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Ooooo, the pendants are going to get you for implying that Linux uses a "micro" kernel.

The usual FSF copyright assignment contract obliges the FSF to act in certain ways:

See http://www.gnu.org/philosophy/free-sw.html for the difference between free as in beer vs free as in speech if you're curious.

And don't forget to use your editor of choice in conjunction with that whole rigamarole ;).

... a company or other organization can develop a modified version and install that version through its own facilities, without giving the staff permission to release that modified version to outsiders.

However, when the organization transfers copies to other organizations or individuals, that is distribution. In particular, providing copies to contractors for use off-site is distribution.

A company is running a modified version of a GPL'ed program on a web site. Does the GPL say they must release their modified sources?

        The GPL permits anyone to make a modified version and use it without ever distributing it to others. What this company is doing is a special case of that. Therefore, the company does not have to release the modified sources.

... a company or other organization can develop a modified version and install that version through its own facilities, without giving the staff permission to release that modified version to outsiders.

However, when the organization transfers copies to other organizations or individuals, that is distribution. In particular, providing copies to contractors for use off-site is distribution.

A company is running a modified version of a GPL'ed program on a web site. Does the GPL say they must release their modified sources?

        The GPL permits anyone to make a modified version and use it without ever distributing it to others. What this company is doing is a special case of that. Therefore, the company does not have to release the modified sources.

He is talking about this.

no, BSD software can be relicensed under the more restrictive GPL, just not the other way around. By the way, I downloaded the source for Abiword-2.4.6.tar.gz and found the hash.cpp with the full license inside but no tword.cpp file

Please feel free to learn more about this issue.

The term "Intellectual Property", which you refer to by acronym "IPR" is a nonsense term, as you should know if you have any familiarity whatsoever with the issues you are trying to discuss. Since you are talking about "DRM", you probably meant to say "copyright laws", which would have actually meant something that would be clear instead of obfuscatory, since "Digital Restrictions Management" has nothing to do with patents or trademarks.

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

If there is anything that I have learned in the past 10 years of writing code (since before high school), I have learned that the following sequence of learning is ideal.
1. HTML/CSS/JavaScript - Get acquainted with web programming. None of that Nambly-pambly BBCode crap that they offer on MySpace.
2. Python - I wish I had got into this before I learned C++. Good for learning about shells if you decide to switch to Linux or BSD, especially if you decide to create your own website through a webhosting provider that uses SSH.
3. C/C++ and/or PHP/MySQL. - Playing with the big-boy toys at this point. The safety net that points 1 and 2 provided has been lowered.
4. OpenGL or Assembly Programming. - Really advanced programming! OpenGL is high-level. Assembly is low-level.
From there on, the sky is the limit.

Understand that the Red Ring of Death (RROD) is just a failure in the treacherous computing chain of trust. Everything must be safe and secure because any minor problem along the way could introduce a "security risk". It's important to distinguish between a security risk (for example: XBOX 360 giving away your credit card details to a Russian mafia hacker) and a "security risk" (for example: someone is able to run Linux on the XBOX 360, take advantage of the hardware, and not buy any Microsoft games).

How do you set up a treacherous computing chain?

In software, it starts with protected areas of the CPU, memory, and cryptographic keys. No other programs or processes can see what this special software process is doing, otherwise all the security falls apart as the keys are divulged. To do this, you hide the chip that performs this function somewhere where it's VERY difficult to get at (like inside the CPU itself). From that point, you've got to carry that protection forward in hardware; otherwise a hacker hooks up the probes and gets a clear read on that HD-DVD movie intended to be encrypted until it gets inside the HDTV itself.

So, the RROD originates with the media industries and their broken Digital Restrictions Management (DRM). Treacherous computing is the hardware way of enforcing their restrictions in the hardware you spent your money to buy. (So, who really owns that Xbox 360?) Well, apparently Microsoft does, because any little thing that goes wrong, your fault or not, gives you the RROD; it's Microsoft's way of saying:

PWNED UR XBOXOR!

