Yup..you are FREE to use any license you want. That's YOUR choice. But what if somebody takes your BSD licensed code and puts it under the GPL (they CAN do that your license allows it)?
Still want to go with the BSD license?
In a sense, you're not really "giving" people your code unless it's with no strings attached. I respect that - being willing to give your code to someone under terms that let them do almost anything - even if it's something you don't like. In that sense using a very permissive license is very generous.
What I appreciate about the GPL, though, is that its restrictions create a structure which encourages the long-term growth of the program. People looking to take advantage of the code written for the project are expected to grant their modifications back under the same license, so they could be incorporated into the original project. And if the original project team drops the project to do other things, then anyone who attempts to resume that work would be doing it under the GPL as well. Of course, one could rely on the culture of the userbase to achieve the same ends (free software users use free software, so if they work on the project they're likely to let it remain free software) - having that as a condition of the license just means that people outside that culture are expected to contribute back, as well.
Personally when I set out to write a free program my goal is to have it be a lasting gift to the free software community - specifically, I want people to be able to use it and modify it as necessary, and if the project survives beyond my own involvement in it, I want its nature as a free program to remain unchanged. But if the license were to interfere with the intended use of the application then I think it would make sense to use something more permissive. Or if I felt the project was trivial enough that I really don't care what people do with it, and my priority in giving it away is really just to make sure it's useful to someone - in that case a more permissive license would make sense, too.
The man is delusional and just needs to go visit any communist/socialist society and live in it to discover that his ideals just don't work because human nature will not allow it.
Well, I think there's an interesting question in there:
material communism seems not to work, but what about when we're talking about information? Information which can be shared at virtually no cost, and which (in the form of computer programs) can be complex, practically useful, and still trivial to copy and share - is "communism" when applied to such a substantially non-material "property" still impractical? Or do the different rules at play make it work?
That said, I would say RMS pushes things a bit too far... Hoping for a day when free software totally supplants commercial software, for instance. If technology stopped moving forward, if the capabilities of the machines stopped dramatically increasing so quickly and the concepts of what people need from the software running on them stabilized, then I could see the opportunities for proprietary software diminishing significantly. If machines could be made intelligent enough to program themselves, the same condition could occur. In either case, the system would then presumably be accessible enough that snybody who wanted the machine to do something a little differently would be able to make it happen - and the issue of whether that change is shared or not would be pretty meaningless. In the current world I don't see that working - things still change too quickly in the world of computers for hobby development to catch up, let alone take over.
To me, the best role of free software is to raise the baseline standard for computing. That is, you have these commercial developers creating new software that pushes the limits of what you can do with your machine - and meanwhile you have free software which raises the standard for what users can do without those applications. Low-cost or no-cost software with lower capabilities than commercial applications helps to raise users' expectations, which in turn acts as another force driving innovation in the high-end stuff. If this no-cost software is "Free Software" in the FSF sense, then it raises the baseline for programmers as well, because they can access and reuse the source code from the application to push the baseline further.
"Hello there ladies. Would any of you be interested in participating in my scientific experiment to reduce the risk of human extinction?"
Hah! That's great! I can just imagine how this would all go down... You'd tell the ladies how you're conducting a program to reduce the risk of human extinction and "preserve favorable genetic traits"... You'd, like, buy 'em a drink, take 'em back to the lab with you, then take a genetic sample, put it in the freezer and send 'em on their way...
No joke, you ever try to explain the Monte Hall logic of changing doors? I've had people fight to the bitter end on that one. I've drawn pictures.
What I've found works is to extrapolate to ten, one hundred, ten thousand, or a million doors, and describe it as Monty Hall going down the row of doors, looking behind them, then opening them, except one. I've never had anybody argue the point with the million doors.
I don't get how changing the number of doors makes the principle any clearer...
I was one of those "fight it to the bitter end" types (there was a pint of Ben & Jerry's on the line) - the bit that finally helped me understand was the realization that the choice of which door gets opened is constrained by your first-choice door - then I just ran the possible combinations (1 in 3 chance that my initial door choice was the right door, in which case switching results in failure, 2 in 3 chance that my initial door choice was wrong, in which case switching results in success)
The general plan is to perform mass-cloning of the populace, and then send out hordes of colonization fleets to find habitable planets elsewhere in the galaxy... If we hit any rough territory, we'll just sing at the problem until it goes away!
It's like having and raising a child. Except this one, at 15, doesn't live in your house and does what he's told.
It's like having and raising a child on Mars... Which is a real problem. Mars ain't the kind of place to raise your kids - in fact, it's cold as hell, and there's no-one there to raise 'em, if you did!
How do you jump from finding one very old temple to deciding that the motivation for all civilization starting and people getting together being religion?
