It seems to me this should extend to any collective pool of IP - including patents.
Possibly, it depends on how broad the SCOTUS ruling was. The laws for trademarks and the laws for patents are very different, and each are different from the laws for copyrights.
We'll have to wait and see, but it definitely sounds like this case could be used for a strong argument in Nero's case.
Federal safety standards are pitiful compared to insurance company standards.
Federal standards mandate airbags, but only for the driver, not the passenger or side airbags they've been putting in. All of that is coming from the insurance industry - and except for the fact that all drivers must have insurance, it's completely free market. Things like better crumple zones and such are all designed to boost their ratings with insurance companies, because people look at how much the insurance is going to cost them when they think about buying a car.
I think Schmidt flubbed it, what he should have said was: "If you have something that you don't want everyone to know, maybe you shouldn't be broadcasting it in the first place."
Google wasn't hacking into anything, they were connecting to open WiFi networks and collecting information that is necessary to connect to the network . The only thing that was a potential booboo here was they didn't dump the information, instead they chose to save it.
If you don't want the whole world to know it, don't broadcast it.
Except you can't put out something new and be able to sell it to 99% of the market.
I'm sorry, that's not how business works. You don't just play with something without some plan to get it to market.
The way to do this is as follows:
Phase one: Create a hybrid drive that is significantly faster than traditional HDDs (though still slower than SSDs) without any of the storage problems of SSDs. Vendors copy you, pretty much all HDDs on the market are eventually hybrid.
Phase two: While this is booming, be talking to Microsoft and Apple about how much better it would be if the OS were controlling the cache instead of the hard drive. You could suddenly have the fastest OS on the market with any drive. Dollar signs flash, and the next versions of the OS (or some update, if that's feasable) is capable of doing the caching.
Badda bing, badda boom, success. Microsoft and Apple aren't going to invest in something like this unless there is a market for these drives. There currently isn't, so Seagate needs to create the market first. THEN it can sell OS-handled cache.
4GB is just a cache file, if you are lucky it caches the right files but if you are doing complex stuff these "smart" caches often get horribly confused and start caching the wrong data.
You do realize that the reason your computer is so fast is because of progressive layers of cache, right?
The fastest cache on the system is L1 cache. It's also the most expensive. Next is L2 cache, which runs at about 1/10th the speed of L1, but it's much cheaper and so there can be more of it. That it's only an order of magnitude different means the larger L2 cache has time to fill the L1 cache before the L1 cache is completely empty. Then comes L3 cache (usually), which is again about 1/10th the speed of L2, and it keeps the L2 full. Then RAM, which has kept pace pretty well and is about 1/10th the speed of L3 and keeps L3 full. And here is where things break. RAM speeds are measured in nanoseconds. Spinning disk hard drive speeds are still measured in milliseconds, and not even 1 or 2 milliseconds, more like 5-10 milliseconds. That's a couple orders of magnitude slower and breaks the chain of cache that we had going, and it is not enough to maintain full RAM at all times. What we need is a cache that is about 1/10th the speed of RAM to sit between RAM and Hard Disk.
SLC Nand flash, with its sub-millisecond read and write times, fits the bill perfectly. It's basically a scaled up version of the caching they use on hard drives already, and because of its size should be much, much more effective.
Data is a sort of "group" word - the word is singular, but it stands for many individual pieces of datum.
You treat it as a singular word in every case, therefore "data is stored safely". People who say "data are..." are incorrect, unless "data" is just being used to describe something else. I.e. - "Several chunks of data are missing from the database." The relevant phrase there is "chunks are missing". "Of data" just describes the type of chunk.
Many is for individual items, much is for groups of items or non-singular items. Data is a word that means many pieces of datum. It's not a plural of datum in the traditional sense - you treat it like a new word that means "many datums" instead of a plural form of datum.
I.e. - I have many knives in my drawer, but there is much tea in my glass, and not much time to drink it. The knives are referred to as individuals, even though there are many of them. The tea is a liquid, and is composed of individual molecules, but we don't count them, we refer to them all as a group - tea. Time is an idea that cannot be singular, so it is treated the same as a group.
The real trick to English, though, is that for every rule, there is an exception (even this one). Most native English speakers don't speak the language correctly anyway, so don't worry too much if you mess up something like using "many" instead of "much".
