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Slashback: Lunacy, Cinema, Parliament
"That's not censorship, mate. This is censorship!" Carnage4Life writes: "After causing a murder trial to be aborted last month CrimeNet has been ordered by the attorney general of the Australian state of Victoria to be shut down. If the site operators refuse to shut down they will face jail time. The story can be found here. In news which can only be considered related, an anonymous kangaroo wrote: "Found a reference to this article on LISNews. Seems the Aussie Parliament pitched a hissy fit when their internet access got filtered. Oh gee, how the fsck do you think the rest of the country feels?" How indeed. That's what happens when you start introducing clashing premises, I guess. Geese, ganders, sauce.
To the moon, Alice -- To the moon! We've frequently linked to NASA photos from Slashdot; what if they said "(registration required)" after them like links to the New York Times? MousePotato writes: "NASA announced today that it has entered into an agreement with Dreamtime Holdings to provide multimedia coverage of astronaut activities. The press release details "creating a state-of-the-art multimedia portal, www.Dreamtime.com, that will, with the click of a mouse, open the door to thousands of images, sounds, documents, blueprints and plans from NASA's currently underused archives. " Interesting to note about it is the fact that they will be using HDTV to give us as well as NASA engineers high quality video." Interesting, too, that billions of space research tax dollars are being used "to create new market opportunities in the multimedia arena."
Does this mean I can watch my -- errr ... "classics" again? The DVD-under-Linux story continues, specifically with an update on LinDVD; soon, the MPAA's claims that there are legal DVD players for Linux users may hold at least a sprinking of water; johnnick writes: "Another update in the DeCSS saga. One of the arguments for DeCSS was that there was no legal DVD decoder for Linux boxes. CNET reports that InterVideo, a licensee of the software that enables DVD information to be decoded, plans to release beta software called LinDVD this month that allows people to watch DVDs on Linux machines."
Microsoft not making a run for the border: Calz writes: "Both Microsoft and B.C.'s Investment Minister have denied that Microsoft is considering moving, as reported in this Yahoo article."
In other news from planet Microsoft, the indefatigable Bruce Perens has this to say about mixed-case licensing:
"Microsoft has been caught in a trivial, easily remedied, GPL violation, which is detailed here. They have been contacted, and their response was, well, dumb.Why do companies get involved in trivial GPL violations? Because the company picks up Free Software as part of one of their products without making a commitment to do the simple, easy, inexpensive things that are required to comply with the Free Software license. Folks, if you can't comply with license requirements as easy as those in the GPL, find other software, please.
One of these examples comes up at least once a month, and I'm going to keep submitting these stories until the situation improves. Maybe that means forever. Today's wakeup call goes to Microsoft corporation, read the account from Tim Burlowski. "
As Bruce says, this looks like a relatively easy one to fix. It could be explained by the complexities of mergers and acquisitions, general confusion, alignment of planets etc, but eternal vigilance is the price of liberty, including as applied to software. Unless Microsoft would like to declare all EULAs null and void ...
So... What I saw on the MPAA's Faq page was kindof funny.... they use an analogy that the CSS is similar to a Lock on the door of your house.... but the way I see it is... what good is a Lock on a door if you leave your windows open?
...
...
... :)
So what.... so somebody reverse engineered there software, and found out there big secret... I'm sure theres been bigger things cracked in the past... If they don't want DVD's ripped, then why distribute them... Oh... wait... they *KNOW* theres no way they can stop it... but... *OOPS* somebody made it public... and now they're crying piracy. I'm sure that if somebody had cracked the CSS and kept it quite and amongst a few of there friends... nothing would have ever been said...
Synchis
The worlds most popular, famous, and loved super hero...
Just kidding
Thomas A. Knight
Author of The Time Weaver
include a thin layer of archive encryption and make it a violation of the DMCA to create versions without the EULA.
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Show me the source code for THOSE programs, and then they will no longer be in violation.
Many of the tools the license mentions are GNU tools; the source for the GNU system can be found at gnu.org or any Linux distro site.
Will I retire or break 10K?
Microsoft stays here
Aussies mired in censorship
NASA sells pictures
Absolutely. I mean the mac has been able to see and format dos floppies forever. But windows still acts like they are not formatted, even when there is a wonderful microsoft office file there.
