That's exactly the problem. You *might* need it, *if* you are in court. but with a click-through requirement, we have the problem for sure, right now: Every user has to click and ideally read each time he installs. The loss is there, no matter, if it actually brings any value.
> You already have to do this with the Sun Java > runtime [sun.com] for Linux, which is distributed > in a "self extracting TAR ball" - read "sh script > which pipes most of its contents to gzip and then > tar after displaying the license
That's exactly the "binary" he spoke of. And I completely disagree with that. Software doing that ends up in a separated portion of my system. It is a security risk, because the user installing it has to run the software. Otherwise, you can ideally install software by *just* doing |tar xjf filename| as root, nothing else, and then run the software as any user on the system. (In fact, I worked hard to make that possible with Beonex Communicator.)
> I agree that package installers should be able > to present the software license for any package > on demand
I disagree, at least for open-source. It's going to be a nightmare to install a distro.
What if I do |apt-get update;apt-get dist-upgrade -yes| in a cron job? And a new packge is installed as new dependency of an installed app? Does the -yes apply to the license as well? Did I agree to it?
Please, NO! I thought the need to prevent exactly that was a major reason for this discussion.
I am not a lawyer. Please click here to accept that. Otherwise you are not allowed to read this post.
Back to my previous speaker: Agreed.
What if book gives you bad advise? Can you sue the author? Do I have to explicitly accept anything when buying in a shop?
Please also consider other jurisdictions. I read that click-wrap licenses here in Germany are considered a one-sided statement, not an agreement or even contract.
Another big reason against click-wrap licenses: Almost nobody reads them. Considering that, claiming that the user agreed to them by clicking "OK" or checking "Yes, I have read it" is unfair to the user at best, simply wrong and a lie at worst. This is the main reason why I reject click-wrap licenses.
(Thinking of it, my software happens to have a click-wrap license, because it's the default in the installer. I think I will follow my own argument and remove it.)
As for "other media": It is only a matter of time until the RIAA and MPAA force authorized players to let the user agree to a contract for the music he listens to. I don't want to sign a contract to listen to orinary music!
Yes, it's a truth that many end users use Mozilla. The result of that is 100% (!) noise on the development newsgroups.
Per the official mission, mozilla.org has an interest in getting testing coverage, not making a perfect browser for end-users to download. As such, many of the mozilla.org binary downloads are bigger than necessary and probably slower than necessary (compiler flags, lots of development/testing stuff included). Default prefs (sometimes hidden) are often adjusted to get maximal testing of the features. I firmly believe that Beonex Communicator is better suited even for Slashdot folks.
Yes, mozilla.org is trying to produce a browser suitable for end-users. But only as source-code, to be modified and redistributed by others with minimal effort. (But it's still enough effort to keep me busy.)
Beonex has been created, because mozilla.org didn't want to adapt to end-users. I'd be glad, if mozilla.org changed its focus, but it should be consistent. I think that the current situtation is suboptimal for both mozilla.org development and end users.
While the ultimate goal of the Mozilla project is to produce source code that can be used by other projects and companies,
the Open-Source project Beonex tries to make a browser for end-users out of it.
(See Beonex vs. Mozilla).
Beonex Communicator stays relatively true to Mozilla.
Special emphasis is being put on security and privacy. The software is configured defensively, to avoid security holes to appear in the first place.
For example, it sanitizes incoming HTML-email to the largest part.
The current version is available for Windows und Linux and bases on the final Mozilla 1.0 source code.
BTW: Congratulations to the whole Mozilla project!
Disclaimer: I am a member of the Beonex project.
I hope, Slashdot will also run this as main news article.
I demand that the Hurd is being called Mach/Hurd, because the Hurd is just a bunch of servers running on top of the foundation of Mach. The Hurd crew added a critical piece, but by no means created the whole thing, which using just "Hurd" as name implies. Adding Mach to the name gives due credit to the Mach creators.
In Germany, telemarketing is forbidden. A company may only call you, if you have an existing business relationship with them. (And you can terminate that relationsship and demand that they delete data about you.) I.e. opt-in, not opt-out. That's IMO the only sane way.
It works - I don't remember *ever* being called by telemarketers. And that although I am listed in the phone book.
BTW: In Germany, all my data belongs to me, too. BTW2: It does not work for faxes. I made the error to enlist my number in the fax phone book and get spammed by fax about once or twice a week.
> Some people can never be made happy, no matter > what choices America makes.
There are definitely countries which have better foreign politics ("better" as in 'causing less lost lives'), to say the least.
What fills many people with disgust is that America always claims to be the driving force of the "good" (TM) and the "free" in the world, while the reality looks a bit different, if you look under the covers.
> why measure people according to nations in this regard?
