Slashdot Mirror

I'm sorry, you must phrase your rebuttal in the form of quotes from the GPL, otherwise I'll believe you're talking out your ass.

I'll also use the GPL FAQ. I doubt you believe the GNU folks are talking out of their asses.

Whether or not you feel it is more or less wrong is up to you, but in my opinion, you're breaking a social (and legal, for that matter) contract if you then attempt to use the software in a method against the GPL, i.e., closing it up in your own hardware without releasing changes,

Does the GPL require that source code of modified versions be posted to the public?

attempting to sell it for profit,

Does the GPL allow me to sell copies of the program for money?

just plain not releasing modifications under the GPL, etc.

The modified work as a whole must be licensed under the GPL, that is all the GPL requires. The modifications may have any license compatible with the GPL. In particular, modifications in the public domain are explicitly acceptable.

You need not accept the GPL on my software; however, without accepting it, you have no right to use it under copyright law. It is exactly like an end-user license agreement. The only way you can use it without accepting the GPL is if I, as the copyright holder, give you the option of using it under another license.

Copyright law doesn't affect use, only distribution. Why did you think the GPL specifically states "You are not required to accept this License, since you have not signed it. However, nothing else grants you permission to modify or distribute the Program or its derivative works." without mentioning use? Why do you think it 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, and the output from the Program is covered only if its contents constitute a work based on the Program (independent of having been made by running the Program).
Whether that is true depends on what the Program does." ?

Read The Myth of RF Interference by David Reed (yes, that David Reed).

Basically, we use spread-spectrum software defined radio (ala GNUradio) to connect with multiple nodes in a truly P2P wireless mesh-network.

• Using the "mods-hate-me" tactic in your sig. Fallen off of Pons Asinorum Primus(#1).
• Painting all /.ers with one brush. Your existence proves that. Fallen off of Pons Asinorum Secundus(#2).
• Using the repeatedly-trotted-out "GPL double standard" argument. Fallen off of Pons Asinorum Tertius(#3). Read this, you might learn something.
• No, wait, that's it. But three Pontes Asinorum in such a short post...makes me wonder if you have much logic in you.

You can leave politics alone, but it won't leave you alone. That's why the GNU philosophy was necessary.

If you think TIFF is better for lossless compression than PNG, you're misguided. Not that TIFF is a bad format, just that its best lossless compression, deflate (which is essentially LZ77 + Huffman encoding), is EXACTLY the same compression algorithm used in PNG.

    Some of the compressions supported by TIFF, like LZW (based on LZ78 - our favorite now mostly* expired patent) and packbits work best on images containing lots of similar data. CCITT fax 3 and 4 are really only useful on black and white images, so I've never actually used them.

Most photo editing software programs support JPEG compression on TIFFs, even - GIMP:
Launch GIMP. Create an image. File->Save. Name the file image.tif. Click Save. Notice
your compression options are:
O None
O LZW
O Pack Bits
O Deflate
O JPEG

JPEG actually works quite differently than the non-lossy algorithms. It divides the image up in a quadtree like manner (maybe it is a quadtree - I forget) and achives better compression by reducing the aspects of the image the eye doesn't notice as much, like saturation. The advantage of a quadtree structure is that similar colors are usually next to other similar colors in all directions, not just linearly, which is valuable when trying to decide what data to lose during compression.

* - IBM still has a patent on LZW that expires August 11, 2006, but the earlier Unisys patent would likely invalidate it if they tried to enforce it - see the footnote http://www.gnu.org/philosophy/gif.html

There already is a smaller scale version of Silicon Valley roughly centered on Boston, Massachusetts. The partial circle defined by Route 128 (and to a lesser extent the larger one surrounding it defined by Route 495) has most of the required properties already. Heck, it even has the same elevated levels of Asperger's Syndrome that Silicon Valley has.

I think a bigger point is the number of colleges and universities in the Massachusetts area (like MIT, Harvard, Northeastern, and Boston University, to name just a few). Plus, besides Boston, there are numerous other technologically advanced places in that ring (including Cambridge, Saugus, Waltham, and Billerica, to name just a few). If you do a look-up on the saga of ODF and the history of OASIS and/or GNU you'll find a lot of these places mentioned -- OASIS originated in Massachusetts, the Free Software Foundation is headquartered in Massachusetts, and AFAIK Massachusetts was the first government to sanction a special "Open Source Software Trough" to encourage the usage of open source software within both its own branches as well as its local community governments. It's not clear to me where the weird view that Massachusetts is somehow against free software, open source and information sharing that some are espousing is coming from...

Your resolving power, however, should be pretty damn amazing at 20 miles diameter. Ok, so what's wanted here is something nice and noisy, where your ability to isolate a region of sky and/or track an object would be of value.

You could probably track the storms on Jupiter - you can detect those with even a trivial dipole and a receiver in the right range, so you've certainly got more collecting power than necessary. Not sure how accurate your measurements would be, but that would make a fascinating experiment.

GnuRadio will turn your computer into a suitable receiver (provided you either have a soundcard that works at the right frequency, OR you have a suitable analog-to-digital converter plugged in somewhere). You then need to process the streams into something interesting. I believe AIPS is what you'll want for this. It is "professional" Open Source software for interferometry (read: the interface is crappy, but the logic is superb).

The nearer satellites - such as those orbiting Mars - should be well within your ability to receive and track. I doubt there will be any encryption on the data being sent to Earth, so you might be able to get real-time(!) images from the probes. The only question there is whether the signal would be strong enough to correctly interpret. The same would be true of anything sent by the Cassini probe, although it is much further away and therefore would be far fainter, so you might be restricted to just knowing where it was. Which would be pretty damn good, even so.

