Slashdot Mirror
Slashback: IceWeasel, Online Gambling, GPU Folding, Evolution
The facts about Debian Iceweasel. john-da-luthrun writes, "Debian Firefox/XULrunner maintainer Mike Hommey reports on the Firefox/Iceweasel wrangle, correcting various assertions that have been made in the assorted trollfests/flamewars currently raging over the proposed Firefox rename. Hommey confirms that Firefox in Etch will be renamed 'Iceweasel,' but this will only be a renamed version of the vanilla Firefox, not the GNU Iceweasel fork — though the Debian and GNU Iceweasel teams may work together in future."
A closer look at Folding@home's GPU client. TheRaindog writes, "Slashdot recently covered some impressive client statistics for Stanford's Folding@home project, but they don't tell the whole story. The Tech Report has taken a closer look at the GPU client, running it on a Radeon X1900 XTX against the CPU client on a dual-core Opteron. The results are enlightening, especially considering how Stanford has chosen to award points GPU client work units. Power consumption is more interesting, with the GPU client apparently far more power-efficient than folding with a CPU."
David Brin need not lament — KidBasic. sproketboy writes, "I was thinking about the recent slashdot story David Brin Laments Absence of Programming For Kids, and after looking around I found KidBasic. KidBasic is quite good and teaches all the basics of programming. My 4 year old nephew and I have been able to get a few simple games programmed with it."
Online gambling ban may violate international law. An anonymous reader writes, "As Slashdot noted earlier, Congress has passed an effective ban on online gambling in the U.S. This may not be the end of the story, however. The law may be struck down by the World Trade Organization on the grounds that it violates the United States' international obligation not to discriminate in favor of domestic casinos. If the WTO strikes down this U.S. gambling ban, it would not be the first time. In November of 2004, the WTO struck down a U.S. anti-gambling law as illegally discriminating against the nation of Antigua."
Human species may do whatnow?. jamie writes, "'I might have believed this nonsense could come from some late 19th century eugenicist, but now? Is there any evidence...?' That's biologist PZ Myers's comment on the BBC story that claims the human species may split in two. It was posted on Slashdot as humor, but Myers's comments are a much-needed sober appraisal of this kind of pseudoscientific claim."
Another RIAA lawsuit dropped. skelator2821 writes, "Another RIAA lawsuit has been dropped against a defendant who had been accused of illegally sharing songs online, according to Ars Technica. Looks like the Mob tactics are not paying off for our good friends at the RIAA anymore."
I hope they make it run on other GPUs. Maybe, this will pressure gfx card manufacturers to make some sort of cross-compatible powerful scripting language to run any other embarrassingly parallel calculations... it would certainly be benificial
I have developed a truly marvelous proof of this comment, which this signature is too narrow to contain.
Penny Smith's supposed solution to the Millenium problem (Navier Stokes) turned out to be wrong.
Since when does US care about international law?
___
If you think big enough, you'll never have to do it.
> The law may be struck down by the World Trade Organization...
The WTO does not have the power to strike down any US law.
Warning: this article may contain humor, sarcasm, parody, and perhaps even irony. Read at your own risk.
Nor give away something, that is not yours.
The folks at RIAA may be unpleasant, but they are in the right on this.
In Soviet Washington the swamp drains you.
The rules of evolution (from Darwin) are such that all species eventually split into seperate species. It's arrogant to suppose that humans are immune! Hopefully, we can stick together as one species long enough to populate distant solar systems, and thus let geographic boundaries be the cause of our branches.
No, I will not work for your startup
Debian is being stupid if they use the Iceweasel name knowing the it will be confused with a current, ongoing project.
And you wonder why Mozilla doesn't want them abusing their trademark...
DFSG Be damned....I'd rather see the Debian folks contributing TO Firefox. This will eventually create a fork. Sure, Iceweasel may be vanilla firefox now, but I would rather see a understanding. Not this weirdness with the logo causing "issues".