Yeah, that wikipedia article is using figures from over a decade ago (1997 for their highest NAND numbers). Today the number of write cycles for the premium chips are in the millions, not thousands. You'd have to write your entire 500gb hard drive 8,000 times to burn up that 4gb of flash, assuming 1 million write cycles. In these applications, though, they're probably using the "creme de la creme" of flash chips, which can last up to 5 million write cycles. That lets you write that 500gb hard drive 45,000 times before the flash dies. That's 22.5 petabytes worth of data transfer. Assuming an 11ms write time for the hard drive (typical of notebooks), and assuming I didn't royally screw up somewhere (I may have), I get 32 million years of non-stop writing to use that up.
Even at their slowest, SSD drives are 5-10x faster than spinning disks. This allows it to act as a perfect layer of cache between RAM and HDD. It's also non-volatile, like the rest of the hard drive, so all you need to ensure no loss of data is to at least get the data to the cache. Assuming the hard drive doesn't do something retarded, like wipe the cache on reboot, it's all good.
They have to give you the tools (code and build scripts) let you build the code to any hardware you have access to. They don't have to give you access to their hardware. At this point he can still reverse engineer the image format and potentially gain access to the router.
Really, the guy should probably shut the hell up. All they have to is claim their flash image format is "a technical measure designed to prevent piracy" and boom, it's illegal to even reverse engineer it. Put some shitty encryption on it, and it's done for. Once that happens, DMCA kicks in and he has no options at all, he'll never legally get his code on that router.
And it only covers the code for that particular install. It doesn't mean I need to ship you a compiler to go along with it, or the third party script engine I used to run the build script. It doesn't mean I need to send you the drive format so you can put it on the same drive as mine, nor does it mean I need to send you any tools to do so.
They gave the OP enough to build the code (minus some third party libraries, which cannot be distributed due to copyright) into an executable on any machine he has a compiler for. That's all the GPL requires. What he wants are tools that he does not have access to that are not covered by the GPL (they cannot be, they have their own copyright) in order to install the executable on router hardware. The GPL doesn't cover that, it cannot. If it did it would be made null (at least the offending provision would be) at the very first legal challenge.
As others have pointed out, GPLs 2 and 3 both require the release of the build-prerequisites for compiling the code.
There, fixed that for you. GPL doesn't take over the whole machine, it only involves the copyright on that specific piece of code. Derivatives of that code must be GPL also, but the provisions in the GPL apply only to GPL code. That means for GPL code you must supply the code. They did that. It also means for GPL code you must supply any build scripts to compile the code. They did that too. What it does not mean is that when they package the code in a proprietary format with proprietary tools to be flashed to proprietary hardware, they have to distribute that too. Not happening. It's probably even illegal - other people own the copyright on those formats/tools, to distribute them for free would be piracy.
Seriously, GPL doesn't get to take over other people's copyright just because you want it to. It dictates the use of the original code and derivatives of that code. Period. It doesn't touch anything else. If there is a situation where it looks like it does, that portion of the GPL would be ruled unenforceable in a heartbeat, because it's touching someone else's copyright.
They distributed all code and build scripts, except for third party libraries which they are not permitted to distribute (GPL doesn't get to steal other people's copyright).
The image format to flash the ROM is an entirely separate entity from the GPL'd software, GPL doesn't steal their copyright on that either, none of the tools needed to install it on that specific hardware need to be distributed.
GPL doesn't get to steal other people's copyright, it only dictates the use of code that is a direct modification of the GPL code.
More than likely he went to the FSF and they said "1.) You're a dumbass, this doesn't violate shit, and 2.) We don't have standing anyway, you aren't the copyright holder and neither are we". He probably interpreted that as them being "too busy" or something.
Actually you can build a program built in Visual Studio without buying Visual Studio, but only because Microsoft chooses to give away their compilers for free. They sell IDE's, not compilers, you could work with notepad to build VS apps if you want to.
I'm also not sure it's legal to distribute the compiler with your code, Microsoft owns it, and it's almost certainly a copyright violation.
In other words, he's got to get his tools from someone who is willing to sell them. If the manufacturer owns them, and is unwilling to sell them, too bad. His only option now is to reverse engineer it.