I would certainly encourage you to give it a try and see what you can do, and also to diary what works. You may well be able to do far better than I expect - it depends on how big the dishes are and how well you are able to sort signal from noise.

You get your Real Ultimate Power badge if you can intercept a message from either Voyager probe, and an honorary lifetime membership of the Q Continuum if you can get any kind of signal at all from one of the Pioneer probes.

(Note to the humour-deprived: If NASA can barely achieve the former, and can't achieve the latter at all, on the Deep Space Network, there is no friggin' way an amateur is going to on three dishes... unless they ARE in the Q Continuum, in which case the prize is easy.)

The only thing we have a problem with is when the government funds open-source work. Government funding should be for work that is available to everybody. Open source is not available to commercial companies. The way the license is written, if you use any open-source software, you have to make the rest of your software open source. If the government wants to put something in the public domain, it should. Linux is not in the public domain. Linux is a cancer that attaches itself in an intellectual property sense to everything it touches. That's the way that the license works.

Theres plenty of deep geekery going on still in Ham radio. Software defined radio for a start

http://www.gnu.org/software/gnuradio/

Not to mention all the GHz experimental work, digital modes experimentation, Earth Moon Earth transmission and you can still do new fundamental research into ELF natural phenomenon, build your own radio telescope - all done with gear developed by and for radio amateurs.

Of course the mainstream is more like stamp collecting by cb radio - a competition to work two way communications with as many different countries as possible.

But make no mistake theres lots of cutting edge geekery still to be found in radio.

I hoping that gnuradio gets some more momentum. Think of all the possibilities! I think things could get very interesting with experimental digital modulation. I haven't played around much with gnuradio since I don't have a USRP. It seems to me that the software is a little hard to use. I keep my eye on the project hoping that things will continue to move along and get easier to use.

Once things move along it would be nice to have a portable gnuradio hardware that could interface to a PDA for HT uses.

XGL is free, but shackled.

We all know that, to use XGL in GNU/Linux, you need to use non-free binary drivers from nVidia or ATI. That's why Kororaa included them. But, tautologically, these are not free, so XGL is completely useless to the free software community. Please see Richard's essay, which I've linked to above.

So what freedom of mine is Sun denying?

Java is already fragmented. The result of open sourcing Java will actually be consolidation, i.e. killing of competing VMs. And a huge open source test suite will greatly benefit all surviving JVMs, which is a good thing.

How can you not see this?

Javas problem is not that it might get fragmented, the problem is that it IS fragmented. Do something about it! Let Java free!

Note that it's perfectly possible to have a Linux completely without Linus by forking the Kernel. Note that it's NOT possible to have a Gnu/Linux without any trace of Gnu tools (which DO exist, by the way).

Let me reiterate, for clarification. Your initial statement was that RMS pushes for GNU/Linux because it will bring in more publicity for GNU, with the downside that some people might assume that GNU was responsible for the "entire Linux package" (emphasis mine). My response was that, given the two options "Linux" and "GNU/Linux," the former is much more likely to make people assume that Linus is responsible for the entire package, whereas the latter gives each a pretty equal share.

If your argument is that GNU is an organization, where Linux is a "product" (GNU/Linux ~~ Microsoft Windows), then I can see that being a problem. I've always seen GNU as the project to make free software tools (as in, GNU == [glibc; gcc; ...]), where the Free Software Foundation was the organization.

FSF/Linux isn't very fair, definitely, so I agree with you if that's your problem with it.

from "the java trap" http://www.gnu.org/philosophy/java-trap.html

" A program is free software if its users have certain crucial freedoms. Roughly speaking, they are: the freedom to run the program, the freedom to study and change the source, the freedom to redistribute the source and binaries, and the freedom to publish improved versions. (See http://www.gnu.org/philosophy/free-sw.html.) Whether any given program is free software depends solely on the meaning of its license. "

Sun don't say java will is free software, it is OPEN source, since you can download and study the source. If you want to contribute with code optimizations or other improvements, you can study the code and send it to SUN, modifying and redistributing at will would spawns several forks with limited compatibility killing the "write once, run anywhere".

I hope that Java never became "free" in Stallman's definition.

"If you develop a Java program on Sun's Java platform, you are liable to use Sun-only features without even noticing. By the time you find this out, you may have been using them for months, and redoing the work could take more months. You might say, "It's too much work to start over." Then your program will have fallen into the Java Trap; it will be unusable in the Free World."

This states that Stallman doesn't understant hoe JCP works. There is no "Sun-only features" as standard libraries, SUN's VM implements the specifications that are avaliable to everyone to implement in his way (the specification garantes the interoperability).

Java is already open, as open as it is usefull to the open source community. it is not as open as stallman's dogma says it is desired, but that is another matter.

from "the java trap" http://www.gnu.org/philosophy/java-trap.html

" A program is free software if its users have certain crucial freedoms. Roughly speaking, they are: the freedom to run the program, the freedom to study and change the source, the freedom to redistribute the source and binaries, and the freedom to publish improved versions. (See http://www.gnu.org/philosophy/free-sw.html.) Whether any given program is free software depends solely on the meaning of its license. "

Sun don't say java will is free software, it is OPEN source, since you can download and study the source. If you want to contribute with code optimizations or other improvements, you can study the code and send it to SUN, modifying and redistributing at will would spawns several forks with limited compatibility killing the "write once, run anywhere".

I hope that Java never became "free" in Stallman's definition.

"If you develop a Java program on Sun's Java platform, you are liable to use Sun-only features without even noticing. By the time you find this out, you may have been using them for months, and redoing the work could take more months. You might say, "It's too much work to start over." Then your program will have fallen into the Java Trap; it will be unusable in the Free World."

This states that Stallman doesn't understant hoe JCP works. There is no "Sun-only features" as standard libraries, SUN's VM implements the specifications that are avaliable to everyone to implement in his way (the specification garantes the interoperability).