Gorkman
the link to the david brin article be BROKEN. I can't find the link that was intended.
I chose to use a Commodore 64 for educating my own son:
s s/archives/42
http://akaimbatman.intelligentblogger.com/wordpre
Javascript + Nintendo DSi = DSiCade
The WTO is not "international law", it's just of club of countries that get together to set rules for trading amongst each other. WTO sanctions are hardly law or international.
In any event, anybody who thinks the concept of international law exists must believe in Santa Claus and the Tooth fairy.
I don't know how successful using LogoWriter was, or how many people used it, but it was used in my elementary school. Here's a link as to what it was, but apparently it's so obscure that there isn't even a wiki page that I could find for it.
When are we going to see the tag cloud that stories are tagged with? Is it possible to make sure that some words are not used when tagging stories? I would bet that the current tag cloud has the words yes, no, fud, notfud, notnotfud as the largest taxonomies. Whilst I'm sure some /.'ers couldn't care about those words being the dominant words they really don't add any substance to a tagged story. How about tagging stories with useful concept-oriented tags and blocking non-substance words like 'no' or 'yes'? Those words should be elaborated on in the comments not as a tag.
As much as I'd appreciate giving the WTO such a power in this particular case, I'm afraid the ability to strike down laws of sovereign nations is far too extreme to allow this organization.
Fortunately, it seems the WTO doesn't actually have this power. They can declare a law in violation of the WTO. They can convince the member nations to implement sanctions against countries which remain in violation. But they don't seem to have the power to "strike down" any laws.
O RLY? The U.S. Supreme Court has ruled that Congress can regulate wheat and marijuana production that does not cross state lines because they compete with products that do cross state lines. Wickard v. Filburn ; Gonzales v. Raich .
If I buy something and want to share it with others out of the kindness of my heart, that's my affair.
Just because it *may* reduce the studio's income (which is debateable, since sharing is also free promotion), this does not automatically make it wrong for people to share what they have bought.
It may be illegal, but that's just a distortion created by the law. It's not *wrong* to share. Mankind has been sharing since the dawn of time, and bloodsucking studios and lawyers and politicians aren't going to change that.
But they don't seem to have the power to "strike down" any laws.
:-)
The only power that anyone ever really has is military power. The only way that the US government can enforce any law on its citizens is to threaten them with force. The only way to actually "strike down" any American law would be to use force against the US government. Or at least threaten to use force.
Because the WTO has no military force, the only thing they can do is put sanctions against the US. It is the same thing that the UN is planning on doing to North Korea. It could still work if they can work up the guts, and I hope they do.
Im an American, but these gambling laws are rediculous. If it takes crippling our own economy to show our rulers that they are out of line then its a small price to pay. If I lose my job I could always become a professional gambler
--
-- All that is necessary for the triumph of evil is that good men do nothing. -- Edmund Burke
All species diverge into separate species if some sort of reproductive barrier springs up to prevent two groups of such a species from interbreeding. Examples include the founder effect and natural disasters. Unless you think that the "Proto-Eloi" and "Proto-Morlocks" really will have no interbreeding whatsoever for thousands of years, the two groups won't diverge. In the case of humanity, I would actually argue that we're becoming less diverse. With more people moving from continent to continent in the past five hundred years than at any time in history (except maybe the Bering Strait), there's more inter-racial breeding and humanity is moving towards a center, rather than diverging into different sub-species.
Note: I'm casting no judgment on inter-racial couples; if you really wanted to look at things from a biological standpoint, arguments from hybrid vigor would favor such pairings.
to add to my at least half a dozen rants on this subject...this is down in TF Blog A "I'm not saying the Debian one was perfect, it also had its own problems, but that was a whole lot less than the blatant crap that was the official one, obviously written for Windows without any thoughts for unix, and especially linux distributions." YEP! What I have been saying
I am so glad Debian is forking and I hope it is a REAL fork, a browser FOR LINUX, and did ya see that other little gem, the same with seamonkey, which will be called ICEAPE!