Spend your money on freedom, or don't complain about how heavy the chains lay on your wrists.

Thank you for your kind consideration.

A container for multiple shell windows (slrn, irssi, mutt, etc..)

Stallman called it correctly.

http://www.gnu.org/philosophy/right-to-read.html

I can think of five set-top game players still sold new in North America: Games for Windows (e.g. Shuttle XPC), Mac OS X (e.g. Mac mini), PLAYSTATION 3, Xbox 360, and Wii. The first three can run GNU/Linux. Now about the others:

With Xbox 360, you need XNA Creators Club in order to mod a newly purchased machine to run homebrew. This XNA Creators Club subscription costs $495 per machine for the typical five-year life of a console. In the case of a program under the GPL, "Installation Information" would probably need to include an XNA Creators Club subscription. People who port GPLv3 software to Xbox 360 would have to provide Installation Information along with the Corresponding Source, and it's not clear whether $99 for the first year of an XNA Creators Club subscription counts as "a price no more than your reasonable cost of physically performing this conveying of source".

To my knowledge, the one existing Wii crack has not yet been generalized to the point where anybody who has bought a Wii can stick in a disc or plug a card into the outside and start homebrew.

First, in most cases there's no need to spend time comprehending a large code base. You have to be selective, and the tools you'll use will depend on the problem you're facing.

• If you're only trying to solve a specific bug, then, as other posters already commented, the debugger is your tool of choice.
• If you're facing performance problems, then use the various performance measurement tools.
• If you must evaluate the code, then invest on metric collection tools, like CCCC.
• If you want to reuse the code in another project, then you need to investigate packaging tools and techniques.
• If the code's identifiers or its structure require refactoring, then try using a refactoring browser, like CScout.
• If the code's formatting and style brings you a headache, look at formatter, like indent

Second, never underestimate the power of grep. Grep will often find things that other tools can't. It can search in documentation, comments, binary files, unparsable source code, and change logs. It can work on any language, and (with the help of find(1) and xargs(1) tools) traverse deep directory hierarchies. Unlike most other tools, grep doesn't need any setup, tuning, or configuration. Grep will often locate what you're looking for, in less time than what you need to download a more sophisticated tool.

in-fact, if you're not familiar with the GPLv3 I recommend you on the GPLv3 quick guide click here
I think you, mr. developer, should be happy as-well.
Good luck and good night :)

The codebase? Java.

Back in the old days, Java was licensed with a scary EULA. This was fine for the end user because it was free as in beer. But it was trapped. OpenJDK is the cure. This is fine for end users and end developers. Now if a developer sees a bug (s)he'd like to fix, the license allows that.

Before Sun Microsystems released their code through OpenJDK, a rival GNU Classpath effort had been, and still is, producing a clean-room implementation. This prompted Sun to release their code under the same license in the hopes of cross-pollination.

The problem? Classpath and related projects have copyright assignment to FSF. OpenJDK requires copyright assignment to Sun. (Each, I think Sun does, may have copyright shared with the original author.)

So at the moment there's a something of a stand-off regarding this copyright. They're licensed under the same licensed but some code belongs to FSF and some belongs to Sun. So, effectively you either sell your soul to RMS or James Gosling! :) Ironic, given their bitter infamy over emacs!

Until lawyers of FSF and Sun can resolve this dispute, Classpath-derived code won't appear in OpenJDK and OpenJDK-derived code won't appear in Classpath. Third party repositories have been hosted for such hybrids. For the first scenario, IcedTea exists while for the second scenario BrandWeg has recently been announced. I quote the announcement for BrandWeg, which may be helpful in clarifying the issue:

I proposed that a company would obtain the GPL source code for MySQL, compile it, and then SELL the resulting binaries.

I've since added both cscope and freescope, as well as the old Red Hat Source Navigator for good measure.

