Slashdot Mirror
Slashback: Forbes, VoIP, Firefly
Hey, this approach works for the New York Post ... digidave writes "The fallout from Dan's Linux's Hit Men article on Forbes.com has pushed Forbes.com into putting up a discussion board, where Dan [Lyons] has posted his response"
And unmadindu writes "FSF's Bradley Kuhn has responded to the Forbes article ( reported earlier at Slashdot). Read the short, but to-the-point response at Linux Today." Kuhn's response is remarkable in its restraint.
Reader Waldo Jaquith sent the text of Lyon's first posting; an excerpt serves to illustrate its tone:
"Of course the Free Software Foundation is entitled to enforce its GNU General Public License (GPL), just as other organizations are entitled to enforce their copyrights and licenses. My article simply points out that the paradoxical effect of these "enforcement actions" (FSF's term) may be to impede the adoption of Linux. By demanding that licensees publish source code for their own "derivative work" code (in addition to the Linux they're using) the FSF is, in effect, charging a royalty that approaches 100% of the value of the licensee's product."Some of the postings in response are very impressive; I especially like this one.
Dragonfly Forum Logs are scintillating reading. drdink writes "SlashNET would like to thank Matthew Dillon and everyone who attended the Dragonfly BSD Q&A forum session. Logs are available both in text and HTML formats."
You get to keep your base. Stealthgirl writes "The Hidden Agenda Game Development Contest, which received quite a bit of interest but also a lot of flak for its IP rules, has adapted the rules to appease those who were griping on sites like Slashdot. Check out this post for more info." Up to the entrants to decide if they like the rules of any contest, of course.
Leech friendly, with public Mandrake 9.2 torrents. An anonymous reader writes "Public torrents for the first two of the Mandrake 9.2 ISOs are up (I and II). Anybody cares to share the third?"
Sir? It's reality calling, on line two, from Anywhere. Marcelo Rodriguez (gardel on Slashdot), editor of Voxilla.com, writes: "We've posted the complete text of Federal Judge Mike Davis' ruling in Vonage v. Minnesota Public Utilities Commission on Voxilla.com. ... It's pretty much a slam dunk for Vonage and VoIP. Judge Davis wrote that Congress mandates that 'that information services such as those provided by Vonage must not be regulated by state law.' He also wrote that 'State regulation would effectively decimate Congress's mandate that the Internet remain unfettered by regulation.'"
And thus my hopes for "Firefly taken up by SciFi" are dashed...
/. headline?!??!?
On the other hand, how stupid do you have to be to get you hopes up based on a
Disk 1
Disk 2
and Disk 3
...And when they came for me, there was no one left to speak out for me." - Martin Niemoeller (1892-1984)
As a member of MandrakeClub for the past year, with a renewal for the next year, I have ponied up and contributed US$120 towards the continued survival of Mandrake the company--and by extension, those who eke out a living contributing to and pulling together this excellent product.
In addition, I have submitted bug reports, contributed to the technical support forums, and tried (unsuccessfully, alas) to contribute an rpm to the Mandrake contribs.
It bothers me that some of my peers clearly don't respect the approach that Mandrake has taken to attempt to supplement its meagre revenue. Some of the attitude, I assume, is an adoption of the "The net sees censorship as damage, and routes around it" perspective. I would argue that prematurely sharing the Mandrake 9.2 release images is a misapplication of that perspective. Delaying the release of the 9.2 images is a reward for those who contributed directly to the latest release, and the images will be made officially available to everyone else in a matter of weeks.
There is one case that merits consideration. In the same way that Red Hat chose leading Linux developers to receive shares of its IPO years back (ah the good old days), there are undoubtedly many developers whose code is being used and distributed by Mandrake. It would be nice if Mandrake also invited those developers to access the early 9.2 torrents--although with so many packages, tracking all of the developers and ensuring that they have authorized IDs might require an entire company in itself.
Some of it is pure selfishness, in the manner of a child's tantrum: "I want this free, and I want it NOW!"
I suspect some of the attitude is also a simple fascination with the ability to adopt technical measures to overcome business policy. While setting up a BitTorrent offers a bit of a gee-whiz factor, I predict that overcoming Mandrake's business policy by removing one of their two means of increasing revenues will have one of two effects, neither one particularly pleasant:
So I'm asking everyone out there sharing unofficial Mandrake 9.2 ISOs: please consider the larger ramifications of your actions. In isolation, what you're doing might not seem all that important--but when you're posting (and publicizing, and taking advantage of) torrents on Slashdot, your actions will have a detrimental effect on the company that's making the very distribution you're so keenly sharing.
And that distribution simply might not be available to share in the future...