I'm in......
oh look i can use google. michael cavender you suck dick. do some real shit besides googling my nick and pulling my birthdate from your forum.
el_jewapo el_jewapo el_jewapo el_jewapo el_jewapo
IANAL but if I read my Constitution correctly, if there is a conflict between membership in the WTO and a newer US law, no court outside the US can invalidate the newer US law, not in the same way a US court can declare a law unconstitutional.
What such a court can do is pressure the US to repeal or at least not enforce the law, through sanctions or other means. Until Congress repeals the law, the law is on the books and enforceable.
If the US doesn't like the sanctions, they can withdraw from the WTO treaty.
Knowledge is how to play a game, intelligence is how to win, wisdom is knowing what game to play.
They can only respond to complaints about unfair trading practices, ie they cannot go out & 'declare a law in violation' unless someone comes to them first.
Since that person came to them, the WTO doesn't have to convince anyone. The complaint wouldn't be made if the complainer wasn't seeking relief.
[Fuck Beta]
o0t!
But then, for the part of the population that is sane and rational, the real world intrudes. We realize that resources are limited, we have to live with others, even if they are different, we have to work for our toys, and, in a world where guys will resort to soft fruit, any person who is not extremely objectionable is fair game, at least long enough to procreate. Combine this with the fact that so many of these characteristics can be had by artificial means, and the artifice may not be detected until the bun is in the oven, and evolution seems to be quite out of play.
"She's a scientist and a lesbian. She's not going to let it slide." Orphan Black
Did anyone notice the link provided for the RIAA case simply discussed the Elektra v. Wilke case, which has already been posted here to /. and is actually the topic of the story "RIAA Drops Case in Chicago," under the related stories? ...or am I the only one here who RTFAs?
(no link, you can click over on your own)
That's cool and all, but how about a universal binary folding@home client?
Or at the very least, an intel compatible one. Running F@H under rosetta is barely worth it.
Look out honey cause I'm usin' technology
Ain't got time to make no apologies
Did anyone else read that as "David Brin's Lamenet" and wonder what kind of lame-ass peer to peer network this was?
Want to improve your Karma? Instead of "Post Anonymously", try the "Post Humously" option.
If the WTO strikes down the anti-gambling law, it will become more powerful than they can possibly imagine.
"My 4 year old nephew and I have been able to get a few simple games programmed with it."
I can't be the only one who laughed his ass out reading this.
I think that is a bad analysis. It is true that in the end the only true way to enforce "striking down" a law may be military force. However, the Supreme Court can strike down a federal or state law because of constitutional reasons and it doesn't have an enforcement arm. Its rulings are almost always listened to (some exceptions though) because of the constitutional system and respect in the U.S. The WTO cannot strike down a law for the simple reason that it does not have such authority (as the Supreme Court does in certain cases). Its authority is that given to it by the agreements entered into by countries (GATT and all those Rounds that came after). It has the authority to rule that a law is in violation of the WTO requirements. The losing country will come into compliance, agree to compensate the winner, or if not, the winner will be permitted to retaliate. Hence, by saying it is in violation of international law, one means that it is contrary to an agreement entered by the United States. The agreement sets up consequences for its violation. The law isn't void as against international law though. I would analogize it to saying that the U.S. is simply in breach of its contract (possibly not the best analogy). Also, I believe that WTO panel decision was appealled to the Appellate Body setup by the DSU within the WTO. That decision held that the U.S. essentially could ban online gambling b/c of an exception that allows them to do such things for "public health and moral" (I think that is the quote). However, that defense was rejected b/c the law wasn't applied non-discriminatorily, since it allowed online placing of bets for horse racing. Subsequently, the U.S. changed the law and it is being challeneged once again.
