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If you believe that you cannot profit as a software distributor, then don't build a business model as being a software distributor! You'll have to change your business model. Three ways of profiting with free software that is also endorsed by the FSF is as follows.

• Donation - write your software, publish it, then beg people to pay you for it
• Consulting Support - People come to you to ask advice about operating the software, you sell them your time in providing that advice. People can also come to you for support in extending the function of the software to add new features or improve the performance of the software, you sell them that time in writing that software. People can also come to you for support in fixing software bugs that they found, you sell them that time in writing that software.
• Hardware - bundle your software with some hardware and sell the bundle. Hopefully that hardware isn't locked away from the user via Tivoization

These are morally acceptable ways of selling free software. If you can't build a business model around them, you should not be running a business around software.

I am pretty sure they also forgot that the 'S' in sbin stands for static und not superuser.

I beg to differ: http://www.linfo.org/sbin.html

These file in /sbin were system binaries. That is why /sbin directories are usually not on the default path for users.

Now, /usr/sbin, that one is confusing unless you know the sorrid history of /usr as a shared NFS mount. Files in /bin and /sbin may be statically linked or not even on real UNIX. For boot-time on Linux like Debian, static linking is for stuff in your initrd, rescue images or really really badly written software (*cough* Zabbix *cough*).

The changes directly impact two groups. Power users are going to need to know about /bin, /sbin, /usr, etc. as they are going to mess with their system directly. Package Maintainers are going to have another thing to pull hair out over when converting the raw sewage seeping out of poor developers into functional shipping things to end-users.

Until this impacts regular users or Joe X Windows who runs SteamOS it's like the mechanic changing the brand of shocks in your car. Someone who knows better will be using the correct tools to do the correct thing. Or everyone will hang them out to dry when your transmission drops out of the car on the highway.

You mean apart from swallowing the fee themselves, like most other companies do?

That would be the "take an 18% loss" option.

Or simply not offering a subscription in-app?

Their claim is that this is what they were trying to do in the update that was rejected. That would be the "or leave" option.

You'd have trouble finding your own ass,

I'm shitting as I write this; I'd say I found my own ass just fine, thanks.

but that's beside the point.

Having read you entire post twice and discarded the invalid, incorrect, or irrelevant portions, I'm left with nothing and have to ask: what was the point?

What Microsoft got in trouble was that they got in trouble before and consented " not to tie other Microsoft products to the sale of Windows " to get out of it.

Yes, that's bundling which is illegal under...

You wouldn't find that statute if you were a lawyer either.

Are you ready to stand corrected? The Sherman Antitrust Act, as well as the Clayton Antitrust Act. I wasn't sure either applied in this case, so I gave them another read-through. The Sherman Act is short so you can probably manage to read it all, but look specifically at section 2. Since it's quite packed with legalese (now, I did say IANAL, but I did not say I don't have any formal education in the field; I do and I can read and understand this crap just fine, I simply don't work with it every day in order to be able to recall it on-demand), you might have some difficulty in following it, so here are a couple easier references for the Sherman Act.

The Clayton Act clarifies the Sherman Act, specifically stating:

(f) Knowingly inducing or receiving discriminatory price

It shall be unlawful for any person engaged in commerce, in the course of such commerce, knowingly to induce or receive a discrimination in price which is prohibited by this section.

and

Sec. 14. Sale, etc., on agreement not to use goods of competitor

It shall be unlawful for any person engaged in commerce, in the course of such commerce, to lease or make a sale or contract for sale of goods, wares, merchandise, machinery, supplies, or other commodities, whether patented or unpatented, for use, consumption, or resale within the United States or any Territory thereof or the District of Columbia or any insular possession or other place under the jurisdiction of the United States, or fix a price charged therefor, or discount from, or rebate upon, such price, on the condition, agreement, or understanding that the lessee or purchaser thereof shall not use or deal in the goods, wares, merchandise, machinery, supplies, or other commodities of a competitor or competitors of the lessor or seller, where the effect of such lease, sale, or contract for sale or such condition, agreement, or understanding may be to substantially lessen competition or tend to create a monopoly in any line of commerce .