Java is already open, as open as it is usefull to the open source community. it is not as open as stallman's dogma says it is desired, but that is another matter.

So I can copy GPL'ed code and just ignore the license? Sweet deal.

*sighs*

The GPL is a license on distribution, not use. In the license itself it says You are not required to accept this License, since you have not signed it.

Do you see the difference now? Microsoft requires you to accept their license to use their software. The GPL/BSD license do not.

I suggest you have a read of the FSF's licenses + comments page before making smartass comments.

So I can copy GPL'ed code and just ignore the license? Sweet deal.

*sighs*

The GPL is a license on distribution, not use. In the license itself it says You are not required to accept this License, since you have not signed it.

Do you see the difference now? Microsoft requires you to accept their license to use their software. The GPL/BSD license do not.

I suggest you have a read of the FSF's licenses + comments page before making smartass comments.

I do all my programming with 'cat'.

no, no, no, you got it all wrong!
Everybody knows that ed is the standard text editor!

Werent we told recently that we no longer have the right to make modifications and compile the apple kernel from source?

No.

Maybe it would be useful to look at it for learning purposes, but now-a-days I believe you can get into quite a bit of trouble if you look at source code thats not your own then go off to make your own project under a different licence.

"Now-a-days"? Try releasing a *BSD system under the GPL, or the Linux kernel+glibc under a BSD license, and see how much trouble you get into.

Whether looking at project X and using its ideas when writing a new project gets you into trouble is another matter. I'm not sure whether the GPL or the modified BSD license or the APSL limits what you can do if you read code covered by that license or not.

I am proud to say that I participated in today's FSF event.

I believe the combination of Digital Rights Management technology and the Trusted Computing initiative are the single greatest threat to a free software desktop. I believe the danger is not just that we will be pushed into a desktop ghetto where we will not be allowed to enjoy the newest movies and music.

RMS' Right to Read might seem far out for most folks I believe he is point on. DRM will tie media to an user or possibly an user and a specific machine. DRM will allow corporations to gather unprecedented amounts of information about us. If we are not vigilant we are headed into an Orwellian dystopia where all of our digital habits are carefully monitored and controlled.

The really interesting thing is that it WILL NOT STOP PIRACY! As long as we enjoy books and movies with our eyes and music with our ears there will be an analog hole and there will be piracy. DRM is not about stopping piracy it is about destroying competition. Competition from small developers, competition from start ups and competition from free software...

For almost the whole of human history culture has been shared. Imagine if Shakespeare had been controlled by DRM and copyright law so that no was able to sample his plays. What would modern literature be like. I imagine it would be worse. We stand at a moment in history where we have an unprecedented ability to create and share. Do we want to hand the keys of our shared culture to those least likely to allow us to use it in meaningful ways?

I agree with those who say the problem are the laws such as the DMCA and as well as perpetual copyright. These things should be overturned. However it is my opinion that a motivated group of individuals could raise awareness within the public to create a backlash and prevent a DRM nightmare from fully forming.

If I did not stand up at this moment in time and let the world know that DRM is wrong I would be complicit in the effort of corporations to steal our shared culture.

Do I believe that I can stop the DRM juggernaut of Microsoft/Apple/Intel/Etc? I don't know but I don't believe I can just let it happen.

One note on RMS, you may not agree with him but he serves an extremely important role in both the free software and open source movements. He is the logical extreme of freedom while others serve as the logical extreme of pragmatism. He helps define the spectrum of opinion on all issues related to software freedom and for that (and more) I appreciate him. If we did not have him and the FSF we would not be where we are today.

I will be posting about my experience at http://psfk.blogspot.com/ (nothing to see there just yet 5/23/2006 @ 6:20 PM )

Gee, I hope the flash presentation will render correctly in Gnash. I'm not too optimistic since "not all movies play sucessfully" in it.
//ducks!

Sounds familiar.

I say that DRM is the studio's plan to have perpetual copyright. Think of it this way: it is, now and until the law is removed, a violation of the DMCA to unscramble CSS. So, when the copyright on Steamboat Willie (or any other DVD-released movie) expires, the studios will have a (potential) hook by which they can prevent transformative reuse of that footage: unlawful decryption of the video.

But breach of copyright or intellectual property rights (IPR) is illegal

What is "intellectual property rights"?

This could become a case of chickens coming home to roost with China and other U.S competitors and adversaries using the TCP (Trusted Computing Platform) to have a back door to computers they produce and which are sold to businesses and governments all over the world.

All they need to do is to make note of the keys or signatures from the TPMs(Trusted Platform Module) that are embedded in every modern PC.

In fact this illustrates the greatest challenge of TCP based DRM. Who will be the key escrow / signing authority in a world where China, Russia and India increasingly shun away from U.S centered IT solutions.

Its all about your right to read.

No it doesn't. Have a look at this list. The Gnu project defines the BSD license as a "GPL-Compatible, Free Software License", which is the category they like the most (apart from the GPL, that is).

already done

Richard Stallman is the one to blame for all these abuses.
He gave them ideas!

I don't believe in Windows backdoors any more that I believe that the Lenovo people are able to pull this off without anyone detecting it.

Agreed, for now, MS would most likely not be able to hide such things. But what about when Treacherous Computing comes around?
I don't know about you, but Microsoft having their own hardware encrypted little processing enclaves, communicating over an encrypted channel with Microsoft, on most of the computers in the world gives me the shivers in a bad way.

The Sun JVM was mentioned by name. There are many, many JVMs out there by many different people. Including many embedded Java JVMs and even realtime ones used in robotics.