Funny thing there, too. If you format a floppy dos and save office files as Word 6.0/95 format (the first word for windows) you can transfer them easily from one platform to the other. However I have had horrible luck getting Office to translate properly from Mac format on the PC.. usually results in garbage.
Well, while man has always dreamed of destroying the Sun, I don't think that the same can be said about the Moon. But perhaps we can convince Bill to move to the Sun instead? (at night... when it sets ;)
-- This and all my posts are in the public domain. I am a lawyer. I am not your lawyer, and this is not legal advice.
That sounds euphonic, too ;) ("jee-pee-yoolah")
However, if that were sufficient, then so would be Microsoft's easily-gettaroundable kerberos spec protected by just such a click license, wouldn't it?
And MS could say "well, we got the code using an unarchiver which never showed us this so-called license thing," which is what a lot of people are saying about kerberos.
I'd prefer unambiguous plaintext, I think. ("These are the terms. Read 'em and weep only if you choose not to follow them.")
timothy
jrnl: http://tinyurl.com/c2l8yr / foes: http://tinyurl.com/ckjno5
Well, either way ... you're right, it's a contradiction that will have to get faced one day. All I'm saying is that I'd rather EULAs be considered valid than OK usurpation of GPL'd source, since the GPL is really a sort of EULA. Tricky thing, I'm not sure which approach would be better. timothy
jrnl: http://tinyurl.com/c2l8yr / foes: http://tinyurl.com/ckjno5
Something that I think would be a nice idea would be a nice idea would be to make a closed surce version of DeCSS (It would unfortunately require a total rewrite to avoid GPL breaches) for windows, and make sure that it was much more secure against piracy than any licenced DVD player. Make sure it is even strict about region coding.
The purpose would be that this could be released without the MPAA being able to make any claim that it could be used for piracy. If it is ruled that this is legal, then the restrictions could be gradually removed.
Is there a DVD player for BeOS, and *BSD? If not, DeCSS is necessary.
And this is an argument that would never end. Even the Amiga can be upgraded to use a G3 processor, so we need a DVD player for that too. So they produce one. Has anyone got a Sinclair QL with a stupidly fast processor? Or how about a player for people with slow machines but stupid quantities of fast storage. I want to be able to watch DVD movies reduced to 16 colours on my C64 connected to a raid system:)
All the GPL can do is require that you stop distributing infringing code, unless you can prove actual damages. Before they would do anything as dumb as argue that they're separate programs, Microsoft would just rewrite the code from scratch.
Then again, I would have never believed that Microsoft would pursue business as usual with the DOJ breathing down their neck. So who knows what they would really do?
-russ
Don't piss off The Angry Economist
I mean, what if I want to build a Linux machine with an Alpha processor? Or what if I want to use LinuxPPC on an Apple computer? In order for something to count as a DVD player for Linux, it ought to be available for all the different platforms that people run Linux on. Otherwise, it's just a DVD player for i386 Linux, which means that DeCSS is still needed.
I guess you can extend this argument to other operating systems, too. Is there a DVD player for BeOS, and *BSD? If not, DeCSS is necessary.
Take care,
Steve
========
Stephen C. VanDahm
It's not open source. The way the MPAA is, it's almost certain there never will be an open-source liscenced DVD player. So, I'd rather used some nice, open, DeCSS based thing.
After all this stupidity, there is no way in hell I'm going to use some MPAA liscenced player.
Dionysus vs, Socrates! The greatest battle of all time!
Funkadelic!
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Zardoz has spoken!
Oper on the Nightstar
Well, if you're talking semantics, then DeCSS can be used to copy DVDs, just not to a standard DVD medium. With a big enough hard drive, I can make a perfect copy of a DVD. There's just not a whole lot I can do with it at that point - at least not portably. :)
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The BSD software gets around, too.
Yes. Almost every OS except Linux uses the BSD stack, rather than implementing their own. That's what the BSD project(s) excel at. The BSD code provides openly available 'reference designs' that anybody else can make use of. It has the positive effect that most of the Internet (Linux is one of the rare exceptions, btw) uses the same code base to talk. That's called enhanced operability and it's the kind of thing that used to be praised. Linux, with it's own stack, is the child that doesn't always 'play nice' with everyone else.
Are there any Microsoft modifications?
I would say the burden of proof lies with you.