It need not be religion. Consider the following observations: - ancient Man changed from a nomadic people to stationary societies (settlements) - the oldest known settlements in mesopotamia (present-day Turkey) are from around 10,000BC - 10,000BC is also considered to be the onset of agriculture
Based on those findings, it was presumed that agriculture was the catalyst that enabled us to stop roaming. Now, we add another fact: - a temple was built in mesopotamia around 11,000BC
The current year is 2008. So a 11000 year old temple would have been built around 9000 BC.
When dealing with the distant past you might wonder, what difference does a couple thousand years make? Plenty. I mean, what was life like 2000 years ago?
No, after all, Earth had to be attacked to cause Johnny to go to war. And his hometown still had to be annihilated for the plot device at the end
No, I know Buenos Aires was destroyed and Johnny's mom died - I just thought the idea of it being specifically by mass-driver bombardment was something that was from the movie and not the book.
In the anime, I remember the bugs came down to Buenos Aires personally - but I can't remember how it went down in the book.
Could you?! I've been running low, and have been trying to conserve.
Well, I just went over my stock and I think I could spare "immolate", "vilify", and "google". The last one might not actually be a real verb. I guess I won't be able to use the old "Immolation is the sincerest form of flattery" again until I stock up...
The ever more potent weapons of Doc Smith's Lensmen. First the Sunbeam, where the entire solar system is turned into a vacuum tube and the suns output is focused into a single beam. Then we have the Negasphere, a planetary sized chunk of anti-matter you toss at an enemy planet (with a tractor beam, because it's antimatter, see). The Nutcracker, two planets from another dimension, travelling in opposite directions, both exceeding the speed of light and then collided with the enemy planet in between. His ultimate weapon is so cool, I won't give it away, just in case you haven't read the books. You should read the books, if only to see who was playing with these ideas about 50 years before Lucas did Star Wars.
Look, if you're going to do a post about Lensman, you gotta do it right. You need more exclamation marks, you've got to gush constantly about how amazing it all is - and if you can work in a few words in all caps, all the better. Be sure to reiterate at every opportunity:
How awesome and universally loved the galactic patrol is
How mighty Kimball Kinnison is, in his own, non-Velarian way
How freaky Worsel is
How crazy-fast the ships can go, and how awesome the undetectable speedsters are
Well, I'll admit that the emphasis on application integration and cross-language compatibility does make Scheme a lot more useful, but, I don't know, it doesn't quite seem like a doomsday weapon. I mean, what, is it going to bury people under so many parens that their computer collapses into a black hole? Even then it seems like XML does the job better...
Not quite a doomsday device, but I remember that Davros had a button on the control panel on the front of his chair that turned off his life support system (cf Genesis of the Daleks). That is almost as clever as designing machines for world domination that could be defeated by a staircase.
Real Daleks don't climb stairs - they level the building...
... it has a countdown on an LCD, and a big red button.
Well really 7-segment LEDs are the common choice... But what about Nixie Tubes? Dr. No's bomb had Nixie Tubes... Of course most mad scientists these days wouldn't want to shell out for old-stock Nixie Tubes for a simple counter, particularly now that Nixie Clocks are en vogue - but I'm sure there's got to be a couple who like the bright neon glow and clearly-defined digits - and who are maybe OK with "5" looking like an upside-down "2"...
1. Yes you did. "I have just one thing to say about that..." was in your subject.
2. Humor fail.
1: Right. The subject said I had something to say, the message body said it. Simple enough. 2: Really, what is it with this "X fail" crap? Like people can't make sentences any more? I could loan you a verb if you like...
Kirk is subsequently seen being smuggled on board the Starship Enterprise on its maiden voyage by doctor Leonard "Bones" McCoy, played by Karl Urban.
McCoy isn't the original ship's surgeon on the Enterprise. I guess nobody who worked on the film ever saw The Cage.
They're not following canon at all, they're re-booting the series.
The canonization of the 20 year history of the Enterprise before Kirk took command was mainly just a way to recycle the pilot episode that used a different cast and FX model. I wouldn't say it's necessarily the best thing for the story to keep that around in a reboot.
The real news at the moment is that a photo of the new Enterprise was released yesterday. I was expecting changes, but this awkward kitbash makes me very unhappy.
From TFA: "If you're going to do Star Trek, there are many things you cannot change. The Enterprise is a visual touchstone for so many people."
Slashdot Mirror
Yup..you are FREE to use any license you want. That's YOUR choice. But what if somebody takes your BSD licensed code and puts it under the GPL (they CAN do that your license allows it)?
Still want to go with the BSD license?
In a sense, you're not really "giving" people your code unless it's with no strings attached. I respect that - being willing to give your code to someone under terms that let them do almost anything - even if it's something you don't like. In that sense using a very permissive license is very generous.
