnight.

PGO in GCC: http://gcc.gnu.org/install/build.html#TOC4

I never realized that reading Dr Seuss to my 3-year-old would be such a nightmare in terms of derivative rights and royalties.

Right to Read

This is not a HOW TO - http://www.gnu.org/philosophy/right-to-read.html

Mod parent up. If you haven't read "The Right to Read" yet, let me repeat that link for you. Go read it. Now.

This is indeed the road to Tycho.

The easy answer to the problem: don't redistribute whatever it is you make.

It sounds easy, but it is actually very difficult to keep from distributing. You see, a distribution is a transfer between any two legal entities. So, for example, you hire a consultant and give him a copy of the software. Then you decide not to use the consultant any longer. He's annoyed, and he asserts his GPL rights on your entire product, and distributes it. You go to sue, and the copyright holder of the GPL piece gets involved and makes a case that you don't have the rights you think you did. Your NDA does not apply to GPL software because GPL prohibits you from adding incompatible terms.

In some cases, transfer between divisions, especially partnerships with one or more additional firms, are distribution. So, in practice, I think that purposefully not distributing is too difficult to do reliably. It also does not work against Affero GPL3. If you perform that as a service, you have to give up the source code.

So, it is much easier to keep your software separate as I advise.

Thanks

Bruce

That was the reasoning used in my current company to never, ever risk integrating GPL software into our code, despite the fact that we never sell or release software. (We use the custom software internally to help build a physical product.)

This seems at odds with the GPL FAQ:

http://www.gnu.org/licenses/gpl-faq.html#DevelopChangesUnderNDA

Does the GPL allow me to develop a modified version under a nondisclosure agreement?

Yes. For instance, you can accept a contract to develop changes and agree not to release your changes until the client says ok. This is permitted because in this case no GPL-covered code is being distributed under an NDA.

You can also release your changes to the client under the GPL, but agree not to release them to anyone else unless the client says ok. In this case, too, no GPL-covered code is being distributed under an NDA, or under any additional restrictions.

The GPL would give the client the right to redistribute your version. In this scenario, the client will probably choose not to exercise that right, but does have the right.

Is there something I'm missing? Are there specific provisions that should be included in NDAs and employee contracts to do this safely?

Did you give Gnash a try?

Side note: it's a proprietary world. Having the opinion that it should be the other way around doesn't really make a difference on how it works. In other words, go fix it or stop whining.

GNU software also has licences that gives you permission to use the software based on a given set of premises.

Really now? And which license is that? The GNU GPL/LGPL are source code licenses, not end-user licenses. Clause 0 of the GPL v2 states "Activities other than copying, distribution and modification are not covered by this License; they are outside its scope. The act of running the Program is not restricted".

I see nothing in these rules that would preclude Free Software. Indeed, they would seem to favor Free Software as it is the device manufacturer, not the software vendor, who must see to it that the software complies.

BTW Free Software is not the same as Copyleft Software. Much of your proprietary software (and all versions of Unix) contain bits of Free Software, such as the BSD TCP/IP stack. See the Free Software Defintion.

So, how do we permit plugins while prohibiting proprietary plugins, and how do we do it while staying within the bounds of copyright law which is the basis of the GPL?... ...most people participating in the related discussions on the gcc mailing list, suggested already that an unstable plugin API would bring all major advantages of plugins in gcc, while complicating the scenario of proprietary plugins.

- GCC Plugin Wiki

That is the first that comes to mind. I believe Linus himself has been quoted as saying something along the lines of "We don't promise a stable kernel ABI and if that means breaking binary drivers, oh well, in fact we might change the ABI just to break them on purpose!". Can't find the quote though.

And if you still aren't convinced, just browse the comments right here at Slashdot every time there is a story about some driver somewhere. There indeed exists a group of people who want to purposefully mix shit up hoping to scare certain kinds of developers away.

What is the past tense of "copyright"? Copyrighted?

Correct. Read nearly any section of the U.S. copyright law (Title 17, United States Code), and you'll see numerous mentions of "a copyrighted work". But this past participle might differ in the Commonwealth, as Australian Copyright Council uses "copyright works". And if you wonder about the past tense of the verb meaning to authorize distribution of a copyrighted work under a reciprocal Free license, FSF spells it "copylefted".