If you were to build GPL software on Windows, does that mean you now must distribute Windows with your code to be in compliance?
Of course not.
That's what's going on here, the OP wants tools completely unrelated to the GPL code (he already has what is needed to compile the code) to allow him to install it on the manufacturer's hardware. They don't have to do that. In fact, it is almost certainly a violation of someone else's copyright to do that. It's nice that Windows does it (it would be useless if it didn't), it's also nice that Linux and Mac do the same thing, but there is nothing that says a router vendor has to do it.
The media they choose to distribute it on is irrelevant. It could be chiseled into stone tablets.
What they don't have to do, however, is give you a chisel and a fresh stone tablet so you can do it exactly like they did.
Seriously, it sounds like they distributed everything necessary to build the code on any machine you want, provided you have the proper tools to access the hardware. What they don't give are the tools to access the hardware, and neither do they need to.
The argument most people are making here is effectively that installing GPL'd software on top of non-GPL (i.e. an OS or firmware image) suddenly means the non-GPL software must be distributed freely. That's bullshit, of course it isn't true. That non-GPL software has someone else's copyright, and the GPL doesn't magically take that over. What it does is force you to distribute any changes to the GPL code as GPL also. It doesn't affect any software or hardware external to the GPL code at all. Ever. Other people have copyright on that shit, GPL doesn't get to steal it.
Seriously, people are assuming that the hardware vendor owns the firmware software, they probably don't. Even if they did, they have their own separate copyright on it, and GPL doesn't magically get to take that away.
That's not true at all. If what you say were true, then installing GPL software on a Windows machine means NTFS is suddenly GPL too. That's stupid, of course it isn't.
Once the GPL'd code is compiled it's a separate entity. You can wrap it up however you like, it doesn't magically GPL code that has nothing to do with the GPL'd code.
The code is available, and apparently complete. The OP is free to put it on any machine he likes. However, if he's going to put it on the vendor's hardware, he needs the image file format and any special software necessary to flash the ROM. This would be true whether he were using GPL code or just wanted to put nonsense on there. It has nothing to do with the GPL, it doesn't touch this.
If the code is not complete that's a completely separate issue, and the GPL definitely comes into play, but that's not what the OP said.
The issue here is a proprietary firmware image format, which the GPL would not cover. They released all GPL code. Wrapping it up in a proprietary format so that it will work on your device does not mean GPL suddenly applies to that format. It only covers GPL'd code and modifications to GPL'd code.
Once that sucker is compiled, they can do anything they want with the binary, including packaging it in a proprietary image format for flashing to a ROM. That portion of it they don't ever have to give up.
It sounds like the problem is the device, not the released code.
Basically, he needs a compiler for the hardware, or the image file format that the device uses to store the firmware. If either of those two things are proprietary, and have nothing to do with the GPL'd code (the fact that GPL'd code is packaged thus doesn't mean the GPL "infects" the proprietary portions of their hardware), they are not in any way required by the GPL to release them.
Basically, the OP is perfectly capable of compiling and running the source on a different piece of hardware, but he cannot modify and re-install the software on this hardware because there are other components not covered by the GPL which are required to make it compatible with his hardware.
The answer to this is not easy, but it's perfectly legal: Reverse engineer the firmware format, then install your modified code.
It doesn't sound like there is any legal justification for forcing them to distribute proprietary software/hardware access. The GPL doesn't give you license to their hardware, just the software, and they already gave that away like they were supposed to.
You don't have to subtract anything. It's on pace to be about half the national suicide rate. Not exactly damning when you put it in context.
Foxconn's conditions seem to be above average for stories I've read about Chinese factories. China in general treats the working class citizen as sub-human. Which is absolutely hilarious in the not-funny-at-all kind of way, considering the whole goal of Communism is to make the working class citizen the highest class citizen in the land.
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It seems to me this should extend to any collective pool of IP - including patents.
Possibly, it depends on how broad the SCOTUS ruling was. The laws for trademarks and the laws for patents are very different, and each are different from the laws for copyrights.
We'll have to wait and see, but it definitely sounds like this case could be used for a strong argument in Nero's case.
