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Eben Moglen — GPLv3 Not About MS and Novell
Linux.com's Joe Barr was recently able to sit down with Professor Eben Moglen at the San Diego Red Hat Summit and discuss the GPLv3 and what it means beyond the Microsoft/Novell deal on video. "Professor Moglen explains briefly about GPLv3's work on globalization of the software license, preventing harm to others by members of the community, and the most contentious in earlier drafts, DRM."
It's really about bitching like crazy until finally you get a version of it where people can...you know...write software and give it out for free without anyone messing with it and copying it and stuff. In fact, it could be a one line license that just says that.
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Isn't that the whole purpose of the process? You have an original draft and several revisions until you get it the way you want it.
LK
"Hi. This is my friend, Jack Shit, and you don't know him." - Lord Kano
Novell comments that if "the Free Software Foundation releases a new version of the GNU General Public License with certain currently proposed terms, our business may suffer harm."
;-)
Someone needs to sit a few people from Novell down at some point and explain to them that a desire to ensure that businesses suffer harm was arguably one of the main motivations behind the GPL having been written at all.
For once, I wish someone could actually give me a reasoned rebuttal on why they believe that I'm wrong in believing that (at least the intention behind) the GPL is largely anticapitalist, instead of simply calling me names (an idiot, a troll, "disingenous" etc) for making the statement. Continuing to only do that strongly implies that you don't actually have a rebuttal for that assertion, and so simply attempting to bury me in ad hominem is the best way to divert attention from that.
It's a shame I also can't run a betting pool about how likely I am to be told verbatim to again "shut the fuck up," in response to this as well. I suspect I'd end up making rather a large sum of money.
Maybe Stallman's drones here genuinely are beginning to get desperate, if simply attempting to demand my silence is becoming the preferred way of answering rather than even regurgitating the usual rhetoric in response to me.
In a Communist scenario all the sofware would belong to the state, the choice of sharing would not be mine.
Right now it's still voluntary, yes...but if you know anything about Stallman and/or Bradley Kuhn, then you also know that they are very adamant in their belief that the GPL is the only license with the right to exist. You can be very sure that if Stallman had any ability whatsoever to dictate that the GPL were the only scenario under which software could be distributed or used at all, he would exercise it with great enthusiasm.
Hence, the GPL can be called Communist due to Stallman's intent, rather than the end result. Attempted murder is considered a crime even if the murderer is not successful in killing the victim, if the intent to kill can be clearly legally shown. Stallman's intentions with the GPL are most certainly Communist; the only reason why he is not able to realise those intentions fully is because he does not have as much control over the world as he would like.
Free software does not destroy the free market, but encourages it.
This would be true if a plurality of licenses were accepted and encouraged. However, a GPL monoculture has been seen time and again to be the end goal. Stallman's ideal scenario would be every bit as much a monoculture as Microsoft's; the only difference is that in Stallman's case, the hunger for controlled monoculture would be, and is, explicit.
I'd almost like to see your post modded up as 'Funny', just because it's so stupid and full of hilarious vitriol.
Yes, and so the readership of this site remains divided into two groups. Those of us who are able to see Richard Stallman for what he truly is, and despite the continual abuse we receive for doing so, are unafraid of writing about it, and those of us who continue to worship him blindly, and hold members of the first group in contempt, as well as continuing to demand our silence.
You may continue to demand our silence, but you will not obtain it.
Dear PC users,
It's no secret iTunes turned to shit as soon as Apple had to start catering to PC users. It was version 4.1, if memory serves, around the time they let you cavedwellers into our music store. The demand for PC compatibility is the major reason iTunes is still a Carbon app, according to insiders, when every other iApp has since been rewritten in Cocoa to behave like a decent Mac application.
Frankly, we think Apple should revoke PC compatibility from the iPod. Only when the last PC user is forced from our platform shall we enjoy freedom, again and at last, from your tasteless, backwards demands.
Love,
Mac users