With regard to your premise number 1, I don't agree that's a "mistaken impression" at all. You have referred to "using" Spring, but it's not as simple as that. What if I downloaded Spring, renamed it and sold it to my client as my own work? I would be in trouble. It's not a clear cut rule which is the same in every case, and the legalities would depend on the specifics of the individual case. If you use any open source code in your company's software, your failure to comply with the legal conditions for doing so (such as the GPL) can and will put you in close communication with your lawyers if the original coder ever finds out you've ripped his code in secret.
These companies are not under any false impressions. They have every right to seek legal advice to protect themselves from being liable to pay damages under intellectual property law. The safeguards referred to in the article (e.g. blocking SourceForge and prohibiting devs from bringing in flash drives) might help them if it ever came to a court of law, and if they were accused of "turning a blind eye" to copyright theft. It seems reasonable to me.
That's the most pathetic stream of uninformed drivel and meaningless blustering and whingeing I've ever wasted a minute of my life reading. Nobody who knows anything is going to take that seriously. I wonder whether that guy actually cares that he's just permanently ruined his reputation as a tech writer, and that his article is now a matter of historical record for the benefit of future generations who will possess a higher average level of technical knowledge than the present day Joe Lowest-Common-Denominator.
They roll their own.. They offer big promises to college students, and train them up. There's also an industry tied in with defense and aerospace, which has 1 customer: the government. They are secretive private companies that are often considered a part of the government.
They can print as much of that as they want. It's about control. Having the power of life and death over people, and maintaining a base of power. They're now finished with the illusion of democracy and constitutional law, because they don't think they need it any more now they have technology. After this massive Big Brother world government, we will also see forced drugging, sterilisation and the religion of the State. Americans, the people who are doing this have no interest in your displays of enthusiasm for jingoistic hegemony. They want your fear.
Well OK I take your point but (sorry to degenerate into ideology) this kind of approach seems pyramidic-hierarchical, where people are only told exactly what they "need to know" and no more no less. It's fundamental to our human condition are important to our future that we are allowed to think abstractly, and to explore applied mathematics (which is exactly what computer science is) even if for rice and bananas we just have to sweep the streets. Unfortunately while computer technology has raced ahead, the same can't be said for our education system, where a person can spend 18 years in a state school and is then expected to migrate to the factory floor, purely on the basis that someone or some committee has decided they don't need to know how a bootloader for instance works, as long as (for basic subsistence) they wake up early in the morning to make some more money for someone who has capital. The Linux open source approach has traditionally offered freedom from this kind of attitude - because you don't need capital or license to take control of the technology. It's a bit irresponsible to rely on others to do it.
If HP started teaching Linux with a "from scratch" mentality, that would definitely be much better than anything a state-sponsored community college could offer.
I agree with you, but the point of Linux is that the users are supposed to be the potential developers too. It's not Linux if it's not transparent. It can't be right, if you have a bunch of people using Linux apps effectively (because they sort of mimic Windows) and who can schedule tasks and maybe do some Bash scripting, who don't have the first idea about what an OS is or what it's doing, or how Linux works under the hood. To this end, it's important to train users about the kernel structure, so it doesn't seem like magic, and they can change all of it or some of it just because they want to. You can't do this with Windows, because Windows is closed source. It's quite hard to learn about kernel hacking without a teacher, so there's a lacuna for free courses teaching that. But there are already many websites clearly explaining what the HP Linux courses purport to teach. So you're right, but I think it's a missed opportunity nevertheless.
You hit the nail right on the head. That's exactly how it works in their grand scheme of things. It reminds me of this pompous local councillor we have (I'm in the UK) who has zero skills (including barely mediocre literacy) and yet has a vote in the local authority on every local issue, and 5 houses rented out to poverty-line Eastern European immigrants who slave away happily 7 days a week in local sweatshops or picking broccoli or whatever. And yet as a self-employed skilled software coder I have to struggle to make ends meet, and don't have 1 house to my name. Ignorance rules the world over.
I had a look. It's only very easy-peasy stuff - it doesn't teach Linux properly. A Linux course should explain basic computer architecture, what is an OS, how OSes work, what Linux is and how it works, filesystems, etc. all leading up to the point where the user can take control of their Linux system: modify the kernel. Otherwise they can already do most of the stuff that HP wants to teach them, with their Windows system.
I agree with you 100%. The only problem is the network support for the open source BSD OSes. Ndiswrapper and Prism are well-established in Linux, which is an important reason for its popularity.