What about LOGO?2 1-Kevin_McCarthy-The_Six_Year_Old_Hacker.mp4
http://media.defcon.org/dc-13/video/2005_Defcon_V
If they are developing on an older version it sounds like they have already forked and a dummy spit over a logo has just brought it to a head. Emacs forked over a trivial reason as well - although it took many months to find a new developer to actually do anything with the RMS fork when the existing developer starting including support for stuff like X windows which didn't benefit hurd in any way. Has RMS joined the debian board recently? What changes have their been recently which would make them more into a no compromise position? Remember here that firefox is not a Debian project and I think the mozilla conditions listed above are fine - although it would be nice to be allowed to backport patches I can see why they don't want it done. The above bold type "com" bit above by the previous poster I see as the sort of childish attitude we saw with the emacs split - the impurity of people getting paid to write software that is available to all under the GPL!
Excellent! I always wanted to be a script kiddy! ... I mean now I will be teh 1337 H4x0r!!!
What's wrong with Frost Ferret?!
If someone can copyright musical compositions or words on paper, I suspect I could copyright my particular folding crane, or at least a book illustrating the methodology.
Luke, help me take this mask off
The Folding@Home GPU really hurts my computer's performance - it doesn't play well in terms of idle / background threading, and about a week into it, my computer got to the point where I needed to reboot it to restore functionality. Not sure if it driver leaks, bad implmenation, or what, but not the greatest experience I've ever had.
kingkade: "Or I can go a different route and argue that you're not stealing something tangible such as a pattern of bits that is a song, but you are stealing a potential customer from the artist to whom they'd be able to sell their song."
Or ANOTHER way of looking at it might be: by sharing a piece of music with a friend, a person might just cause that artist to GAIN a new customer that might never have heard of them otherwise. So sharing just as likely to create a potential customer. The only way you MIGHT be able to "steal" a customer would be to sell them your own music, but even then the word "steal" is a mighty big stretch.
In other words, the WTO has real teeth in terms of overruling actions of the U.S. Congress.
About the only thing that the WTO can't do is to override the U.S. Constitution, which in theory trumps even treaties (and a prime factor to consider with copyright treaties, for example). The problem here is that the current members of the U.S. Supreme Court seem very reluctant to even override treaties based on this provision, nor does Congress really fight back hard if they are told "No" by international groups like the WTO.
So there are really two approaches that can be done in this situation:
In short, this is a big deal in the current American legal system. Hopefully this is going to be something that will be publicized so much that Americans will finally realize how much of their soverignty has been given up to silly groups of "international law experts", answerable to nobody other than themselves. There certainly is no check or balance to allow a group like the U.S. Congress to impeach these WTO judges if they abuse their position, nor any direct citizen involvement in deciding who gets to make these decisions.
You're right, that is another way of looking at it. The point is the copyright holder is the only one with the right to make such a decision to share their work, not you and your friend.
why run from Vincenzo?
This is true, and no offense, but frankly I'm impressed that you are aware of this. It's a welcome relief from the overwhelmingly ignorant "globalization this" and "free trade that" rants that I often read on Slashdot. What you might not know, however, is that allowing the nation who petitioned the Dispute Settlement Body to choose the way in which they are to be compensated has had an unexpected political side-effect, at least in the U.S. It turns out that one of the best ways of putting pressure on lawmakers and even the President of the United States is to impose tariffs on goods that are made in certain politically volatile states.
For instance, let's say it's 3 years ago and you're, I dunno...Germany. You just won your DSB case because you successfully demonstrated that you were harmed because of let's say, an economic initiative by George Bush that involved giving domestic steel producers in the northeast an unfair subsidy. As Germany, you turn around and impose a heavy tariff against all oranges coming from the United States, knowing full well many of those oranges come from Florida. Then, the pressure is ramped up on Bush, because he must then explain to Florida orange growers (who have a powerful lobby, by the way) why it is that they're having trouble selling their oranges in certain European markets.
That's the theory, anyway.
