Slashdot Mirror
Lindows - Where's the Source?
bbh writes: "NewsForge has an article about the Free Software Foundation asking the makers of LindowsOS a simple question, 'Where's the Source?' Lindows CEO Michael Robertson has an interesting take on what the GPL means."
Well this is slightly offtopic, but I discovered recently an universal theory of everything and I can't whithold such important information from the slashdot crowd.
The theory is mainly inspired by the posts I read here at slashdot and consists of the revolutionary thesis:
Everything is a troll.
I'll explain now what leads me to this conclusion.
Let's start with the most important part of most slashdotters lives: the computer.
As you all know operating systems have lead to many heated and sometimes flamebait discussions, take all these Linux vs Windows XP vs *BSD etc flamewars here at slashdot as an example. In fact we all now that the most important differences of the OSes are for these discussion, for most practical uses an operating system is as good and any other. Therefore the main purpose of modern operating systems is just trolling and not any practical issues anymore !
The same goes for programming languages. Today we have enough programming languages for any purpose which comes into our minds. And we all know that the best programming is choosen specifically for an explicit task. But nevertheless there are always more and more universal programming languages which "suit all purposes perfectly" created all the time. Take Microsofts C# as an example. Thus we can conclude that the main purpose of modern programming languages is again trolling.
C# takes us direct to Microsofts monopolic behavoir. If you examine it long enough, you'll come to the conclusion that their practices to subdue the competitors is just a very clever way of trolling. The the whole anti-trust case is just the way of the competitors and the goverment to troll back at Microsoft !
You can go on and on with this and you'll finally reach the same conclusion as I: the main purpose of the entire computer/IT industry is just trolling.
Can we extend this statement to other parts of our lives ?
Let's look at something basic: emotions.
Hate is obviously a form of trolling. If you think about it a little, you'll see that the same goes to the opposite: love. If you love someone you just troll everybody you don't love and if you love everybody you troll the people who don't want to be loved. In fact any kind of emotion is a form of trolling.
The same goes for the society war is an obvious form of trolling. The rule above for love applies at society leave at peace. Terrorism, trade contracts, diplomany, just anything is trolling. Religions are trolling just by their existence, because they always claim all other relgions to be wrong. You'll have to do some examination to see this always but once you know the pattern it's relatively easy to spot.
This lead to the next conclusion: humans and society are always trolling.
But what about nature ?
Well we know how to approach such thing know, so it's not very difficult to procceed.
Carnivores are trolling herbivores and other carnivores by eating them.
Herbivores troll plants by eating them.
Plants are trolling everybody by sitting around doing nothing and being green.
Bacteria are trolling everybody by causing such things as rotting and diarreea.
In fact even the physical laws are trollish. Take the laws of thermodynamics. The law of entropia is trollish by causing disorder everywhere. The law of energy conservation is trollish by causing energy problems all over the world. As another example the law of gravitation is trollish by hitting people with apples on the head. The moon circles around earth to troll it which on the other hand trolls around the sun. And the sun trolls the planets by sending radition and light at them. The milkyway trolls around it's own axis. The whole universe is trolling by expanding infinitely !
Well, this leaves the question wether the laws of trolling hold outside our universe. But the existance of such questions would be oviously trolling and therefore everything outside the universe must be trolling, too ! So we can conclude the universal laws of the universe:
EVERTHING IS TROLLING !
This law has some interesting implications:
Owner of a Mensa membership card.
However, Lindows is under no obligation to release the source. They only have to do that if a) they are selling the binaries and b) someone requests it. And of course, if somebody does they have to release both the source of those binaries as well as the source of any tools that helped created those binaries. That's why it's always a good idea to use gcc and emacs for your OS projects.
Really, sometimes the FSF can be as bad as the BSA...
ok then your [sic] infringing on my copyright! Could you as [sic] me next time before STEALING my comments for your own?
However, before I became the world-renowned physicist I am today I was a lawyer for the Free Software Foundation (I was LawGenius back then). I wrote significant portions of the GPL as well as grooming ticks from RMS dense face foliage. I know whereof I speak and you are a troll.
Why don't you go fuck yourself.
Asshole.
Maybe it's because I just woke up, maybe it's cause I missed something in the article, but it seems a simple thing for him to say, "Oh, we didn't include the source due to x y z."
He did. They didn't include the source becuase they haven't released the product to the public.
The GPL distinguishes between modifications published (for which source is required) and modifications for internal use (for which source is not rewuired). Testing is usually an internal use.
Beta testing is a grey area, is it a public distribution or is it internal? But it seems to me a resonable interpretation.
I have discovered a truly marvelous sig, unfortunately the sig limit is too small to contain i
I might remember you from movies such as A Troll in Central Park and My Life as a Troll .
Surprised by Unicide! (fuck this shit)
Wow, I like this reasoning. Throw enough money at the community and you should be allowed to violate license agreements!!! Let's all sponsor Windows conferences so we can violate their EULA. Then again, you couldn't pay me to use Windows so forget about paying
In this case, it's especially ironic because they're attacking a company that could do a great deal to popularize Linux on the desktop. The fact that they're doing it anyway shows not only that they want to hurt software businesses but that it's their first priority. Providing an alternative to Microsoft isn't as important. Making things easier for users isn't as important. What matters to them is what mattered to Richard Stallman when he attempted to destroy Symbolics many years ago (cf the book "Hackers" by Steven Levy): to destroy businesses, big or small, that make money by writing software, and to prevent programmers from being able to make a livelihood that way. (Stallman, incidentally, states that specific goal for the GNU Project in his essay "The GNU Manifesto.")
The FSF has become as Draconian as the RIAA: It is d attempting to use legal threats to destroy software businesses in the same way that the RIAA used them to destroy Napster. Who's next?
--Brett Glass