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Miscellaneous GNU News
A new monthly column
Brave GNU World has started, with the mission to inform
everybody about new GNU software. Apparently dd if=/dev/zero of=/dev/hda
does
not completely delete the contents of you hard-drive. You
should use
shred instead.
Paul Smith wrote in
to plug a Free lecture by Richard Stallman which is
going to be held tomorrow - Tuesday 23 March at 7pm at the
Commonwealth Institute in London. Finally, jbc
wrote in with "In his latest 'Ask Tim' piece, Tim
O'Reilly talks about the
differences between himself and RMS
in terms of how they view OSS/FSF licensing issues."
null -> zero (*blush*)
You didn't read the article, did you? You are correct that dd if=/dev/zero of=/dev/hda will write zeros over the entire contents, but it will not prevent someone from recovering the data.
If I had sensitive data on a hard disk which I planned to decommision, I think a furnace would be involved.
Neither works, actually. Your drive won't be able to read the data, sure, but a good data recovery lab could still extract the data using *other* methods. 1010 isn't stored on the media as 1010. There are error recovery bits, compression, timing bits, etc. Re-read the article
The best way, of course, is to install a buggy, bloated operating system. There is an obscure company from Redmond, Wa. that makes a very bloated OS that's sure to thrash the disk until it's completely un-recoverable.
You must have been playing with MS-DOS .... is strictly a NOP under
dd if=/dev/null
Unix
/Tommy
If you spent a considerable sum of money *designing* and developing an operating system, I don't think you would appreciate a clone of it (cloners are essentially allowed to steal the *design*, even though the implementation must be original).
The ability to clone software at the API level actually seems to discourage creativity and encourage obscurity (witness the horribly complex Windows API, or the fact that the UNIX API is still the only real alternative). I don't think you could realistically disallow API-level cloning, but that doesn't mean there aren't problems with it.
I think the point is that people like Richard Stallman will use `free' (i.e. GPL'd) software, even if it is inferior to `non-free' software.
O'Reilly's argument is that the superior nature of free software will allow it to triumph among users who base their decisions solely on which software is best. Stallman's view, whether or not he believes in the superiority of free software, is that the question of which is better should not even be asked, because free software is the `one true way'. In short, Stallman is an ideologue, while O'Reilly is a pragmatist.
I agree the author might think they have a good reason for using BSD or whatever.
But what is happening is that the marketplace powers (like O'Reilly and Raymond) are confusing many newbies by trying to set the standard that exploitable free licenses are good enough.
We can't let them do this. Everyone needs to know the ultimately for the user nothing protects them better than a copyleft.
Don't let the $$$$ ppl try and lower the standards of the general linux community... Promote the GPL, promote the Free Software Foundation...
ta,
wayne
There is more than just one's immediate gratification at stake in software choices. The rise of Microsoft demonstrated quite clearly that our choices have grave future implications. In certain situations, there is more to ones own enlightened self-interests than that which is instant and superficial.
You don't have any real rights as an author. What you may have is a public policy construct to encourage you to invent, nothing more.
It is a NOP, eh? In that case, you wouldn't mind
actually trying it. Go ahead.
Software is nothing like a wheel. THAT is the problem. Intellectual Property has gotten out of balance and is currently skewed towards lazy hoarders vs. industrious inventors.
The annual MS Word upgrade is a prime example of this.
It is ultimately in the best interests of all consumers to ensure that conditions exist such that the purchasing decisions they make today will not trap them into decisions they would rather not make tomorrow. This is why it is useful to be 'religious' about software licences.
Slavery is alive and well in west africa as well.
OS (kernel, main libs, shell) freedom is critical.
File format freedom (often ignored) is critical.
Network protocol freedom is critical.
App freedom is no big deal. When an app crashes,
it doesn't bring down anything else. When I want
to replace an app, I don't also need to replace
everything else. I could even pay for an app.
(and no, GUI libs do not count as apps)
In this modern world of smart disk drives with their auto-fix of broken sectors, the only true way to be confident that your data is gone is to obliterate the media.
I recommend Craftsman brand sledgehammers and Mobil high-octane gasoline.
To my way of thinking, science is essentially a method of viewing and analysing the world. The scientist does not take anything on faith, but rather relies on objective (to the extent possible) facts.
The scientific approach to evaluating free software is to compare the results of projects based on totally free software, GPL'd free software, open software, proprietary software, etc. If one sort of licence or organisational scheme produces consistently better software (based on objective criteria), it can possibly be considered the best way to develop software.
The view taken by Richard Stallman is that GPL'd software is inherently better, simply because he believes it is right. Regardless of any evidence to the contrary, he will only use software which fits his definition of free, because that is his religion. To his followers, then, he is the prophet of the GNU faith. To the rest of us, he just seems a bit of a nutter.
PS If the Soviet Union had been levelled in the 1950s, the way Germany and Japan were in the 1940s, the world (especially Russia and Eastern/Central Europe) would probably be in much better shape today.
> At bottom, Richard believes that the rights of
> the users of software take precedence over
> the rights of the creators of that software.
But on a free project involving the efforts of many volunteers, the GPL protects the choice of the volunteers to make their code free in perpetuity; in that sense it protects the rights of the creators, not just the users.
Wasn't it the BSD-style X license that allowed so many volunteers to get screwed (at least potentially) by the X-open people (or whatever they're calling themselves this month)?
1) Sun Microsysytems was founded by, among others, bright people from the CSRG at Berkeley. The same is true of BSDI.
2) Sun and BSDI have both given back to the UNIX community in various ways, as have other corporations involved with UNIX. BSDI has even provided some of its original source code to the free BSDs. The difference is BSDI isn't forced to give away everything it develops, so its programmers can still earn a living writing an OS, rather than supporting it (or, more probably, having to do something else while others earn a living supporting it).
3) The GPL does not prevent forking. If you try to insall, for example, SuSE RPMs on Red Hat, you may be unpleasantly surprised. What prevents the Linux kernel being forked is Linus Torvalds (through his leadership style, and the fact that few people would be interested in a non-Linus Linux unless Linus's version was very broken).
When WordPerfect messes up formatting, one always has the option of seeing and fixing the problematic tags until it works fine again. Oh how this poor secretary wishes she could use WordPerfect at home instead of our dreadful Word. And I'm inclined to recommend a few licenses just to ease everyone's suffering.
I use HTML, myself, but I can't recommend that as a solution to everyone... I pity those stuck by the "standard" of Word and who have to use it on a daily basis.
That's an insult to BSD.
Seriously though, if someone wants to bring a product you produced to the masses, more power to them. The BSD license requires that they give you credit for the code they use. I just don't see the advantage the GPL would give you. If you had released your code under the GPL, you would not get mainstream recognition, and people who like the more polished feel of commercial software (try teaching your parents to use and like either vi or emacs) don't get quite as good a product for their money.
It could be argued that companies are using you to make money, and they are, there's no denying it. However if they don't improve on your product in a significant way, people aren't going to pay them for it, so it's not like they can just change the name and sell it. And honestly, this doesn't really bother me. I'd think a lot of business opportunities would arise out of being the person who wrote the in .
I'm not going to go into great length to explain my views, because as I said it's a personal decision. This is my personal opinion.
O'Reilly is a short term pragmatist. Stallman is a long term ideologist and pragmatist.
It almost sounds like Douglas Adams; a religion focused around using the bathroom.
What percentage of "clones" are proprietary? What percentage of "clones" have stayed purely a clone? What percentage of clones have added "unique" value to the copied UI base?
He held his nose and used closed-source systems out of necessity to bootstrap his tools, just as he uses copyrights to protect his work from the ravages of that selfsame copyright system. It seems to me he didn't want to, and he resented that he had to, but he recognized that he had no choices until he created them for himself, which he promptly did.
What's the more consistent position? Throw up his hands and declare the whole idea hopeless? Oh, yeah, that's a much better idea.
I think this is true of attempts to build "brand loyalty" and "mind share" (which are all about trying to prevent objective purchasing decisions), but not of the simple product announcements that actually reward innovation and competition.
I guess that depends on what you mean by "levelled." There were a lot more survivors than my own definition (Nagasaki or Dresden) would accomodate.
But it's Stallman who has looked around and seen what proprietary software has done to the industry (we couldn't share, learn from or reuse our peers' and betters' work, so of course most everything we had was crap!), and O'Reilly who needs to believe whatever the market stumbles into will be Truth.
> Xwindows is an exception, but it's almost free
I presume you mean XFree86, which is completely free for anyone (including commercial developers). It isn't even restricted by the sort of limitations in the GPL.
CD-R should melt fairly readily, and since they warn about sunlight I can't imagine it'd take that much heat to degrade the dye.
From what I know about the "voices of reason" you mentioned, you correlate "reasonable" pretty strongly with not really giving a damn about licensing or the ethics of intellectual property. Nobody interested in attending a free software licensing discussion seemed "reasonable"? What a shock!
If he had really got his heart in it, Stallman could have developed an operating system and compilers from the ground up (very tedious, yes, but it can be done). Instead, he chose to use and copy the work of others in order to create a GPL'd imitation of their work.
I'm glad he did this, but I think it's absurd to blather on about the superiority of the GPL and GPL'd software when most of the vital GPL'd code consists entirely of unoriginal imitations of original, non-GPL'd, work done by others.
>> The scientific approach to evaluating free
>> software is to compare the results of projects
>> based on totally free software, GPL'd free
>> software, open software, proprietary software,
>> etc. If one sort of licence or organisational
>> scheme produces consistently better software
>> (based on objective criteria), it can possibly
>> be considered the best way to develop software.
>
> This gives you a full comprehension of which way
> is the most efficient way to develop software.
> Sweatshops are also exceedingly efficient. Free
> software is too. 'Scientific' correctness is
> orthogonal to rightness.
That is true if `best' to you means only `most efficient'. In determining which software is best, I have a different set of criteria to pure efficiency, but then this makes the whole issue somewhat subjective.
> Stallman doesn't claim that free software is
> better than proprietary software (although it
> often is), he claims that free software is the
> Right Thing[tm] to do.
In my mind, that which is right is obviously better than that which is wrong. It may also be technically superior, but that is not what I intended to imply.
> To be honest, I don't have access to an
> alternate-universe machine to find out what
> would have happened if we had nuked Russia. But
> I suspect that the results would have included
> massive destruction within Russia (worse than
> Germany or Japan), horrendous [Russian] civilian
> casualties, etc, etc... *Perhaps* they would
> have rebounded like Germany and Japan, but that
> still doesn't mean that it would have been the
> 'Right Thing'.
>
> btw, was Hitler's only mistake the invasion of
> Russia? Wouldn't it have been better for Fleming
> to get a patent on the production of penicillin?
Perhaps the word `probably' has caused some confusion?
After reading way too many posts on
I can assure you that the prominent stand out. I am very sure of the identity of several some-time Anonymous Cowards, most of whom have written extensively on the web or usenet.
They were pissed because MS cloned the mac interface...?
And MS won the lawsuit.
And MS is going to get its proprietary butt handed right back to them as their cash cows go down under the weight of the GPL.
Whether or not BSD-licensed code is better, it is certainly more free (that is, there are fewer restrictions on who may use it and for what purpose).
My understanding is that the GPL cannot be used for XFree86 because it contains code which has been restrictively copyrighted by sources other than the XFree86 project. The GPL demands that either all code or no code in a given work be GPL'd, hence such code would have to be removed (crippling the software) in order to GPL the rest.
In short, the code which is under BSD-ish licences (XFree86/X/BSD) could be included in a GPL'd derivative, but other contributors have used more restrictive licensing, and refuse to give up their rights (which is required by the GPL, but not a BSD-style licence).
The simple fact is the GPL's restrictive nature prevents its use with any XFree86 code, not the other way round.
A pragmatic ideologue?
Many proprietary Microsoft products are reimplementations of software programmes designed by others; with many improvements of course. The people who designed and developed the originals had no way to stop Microsoft copying their ideas, hence it was able to take over their markets.
As an example, the fellow who invented the spreadsheet (VisiCalc) never got anything from Lotus 1-2-3 or Microsoft Excel, despite the fact that his creative contribution to those applications was probably greater than those of any of the programmers involved (and, of course, many improvements in 1-2-3 were copied over to Excel). There are countless other, similar examples.
