I Want My MTV... PC?

Tsar writes: "MTV Networks is putting their imprimatur on a line of entertainment-oriented PC's to be available early this year. Targeting the college-age crowd, they'll have TV &amp radio tuners, DVD players, remote controls, and 'MTV-specific content.' CNN has this article on CNN's SCI-TECH page, but the original story was posted last Thursday on IDG.net. There's also news of MTV's impending digital music player, which uses DataPlay's 500MB matchbook-sized discs with built-in digital rights denial^H^H^H^H^H^Hmanagement."

Comments

GPL - Intellectual Theft?

[Anonymous Coward]

Hello,

Consulting for several large companies, I'd always done my work on Windows. Recently however, a top online investment firm asked us to do some work using Linux. The concept of having access to source code was very appealing to us, as we'd be able to modify the kernel to meet our exacting standards which we're unable to do with Microsoft's products.

Although we met several technical challenges along the way (specifically, Linux's lack of Token Ring support and the fact that we were unable to defrag its ext2 file system), all in all the process went smoothly. Everyone was very pleased with Linux, and we were considering using it for a great deal of future internal projects.

So you can imagine our suprise when we were informed by a lawyer that we would be required to publish our source code for others to use. It was brought to our attention that Linux is copyrighted under something called the GPL, or the Gnu Protective License. Part of this license states that any changes to the kernel are to be made freely available. Unfortunately for us, this meant that the great deal of time and money we spent "touching up" Linux to work for this investment firm would now be available at no cost to our competitors.

Furthermore, after reviewing this GPL our lawyers advised us that any products compiled with GPL'ed tools - such as gcc - would also have to its source code released. This was simply unacceptable.

Although we had planned for no one outside of this company to ever use, let alone see the source code, we were now put in a difficult position. We could either give away our hard work, or come up with another solution. Although it was tought to do, there really was no option: We had to rewrite the code, from scratch, for Windows 2000.

I think the biggest thing keeping Linux from being truly competitive with Microsoft is this GPL. Its draconian requirements virtually guarentee that no business will ever be able to use it. After my experience with Linux, I won't be recommending it to any of my associates. I may reconsider if Linux switches its license to something a little more fair, such as Microsoft's "Shared Source". Until then its attempts to socialize the software market will insure it remains only a bit player.

Thank you for your time.

Why is this on slashdot ?

[Anonymous Coward]

1. it has been posted everywhere else for two days
2. do nerds watch MTV ?
3. is it stuff that matters ?

Re:That's Funny

[Anonymous Coward]

HAHA

Maple V is your BITCH,
Or are you its BITCH?

Love that pascal-like language!

Tsar = moron^H^H^H^H^Hcool person

[billybob]

Wow, thanks for all the links. If you hadn't linked to cnn's front page twice, I wouldn't have known how to get there. WHo wouldve thought cnn.com would be the address for cnn?

Also youre joke concerning the ^H's was extremely not^H^H^H funny. You should not^H^H^H give up your day job to become a comedian.

interesting?

[Anonymous Coward]

moderators on crack again, right?

First Heterosexual Post

[Anonymous Coward]

This is the first heterosexual post, as stated in the subject line above.

Thank you.