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RMS & FSF Directors To Meet With FSF Members
Free Software Foundation writes "Richard Stallman, Eben Moglen, Bradley Kuhn, and the rest of the FSF leadership are hosting a rare FSF members meeting in Cambridge, MA on March 27, where they will tackle topics including, 'The Dangers of Software Patents', SCO, 'Free Software in a Global Economy', and 'The State of the Foundation'. FSF members will have ample opportunity to gripe, praise, dialog, network, and eat."
i hope the xfree team goes there and talks the license issue with them
Open Source Java Web Forum with LDAP authentication
Get out and support your GNU Organisation if you're anywhere around! Networking in reality still means a lot more than its virtual counterpart.
((lambda x ((x))) (lambda x ((x))))
Why support FSF when there are other licenses than GPL that are actually more free?
The owls are not what they seem
don't these things happen yearly? (according to the website, they do)
-ninjaneer
I'm beginning to wonder if SCO's second biggest negative impact (after the FUD it spreads) is all the time it is taking away from folks that would otherwise be having fun making open source software better.
I can't even begin to imagine how many man-hours have been blown obsessing about, discussing, worrying, or protesting SCO's latest actions. It really is appalling.
Furthermore, it doesn't seem like there's much point in "fighting" SCO any more. There isn't anyone in the tech community that takes them seriously. They are going to run out of money unless they get more cash influxes. It seems really unlikely that they will ever win even a minor lawsuit, much less something that will impact Linux. To the best of my knowledge, they aren't doing much to prevent Linux adoption -- there were a lot of journalists talking about how SCO might have a chance a couple of months ago, but it seems like everyone is pretty negative now (though I haven't read pure business publications for a while, so I might just be out-of-touch here).
Is there really any point to dealing with SCO any longer? It just wastes our time, and frankly, if I'm going to waste an hour of my life, I'd rather do it playing a video game or modeling something or writing software or cooking something than agonizing over SCO.
Unlike most Slashdot topics, SCO usually doesn't bring anything new or interesting to the table. A SCO article doesn't let me know about new LED displays that haven't existed before or a new VM about to be released or anything, really. Most comments in SCO articles are just jokes about SCO or McBride -- real analysis mostly happens at groklaw.
I just think -- every time Alan Cox posts about SCO or an indignant open source author spends a day disproving an new fabricated SCO claim so that they can come out with an analysis on groklaw, that's a driver patch that doesn't get applied, or a bit less threading work that can be done.
Frankly, even if the whole tech world started talking negatively about Windows, the kernel coders at Microsoft are unlikely to notice or care -- to them, that's just some crap for the PR people to deal with. They wouldn't let it affect them. SCO is wasting a good deal of time, time which actually does have value. Aside from passively providing the opinion that SCO is full of it when they come up in conversation, there doesn't seem to be much useful stuff that can be done any more.
Now, if you're really into IP law, of course, the case is interesting. But I just have a really hard time getting upset over whatever latest outrage SCO has come up with to stay in the press. I mean, who *cares* anymore? Noting we're going to say is going to stop them from making claims and getting quoted. Everyone in the tech world already thinks SCO is absolutely ludicrous, and IBM and Red Hat and Novell and God knows who else are already busily dealing with the situation. I'm sure the moment SCO crosses a legal line somewhere (and sooner or later, they have to), there will be a countersuit, maybe with a preliminary injunction against SCO stopping them from making new claims. My time is too valuable to me, and Darl McBride too worthless of a human being, to spend it on him.
The strength of the Open Source world is that one person contributes thoughts, code, analysis, whatever, and then that work propagates and is used and built upon by as many other people as are interested. Finding SCO's logical fallacies is work that is useless by the end of next month, as they're onto something new. It doesn't feel *good* when you're done with it. It's terribly inefficient and ineffective, even if it feels cathartic at the moment.
May we never see th
Nonsense. "Free" software is fine for simple systems and copying existing systems but lack the ability to be truly innovative. As the need complexity of systems increase, the free software copies will fall further behind their counterparts. The simple reason is that the number of people with the experience to create and maintain these complex systems will decrease. Unless the economics of free software change, you will be unable to attract many experienced professionals. Many OSS systems now are created in the developers "free time" - this does not scale well.
The only thing that "free" software competes on is price. The current corporate interest in "free" software is in the ability to get software systems for free.
As these companies start running out of their VC and IPO capital, this concept will disappear.
RMS is an (admitted) Marxist. He applies these concepts to the software world, but would like to see them extended to encompass as many fields as possible.
I disagree with that entirely. No flamebait here, but RMS is not *that* influential. Honestly. Gutenberg gave us a printing press--and changed the course of history. RMS gave us...the Free Software Foundation. If the GPL is going to change history, I have yet to see it.
In all honesty, the Open Source camp stands more poised to make drastic change than the Free Software folks. Open Source, like most historical changes, is pragmatic.
(No offense to RMS. I use Linux From Scratch, I can't exactly go "hatin' on" Stallman.)
I have discovered a truly marvelous
The need for complexity in software is directly related to the need to support past versions of said software. Think microsoft's massive heap of code. The beauty of free software is that no one really likes the complexity involved in projects after a while and the community lets them die (good thing).
If by innovation you mean cool buttons and color schemes then, yeah, proprietary model might be mroe innovative, but only because they're selling to the lowest common denominator. The internet was built on open systems and free software. Every day someone in the free software community releases software with innovative features, even though it may have other problems. So I don't quite see this lack off inovation you speak of.
Therefore all your other points seem moot.
The problem is that nobody informed them about the concept of Open Showers, where everybody gets to pitch in and clean each other. With more sets of eyes finding all the dirt, it's a lot cleaner than a Closed Shower with only one person.
Did you just get out of jail or what?
?If the GPL is going to change history, I have yet to see it."
It could be sooner than you think. (SCO vs. IBM)
1f u c4n r34d th1s u r34lly n33d t0 g37 l41d
Am I the only one who thinks, instead of getting together to discuss "legal issues" and "licenses," maybe people should be getting together to, I don't know, discuss furthering the Linux desktop movement through some sort of unification effort?
This SCO thing will blow over. The real world expects results, not some licensing meeting between old UNIX hackers. I'd rather they be drawing up designs for an innovative desktop.
"Sufferin' succotash."
well said. that echoes the thoughts of my optimistic side, but my pessimistic side keeps whispering in my ear that the powers that be will somehow neutralize him to preserve present power relationships.
pr0n - keeping monitor glass spotless since 1981.
SCO is claming that GPL is invalid, so how can this lawsuit be a mere footnote? If IBM wins, RMS could be a giant in the history books. If SCO wins, Darl will be a giant in the history books and RMS will be a mere footnote (as a loser).
1f u c4n r34d th1s u r34lly n33d t0 g37 l41d
Freedom, when referring to software, means what PEOPLE can do with that software, period. GPL places restrictions on the use of that code that BSD does not, therefore by definition, it is less free.
More restrictions == less freedom. It's a pretty fucking simple concept.
But when a piece of code can become closed again, doesn't that mean that it becomes more restricted?
thus meaning less freedom for users?
So I would say that GPL means that software is more free, and remains free.