While there are many native Java compilers out there, including GCC, they are not highly optimized nor fully featured it seems. GCJ at this time barely matches the Sun JVM which just goes to show how a native app could perform as poorly as an interpreted one. But in the general case optimized native code performs one order of magnitude better than interpreted code. For that matter, Sun's own HotSpot JVM has contained a JIT compiler since JDK 1.3. So you must consider even Java is cheating a little.

Even when compiled to native code, though, Java must still behave like Java. Which means it retains some of its "interpretedness" behind the scenes. Things like Java's implementation of reflection and dynamic class loading prevents some more aggressive native optimizations.

Is this what you want?

Apple owns the copyright to the kernel and it is licensed under the Apple Public source License. Since you do not own the copyright, you do not have the right to relicense it under the GPL.

What would give you the impression that you should have the right to fork something you do not own and did not contribute anything to?

Unfortunately for Sun, Java will be Open Source with or without them. GNU Classpath is already mostly Java 1.4 compliant.

They basically have a choice. They can either make the Sun JVM the defacto JVM now by complying with open source demands, or they can be the stodgy corporate-only JVM while everyone else uses GNU Classpath. Even by fixing the Sun JVM license the people working on GNU Classpath aren't going to stop. They want a GNU, true open source alternative. Do we need any reminder on how the UNIX / Linux battle played out?

So like the Sun execs have said, it is not whether the JVM will be open source. It is HOW it will be. Will it be Sun or GNU Classpath in 5 years? Clearly, Sun realized this and is scrambling to make it happen before it is too late and a thriving community leaves them in the dust like with Solaris v Linux.

General Public License

Seriously, there's a reason it's so popular. It ensures that noone can hijack the project and the source code will be legitimately free. You will make the most people happy with your decision if you go that route. Anything else will be seen as hedging your bets.

Tom Caudron
http://tom.digitalelite.com/

This oft-overlooked distinction is crucial. Freedom is being able to make decisions that affect mainly you. Power is being able to make decisions that affect others more than you. If we confuse power with freedom, we will fail to uphold real freedom.

MESA is not licensed under the GPL. If MESA were GPL-code, an application with MESA in the distribution would have to be GPL as well. That's one of the more obvious cases, so if you don't understand it, maybe it's time to go back to http://www.gnu.org/copyleft/gpl.html, and don't forget to look at the FAQ. (BTW, some people think that libraries shouldn't impose their license on the main program, thus the LGPL was created. Coincidentally the MESA GLU library is licensed under the LGPL.)

Since I know that this story is going to turn into flame-fest central, I'm going to try to head things off by interjecting an intelligent conversion about some issues that are on my mind at the moment.

First and foremost, does anyone have a torrent of Minix3? Tanenbaum is a bit worried about getting slashdotted. If you've got one seeded, please share.

Now with that out of the way. I don't know if anyone else has tried it yet, but Minix3 is kind of neat. It's a complete OS that implements the Microkernel concepts that he's been expounding on for years now. The upsides are that it supports POSIX standards (mostly), can run X-Windows, and is a useful development platform. Everything is very open, and still simple enough to trudge through without getting confused by the myriads of "gotchas" most OS code-bases contain. Unfortunately, it's still a long way from a usable OS.

The biggest issue is that the system is lacking proper memory management. It currently uses static data segments which have to be predefined before the program is run. If the program goes over its data segment, it will start failing on mallocs. The result is that you often have to massively increase the data segment just to handle the peak usage. Right now I have BASH running with a segment size of about 80 megs just so I can run configure scripts. That means that every instance of BASH is taking up that much memory! There's apparently a Virtual Memory system in progress to help solve this issue, so this is (thankfully) a temporary problem.

The other big issue is a lack of threading support. I'm trying to compile GNU PThreads to cover over this deficiency, but it's been a slow process. (It keeps failing on the mctx stack configuration. I wish I understood what that was so I wouldn't have to blindly try different settings.)

On the other hand, the usermode servers do work as advertised. For example, the network stack occasionally crashes under VMWare. (I'm guessing it's the same memory problems I mentioned earlier.) Simply killing and restarting dhcpd actually does get the system back up and running. It's kind of neat, even though it does take some getting used to.

All in all, I think it's a really cool project that could go places. The key thing is that it needs attention from programmers with both the desire and time to help. Tossing lame criticisms won't help the project reach that goal. So if you're looking to help out a cool operating system that's focused on stability, security, and ease of development, come check out Minix for a bit. The worst that could happen is that you'll decide that it isn't worth investing the time and energy. And who knows? With some work, Minix might turn out to be a good alternative to QNX. :-)

The blessing of electronic media is also it's curse: Instant modification of documents, or outright deletion of the undesirable.

There is still plenty of need in the world for hard copy.
Physical, leather bound, acid free paper.
Stone tablets. Microfilm copies.

'1984' had it's ministry of truth, 2006 has the ministry of fog - an internet clogged with countless documents.

The Right to Read has never been greater.

The GPL states,
0. This License applies to any program or other work which contains a notice placed by the copyright holder saying it may be distributed under the terms of this General Public License. The "Program", below, refers to any such program or work, and a "work based on the Program" means either the Program or any derivative work under copyright law: that is to say, a work containing the Program or a portion of it, either verbatim or with modifications and/or translated into another language. (Hereinafter, translation is included without limitation in the term "modification".) Each licensee is addressed as "you".

And the way that copyright law dertermines if something is a derived work is called 'Abstraction Filtration Comparison'.

Basically I don't see how something that doesn't contain any of the code in the kernel (e.g. a binary driver) can be called a derived work under copyright law making the GPL and LGPL are esensially one of the same.