Slashdot Mirror
With regard to your premise number 1, I don't agree that's a "mistaken impression" at all. You have referred to "using" Spring, but it's not as simple as that. What if I downloaded Spring, renamed it and sold it to my client as my own work? I would be in trouble. It's not a clear cut rule which is the same in every case, and the legalities would depend on the specifics of the individual case. If you use any open source code in your company's software, your failure to comply with the legal conditions for doing so (such as the GPL) can and will put you in close communication with your lawyers if the original coder ever finds out you've ripped his code in secret.
These companies are not under any false impressions. They have every right to seek legal advice to protect themselves from being liable to pay damages under intellectual property law. The safeguards referred to in the article (e.g. blocking SourceForge and prohibiting devs from bringing in flash drives) might help them if it ever came to a court of law, and if they were accused of "turning a blind eye" to copyright theft. It seems reasonable to me.
That's the most pathetic stream of uninformed drivel and meaningless blustering and whingeing I've ever wasted a minute of my life reading. Nobody who knows anything is going to take that seriously. I wonder whether that guy actually cares that he's just permanently ruined his reputation as a tech writer, and that his article is now a matter of historical record for the benefit of future generations who will possess a higher average level of technical knowledge than the present day Joe Lowest-Common-Denominator.
problem.h
reaction.h
solution.h
Exactly right. And include headers: otherwise it won't work.
They roll their own.. They offer big promises to college students, and train them up. There's also an industry tied in with defense and aerospace, which has 1 customer: the government. They are secretive private companies that are often considered a part of the government.
They can print as much of that as they want. It's about control. Having the power of life and death over people, and maintaining a base of power. They're now finished with the illusion of democracy and constitutional law, because they don't think they need it any more now they have technology. After this massive Big Brother world government, we will also see forced drugging, sterilisation and the religion of the State. Americans, the people who are doing this have no interest in your displays of enthusiasm for jingoistic hegemony. They want your fear.
Well OK I take your point but (sorry to degenerate into ideology) this kind of approach seems pyramidic-hierarchical, where people are only told exactly what they "need to know" and no more no less. It's fundamental to our human condition are important to our future that we are allowed to think abstractly, and to explore applied mathematics (which is exactly what computer science is) even if for rice and bananas we just have to sweep the streets. Unfortunately while computer technology has raced ahead, the same can't be said for our education system, where a person can spend 18 years in a state school and is then expected to migrate to the factory floor, purely on the basis that someone or some committee has decided they don't need to know how a bootloader for instance works, as long as (for basic subsistence) they wake up early in the morning to make some more money for someone who has capital. The Linux open source approach has traditionally offered freedom from this kind of attitude - because you don't need capital or license to take control of the technology. It's a bit irresponsible to rely on others to do it. If HP started teaching Linux with a "from scratch" mentality, that would definitely be much better than anything a state-sponsored community college could offer.
I agree with you, but the point of Linux is that the users are supposed to be the potential developers too. It's not Linux if it's not transparent. It can't be right, if you have a bunch of people using Linux apps effectively (because they sort of mimic Windows) and who can schedule tasks and maybe do some Bash scripting, who don't have the first idea about what an OS is or what it's doing, or how Linux works under the hood. To this end, it's important to train users about the kernel structure, so it doesn't seem like magic, and they can change all of it or some of it just because they want to. You can't do this with Windows, because Windows is closed source. It's quite hard to learn about kernel hacking without a teacher, so there's a lacuna for free courses teaching that. But there are already many websites clearly explaining what the HP Linux courses purport to teach. So you're right, but I think it's a missed opportunity nevertheless.
You hit the nail right on the head. That's exactly how it works in their grand scheme of things. It reminds me of this pompous local councillor we have (I'm in the UK) who has zero skills (including barely mediocre literacy) and yet has a vote in the local authority on every local issue, and 5 houses rented out to poverty-line Eastern European immigrants who slave away happily 7 days a week in local sweatshops or picking broccoli or whatever. And yet as a self-employed skilled software coder I have to struggle to make ends meet, and don't have 1 house to my name. Ignorance rules the world over.
I had a look. It's only very easy-peasy stuff - it doesn't teach Linux properly. A Linux course should explain basic computer architecture, what is an OS, how OSes work, what Linux is and how it works, filesystems, etc. all leading up to the point where the user can take control of their Linux system: modify the kernel. Otherwise they can already do most of the stuff that HP wants to teach them, with their Windows system.
I agree with you 100%. The only problem is the network support for the open source BSD OSes. Ndiswrapper and Prism are well-established in Linux, which is an important reason for its popularity.