GNU Global is able to generate a set of HTML pages from C/C++ source code. This tool has helped me several times. All member variables, functions, classes and class instances are hyperlinks. It provides an easy way to examine source code. It also provides tags for several text editors (for Vim and Emacs especially). http://www.gnu.org/software/global/

This is why you don't get any malware for linux.

Wouldn't it be possible, at the corporate level, to do quite a bit of customization, more than possible for mere humans on MS Office.

I'm not all corporations, but I've been around a few decades. Here's my 2 cents worth.

All of the OOo code is licensed under the LGPL, and can be freely downloaded, built and customized. So yes, it's possible. The sky's the limit; it's just software. :-) Several factors make it less likely that a corporation would take this approach, however.

One is that such a customization would very likely be deemed a "derivative work" by Legal, in which case if it were distributed (e.g., to suppliers for a given project, or even arguably to contractors working for the corporation), then the source must be made available as well. Non-software corporations tend to be allergic to releasing their source code, in my experience, because their lawyers tend to be very conservative. Some manager somewhere will likely have to bet his career by accepting legal liability for the corporation. Will the risk to his career if Something Bad Happens justify the benefit he perceives?

The issue of support will also likely be raised. What if the customized version breaks - who will "support" it? Yes, yes, we all know the internal team of developers will - assuming they weren't laid off in the last "shareholder value" improvement exercise (a constant risk in corporate America). But IT directors tend to go the other direction, from what I've seen - they want to outsource support (and legal indemnification) for open source software, so it can be treated as if it were proprietary. Proprietary means comfort; a target at which the finger can point if Something Bad Happens. This tendency is likely the foundation of IBM's business case for Symphony, by the way.

Finally, if a support team were to be established in a corporation to produce a custom version of OOo, they would need to have some type of development environment. As much fun as bashing Microsoft may be, Visual Studio and .NET are not technically inferior products. So a corporation is unlikely to consider that an inferior option to, say, Eclipse technology. Sure, it costs a lot more - but it's a small number of licenses. They probably wouldn't hesitate.

But in the end, I suspect a lot of corporations just want to write scripts and such without mucking around in the source code proper. The issues most likely to resonate are: (1) How do you efficiently distribute the customizations? (2) How hard are they to develop and maintain? and (3) Can we use them on all of our platforms as is, or do we have to port or (ack!) redevelop for each platform? The third is where Microsoft's "Windows Everywhere" bias may hurt them with this decision to abandon VBA. (Gee, now I'm sure glad we chose to use Python as the scripting language in our internal applications! :-)

I never suggested removing copyright, just reducing the length to something reasonable. This way, if a company wants to continue making good profits, they must continue creating things that for customers will pay for. I bet that companies will still be able to sell their software very well after it has entered the public domain anyway. People like shrink-wrapped boxes, physical media, and convenience.

I am sure very few people had printing presses. Because there were few that could mass produce books, it would be easy to prevent them from copyright infringement as they would be easy to spot. Before computers and copying machines, copyright law was simply something individuals did not have to worry about at all. It was a wonderful tradeoff.

More "unauthorized publishers" means people, from the public who is supposed to be main group benefitting, are negatively effected by current copyright law. The public gets less from the deal.

We are talking about law, not right and wrong. These are two unrelated matters.

I am sure that cost would be worth the benefit. Copyleft turns copyright law upside down, so the stronger copyright law, the stronger copyleft is. Richard Stallman, the man behind the GPL (I am sure you know), said this about copyright lengths, "In my own field, computer programming, three years should suffice, because product cycles are even shorter than that."

Hobbyist developers will always be there regardless. Free software is how they scratch itches. As for GPL software falling into public domain, they could and would be turned into proprietary software. However, we have BSD software works like this fine. There are corporate contributers to OpenBSD, for example.