Here's an easier to follow reference for the Clayton Act, as well.

And, before I drive my point home, the Black’s Law Dictionary definition of “induce", found on page 915 of the referenced edition (4th):

To bring on or about, to affect, cause, to influence to an act or course of conduct, lead by persuasion or reasoning, incite by motives,

Git started out as a quick hack to respond to criticism of linux using BitKeeper. He fixed that "bug." Torvald's goal in creating git was to get off BitKeeper, not to develop an SCM as his main project.

Since this is open-source, and you think the documentation is poor, why don't you fix it?

Or you could fork it and make something simpler to use.

For example, he could recognize when his anger is caused by not getting enough caring in childhood, and not think that events in the present caused his anger, when events in the present only made him aware of his anger.

Now you're talking like a useless git. Do you have ANY proof that he didn't get enough caring in childhood, or do you just go around slandering people's parents routinely? You might want to read this. Sounds like a pretty enriched environment to grow up in.

I'm writing a book about how people use their brains.

$DIETY help us.

To really understand a lot of projects to the point where a developer can make substantial contributions often takes a substantial investment of time by a developer. So some combination of full-time employment in the area, government grants, a basic income, or gifts of some sort are required for experienced developers to have substantial time to look at source code. It's true some developers have time to do it as a hobby, and others might have time as students. But to really dig into complex code and keep at it for a substantial period of time require, in US society at least, generally requires some kind of external support (even if just a spouse who earns money). This issue is not helped by the fragmentation of many software projects via forks, the competition between similar FOSS projects, and the proliferation of languages and not-very-good standards which all chew up vast amounts of developer time.

Of course, some people, like Bill Gates, who was born with a substantial trust fund have inherited the wealth needed to allow them to develop free software the rest of their life. However, for good or bad, he did not pursue that choice.
"How to Become As Rich As Bill Gates"
http://philip.greenspun.com/bg...
"William Henry Gates III made his best decision on October 28, 1955, the night he was born. He chose J.W. Maxwell as his great-grandfather. Maxwell founded Seattle's National City Bank in 1906. His son, James Willard Maxwell was also a banker and established a million-dollar trust fund for William (Bill) Henry Gates III. In some of the later lessons, you will be encouraged to take entrepreneurial risks. You may find it comforting to remember that at any time you can fall back on a trust fund worth many millions of 1998 dollars."

A substantial "basic income" equivalent to US Social Security from birth would, in a sense, make everyone a millionaire overnight and give them the time they need to pursue public benefit projects, whether doing code review or raising children well. Linux in part is a result of Finland's generous support for students like Linus.
http://www.linfo.org/linus.htm...
"Torvalds thus decided to create a new operating system from scratch that was based on both MINIX and UNIX. It is unlikely that he was fully aware of the tremendous amount of work that would be necessary, and it is even far less likely that he could have envisioned the effects that his decision would have both on his life and on the rest of the world. Because university education in Finland is free and there was little pressure to graduate within four years, Torvalds decided to take a break and devote his full attention to his project."

I don't doubt that needing a MAC makes it a layer 2 device. I was arguing that if it had a MAC, that is probably capable of being connected to and is more than likely a layer 3 device. A modem can act just fine as a portal between Ethernet and SomethingElse without existing at layer 2. The Ethernet device only sees the MAC and IP of the router/other device beyond the modem, and sends a packet out the Uplink port. You even mention a network bridge which were, in Ethernet cases anyways, invisible layer 1 devices with no MAC, that were just signal amplifiers. As for DSL spec'ed as being a layer 2 protocol, that's outside my personal realm of specialized knowledge. The behavior of a modem does not require such, since it just converts from one physical layer to another. See http://www.linfo.org/physical_layer.html and http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Physical_layer for where I pulled opinions to back my knowledge from old cisco classes. Now, in searching, it seems that the ADSL spec does lay out layer 2. Since ADSL has basically replaced DSL, maybe that's where our confusion lay.

