Slashdot Mirror

What is your favorite language?

I like C and Smalltalk for the clarity and focus of their ideas (you may say that C is not focused or clear, but look how many languages have copied it). Smalltalk is powerful, even though people call it "Object Oriented" it really picks up a lot of ideas from Alan Kay's Lisp days. Squeak does a good job showcasing the ideas, it's worth downloading and playing with. APL is really cool, overloaded operators done right. (It was of course impossible at the time, but if Excel had been built on top of APL, it would have been a more natural, flexible, and beautiful product).

I also think Forth is worth looking at, but I'm not really good at it enough to say it's great.

It's understandable because there will certainly be a massive amount of overlap in a new clean room implementation using that abstracted standard.

This was not a clean-room implementation. Google was sloppy.

I think you are confused because you don't understand the abstraction, filtration, comparison test. You can read about it.

According to the courts. Having a license will avoid expensive copyright suits that you might lose. By itself, a clean-room implementation is not fair-use: the clean-room aspect merely ensures you copied no more than necessary for the purposes of interoperability. Building your implementation for the purpose of interoperability can be a fair use defense. More info is available here.

Google tried the interoperability defense, but it failed because their software was not interoperable with Java.

That reminds me that both CSS and C++ were written for that purpose, giving programmers employment. :/

No, it's fun! I actually tried APL in a job interview once. They said, "Use any language you want." "Really?? OK." tbh I don't think they meant it since I didn't pass.

Obligatory interview with Marc Andreessen, creator of Netscape.

As a result of the new finding, I do not believe that dynamic linking works as an insulator between GPL and proprietary software...I always felt that dynamic linking of proprietary and GPL was risky and never advised my customers and their attorneys to do it.

It is almost certain that dynamic linking (or any other kind of linking!) is not an insulator between GPL and proprietary software......For example, even connecting over the network will not prevent it from being infringement, if the connector is a derivative work. The was clear that the abstraction, filtration, comparison test should be used. Briefly, you filter out everything (in the accused code) that was not derived (at least conceptually) from the original code, and whatever remains is infringing (interoperability fair use can still apply).

There will be more litigation and maybe this new ruling will be overturned, or maybe not.

The appellate court ruling is high quality, clear, and logically ties together a lot of the loose ends in software copyright. It will not be overturned, and will guide software copyright for generations to come (that is, although there are still procedural ways it could be overturned, any reasonable judge is likely to be convinced of the solidness of that decision). Future litigation will revolve around what exactly should be filtered out, and what can be abstracted, thus building on the appellate court decision.

APIs are not copyright able. See Google vs. Oracle.

Wow, you completely misunderstood that case. APIs most definitely are copyrightable, as per the appellate court. The best you can hope to attain is a fair use defense, which Google tentatively won (though it may or may not be overturned, like I know). Reasonable summary here, a lot of situations are probably fair use, including interoperability.

But I can see how a language designed just to be terse could be difficult. (APL anyone?)

It's not too difficult!

ok, I've read your argument elsewhere regarding the contributory infringement. In a lot of ways, it's like the cleanflicks case.....you are not allowed to edit and sell the edited DVDs, but you are allowed to sell metadata indicating which parts of the original movie can be modified, even though such metadata is clearly a derivative work. That would be analogous to allowing an end-user to download the kernel elsewhere, then apply the patches to it separately.

DVDs are a little different because they fall under the Family Entertainment and Copyright Act. The Linux kernel does not. I can't think of any case that applies to this directly. Applying the abstraction, comparison, filtration test, it seems reasonable that if Grsecurity lost the right to redistribute the Linux Kernel, they would at least lose the right to those portions of the code which allow them to integrate directly with the kernel, or are directly related to Linux. IF that happens, of course the patch would be useless.

So the question is, if you have a license from Grsecurity to use the parts of code they own, and a license from Linux for parts of the code that they own, why can't you use them together? The real question is about the jointly-owned portion of the code (after the abstraction, comparison, filtration test). Are you able use that or not? If not, why not?