Federal safety standards are pitiful compared to insurance company standards.
Federal standards mandate airbags, but only for the driver, not the passenger or side airbags they've been putting in. All of that is coming from the insurance industry - and except for the fact that all drivers must have insurance, it's completely free market. Things like better crumple zones and such are all designed to boost their ratings with insurance companies, because people look at how much the insurance is going to cost them when they think about buying a car.
I think Schmidt flubbed it, what he should have said was: "If you have something that you don't want everyone to know, maybe you shouldn't be broadcasting it in the first place."
Google wasn't hacking into anything, they were connecting to open WiFi networks and collecting information that is necessary to connect to the network . The only thing that was a potential booboo here was they didn't dump the information, instead they chose to save it.
If you don't want the whole world to know it, don't broadcast it.
Except you can't put out something new and be able to sell it to 99% of the market.
I'm sorry, that's not how business works. You don't just play with something without some plan to get it to market.
The way to do this is as follows:
Phase one:
Create a hybrid drive that is significantly faster than traditional HDDs (though still slower than SSDs) without any of the storage problems of SSDs. Vendors copy you, pretty much all HDDs on the market are eventually hybrid.
Phase two:
While this is booming, be talking to Microsoft and Apple about how much better it would be if the OS were controlling the cache instead of the hard drive. You could suddenly have the fastest OS on the market with any drive. Dollar signs flash, and the next versions of the OS (or some update, if that's feasable) is capable of doing the caching.
Badda bing, badda boom, success. Microsoft and Apple aren't going to invest in something like this unless there is a market for these drives. There currently isn't, so Seagate needs to create the market first. THEN it can sell OS-handled cache.
I imagine an SSD drive much like Iron Man's suitcase, except when it unfolds it turns into a giant, Tokyo destroying monster!
4GB is just a cache file, if you are lucky it caches the right files but if you are doing complex stuff these "smart" caches often get horribly confused and start caching the wrong data.
You do realize that the reason your computer is so fast is because of progressive layers of cache, right?
The fastest cache on the system is L1 cache. It's also the most expensive. Next is L2 cache, which runs at about 1/10th the speed of L1, but it's much cheaper and so there can be more of it. That it's only an order of magnitude different means the larger L2 cache has time to fill the L1 cache before the L1 cache is completely empty. Then comes L3 cache (usually), which is again about 1/10th the speed of L2, and it keeps the L2 full. Then RAM, which has kept pace pretty well and is about 1/10th the speed of L3 and keeps L3 full. And here is where things break. RAM speeds are measured in nanoseconds. Spinning disk hard drive speeds are still measured in milliseconds, and not even 1 or 2 milliseconds, more like 5-10 milliseconds. That's a couple orders of magnitude slower and breaks the chain of cache that we had going, and it is not enough to maintain full RAM at all times. What we need is a cache that is about 1/10th the speed of RAM to sit between RAM and Hard Disk.
SLC Nand flash, with its sub-millisecond read and write times, fits the bill perfectly. It's basically a scaled up version of the caching they use on hard drives already, and because of its size should be much, much more effective.
Data is a sort of "group" word - the word is singular, but it stands for many individual pieces of datum.
You treat it as a singular word in every case, therefore "data is stored safely". People who say "data are ..." are incorrect, unless "data" is just being used to describe something else. I.e. - "Several chunks of data are missing from the database." The relevant phrase there is "chunks are missing". "Of data" just describes the type of chunk.
Many is for individual items, much is for groups of items or non-singular items. Data is a word that means many pieces of datum. It's not a plural of datum in the traditional sense - you treat it like a new word that means "many datums" instead of a plural form of datum.
I.e. - I have many knives in my drawer, but there is much tea in my glass, and not much time to drink it. The knives are referred to as individuals, even though there are many of them. The tea is a liquid, and is composed of individual molecules, but we don't count them, we refer to them all as a group - tea. Time is an idea that cannot be singular, so it is treated the same as a group.
The real trick to English, though, is that for every rule, there is an exception (even this one). Most native English speakers don't speak the language correctly anyway, so don't worry too much if you mess up something like using "many" instead of "much".
It would have been correct if he had said "many more datum", but that's just weird.