This is off the top of my head here, but maybe there would be a rule about software falling into the public domain: once distributed software falls into public domain, the source code must go with it. Maybe this could only work with registered copyrights. This would help balance propreitary software against GPL once things fall into the public domain.

Actually, I am plucking almost all of these ideas from various Richard Stallman essays (if I am understanding them properly). This is someone who has spent half his life thinking about these things. :-)

Source for RMS quote: Misinterpreting Copyright.

Gnome and KDE choose to distribute their software for free.
I suggest that you read this. http://www.gnu.org/philosophy/selling.html
Yes you can charge for FOSS software. My company has paid for FOSS. We needed a feature added to Asterisk so we paid for the developer to add it.
You use selfish in an interesting way. You want a developer to spend his time and effort on a project and not even get a thank you in return. I am saying that if you use a FOSS program that you should at least thank the developers, help other users, write documentation, write code, pay someone to write code, or donate money to projects that benfit you. You keep using that word but I don't think you know what it means.

Every 20 years, copyright is extended by another 20 years, so copyrights have been getting worse. This is why I said "no longer".

First of all, copyright exists to promote the arts and sciences, not to make anyone money. It is a tradeoff made by the public, where they give up some rights (being able to copy works) in order to encourage authors to make works. After a short term, those works would then fall into the public domain, where anyone could use them to derive more creative works. A big, full public domain of free material then gets built up.

Now to answer the question. Originally, copyright had no effect on individuals. No one had the ability to make mass reproductions. To copy a book, an individual had to hand copy it, since individuals didn't own printing presses. Copying two books took twice as long as copying one book. It wasn't worth it. When it came to copyrights, the public wasn't actually losing anything, since they didn't have the ability to excersise those rights in the first place. Copyright was an industrial limitation, to keep publishers from publishing books before the author got a chance to make some profit.

This is different in the digital age. We all have printing presses now. Copyright needs to be reevaluated.

Thanks to the digital age we have, the software supply is infinite. Really, copyright creates an artificial cap on this infinite supply. Another way to look at this, I guess, is that there is a limited supply of unique software. But why does demand go down? People won't stop needing software if copyright law changed. I am not sure that the supply-demand curve applies well to creative works, anyway.

Copyright encourages authors to not only create works, by providing a profit motive, but needs to also allow works to fall into public domain so that they can be used to create even more works. Copyright fails the second part, along with the unreasonable restrictions on personal freedoms. The public is the important side of the deal, and should be getting the bargain. Copyright law is backwards right now.

I don't want to plagairize, but I read this article: http://www.gnu.org/philosophy/reevaluating-copyright.html a couple years ago, and I was using things I remebered from it in writing this.

if it can't also protect copyleft.

You may also want to consider this story, and consider that you might not have to completely open-source your software to satisfy your paying customers.

FSF view on selling software

Also: Software as a service

Finally, there is also consultancy for your own project. You need help installing it? You want a feature? Hand over the cash!

No, I haven't done it. Mainly because I'd rather not be my own boss. The payoff is high, but so are the risks. I'd rather be a wage-slave and let my boss bear the risks.

Uh, GCC doesn't even support C99 why would you expect MS to be?
http://gcc.gnu.org/c99status.html

1.- the right to legal action upon circunvention is the right to legal action against modification, wich is one of the specific freedoms (freedom 1) that the GPL wants to defend. It is against the spirit of the GPL. If you want to use GPLed work, you must not forbid or penally persecute those trying to make modifications. As Bruce Perens has already stated in this very same thread, that does not prohibit the implementation of DRM techonology at all, it just states that if you use GPLed work, this can not be taken into consideration for purposes of aplication of anticircunvention clauses cotained in the DMCA or any other such act.

I just want to point out that you just went form the legitimate user trying to acces DRMed content (whose rights allegedly we where affecting and shouldn't) to content creators and third parties that do not, in principle, have nothing to say in a software license, and whose rights should be (and are) defended somewhere else.