There are ways to deal with it.
Unless you're a lazy developer and spend half your time on Reddit, then it doesn't matter if your boss pressures you. The software won't get done before you estimated it.

I'm suspicious of anyone who calls HTML 'venerable.' They should call it, "notorious" or "infamous," maybe, "expectorant." Marc Andreesen points out there are just problems with it, and I can't see OOP fixing things.

So, I looked at this guy's project, and it's better than I expected. The major problem it solves is: "how do you avoid repeating yourself, while still keeping things flexible?" The common approach right now is to either throw it into a CSS library (like Bootstrap) or write Javascript to produce the HTML. The latter idea there sounds like a joke but it's not.

In comparison, this lets you break things into components (like React does), but without any cost to the front end. Overall a good approach, but likely to get lost in the noise of a thousand other web frameworks.

I'm suspicious of anyone who calls HTML a "LANGUAGE", let alone "venerable".

Despite the "L" in the acronym, HTML is NOT a computer Language. It lacks several of the criteria. Must I list them for a Slashdot audience?

I'm suspicious of anyone who calls HTML 'venerable.' They should call it, "notorious" or "infamous," maybe, "expectorant." Marc Andreesen points out there are just problems with it, and I can't see OOP fixing things.

So, I looked at this guy's project, and it's better than I expected. The major problem it solves is: "how do you avoid repeating yourself, while still keeping things flexible?" The common approach right now is to either throw it into a CSS library (like Bootstrap) or write Javascript to produce the HTML. The latter idea there sounds like a joke but it's not.

In comparison, this lets you break things into components (like React does), but without any cost to the front end. Overall a good approach, but likely to get lost in the noise of a thousand other web frameworks.

With a halfway decent macro library, assembly's not too bad.

I really think that if Excel had been built on APL from the ground up, it would have been a much better platform than having visual basic tacked on at the end. In fact, if I ever get enough time, maybe I will build such a thing.

It's not too bad. Very entertaining language and fun to use.

Heh.....$100k web developer. After the .bomb it looked like you couldn't do that anymore. Don't worry, that problem's been solved.

I think this is a good summary of the state of software copyright, at least until the appeals court changes things.

However, *unlike* the TSG case, Oracle are taking exception to Android's use of the "language structure" of JAVA, which of course Google did to ensure compatibility with existing applications. This is interesting because of the potential legal repercussions of this case and not just because this is two of the biggest names in US Technology duking it out in a court of law. Oracle are trying to argue that the structure of JAVA can be subject to copyright.

It's a little more complex than that, though.

Have you ever even used HyperCard? Because I have, and the web is better in every way, and HyperTalk was buggy crap compared to JavaScript.

Oh hell no, just getting something centered on the page is a pain on the web. And don't even talk about lining stuff up vertically. The web is the C++ of the page-layout world: it gives us jobs.

Nah, if Google lost it wouldn't be so bad, because of the narrowness of the case. See for example.
Despite the hype stories, we'll still be able to use Java even if Oracle wins.

Any reasonably written executable that does dynamic linking can choose or not to choose to load a library.

That's true, you can conditionally open a dll in your program using dlopen(), but it's an edge case.

As I mentioned in another post, the method of linkage doesn't matter, but whether it is a derivative work. There is a fairly complex process the court goes through to determine if something is a derivative work or not (more info here, and links to even more info), but it doesn't take into consideration linkage. Your list of linkage types is not relevant. Even inter-machine calls can make your program a derivative work.

It is true that in the 90s and late 80s when the GPL was born, Richard Stallman taught that linkage was an important aspect, and it seemed reasonable at the time; but since then, copyright law developed in a way he didn't expect.

So what will matter in the next age of media?

Compelling voices and stories, real and raw talent, new ideas that actually serve or delight an audience, brands that have meaning and ballast; these are things that matter in the next age of media.

No, that's a pipe dream. Talent doesn't matter. Compelling stories don't matter. New ideas don't matter, and brands don't matter.Click here to find out the seven things that a mom discovered that matter!

"Quality news" has a real but small audience. Most people are looking for the next thing to click on to feed their buzzing squirrel brain.