As an example of this think about an applicaiton that uses OpenGL under Linux, If they compiled against NVidias drivers and had a closed source application would they have to release their application under the GPL just becaue someone ran their application using Mesas drivers? I think not.

http://www.gnu.org/licenses/gpl-faq.html#MoneyGuzz lerInc
http://www.gnu.org/licenses/gpl-faq.html#GPLAndPlu gins
http://www.gnu.org/licenses/gpl-faq.html#GPLAndNon freeOnSameMachine
http://www.gnu.org/licenses/gpl-faq.html#MereAggre gation
http://www.gnu.org/licenses/gpl-faq.html#LinkingWi thGPL
http://www.gnu.org/licenses/gpl-faq.html#GPLModule License
http://www.gnu.org/licenses/gpl-faq.html#GPLPlugin sInNF

I think this item is also insightful:

http://www.tux.org/lkml/#s1-19

which mentions:
http://www.atnf.csiro.au/people/rgooch/linux/docs/ licensing.txt

TECHNICALLY, seems the GPL prohibits what Kororaa is doing with their Live CD. HOWEVER, seems Linus would side with them. HOWEVER HOWEVER, this would have to be legally debated, in other words, "defended". There's no explicit legal protection, and to get a judgment call would require money, lawyers, and being tangled in a lawsuit.

All of which would be silly and embarrassing both inside, and outside, of The Community.

I, personally, am very much in favor of "completely free (as in speech)" software. Mr. Stallman may be a "stickler", but I find him heroically inflexible. The world needs MORE Mr. Stallmans who actually and honestly stand tall, stand proud for what they believe in. And I'm not kissing ass here: I share his vision, but am far weaker in my convictions.

The pragmatist in me thinks that the Linux kernel's license should be changed to the LGPL. (http://www.gnu.org/copyleft/lesser.html) I know full well, however, that this would be a huge step backward for Freedom. (Anybody saying otherwise is either [1.a] simply not intelligent enough to understand, or [1.b] hasn't bothered to consider the implications, [2] has ulterior motives, and/or [3] has a personal vendetta against RMS due to personality conflict. "Consider the messenger...")

But PRACTICALLY, it would enable real headway on the driver/support front. I think ATI and nVidia (and every other closed-source **DRIVER** maker) is quite daft. But they have their "reasons", even if we neither know, nor understand them.

It's laudable to DREAM of a world where all software is Free, both as in Speech AND as in Beer. Bur for now, and for the foreseeable future, we all live and work in the Real World. Unless we're friendly and play nice with the other children, most proprietary companies, especially hardware creators, may very well choose to take their balls and go home. (To those who cry, "GOOD RIDDANCE!", I ask for you to tell us all of the open-source-hardware, with accompanying open-source drivers, to replace their wares with!) Free and Open (Source) Software makes its virtues self-evident. We need not be antagonistic.

The truth of the matter is that the hardware we want open-sourced drivers for the most is made by companies comfortably at the top of their game. They sell PLENTY of hardware to not need to worry/care about The Community one iota. They ha

http://www.gnu.org/licenses/gpl-faq.html#MoneyGuzz lerInc
http://www.gnu.org/licenses/gpl-faq.html#GPLAndPlu gins
http://www.gnu.org/licenses/gpl-faq.html#GPLAndNon freeOnSameMachine
http://www.gnu.org/licenses/gpl-faq.html#MereAggre gation
http://www.gnu.org/licenses/gpl-faq.html#LinkingWi thGPL
http://www.gnu.org/licenses/gpl-faq.html#GPLModule License
http://www.gnu.org/licenses/gpl-faq.html#GPLPlugin sInNF

I think this item is also insightful:

http://www.tux.org/lkml/#s1-19

which mentions:
http://www.atnf.csiro.au/people/rgooch/linux/docs/ licensing.txt

TECHNICALLY, seems the GPL prohibits what Kororaa is doing with their Live CD. HOWEVER, seems Linus would side with them. HOWEVER HOWEVER, this would have to be legally debated, in other words, "defended". There's no explicit legal protection, and to get a judgment call would require money, lawyers, and being tangled in a lawsuit.

All of which would be silly and embarrassing both inside, and outside, of The Community.

I, personally, am very much in favor of "completely free (as in speech)" software. Mr. Stallman may be a "stickler", but I find him heroically inflexible. The world needs MORE Mr. Stallmans who actually and honestly stand tall, stand proud for what they believe in. And I'm not kissing ass here: I share his vision, but am far weaker in my convictions.

The pragmatist in me thinks that the Linux kernel's license should be changed to the LGPL. (http://www.gnu.org/copyleft/lesser.html) I know full well, however, that this would be a huge step backward for Freedom. (Anybody saying otherwise is either [1.a] simply not intelligent enough to understand, or [1.b] hasn't bothered to consider the implications, [2] has ulterior motives, and/or [3] has a personal vendetta against RMS due to personality conflict. "Consider the messenger...")

But PRACTICALLY, it would enable real headway on the driver/support front. I think ATI and nVidia (and every other closed-source **DRIVER** maker) is quite daft. But they have their "reasons", even if we neither know, nor understand them.

It's laudable to DREAM of a world where all software is Free, both as in Speech AND as in Beer. Bur for now, and for the foreseeable future, we all live and work in the Real World. Unless we're friendly and play nice with the other children, most proprietary companies, especially hardware creators, may very well choose to take their balls and go home. (To those who cry, "GOOD RIDDANCE!", I ask for you to tell us all of the open-source-hardware, with accompanying open-source drivers, to replace their wares with!) Free and Open (Source) Software makes its virtues self-evident. We need not be antagonistic.