I've built some Linux and Unix code on Interix. Very little of it (if it's portable code, and not based in Linux-only functionality) required adapting to build.
Are you a paid Interix customer? If not, you don't belong in any discussion of 'breach of contract.'
This category seems a lot like Usenet. Less consistent than the usual discussions on /.
/. site, with all the wandering discussions weaved together like a newsgroup. Except each mini-Usenet dies and is tucked away in an archive after a day or so.
It's like a little mini-Usenet built inside the
It is probably a GPL violation that Microsoft purchased, rather than committed themselves. Interix was developed by Softway Systems and Microsoft only purchased Software about a half year ago. Softway was an NT Source license holder, under NDA.
- The line is "beat their swords into plowshares." Meaning, put an end to war and use the tools of war for peacetime activities.
- A plowshare is the blade of a plow, the part that cuts into the dirt. The plow was made of wood back when that phrase was used, so it doesn't make sense to beat a plow into a plowshare.
- Plow = plough, plowshare = ploughshare. The "ough" is just Old English, that's all.
All of these words are defined at everything.Sounds great. The problem is that when you tell others to "go back to gnu" you are costing gnu (well FSF) money in the terms of bandwidth and infrastructure required to provide source for your commercial product. This is why the GPL specifically prohibits doing that in a commercial product.
If Microsoft had included source on their CD's that would have been fine. Bt they didn't, hence they have to get source to the people who have already bought Interix.
True, the GPL provides for you to charge for that, and even provide it on a second CD. It's usually not done that way for PR purposes, and also because it is easier to distribute source with binaries usually.
However, most of this is moot because Microsoft specifically agrees in the license agreement that they will provide source at two specific URLS. Read the agreements.
Of course The Windows EULA says you can get a refund, and that has not been honoured, either, like most legal agreements Microsoft signs. Microsoft is a pirate in suit's clothing. Always has been, always will be, no matter how big they get.
But microsoft's modifications are not provided there. Also Bruce pointed out that according to GPL they are required to distribute source themselves, if anything at least with the binaries (they don't even need an ftp site, they just have to put it on the CD).
Another problem is that microsoft's own agreements agree to place the source at certain urls, at which teh source cannot be found. Breach of contract, mate.
This argument, too, has already been disproven. A COMMERCIAL distrubution CANNOT satisfy Section 3 of the GPL simply by linking to GNU's website. The GPL says this EXPLICITLY in Section 3(c):
Accompany it with the information you received as to the offer to distribute corresponding source code. (This alternative is allowed only for noncommercial distribution and only if you received the program in object code or executable form with such an offer, in accord with Subsection b above.) ( bold is mine )
They need to use sections 3(a) and 3(b) which to paraphrase state:
3a. Put the source code in the distrubution
3b. Make a written offer, good for a min. of 3 years saying you'll give them the source code, at a price no more then it takes to distribute, in a way commonly used for software interchange.
Linking to gnu.org's website falls under 3(c), which is invalid for them, putting source on their site follows 3(b) which is what they need to do. Specially since there is no gaurentee that they have not tampered with source code.
It's a common misconception.
FYI they're not "hidden" really, and trivial to find. Just take a peek at TELNET.EXE or the command-line FTP.EXE in win95/98 sometime.
I have seen the future, and it is inconvenient.
Alright... this is great... but what I don't understand is that... with all the Anti-MS crap out there, and all the people crying *KILL MS!!!*.... Why are so many people *STILL* using there software??? It's not like there isn't other alternatives.... you can go to Linux, with its various different XWindows servers.... or hey... get out there and create yer own OS... why not? Hmmm... because you'd rather cry about the tyrancy of Microsoft... when all that MS was built on was an OS that started as simple as DOS! Theres no reason why that could not happen again. And maybe.... just maybe the lucky person that gets the jump on MS... will do things differently this time... and use MS as an example.... RIGHT?
...
...
... :)
Synchis
The worlds most popular, famous, and loved super hero...
Just kidding
Thomas A. Knight
Author of The Time Weaver
It will never matter. The whole "there's no legal player for Linux" argument was irrelevant from the very beginning, probably created as a strawman by an MPAA sympathiser.
