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And people already started hacking it and combining it with all kinds of interesting existing free java projects to product MIDPath

Seems the GNU Classpath, Kaffe, GCJ, etc projects really want to Collaborate and work together with Sun according to their latest release notes. 2007 might be a pretty interesting year for Java and GNU/Linux (and mobile devices!)

Nothing prohibits any Novell customer from giving any non-Novell customer the source code and binaries to any GPL product contained in that distribution. Nothing in the GPL even begins to deal with things outside of the boundaries of Copyright law. That is to say, Copyright normally takes your rights away and the GPL allows you certain freedoms in contradiction to Copyright should you agree to uphold those ideals.

You may not be able to transfer any additional warrantee Novell gives you w.r.t. Microsoft lawsuits that may or may not ever happen, but you wouldn't have had that without the agreement either.

You do realize that's all this is right? -- a warrantee agreement between Novell and its customers with permission from Microsoft.

Please, informed replies only. Flames are not helpful.

Thank you. A few years ago I got flamed on slashdot for suggesting that patent encumbrance could be an issue for the GPL. This deal is making people "get it." Yay!

I recommend taking the GPL Quiz for anyone that questions anyone else's understanding of copyright and patent issues. It's a great starting point to understand some of the issues, and slashdot would be a better place for it.

Based on the GPL FAQ you could also use a socket interface and the software would still be considered "aggregate programs" and not linked modules unless "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." MySQL is probably claiming that making various queries constitutes exchange of complex internal structures. I would disagree with this and label it as communication between separate programs if the data exchange is that of formated data as expected from any other standard SQL RDBMS implementation.

You're right. Besides Tamarin, there's also GNU Gnash. Here's the homepage for anyone that's interested. For those of us running K/X/Ubuntu or other Debian-based distros, "sudo apt-get install gnash".

http://www.gnu.org/philosophy/
(yes, GNU is a project of the FSF)

Including: http://www.gnu.org/philosophy/pragmatic.html

Quote: " I want to encourage free software to spread, replacing proprietary software that forbids cooperation, and thus make our society better."

or http://www.gnu.org/philosophy/why-free.html

"As a computer user today, you may find yourself using a proprietary (18k characters) program. If your friend asks to make a copy, it would be wrong to refuse. "
"A person should aspire to live an upright life openly with pride, and this means saying ``No'' to proprietary software."
"The Free Software Foundation follows the rule that we cannot install any proprietary program on our computers except temporarily for the specific purpose of writing a free replacement for that very program. Aside from that, we feel there is no possible excuse for installing a proprietary program."

etc...

http://www.gnu.org/philosophy/
(yes, GNU is a project of the FSF)

Including: http://www.gnu.org/philosophy/pragmatic.html

Quote: " I want to encourage free software to spread, replacing proprietary software that forbids cooperation, and thus make our society better."

or http://www.gnu.org/philosophy/why-free.html

"As a computer user today, you may find yourself using a proprietary (18k characters) program. If your friend asks to make a copy, it would be wrong to refuse. "
"A person should aspire to live an upright life openly with pride, and this means saying ``No'' to proprietary software."
"The Free Software Foundation follows the rule that we cannot install any proprietary program on our computers except temporarily for the specific purpose of writing a free replacement for that very program. Aside from that, we feel there is no possible excuse for installing a proprietary program."

etc...

http://www.gnu.org/philosophy/
(yes, GNU is a project of the FSF)

Including: http://www.gnu.org/philosophy/pragmatic.html

Quote: " I want to encourage free software to spread, replacing proprietary software that forbids cooperation, and thus make our society better."

or http://www.gnu.org/philosophy/why-free.html

"As a computer user today, you may find yourself using a proprietary (18k characters) program. If your friend asks to make a copy, it would be wrong to refuse. "
"A person should aspire to live an upright life openly with pride, and this means saying ``No'' to proprietary software."
"The Free Software Foundation follows the rule that we cannot install any proprietary program on our computers except temporarily for the specific purpose of writing a free replacement for that very program. Aside from that, we feel there is no possible excuse for installing a proprietary program."

etc...