The current system allows the most efficient developer/marketer to copy any innovative competitor and drive it out of existence. That is precisely what has created the Microsoft monopoly. How is that fair, right or conducive to innovation?
Maybe I simply don't have my threshhold set low enough, but it seems people merely flip-flop their opinions at nearly every article:
Apple on macosx: everyone agrees apple is great
Apple on xanim: everyone agrees apple sucks
Perens on ASPL: everyone agrees with him
ESR on ASPL: suddenly, everyone decides to agree with him instead
NCL: everyone agrees it sucks
RMS on ASPL: now they agree with him
O'Reilly: everyone agrees that O'Reilly speak one logical sentence
Speaking of logical sentences, insert a 'can't' in that last sentence.
No, the problem was that the X Consortium switched from its BSD-style licence to a more restrictive one in the most recent release. It could have done this if it had used the GPL, but there would have been the mandatory three-year warning in that case.
The important thing is the X Consortium had to reverse this decision. That this happened is a testament to the strength of support for the XFree86 project, which had threatened to fork the X standard to keep XFree86 free. The bottom line is that XFree86 has become more important than any of the proprietary X servers, and its implementation would have become the defacto standard.
Whoa there, friend! You just broke the unwritten rule of Slashdot! You discussed CODE. Not law, not politics, not morality, not flaming (nor meta-flaming), but ioclts! (Whatever they are.)
For introducing code into a foul atmosphere of yammerheads and back-seat drivers, I sentence you to slave away in front of an emacs window, unloved and unthanked, while ESR, RMS, and Al Gore argue over which of them is responsible for inventing your programs.
Have a nice day. :)
I very much doubt there is a single line of BSD code in any Microsoft product. Microsoft places value, above all, on Microsoft-owned standards. BSD is the polar opposite, and an anathema to Microsoft (particularly as most of Microsoft's commercial rivals use operating systems containing significant amounts of BSD code).
Without BSD, there would be no Internet, and most of us would probably be using either NT, or some other proprietary operating system.
Does Nike really suck?
Someone from Oxfam told me that Nike were one of the few companies that _don't_ employ slave labour in miserable conditions.
For this reason I bought Nikes instead of other shoes.
The ironic thing is that Slashdot probably has the highest visibility of all Linux-centric sites these days, and none of the Linux people seem to have a problem with that. Weird.
I totally agree.
Beautifully expressed.
Just want to add that I hate the way people
refer to the marketplace as if it is a person that
"acts".
PS:nvon..where is my cookie?
You said:
"The marketplace is a wonderful, Darwinian model. Let products, services, etc. flourish. Only the best ones will survive."
Yacks!!!
Could you be so kind as to tell us all how you
define "best"?
I mean I may be an assasin.In that case, I most probably am better than you in killing people.
So should I come to your house and kill you and
your family? (Sorry for the black nature of the
example.)
The truth IMO is that people with more power,try
to exploit other people with less power.The more
powerfull one is,the less effort he puts in
even trying to hide his tracks,and the more ruthless he is.That said,companies,at least some,are *extremely* powerfull.So they don't try to be good.They don't have to.So the darwinian model is
of course correct,but not because the "best" survive.Just the strongest.In the analogy of my
above example,if we disagree in something,then why
should I lose my time arguing with you?I can just
kill you.That's darwinian,that's the law of the jungle,and that's the question.Is this good?Is this what we should do?
-
PS:I am nvon.
How can it (GPL, etc.) be called (morally) superior when it is primarily used to rip off the work of others, in the name of `free software'?
I think that could happen, but only if those who support the global market project come round and admit that social responsibility is more important than either free trade, or the free flow of capital. The sort of assault on the market that socialism represents isn't necessary at all, and neither are bloody and ultimately pointless revolutions.
Free trade has very little to do with preventing global conflicts. Free trade and interdependence were prominent during the Belle Époque, but so was competition for colonies, raw materials and markets. The result was the 1914-18 war, which left the world in a state of chaos from which we have still not fully recovered.
The global market has become increasingly integrated since 1945, but it has only been during the last quarter of the century that we have reached (and surpassed) the level of integration that existed in 1914. As this has happened, we have seen rising long-term unemployment in social-democratic economies, increasing polarisation of wealth in the Anglo-Saxon countries, the rise of virtual slave labour in the third world, and increasing environmental degradation. None of these are conducive to global stability in the long run.
The relative stability of the post-war period up to 1989 is largely a result of NATO, the Cold War, and MAD (mutually assured destruction). The world was divided into two armed camps for 45 years, with neither side in a position to attack the other without destroying itself. With the collapse of the Soviet Union, and the end of the Cold War, we have seen a substantial rise in regional conflict, and the proliferation of weapons technology. This is in spite of the entire Soviet Block having been brought into the global market (and much of it de-industrialised in the process), and greater integration of China and the rest of the third world into it as well.
Ultimately, GATT (General Agreement on Tariffs and Trade) and the WTO (World Trade Organisation) exist primarily to remove power over international trade from democratically-elected regimes, as these regimes have often been known to act in the interests of their populations, rather than those of international capital. Together with the international bond markets, which control capital flows and punish any deviation from the free-trade dogma, they have been quite successful in doing that. I don't know if national governments could reverse this now, even if they wanted to.
Unrestrictive licenses make s/ware free NOW.
GPL makes s/ware free FOR EVER.
Which do you prefer? Discuss...
-- gidds
hi all,
Here is the main difference:
BSD-style license gives ppl freedom to exploit you by releasing a non-free modification of your code.
GPL restricts your and others freedom to let ppl rip you off this way by enforcing all modifications to be free/GPL'ed also.
Looking at it this way the GPL is not as "free"... but I don't want the freedom to be ripped off, thank you very much. If you are writing new code from scratch you can use any license you like (or none), but if you are going to use my code then it has to be GPL'ed like mine or you can offer me money for it under another license.
If you are new to open source but haven't read the articles on http://www.gnu.org then read them right now.
I'm not religious about the GPL (I'm a Christian), but to me it seems logical why I choose to release my code under the GPL rather than a BSD style license. (This is also one of the major factors why linux is more successful than BSD).
The reason Tim Oreilly's 'market place' makes him want to support non-copylefted free software is that the market place is always more supportive of licenses where it can rip people off for $$$$$.
Don't be content with open source, demand freedom of the code. Copyleft your own code with the GPL.
thanks,
wayne.
Scientists study a universe governed by consistent natural laws. A human marketplace is the exact opposite of such a system. The notion that one should apply Science as it is currently practiced given the state of humans' knowledge of themselves and each other is absurd. To do so would rather be the course of action that would make one resemble 'religious'.
> I am simply glad there are people like Stallman
> who realise money is not all there is, and is
> not even related to happiness.
Well said. I may disagree with Stallmanism (and the attempt to turn Linux into `a version of GNU', which it certainly isn't), but at least Stallman hasn't been blinded by avarice the way so many others in the field have.
Group 1
These people will look in your files. Use the rm command to protect yourself.
Group 2
These people will look beyond the filesystem. You can stop them by overwriting everything with the dd command.
Group 3
These well-funded people will disassemble your disk, scan it with a magnetic force microscope, and analyse the measurements on a supercomputer. There is absolutely no pattern that can hide your old data. These people can recover several generations of data even, perhaps getting 60 GB of old data off of a 4 GB drive. You should completely melt the disk in a furnace or completely dissolve the disk in acid.
It's up to the programmer to decide how he wants to license his code, not all of you. The BSD style licence is for programmers who want to help out the entire community, not just the nerds. The GPL is for programmers who want to help out the free software community. Honestly, I'd rather help out the entire community. You people whine to much.
> [The GPL] is also one of the major factors why
> linux is more successful than BSD
There is no evidence to support this claim. The primary reasons for the greater market success of Linux are:
1) Timing. Linux was not blocked by lawsuits, and so was available to those without USL licences before *BSD. This was critically important when the explosion of non-academic Internet use began (and *BSD was still effectively blocked from distribution outside universities).
2) Incompleteness of Linux. Linux itself is just a kernel. In order to make usable `distributions', someone had to provide the service of packaging the kernel with all the userland libraries and tools. This is where the commercial distributors came in, with their (well-advertised) value-added services. *BSD is distributed as a full OS, so there was never a need for commercial packagers.
All things considered, *BSD does quite well, especially in the server market and in its traditional academic roots. It doesn't get as much press as Linux, and has a smaller user base, but a lot of that is due to the fact that it isn't packaged and marketed by commercial distributors, but rather by developers.
If you look beyond the BSD/Linux competition, many of the most popular software tools are not GPL'd. This is true of Apache and XFree86, which both use BSD-like licences. None of the GPL'd alternatives have done remotely as well, which is not surpising. Without the USL lawsuit blocking *BSD, Linux would have been redundant; in fact, it probably would not have even been written.
The market is an important part of society, but only one part, and not even the most important one. It does not embody the beauty of art and music, the strength of community and the family, or acknowledge the value of education (as opposed to simple training).
America and the other Anglo-Saxon countries (at least since the 1980s) may hold the view that the free market is the embodiment of human achievement, but the majority of the industrialised countries do not. The social-democratic model produces a better-educated population, higher productivity, greater societal cohesion, and a more equal society (without the corrosive problem of an underclass). Unfortunately, despite the lower productivity in free-market economies, greater labour flexibility allows real wages to decline sufficiently to more than compensate for it. No matter how productive social-democratic economies become, falling wages in free-market societies will make them more competitive.
In the short run, global free trade and the free flow of capital mean the social-democratic model can no longer compete with the ruthlessness of the free market. In the long run, I dearly hope something more socially responsible can.
Basically, I had started to question a lot of the things that I had been so idealistic about for the previous 2-3 years. I was hoping that maybe one of the three speakers (ESR, BP, RMS), coming from vastly different backgrounds and beliefs, would talk sense. I hoped that at least one of them would rise above the primordial ooze of free software flaming and dorkiness and bring it all into perspective. I had hoped to find some reassurance somewhere, but unfortunately none of them came off particularly well- each one seemed to have their own particular brand of tunnel vision, megalomania, narrow-mindedness, and, well, just general yuckiness. It was rather disappointing. The audience wasn't much better- everyone seemed either insanely bitter and hostile, or posessed of the worst kind of subservient sheep mentality. It was like spending an hour in a mental institution- *everyone* was crazy. In particular, I'm not sure how anyone could have walked out of that room after an hour and still retained so much as an ounce of respect for RMS- and I mean that on both a personal and philosophical level. It was a very disheartening experience.
What this whole big long rant is leading up to is this: Tim is one of the very, very few voices of reason when it comes to free software. There are a handful of others: Eric Allman, perhaps Linus (although he makes very few public statements about free software "philosophy"), probably John Ousterhout, Guido (of Python fame), Jordan Hubbard...I'm sure there's a few more out there. Note that none of these people are particularly vocal in "the community" compared to people like ESR, BP, RMS, Alan Cox, Miguel, etc. Most of the widely acknowledged "leaders" of free software seem to have some sort of fatal flaw that prevents them from rising above the muck: they're drunk on their own pseudo-celeb status, they've idealized something or other to the point of ludicrousness ("hacker culture", the morality of software, MS-as-Evil-Empire...), or they're just plain jerks. People you'd go out of your way to avoid if you had to work with them or deal with them on a day-to-day basis. Unbalanced people who just never grew up in one way or another.
Anway, sorry for the rant. The message is, listen to the Tims of the world, and maybe don't pay so much attention to the {ESR,BP,RMS}s of the world. The Tims might not talk so much or so loudly, but it's usually because they actually spend some time thinking about what to say, rather than just reveling in the fact that people are listening to them.
The marketplace is properly an integral part of society, and as such contributes much to society. The problem is that some people have sought to separate it from society, putting it above society, and worshipping it as some sort of god.
Societies which pursue this fanatical view are destined to fail in the long run, just as the attempt to remove the market from society in the Soviet Union ended in tears. Those who take the sensible middle road, seeking neither to deify nor to destroy the market, will triumph in the long run.
So it is that the veils are falling.
Now that lots upon lots of money are to be made on the name of free software (bastardized as "open source", so as not to frighten CEOs of companies for whon freedom is anathema) the real faces are showing.
Naturally anyone with an eye in the pagan god called marketplace would prefer anything but GPL. "Let all software be free", they say, ("so that we can hide it later", they complete in their heads). Tim O'Reilly words on GPL can be easily translated into "GPL restricts my freedom to restrict your freedom, so it is not free". Worded this way, it is easy to see the sophism.