Best Approach To Keeping a Virtual World Protocol Free to All?

1. Document it well. Do you have a javadoc style reference for it? What about example or sample code showing how to use it?
2. Promote it. Ninety percent of GPL code I use is recommended to me by coworkers & coleagues.
3. Support it (if possible). Feature f is seriously not working for me, is anyone going to help?
4. Let the community own it. Don't be afraid to let contributors add/request new directions.

... filed a provisional patent application on it March 20 of last year

But I'm guessing you haven't been awarded the patent? I think you've done more than most people would have. If you're worried about someone suing you for using a protocol, why not just upload all the documentation for it to a SourceForge Project or make it available on your site and date it? I'm guessing it's a bit more tricky than software as you need the required documentation to define a protocol but why shouldn't that be releasable under the GPL? If you really wanted to ask for help, you could seek help from the EFF in establishing prior art now.

Also, what kind of document would I need to make official the public-domaining of the app?

If you have the source code, just drop it on SourceForge or make it available for download on your site with a copy of the GPL as a license file. Frankly, I'd be more concerned about it being adopted and supported widely rather than having it be a GPL protocol. I wish you the best of luck--I think something very neat could come of this!

Best Approach To Keeping a Virtual World Protocol Free to All?

1. Document it well. Do you have a javadoc style reference for it? What about example or sample code showing how to use it?
2. Promote it. Ninety percent of GPL code I use is recommended to me by coworkers & coleagues.
3. Support it (if possible). Feature f is seriously not working for me, is anyone going to help?
4. Let the community own it. Don't be afraid to let contributors add/request new directions.

... filed a provisional patent application on it March 20 of last year

But I'm guessing you haven't been awarded the patent? I think you've done more than most people would have. If you're worried about someone suing you for using a protocol, why not just upload all the documentation for it to a SourceForge Project or make it available on your site and date it? I'm guessing it's a bit more tricky than software as you need the required documentation to define a protocol but why shouldn't that be releasable under the GPL? If you really wanted to ask for help, you could seek help from the EFF in establishing prior art now.

Also, what kind of document would I need to make official the public-domaining of the app?

If you have the source code, just drop it on SourceForge or make it available for download on your site with a copy of the GPL as a license file. Frankly, I'd be more concerned about it being adopted and supported widely rather than having it be a GPL protocol. I wish you the best of luck--I think something very neat could come of this!

You can speak HTTP over a UNIX socket just as easily as you can over a network socket.

WRT Licensing:
http://www.gnu.org/licenses/gpl-faq.html#MereAggregation

"By contrast, pipes, sockets and command-line arguments are communication mechanisms normally used between two separate programs. So when they are used for communication, the modules normally are separate programs. But if the semantics of the communication are intimate enough, exchanging complex internal data structures, that too could be a basis to consider the two parts as combined into a larger program."

It would seem that GPLv3 doesn't change the landscape for this sort of thing. Also, I would wonder if publishing your communication protocol (maybe along with a liberally licensed, actively maintained client and server) would cause the FSF to look more favourably at your closed-source app.

Regardless. Wouldn't Apple be using GCC to merely generate an AST of some source code? I can't possibly see how *that* would qualify as a complex internal data structure. :)

While MFoG is certainly respectable, there are go AIs that work native under Linux you may want to look into, such as the open-source gnugo and the incredibly strong mogo.

The technique used to make MFoG 12 so strong (Monte Carlo Tree Search) was first popularized for go AI by Mogo, and last I checked Mogo was still stronger than MFoG. Check it out.

I don't understand, why was Budweiser's commercial loaded on a ship off the Somali coast? And how much ransom did the pirates want for it?

http://www.gnu.org/philosophy/words-to-avoid.html#Piracy

That F in FOSS stand for"free" as in speech, not lunch... er beer.

Free Software isn't *intended* to be a "business model" for corporations to get filthy rich selling copies of information that they produce for a nickel each.

http://www.gnu.org/philosophy/free-sw.html

I'm a physicist (of the modelling kind, though, not an experimental one).

Let me tell you, if you want to support Open Source in science, support GNU Octave. Matlab is the de facto standard in many fields just because students are conditioned to use it during undergraduate education. However, it's ridiculously expensive and many institutions are just looking for an excuse to dump it. Surprisingly often they haven't even heard of Octave.