What are you waiting for?

Let's start with Hurd task 5458 (currently 0% complete): Design and implement a sound system.

What are you waiting for?

It exists. It works.

The driver support and performance arn't super, but it is a real working system.

http://www.gnu.org/software/hurd/
http://www.debian.org/ports/hurd/

With yet another zero-day exploit of MS-Word document files, what are fellow system admins doing to protect themselves against these threats?

Well I use Linux so I dont have MS Office but I extract the text from MS Word documents using Antiword or Catdoc and then read them in Vim.

Antiword: http://www.winfield.demon.nl/
Catdoc: http://www.45.free.net/~vitus/software/catdoc/

Add this to your .vimrc to make it automagic:

autocmd BufReadPre *.doc set filetype="msword"
autocmd BufReadPost *.doc silent %!antiword "%"
autocmd Filetype msword call s:MyMSWordSettings()

function! s:MyMSWordSettings()
        set readonly
        set hlsearch!
endfunction

For RTF documents, check out UnRTF: http://www.gnu.org/software/unrtf/unrtf.html

FSF's "long-term" perspective has also given you GCC, among other things. The failure of one project does not mean that their philosophy is flawed. Like there haven't been a few dead ends in Linux kernel development?

No, I think this is probably the biggest.

2. You may modify your copy or copies of the Program or any portion of it, thus forming a work based on the Program, and copy and distribute such modifications or work under the terms of Section 1 above, provided that you also meet all of these conditions:

>However, refusing users to shimmy in a binary module themselves is wrong. The GPL clearly states that it only covers distribution, not usage, so users are perfectly entitled to do whatever they want to the kernel as long as they do not distribute it. Adding a check to refuse loading of binary modules would only lead to a fork of the kernel, which is unproductive and unhelpful. I think some very friendly people over at the fsf would care to disagree with you ^_^. The GPL is primarily a license covering distribution, but if you go read the license it also covers modification, so when you add your propitiatory module into the code you have violated section 2. http://www.gnu.org/licenses/gpl-faq.html#LinkingWi thGPL The problem is Linus has been so lax on this that it is so rampant in the linux kernel it seems like the norm.

I suggest gaining some experience in free open-source software development. Goto high-priority projects assisted by GNU, or goto Savannah. Get an IRC account at FreeNode and meet other hackers.

Then, I suggest investing about $400 per year on a Safari subscription. This is a site where you can legally read O'Reilly IT e-books. It will come handy if you have a PDA, like HTC Universal with a 3G broadband connection for reading Safari while you commute (note: Here in Europe we commute by taking a taxi, riding a bus, or using a train, if you are in North America most probably you won't be able to use a PDA during commuting as you ought to drive, unless you are in New York City where mass transit is similar to Europe).

Finally, focus on the fundamentals. What's a queue and how it differs from an array? What is a relation? What is a finite state machine? What is a Turing machine, and what is a hypercube?

Armed with the fundamentals, assisted by a good e-books site like Safari, and practising on open-source projects, you will become a hacker in no time.

A caveat: Try to understand what kind of company your employer is. Do they pass the Joel Test? Do they have good Management and do they use Software Engineering methodologies, and if not why not? Many companies are just hiring a bunch of underpaid engineers, put them in a noisy environment, and tell them to write code all day. This is a recipe for bugs! Good companies act on bugs proactively, via test-driven development, etc.

Another important thing you must achieve is the state of flow, coding in the zone, or hack-mode. It is, in fact, more important to be able to achieve flow easily rather than have advanced degrees in computers.

You are wrong, as std::cout is defined in the header "iostream". See here. cout is an extern in the namespace std. By include-ing iostream, I have defined cout.

That's why we have GNU hello (http://www.gnu.org/software/hello/), a standards-compliant implementation of hello complete with localization and command-line options.