Actually never -- if they did, they would be neglectful of their responsibilities as leaders to do the best thing for their country. However, sometimes it's best to forgo a short-term gain in favor of long term stability. In other words, by submitting to international law (or a body like the WTO), you preserve a system which you believe benefits you in the long run.
Being law abiding, whether on the individual or national level, is not self-sacrificial behavior. There are good and rational reasons for doing so. It only looks disadvantageous when you're using a very short or narrow perspective. I would argue that the main problem with U.S. foreign policy is that it sacrifices long-term goals for short-term advantages or gains. We probably have more to gain from a strong World Trade Organization than anyone; if we make it irrelevant, we hurt ourselves in the long run.
"Ladies and gentlemen, my killbot features Lotus Notes and a machine gun. It is the finest available."
Oh look, another sanctimonious AC who thinks he knows something. Hey asshole, there is such a thing as international law--it's called "treaties." It's where two countries get together and formally agree to something? Since you're so fucking dumb, I should mention that they're also called accords, agreements, protocols, conventions and so on--it's all the same fucking thing.
If you think the U.S. is empowered to just sign onto treaties that are in conformity with the Constitution and then ignore them, then you should re-read Article VI, Section 2 (assuming of course that your dumb bitch ass has ever read it ever anyway). Do you know what "law of the land" means? It means it's the fucking law of the land, and yes, it does fucking exist.
I'd argue that a similar situation now exists with abortion and other reproductive and personal rights. Lots of things that many people take for granted rest on a series of court decisions -- Roe v. Wade chief among them -- which are rather delicate logical and jurisprudential constructs. Had Roe not been decided the way it was, political will might have developed in the 1970s to codify an actual right to privacy, rather than relying on the flawed concept of a "pneumbra." Unfortunately, the latter path was taken, and now a whole host of rights ride on a this concept. As soon as people began to take those rights for granted, the opportunity of actually having enough momentum to get an actual codified right disappeared. Today, if a handful of legal scholars can be convinced of the wrongness of Roe and the pneumbra concept, then not only abortion but the whole "right" to privacy could disappear.
Swallowing bad jurisprudence simply because it produces social good in the short term is almost always a bad idea, and it leads to less stability in the long run. It forces you to either run the risk of losing the social gains in order to overturn bad law (as in Roe), or in keeping the bad precedent and subsequent bad judgements in order to keep the social good (as with your example of Raich and civil rights).
"Rights" won on questionable legal arguments can hardly said to be 'won' at all -- they're the social-freedom versions of stock-market bubbles. Pleasant, ephemeral, but apt to cause chaos one way or another whether they burst or remain. Slow growth based on actual legislative action is far better in the long run, painful as it may be in the present. Sometimes extreme pain is what's required to motivate both the people and the Legislative branch into action.
"Ladies and gentlemen, my killbot features Lotus Notes and a machine gun. It is the finest available."
Yea, and I hear the Columbian Cocain Cartels are going to sue because the U.S won't import their Cocain either, favoring our domestic growers.
Go to a well off suburb shopping mall, then a working class shopping mall. Compare the beauty/sexiness of the women. Case closed. And why oh why is skin tight clothing more popular with people who should not wear skin tight clothing!?
I've disabled Backslash from my prefs (there's enough dupes as it is) and now this Slashback thing turns up.
How do I turn it off, please?
Why slashbacks instead of never alllowing the stories expire(and making them editable).
Civil rights legislation is justified by Amendment XIV, which provides for equal protection under the law. It gives Congress the authority to enforce civil rights laws, trumping states' rights.
Civil rights laws aren't based on the interstate commerce clause. All sorts of discrimination were legal before Amendment XIV was passed.
I'm not really against the WTO as such, or rather I don't really have an informed opinion.
But I'm not so sure about the "fortunately" part of your post. Like with a lot of freedoms and righs the US takes for granted, such as freedom of speech, having it written in law is but one thing.