I am really worried now about our fate. It is pretty obvious that there is a character destruction campaign against Richard Stallman. The main goal seems to be to discredit Richard as a communist or a lunatic, to make GPL look like a delusional hippie allucination and to hide all FSF contribution to the present state of things.
If they have their way, the net result will be a far less happy world (albeit a far more lucrative).
Am I paranoid? Or, in the end, "money talks" is the only "road ahead"?
One of the points of the article is that even urandom isn't good enough. /dev/urandom will cause high frequency static on the drive, when low frequency static is far more effective for wiping information.
Also, the impression I get is that shred will work on a file by file basis, not just on a partition scale.
----
Open mind, insert foot.
And what was he supposed to write gcc on? His own unix? With what compiler? Richard did not have a choice of whether to use free software or not to develop gcc. RMS never said that it's wrong to use non-free software when there's no choice, only when there is a choice does ethics come into it.
Now there is a choice, I bet RMS is using either Linux or Hurd to do his work, and look at that, he has a choice of two GPLed OSes to work on, both usin GPLed tools (Xwindows is an exception, but it's almost free and where's the choice?). I see no hypocracy.
Bill - aka taniwha
--
Leave others their otherness. -- Aratak
1. Many fence sitters got shaken up and settled on how they feel, and are thus more vocal (pretty much like dropping a crystal into a super-saturated solution), and some that thought `Open-Source' is okey got there eyes opened as to what's really going on, and changed their minds.
2. The die-hared anti-GNU types haven't shown up yet.
Bill - aka taniwha
--
Leave others their otherness. -- Aratak
And this makes it better? Not in my (or many others) opinion. I seem to remeber seeing on the XFree86 website a comment that they would have liked to release XFree86 under GPL but couldn't, due to licence restrictions. Hmm, seems XFree86 licencing isn't so unrestricted after all.
Even if I'm wrong about the XFree86 people's desires, they still can't release XFree86 under GPL.
Bill - aka taniwha
--
Leave others their otherness. -- Aratak
No, that's honesty you're thinking of. Copyright prevents all copying, properly accredited or not (hence the `fair use' exceptions). See ipnot (I just read it myself)
Bill - aka taniwha
--
Leave others their otherness. -- Aratak
Almost, it's competition and co-operation. Read Earth, by David Brin. That book goes over that meme quite nicely (probably could do with more) along with many others. Otherwise, I agree with you, co-operation is just as important as competition. Hmm, I think Brin stated that you can't have one without the other in a successful system.
Bill - aka taniwha
--
Leave others their otherness. -- Aratak
Posted by FascDot Killed My Previous Use:
...by the use of the infantile "NOT!" nor the repeated abuse of reasonable people.
Posted by FascDot Killed My Previous Use:
Found this interesting: www.az.com/~drysdam/GPL-as-strategy.html
Posted by FascDot Killed My Previous Use:
It's not a "zealotry" issue. It's a consistency issue. If I hold a principle to apply to some cases, there has to be a reason it doesn't apply in other cases. In order to abandon my principles I need a better reason than "the ends justify the means".
As for infringing on the creators rights: Far from it. The creator of GPL'd software has at least as many rights as closed software developers (if not more) with the added benefit of increased usage.
Posted by FascDot Killed My Previous Use:
First, the "marketplace" in "let the marketplace decide" is not always economic. It can be the "marketplace of ideas" or something similar. The "invisible hand" of Adam Smith works in other areas as well. (evolution anyone?)
That said, I agree that capitalism (or worse, consumerism) is an ideology that many would do good to get rid off, although I'm not quite as cynical as your "marketing department" comment makes you sound.
Posted by FascDot Killed My Previous Use:
I don't get it. Isn't Gates rich enough already? Why contribute to his BSD codebase any further?
I think the main influence for this argument is creationism and science in general.. religious groups have often considered science and furthering of development to be 'evil' as it detracts from creationism, i.e. that the earth was here a long time before humans were, and that the bible may not be wholly right.
By saying 'religious' he means someone who is more interested in staying true to their beliefs than looking at the world around them, while by scientific you would think the opposite - someone who is more interested in discovering the world around them than paying attention to what people may strongly believe in.
Humans are already trafficked, it's just not normally described so bluntly. Whether it's the transfer of manufacturing capital from the West to the Third World (cheap labor!), magazine publishers' mailing-lists (like the transfer from BYTE to Windows Magazine - the most valuable asset was the subscriber list, rather than the brand-name and archives), or the Nielsen Ratings, people are just marketplace commodities. But the whole thing is so ingrained that we give it little notice.
I am not a target audience! I am not a number! :)
(With apologies to Coupland and McGoohan.)
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=8^
Slavery in the traditional sense still exists - every time I think of the southern Sudan, I (figuratively) hit my knees and pray for them.
Slavery in a modern sense exists. The difference between a sweatshop worker and a slave (or a corporate Third World farm worker and a slave) is that the escapees won't be hunted down; it's cheaper to hire a replacement. For now. On top of that, toxic work environments (due to either heavy pesticides in the fields or chemicals in the factory) shorten the lifespan of the workers.
Slavery in any form is heinous and immoral.
What CMP (and other publishers) did/do is merely cynical and amoral; they're not in the same league as Nike, Disney, United Brands, and the other Big Boys.
The Nielsens are a tool used by the cynical and amoral; a small number of teenage eyeballs influence the multi-megabuck decisions of programmers and advertisers, though the I Ching might make a more useful tool. Commercial broadcasting is all about the broadcaster "selling an audience" (measured by a ratings system) to potential advertisers. Again, cynical and amoral. And we are, either literally or by proxy, being trafficked, even though we don't suffer the same fate as slaves.
There but for the grace of God, etc etc...
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=8^
Joshua can speak for himself, of course...
I don't think he (or I) was speaking as someone who is anti-markets.
The slave analogy is neither silly nor ignorant. It's relevant in that it shows what can happen when the bottom-line concerns of the marketplace crowd out moral issues. The enslavement (and "neo-enslavement", i.e. the cheap labor in the Third World) of peoples, which goes on even today, is one example. The bastardization (YMMV) of the GPL (with all these OSI-compliant "free" and open licenses), and the demonization (YMMV) of RMS (that psycho/utopian/commie/clue-starved Rasputin), may be another example.
Disclaimer: Smoke-Blowing Mode again.
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=8^
Someone from Oxfam told me that Nike were one of the few companies that _don't_ employ slave labour in miserable conditions.
For this reason I bought Nikes instead of other shoes.
I've lumped slavery and "neo-slavery" together. Nike's not the worst practitioner - they don't use real slaves, but their history shows a constant search for a Lowest Common Denominator of labor laws. They move their manufacturing from place to place as they find a sweeter deal in another country.
I use Matthew 7:12 (the "Golden Rule") as my rule of thumb: would you be willing to work in one of the plants that Nike uses to manufacture their goods? Would you want to be paid less than a dollar an hour? Would you like to be exposed to toxic chemicals, ones that might leave you with a serious respiratory ailment when you reach middle age? Would you like being "disciplined" by one of the managers? I don't think you would. Nike does this stuff because they can get away with it, as do dozens of other companies. I don't think there's any valid economic reason to do it - they're just deathly afraid of having to pay a unionized workforce a living wage, and too cheap to deal with issues like workplace safety and payroll taxes on Western (government-regulated) terms.
As I said in a previous post, the only difference between this and slavery is that no-one hunts down the escapees.
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=8^
Shred is by Colin Plumb, who was at one stage one of the main PGP implementors (may still be) and Knows What He's Doing.
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Xenu loves you!
Bruce's short comment has received two responses, both of which miss the point.
Tim isn't merely disagreeing with RMS's precise ethical stance.
Tim is explicitly disagreeing with the very idea of raising ethical considerations in these discussions. He thinks talking about ethics at all is simply unscientific.
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Xenu loves you!
Tim O'Reilly's position that morality is incompatible with science is a breathtakingly unpleasant and dishonest position. Science may guide you on the consequences of particular behaviour, but it can't tell you which consequences are desirable or what behaviour is acceptable. O'Reilly caricatures all attempts to advocate ethical behaviour as religious posturing - as if all atheists are bound to act amorally.
When he argues that free software should be "teted in the marketplace", he doesn't feel the slightest need to justify his belief that this will lead to consequences in the common good; whatever consequences emerge, they will be good simply because they're the ones blessed by the magic market, even if it might seem to those who don't have faith in the market that they require unethical behaviour from the participants. So who's got religion now?
How he can pretend to imagine that his position and RMS's are not so different when moral arguments are at the heart of RMS's stance is beyond me. It's almost enough to turn me into a fundamentalist Stallmanist.
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Xenu loves you!
I think it's a good idea to discourage people from raising the Nazis as examples. It's just too obvious and too emotive. I think the people who raised slavery in parts of Africa chose better.
--
Xenu loves you!
>I think the point is that people like Richard Stallman will use `free' (i.e. GPL'd) software, even if it is inferior to `non-free' software.
What did Stallman write the original gcc on? There was no Linux back in '83.
The hypocrisy in Stallman's position is that he chose to use closed source OSes to achieve his goal -- publicizing his idea of Free Software by making tools people would want to use; now he thinks it's immoral for the rest of us to work with closed source stuff to achieve our own goals.
Ooh, a sarcasm detector. Oh, that's a real useful invention.
"However, is this wrong? When looking at it rationally, is Intellectual Property a logical, natural concept, on par with physical property rights?"
Physical property claims, or at the very least real estate, all derive originally from one person or group taking it by force from another, or, more rarely, from "finders keepers." In contrast, intellectual property is creation from nothing. Is "don't copy" really more objectionable than "no trespassing"?
>However, I think we're coming to a point very soon where IP law is no longer relevant for
software.
True for software geeks enjoy working on, less so for things they don't, or don't have the skills for; I don't see an open source game with the polish of Age of Empires or Starcraft appearing
soon. And as for media, do you see an open source "Schindler's List" appearing any time soon?
Ooh, a sarcasm detector. Oh, that's a real useful invention.
>And what was he supposed to write gcc on? His own unix?
Why not? I worked with a group that basically wrote our own (rather limited) OS for our graphics supercomputer. We did buy a compiler, but then we weren't on a moral crusade. And the consequence for RMS of his shortcutting was that the open-source that followed got named after some other, more pragmatic, individual, much to RMS's annoyance.
Ignore the moral issue for a moment. You have to admit it's possible that IP laws result in some better IP (do you think Star Wars would ever have been made without them?). If so, if the net result of eliminating IP might mean we have to wait longer for a cure for cancer, or Alzheimer's, or paralysis. Are you willing to tell someone who ends up dying from one of those ailments that it was moral to delay the generation of the cure? Good things can come from pragmatism.
Now, if you believe that open source will eventually produce all the software we need anyway, then you don't need the moral argument.
Ooh, a sarcasm detector. Oh, that's a real useful invention.
The marketplace has indirectly caused some things. However, it is still individual people who create ideas. Maybe the marketplace can be a reasonable way to motivate people but it is not a principle that should be used as a foundation. The marketplace is not the foundation for something that should be called "science".
The issues of address lists, and more generally advertising as a whole, is a serious one. It's a matter of selling our minds. Now, this is not oppression on the scale that it is happening in most places. But it is insidious and dangerous (that banner at the top of the page included!)
We are the ones who are the receivers of many of the benefits of oppression. Most slashdotters are clearly members of the international elite (even if a number of us chose not to partake fully in it). If we cannot be clear-minded -- cannot understand what we are doing and why -- than our ethics cannot save us. Advertising is all about muddling our thoughts. From the mundane nature of a banner add that looks like a Win95 window to the spin-doctors that make us think a medicine factory is some chemical weapons production.
(p.s., Junkbuster will get rid of the banner ads -- fight the Man one banner at a time! I'm not sure if I'm kidding)
RMS' motivations for creating free software are very different than O'Reilly's. And of all the things you can accuse RMS of, hypocrisy is certainly not one of them.
The question is: what do you believe? What do you want, for yourself and the world around you? The answers aren't obvious and everyone isn't going to answer them the same. But I don't worry about that so much as all the people who never ask the questions or never let their answers become action.