So again, scientists know this is a problem. They just don't know how to stop it.

Hey, I have this really cool idea. I call it Hubs and Authorities ; the idea is that there is peer review and the best-reviewed journals are considered the best journals to send your paper to! Whaddya think?

man intro(1)

Which is crap and all the unmentioned details for "cd" are hidden somewhere more obscure; Google it instead and you'll find
http://www.linfo.org/cd.html

Now brace yourself as you'll get it up your ass with a mint-flavoured condom.

trollololol

Not a troll, just a comment that is more a history reference, in a world where its been impossible to buy a PC without an OS for years http://www.zdnet.com/top-five-pc-manufacturers-fail-naked-pc-test-3039286228/ this is an article describing how difficult it was in 2007. The truth is Microsoft created the [propaganda] term "Naked PC" for "its dramatic value and as a means for creating the impression that it is evil to sell computers without operating systems because they might be used for so-called software piracy" http://www.linfo.org/naked_pc.html

You might want to look a little deeper... There are many (ethnic and linguistic) Swedes in Finland.

Link

Maybe because the BSD license is just a little bit too naive for a world in which not everything is kittens, sunflowers and kumbaya-singing hippies. ;) (Which I don't have anything against per se.)

As it is so free, that it allows the licensee to hang you by your own license. (TiVoization)

I, for one, think that the only thing that's actually 100% free, is no license at all. (I.e. in harmony with actual reality, in which there is no property of ideas)
Even using a license at all, already validates the "IP" delusion. And any terms at all, are obviously less free than no terms at all.

So GNU is, sadly, validating the very position they oppose. (A common mistake of people not trained in social dynamics. [Keyword: reality dominance]) But at least it's, so your own works don't fall into the trap too.

Why anyone would use a license, that does nothing to protect you, but still validates the "IP" delusion... in essence doing only harm at no gain... is therefore beyond me.
If I had the BSD license mindset of wanting 100% freedom (which, in fact, I strongly do!), I'd choose no license at all.

(Ok, in reality, I only have one term you have to agree to:

I agree, that "intellectual property" (including, but obviously not limited to, DRM, copyright, trademarks, patents and DRM again) is a delusion, which in physical reality does not exist. Hence, if I ever acknowledge or believe in its existence, I will lose all freedom over these works/information/ideas retroactively for all time.

:)

Uh huh, I'd say the REAL goal is a slow but sure march towards TiVoization which I said would happen for...oh about a year now. Once Google said they wouldn't allow any GPL V3 (which RMS wrote to specifically keeping companies from TiVoing GPL software) I figured it was only a matter of time.

You watch these early moves are 'feelers" to see how big of a stink it causes in places other than Linux forums. When Google sees the fanbois are all onboard and making with the excuses and Joe Consumer frankly doesn't care they trot out a nice "its for security!" statement (probably timed right after some Android malware hits the news) and it'll be code signing or eFuses all the way.

As much as I don't agree with RMS on ...well hell pretty much everything, he was right on this. Once TiVo showed the corps how to run right around GPL V2 it became for all intents and purposes useless. Anybody using GPL V2 now might as well be using BSD or PD for all the "freedom" it protects now. After all what good is the code if you aren't allowed to modify it or run it on the device for which its intended?

I just hope moves like this teach the community two important lessons: 1.-There is no such thing as a "friendly" corp. They can come up with little slogans like do no evil, they can make shiny devices, it frankly doesn't matter what they do, because if it comes down to making more money and/or gaining more power or not fucking you? Well bend over pal, because here it comes. 2.- GPL V2 needs to be dumped ASAP and replaced with GPL V3, because as it is using GPL V2 is simply giving corps your labor for free while they don't have to give you ANYTHING in return. eFuses and code signing cost almost nothing and gives the corp all the control of proprietary while at the same time gaining all the effort that has been put into embedded Linux by the community.