You can have all the freedom of speech you want, if half the nation impose self censorship due to various moral, ethical or religious reasons, you don't really have anything resembling free speech.
The WTO might not have the right to strike down US law, but in reality, isn't this precisely what their power is?
Few nations can survive the trade tariffs for very long if they're hefty enough and hitting the right market. So if the WTO really wants, can't it stop pretty much any behavior its members find abhorrent enough?
It's not really related I guess, but it just scares me how we so blindly stare at our rights written on paper, and nearly never watch as those papers become more and more meaningless out there in the real world, where we self regulate or otherwise undermine the intent of the freedoms in question.
*sigh*
For the millionth time, it's still the same people!
You know, Microsoft's street address also says a lot about their mentality.
Hmm, sounds like VisualBasic ;)
:)
Aaaanyway, what I'd recommend for his kid is IBOL: Icon Based Operation Language. Never heard of it? Try googling for 'ChipWits'
(Yes, this time I'm involved: am re-creating a freeware version of it for - gasp! shudder! - Windoze)
Ciao,
Klaus
Free PC version of ChipWits at http://www.breueronline.de/klaus/chipwits/
This is only here because I accidentally modded a post overrated instead of underrated. All gone now.
My spoon is too big.
--
God is dead-Nietzsche
Nietzsche is dead-God
Nietzsche is God-dead
Nietzsche God dead-is
The purpose of a democratically elected government is to represent and advocate for the interests of their constituency. They have no responsibility to anyone outside of that constituency, period.
That said, I think it's fair to say in most cases, that most rational people wouldn't want a government that got them gains at the expense of the rest of humanity. Therefore, an honestly representative government might act in ways that are occasionally not seemingly in the direct best interest of the people they represent.
Again, it's all about the point of view you take. In the short term, it might seem as though it's in the best interest of a country to invade its neighbor, but in the long run (as with Germany) it could also backfire spectacularly. Thus there are good reasons for not acting according to that short-term impulse.
However, if everyone in a certain country really wanted something, and didn't give a damn about the rest of humanity, and elected leaders to pursue this goal, then it would be patently undemocratic for those leaders to put the desires of "humanity" above the desires of their consitutants. If a particular leader felt it morally impossible to continue, due to his own feelings prohbiting him from acting as his voters elected him to do, then he would be correct to resign and step down.
The basis of representative democracy is a somewhat adversarial process. Various elected representatives are tasked with acting as proxies for the people that they represent. Their job is to do whatever the people would do themselves, if they were acting in government directly.
Now, this doesn't prohibit morality in government completely. People elect representatives because, in many cases, of their perceived moral judgement. This might mean that the correct (by which I mean, representative) thing to do, would be to take a course of action that was for the "greater good" rather than the good of the constituency, because that's what the people in the constituency would have done themselves. This is important, because this this is the difference between an actual representative democracy and a theoretical government run by a computer that was just programmed to do the most self-interested thing, all the time.
The job of government is precisely to place the needs of its people above all else; however, the people may then decide to place the needs of the world above themselves, and instruct their leaders to act accordingly. But it is the job of the people, and not a small elite, to make this decision.
"Ladies and gentlemen, my killbot features Lotus Notes and a machine gun. It is the finest available."
Scratch is an excellent programming tool for kids. It's great for kids 7 and older.
It's just a BloJJ
By "cannabis" they mean "hemp products imported from Canada and other countries where C. sativa plants are not presumed to be of high-THC strains".
The "human species split in two" link leads to a 404 on Slashdot. Could it be that Slashdot has Slashdotted itself?
/* No Comment */
Mozilla-Firebird, Firebird, Firefox, icewhatel?
Why not call it RenameBrowser and be done with it?
JFC!
Or were you just America-bashing in hopes of picking up some karma? (Which apparently you did -- nice job, mods.)
"Ladies and gentlemen, my killbot features Lotus Notes and a machine gun. It is the finest available."