The truth of the matter is that the hardware we want open-sourced drivers for the most is made by companies comfortably at the top of their game. They sell PLENTY of hardware to not need to worry/care about The Community one iota. They ha

http://www.gnu.org/licenses/gpl-faq.html#MoneyGuzz lerInc
http://www.gnu.org/licenses/gpl-faq.html#GPLAndPlu gins
http://www.gnu.org/licenses/gpl-faq.html#GPLAndNon freeOnSameMachine
http://www.gnu.org/licenses/gpl-faq.html#MereAggre gation
http://www.gnu.org/licenses/gpl-faq.html#LinkingWi thGPL
http://www.gnu.org/licenses/gpl-faq.html#GPLModule License
http://www.gnu.org/licenses/gpl-faq.html#GPLPlugin sInNF

I think this item is also insightful:

http://www.tux.org/lkml/#s1-19

which mentions:
http://www.atnf.csiro.au/people/rgooch/linux/docs/ licensing.txt

TECHNICALLY, seems the GPL prohibits what Kororaa is doing with their Live CD. HOWEVER, seems Linus would side with them. HOWEVER HOWEVER, this would have to be legally debated, in other words, "defended". There's no explicit legal protection, and to get a judgment call would require money, lawyers, and being tangled in a lawsuit.

All of which would be silly and embarrassing both inside, and outside, of The Community.

I, personally, am very much in favor of "completely free (as in speech)" software. Mr. Stallman may be a "stickler", but I find him heroically inflexible. The world needs MORE Mr. Stallmans who actually and honestly stand tall, stand proud for what they believe in. And I'm not kissing ass here: I share his vision, but am far weaker in my convictions.

The pragmatist in me thinks that the Linux kernel's license should be changed to the LGPL. (http://www.gnu.org/copyleft/lesser.html) I know full well, however, that this would be a huge step backward for Freedom. (Anybody saying otherwise is either [1.a] simply not intelligent enough to understand, or [1.b] hasn't bothered to consider the implications, [2] has ulterior motives, and/or [3] has a personal vendetta against RMS due to personality conflict. "Consider the messenger...")

But PRACTICALLY, it would enable real headway on the driver/support front. I think ATI and nVidia (and every other closed-source **DRIVER** maker) is quite daft. But they have their "reasons", even if we neither know, nor understand them.

It's laudable to DREAM of a world where all software is Free, both as in Speech AND as in Beer. Bur for now, and for the foreseeable future, we all live and work in the Real World. Unless we're friendly and play nice with the other children, most proprietary companies, especially hardware creators, may very well choose to take their balls and go home. (To those who cry, "GOOD RIDDANCE!", I ask for you to tell us all of the open-source-hardware, with accompanying open-source drivers, to replace their wares with!) Free and Open (Source) Software makes its virtues self-evident. We need not be antagonistic.

The truth of the matter is that the hardware we want open-sourced drivers for the most is made by companies comfortably at the top of their game. They sell PLENTY of hardware to not need to worry/care about The Community one iota. They ha

http://www.gnu.org/licenses/gpl-faq.html#MoneyGuzz lerInc
http://www.gnu.org/licenses/gpl-faq.html#GPLAndPlu gins
http://www.gnu.org/licenses/gpl-faq.html#GPLAndNon freeOnSameMachine
http://www.gnu.org/licenses/gpl-faq.html#MereAggre gation
http://www.gnu.org/licenses/gpl-faq.html#LinkingWi thGPL
http://www.gnu.org/licenses/gpl-faq.html#GPLModule License
http://www.gnu.org/licenses/gpl-faq.html#GPLPlugin sInNF

I think this item is also insightful:

http://www.tux.org/lkml/#s1-19

which mentions:
http://www.atnf.csiro.au/people/rgooch/linux/docs/ licensing.txt

TECHNICALLY, seems the GPL prohibits what Kororaa is doing with their Live CD. HOWEVER, seems Linus would side with them. HOWEVER HOWEVER, this would have to be legally debated, in other words, "defended". There's no explicit legal protection, and to get a judgment call would require money, lawyers, and being tangled in a lawsuit.

All of which would be silly and embarrassing both inside, and outside, of The Community.

I, personally, am very much in favor of "completely free (as in speech)" software. Mr. Stallman may be a "stickler", but I find him heroically inflexible. The world needs MORE Mr. Stallmans who actually and honestly stand tall, stand proud for what they believe in. And I'm not kissing ass here: I share his vision, but am far weaker in my convictions.

The pragmatist in me thinks that the Linux kernel's license should be changed to the LGPL. (http://www.gnu.org/copyleft/lesser.html) I know full well, however, that this would be a huge step backward for Freedom. (Anybody saying otherwise is either [1.a] simply not intelligent enough to understand, or [1.b] hasn't bothered to consider the implications, [2] has ulterior motives, and/or [3] has a personal vendetta against RMS due to personality conflict. "Consider the messenger...")

But PRACTICALLY, it would enable real headway on the driver/support front. I think ATI and nVidia (and every other closed-source **DRIVER** maker) is quite daft. But they have their "reasons", even if we neither know, nor understand them.

It's laudable to DREAM of a world where all software is Free, both as in Speech AND as in Beer. Bur for now, and for the foreseeable future, we all live and work in the Real World. Unless we're friendly and play nice with the other children, most proprietary companies, especially hardware creators, may very well choose to take their balls and go home. (To those who cry, "GOOD RIDDANCE!", I ask for you to tell us all of the open-source-hardware, with accompanying open-source drivers, to replace their wares with!) Free and Open (Source) Software makes its virtues self-evident. We need not be antagonistic.