2.- No, it does not defeat the purpose of the user that you put up as a counter example: i want to run signed binaries in my hardware for security reasons. This is legit, and permited under the GPL. I want to give you a computer with GPLed code, and means to modify and update that code, but locked up behind a crypto key or signature. This is not legit, and forbidden. If you use GPLed work, and need it to be updatable, then you must accept all updates. If you use GPLed work, and do not want to accept third partie's mods, put it in a ROM, and distribute updates thru other means (ROM replacement? online auth?). If you want to be the only one to be able to make changes to the software under any circumstance, do not use free software, as what you want to do it's, by definition, un-free. ie, stay away from our free code. and our license. and our movement.

3.- it does not impose restrictions on hardware, only to software. You are still free to produce any hardware that you want, provided that IF you include GPLed works inside it, you do not take steps to actively prohibit the freedoms that we want to preserve. You are still free to design and implement DRM schemes, provided that you do not persecute does trying to examine (even perfect?) said schemes.

Nobody forces you to put GPLed works inside this kind of artifacts, you are always free to reimplement the same features as a locked source under any other license. Which comes down to the obvious: GPL covers only work licensed under the GPL. Hardware is not licensed under the GPL. Content is not licensed under the GPL. Software that interacts with them is, and if you need closed source, propietary software, then why o why do you want to use GPLed work?

4.- I disagree. The heat is not upon the OSIers, but against the FSF, who has been called traitors to say the least. This whole issue has shown who among our movement have a real interest in freedom, and who have an interest in free beer and open source. But i couldn't care less who's got more heat, really.

The issue finally comes down to: if you truly believe that freedom to run, study, modify, copy, distribute, improve and release and execute software are freedoms that need to be defended (as stated by the FSF since 1986), then you should use GPLv3, GPLv2 is not effective to protect those very same freedoms. If you have reassons to stick with GPLv2, then you are not interested in freedom, just in open source. So yes, if you appear in public speaking for free software, and calling the fsf traitors, and pontificating about what the FSF should do (and i'm not saying this of you, honestly. You might be commenting, by you are not in a possition to pontificate. not here at least, so, honestly, i'm talking about linus and ESR and the like) out of your alleged interest in freedom, and decide to stick to GPLv2, you are going to get heat.

indeed there is.

When you convey a covered work, you waive any legal power to forbid circumvention of technological measures to the extent such circumvention is effected by exercising rights under this License with respect to the covered work, and you disclaim any intention to limit operation or modification of the work as a means of enforcing, against the work's users, your or third parties' legal rights to forbid circumvention of technological measures

Distributors are still allowed to use cryptographic keys for any purpose, and they'll only be required to disclose a key if you need it to modify GPLed software on the device they gave you. The GNU Project itself uses GnuPG to prove the integrity of all the software on its FTP site, and measures like that are beneficial to users. GPLv3 does not stop people from using cryptography; we wouldn't want it to. It only stops people from taking away the rights that the license provides you--whether through patent law, technology, or any other means.

When you convey a covered work, you waive any legal power to forbid circumvention of technological measures to the extent such circumvention is effected by exercising rights under this License with respect to the covered work, and you disclaim any intention to limit operation or modification of the work as a means of enforcing, against the work's users, your or third parties' legal rights to forbid circumvention of technological measures

Distributors are still allowed to use cryptographic keys for any purpose, and they'll only be required to disclose a key if you need it to modify GPLed software on the device they gave you. The GNU Project itself uses GnuPG to prove the integrity of all the software on its FTP site, and measures like that are beneficial to users. GPLv3 does not stop people from using cryptography; we wouldn't want it to. It only stops people from taking away the rights that the license provides you--whether through patent law, technology, or any other means.