I agree that RMS wants to force people to make free software. But all those proprietary software companies want to force you not to copy their software (or at least to pay first). The GPL fights fire with fire. The permissive licenses don't fight at all.
That's okay... you're allowed not to fight. A permissive license does no harm. But can you really blame someone who does want to fight? And don't they have some obligation to try to convince you to do the same?
The marketplace has given us no ideas, no beauty, no creation. People have given us those things -- often in disregard of the marketplace which can offer only material rewards.
So, to hell with the marketplace. Even in the most utopian of marketplace ideals, it is dull and dead. Thankfully not everyone has given up on thought and, yes, morallity for the seductive void of the marketplace.
I know I certainly am not tired of moralizing :)
They describe this series of 35 steps to wipe data, and I'd guess shred does that?
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Ben Kosse
Remember Ed Curry!
The economy *is* a measure of human achievement. It DOES embody everything we do.
Of course, with money being numbers and all, it is an objective system and doesn't keep track of "how" you got the numbers, which does lead to a lot of the corruption and general greed/silliness in the world of business. A system created by impefect humans FOR imperfect humans.
The free market *is* the embodiment of human achievement. The developed world is centered around the notion of this system. All innovative work in the past two centuries has been embodied by organizations involved in this market: the invention of electricity (Tom Edison's General Electric), the invention of the transistor (Bell Labs), the invention of the computer, microprocessor, etc. The innovation of the *personal computer* (IBM, Xerox and Apple). etc.
No, the free market system is not perfect, but please don't let your ignorance detract from the achievements that have taken place under that system.
-Stu
The market is not an invisible hand - though that is how Adam Smith described it in the 18th century.
With today's modern complexity theory, it is very clear that the market embodies OUR actions. We make the market the way it is... We run the eocnomy... and the central bankers of the world adjust things when they get out of hand.
Your slave analogy is both silly and ignorant. What the hell does this have to do with a modern marketplace? Did you just throw this in to support your view of the "evil market" because you have no real knowledge of how the market works?
The marketplace embodies *trade* of goods, servics, but above all, VALUE from human achievement.
-Stu
I *do* like Stallman's views, and I do know that money is not related to happiness.
I *am* saying that if there are any failings of the "marketplace", the blame should be placed squarely on the shoulders of the greed-mongers of our time. In otherwords, the system is an objective thing - it's humans that mess it up. Such will be the case with any system you come up with.. so why don't we stick with what we've got and just try to improve it - it's worked modestly well for two centuries or so, and improved the quality of life for developed countries dramatically in that time.
-Stu
well yeah, there is a poor tendancy to worship the "marketplace". It is, after all, a reflection of what we do with our time and money, so people rightly should analyze it.
The problem has been to over-analyze it. Customer opinions sway - and often they don't know what they want. So innovation is the only way to counter that. Of course, traditional innovation was based on market research, leading to Microsoft-style "creative imitation"...
In future, I think we're going to see more "visionary" innovations, because frankly, in a world with little brand loyalty and changing perceptions, that's the only way TO compete. Make the future the way you want it to be, not the way the market wants it "at this second"...
-Stu
looking at copyright law, (RMS has a great essay about this on his website), there's a distinct difference of perception in the business world between cloning "ideas" vs. "words".
In software, that means cloning the code is copyright infringement, and cloning the ideas is "creative imitation", and acceptable.. This largely is because copyright was designed to protect the written word from competition.
NOW, copyright is being used to force the public to pay for information they can easily copy. It leads to an interesting conflict: The public doesn't want to give up this right (though they did over two centuries ago, primarily because you wouldn't have a printing press in your backyard so it didn't matter).. BUT companys need economic performance to stay alive.
Overall, in free software, I think the greatest lesson for the business community will be that protecting information is not as useful as protecting "knowledge" - which only exists in your employee's heads.
People are the only truly important resource that need to be protected.
-Stu
Well Tim tried to be somewhat diplomatic in his treatment of RMS' views, but his ignorance of RMS' ideological position really detracts from his view .
Adam Smith's invisible hand is nothing more than a reflection of what "we're doing" in terms of economics & trade... It isn't an end in itself - something too many businesspeople forget.
-Stu
Seeing the morality of "increased freedom" is obvious.
Seeing the morality of "everything must be free", as Tim says, is a little harder to see.
Should a creator have a right to keep his source closed? RMS says no.
-Stu
While I agree with the content of that post (everyone is NOT crazy), just two points:
- Tim *is* a voice of reason. His argument was well spoken, and easy to understand. The major disappointment was his lack of perspecitve on the role of ethics & morality in software development.
Other than that, he has a point: Should it be "free software because we HAVE to" or "free software because we WANT to" ?
- The interesting observation of the post above yours was the varied reaction in the audience: it really seems to be hard to get people to agree on things in this community.
-Stu
I should have clarified that.
I was refering to enslavement in the "developed world", not the third world, where it most certainly, and unfortunately, goes on.
Free software is largely an ethical issue and will always be. At the end of the day, one can argue that protecting information (i.e. source code) is not as important as protecting knowledge & people - such is the argument of OSI and ESR.
But, what *really* is the reason behind free software other than to advance the freedom to improve and share technology? It comes full circle back to the ethical argument.
As I've stated in other messages, I follow RMS' view closely, and the only thing I'm still at odds with is his view that everything "MUST" be free.
People should have the right to choose, without discrimination over a subjective definition of "morality".
-Stu
First off, I don't equate "free" with "zero cost". I understand RMS' philosophy quite well. Furthermore, I agree that RMS is not "forcing" people to do open their source right now.
It is, however, his philosophical intention. He believes the copyright law SHOULD be modified such that software does not have owners and everyone is free to copy it. (This is in his essay "Re-evaluating copyright" and also "Why software should not have owners".)
So no, RMS isn't forcing people right now. Given the opporunity though, his writings indicate he is striving to create a world where free software is not a choice.
-Stu
I don't believe there is a difference (in terms of protection) between tangible and intellectual property.
Specifically, I believe that copyright (that is, protecting the *content* of your intellectual property, not necessarily the ideas behind it) has evolved to a point that it *is* a right for the creator.
I read RMS' essay on copyright law, and enjoyed it tremendously, BUT I think the copying policy should be a choice of the creator - not a law. The unfortunate trend towards criminalization of copyright infringment is dangerous.
-Stu
In the short run, global free trade and the free flow of capital mean the social-democratic model can no longer compete with the ruthlessness of the free market. In the long run, I dearly hope something more socially responsible can.
Indeed, the current system is not socially responsible. However, it is quite probable that future "socially responsible" structures are built on top of our current system, which has worked well in many cases (improving the standard of living, for instance).
-Stu
As for software, I hate to be premature, but I think it's already won. We're
into the glorious drudgery of finishing up now.
There are many, many, bright and even ethical people out there that would disagree with that vehemenantly, and not just out of ignorance. Some sincerely prefer to live in a property-driven society, where property includes "intellectual" property. (By intellectual I mean copyright-like property, not the ideas behind it).
While I think that open source is gaining, there really is a long road to go. Witness the trends of zealous copyright enforcement, the digital millenium copyright act, the surge in patent claims. While the message is getting out there, it isn't reaching many of the people who are working with our society's laws and organizations.
-Stu
Actually, free trade, or in general, the lowering of
trade barriers & tariffs, has a lot to do with why we're seeing
a lot less global conflict than in years past...
The Generally Accepted Tariff Treaties (GATT) from WW2 and onwards
have had a profound effect on our world's interdependence. That's
a good, socially responsible action of the economy... a first start
down a long road.
-Stu
While I think Tim's ignorance of the moral/ethical side of free software is disappointing, he has a point:
Should it be "free software because we WANT to" or "free software because we HAVE to".
I want to create MORE free software.
I want to see MORE progress in technology and community sharing because of this movement.
BUT
I do NOT want to *FORCE* people to create free software.
RMS believes everything "MUST BE FREE". I agree with a lot of his philosophy, but that is one point where I must draw the line.
If we can find a way of NOT being a property-driven society, then I will by all means accept the view that "everything must be free".
-Stu
Hmm. Well, the X protocol standards are free, as far as I'm aware. There also happens to be some example implementation code out there, and some other stuff licenced under all sorts of agreements. There's nothing that I know of to stop someone from reimplementing X under any license that they please (although the Open Group briefly tried to take this right away with the Broadway release), but the consensus seems to be that the XFree86 implementation is free enough.
ObNameFlame: it's not `XWindows', it's `X', `X11' or the `X Window System', blah blah, read the X man page, etc.
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W.A.S.T.E.
W.A.S.T.E.
I wish I thought this was true. I think you're wrong though. People in the Linux and (to a lesser extent) the remainder of the `Free Software' movement seem to have a rather blinkered view on many X related things. Here are some examples:
Don't get me wrong: I'm not doing down the importance of free software here. I'm trying to inject a bit of realism. Motif is better than you think it is (resources, anyone?). Thinking about it, XFree86 might just have a wider distribution than any other single X server, and I bet it'd be more likely to get upgraded than the rest of the X servers combined: they'll probably only get upgraded in sync with OS upgrades if at all. Nevertheless there is a huge inertia behind the installed base of non-Free X machines out there, and it wouldn't do to get carried away.
I seem to be rambling now, so I'll stop. Does anything I've said make any sense?
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W.A.S.T.E.
W.A.S.T.E.
It's most ironic that you call your response "Software Darwinism". Mostly because free/open source software is what Darwin really wrote about at work. You see, Darwin was not a believer in what has come to be known as "Darwinism". Sure, the catch-phrase of "survival of the fittest" has become the limit to what most people know about the man's works.
But in fact Darwin's works show substantial recognition of the intra- and inter-species co-operation that occours in nature, and the importance of this in the evolutionary process. That is, maybe it is true that the fittest does survive. But the fittest is not necessarily the one who kills off everyone else, but rather can be the one who co-operates with others to the fullest extent.
That Darwinism = competition is just propaganda cooked up by "free market" capitalist appologists who seek to paint their system as the "natural" way.
Instead, it is co-operation that is the way forward, NOT competition.
"Now watch what you say or they'll be calling you a radical, liberal, fanatical, criminal." - Supertramp, The Logical So
Seriously. Not for too long though :)
Matt. Want XML + Apache + Stylesheets? Get AxKit.
The users get a
guarantee of freedom to see the code in the process but it does take away their 'right' to hide it.
Err, I meant in the GPL.
Daniel
Hurry up and jump on the individualist bandwagon!
Huh? RMS' saying that something is wrong doesn't take away your right to ignore him and do it your way. You'll just be wrong. ;-) The GPL is meant to provide the creator of a work with the ability to say something about how it's used. A good description I saw earlier was "liberated software, not libertine software".
And I'm not even going to mention the piracy troll.
Daniel
Hurry up and jump on the individualist bandwagon!
It's as if he's saying that ethics are in some way illogical, or that Adam Smith's invisible hand is
somehow superior to ethics.
I'd say that ethics are illogical. That's why we need them.
Daniel
Hurry up and jump on the individualist bandwagon!
I like the way you ignored the rest of my post...
/. or O'Reilly's site. ;-) But if you don't understand why some sort of ethical basis for action is necessary..then I repeat my comment:
/. ACs on this point ;-) You just got in the way of a rant waiting to happen. ]
erm, anyway. What bothers me is the elevation of pragmatism over other concerns and the treatement of ethics and morality as something dirty to be avoided. (IMO, 'ethics' is a better term here) More than that; in taking this stance, people try to present themselves as being 'objective' (and therefore, presumably somehow better) when in fact they have made a decision as well. Denying that an ethical issue exists (even if you are correct) is an ethical decision. To pretend objectivity is hypocrisy of the nth degree.
On top of that...while I can understand pragmatism in software (it can be easily argued that there are more important moral questions, however much it may impact my life), I often get the feeling that this is part and parcel of a larger attitude of pure pragmatism. I could be wrong of course, it's difficult to judge people based on 5-line posts on
I'm sorry.
[ now that I think about it, O'Reilly is probably not guilty of this..heck I doubt you are either..I'd be quicker to indict random
And you *totally* missed my point about users vs creators. The GPL is an assertion of the rights of the creator of a piece of software to ensure that it is used in the way he or she intended. And even in the mindset that this is a moral issue, no-one, even RMS, is going to come around and *force* you to GPL your software (except for some very misguided people)--persuade, argue, cajole, perhaps.