And either way, it's product-tying. They're tying the DVD purchase to the DVD-CCA's license fee. It doesn't matter if you're "forced" to buy a copy of MS Windows (and a Windows player) or "forced" to buy a copy of LinDVD, in order to play your DVDs. You're still having give additional money to DVD-CCA and establish their monopoly position. Making your own player or getting it from a totally unrelated organization should always be an option.
And since they insist that everyone pay that license fee (and agree to those atrocious license terms) and are suing people over it, I will always counter-insist that the player I use be unlicensed. If someone wants to make money selling a commercial DVD player for Linux, they should advetise it as being unlicensed. I bet they'd outsell LinDVD, because a lot of people really do care about this issue.
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As copyright owner of this comment, I authorize everyone to defeat any technological measure which limits access to it.
Isn't that rather similar to those sites that used javascript to open millions of browser windows.......
Who's gonna visit that site?
The secret of success is honesty and fair dealing. If you can fake those, you've got it made. (Marx)
What could the MPAA do about it? I don't own any DVD's, but with a player like this I'd get some. They can't tell me what player I can play my DVD's in since consumers don't license DVD disks, they own them.
A player like this could advertise itself as DVD compatible if "DVD" is trademarked (probably is) and I know that word of mouth would mark it for what it is even if it couldn't use the words "DVD".
Heck, I'd buy two of them if they were here today.
This doesn't directly answer your question, but... The DMCA makes all protection-defeating software illegal (and DeCSS clearly falls under that, no matter what it's actually used for.)
However, exceptions must be made, if "persons who are users of a copyrighted work are... adversely affected by the prohibition... in their ability to make noninfringing uses... of a particular class of copyrighted works." If there are no legal DVD players for Linux, then that exception clearly applies... but if legal players appear, the argument loses a lot of its weight.
Personally, I think that the DMCA is an unconstitutional restriction of free speech (i.e. code.) But until we can get it overturned, that's where it stands.
MSK
Fortunately, GNU Time Transporter 0.1 was just released, so the world will be saved by Richard M. "Danger" Stallman.
Stay up hacking each weekend. Sleep is for the week.
... and the damages would at least be what Microsoft earned from selling the original author's code. I'm not so sure that faced with that they wouldn't just open the source.
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That's the point: a software publisher who used EULAs and copied GPLed source could't very well take the position that EULAs are not binding...
And MS could say "well, we got the code using an unarchiver which never showed us this so-called license thing
...especially if they were a publisher that also believed that the DMCA stopped the circumvention of copy-protection as you describe.
Or, to put it a different way, I'd love to see Microsoft win with your defense because it would entail total capitulation with regard to what they say about all of their own licenses. Ebay would become a huge software bazaar and the "microsoft" user would have to get it's negative evals back :)
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It is pretty inconceivable, IE was originally licensed from NCSA Mosaic, which was never anything close to free software, it's copyright was strictly held by NCSA. The source was available for educational use only, and at least for the windows version it was only made available if you physically signed a license agreament and sent it in. The unix source was available for download if you went through various electronic means of agreeing to the license. There are various other components that MS has licensed from various people to put into IE, all of them properly credited, and I don't believe that any of them were open source of any kind, not even under a BSD style license. On additional note, even if IE was violating the GPL in some way, because of the way it is put together, as any good piece of large software should be, it is made up of many compenents, so if one compenent was made up of of some originally GPLed code, the worst they would have to do is expose the source for that compenent.
From what you understand.
That's a praiseworthy qualification that so seldom is made here.
This particular GPL violation really does sound like an innocent mistake. Two people assumed that the other one would deal with putting up the source code. As long as it gets fixed quickly, it's not an example of anything.
Regarding the EULA issue, the GPL is not a EULA in the same sense Microsoft's EULAs are. The GPL does not remove any rights that the end user would normally enjoy under copyright law. It strictly grants additional rights for the user who wishes to distribute the code.