Yes, "much more data" is the correct way to say it, which was the point of the GP's joke.
Yeah, that wikipedia article is using figures from over a decade ago (1997 for their highest NAND numbers). Today the number of write cycles for the premium chips are in the millions, not thousands. You'd have to write your entire 500gb hard drive 8,000 times to burn up that 4gb of flash, assuming 1 million write cycles. In these applications, though, they're probably using the "creme de la creme" of flash chips, which can last up to 5 million write cycles. That lets you write that 500gb hard drive 45,000 times before the flash dies. That's 22.5 petabytes worth of data transfer. Assuming an 11ms write time for the hard drive (typical of notebooks), and assuming I didn't royally screw up somewhere (I may have), I get 32 million years of non-stop writing to use that up.
Even at their slowest, SSD drives are 5-10x faster than spinning disks. This allows it to act as a perfect layer of cache between RAM and HDD. It's also non-volatile, like the rest of the hard drive, so all you need to ensure no loss of data is to at least get the data to the cache. Assuming the hard drive doesn't do something retarded, like wipe the cache on reboot, it's all good.
They have to give you the tools (code and build scripts) let you build the code to any hardware you have access to. They don't have to give you access to their hardware. At this point he can still reverse engineer the image format and potentially gain access to the router.
Really, the guy should probably shut the hell up. All they have to is claim their flash image format is "a technical measure designed to prevent piracy" and boom, it's illegal to even reverse engineer it. Put some shitty encryption on it, and it's done for. Once that happens, DMCA kicks in and he has no options at all, he'll never legally get his code on that router.
And it only covers the code for that particular install. It doesn't mean I need to ship you a compiler to go along with it, or the third party script engine I used to run the build script. It doesn't mean I need to send you the drive format so you can put it on the same drive as mine, nor does it mean I need to send you any tools to do so.
They gave the OP enough to build the code (minus some third party libraries, which cannot be distributed due to copyright) into an executable on any machine he has a compiler for. That's all the GPL requires. What he wants are tools that he does not have access to that are not covered by the GPL (they cannot be, they have their own copyright) in order to install the executable on router hardware. The GPL doesn't cover that, it cannot. If it did it would be made null (at least the offending provision would be) at the very first legal challenge.
As others have pointed out, GPLs 2 and 3 both require the release of the build-prerequisites for compiling the code.
There, fixed that for you. GPL doesn't take over the whole machine, it only involves the copyright on that specific piece of code. Derivatives of that code must be GPL also, but the provisions in the GPL apply only to GPL code. That means for GPL code you must supply the code. They did that. It also means for GPL code you must supply any build scripts to compile the code. They did that too. What it does not mean is that when they package the code in a proprietary format with proprietary tools to be flashed to proprietary hardware, they have to distribute that too. Not happening. It's probably even illegal - other people own the copyright on those formats/tools, to distribute them for free would be piracy.
Seriously, GPL doesn't get to take over other people's copyright just because you want it to. It dictates the use of the original code and derivatives of that code. Period. It doesn't touch anything else. If there is a situation where it looks like it does, that portion of the GPL would be ruled unenforceable in a heartbeat, because it's touching someone else's copyright.
How are they not in compliance?
They distributed all code and build scripts, except for third party libraries which they are not permitted to distribute (GPL doesn't get to steal other people's copyright).
The image format to flash the ROM is an entirely separate entity from the GPL'd software, GPL doesn't steal their copyright on that either, none of the tools needed to install it on that specific hardware need to be distributed.
GPL doesn't get to steal other people's copyright, it only dictates the use of code that is a direct modification of the GPL code.
More than likely he went to the FSF and they said "1.) You're a dumbass, this doesn't violate shit, and 2.) We don't have standing anyway, you aren't the copyright holder and neither are we". He probably interpreted that as them being "too busy" or something.
Actually you can build a program built in Visual Studio without buying Visual Studio, but only because Microsoft chooses to give away their compilers for free. They sell IDE's, not compilers, you could work with notepad to build VS apps if you want to.
I'm also not sure it's legal to distribute the compiler with your code, Microsoft owns it, and it's almost certainly a copyright violation.
In other words, he's got to get his tools from someone who is willing to sell them. If the manufacturer owns them, and is unwilling to sell them, too bad. His only option now is to reverse engineer it.