Daniel
Hurry up and jump on the individualist bandwagon!
To my way of thinking, science is essentially a method of viewing and analysing the world. The ;-)
;-)
scientist does not take anything on faith, but rather relies on objective (to the extent possible)
facts.
I would argue that this is not the end-all and be-all of science; it just happens to be the correct way to go about advancing the 'greater good' as seen by scientists (deeper understanding of nature/universe/God depending on what time period you're talking about). Obviously not all scientists agree
In any event, this approach is very good at getting you the truth but doesn't tell you what to do with it.
The scientific approach to evaluating free software is to compare the results of projects based on
totally free software, GPL'd free software, open software, proprietary software, etc. If one sort of
licence or organisational scheme produces consistently better software (based on objective
criteria), it can possibly be considered the best way to develop software.
This gives you a full comprehension of which way is the most efficient way to develop software. Sweatshops are also exceedingly efficient. Free software is too. 'Scientific' correctness is orthogonal to rightness.
The view taken by Richard Stallman is that GPL'd software is inherently better, simply because
he believes it is right. Regardless of any evidence to the contrary, he will only use software which
fits his definition of free, because that is his religion. To his followers, then, he is the prophet of
the GNU faith. To the rest of us, he just seems a bit of a nutter.
No, you're confusing him with ESR. Stallman doesn't claim that free software is better than proprietary software (although it often is), he claims that free software is the Right Thing[tm] to do. I personally think that freeness and quality are not related. There's bad free software and good proprietary software. They have different strengths, etc, etc, but the question for Stallman is not whether one is objectively better but which one is right. Whether you agree with him or not, having made an ethical decision--even an unpopular one--does not automatically qualify one as a "nutter". If Stallman said that the GPL was given to him by little pixies, I think you might have a point.
PS If the Soviet Union had been levelled in the 1950s, the way Germany and Japan were in the
1940s, the world (especially Russia and Eastern/Central Europe) would probably be in much
better shape today.
To be honest, I don't have access to an alternate-universe machine to find out what would have happened if we had nuked Russia. But I suspect that the results would have included massive destruction within Russia (worse than Germany or Japan), horrendous [Russian] civilian casualties, etc, etc... *Perhaps* they would have rebounded like Germany and Japan, but that still doesn't mean that it would have been the 'Right Thing'.
btw, was Hitler's only mistake the invasion of Russia? Wouldn't it have been better for Fleming to get a patent on the production of penicillin?
Daniel
Hurry up and jump on the individualist bandwagon!
A couple of..umm..interesting things in that O'Reilly article.
At bottom, Richard believes that the rights of
the users of software take precedence over
the rights of the creators of that software.
Yes, that's why when a creator puts his or her work under the GPL, it stays free ad infinitum, whereas a BSD license lets any of the users close the source off for their own uses. The users get a guarantee of freedom to see the code in the process but it does take away their 'right' to hide it.
like to say that Open
Source is science, not religion. Making source
code freely available is good not because of
some inalienable right belonging to the users of
software, but because it's good for the
creators of the software
Um. He must have a different understanding of how science work[ed|s] than I did. AFAIK, science has as a goal the furthering of human knowledge by sharing of information and discoveries. True, it doesn't work that way all the time (ego, greed, etc), but it works well enought that I would suggest that Stallman's position is grounded in a scientific ethic.
But for me, the choice of proprietary or Open
Source software is purely a pragmatic one.
I'm sorry.
Ultimately, the question you're asking...is one of
whether free software is a moral issue or a scientific
one.
Oh dear. [ using science in the sense of 'object judgement' here: ] I think that it was suggested at various points in the '50s (by Von Neumann and others? I'm getting this from a history of game theory that I read, feel free to thwack me if I'm wrong) that the 'scientific' thing for America to do was to bomb Russia back into the stone age before they got nuclear missiles, and just hope that the effects weren't devastating to us. I would agrue that science and objectivity have to give way to ethics and morality.
In the case of GNU/Linux, of course, we're lucky that the objective and the moral Right Things to do coincide.
Daniel
Hurry up and jump on the individualist bandwagon!
Stallman has said that he decided early on that the FSF would use proprietary software only for the purposes of developing a free replacement (see the "Donated Computers" section). He doesn't feel good about it, he just realizes that it's a necessary evil.
BTW: Saying that he thinks it's immoral to work with closed source stuff is a bit of a misrepresentation. I expect he realizes that some people will need to use closed source software to live their life, and that not everyone can work on free replacements. At the risk of putting words in his mouth, I would say that he would consider using proprietary software to be a bad idea, but only because you're hurting yourself. Creating proprietary software is another story.
I'll disagree with Tim on this point: the GPL protects the community, not just the users.
Remember that in a vibrant open-source project, the distinction between the "users" and the "developers" is blurred. After all, developers also use, and the users often take up the developer's mantle when their use is hampered.
All of the best open-source projects can no longer be attributed to one man or one small group. For this reason, it's hard to identify "the developer" most of the time. In those cases where there is an exception, it seems to be due either to a very strong leader (Linus, for example) or to a very quiet project with few contributors.
Thus, the question of who "owns" the code (which Tim puts such stake in) is impossible to answer without looking at the community as a whole. In this situation, the GPL is best at preserving the community's best interests.
> Source software is purely a pragmatic one.
I'm sorry.
What?! What in the world is wrong with making the choice between free or open source or proprietary a sensible choice? Must everyone just outright choose open sourced or free software based on someone else's morals? Give me a freaking break. If I want to choose the best software, I'll choose the best software, whether it be proprietary or not. Most non-zealots probably would too.
As for the rights of users vs. the rights of creators, I'm sorry, but if I write a piece of code, and you want to use it, either you abide by the license that I decide to put it under, or write an implementation yourself, or tough shit. In this instance (you may feel its selfish, but tough), my rights are what I want protected, not some joe schmoe out there who is just looking to get something for nothing.
Oh, I'm sorry. I didn't realize that I was under some obligation to respond to everything you said...
On top of that...while I can understand pragmatism in software (it can be easily argued that there are more important moral questions, however much it may impact my life), I often get the feeling that this is part and parcel of a larger attitude of pure pragmatism. I could be wrong of course, it's difficult to judge people based on 5-line posts on /. or O'Reilly's site. ;-) But if you don't understand why some sort of ethical basis for action is necessary..then I repeat my comment: I'm sorry.
Anytime you want to be less patronizing, I'll be waiting. First off, as you said, there are FAR more pressing issues than deciding the morality of software choices. But you seem to be saying that there are ethics involved when choosing software, and I think you are on crack for saying that. Sounds like RMS in his more zealous moments... There are no ethics involved when choosing software, whether free, open, or proprietary. None. It is not immoral to buy some proprietary software when it is heads and tails above the rest. It is not immoral to buy some proprietary software when it is the worst of the software (that's just stupid.) There just aren't any morals involved whatsoever. It's fscking software, not a debate on the morals of porn.
And you *totally* missed my point about users vs creators. The GPL is an assertion of the rights of the creator of a piece of software to ensure that it is used in the way he or she intended. And even in the mindset that this is a moral issue, no-one, even RMS, is going to come around and *force* you to GPL your software (except for some very misguided people)--persuade, argue, cajole, perhaps.
If the GPL is so damned free, and so good, can I, as a creator of a piece of software, remove the software that I originally placed under GPL if I decided to sell it later on? No you say? Not too free then, is it. Does the GPL allow me to sell my software at all (beyond the price of the medium of distribution)? What? No again? I don't really see how it is protecting my rights then...
The point of the article is that /dev/zero is not good enough, since it's possible to read what's "underneath" the zeros if you have the right equipment. Writing pseudorandom data is slightly better, and writing multiple passes of random data is even better. However, as someone else once said, the only truely secure deletion method is a smelter. :-)
If urandom doesn't do it, you can just leave the drive a little too close to your favourite woofer. Really, though, it seems a little bit extreme. So you sell your drive and the person you sell it to gets your child pr0n, big deal.
Well, be careful, Bruce, Godwin's law is just around the corner.
But, ethics are illogical, or rather, down the path of pure logic and scientific reasoning lies the mindset of the sociopath. That's why science has such strong ethical principles, it's not because they easily derive from science and logic, but because scientists see that their work would be on a slippery slope if they didn't intertwine ethics and science. It might be good for science, but they would lose sight of the higher goal, to further mankind.
And that might be what Tim O'Reilly has lost, in all his capitalist, market liberalist fury. The sight of higher goals.
--Joakim Ziegler
...or is the winds turning back in RMS' and GNU/FSF's favour? It seemed just a few days ago that people were falling over themselves to get distance from RMS (even though the refrain has usually been "I'll agree with him this once", over and over again), and everyone was shouting "ESR and Open Source is so much better".
Yet now, it seems so many more have taken to their senses, and see things with a lot less bias. I'm insanely happy about it. Maybe we can get back to where we were, writing free software, and furthering knowledge and sharing.
--Joakim Ziegler
RMS doesn't want to force people to write free software either. Neither does he believe it all must be free. This is one of the major misconceptions about RMS.
Rather, he says that "The software that isn't free, is none of my business, I want nothing to do with it, I'm not going to use it". And, often, he sees that some proprietary software fulfills a need, so he sets out to create (or encourage the creation of) a free alternative.
He's not forcing anyone. However, when you write proprietary software, know that RMS or some other moral soul will come along and make a free alternative to your package. That's fairness.
Aside from that, you make the basic mistake of thinking "free" means "zero cost" in your last paragraph (as well as, it seems, equating physical and intellectual property rights).
Creating free software or not is your choice. Ignoring proprietary software is the user's business. Making a free alternative is the moral programmer's business (some feel it's an obligation, but mostly they feel it's their own obligation).
--Joakim Ziegler
Very true.
However, is this wrong? When looking at it rationally, is Intellectual Property a logical, natural concept, on par with physical property rights?
However, I think we're coming to a point very soon where IP law is no longer relevant for software. As free software turns out to be better, cheaper, and more attractive to everyone, and increased Internet bandwidth and storage capacity allows piracy to wipe out the ruins of the proprietary software industry, perhaps the battlefield for whether or not IP is a good thing will be in the fields of media and entertainment. Ironic, since these might be some of the only industries even more corrupt and full of artificially inflated profits than software.
It'll be there, and it'll be fierce. Hopefully, we can emerge with a world where the producer of information is dethroned, and where everybody becomes less of a passive consumer in the process.
As for software, I hate to be premature, but I think it's already won. We're into the glorious drudgery of finishing up now.
--Joakim Ziegler
I have to hand it to you, Bruce, you shoved some character there. Of course, I kind of thought the problem was evident pretty early on, but still, better late than never.
Good to see you're back to writing code. I bet ESR hasn't been doing all that much of that lately.
--Joakim Ziegler
Too bad his position is proven to be what we feared it was. "I fail to see the moral dimension" means that he has no morals in these issues. "A matter of science" is simply misleading. Science has very strong ethical guidelines, first of al, and secondly, it's mostly done for the furtherment of mankind in general, not to (for instance) sell a lot of books about UN*X administration.
Also, I resent the reference to RMS' position as religious. It's not religious, it's moral and ethical, and it's also consistent and well thought-through. Of course Tim doesn't want RMS to be right, Tim gets all his profits from Intellectual "property" monging, and RMS is staunchly anti-IP, and very good at pointing out why IP is an artificial restriction of people's rights, and has little to do with physical property laws.
So, Tim has an agenda, and it's all about money. RMS has an agenda too, and it's all about the freedom of the users. You choose which side you're on.
--Joakim Ziegler
The marketplace is a wonderful, Darwinian model. Let products, services, etc. flourish. Only the best ones will survive.
Keep in mind that best can mean a lot of things. WordPerfect has always been a crappy word processor. Yet it had the best customer support and that made it the best-selling program in its class until Microsoft came up with a better one.
Eugene
Your mind is your only judge of truth--and if others dissent from your verdict, reality is the court of final appeal. -- Ayn Rand
http://eugeneciurana.com | http://ciurana.eu
since it seemed to be a good way to make the idea of free software more palatable to the media and to timid corporate entities.
But now I'm starting to swing back in the other direction, because people are becoming fixated on "zero-cost", forgetting about the idea of being able to control your computing environment.
Should write an essay about this...
If US Govt. software procurement procedures were amended to favor GPL-ed software over proprietary products, then our taxes would be better spent.