How ironic that the /. headline mentions "OSS" (open source software) yet Prof. Moglen is General Counsel for the Free Software Foundation; an organization that not only predates the Open Source Initiative (which coined the term "open source") by over a decade but has a different philosophy which sometimes reaches different conclusions about what software is acceptable than the open source philosophy does. For the open source movement, running non-free software is okay (not that an open source proponent would call it that; the open source movement exists in part to not talk about software freedom at all). For a free software proponent, non-free software is avoided except when writing a free replacement for a non-free program. The difference in reaction to non-free software is quite striking.

You can see how that plays out in this /. story: none of the formats this talk has been transcoded to can be played by all users with free software even though this could have been accomodated. Instead of including options free software users could use, we have a list of (what are for most users) non-free alternatives. MP3 is patent-encumbered in many countries, so citizens of those countries can't have free MP3 encoding or decoding software. The QuickTime container format can be free, but the codecs most often used with QuickTime are non-free. Flash can be played with free software but the free replacements aren't yet to the point of maturity where it can be used as a drop-in replacement (and even when the job is done, MP3 soundtracks on Flash video+audio files will pose a problem).

The solution has been around for some time and works well: add Ogg Vorbis audio files and Ogg Theora+Vorbis video+audio files. These files can be played on all platforms and there are implementations which are free software for everyone.

With Cohen walking hand in hand with the MPAA nowadays, how will this affect the privacy of current Torrent users such as myself?

Fortunately, the original Bittorrent software is free software so you'll always have the freedom to make sure the software preserves your privacy (insofar as that can be done on a Bittorrent network). The same cannot be said for uTorrent which will remain proprietary.

Have you ever tried contributing non-trivial portions of code to something under the GNU project or otherwise copyright the FSF? If you have, then you would know that the FSF is strict about copyright assignment, unlike Linus Torvalds, hence I don't believe that this will ever be a problem for any project of theirs. If some key developer were to break away, the code they try to start the fork from would not belong to them, but to the FSF. The forkers could maintain the fork's GPLv2 status, but that would not allow them to change the licensing conditions and eliminate the 'later version' clause: only the FSF would have the authority to do that.

If they cannot create anything, then the next thing that comes their way is:

"A fool and his money are soon parted"

When all the money is gone, that's it.

Creativity and imagination are the real wealth, upon which all new and desirable goods and services depend.
Well, almost, anyway.
 

Tivo can stop any unapproved software, modified GPL code or anything else, from running on its hardware, but it cannot stop you from running any of its GPL'ed code. You are free to develop your own DVR using their code.

What part of "that defeats the whole point" do you not understand?!

No, he hasn't. All RMS cares about is freedom to have source code to software. It's only recently that hardware technology exists that limits software. As I recall, RMS originally got miffed when some of his fellow programmers took lab software, went commercial with it, and stopped providing him access to code. It had nothing to do with hardware til now. If it did, there would already be hardware restrictions in the GPL.

You're wrong. Here's a quote from "About the GNU Project":

I had already experienced being on the receiving end of a nondisclosure agreement, when someone refused to give me and the MIT AI lab the source code for the control program for our printer. (The lack of certain features in this program made use of the printer extremely frustrating.) So I could not tell myself that nondisclosure agreements were innocent. I was very angry when he refused to share with us; I could not turn around and do the same thing to everyone else.

What you're arguing about "developing your own PVR" is just stupid. Do you think RMS would have been happy if the company gave him the code but wouldn't actually let him use it? No, because the whole point was to be able to make full use of the hardware he already had!

GNU software exists to give you control over your computer, not some hypothetical computer you may or may not have in the future. If it doesn't run on the hardware you already own, it's useless!

Regardless of what RMS says, the linux kernel developers, as a group, support Tivo's usage. In my mind, that's what matters.

Then they should have used the BSD license instead. Letting people take advantage of your software in their own products without ensuring the Four Freedoms -- which is exactly what TiVo is doing -- is what that license is for.

And yet, we still hear Stallman complaining about the fact that the Tivo hardware locks you out from changing the software.

You do know that the Free Software Foundation was founded specifically to fight this sort of behavior, right? Stallman was denied access to the source necessary to use his printer to the fullest extent. Tivo is doing the exact same thing.