The truth of the matter is that the hardware we want open-sourced drivers for the most is made by companies comfortably at the top of their game. They sell PLENTY of hardware to not need to worry/care about The Community one iota. They ha

http://www.gnu.org/licenses/gpl-faq.html#MoneyGuzz lerInc
http://www.gnu.org/licenses/gpl-faq.html#GPLAndPlu gins
http://www.gnu.org/licenses/gpl-faq.html#GPLAndNon freeOnSameMachine
http://www.gnu.org/licenses/gpl-faq.html#MereAggre gation
http://www.gnu.org/licenses/gpl-faq.html#LinkingWi thGPL
http://www.gnu.org/licenses/gpl-faq.html#GPLModule License
http://www.gnu.org/licenses/gpl-faq.html#GPLPlugin sInNF

I think this item is also insightful:

http://www.tux.org/lkml/#s1-19

which mentions:
http://www.atnf.csiro.au/people/rgooch/linux/docs/ licensing.txt

TECHNICALLY, seems the GPL prohibits what Kororaa is doing with their Live CD. HOWEVER, seems Linus would side with them. HOWEVER HOWEVER, this would have to be legally debated, in other words, "defended". There's no explicit legal protection, and to get a judgment call would require money, lawyers, and being tangled in a lawsuit.

All of which would be silly and embarrassing both inside, and outside, of The Community.

I, personally, am very much in favor of "completely free (as in speech)" software. Mr. Stallman may be a "stickler", but I find him heroically inflexible. The world needs MORE Mr. Stallmans who actually and honestly stand tall, stand proud for what they believe in. And I'm not kissing ass here: I share his vision, but am far weaker in my convictions.

The pragmatist in me thinks that the Linux kernel's license should be changed to the LGPL. (http://www.gnu.org/copyleft/lesser.html) I know full well, however, that this would be a huge step backward for Freedom. (Anybody saying otherwise is either [1.a] simply not intelligent enough to understand, or [1.b] hasn't bothered to consider the implications, [2] has ulterior motives, and/or [3] has a personal vendetta against RMS due to personality conflict. "Consider the messenger...")

But PRACTICALLY, it would enable real headway on the driver/support front. I think ATI and nVidia (and every other closed-source **DRIVER** maker) is quite daft. But they have their "reasons", even if we neither know, nor understand them.

It's laudable to DREAM of a world where all software is Free, both as in Speech AND as in Beer. Bur for now, and for the foreseeable future, we all live and work in the Real World. Unless we're friendly and play nice with the other children, most proprietary companies, especially hardware creators, may very well choose to take their balls and go home. (To those who cry, "GOOD RIDDANCE!", I ask for you to tell us all of the open-source-hardware, with accompanying open-source drivers, to replace their wares with!) Free and Open (Source) Software makes its virtues self-evident. We need not be antagonistic.

The truth of the matter is that the hardware we want open-sourced drivers for the most is made by companies comfortably at the top of their game. They sell PLENTY of hardware to not need to worry/care about The Community one iota. They ha

http://www.gnu.org/licenses/gpl-faq.html#MoneyGuzz lerInc
http://www.gnu.org/licenses/gpl-faq.html#GPLAndPlu gins
http://www.gnu.org/licenses/gpl-faq.html#GPLAndNon freeOnSameMachine
http://www.gnu.org/licenses/gpl-faq.html#MereAggre gation
http://www.gnu.org/licenses/gpl-faq.html#LinkingWi thGPL
http://www.gnu.org/licenses/gpl-faq.html#GPLModule License
http://www.gnu.org/licenses/gpl-faq.html#GPLPlugin sInNF

I think this item is also insightful:

http://www.tux.org/lkml/#s1-19

which mentions:
http://www.atnf.csiro.au/people/rgooch/linux/docs/ licensing.txt

TECHNICALLY, seems the GPL prohibits what Kororaa is doing with their Live CD. HOWEVER, seems Linus would side with them. HOWEVER HOWEVER, this would have to be legally debated, in other words, "defended". There's no explicit legal protection, and to get a judgment call would require money, lawyers, and being tangled in a lawsuit.

All of which would be silly and embarrassing both inside, and outside, of The Community.

I, personally, am very much in favor of "completely free (as in speech)" software. Mr. Stallman may be a "stickler", but I find him heroically inflexible. The world needs MORE Mr. Stallmans who actually and honestly stand tall, stand proud for what they believe in. And I'm not kissing ass here: I share his vision, but am far weaker in my convictions.

The pragmatist in me thinks that the Linux kernel's license should be changed to the LGPL. (http://www.gnu.org/copyleft/lesser.html) I know full well, however, that this would be a huge step backward for Freedom. (Anybody saying otherwise is either [1.a] simply not intelligent enough to understand, or [1.b] hasn't bothered to consider the implications, [2] has ulterior motives, and/or [3] has a personal vendetta against RMS due to personality conflict. "Consider the messenger...")

But PRACTICALLY, it would enable real headway on the driver/support front. I think ATI and nVidia (and every other closed-source **DRIVER** maker) is quite daft. But they have their "reasons", even if we neither know, nor understand them.

It's laudable to DREAM of a world where all software is Free, both as in Speech AND as in Beer. Bur for now, and for the foreseeable future, we all live and work in the Real World. Unless we're friendly and play nice with the other children, most proprietary companies, especially hardware creators, may very well choose to take their balls and go home. (To those who cry, "GOOD RIDDANCE!", I ask for you to tell us all of the open-source-hardware, with accompanying open-source drivers, to replace their wares with!) Free and Open (Source) Software makes its virtues self-evident. We need not be antagonistic.