Capitalism is an ideology just as is socialism or many of the other *isms. In the US this ideology is so deeply ingrained that most people mistake it for an objective world-view. It certainly is nothing more one of the many ideologies.
When you read or hear the phrase,
"Let the marketplace decide."
substitute the phrase,
"Let the marketing department with the biggest budget decide for you and I."
No thanks!
I value freedom over short-term profits.
Cheers,
smithdog
it's not surprising that with the force of guns the the government behind them, proprietary software could "beat out" free software.
by letting the Darwinian model flourish, i hope you don't mean that murder is ok.
__
Scott Draves
# RMS doesn't want to force people to write free software either. Neither
# does he believe it all must be free. This is one of the major
# misconceptions about RMS.
What he DOES say is that you cannot mix his free software with yours unless you agree to his terms (i.e., make your software free). He DOES want to force people to write free software in that sense. And this is the primary philosophical differences.
RMS wants to force people to make free software whenever he can (which is only achieved by the copyleft). He wants everyone to use free software as long as they come into his free software world and don't leave. He wants a separation between free and nonfree software. He want two sets of water fountains, he wants clear delineation between fronts and backs of the bus.
Me, I just want people to use my software, and to destroy as many barriers to that goal as possible. cf. Artistic License.
Nonsense. I don't care what Bruce or Richard would have you believe. For some people and companies -- like Apple and Netscape -- money is an issue. But Tim is defending the Artistic License as much as any in opposition to the GPL, and money is not an issue with that.
It is not about the money. I don't know why people continue to think that it is. We are dealing with philosophical and religious issues of much higher significance than mammon.
I am licensing most of my code only under the AL (except code that must be GPL/AL because it may be distributed as part of a larger GPL/AL work) because I do not want to restrict people, period. I want people to use my code. If they want to incorporate it into a pay product, great. Wonderful.
I don't know how it is reasonable to say this has anything to do with "money talks". And I don't know how the AL resricts anyone's freedom, including the community's.
You don't have to like the AL. You may believe that all software based on free software in any way should also be free. But this is a religious belief that I and many other people do not share, and it is not about money.
Ethics are not illogical. At least, mine are not. I believe only what I can come to logically (to my mind, of course).
I see with the moral dimension of free software. That said, I have no problem with those who don't. Why should I? I am a Christian, and I do not have a problem with those who don't believe in the inerrancy of Scripture as originally written. I am a Libertarian, and I do not have problem with people who believe that government should take our responsibility away so that government can take care of us.
Now, I will, of course, argue against opposing views when it is required of me. But people have a right to believe what they want, and they will believe differently. This is one of the constants in life. There is no empirical evidence that shows that Free Software is morally right. It is a philosophical, religious, belief, and one that I mostly agree with.
But just as Jews and Christians and Mormons and Muslims can get together and do good things in the areas they agree, why is it that we in the free software community cannot do the same?
I suppose every religion needs its terroristic zealots, but perhaps we can minimize those here in the name of promoting free software.
I'd rather that RMS, ESR, Tim, etc. just stated their differences and opinions and then we went on our way. To keep drudging up the same disagreements over and again is not, to my mind, useful. Instead we could be promoting the things we do agree on, together.
I don't see the morality involved in eating meat. Some people do. I don't see the morality involved in watching TV. Some people do. I don't see the morality involved in driving a gasoline-powered car. Some people do.
:)
I see the morality involved in abortion. Some people don't. I see the morality involved in free software. Some people don't. I see the morality involved in rooting for the Boston Bruins. Most people don't.
This is a religious issue. If you resent that, then there's nothing I can do about it. I resent that you say Tim's agenda is all about money. Of course, there's probably nothing you can do about that.
So because many software companies do what you consider wrong, it is OK for GNU to do the same? Something about two wrongs not making a right comes to mind.
I think I can blame them for it. However, I normally don't. I just try to disagree and go on my way. You'll notice that most of my comments on the issue are in defense of Tim and non-GPL, not specifically against RMS and GPL. The quote you correctly attributed to me was not meant to be an attack on RMS.
I notice you did not disagree with what I said, only with the tenor I used. Realize I was not trying to make RMS look bad or attacking him, but only trying to show my perceptions of the reality of his beliefs.
If you share his belief of free software supremacy, proprietary software bigotry, and separatism of the two, as is your right, then that's fine. I won't vilify you for it (I also probably won't defend you against those who do, but that's OK, plenty of others will). But I want people to understand that the GPL does stand for this kind of separatism and bigotry. If people think that it is good in spite of or because of that, fine.
Are you quite finished filling O'Reilly's mouth with words? It sure looks like you've allowed your prejudices to colour your judgement on what is a very innocuous statement to the press.
While I wouldn't dream of trying to speak for Mr. O'Reilly, did you consider that perhaps his opening statement was merely an attempt to diffuse a potential damaging tone for the article?
Any reporter calling up O'Reilly or RMS or ESR and asking a question as baited as "focus on how you disagree" is just a few short hops away from a headline like "FREE SOFTWARE COMMUNITY HOPELESSLY DIVIDED" or "PHILOSOPHICAL DISPUTES TO BE THE DOWNFALL OF FREE SOFTWARE?"
Personal conflicts always make for good stories, I'm sure, and it's a very fine line that these guys have to walk with the press.
As much as we may try to make this a personal struggle between icons, it's not, and I think it's absurd to try to fault O'Reilly for keeping the discussion in the appropriate arena.
And for the record, I think his statement is quite accurate. Their beliefs are not as dissimilar as some here would make them out to be.
Except you, eh? Everyone except you was crazy.
Everyone except you, huh?
Bruce Perens.
It's as if he's saying that ethics are in some way illogical, or that Adam Smith's invisible hand is somehow superior to ethics.
It just doesn't seem like a very mature viewpoint.
Bruce>
Bruce Perens.
Bruce
Bruce Perens.
Thanks
Bruce
Bruce Perens.
I'm not sure I buy your points, but I'm willing to drop the argument.
Bruce
Bruce Perens.
Bruce
Bruce Perens.
So, I wrote two more GPL-ed programs last week. You'll find them in the "contrib" directory of the next releases of Mailman and Webalizer. How many programs did Tim O'Reilly write last week?
The BSD license was originaly used because the software was paid for by the U.S. Government, out of our taxes. It made sense for everyone to be able to take that software private. It doesn't make nearly as much sense for my own work.
Bruce Perens
Bruce Perens.
Bruce
Bruce Perens.
Bruce
Bruce Perens.
I was trying to get Eric to lay off of Stallman for quite a long time, but he acted as if he wasn't really conscious that he was doing it. I tried to get Stallman on to the OSI board, the others opposed that.
I would never have started to work on Open Source if I'd understood Eric's intentions. Much of his agenda was not stated when he recruited me.
Bruce
Bruce Perens.
I consider an operating system to be a kernel, vital and shared libraries, shared tools, and the desktop(so apps don't have to be rewritten).
I use an open source, forkable without consequence, Operating system so that I will not be held hostage by one company. I believe this raquet style customer hearding to be bad for me and every other person who uses it. As long as I can save to common file types and use my OS to force my apps to behave, then any licence for apps is acceptable.
Don't forget this is about freedom of choice for all not one religion.
Novel theory: Modern Man evolved from psychopath
Who didn't know that erased data could be recovered? Back in the days of DOS the Norton Utilities had a program called Diskwipe that would iterate over either your entire disk or just the unused parts. It was configurable to do as many passes as you specified and could write zeros, a user specified pattern, or random data. The manual clearly explained that a single pass was not adequate to guard against extreme recovery methods.
Do we make software free because we have to, or because we want to? I argue that we want to. The free movement of ideas always trumps restrictions on ideas in terms of innovation and quality. So let Open Source be tested in the marketplace, not in the pulpit!
The last sentence implies two things: O'Rielly's philosophy relies on the strengh of Open Source in the marketplace, whereas the FSF philosophy degenerates into petty arguments on morality and ethics. (We all know that the marketplace transcends morality and ethics, now don't we?) But O'Reilly's decision to use a word with a negative connotation isn't what confuses me: It's the way he worked up to it.
"Free movement of ideas always trumps restrictions on ideas..." This is not very controversial -- both Stallman and O'Reilly would agree to this much. However, with the use of the two simple letters s-o, he implies that this statement supports his marketplace, not Stallman's pulpit.
Not only is that suggestion blantly wrong, it's not even supported in his essay.
I think I read somewhere that the DoD standard was to write all 1s, then all 0s, then all 1s again... or was it 0,1,0... whatever. Seems like that would destroy any remnants of data that may be lurking?
The government has the tech to read residules untill it has been overwritten *7* passes... I say burn the disk!
People like 'the marketplace' because its some kind of objective test of whether something works. Its no substitute for beauty or functionality, but it is an imperfect judge of those things. To find whether something works for most people it is better to see whether they buy it than to listen to the prophets rant about it.
This, as far as I'm concerned, is balderdash. While it is certainly generous for software authors to give away their work, there is absolutely nothing intrinsically wrong with choosing not to do so. Stallman denies this, and his insistence upon it is what makes him such an irritant. Being an advocate for free software is one thing; RMS would condemn all authors of proprietary code to hell if he could, I suspect.
DFL
Never send a human to do a machine's job.
Stallman denies that proprietary software can even *be* ethical. Unless I've totally misunderstood him (and I'd be happy to be corrected), his view is that to release proprietary software is intrinsically unethical.
Stallman's ethical consideration here is, as I said, hogwash. O'Reilly doesn't need to defend his views about free software; RMS needs to defend his ludicrous ideas about proprietary software being evil just because it's proprietary. And really, they're indefensible as far as I'm concerned -- they're completely disconnected from reality.
DFL
Never send a human to do a machine's job.
DoD standard is likely the NSA standard which repeatedly writes 0x55AA to the disk. /dev/random does just as well though. If you need to destroy your data in a hurry though, I would suggest fire.
I've finally had it: until slashdot gets article moderation, I am not coming back.
The marketplace has given no ideas? Every single advance in sailing (until it achieved military application at sea itself) was made in pursuit of trade. Just because the marketplace isn't the end-all embodiment of virtue and endeavor doesn't make it dull, dead, or in any way worthless.
I've finally had it: until slashdot gets article moderation, I am not coming back.
It is most certainly zealotry to not allow the creator of a work a choice over the distribution of his software. RMS claims software is like water or air, when it's more like a water wheel or a windmill. Perhaps no one can truly own the ideas, but the application of those ideas are a creation that can only come about from the effort of its creator.
It's not the GPL that removes the author's choice in this moral view, it's the piracy that RMS condones.
I've finally had it: until slashdot gets article moderation, I am not coming back.
And if you don't MIND if people release non-free modifications of your code, so long as you are credited (as the BSD license requires), then you'd arguably be more inclined to think of the BSD license as granting you the author more freedom. If you want to be credited and not see your work twisted into something broken, then the Artistic License is more up your alley. And if you want to ensure that your work will remain free only to those who will keep it free, then GPL is for you.
Getting the picture? RMS is a user's advocate, something the world desperately needs. I just wish he would TRUST the authors once in a while too.
I've finally had it: until slashdot gets article moderation, I am not coming back.
I would tend to agree with all your points except slavery. Slavery is employment (involuntary), which is itself an economic system (macro), but it removes the free choice of those who are forced into the system. Thus it's command economy at its ugliest.
I've finally had it: until slashdot gets article moderation, I am not coming back.
first off, /dev/zero isnt good enough, as there would be reidual magnetic forces from the old data . multiple passes from /dev/rand would obscure the pattern better, but a truly motivated agancy could probably still recover your data. Physical destruction of the disk is the only 100% sure way to destroy the data, if you have data to hide, keep it all on zip disks, they burn faster than an aluminum hard drive...
0 1 - just my two bits
That depends on how secure you want it to be. Large governmental bodies have great talent at getting data out of tape that should be unrecoverable. The only safe way is to totally destroy and obliterate the tape. But what the heck could an INDIVIDUAL have on a tape that needs to be that secret? Wait, umm. I don't want to know.
Looking through previous comments, I've seen nothing about `Renaming of the LGPL'.
Am I the only one who is feeling nauseous when reading 'The LGPL is a compromise that is required sometimes but generally disliked.' ?
Now, not only does RMS and his church have opinions, but everyone generally agrees with them ?