Worse, Tivo is violating the spirit of the GPL, if not the letter. The entire point of the GPL was that a user receiving GPL protected software can modify and replace it. You can't do that with a Tivo. Their lockout solution is legal, but pretty clearly flaunts the Free Software Foundation's intent.

What he (and many others) apparently miss is that when you buy a Tivo, you're not buying a general purpose computer: you're buying a DVR.

Maybe they bought a DVR. So what? I bought it, it should be mine to hack on as I want. I can buy a cordless drill and hack on it to convert it into a powered pepper grinder (like Alton Brown did). I can modify my car into a Zamboni-like ice-resurfacer (see "Monster Garage"). I can take the freely offered CueCat and hack it to give me unencrypted data, then use it to catalog my library. I can take my Xbox game system and turn it into a general purpose computer. Check out sources like MAKE magazine for endless lists of people doing cool and completely unexpected things to their own property. If Tivo doesn't want me hacking on my box, they shouldn't sell it to me; they should lend it to me. That you've bought into the idea that you can "own" something, but not be free to use it as you like reinforces how important Stallman's message is.

I mean, God forbid that they prevent users from running them out of business by buying the hardware for far less than it costs Tivo to make it and loading MythTV onto it.

Boo-freaking-hoo. "I gave away razors, now everyone is buying replacement blades from my competitor!" There are solutions that don't require crippling the boxes they sell. Indeed, mobile phone service companies dealt with this problem a long time ago. You can either buy a phone at full price with no commitment, or you buy a discounted phone with a contract. If you get the discounted phone and break the contract early you're liable for the value of the discount, or even more.

Mind you, I own a Tivo. They made a great product, and for now I'm willing to accept their compromise. But it's completely inappropriate to bash Stallman on this. He's simply maintaining a consistant position. He's reinforcing the exact same message he has for the last twenty years. And he's quite reasonably upset that Tivo twisting the intent of the GPL while following the letter of the GPL.

and for the pre-installed OS, price is a criterion (in order not to exceed the $100 target price)

Wrong! Price is irrelevant; the only consideration is that the device must be hackable by the user. The developers of the OLPC are insisting on Free Software specifically because they want the kids to have the four freedoms; no more, no less.

By the way, if you don't believe me consider this: the OLPC people rejected Mac OS X even when it was offered for free (i.e., zero cost).

• We have a group at least partially led by a Stalinist fanatic who has tried to prove that economic incentive is actually detrimental to producing good work, and who has essentially declared war on capitalism in general. (At least as far as software is concerned, anyway)
  

  
  

• As a direct outgrowth of their beloved Leader's stated beliefs, said group themselves verbally abuse, defame, and threaten without mercy any within their midst who would be suicidally foolish enough to attempt to openly generate revenue in association with open source. Said group are themselves typically grindingly poor, cubical-dwelling wage slaves whose primary objection to capitalist philosophy is a seething resentment over the idea that somebody *else* might get rich. (I find myself wondering how much abuse Mark Shuttleworth has had to weather over his own economic status, although he apparently had the good sense to become wealthy in another field before starting Ubuntu. He'd probably find himself nailed to a cross if he tried to generate revenue from that)
  

Good post.

I disagree with the grandparent's claim that accurate digital sampling is expensive. Take a look at the GNU Radio, which can sample 2.4GHz+ signals accurately, all for under $500. I've certainly seen people pay more than $500 for recording equipment, and that can "only" sample at 44KHz!

That's not offtopic, it's just a woefully inadequate description of what he carries on his rescue disk. From the GNU Tar man page:

"GNU tar creates and manipulates archives which are actually collections of many other files; the program provides users with an organized and systematic method for controlling a large amount of data. The name "tar" originally came from the phrase "Tape ARchive", but archives need not (and these days, typically do not) reside on tapes."

http://www.gnu.org/software/tar/manual/html_node/i ndex.html

Apart from the unnecessary obscurity of the code, the code actually simply computes the wrong values with current versions of gcc and optimization turned on. See here:

http://gcc.gnu.org/ml/gcc-bugs/2006-03/msg02943.ht ml

http://gcc.gnu.org/ml/gcc-bugs/2006-03/msg02957.ht ml

It also makes unstated assumptions about the values it gets called with; call it with something else and you get bad results.