When you convey a covered work, you waive any legal power to forbid circumvention of technological measures to the extent such circumvention is effected by exercising rights under this License with respect to the covered work, and you disclaim any intention to limit operation or modification of the work as a means of enforcing, against the work's users, your or third parties' legal rights to forbid circumvention of technological measures

Distributors are still allowed to use cryptographic keys for any purpose, and they'll only be required to disclose a key if you need it to modify GPLed software on the device they gave you. The GNU Project itself uses GnuPG to prove the integrity of all the software on its FTP site, and measures like that are beneficial to users. GPLv3 does not stop people from using cryptography; we wouldn't want it to. It only stops people from taking away the rights that the license provides you--whether through patent law, technology, or any other means.

This is the text the FSF recommends when licensing your software under the GPL (was the same for GPLv2):

This program is free software: you can redistribute it and/or modify it under the terms of the GNU General Public License as published by the Free Software Foundation, either version 3 of the License, or (at your option) any later version.

It's clear you can choose one of the other, hence you are free to strip any you want. In your quote, you're saying "and any later version". I'm not sure where the "and" comes from, but it's certainly not the common formulation for GPL software. Think about this: if you really couldn't strip some versions when distributing GPL software that has the "or any later version" clause, it would mean that software released as GPLv2 or later would be incompatible with software released as GPLv3 or later, which would even be incompatible with software released as GPLv3-only. In other words, "or any later version" can only be useful when you can actually drop something. Just curious, what was the piece of software that was using "and" instead of "or"?

Free Software / Open Source: Open Source is descriptive... there is more to it than the source being viewable, but that's the main action item, the rest is details. Free Software? confusingly vague, similar to Freeware (an already existing term with a lousy brand), and required a "manifesto" to understand.

You can hop over the www.gnu.org and look for the philosophy section, and, specifically, what Stallman wrote about "open source".

In the first place, Free Software has two likely meanings, and "free as in speech, not as in beer" differentiates them nicely. Stallman hasn't found a good word in English that unequivocally means "free" as in speech, and neither have I, or many other people. It isn't intuitive, but it's memorable.

"Open Source", on the other hand, means software you can get the source code for. The OSI has come up with its own definition, which is mostly Free Software with the serial numbers ground off. They can't enforce it. They can enforce the use of the OSI mark, but that's not the same thing. It's ambiguous, and it's easy to drift off into a different meaning.

I'd recommend reading the original or the updated version. I can't summarize as well as Stallman can write.

Free Software / Open Source: Open Source is descriptive... there is more to it than the source being viewable, but that's the main action item, the rest is details. Free Software? confusingly vague, similar to Freeware (an already existing term with a lousy brand), and required a "manifesto" to understand.

You can hop over the www.gnu.org and look for the philosophy section, and, specifically, what Stallman wrote about "open source".

In the first place, Free Software has two likely meanings, and "free as in speech, not as in beer" differentiates them nicely. Stallman hasn't found a good word in English that unequivocally means "free" as in speech, and neither have I, or many other people. It isn't intuitive, but it's memorable.

"Open Source", on the other hand, means software you can get the source code for. The OSI has come up with its own definition, which is mostly Free Software with the serial numbers ground off. They can't enforce it. They can enforce the use of the OSI mark, but that's not the same thing. It's ambiguous, and it's easy to drift off into a different meaning.

I'd recommend reading the original or the updated version. I can't summarize as well as Stallman can write.

I've never seen Stallman as a control-freak. I know he's got that reputation because he wants people to call GNU/Linux "GNU/Linux", but that's just pedantry you can expect from a geek. He doesn't seem to have had any problems ceding control over software projects he's started, and his general aim seems to be to try to explain why acting ethically is in everybody's best interests rather than to amass followers. In fact, something people have often suggested, which he is adamantly against, is a way of stopping Free Software from being used in particular ways that people don't like (e.g. on non-Free operating systems, military purposes, etc). If he were a control freak, he'd be trying silly stuff like that rather than denouncing it.

I didn't say control freak, you did. He isn't obsessed over control with software, although he's shown some examples of acting that way. However, when shown better code, he normally backs down and turns in over, which isn't an unreasonable solution, and is the "pure geek" one at that.