The US is actually a great example of the problem with centralising these types of powers. Even if things are initially set up with good intentions, with the central power having very limited powers, eventually that central power will find a way to get around all those limitations that were put in place.
Of course, in the end, the WTO is a much worse entity to have such powers in the first place, as the representatives aren't even remotely directly elected.
As long as the WTO is protecting free speech, I don't have a problem. I hope you're not implying that online gambling is a free speech issue, or that the WTO exists to protect individual freedoms of any sort. No, the WTO exists to protect big business. This is not just the reality of the situation, it's their stated mission.
So yeah, if the WTO protects free speech, that's fine. But what if they strike down child labor laws, or antitrust legislation, or environmental protection legislation?. Here's someone else's Top Reasons to Oppose the WTO. So my fears about what's possible isn't just hypothetical. Some of it is already happening. Giving the WTO the power to directly strike down laws would make this worse.
Certainly not precisely. For example, say the WTO does declare the online gambling law to be in violation. Does that mean that I can now violate this law with no fear of prosecution? Absolutely not. The US courts, up to and including the US Supreme Court, will still enforce a law despite the fact that it violates a WTO agreement. Only an act of Congress can change this.
No, if the governments of the WTO member-countries really want, they can stop pretty much any behavior. And part of that is that they have to "really want" it. There are a number of places where various countries, including the US, are in violation of WTO agreements, and yet nothing much is happening about it.
I suppose you could say that this is true of any judicial or quasi-judicial entity with no physical troops. Only a few decades ago even the US Supreme Court had a lot of trouble striking down individual state laws. So maybe the ability to strike down laws is a sliding scale, and not a black and white issue. If so, I'd put the US Supreme Court's ability to strike down federal laws at a 9.9 out of 10, their ability to strike down state laws at a 9, and the WTO's ability to strike down US laws at a 3 or a 4.
This is only true if the treaty is "self-enacting". In any case, the US has not bound itself to the WTO via treaty, it has bound itself via "congressional-executive agreement" (see http://fpc.state.gov/documents/organization/35430. pdf).
"If every FOSS project behaved as Mozilla does then almost EVERY piece of software in most Linux distros would have to be renamed. Just how does this help with public perception and branding?"
/. fodder. :-)
How would you feel if someone started distributing shitloads of copies of a GUI for *nix systems, based on Gnome, that they called "Gnome" but which was extremely buggy, messed with other critical software on a user's box, phoned home to the people who are behind it and did a core dump of all sorts of information about the user along with anything that looks like it might identify the users of said system? Oh, yeah, I forgot to mention they made sure it could not be easily uninstalled.
Right now, if I get something based on the Linux kernel, I know I can expect the core part of the OS to behave in certain predictable ways. When I decide to use Gnome rather than KDF (for example) I have a good idea of what I will get. What is wrong with that? It works rather well, I'd say.
I've taken a look at the proposed GPLv3 and, at first glance, I don't see where it prohibits anyone who decides ti use such a licensing scheme from keeping control of the brand name of whatever they create and distribute -- it just says that source code must remain open source (free as in free speech). I'm not going to get into a technical legal thread discussion (I still want to be an IP lawyer, but am not one yet).
GPL makes heavy use of terms such as "unmodified program". But, more specifically, the proposed GPLv3 says, "Developers that use the GNU GPL protect your rights with two steps: (1) assert copyright on the software, and (2) offer you this License which gives you legal permission to copy, distribute and/or modify the software." Since GNU is certainly a major source of great FOSS, I'm using that as a case in point.