When speaking about America (meaning the USA), people are not speaking about the American population, but about that part of America they see. As already pointed out, that are mostly movies, megacorp CEOs, marketeers and politicians.
And you can make a case that they in fact are often blatantly ignorant about other countries and their people (probably even about Americans).
Thousands of employees are fired, because artificial revenue expectations haven't been met (don't mind that they were unrealistic to begin with, but nobody cares). In other countries, we don't have the short-sighted hire and fire mentality nor think that it's useful. We don't think that quarter-year shareholder value is the final measure of a company. Yet, often when an American company buys a local one, because the local one thinks it must globalize (I am thinking of at least one concrete case here), we see this attitude being applied and often ruining the company.
Of course, what happened at 2001-09-11 was tragic and there's no excuse. But the recent war against Afganistan enraged many people. Thousands of American people died, so lots of Afgan people have to die, it seems. I don't know the recent numbers, but the UN spoke about millions of innocent civilians being at risk to lose their life last winter. And that's a risk the USA took knowingly by choosing bombardements from airplanes. Better have a bit collateral damage than losing one American soldier. (I guess that has been discussed to death, but that doesn't make it less severe.) One has to conclude that American lifes are worth more than foreign lifes, and somebody I discussed with actually said so openly. That is nationalism, plain and simple.
Take the bullying the USA does in the Ukraine to force American corporate-sponsored laws on them, even though the parliament there dicided that they don't want them and even though these same laws would at least be objectionable and controverisal in the USA itself.
Then there's the Kyoto protocol (much-needed environmental protection), but I do see that this was dependant on the outcome of the presidential election.
That's what we see from America and what we are complaining about. I surely see that not all human are the same and that there are very reasonable and good people in America.
I do wonder, though, why American people (or rather, their state) chose exactly Bush to act on their behalf, who clearly just acts in his own interest, causing some of the problems I mentioned. I'm not saying that any president would have been good, but why had exactly such a selfish corporate $&(%&% to be elected? Obviously, a lot of Americans judge presidents by the ads they run.
> Your theory that Americans don't know or care what's going on in > the world is simply untrue.
With things like that, you have to wonder... (Hint: Where was Switzerland again?)
I can fully understand that you feel personally offended by all critism of America and its people. Yes, that is some form of ignorance, the same ignorance that America is partly being accused of. But, if you compare your language alone with other slashdot posts by Americans, you can see a big difference. You probably don't judge presidents by their ads, but the masses seem to do.
> But there are some people in America and > elsewhere who will deny the virtues of America > or deny the flaws of other nations out of hand > -- as a reflexive movement.
That's probably because they are so utterly pissed about America's actions and sick of the propaganda. It is hard to tell the truth within all the fog being thrown around.
But of course you are right, there are certainly good influences from America. For example, Germany has evolved from a destroyed country with an utterly nationalistic government to a quite free country with strong economics and wealth, and to a limited (!) degree, that's America's credit. That might not have been a selfless action, but the outcome still seems to be good.
> The celebration of and actual death of innocent > people purely on the basis of nationality, race, > gender, or any other accepted social > xlassification you can think of is wrong. > Period.
> 98% of my software calls are these two programs. > There really is no reason we can't support any > email program, but people just aren't using them > at home.
Are you inferring the latter from the former? Maybe the other software's users just have much less problems?
> Unfortunately [AOL] are applying pressure to the > Mozilla team to wrap it up and get the product > out the door.
No. Mozilla version numbers are completely unrelated to Netscape/AOL versions. In fact, I don't think that Netscape will base a stable (i.e. non-beta) release on 1.0.
What does influence development is the fact that most (not all, by far) engineers are paid by Netscape, so Netscape of course tells them what to work on, to some extend.
Slashdot Mirror
> It's nice to let them know as a favor, I
> suppose... Mozilla shows the license during
> install.
hehe, Mozilla does it, because Netscape needs it.
> You might need it if you wind up in court
That's exactly the problem. You *might* need it, *if* you are in court. but with a click-through requirement, we have the problem for sure, right now: Every user has to click and ideally read each time he installs. The loss is there, no matter, if it actually brings any value.
> You already have to do this with the Sun Java
> runtime [sun.com] for Linux, which is distributed
> in a "self extracting TAR ball" - read "sh script
> which pipes most of its contents to gzip and then
> tar after displaying the license
That's exactly the "binary" he spoke of. And I completely disagree with that. Software doing that ends up in a separated portion of my system. It is a security risk, because the user installing it has to run the software. Otherwise, you can ideally install software by *just* doing |tar xjf filename| as root, nothing else, and then run the software as any user on the system. (In fact, I worked hard to make that possible with Beonex Communicator.)