The only restrictions placed on users of software released under a typical BSD license are that if they redistribute such software in any form, with or without modification, they must include in the redistribution (1) the original copyright notice, (2) a list of two simple restrictions and (3) a disclaimer of liability. These restrictions can be summarized as (1) one should not claim that they wrote the software if they did not write it and (2) one should not sue the developer if the software does not function as expected or as desired. Some BSD licenses additionally include a clause that restricts the use of the name of the project (or the names of its contributors) for endorsing or promoting derivative works.

So please stop the FUD. It has long since been debunked, I really don't understand why it remains such a common belief amongst otherwise intelligent people...

Some of the files SCO claimed were infringing turned out to be BSD code, and as such, entirely okay (SCO couldn't claim rights to BSD code because of the Regents of the U of C vs AT&T case).

-- Barbie

You probably can't run Linus's original keyboard driver on that. Seriously, according to this it requires at least 640K of RAM for Minix and since Linux started as a replacement kernel I bet it was at least in a similar ballpark...

http://www.linfo.org/minix.html

It's interesting that the patent examiner was perfectly aware of su, sudo, gksu, kdesu, Ubuntu integration with gksu to call it as needed automatically, etc. Look at the "Other References" section of the patent:

"GKSU: A gtk+ su front end Linux Man Page" retrived at http://www.penguin-soft.com/peguin/man/1/gksu.html

Lawrence, "Using Sudo", Linus Tutorials, May 12, 2005, retrieved at http://web.archive.org/web/20050530041932/www.developertutorials.com/tutorials/linux/using-sudo-050511/page1.html

Miller, "Sudo Manual", Jul. 11, 2004 retrived at http://web.archive.org/web/20040711020526/http://www.gratisoft.us/sudo/man/sudo.html

Miller, "Sudoers Manual", Jul. 11, 2004, retrived at http://web.archive.org/web/20040711020555/www.gratisoft.us/sudo/man/sudoers.html

Quick HOWTO: Ch09 : Linxus Users and Sudo, Dec. 23, 2005, retrived at http:web.archive.org/ web/20060203023004/http://www.linuxhomenetworking.com/wiki/index.php/

"The KDE su Command", Nov. 20, 2004, retrived on http://www.linfo.org/kdesu.html

"The Ubuntu Quick Guide. Chapter 3. Applications Menu: System Tools.", retrieved on http://people.ubuntu.com/.about.mako/docteam/quickguide/ch03s07.html

The other attack was the campaign against vendors selling naked PC's.
http://news.zdnet.co.uk/hardware/0,1000000091,39286228,00.htm/
http://www.theregister.co.uk/2000/11/23/ms_how_pcs_shipped_without/
http://www.linfo.org/naked_pc.html/

Then cite _that_ work, or at least cite it as well as the degree in education. It lends credence to your claim of expertise, and in itself seems interesting work. You're making the claim: you provide the data, the reasoning, or at least the citations. And because I don't put anything in my profile myself, for privacy reasons, I've never bothered to read others. And yours doesn't even cite your degrees in other languages.

A mere few moments on Google reveals http://www.linfo.org/lower_case.html, and a lot of anecdotal claims that lower case is easier to read. But I'm finding it difficult to detect actual research on it. If you can remember anything of the references you mentioned, perhaps you can find a pointer to _actual research_ on it.

Let's assume that you actually had two choices for cable internet at some point in the past, and you found out that the one you liked was going to sell out to the one you disliked. Did you contact them and let them know of your opposition to the move? Did you persuade your friends/family/neighbors to do the same? If it was going bankrupt, were any donations made? Did you persuade everyone you know to switch from the crap service to the good one? If you believed their service to be superior in some way (eg, no torrent restrictions), where were you when it was faced with extinction?

Open source software is software whose source code is freely available (i.e., without any requirement for payment or any other obstacles) for anyone to inspect and study

According to the linfo.org pages, linfo is a project of the Bellevue Linux Users Group.

Checking out whois isn't always the most reliable way to figure out who is behind a site.

Would you expect this on a Microsoft-owned website?

(And yes, I do work for Novell. And I don't have much of a reason to defend the site, since most of the reasons listed don't expect Novell to survive, only to serve as a bad example.)

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