The GNU/Linux thing is because the systems were primarily the GNU system running on the Linux kernel, which he thought should recognize the GNU nature of the system. People on Slashdot like to make obnoxious comments about, "should we call it the GNU/X/Apache/Linux system," but Stallman's argument is real. His project wrote an entire operating system, and were then turning to the kernel. Linus wrote a simple kernel to replace the 8086-80286 targetted Minix kernel with an 80386 one and posted it. People decided to use the GNU tools instead of the simple, for educational purposes only, Minix ones, and the "Linux System" was born, using probably 95% GNU code and 5% Linus's simple kernel. All of a sudden, those GNU tools that people used where they liked them better than the standard Unix ones, were being used in the system rms envisioned, only they were calling it Linux.

Although, there is a bit of irony, since he blasted the generally freer BSD license for the advertising clause, then tried to push the horrible sounding GNU/Linux system. The fact is, GNU wrote the Unix-like operating system, yet the Linux name stuck because GNU sounds horrible AND became known as a project, not an OS. People were using GNU Tools, and nobody was going to call it Slackware GNU, because it sounds bad. If they had even done something lame like Freenix, that might have stuck. I think that the loss was on the branding front, same as Free Software lost out to Open Source, and the ideological driven push by Richard Stallman lost out to small minded thinkers targeting corporate development.

He wanted a movement. He wanted user freedom. He wants the freedom to tinker. These are his goals, and he used software and licensing as a tool to do it. Read his explanations on when to use the LGPL and when to use the GPL. If you are making a Free version an existing library, use the LGPL to make it easier to work with. If it is new functionality, put the GPL on it, so if people use the code, they need to contribute to the body of GPL'd software. His goal is a growing pile of GPL'd code (which he started) that is an enticement. He wants each developer to look at the GPL'd landscape and say, "Wow, if I will GPL my app, I can saved hundreds of thousands of dollars with this free libraries... let me do just that." Like minded people releasing GPL'd software isn't the goal, it's the means to get people that don't really agree to release GPL'd software. That's the goal of the FSF, in the article linked, he writes, "If we amass a collection of powerful GPL-covered libraries that have no parallel available to proprietary software, they will provide a range of useful modules to serve as building blocks in new free programs. This will be a significant advantage for further free software development, and some projects will decide to make software free in order to use these libraries. University projects can easily be i

RMS wrote a lot of software: he's the initial programmer of GCC, GDB, GNU Emacs, and lots of other software. Judging this by how much software one writes is a great way to dodge the real issues at hand, never having taken these issues of software freedom seriously to begin with. RMS is also the principal author of the GNU General Public Licenses. RMS not only theorizes, he also puts theory into practice, and he has established a track record of seeing restrictions to our freedom well before others.

Torvalds is widely covered when he talks about the GPL. That coverage usually neglects to tell the audience that Torvalds doesn't share the same appreciation of freedom RMS, the GNU Project, and the FSF do. Torvalds may be an excellent programmer, he may make great decisions on a wide range of technical matters that concern Linux kernel development and source code management (not surprising since he's the initial author of the Linux kernel and git), but it should be clear to all by now that when it comes to defending your freedoms to run, inspect, share, and modify computer programs, Torvalds is simply not interested.

From FSF (This is the meat of the patent section.)

Discriminatory patents are restricted as follows: A patent license is "discriminatory" if it does not include within the scope of its coverage, prohibits the exercise of, or is conditioned on the non-exercise of one or more of the rights that are specifically granted under this License. You may not convey a covered work if you are a party to an arrangement with a third party that is in the business of distributing software, under which you make payment to the third party based on the extent of your activity of conveying the work, and under which the third party grants, to any of the parties who would receive the covered work from you, a discriminatory patent license (a) in connection with copies of the covered work conveyed by you (or copies made from those copies), or (b) primarily for and in connection with specific products or compilations that contain the covered work, unless you entered into that arrangement, or that patent license was granted, prior to 28 March 2007.