I believe that if NASA is to continue on their ever dwindling federal budget (drug enforcement rates higher dollars and votes, even deeper issues that need to be responsibly re-addressed and handled completely differently than presently managed) they need to do many more things like this. I remember reading a few years back in Analog about an idea where Hollywood and NASA should team up. The partnership would benefit both sides mutually. The entertainment industry has very deep pockets and NASA has financial needs that our country for some reason feels needs to be neglected. This is a very sad statement to ponder as many of our modern conveniences like cellular phones, remote control tv/vcr/dvd's, extended life rechargeable batteries and lest we forget Tang all stem from technologies developed during the Gemini and Apollo programs. Our society now depends on may of these technologies to the point where they are all 'must haves' yet we don't want to fork over more funding to continue because most folks don't realize the origins of where these things came from. We could have and should have at this point established a moon base in the 30 years since we have been there. Why haven't we? Mostly because of money.Imagine if Tom Hanks had filmed his from earth to the moon series in a joint effort where NASA could have benefited financially from it. If a portion of ticket sales (lets say $2) from Apollo 13 were going to NASA and the public was made aware of how this kick back was working the public could help fund these programs. If you really like the movie you could go more than once etc. whatever but you see my point. Considering the hundreds of millions of dollars in revenue that motion pictures bring in these days (not to mention residuals and royalty monies) there is a huge potential for this to help the cause. The Artemis Project is based on this type of idea. Look into it if you like. It is totally possible to have missions to space that generate a profit and the Artemis folks have carefully thought out most of the issues. Twelve men have walked on the moon and in the time passed since then a whole generation has grown up. If you were born after 1970 you are truly a child of the space age. Shouldn't you be able to experience and contribute to your part of history?
IAAMOAC - so are you
Prospecting Stinks. Stop Wasting Time on Cold Calling.
I don't know if Hollywood is the best answer, maybe a part of it. Recently Disney announced some joint ventures which should help in the manner you referenced. I think the government should belly back up to the bar, cut massivly on the socialised support stuff, and put it right into NASA. I was born well before 1970 and grew up with the space race, boy I miss those days. All the technology advances, Prinde in the country etc.
Boy have we as a country lost focus.
Thanks again, BTW, what does IAAMOAC mean?
IAAMOAC - "I Am A Member Of A Civilization" SciFi author David Brin. His web page is at Kithrup.com. Go checkout his work if you haven't already. He has written plenty of non fiction thesis as well and is a former teacher/scientist. I don't usually quote him in posts like that but for this as a subject it seemed quite appropriate.
Prospecting Stinks. Stop Wasting Time on Cold Calling.
IIRC, the linux IP stack is different to make it less susceptible to DOS attacks. Differences in its stack include waiting for the ACK before completely dedicating a connection (to prevent SYN floods) and packet defragmentation logic.
You are correct that Linux's stack is different, but so is Microsoft's and Apple's I believe. Even if the stacks are different, there are some things, like DHCP for instance, that are implemented differently on different platforms because of grey areas in the design. the result is a lack of interoperability.
It did not seem to me that linux's "different IP stack" was designed in a way that would prevent interoperability, but then, Microsoft DHCP seemed to be mostly within spec, yet did not give Apple computers and IP address (isn't that nice?) because of the way it interpreted and expected certain signals. Apple ended up changing their design to allow it to work.
So can you point to a situation in which Linux breaks compatability with others? I thought interoperability was something Linux tried harder to have than anyone save BSD and co.
Michael.
The problem is that large companies violate and take advantage of free software licenses all the time. they take code that is freely available and incorporate it into their proprietary, closed-source projects which they then use to flog open source projects. "Don't use BSD, it is open source and cannot be trusted. Use Windows which steals code from it!"
Especially since the MPAA has said in every press release that there were tons of legal Linux DVD players...
every time they said that I was like "Where?"
Okay i'm obviously missing something here. I keep hearing all these statements about there being no DVD support at all whatsoever for Linux, but i know there are open source linux drivers for creative labs' dvd decorder card. Why doesn't this count as a legal dvd decoder?
I always thought it would be an interesting situation to find a GPL violation in Internet Explorer.
"It's part of the operating system, so you have to open the entire operating system."
MS would then reply...
"No!!! It's not part of the operating system. Look, here's an uninstall for it. You can even take it off of your desktop. You can't have the entire source, just the source to Internet Exploder."
That'd be swords.
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Your statements define exactly why the antitrust suit exists.
The fact that I still have to use windows to do normal, everyday operations in some cases to do my work, despite my chagrin, means that microsoft has an unfair monopoly.
It all comes down to the fact that there is no standard API for doing just about anything (unless you count POSIX, which can't really stand on it's own for anything high-level) so developers get locked in. It should not be that way.
-Erik-
The point if not whether or not there is a legal DVD player for linux now, the point is whether or not there was a legal DVD player for linux when DeCSS was first published.