Octave has improved a lot in the past few years and version 3 is actually quite impressive. Matlab code often runs with minor or no modifications at all. It even supports multidimensional matrices now. At my lab Octave has become an integral part of the research process. We couldn't do without it, I never use Matlab any more.

So, if you are in a position to try Octave instead of Matlab, or recommend it to scientist, I hope you do that. Octave project is also looking for help and I can assure you that by helping them you are helping numerous scientists around the world. Including yours truly.

Does anybody know of any open source software intended for scientific research? Does anybody work in a lab that makes an effort to use open source software?

We discussed R which describes itself as:

R is a language and environment for statistical computing and graphics. It is a GNU project which is similar to the S language and environment which was developed at Bell Laboratories (formerly AT&T, now Lucent Technologies) by John Chambers and colleagues. R can be considered as a different implementation of S. There are some important differences, but much code written for S runs unaltered under R.

R provides a wide variety of statistical (linear and nonlinear modeling, classical statistical tests, time-series analysis, classification, clustering, ...) and graphical techniques, and is highly extensible. The S language is often the vehicle of choice for research in statistical methodology, and R provides an Open Source route to participation in that activity.

One of R's strengths is the ease with which well-designed publication-quality plots can be produced, including mathematical symbols and formulae where needed. Great care has been taken over the defaults for the minor design choices in graphics, but the user retains full control.

While it's not geared specifically towards experimental physics, that's probably going to be your most fruitful endeavor.

Then there's the Matlab knock-off of Octave which describes itself as:

GNU Octave is a high-level language, primarily intended for numerical computations. It provides a convenient command line interface for solving linear and nonlinear problems numerically, and for performing other numerical experiments using a language that is mostly compatible with Matlab. It may also be used as a batch-oriented language.

Octave has extensive tools for solving common numerical linear algebra problems, finding the roots of nonlinear equations, integrating ordinary functions, manipulating polynomials, and integrating ordinary differential and differential-algebraic equations. It is easily extensible and customizable via user-defined functions written in Octave's own language, or using dynamically loaded modules written in C++, C, Fortran, or other languages.

I'm surprised you're surprised that you only find proprietary software in the highly specialized realm of "experimental physics." I mean, you have to be like a PhD in physics with a good deal of programming knowledge to make something accurate & useful (and there's probably gotta be like 50 failed projects before you get a good successful one).

You're probably wondering why there's not a project of Firefox or OO.o quality for experimental physics but I'll tell you why: it's too specialized and your user base is ridiculously small. You're not going to find a company that is going to benefit greatly (or at all maybe) by releasing their product into the wild for a community to grow. There's probably not a community for it to grow in.

You should tell us what specifically you are looking for something to do ... I have no idea what Labview, Igor, Inventor, or Eagle do. Ask yourself why these programs are standards and then maybe add to Octave's wish list or contribute to it even! Unfortunately, this isn't easy--I myself started to implement proper handling of sparse matrices in Octave but gave up as I was trying to form low level requirements ... You probably already know though that this is going to have to be done in C or another very low level, very quick language.

If you're looking for something specific or outline some high level

I'd have never thought that many Dutch went out on the sea and forcibly seized ships and stole their cargo. Seems rather high, are you sure you got your numbers right? Or perhaps you are using the wrong word?

http://www.gnu.org/philosophy/words-to-avoid.html#Piracy

Jimbo sells wikipedia info to third parties.

This is exactly why citations are necessary, so people can't just shit on a page and let it stand. Doing so, even if it is true, isn't helpful because it's a dead end trail.

A question I'd also like to raise is this: What the fuck are you talking about? Wikipedia content is licensed under GFDL, so it's free for the taking with restrictions—possibly too many, which is why Wikipedia will possibly migrate to CC-BY-SA 3.0 before August this year. If you're claiming that Jimbo is selling Wikipedia content without restrictions in the sense of traditional commercial licensing, that's copyright infringement. Why would any third party be stupid enough to pay for content in violation of copyright? Anyone willing to disregard the violations would be better off just ripping material straight out without worrying about involving a middleman. No sane entity is going to pay for stolen goods when they can just as easily do the stealing themselves.