Apart from the unnecessary obscurity of the code, the code actually simply computes the wrong values with current versions of gcc and optimization turned on. See here:

http://gcc.gnu.org/ml/gcc-bugs/2006-03/msg02943.ht ml

http://gcc.gnu.org/ml/gcc-bugs/2006-03/msg02957.ht ml

It also makes unstated assumptions about the values it gets called with; call it with something else and you get bad results.

Very interesting how ecryptfs uses the TPM module for encryption. While there is plenty to worry about regarding treacherous computing, it is nice to see that the TPM can be put to uses that actually bolster privacy. This still does not prevent a possible future dystopia, but it still goes to show that devices such as TPM are not necessarily "pure evil."

Copyright (C) yyyy name of author

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 2
of the License, or (at your option) any later version.GPL

Clause 1 is ONLY applicable when you are distributing the SOURCE, not binaries. Do the Google Enterprise Appliance actually include sources without the COPYING file ? News to me.

GPL does not require ANY such attributions in the program. It says: "if the Program itself is interactive but does not normally print such an announcement, your work based on the Program is not required to print an announcement". Where the hell have you come with the idea that GPL text must be available from binaries - is good question, but hardly relevant. Written notice ? Sure. GPL text with the sources ? Absolutely. GPL text in the program itself ? Nope.

It's be hypocrisy for FSF to bash BSD license for "advertising notice" and then include the same thing in FSF's own license, so don't bother to search for it...

Actually Stallman has been thinking about the implications of TCPA for a very long time. You might enjoy his essay "Right to Read", a prophecy of the TCPA future written in 1997.

Apache License, Version 1.0

This is a simple, permissive non-copyleft free software license with practical problems like those of the original BSD license, including incompatibility with the GNU GPL.

Apache License, Version 1.1

This is a permissive non-copyleft free software license with a few requirements that render it incompatible with the GNU GPL.

We urge you not to use the Apache licenses for software you write. However, there is no reason to avoid running programs that have been released under this license, such as Apache.

Apache Software License, version 2.0

This is a free software license but it is incompatible with the GPL. The Apache Software License is incompatible with the GPL because it has a specific requirement that is not in the GPL: it has certain patent termination cases that the GPL does not require. (We don't think those patent termination cases are inherently a bad idea, but nonetheless they are incompatible with the GNU GPL.)

That open source project was using Google's services without authorization.

Actually, the open source project was creating software which helped others use Google's services without authorization.

How would you feel if someone routed your cable service to themselves, with the imminent possibility the cable company finds out and fines you?

I'd feel like getting a new cable company. Of course, I don't have cable...

This quandary is actually a good reason not to use proprietary data. The argument would be similar to this one made by RMS: "As a computer user today, you may find yourself using a proprietary program. If your friend asks to make a copy, it would be wrong to refuse. Cooperation is more important than copyright. But underground, closet cooperation does not make for a good society. A person should aspire to live an upright life openly with pride, and this means saying ``No'' to proprietary software." - http://www.gnu.org/philosophy/why-free.html

I agree, however please stop using that phrase.

Some resources:
Apple's User Interface Guidelines; adapted from the NeXT/OpenStep Interface Guidelines (PDF).

There's also the Classic "Macintosh Human Interface Guidelines" for System 1 through OS 9 (have to hunt it down yourself), GNOME's HIG,KDE's, and Tog's.

Without reading through them all, I can't point out where they address BPs for reuse, management, etc., but I know it is touched on somewhat (although from a NeXT slant) in Apple and NeXT's guidelines.

...but it's not. It's deliberate, calculated, evil terminology designed to mislead the computer using masses into giving up their rights. It's doublespeak, and it's the best example of it I've seen in the last decade (and that includes things like "homeland security"). It's a damn shame that not enough people have read 1984 (or at least The Right to Read ) in order to recognize it as such and have society reject it wholesale!

First and foremost, copyrights and patents are not property, so don't refer to them as such. But it also leads to confusion like this article.