If you were to build GPL software on Windows, does that mean you now must distribute Windows with your code to be in compliance?
Of course not.
That's what's going on here, the OP wants tools completely unrelated to the GPL code (he already has what is needed to compile the code) to allow him to install it on the manufacturer's hardware. They don't have to do that. In fact, it is almost certainly a violation of someone else's copyright to do that. It's nice that Windows does it (it would be useless if it didn't), it's also nice that Linux and Mac do the same thing, but there is nothing that says a router vendor has to do it.
The media they choose to distribute it on is irrelevant. It could be chiseled into stone tablets.
What they don't have to do, however, is give you a chisel and a fresh stone tablet so you can do it exactly like they did.
Seriously, it sounds like they distributed everything necessary to build the code on any machine you want, provided you have the proper tools to access the hardware. What they don't give are the tools to access the hardware, and neither do they need to.
The argument most people are making here is effectively that installing GPL'd software on top of non-GPL (i.e. an OS or firmware image) suddenly means the non-GPL software must be distributed freely. That's bullshit, of course it isn't true. That non-GPL software has someone else's copyright, and the GPL doesn't magically take that over. What it does is force you to distribute any changes to the GPL code as GPL also. It doesn't affect any software or hardware external to the GPL code at all. Ever. Other people have copyright on that shit, GPL doesn't get to steal it.
Seriously, people are assuming that the hardware vendor owns the firmware software, they probably don't. Even if they did, they have their own separate copyright on it, and GPL doesn't magically get to take that away.
That's not true at all. If what you say were true, then installing GPL software on a Windows machine means NTFS is suddenly GPL too. That's stupid, of course it isn't.
Once the GPL'd code is compiled it's a separate entity. You can wrap it up however you like, it doesn't magically GPL code that has nothing to do with the GPL'd code.
The code is available, and apparently complete. The OP is free to put it on any machine he likes. However, if he's going to put it on the vendor's hardware, he needs the image file format and any special software necessary to flash the ROM. This would be true whether he were using GPL code or just wanted to put nonsense on there. It has nothing to do with the GPL, it doesn't touch this.
If the code is not complete that's a completely separate issue, and the GPL definitely comes into play, but that's not what the OP said.
I believe the build scripts were distributed.
The issue here is a proprietary firmware image format, which the GPL would not cover. They released all GPL code. Wrapping it up in a proprietary format so that it will work on your device does not mean GPL suddenly applies to that format. It only covers GPL'd code and modifications to GPL'd code.
Once that sucker is compiled, they can do anything they want with the binary, including packaging it in a proprietary image format for flashing to a ROM. That portion of it they don't ever have to give up.
It sounds like the problem is the device, not the released code.
Basically, he needs a compiler for the hardware, or the image file format that the device uses to store the firmware. If either of those two things are proprietary, and have nothing to do with the GPL'd code (the fact that GPL'd code is packaged thus doesn't mean the GPL "infects" the proprietary portions of their hardware), they are not in any way required by the GPL to release them.
Basically, the OP is perfectly capable of compiling and running the source on a different piece of hardware, but he cannot modify and re-install the software on this hardware because there are other components not covered by the GPL which are required to make it compatible with his hardware.
The answer to this is not easy, but it's perfectly legal: Reverse engineer the firmware format, then install your modified code.
It doesn't sound like there is any legal justification for forcing them to distribute proprietary software/hardware access. The GPL doesn't give you license to their hardware, just the software, and they already gave that away like they were supposed to.
The suicides were in China, not Taiwan. Read more carefully.
What's really sad is Foxconn's conditions are actually pretty good for a Chinese factory.
You don't have to subtract anything. It's on pace to be about half the national suicide rate. Not exactly damning when you put it in context.
Foxconn's conditions seem to be above average for stories I've read about Chinese factories. China in general treats the working class citizen as sub-human. Which is absolutely hilarious in the not-funny-at-all kind of way, considering the whole goal of Communism is to make the working class citizen the highest class citizen in the land.
Yup, Taiwanese owned factory in China. That's where the confusion comes from.
You do realize there are a million ways to commit suicide, right? Closing off the roof does nothing.