Still drawing machines on paper, instead of using a CAD? Never used a text editor? Never used a computer algebra system and still computing integrals by hand? Never searched for cheap airplane tickets? Many people use these things, you know. I'm quite happy with the second and the third one, at least.

Except that's not true anymore with modern optimising compilers, and assuming it is is a good way to shoot yourself in the foot. (Apparently, gcc does some really interesting things sometimes - for example, see this thread and the related lkml thread.)

Use LaTeX instead of plain TeX, it allows you to concentrate on content without the distraction of presentation.

\section{Sure}
% TODO: rewrite this paragraph
LaTeX allows you to concentrate on content\footnote{If you are able to ignore all the clutter in your text that makes it illegible.}. There is \emph{no distraction} whatsoever.

Don't blame the tool if you're using the wrong one instead of the one true Editor

P.S.: Don't use TODO comments in LaTeX. The FixMe package is much better.

I have to agree that, for me, the best writing environment is a terminal with vim (often using Compiz' ADD Helper to dim the desktop and all other windows)

Also, a lightweight markup language, like Markdown, lets you write normally - but be able to convert your document to XHTML, LaTeX, PDF, etc etc.

The biggest downside to using vim is that, unlike Scrivener, it doesn't give you explicit places to put your notes / outline / etc. So, using vim, you're free to put your notes / etc wherever you want ... both an upside (freedom) and a downside (something you have to figure out and that might distract you).

For drafting, I often using an SCM like git or subversion, but for little snippets and free-writes, etc? They might be written down on paper, they might be in a random note file ... who knows?

It might be worth it to use screen or vim split screens to reproduce something like Scrivener provides, with designated places on the sides to have notes, etc etc. I think I might try that out ...

But, come-on, really ... don't we use vim because it's what we use all day, anyway? As sysadmins / programmers / etc, it makes sense for us to use the editor that we always use (which is available on all OSes, as well).

I use vim for my writing, because it's what I use all day anyway.
I use git for keeping track of my files / drafts / revisions, because it's what I use all day anyway.
I use markdown for my markup, because it's what I use all day anyway.

Wrong

If you link against the Linux kernel (or part of it), then you have to use GPL. Very few programs do this. Even kernel modules do not have to do this, provided they use the correct API.

If you copy code from the Linux kernel, then you have to use the GPL. Incidentally, this applies even if you don't copy verbatim - if you copy the structure and then change variable and function names, you still have to use GPL.

But if you have a piece of code which you wrote in its entirety, and which is only linked against the Linux kernel when on Linux, then it only has to be GPL'd when actually linked to the Linux kernel. The version you ship on Windows or Mac OS X can be licensed any way you like.

Anyone who tells you different is just spreading FUD. Version Two of the GPL is a very simple document and is easy to read. It means just what it says, there's nothing complex behind it. Version Three is a little more prolix, but it still means just what it says. Go read it yourself; don't listen to people who are trying to mislead you.

Wrong

If you link against the Linux kernel (or part of it), then you have to use GPL. Very few programs do this. Even kernel modules do not have to do this, provided they use the correct API.

If you copy code from the Linux kernel, then you have to use the GPL. Incidentally, this applies even if you don't copy verbatim - if you copy the structure and then change variable and function names, you still have to use GPL.

But if you have a piece of code which you wrote in its entirety, and which is only linked against the Linux kernel when on Linux, then it only has to be GPL'd when actually linked to the Linux kernel. The version you ship on Windows or Mac OS X can be licensed any way you like.

Anyone who tells you different is just spreading FUD. Version Two of the GPL is a very simple document and is easy to read. It means just what it says, there's nothing complex behind it. Version Three is a little more prolix, but it still means just what it says. Go read it yourself; don't listen to people who are trying to mislead you.