We all know the answer to that question.
Tomorrow will be cancelled due to lack of interest
They should move to the moon! Remember that company selling plots on the moon? I'm *sure* old Bill has enough money to build a simple dome under which to house his money gathering company head quarters. Up there, they'd be free from all these silly government court cases and could develop broken software to their hearts content!
The next site to slashdot will be ready soon, but subscribers can beat the rush and start slashdotting it early!
If a legal Linux DVD player comes along in the middle of the trial, that's all very well and good, but it shouldn't affect the trial, right? There was no player at the time the alleged crime was committed...
I don't think the presence or absence of a legal player should have too much bearing on the legal issues involved, in any case....
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And one which, I hope, leads to an interesting discussion. If the GPL states that you must make available source code for the binary products, do you necessarily have to be the source of that source code? Could Microsoft just like to the GNU web site and say, "Here's your source code!" I realize in this case the EULA states that it can be found on a particular site, but could someone simply link from there to GNU web site or, as the MS employee did, just tell people to go there?
I don't know. To me this seems a little unfair. You can take someone else's code and sell it and not actually do any work yourself, but on the other hand, isn't that what it's all about?
Good that they are mad! They should be! And they should also realize that, under the law, they are no different than you or me. They are not 'law enforcement'. They are parliament.
So.. if they think they have the right to chose what to see and read.. so does the rest of the country!
However things like this:
The NASA-Dreamtime partnership will provide unprecedented public access to space exploration by creating a state-of-the-art multimedia portal, www.Dreamtime.com, that will, with the click of a mouse, open the door to thousands of images, sounds, documents, blueprints and plans from NASA's currently underused archives. Roll out of the in-depth portal site will begin within the next several months.
are confusing. I think the exposure is good, but the focus on what their core business is seems to be getting lost in the search for funding and public acceptance.
What, the ones that prominently display "Microsoft Telnet copyright Microsoft corp." when run? The point is that if you have to search the file for a string that is not prominently displaying the actual source (as in origin) of the program.
The funny thing is that Microsoft continues to say that free software cannot be trusted, whereas they have had to use it for anything mission-critical, like the TCP stack in general. Also the wonders of Hotmail not working with Exchange, only with qmail, and of course freebsd.
That BSD software gets around, too. It forms the heart of the Sun Solaris networking stack, and I would imagine is used by Netware and MacOS. It is of course used by Mac OS X Server and its open source cousin, Darwin.
Another interesting point... if you try to use Microsoft for your main DNS servers, your isp will laugh at you. Everyone knows some form of *nix or *bsd is required for anything so critical. Besides, they are free. ;).
The GPL says you must make source available upon request for a period of 3 years, or to avoid this, ship source with binaries.
I would venture to say that, if it is available from gnu, and it is totally unmodified, that is fine.
If GNU becomes unavailable, then MS would have to provide it themselves.
Whell, yeah, you're right of course. My post was mostly in response to "I think somebody found a BSD copyright message", and was sort of "Why rely on hearsay, see for yourself" thing.
I have seen the future, and it is inconvenient.
First off, barring a couple exceptions, Microsoft never built anything from scratch. They mostly bought it, including DOS. Not to say all those thousands of programmers are doing nothing. they just put polish on the code MS buys.
NT was pretty much an MS product, but it was actually made by a team of VMS engineers microsoft lured away with cash and autonomy. As such it is the best thing MS ever made besides Office.
As for why people use their software, in my case i use it because my boss says I have to, and I have to have compatability with other people who use it because they don't know better. If I could, I would only use Linux. I think that pretty much sums it up for a lot of people.
People don't necessarily hate microsoft because their products suck. Win2000 and office, for instance have lots of good points. They hate them because they get the product crammed down their throats, where again i point to win2000 and office.
At one place I worked, which must remain anonymous, win2000 and office 2000 were banned because of their "viral" qualities. they tend to take over. For instance simply opening a database with Access2000 renders it incompatable with everything else because access does not have to save. Ditto for the other office apps if you do save. Win2000 clients and servers tend to take over a network if you don't control them properly.
I believe that the GPL does allow them to supply the source on a CD. There might be a clause which allows them to charge a reasonable amount for media cost and delivery as well.