What I appreciate about the GPL, though, is that its restrictions create a structure which encourages the long-term growth of the program. People looking to take advantage of the code written for the project are expected to grant their modifications back under the same license, so they could be incorporated into the original project. And if the original project team drops the project to do other things, then anyone who attempts to resume that work would be doing it under the GPL as well. Of course, one could rely on the culture of the userbase to achieve the same ends (free software users use free software, so if they work on the project they're likely to let it remain free software) - having that as a condition of the license just means that people outside that culture are expected to contribute back, as well.
Personally when I set out to write a free program my goal is to have it be a lasting gift to the free software community - specifically, I want people to be able to use it and modify it as necessary, and if the project survives beyond my own involvement in it, I want its nature as a free program to remain unchanged. But if the license were to interfere with the intended use of the application then I think it would make sense to use something more permissive. Or if I felt the project was trivial enough that I really don't care what people do with it, and my priority in giving it away is really just to make sure it's useful to someone - in that case a more permissive license would make sense, too.
Thus the reason he is labeled a ZEALOT.
The man is delusional and just needs to go visit any communist/socialist society and live in it to discover that his ideals just don't work because human nature will not allow it.
Well, I think there's an interesting question in there:
material communism seems not to work, but what about when we're talking about information? Information which can be shared at virtually no cost, and which (in the form of computer programs) can be complex, practically useful, and still trivial to copy and share - is "communism" when applied to such a substantially non-material "property" still impractical? Or do the different rules at play make it work?
That said, I would say RMS pushes things a bit too far... Hoping for a day when free software totally supplants commercial software, for instance. If technology stopped moving forward, if the capabilities of the machines stopped dramatically increasing so quickly and the concepts of what people need from the software running on them stabilized, then I could see the opportunities for proprietary software diminishing significantly. If machines could be made intelligent enough to program themselves, the same condition could occur. In either case, the system would then presumably be accessible enough that snybody who wanted the machine to do something a little differently would be able to make it happen - and the issue of whether that change is shared or not would be pretty meaningless. In the current world I don't see that working - things still change too quickly in the world of computers for hobby development to catch up, let alone take over.
To me, the best role of free software is to raise the baseline standard for computing. That is, you have these commercial developers creating new software that pushes the limits of what you can do with your machine - and meanwhile you have free software which raises the standard for what users can do without those applications. Low-cost or no-cost software with lower capabilities than commercial applications helps to raise users' expectations, which in turn acts as another force driving innovation in the high-end stuff. If this no-cost software is "Free Software" in the FSF sense, then it raises the baseline for programmers as well, because they can access and reuse the source code from the application to push the baseline further.
"Hello there ladies. Would any of you be interested in participating in my scientific experiment to reduce the risk of human extinction?"
Hah! That's great! I can just imagine how this would all go down... You'd tell the ladies how you're conducting a program to reduce the risk of human extinction and "preserve favorable genetic traits"... You'd, like, buy 'em a drink, take 'em back to the lab with you, then take a genetic sample, put it in the freezer and send 'em on their way...
No joke, you ever try to explain the Monte Hall logic of changing doors? I've had people fight to the bitter end on that one. I've drawn pictures.
What I've found works is to extrapolate to ten, one hundred, ten thousand, or a million doors, and describe it as Monty Hall going down the row of doors, looking behind them, then opening them, except one. I've never had anybody argue the point with the million doors.
I don't get how changing the number of doors makes the principle any clearer...
I was one of those "fight it to the bitter end" types (there was a pint of Ben & Jerry's on the line) - the bit that finally helped me understand was the realization that the choice of which door gets opened is constrained by your first-choice door - then I just ran the possible combinations (1 in 3 chance that my initial door choice was the right door, in which case switching results in failure, 2 in 3 chance that my initial door choice was wrong, in which case switching results in success)
The general plan is to perform mass-cloning of the populace, and then send out hordes of colonization fleets to find habitable planets elsewhere in the galaxy... If we hit any rough territory, we'll just sing at the problem until it goes away!
It's like having and raising a child. Except this one, at 15, doesn't live in your house and does what he's told.
It's like having and raising a child on Mars... Which is a real problem. Mars ain't the kind of place to raise your kids - in fact, it's cold as hell, and there's no-one there to raise 'em, if you did!
How do you jump from finding one very old temple to deciding that the motivation for all civilization starting and people getting together being religion?
It need not be religion. Consider the following observations:
- ancient Man changed from a nomadic people to stationary societies (settlements)
- the oldest known settlements in mesopotamia (present-day Turkey) are from around 10,000BC
- 10,000BC is also considered to be the onset of agriculture
Based on those findings, it was presumed that agriculture was the catalyst that enabled us to stop roaming. Now, we add another fact:
- a temple was built in mesopotamia around 11,000BC
The current year is 2008. So a 11000 year old temple would have been built around 9000 BC.