The truth of the matter is that the hardware we want open-sourced drivers for the most is made by companies comfortably at the top of their game. They sell PLENTY of hardware to not need to worry/care about The Community one iota. They ha

http://www.gnu.org/licenses/gpl-faq.html#MoneyGuzz lerInc
http://www.gnu.org/licenses/gpl-faq.html#GPLAndPlu gins
http://www.gnu.org/licenses/gpl-faq.html#GPLAndNon freeOnSameMachine
http://www.gnu.org/licenses/gpl-faq.html#MereAggre gation
http://www.gnu.org/licenses/gpl-faq.html#LinkingWi thGPL
http://www.gnu.org/licenses/gpl-faq.html#GPLModule License
http://www.gnu.org/licenses/gpl-faq.html#GPLPlugin sInNF

I think this item is also insightful:

http://www.tux.org/lkml/#s1-19

which mentions:
http://www.atnf.csiro.au/people/rgooch/linux/docs/ licensing.txt

TECHNICALLY, seems the GPL prohibits what Kororaa is doing with their Live CD. HOWEVER, seems Linus would side with them. HOWEVER HOWEVER, this would have to be legally debated, in other words, "defended". There's no explicit legal protection, and to get a judgment call would require money, lawyers, and being tangled in a lawsuit.

All of which would be silly and embarrassing both inside, and outside, of The Community.

I, personally, am very much in favor of "completely free (as in speech)" software. Mr. Stallman may be a "stickler", but I find him heroically inflexible. The world needs MORE Mr. Stallmans who actually and honestly stand tall, stand proud for what they believe in. And I'm not kissing ass here: I share his vision, but am far weaker in my convictions.

The pragmatist in me thinks that the Linux kernel's license should be changed to the LGPL. (http://www.gnu.org/copyleft/lesser.html) I know full well, however, that this would be a huge step backward for Freedom. (Anybody saying otherwise is either [1.a] simply not intelligent enough to understand, or [1.b] hasn't bothered to consider the implications, [2] has ulterior motives, and/or [3] has a personal vendetta against RMS due to personality conflict. "Consider the messenger...")

But PRACTICALLY, it would enable real headway on the driver/support front. I think ATI and nVidia (and every other closed-source **DRIVER** maker) is quite daft. But they have their "reasons", even if we neither know, nor understand them.

It's laudable to DREAM of a world where all software is Free, both as in Speech AND as in Beer. Bur for now, and for the foreseeable future, we all live and work in the Real World. Unless we're friendly and play nice with the other children, most proprietary companies, especially hardware creators, may very well choose to take their balls and go home. (To those who cry, "GOOD RIDDANCE!", I ask for you to tell us all of the open-source-hardware, with accompanying open-source drivers, to replace their wares with!) Free and Open (Source) Software makes its virtues self-evident. We need not be antagonistic.

The truth of the matter is that the hardware we want open-sourced drivers for the most is made by companies comfortably at the top of their game. They sell PLENTY of hardware to not need to worry/care about The Community one iota. They ha

http://www.gnu.org/licenses/gpl-faq.html#MoneyGuzz lerInc
http://www.gnu.org/licenses/gpl-faq.html#GPLAndPlu gins
http://www.gnu.org/licenses/gpl-faq.html#GPLAndNon freeOnSameMachine
http://www.gnu.org/licenses/gpl-faq.html#MereAggre gation
http://www.gnu.org/licenses/gpl-faq.html#LinkingWi thGPL
http://www.gnu.org/licenses/gpl-faq.html#GPLModule License
http://www.gnu.org/licenses/gpl-faq.html#GPLPlugin sInNF

I think this item is also insightful:

http://www.tux.org/lkml/#s1-19

which mentions:
http://www.atnf.csiro.au/people/rgooch/linux/docs/ licensing.txt

TECHNICALLY, seems the GPL prohibits what Kororaa is doing with their Live CD. HOWEVER, seems Linus would side with them. HOWEVER HOWEVER, this would have to be legally debated, in other words, "defended". There's no explicit legal protection, and to get a judgment call would require money, lawyers, and being tangled in a lawsuit.

All of which would be silly and embarrassing both inside, and outside, of The Community.

I, personally, am very much in favor of "completely free (as in speech)" software. Mr. Stallman may be a "stickler", but I find him heroically inflexible. The world needs MORE Mr. Stallmans who actually and honestly stand tall, stand proud for what they believe in. And I'm not kissing ass here: I share his vision, but am far weaker in my convictions.

The pragmatist in me thinks that the Linux kernel's license should be changed to the LGPL. (http://www.gnu.org/copyleft/lesser.html) I know full well, however, that this would be a huge step backward for Freedom. (Anybody saying otherwise is either [1.a] simply not intelligent enough to understand, or [1.b] hasn't bothered to consider the implications, [2] has ulterior motives, and/or [3] has a personal vendetta against RMS due to personality conflict. "Consider the messenger...")

But PRACTICALLY, it would enable real headway on the driver/support front. I think ATI and nVidia (and every other closed-source **DRIVER** maker) is quite daft. But they have their "reasons", even if we neither know, nor understand them.

It's laudable to DREAM of a world where all software is Free, both as in Speech AND as in Beer. Bur for now, and for the foreseeable future, we all live and work in the Real World. Unless we're friendly and play nice with the other children, most proprietary companies, especially hardware creators, may very well choose to take their balls and go home. (To those who cry, "GOOD RIDDANCE!", I ask for you to tell us all of the open-source-hardware, with accompanying open-source drivers, to replace their wares with!) Free and Open (Source) Software makes its virtues self-evident. We need not be antagonistic.

The truth of the matter is that the hardware we want open-sourced drivers for the most is made by companies comfortably at the top of their game. They sell PLENTY of hardware to not need to worry/care about The Community one iota. They ha

Incorrect!

Inclusion of proprietary code on the same CD as the open source code is not the same as "creating a derivative work". http://www.gnu.org/licenses/gpl-faq.html#MereAggre gation

Creating a script to install the proprietary code is also not a derivative work. You have used no GPL code in your script, and no GPL code in your drivers. The act of installing or running proprietary code on linux does not violate the GPL.

The only place in that series of steps that could be dangerous would be the automatic installation. If you left it up to the user to run the program that installed your drivers, there would be nothing the GPL could do.