Specifically, the well-known Independant JPEG Group libjpeg, which requires a credit (it's under an old-style BSD license with the advertising clause).
And as for how "integrated" IE really is, check it out under Wine.
It turns out the source IS on the interix site here: >http://www.interix.com/tw/main_contrib. html</a>
Every rule has an exception, and this is the only rule with no exceptions! Huh? -- Spatch
Every rule has an exception, and this is the only rule with no exceptions! Huh? -- Spatch
Here is the source page: http://www.interix.com/tw/main_contrib. html
Every rule has an exception, and this is the only rule with no exceptions! Huh? -- Spatch
Every rule has an exception, and this is the only rule with no exceptions! Huh? -- Spatch
*shrug* it's in win95. I don't have 98SE lying around. Too expensive.
I have seen the future, and it is inconvenient.
There has been some concern of late here about American fugutives coming to Canada in order to be spared from having to face a US death penalty. However the prospect of American corporations doing the same is somewhat unsettling.
It's a good thing that Microsoft is staying put and facing the music. I would really hate to see Canada become the Mos Eisley of the corporate world with lawless excutives roaming the streets.
Ideology is for ideots.
A EULA, or shrinkwrap agreement, limits how one can use software. It doesn't limit how you can copy the software, because it doesn't have to. Copyright law itself limits how you can copy the software. Handing your CD to a friend to let them install it on their system is not so much a violation of the EULA as a violation of the vendor's copyright. There are a few tricks one can use to "get around" the EULA; I'm not sure how well any of them stand up in court.
The GPL does not attempt to limit how you can use the software. Arguably, it doesn't limit your ability to copy the software; in fact, it enhances it.
Any GPL software is copyrighted, either implicitly or explicitly. Either way, standard copyright rules apply--you can't just make copies and hand them to others. The GPL gives you rights to copy software for others, given that you take on certain responsibilities (such as shipping source with binary).
There is no getting around this. You are not required to agree to GPL terms. If you don't, you must follow standard copyright law. If you decide to ship GPL'd code, your only defense against a copyright violation charge is that you are shipping the code as allowed under the GPL. If you aren't shipping the code per the GPL license, you are shipping the code in violation of copyright laws. No shrinkwrap, no EULA, no DMCA--the law that keeps you from copying the software is the same law that keeps you from copying books or music for other people.
--The basis of all love is respect
Normally the saying is "beating swords into ploughshares." However in this case they are converting efforts from the government in the form of Nasa, to efforts in technology in the form of multimedia companies. Therefore beating ploughshares into ploughshares... get it?
Haiku are more fun.
Limericks, too, entertain.
Quatrains? They take time.
No boom today. Boom tomorrow. Always boom tomorrow. BOOM!
Sonnets, not quatrains. I'm dumb.
I feel a moderator pointing his/her "Off-topic" gun at me...
No boom today. Boom tomorrow. Always boom tomorrow. BOOM!
It does not matter what my agreements with Microsoft are. They agreed to supply code, they are not supplying it. I do not want their code, but I also do not want Microsoft to get away with breaking the GPL. If we keep allowing that, the GPL will become null through non-enforcement.
It does not matter whether they modify the code either. They must supply the code from their site or on their CD's with their money, not try and get something for nothing, which is ironically what people often try to accuse open-source advocates of doing.
After all, how long is it since you have seen any acknowlegements to the origins of their *bsd-derived tcp software? Was it ever displayed prominently?
The only reason that microsoft got caught here is that they finally violated gpl rather than bsd, and got caught. Since gpl requires a source release, the violation is more obvious. BSD license does not require source release, just acknowlegement, and as such violations are harder to prove. (IIRC someone was able to find hidden bsd copyright strings in some of MS's tcp software at one point. Hidden, mind...)
It's very funny that microsoft can say you agreed to something you are bound to by opening the box to your computer, even if you turn it on and immediately boot to a linux cd therefore never seeing the agreement, but they are not bound by that agreement themselves (which says you can get a refund). You can also be bound by an agreement that only shows up if you use a certain procedure in windows to open a file, rather than using a cross-platform method. But microsoft is never ever bound by anything. In that they have always been consistent. When they ignored the agreements they made with the Justice department around 1995, when they violated their agreements with apple and almost every other company they have ever "partnered" with, they were just being consistent.