(I assumed that you mean "on demany" by the package, not "on demand" by the user. The latter would IMO be a good idea.)
> I agree that package installers should be able
> to present the software license for any package
> on demand
I disagree, at least for open-source. It's going to be a nightmare to install a distro.
What if I do |apt-get update;apt-get dist-upgrade -yes| in a cron job? And a new packge is installed as new dependency of an installed app? Does the -yes apply to the license as well? Did I agree to it?
Please, NO! I thought the need to prevent exactly that was a major reason for this discussion.
I am not a lawyer. Please click here to accept that. Otherwise you are not allowed to read this post.
Back to my previous speaker: Agreed.
What if book gives you bad advise? Can you sue the author?
Do I have to explicitly accept anything when buying in a shop?
Please also consider other jurisdictions. I read that click-wrap licenses here in Germany are considered a one-sided statement, not an agreement or even contract.
Another big reason against click-wrap licenses: Almost nobody reads them. Considering that, claiming that the user agreed to them by clicking "OK" or checking "Yes, I have read it" is unfair to the user at best, simply wrong and a lie at worst. This is the main reason why I reject click-wrap licenses.
(Thinking of it, my software happens to have a click-wrap license, because it's the default in the installer. I think I will follow my own argument and remove it.)
As for "other media": It is only a matter of time until the RIAA and MPAA force authorized players to let the user agree to a contract for the music he listens to. I don't want to sign a contract to listen to orinary music!
> wxWindows [...] this approach has it own problems.
Which ones?
Makes sense. So, how do you make your decision, without trying everything out yourself?
Yes, it's a truth that many end users use Mozilla. The result of that is 100% (!) noise on the development newsgroups.
Per the official mission, mozilla.org has an interest in getting testing coverage, not making a perfect browser for end-users to download. As such, many of the mozilla.org binary downloads are bigger than necessary and probably slower than necessary (compiler flags, lots of development/testing stuff included). Default prefs (sometimes hidden) are often adjusted to get maximal testing of the features. I firmly believe that Beonex Communicator is better suited even for Slashdot folks.
Yes, mozilla.org is trying to produce a browser suitable for end-users. But only as source-code, to be modified and redistributed by others with minimal effort. (But it's still enough effort to keep me busy.)
Beonex has been created, because mozilla.org didn't want to adapt to end-users. I'd be glad, if mozilla.org changed its focus, but it should be consistent. I think that the current situtation is suboptimal for both mozilla.org development and end users.
Free the Lizard! - Beware the Lizard - it has been freed!
While the ultimate goal of the Mozilla project is to produce source code that can be used by other projects and companies, the Open-Source project Beonex tries to make a browser for end-users out of it. (See Beonex vs. Mozilla). Beonex Communicator stays relatively true to Mozilla. Special emphasis is being put on security and privacy. The software is configured defensively, to avoid security holes to appear in the first place. For example, it sanitizes incoming HTML-email to the largest part.
The current version is available for Windows und Linux and bases on the final Mozilla 1.0 source code.
BTW: Congratulations to the whole Mozilla project!
Disclaimer: I am a member of the Beonex project.
I hope, Slashdot will also run this as main news article.
Imagine the following:
What happened:
I told the public, how to infect a Linux system, so sue me.
I demand that the Hurd is being called Mach/Hurd, because the Hurd is just a bunch of servers running on top of the foundation of Mach. The Hurd crew added a critical piece, but by no means created the whole thing, which using just "Hurd" as name implies. Adding Mach to the name gives due credit to the Mach creators.
> The only thing this patent prevents is from others creating
> proprietary versions of the technology in question
What is "proprietary"? The GPL is known to shut out other Free Software licenses (like the MPL) in other cases as well.
In Germany, telemarketing is forbidden. A company may only call you, if you have an existing business relationship with them. (And you can terminate that relationsship and demand that they delete data about you.) I.e. opt-in, not opt-out. That's IMO the only sane way.
It works - I don't remember *ever* being called by telemarketers. And that although I am listed in the phone book.
BTW: In Germany, all my data belongs to me, too.
BTW2: It does not work for faxes. I made the error to enlist my number in the fax phone book and get spammed by fax about once or twice a week.
Some of what I said might be wrong.
...says the buzz
KOMPRESSOR mp3 downloads
Is it *that* what they tell you? Really?
That sounds a bit different from Europe. It sounds like America is planning the same war they did in Afganistan.
> Some people can never be made happy, no matter
> what choices America makes.
There are definitely countries which have better foreign politics ("better" as in 'causing less lost lives'), to say the least.
What fills many people with disgust is that America always claims to be the driving force of the "good" (TM) and the "free" in the world, while the reality looks a bit different, if you look under the covers.
