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Lizard Installer Released Under QPL
coolo wrote in to say that Caldera has decided to release Lizard under the QPL.
Lizard is the installer that they use for their distribution- its
fairly nice looking and appears to be exactly what novices need to
get over that whole install hump. I've heard a lot of good things
about it, so this is a pretty cool thing on their part..
"No company or person has any right whatsoever to use copyright to place restrictions on information"
What the fsck do think the GPL is!? Hamster soup! It's a frigging copyright!!! Have you ever read the GPL? I didn't think so...
If no one has the right to place restrictions on information, then I guess the FSF has no right to restrict my proprietary use of gcc now do they? Only the copyright prevents me from withholding the the source code. Hell, Microsoft could replace the VC++ backend with g++ and nothing would stop them!
Next time please engage the brain before trying to think...
A Government Is a Body of People, Usually Notably Ungoverned
Oh my god! That church uses the RSV! Don't they know that the only true Bible is the KJV! They will surely burn in hell...
A Government Is a Body of People, Usually Notably Ungoverned
I've heard a lot of good things about it, so this is a pretty cool thing on their part
This shouldnt be a cool thing. This should be expected from a company that sells _open_source_ software.
if you go to www.caldera.org/lizard it redirs you to localhost/lizard/
if you go to www.caldera.org/lizard/ it works. screwy server to say the least.
-matt
Interesting. The QPL is rather weird (this is the first time I've read it). According to one term of the license, you must distribute your modifications "in a form seperate from the Software, such as patches".
But the next term of the license says you can distribute your executable forms of the modifications+original, provided you also distribute the source to the modifications+original.
So, which one is it? Can you distribute the source with your modifications already patched in, or do you have to distribute your modifications as patches?
From looking at the screenshots, I just don't see this thing as a major innovation. Of course, I'm not a frightened-newbie, but I don't see the big difference between a mouse-enabled ASCII GUI and a QT GUI. It seems more user-friendly that the RedHat 5.2 installation (haven't tried 6.0 yet), but that mostly depends on how well it detects your hardware and what questions it asks.
/floppy", which is a simple text edit.
I'd say the two most important things in a newbie installation (that may or may not already exist, I don't know), is a part that figures out your monitor and video card for X automatically (not even picking it from and list and certainly not entering in sync values) and something that does the partitions for you. Configuring X is a hell of a problem if you don't know much about your video cards/monitors and you don't have the manuals. And it's probably impossible if you don't know anything technical about modern monitors in general. Partitions are easy for someone who understands computers, but eerie to a newbie. And it should setup fstab correctly so a fskcin' user (not root) can mount the CD-ROM and floppy just by typing "mount
Yeah. I don't see how QT does a thing to any of this. I really think it has more to do with abstracting the frightening details of installation than presententing the frightening details in a nice GUI. But, I suppose, if they want to play Tetris, let them play Tetris.
"the only restriction it places is that nobody is allowed to place additional restrictions on the work, it's copies, and any derivative works."
There a lot more restrictions than that! Go read it.
A Government Is a Body of People, Usually Notably Ungoverned
How can you possibly see the difference between life and death the same as the difference between free and proprietary software? One thing I will never understand is how this debate can come to a nearly religious level... this "if it's not GPL, it's evil and a violation of freedom" crap is more than I can take.
Don't get me wrong... I'm all for the GPL. I'm all for Linux. I use Linux regularly, and I use, obviously, GPL'd software regularly. I've released some software under the GPL.
And, likewise, I've worked on and released software which is not open source. Admittedly, I'd have no problem opening them up, but since they are Windows applications (yes, that's right, I do program and use Windows on occasion, and I even use Windows sometimes, because I see a computer as a tool, not as some kind of political or religious statement), I've never bothered to open them up.
But the thought the the latter is not freedom... that is just unbelievable to me. Your argument that the only freedom is the GPL restricts another freedom, that being the freedom to keep source closed, and to create a proprietary application. You seem to feel that these contradict each other, but they do not. In fact, your analogy of freedoms to life and murder seems to argue the complete opposite of the idea you propose.
The freedom to murder would be the freedom to deny others the freedom to life. Likewise, the freedom for all people to see all source code to all software denies others the freedom to close their source. So I don't think your analogy really works either way.. if it works your way at all.
So, let me ask you this: am I denying someone their freedom by not making my last English paper freely distributable? Am I denying someone their freedom by not making my root password readily available? It seems to me the freedom of disclosure--or lack thereof--is therefore held by he/she responsible for that disclosure, and nobody else. And the release of source code is, as I see it, disclosure.
The GPL is a great idea, but it is not unethical to use something else. Forgive me for continuing an off-topic discussion, but sometimes I find that I can't keep silent any longer.