Microsoft has always been and will always be an outlaw company who takes advantage fo the fact that here in the US we are used to allowing wealthy corporations to be above the law.
The GPL'ed source code is available at http://www.interix.com/tw/main_contrib.ht ml.
I think that the irony of Parliament's protest against filtering cannot be emphasized enough, considering that effective Jan 1, 2000, they put their entire nation, public and private, on a mandatory filtering system
According the the Australian EFF, in the area of 'adult images' (one area which the parliament protested filtering). All 'R-rated' content must be subject to age-verification, no 'X-rated' sites are permitted in Australia, and all foreign 'X-rated' sites must be blocked regardless of the age of the viewer.
So basically, 'pornographic content' shouldn't be available to the Parliament (or anyone in Oz) in the first place. Blindness - a fine starting point for future reasoned debate!
A Real-World example of uninformed debate
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A friend recently returned from Costa Rica and said their War on Drugs is based on a survey that saud a quarter of voters 'felt drugs are a serious concern'. Concern, possibly, but not a problem, according to external public health agencies. Costa Rica has an extremely low drug usage rate -- about 1%.
Unfortunately, only in the past year has there been any real discussion of the facts (some local doctors held a public forum). Until now, 'drugs' were considered a 'dirty' subject that everyone just naturally opposed.
Costa Rica is a wonderful country, with a stable government, low cost of living, good medical care and a large expatriate USAn community - a great place to retire - but it has real infrastructure deficiencies that would benefit from the resources devoted to this misguided policy. I'd hate to be in an ambulance dodging their crater-sized potholes!)
If you can go to bed, knowing you did a valuable thing today, you're very lucky. If you can't... it's not bedtime
I can't help but see some similarity between MS's treatment of the GPL and their treatment of Mac-format floppies... When you're the 364kg gorilla, what you acknowledge determines what the rest of the world acknowledges.
On the bright side, maybe this will form the kernel for that GPL test case we've all been waiting for. If MS really can get away with this, best that we find out soon...
- Michael Cohn
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Go ahead, blame me... I voted for Nader!
Someone else pointed out that the GPL specifically prohibits linking to someone else and saying you are providing source. The reason is that you are not providing source, they are. the only way microsoft can fix this now is to provide source at their urls. They could have avoided it by putting the source on the cd.
If you don't have a legitimate copy of the binaries (meaning you haven't bought Interix (I have)), you really can't demand the source (I can). If all that's been done with these utilities is downloading the source from GNU and building them, and there are no other changes needed to get the binary that they distribute (I haven't checked) then there is no issue. Most any Unix code that I have tried to build with Interix on my NT box has built without modification of the source. Particulary highly-portable base utilities like a lot of the stuff GNU distributes.
Interix is far better than running Cygnus, btw, although you don't get Win32 binaries, because Interix is an entire separate Posix subsystem that runs beside the Win32 subsystem and talks directly to the NT core. I can build X applications on my NT machine, for instance, then run them on an exported display from any other X desktop, just like with any other Unix box.
They said "you can get source from gnu." However, the problem with that is threefold. The most important part is taht gnu necessarily does not have Microsoft's changes. Also the GPL says you must distribute source with binaries. It says nothing about having to use an ftp site to do that.
The other problem is that their agreement specifically states at which urls you can get source, and source is not provided there. IANAL, but I would say that constitutes breaking the agreement on Microsoft's part, since it basically says that they agree to provide source at those locations.
I am not a lawyer. The only legal advice I have is that if you need any you had better get one.
Seems like digital bureaucracy is just as cumbersome as the paper kind. Whenever I read stories like this, the theme from Brazil starts playing in my head.
Microsoft is a HUGE company; I guess accreted layers of bureaucracy are an inevitable side effect of doing business on such a large scale. Or maybe just a side effect of clinging tenaciously to a closed-source proprietary business model.
Someday, if I ever own a megalithic corporation, I'm gonna automate all bureaucratic functions, so they're completely invisible to the user. And also I'm gonna drive a cool car.
http://www.farmerbob.org
state-of-the-art multimedia portal, www.Dreamtime.com, that will, with the click of a mouse, open the door to thousands of images, sounds, documents, blueprints and plans from NASA's currently underused archives.
Only one mouse click. Amazon is going to sue these guys.
134340: I am not a number. I am a free planet!