Next year, this season, we will probably learn that RMS programmed Linux all by himself...
GPL software is not free. You can't do what you want with it. LGPL is a little better. That whole schmuck of changing the license is a bit like pulling the carpet off...
Now that RMS got loads of collaborations from lots of people, and that he's got a system which works, more or less, under GPL (that fabled GNU Linux, the one the rest of the world calls Linux), it looks like he feels he can say `thanks for all the free code. Now, you'd better switch to the GPL, or you won't be able to use the next release of LGPL'd stuff.'
Heard about Darwin ? the dodo bird ? soviet union ?
There's ideology, and then there's reality. Free software should prevail because it's better, not because this is How Things Should Be.
If free software has to compete with commercial software, it just has to *stay* better. The GPL is just complacent.
Why do I bother arguing ? There is no valid technological point there, this is plain religion and ideology...
Well, yeah. /dev/zero would be just a little bit better. But I think the point behind the article (which I skimmed) is that on a hardware level, or lower still on a magnetic level, electromagnetic traces will remain, and you need to use that nifty shred program, which I guess writes zeroes and ones over and over or something. (Anyone know for sure what it does?)
Note to Rob/Hemos/anyone else: I think the comments are overcounted by one on the main page. Not a major bug, but weird. At least to me..
Conor
Programmer, Consultant, Geek, CTYer.
What's the best way, short of the furnace, to securely erase an 8mm tape? Shred doesn't look like it's designed for that sorta thing...
-- Don't Tase me, bro!
I think that the best way winds up being the furnace, actually. I doubt that your tape drive will let you move the tape head to make sure that the edges of the tracks are wiped, and as far as decaussing goes, the article claims that high-quality magnetic tapes require absurdly high field strengths to erase.
You could play with some of the EMP gadgets described in a previous slashdot article, but I think that chucking the tape in the fireplace and buying a new one would be the path of least cost/effort if you really want the data irrevocably eradicated.
OTOH, I don't personally see why this is a concern to most users. I doubt that NSA goons are going to be taking your hard drives and floppies into the lab any time soon
If free software is really in the interests of users, then the opinions of the users must count.
IMO, whether or not a person has actually written code _does_ influence the weight of their opinions.
Someone who uses software but doesn't write it has a strong vested interest in one side of the issue - the user's - and very little in another - the programmer's. From a _practical_ standpoint, free software really is free beer to the user, as they don't contribute much back to the development community (5 minutes of beta testing does not equal 5 hours or 5 days of coding). This doesn't mean that their opinions have no value - but it means that I'll take rabidly pro-free-software posts from people who have never written software with a large grain of salt. Well-reasoned posts I'll still listen to. These do appear every so often, for both sides.
Coders, no matter which side of the open/free/proprietary fence they sit on, at least have the experience of both using and _writing_ software. They know exactly how much effort goes into it, and what most of the issues involved are. IMO, this makes them intrinsically better able to understand the merits and drawbacks of both positions, and so I personally give their opinions more weight (though I'll still ignore blatantly irrational posts, from both sides). The ideal poster would be one who has written both (open and/or free) and proprietary software on a regular basis, and who uses many software packages regularly. Regrettably, I don't yet fall into this category, but a few people here do.
Call me fascist if you like, but at some point common sense has to step in. Is this unfairly discriminatory? IMO, no, as anyone who wants me to take them more seriously has the option of either presenting a well-thought out argument, writing actual code, or both.
Sorry for the rant, but a large number of the posts on slashdot have demonstrated a nearly complete absence of thought, and it's starting to get to me
Whenever phrases like "moral dimension" start cropping up, I get worried, because it generally leads to a lot of vague arguing with little basis on anything tangible - including morals, ethics, or what-have-you. So, I'm going to list a few questions that I think all posters would do well to consider before using "morality" as a justification for their arguments. I don't think that such arguments are necessarily invalid - only that a lot of justification and reasoning tends to be skipped, with the result that the final positions are precarious at best.
Questions that should be addressed are:
Substitute "ethics" or whatever other word you're using for "morality" above if you like. If you appeal to several entities in your argument (e.g. both "morality" and "ethics", if you have different definitions to them), then duplicate the "morality" section above and answer the questions for each of the entities you are appealing to.
These questions represent the groundwork that determines how and to what extent various factors can be used as support in arguments. The importance and reasons for importance of things like money are well-understood and generally agreed upon by most people, so these arguments are usually skipped. OTOH, the importance and reasons for importance of things like morality are hazy, and different people will tend to have _very_ different opinions on them. This doesn't mean that that things like morality *aren't* important - just that you can't skip the above steps if you want to invoke morality, ethics, or what-have-you in an argument.
So, it would behoove all involved to re-state their arguments with this information explicitly spelled out, if they want to be able to effectively debate with each other.
Meanwhile, I'll step back from this thread. Precisely because few people agree on these points and everyone tends to just assume arbitrary positions, discussions based on "morality" tend to lead to Holy Wars and little else.
The government has the tech to read residules untill it has been overwritten *7* passes.
This might be true if there wasn't a deliberate attempt to permanently erase the data. As the article mentions, you can get residual information stored at the edges of tracks, or deep within the magnetic medium if the temperature has changed in just the right way since the original recording.
However, the erasure methods described in the article seem pretty thorough.
Also, the default method given uses on the order of 20 passes IIRC, with 20 different patterns.
Get real. The fact that O'Rielly is successfull only serves to illuminate the failings of GPL and the like. Feel free to write your own meticulous documentation any time you want to. I've yet to see a SINGLE piece of free/open electronic documentation that even comes close to comparing with O'Reilly's. Do you really honestly believe that GPL'd software can and will meet every software need? I, like Tim, believe that Open licenses do have certain advantages. However, I do not believe for a minute that it will ever replace the majority of commercial/propietary software.
When you are born do you have god given right to land, to property, etc. Are you entitled to more land than another individual? All of these concepts are inventions of society. But all of these concepts are neccessary for a healthy society. While there may be some inequity in the system, that does not mean we should abolish it entirely.
If I were to sell a piece of software and keep the source private, the only restriction being that you can't copy the binary, how would this actually take something away from your 'freedom'. Granted it may be nice if you could have it for free, but its not as if it is somehow detracting from your life style. GPL equivelents could still attempt to duplicate my product without abusive patents. The publishing and recording industry really isn't any different from the software industry. They borrow sounds and themes from each other all the time. I happen to believe that one should have the right to the product of their own mind. I do not believe that 'obvious' patents are truely a product of ones' own mind. IP is responsible for most of the major software products. GPL and open alternatives are few and lacking more often than not. How can Stallman honestly say that Joe Schmoe would be better served if no one were entitled to monopoly rents on the product of their own mind, when the 'free' industry has produced damn little that the average user is interested in? Or are you honestly going to tell me that Emacs is well suited for the average user? You might argue that 'free' software hasnt been around that long, but I atleast dont buy that argument for a minute. Many innovations have been made since, and GPL software hasn't kept pace. I don't think it ever will for a multitude of reasons.
I think the best thing that could happen for the free/open software movement would be a cleaning up of IP. eg: fix the software patent system. Restrict frivilous lawsuits. Free/open software and commercial/propietary software can coexist for the most part, they'd both be best served this way.
The marketplace has given us no ideas, no beauty, no creation. People have given us those things -- often in disregard of the marketplace which can offer only material rewards.
So, to hell with the marketplace. Even in the most utopian of marketplace ideals, it is dull and dead. Thankfully not everyone has given up on thought and, yes, morallity for the seductive void of the marketplace.
Right on.
-j
"Christianity neither is, nor ever was a part of the common law." --
He thinks that software should be free, even if its creators don't want it to be. (And so, for example, if you write some piece of software he likes, he thinks it is his right, and perhaps even his obligation, to clone it and make his version free.)
Is O'Reilly suggesting that Stallman is the only one who thinks we've got a right to clone other peoples' products? I don't think that's the case, because cloning, per se, is as popular among proprietary developers as among free ones. I mean, you'd have to walk an awful damn long way to find anybody at all who'd tell you you don't have a perfect right to clone somebody else's program. (All the way to Cupertino
Hmmph. Given the "And so . .
I'm not quite sure why O'Reilly has this thing going on about Stallman, anyway. [insert standard yeah-i-got-a-shelf-of-O'Reilly-books disclaimer]
-j
"Christianity neither is, nor ever was a part of the common law." --
But what the heck could an INDIVIDUAL have on a tape that needs to be that secret? Wait, umm. I don't want to know.
There was recently a discussion on alt.activism.children on this very topic. That should give you some idea. Of course, if I were a poster to that newsgroup who was, ahh, one of the ones advocating that ``the insane rules of society be removed'' (I'll let you guess which ones), I would certainly move my computer next to my oven, keep it at 300 C all day, and be prepared to stick my fixed disk and tapes in it as soon as the dark vans park in front.
Please do not intepret my comments as belittiling to those who suffer from the various paraphilias; I am simply making a statement based on personal observation of many different people's fixed disks which we filled to the brim with files with interesting filenames--the great thing about encrypted Zip files is that you can see the filenames.
Cheers,
Joshua.
--jon. Postel is dead. May we all mourn his, and our, loss.
Societies which pursue this fanatical view are destined to fail in the long run, just as the attempt to removethe market from society in the Soviet Union ended in tears. Those who take the sensible middle road, seeking neither to deify nor to destroy the market, will triumph in the long run.
I agree. The marketplace is somewhat like how we humans are born, the way we eat food, or going to the toilet--these are all very important things, and without them we'd be doomed (unable to last beyond 80 years, unable to go without starving for three weeks, and filled with toxins and overhydrated), but they aren't something wonderful, either. No-one wants to celebrate eating or going to toilet, although some, such as the editors of Gentle Spirit Magazine, want to glorify childbirth.
The marketplace is a fact of our survival but is not some wonderful deity and is neither a magic solution for the ills that ail humanity.
Cheers,
Joshua.
--jon. Postel is dead. May we all mourn his, and our, loss.
Humans are already trafficked, it's just not normally described so bluntly.
This is defintely true. Serious--as in slavery in the style of the 1860's American--is in full swing in the Northern Sudan. Villages in the south or routinely rounded up, the resistant ones killed, the women raped, and the children taken to marketplaces in the north. There are few other places where it is this blatant, but it is certainly happening. Most people just don't know about it.
Trafficking in underpaid labor is also a lesser form of slavery. Take a look at your regular consumer goods and see how much was made in China, which is a terrible place to live in terms of human rights or property rights. But every U.S. company wants to do business with China because there's so much cheap labor there! (Interestingly enough, no-one wins except the oligarchs in this sitatuation--the American consumer gets inferior goods, the American and multinational corporation really does not make more money, and the Chinese laborer gets to make junk for terrible wages for 16 hours a day.)
I'm not so sure about my name and address being sold as trafficking in human souls--there are simply things so much more serious than that taking place that need to be addressed and aren't.
Cheers (or no, as the case may be),
Joshua.
--jon. Postel is dead. May we all mourn his, and our, loss.
I haven't seen this site in a while. I haven't seen a victimisation of HTML like this in a long time! The web server is also weird: Netscape wants me to retreive a plugin for text/html...
Cheers as always,
Joshua.
--jon. Postel is dead. May we all mourn his, and our, loss.
My own "children" are 26, 24, 22, 19, 14, 12, 10, 8, 6, and 2 now, and I have four grandbabies - Elizabeth Lillian (Betsy), 3, Meadow Anne, 2, Victoria Sophia (Tori), 2, and Judah Randolph, my very first grandboy, 1. Betsy and Tori belong to my son Roland and his wife, Joci, and Meadow and Judah belong to John and Amy. Roland and John work at a company owned by Bill Gates and they have done so well. Roland was recently promoted to Technical Integrations Manager and John is the Help Desk lead for the same company. They earn great salaries and live together with their families in the same house about an hour's drive from me, and this has made visiting convenient.
I just love it when Christians who think they are as seperate from the ``world'' as can be end up participating in the worst of the world's systems to the fullest extent. Ask Cheryl Lindsey what she thinks of `free software' is and she'd probably think you were talking about Internet Explorer.
Oh well. This is rather offtopic--forgive me.
--jon. Postel is dead. May we all mourn his, and our, loss.
different people's fixed disks which we filled to the brim with files
WHOOPS. Change that `we' to `were'. The only interesting files which which we've (I do sometimes refer to myself in the plural number) filled up people's disks bear names like `core'.