Come on, no matter how much of a Linux fan you are, you have to admit that there's at least a chance that Linux does indeed infringe on Microsoft's patents.

Okay, it's patents we're talking about, right? Patents are published - that's the whole point of them. They aren't secret.

only Microsoft has access to most of its source code

So what? Their source code is of no use when determining patent infringement, only copyright infringement. So is it copyright infringement we are talking about then?

After all, before IBM handed over some 500 patents to the open source community, it's pretty clear that Linux was infringing some of them. Given that, why is it so hard to believe that the same isn't going on with Microsoft?"

Patent and copyright violation are two totally different things. Copyright violation would involve somebody with access to Microsoft's source code copying it into Linux - a highly unethical and stupid thing to do. I don't think Linux kernel contributors are likely to be highly unethical and stupid. Patent infringement, on the other hand, can be unintentional - but in this case, his remarks about it being impossible to verify don't apply.

This is a case where the term "IP" as a blanket reference to very different rights is confusing the issue. His arguments don't apply to either because he thinks they are the same thing.

I think it's also worth pointing out Stallman's criticism of the term "Intellectual Property".

See: http://www.gnu.org/software/libc/manual/html_mono/ libc.html#Copying

For the most part, I agree with the rest of what you are saying. SuSE will continue to be extremely relevant as long as they continue to employ high-profile Open Source developers, and their developers continue to contributed valuable code that is accepted by upstream providers. That is the sign that SuSE is in serious trouble. Wake me when they lose the developers, or the upstream providers refuse to work with them because they are employed by SuSE. Until then, this is all just hot air moving about.

Kirby

Freedom 0: the freedom to run the program, for any purpose.

Even this most basic freedom will now be denied to Dozers... Why do they stand for it?

um , they do not encourage people to release stuf under LGPL, quite the opposite.
There;s a reason they changed the meaning of LGPL from 'Library GPL' to 'Lesser GPL'

WARNING: The good part of the Register article are the quotes from Moglen, who knows his subject. The reporter who wrote the article, however, makes basic mistakes. E.g.,

"But why use a contract upgrade rather than filing a lawsuit to scupper
the deal, which might produce a clearer result in the long term? Moglen
himself couldn't be drawn on specifics, but the view amongst free
(rather than open) strategists suggests that elements of the deal make
litigation undesirable - even if it is legally justified."

However, Licenses are not contracts.

Well, apparently the people who created the GPL don't believe so, since they have chosen a license that permits commercial developers to link to many of their libraries for free. They have done so because they believe such licenses to be in the best interest of open source.

Then you don't understand the goals of the FSF (the people behind the GPL).

To quote them:
Using the ordinary GPL is not advantageous for every library. There are reasons that can make it better to use the Library GPL in certain cases. The most common case is when a free library's features are readily available for proprietary software through other alternative libraries. In that case, the library cannot give free software any particular advantage, so it is better to use the Library GPL for that library.
...
However, when a library provides a significant unique capability, like GNU Readline, that's a horse of a different color. The Readline library implements input editing and history for interactive programs, and that's a facility not generally available elsewhere. Releasing it under the GPL and limiting its use to free programs gives our community a real boost. At least one application program is free software today specifically because that was necessary for using Readline.

Read about it here

"Free as in speech" doesn't mean you are not obligated to give credit where it is due.

I don't think I need a plan. If I do it and my position makes sense others will follow. If my position is sensible the chances are that others already have the same idea and are working in the same direction.

By making it sound like my idea, my goals (and consequently that I must have a plan to spread it) you pay me far too much credit. I'm just on a path that thousands of people like Richard Stallman are already walking. A better description is that the actions of my government are causing my path to more closely follow the footsteps of those ahead of me.

Over the last decade, since I first learned of GNU, I've been slowly coming to the realisation that Stallman, FSF and the GNU have got it pretty right. This isn't about software, convenience or better models of development. It's about the philosphy and mind set.

I don't have to convince others. All I have to do is let them know that there is an alternative and what that alternative is. The opponents of copyleft will see to the convincing.