> why measure people according to nations in this regard?
When speaking about America (meaning the USA), people are not speaking about the American population, but about that part of America they see. As already pointed out, that are mostly movies, megacorp CEOs, marketeers and politicians.
And you can make a case that they in fact are often blatantly ignorant about other countries and their people (probably even about Americans).
Thousands of employees are fired, because artificial revenue expectations haven't been met (don't mind that they were unrealistic to begin with, but nobody cares). In other countries, we don't have the short-sighted hire and fire mentality nor think that it's useful. We don't think that quarter-year shareholder value is the final measure of a company. Yet, often when an American company buys a local one, because the local one thinks it must globalize (I am thinking of at least one concrete case here), we see this attitude being applied and often ruining the company.
Of course, what happened at 2001-09-11 was tragic and there's no excuse. But the recent war against Afganistan enraged many people. Thousands of American people died, so lots of Afgan people have to die, it seems. I don't know the recent numbers, but the UN spoke about millions of innocent civilians being at risk to lose their life last winter. And that's a risk the USA took knowingly by choosing bombardements from airplanes. Better have a bit collateral damage than losing one American soldier. (I guess that has been discussed to death, but that doesn't make it less severe.) One has to conclude that American lifes are worth more than foreign lifes, and somebody I discussed with actually said so openly. That is nationalism, plain and simple.
Take the bullying the USA does in the Ukraine to force American corporate-sponsored laws on them, even though the parliament there dicided that they don't want them and even though these same laws would at least be objectionable and controverisal in the USA itself.
Then there's the Kyoto protocol (much-needed environmental protection), but I do see that this was dependant on the outcome of the presidential election.
That's what we see from America and what we are complaining about. I surely see that not all human are the same and that there are very reasonable and good people in America.
I do wonder, though, why American people (or rather, their state) chose exactly Bush to act on their behalf, who clearly just acts in his own interest, causing some of the problems I mentioned. I'm not saying that any president would have been good, but why had exactly such a selfish corporate $&(%&% to be elected? Obviously, a lot of Americans judge presidents by the ads they run.
> Your theory that Americans don't know or care what's going on in
> the world is simply untrue.
With things like that, you have to wonder... (Hint: Where was Switzerland again?)
I can fully understand that you feel personally offended by all critism of America and its people. Yes, that is some form of ignorance, the same ignorance that America is partly being accused of. But, if you compare your language alone with other slashdot posts by Americans, you can see a big difference. You probably don't judge presidents by their ads, but the masses seem to do.
> But there are some people in America and
> elsewhere who will deny the virtues of America
> or deny the flaws of other nations out of hand
> -- as a reflexive movement.
That's probably because they are so utterly pissed about America's actions and sick of the propaganda. It is hard to tell the truth within all the fog being thrown around.
But of course you are right, there are certainly good influences from America.
For example, Germany has evolved from a destroyed country with an utterly nationalistic government to a quite free country with strong economics and wealth, and to a limited (!) degree, that's America's credit. That might not have been a selfless action, but the outcome still seems to be good.
> The celebration of and actual death of innocent
> people purely on the basis of nationality, race,
> gender, or any other accepted social
> xlassification you can think of is wrong.
> Period.
Yes!
> 98% of my software calls are these two programs.
> There really is no reason we can't support any
> email program, but people just aren't using them
> at home.
Are you inferring the latter from the former? Maybe the other software's users just have much less problems?
> 3rd parties like Real have to write installers
> which handle each particular branded version of
> Mozilla
No, they can use XPI. This works just fine for all Mozillas. Some vendors just *refuse* to use XPI, for whatever reason.
- It's not open-source
- It is a bloated monster, when compared to its actual use. Download size would be 25MB instead of 10MB.
The first reason also holds for Flash.> Unfortunately [AOL] are applying pressure to the
> Mozilla team to wrap it up and get the product
> out the door.
No. Mozilla version numbers are completely unrelated to Netscape/AOL versions. In fact, I don't think that Netscape will base a stable (i.e. non-beta) release on 1.0.
What does influence development is the fact that most (not all, by far) engineers are paid by Netscape, so Netscape of course tells them what to work on, to some extend.
> Who's law applies if you are accessing a computer in another
> country?
> a) that of the country where you physically
If you are a UK citizen residing in the UK, you are under UK jurisdiction. Only the laws of UK apply.
In theory. (There might be agreements between UK and US to apply each others law to a limited extend, esp. where they overlap.)
IANAL.
> In other words, once again the U.S. legal system is making life
> difficult for its citizens.
Why do you think that he is a US citizen? In fact, he seems to be British:
http://www.btinternet.com/~finlay.dobbie/ : (=British Telecom)
"It took three transatlantic phone calls..."