When dealing with the distant past you might wonder, what difference does a couple thousand years make? Plenty. I mean, what was life like 2000 years ago?
So I ask you, why is science without religion lame?
Well because religion is, like, totally righteous - so as radical as science is, without religion it's just totally lame.
Wasn't that just in the movie version?
No, after all, Earth had to be attacked to cause Johnny to go to war. And his hometown still had to be annihilated for the plot device at the end
No, I know Buenos Aires was destroyed and Johnny's mom died - I just thought the idea of it being specifically by mass-driver bombardment was something that was from the movie and not the book.
In the anime, I remember the bugs came down to Buenos Aires personally - but I can't remember how it went down in the book.
Could you?! I've been running low, and have been trying to conserve.
Well, I just went over my stock and I think I could spare "immolate", "vilify", and "google". The last one might not actually be a real verb. I guess I won't be able to use the old "Immolation is the sincerest form of flattery" again until I stock up...
Knowledge is power. If there's enough knowledge it could be used to destroy the world. So encourage ignorance at every opportunity!
The ever more potent weapons of Doc Smith's Lensmen. First the Sunbeam, where the entire solar system is turned into a vacuum tube and the suns output is focused into a single beam. Then we have the Negasphere, a planetary sized chunk of anti-matter you toss at an enemy planet (with a tractor beam, because it's antimatter, see). The Nutcracker, two planets from another dimension, travelling in opposite directions, both exceeding the speed of light and then collided with the enemy planet in between. His ultimate weapon is so cool, I won't give it away, just in case you haven't read the books. You should read the books, if only to see who was playing with these ideas about 50 years before Lucas did Star Wars.
Look, if you're going to do a post about Lensman, you gotta do it right. You need more exclamation marks, you've got to gush constantly about how amazing it all is - and if you can work in a few words in all caps, all the better. Be sure to reiterate at every opportunity:
The best doomsday weapon is....GUILE, bitches.
Well, I'll admit that the emphasis on application integration and cross-language compatibility does make Scheme a lot more useful, but, I don't know, it doesn't quite seem like a doomsday weapon. I mean, what, is it going to bury people under so many parens that their computer collapses into a black hole? Even then it seems like XML does the job better...
And what about the Daleks?
Not quite a doomsday device, but I remember that Davros had a button on the control panel on the front of his chair that turned off his life support system (cf Genesis of the Daleks). That is almost as clever as designing machines for world domination that could be defeated by a staircase.
Real Daleks don't climb stairs - they level the building...
Starship Troopers 1959
The bugs threw asteroids at us.
Wasn't that just in the movie version?
... it has a countdown on an LCD, and a big red button.
Well really 7-segment LEDs are the common choice... But what about Nixie Tubes? Dr. No's bomb had Nixie Tubes... Of course most mad scientists these days wouldn't want to shell out for old-stock Nixie Tubes for a simple counter, particularly now that Nixie Clocks are en vogue - but I'm sure there's got to be a couple who like the bright neon glow and clearly-defined digits - and who are maybe OK with "5" looking like an upside-down "2"...
1. Yes you did. "I have just one thing to say about that..." was in your subject.
2. Humor fail.
1: Right. The subject said I had something to say, the message body said it. Simple enough.
2: Really, what is it with this "X fail" crap? Like people can't make sentences any more? I could loan you a verb if you like...
1. Don't use your subject field as a discussion field. Use the post body. This goes for your parent as well.
2. Don't you mean "EXCEPTION!?"
1: I didn't.
2: No.
OBJECTION!
"The blood of Uranus can NEVER be healed!"
"EWWWW!"
MST5000! That's Hot!
It's OVER NINE THOUSAAAAND!
(Or 8000 in the Japanese version)
I thought this movie was supposed to come out this Christmas season. Now I see on the Star Trek movie website 'Summer 09'. Am I imagining things?
The word is that they decided this picture was worthy of a summer release. The release date did change.
McCoy isn't the original ship's surgeon on the Enterprise. I guess nobody who worked on the film ever saw The Cage.
They're not following canon at all, they're re-booting the series.
The canonization of the 20 year history of the Enterprise before Kirk took command was mainly just a way to recycle the pilot episode that used a different cast and FX model. I wouldn't say it's necessarily the best thing for the story to keep that around in a reboot.
I looked at the picture of the Enterprise, the curves remind me of a 50's car. Less concern for functionality than for looking stylish.
It is not like those curves are for aerodynamics!
What, you never read "Lensman"?
The real news at the moment is that a photo of the new Enterprise was released yesterday. I was expecting changes, but this awkward kitbash makes me very unhappy.
From TFA:
"If you're going to do Star Trek, there are many things you cannot change. The Enterprise is a visual touchstone for so many people."
And so, naturally, they changed it. :D