Debian wants to modify a program without distinguishing their version from the original. Bad Debian! If they don't like it the way it is and can't live with whatever legal restrictions there are on use of the name "Firefox" to refer to a browser, they should come up with their own name. Hmm, somebody has come up with Iceweasel which is apparently based on the same code that Firefox is. Funny that! Sounds like excellent
When I think of FOSS, I do not assume that all brands of software that have the same roots under an open source license are created equal, nor that I should not be sure to distinguish between them. 0Look at all the flavors (brands) of Linux people can choose from. The only think they have in common is the Linux kernel (thanks, Linus!). At least we know that whoever builds a complete OS around a Linux kernal had enough of a clue to start with a good foundation. Things differ from that point, as most Linux users realize. I want to know whose derivative software I am using.
"All beer is good beer. Some beer is better than others." That describes exactly why brand names matter and why they ought to enjoy protection under the law, expecially when the underlying product can be made and distributed by almost anyone.
"You're young, you're drunk, you're in bed, you have knives; shit happens." -- Angelina Jolie
When I think of FOSS, I do not assume that all brands of software that have the same roots under an open source license are created equal, nor that I should not be sure to distinguish between them. 0Look at all the flavors (brands) of Linux people can choose from. The only think they have in common is the Linux kernel (thanks, Linus!). At least we know that whoever builds a complete OS around a Linux kernal had enough of a clue to start with a good foundation. Things differ from that point, as most Linux users realize. I want to know whose derivative software I am using.
But the kernel is a poster child for reasonable branding. Almost every distro makes numberous modifications to the mainline kernel. The behaivor is pretty much encouraged. Red Hat can refer to their product as "Red Hat Enterprise Linux" rather than "Red Hat Enterprise Weaselix". If I download the Linux kernel from kernel.org, then I know that is Linus' tree. Thing is, one is usually better off running distro kernels because (gasp!) they have been modified to better integrate with the rest of the distro. Come to think of it, the kernel devs leave a certain amount of stabilization and productilization to the distros. If I get it from a distro then I know it is a derivative. Lo and behold, the distros list their changes too so that I know in what way it differs. Linux has a good "brand" without Linus insisting that it can only be called "Linux" if all use is subject to his approval and scrutiny.
Your examples about "phoning home" and "impossible to uninstall" paint Debian in the same light as a Windows spyware vendor; this is completely unfair. They are doing nothing of the kind. Debian wants to be able to:
A. Integrate it with the directory and config file structures of the distro.
B. Freeze on a version and do only security updates.
Both are completely reasonable IMHO. You see, when I deploy Debian stable I too "want to know what I'm getting". In this case that means "A software base that won't change for a few years except for minimal bugfixing and security fixing."
You also say that "Debian wants to modify a program without distinguishing their version from the original. Bad Debian!" WRONG! Every Debian package has a "changelog.Debian.gz" file included with the docs. This lays out how and in what way they modified the original. Debian source packages are distributed as an upstream tarball with patch and control files. Nothing like "phoning home" is hidden. Again, this is standard practice with almost every package in almost every Linux distribution. The more reasonable FOSS projects do not throw up petty roadblocks to the kind of integration customizations are standard practice in Linux and xBSD distros. This is what I meant by "serious trouble" if every project behaved as Mozilla does. ALL packages would have to have different names and probably a different name in every distro. Openoffice say in one distro would be FreeOffice in RedHat and maybe Libre Office in Debian and nobody would be able to make head or tail of anything. In reality, everyone would standardize around forks with sane trademark usage policies.
What Mozilla risks is everyone standardizing on Iceweasel. If Iceweasel is easier to contribute to and easier to make standard distro usage of then it WILL happen. If a more actively developed Iceweasel comes to Windows then goodbye Firefox buzz and goodbye Firefox brand: the opposite of what their anal policies are meant to protect.
I don't dispute that Mozilla is within their legal rights to behave as they are behaving. But it is bad behaivor for an Open Source project. They would do better to drop the pretense and take future versions of Firefox closed source. Most Open Source projects simply do not micromanage outside use of their code bases and branding. Only overt attempt to steal credit or make a project look bad provoke the kind of behaivor Mozilla is engaging in from other projects. Mozilla is treating everybody tha