--jon. Postel is dead. May we all mourn his, and our, loss.
Secondly, many thanks to Rob Malda (fear the taco) and Hemos for their recent decision regarding adding moderators. I am pleased I can do something to prevent the USENET effect on /. Once we got over the initial flood of ``gee, I seem to be getting the first post, where is everybody'' the amount of intelligent conversation really seems to have improved (and I'm someone who has my threshold at -99).
On to the O'Reilly article.
Some Open Source licenses, such as the Berkeley-style license used by FreeBSD, Apache, the X Window System, and much of the Internet infrastructure software--is truly free. You can do anything you like with it--including building a proprietary derivative that is not free--as long as you acknowledge the copyright of the creator.
The UC Berkeley licence has a serious problem: it dictates to your marketing strategy. If you intend to follow the licence, you must have a plug to Berkeley in every commercial. Of course, I don't think very many people do; when was the last time you saw it in a Sun commercial? However, I find the BSD licence disturbing because I believe in doing everything as morally and as ethically as possible, and the BSD licence makes that difficult.
Why do people like O'Reilly like licences such as the MIT licence (or the BSD/Apache/FreeType/&c. licence) which allow you to take formerly open code and turn it into something proprietary and closed? Because it lets you profit from other people's work. Sun Microsystems had a free operating system written for them by UC's bright and young students when they coopted 4BSD for SunOS 2. What did we get back from it? Nothing. In effect, companies, including O'Reilly's organisation, get something for nothing with such licences.
The GPL prevents this sort of abuse. You're free to take the code, compile it, and sell binaries, but you may not restrict other people's freedom to use what is my code! Likewise, I won't tell you what to do: you don't have to submit patches to me, and you don't even have to follow my dictums for advertising strategy.
There is also a pragmatic reason (which appears to be O'Reilly's modus operandi for making decisions) for using GNU style licences: it prevents the kind of code forking that's happend with BSD software. Compare SunOS 4.1 and NetBSD: they're quite different and incompatible. The only code fork of which I can think of that has happened to GPLd software is the emacs and xemacs split, which was more due to the different needs of a true X11-based editor and a grid-based text editor.
Be wary of those who want you to give them something for nothing but who do not give anything back in return. Licence your code with the GPL and rest assured no-one can steal your work or limit your freedom.
Cheers,
Joshua.
--jon. Postel is dead. May we all mourn his, and our, loss.
The marketplace has given us no ideas, no beauty, no creation. People have given us those things--often in disregard of the marketplace which can offer only material rewards.
I cannot agree more. People have made a god out of the supposed invisible hand of the marketplace. What does opensource have to do with the marketplace? If anything, the marketplace wants GNU copylefted software, not licences that leave you and your code splayed open for anyone to come and take a piece of your software for their own purposes without giving anything back in return. There is much more GPL'd software than MIT-style (or BSD-style, &c.) licenced software.
The marketplace has spoken. Bow down and do as it speaks. You shall GPL your software. You shall not use BSD licences. The Marketplace Has Spoken.
If anything, I see a trend away from competitive marketplaces: every large corporation seems to love a lack of competition--witness the recent surge in mergers even though 3 out of 4 mergers by one analyst's analysis are bad for stockholders, the corporation, their employees, and their customers (see recent article in the Journal).
In a true ``marketplace'', humans should be trafficked like anything else: children bought and sold and slaves available on the open market. After all, that's what people want! Cheap labor is important!
I do almost all of what I do because I believe it is right--not because I believe it will let me make lots of money or because I believe it will give me an advantage to gain earthly benefit.
Probably the largest financial transfer in the world--that of parents to their children--takes place outside of the marketplace and is governed only by the law of love. After all, there's no compelling financial interest to feed children, provide them a safe home, spend lots of time with the, give them a good education. &c. Why bother? Think about how much more money we could make if we all stopped reproducing!
I am simply glad there are people like Stallman who realise money is not all there is, and is not even related to happiness.
Cheers,
Joshua.
--jon. Postel is dead. May we all mourn his, and our, loss.
there are actually several different file wipers available. freshmeat has two of them. my version of wipe is at: metalab and freshmeat.
the next version will add block device support for linux. anyone know how to get block device sector counts under *bsd? in linux, it's a BLKGETSIZE ioclt
seriously people, read his paper. it's very interesting and well written. it's what inspired me to write wipe. especially since he already came up with those byte patterns. ;)
Yes, that's true, except that in theory, even if you overwrite as you describe, there is enough residual magnetetic information on the disk that someone who is really determined can still get the information off of it.
/dev/random would be better. Using shred is best. You may want to note that there are actually government standards for erasing sensitive data that programs like shred will often try to meet.
Someone like Drivesavers might be able to do that.
Using something like
And if the originator of GPL'd code wants to make a proprietary derivative, they can. All they have to do is take the source code they wrote, ask other copyright holders for permission, and they can. There is nothing to stop them. The BSD license, on the other hand, allows the original implimentator, and anyone else, to make a derivative work of other people's code.
The GPL is much more protective of *all* the author's and *all* the user's/debugger's rights than any other license out there. That's why I like GPL'd code. If it wasn't for someone making an originally crappy GPL'd implementation of a non-GPL'd product, we'd all be stuck in a proprietary morass, without our now nice working GPL'd alternatives.
I think that quoted statement above was particularly funny. After all, the grand marketplace is the reason for cloned products, denigrating this aspect of it seems hypocritical. Sure it's not fun when someone else "steals" your idea, but where did you get your idea from in the first place? emacs/vi/gcc/whatever may have started off as knock-offs of some other product, but they didn't stay that way, and that's why they're so successful.
Yes they do (or at least some do). Encouraging people to invent is THE major reason the patent process was created in the USA.
You seem to be crying an equally large river, because Stallman doesn't see the issue the same way you do.
An author may have chosen to make some software proprietary, but that doesn't mean I have to treat it as such. Their decision doesn't have to bind me if I don't want it to. (Though I don't do the pirate/warez scene, because I'm moderately high on the paranoia scale.)
The scientist is taking logic and the scientific method on faith. It's a good thing to do (IMO), but realize what you are doing.
That said, experientially speaking logic has a lot more to go for it than most other articles of faith (for me at least).
"By saying 'religious' he means someone who is more interested in
staying true to their beliefs than looking at the world around them,
while by scientific you would think the opposite - someone who is more
interested in discovering the world around them than paying attention
to what people may strongly believe in."
Isn't the concept that discovering the world around you is positive also a matter of belief? Don't let your deep belief of this concept delude you into believing that it is something more than just a strongly held belief.
To paraphrase Miles Vorkosigan (From Bujold's Books), "then maybe, just maybe, everyone's wrong but me." Sometimes everyone else IS crazy, the universe is a large place, it's bound to happen sometime.
The thoughts and phrases that pass through slashdot and the rest of the universe are part of that evolutionary world. People who tell others to stop crying, the world isn't fair so deal with it, etc... are just trying to brainwash others into passivety, thereby making it easier for their world-view/product to triumph. If they succeed in doing that, I guess they've shown that their way of doing things is, at least in the short-term, successful.
So, to all others who believe in the innate capability of the FS world, don't give up just becaus someone says you should! (or I'll be left all alone, and it's better for my ideological fitness that I'm not alone.)
I agree with your proposition, and follow it in life, but the only thing that forces me to follow it is my own conscience. My words were meant as debate, not flame.
;-).
I have used warez before. To me it was fully rationalized under the precipe that I couldn't afford the product anyway, so I was helping myself at the expense of no one else. The standard morality of fair play and legality do not force anyone into certain actions. It can be seen with people such as Gates, Pizarro, etc... that those who go against what most others see as right can benefit greatly. This doesn't make it Right (tm) but it makes it evolutionarily fit.
Looking back at my original post, I see where the "flame" comment came from. Sorry, but I was just responding to your "whine" comment in your original article with a dose of irony. (And yes, I realize the irony fully attaches to me as well. Complaining about people complaining about people complaining is about as ironic and redundant as you can get.) No harm meant
Research type stuff falls under a BSD-like license (ie. bibliographies and footnotes). I'll concede the other aspects of it (no plagiarism here!). It's alot easier to copy something out of a book than to copy a ui/api/etc..., at least for most people. This gives, or has given, enough protection for most cases.
For shredding your hardrive you'd wanna use:
/dev/null will give you an eof char, so maybe it messes up your partition/boot table, but leaves the content of the drive intact. /dev/zero on the other hard, outputs the character 0 to infinity ... thus dd will write 0's all over your HD ... destroying your disk ... totaly! :)
dd if=/dev/zero of=/dev/hda
-- Chris Chabot
"I dont suffer from insanity, i enjoy every minute of it!"
One thing we might ask is why Tim feels the need to start his column by suggesting that he and RMS are perhaps very similar. This comment is not followed up in (or even justified by) the rest of the column. My feel is that he hopes that he'll get more credibility by inferring similarity to a high profile figure in the debate.
It is unfortunate that Tim has fallen victim to the cult of personality that is muddying the waters in the sea of Open Source software. We shouldn't need to engage in the rhetoric of personalities to get our points across.
Granted, this is only a column. It's not as if he's preaching to the heathens rather than the converted, or he was trying to put together a tightly knit theory on software licensing. Anything he says must be taken in this context.
It's just a pity that he didn't think that his comments could stand on their own merits, and needed them prefixed by a RMS reference.
The point being missed is that Stallman believe this for ALL software, not just GPL'ed.... GPL is fine - people who have chosen it have already made up their mind. But others are whining over other people's choices..."Oh, but he didn't use a licence which suited *MY* purposes!"
;-)
Cry me a river
Open Source. Closed Minds. We are Slashdot.
Unfortunately, whilst your 'ideology' may believe this, most societies of the world don't.
Open Source. Closed Minds. We are Slashdot.
(FYI, I support most of the principles of Free Software... just see a need for other forms too - just trying to provoke debate - not flame!) Explain to me why it doesn't bind you? You could build a clone of that software (I won't get into that argument), but saying that you will use someone's efforts in direct contradiction to their licencing is a bit off. Find something else which suits you if that's the case. Linus said that the person who writes the software creates the licence. And if we are going to attack licences, you should also *respect* them, if not agree. "I disagree with what you say/write..." :) Going out a bit more, society has chosen to make murder illegal. But that doesn't mean I have to treat it as such. Their decision doesn't have to bind me if I don't want it to. Sounds stupid? Perhaps. But software licencing is also a matter of law - just (much) more highly debated/disagreed with in circles such as this.
Open Source. Closed Minds. We are Slashdot.
Okay, granted on that point (btw, I'm not deliberately singling out your posts!)... What about more 'conventional' authorship, particularly nonfiction. Copyright there is at least partically to do with preventing other people's legitimate efforts/research/et al being claimed as someone else's.
Open Source. Closed Minds. We are Slashdot.
I should also point out that I'm in Australia
As you said, the difficulty has given a lot of protection, except when a company has the resources to throw at a project when (hopefully) other forces come into effect.
Open Source. Closed Minds. We are Slashdot.
tim oriely begins:
First off, I think that Richard thinks I differ
from him more than I do.
How could they differ more - the rest of the article goes on to talk only about the effiency of the open source development model, which RMS attached (quite well) in his critique of the apsl. i think this is just more of the redifining the question to get the answer you want.
My blog
Hell, they even sell UNFINISHED products nowadays,
development BETA versions to end-user customers!
- nr
This brings to mind a metaphor that I think is interesting: Proprietary software corresponds to asexual organisms, while free/open source software corresponds to sexual organisms. Sex is, after all, little more than the sharing of source code.
There is a fine line between stupidity and insanity. I should know, I'm standing on it.
"How many programs did Tim O'Reilly write last week?"
And your point is?
What is with this constant insistance that goes on, that only people who write software can have opinions?
If free software is really in the interests of users, then the opinions of the users must count.
That fact that you wrote two GPL'd programs last week doesn't make your opinions any more worthwhile, except with regards to those programs.
And the fact that you turn irrational and start raving on when someone posts something about Tim O'Reilly, does a lot to discredit those opinions.
Chill out dude. So you disagree strongly with Tim. I think we've all noticed that by now. There's no need to go slamming him at every opportunity.
- Zod
"Our scientific power has outrun our spiritual power. We have guided missiles and misguided men"