As it turns out, the free market just doesn't value things like environmental safety, so the government intervenes with laws and regulations.
It's just as much the consumer's fault as it is the corporation's
Regardless of whose fault it may be (and I would argue that a corporation intimately familiar with its production process and byproducts bears more guilt in the consiquences of their manufacture than an unsuspecting or unknowing customer who buys the product), the bottom line is that the free market does not work, and does not serve humanity's best interest, when it comes to addressing these issues. I.e. the free market is not the panacea laissaz-faire free marketeers and Libertarians would have us believe. It works great for some things, and falls flat on its face for others. Health Care and the environment are two areas where free markets fall flat on their face, all right-wing rhetoric to the contrary aside.
Or what happened in the 16th and 17th Centuries. All the crazy psychos from Europe wanted to escape because they were being 'persecuted' so they went and pushed the American frontiers. This is why European countries have had no major problems with each other from the 1600s onwards to now.
Modolo that little hiccup we fondly call World War II. Or how about that little bump in the Eternal Peace of Europe commonly referred to as world war one?
Or Napoleon's march across Europe? Stalins depridations that killed 20,000,000 Russians (in addition to the 20,000,000 killed by the Germans in the aforementioned hiccup immediately preceeding). Or perhaps you have already forgottene the more recent attempt by the Serbians to exterminate the muslim neighbors while Europe wrung its hands and stood by watching?
America has plenty of problems, and more than a few of them stem from the remnants of the religious hysteria of those puritans who first colonized the continent, but to suggest Europe has been a font of light for the last 3-4 centuries is patently absurd. Indeed, as humiliating as it is to have the likes of Baby Bush running the country, and quite possibly the world, into the ground, even if our worst fears are true and his leadership does come to resemble that of Napolean or other European despots of the last 3 centuries, this will be a first for America, in contrast to Europe's repetative habits in that regard.
So, while I fear our current administration as much as the next person, and will quite possibly try to emigrate to Canada if Baby Bush wins a second term (assuming, of course, the Canadians will let me), your ethnocentric and historically illiterate representation of geopolitical events makes even Baby Bush look well informed and balanced.
Hmm! It has been improved lately. I might be wanting an ATI card then. After reading... it said that the drivers are hard to install. Is this true?
It probably depends on your distro, although in general I found them to be relatively easy to install. Whether using Red Hat's RPM, uncompressing and installing from a tarball, or using Gentoo's portage (the easiest approach I suspect, and the only one I've used personally: simply 'emerge ati-drivers'), once the software is installed configuration is easy. Just follow the ATI README, run the configuration utility (it will identify the card, ask you some questions as to whether or not you want to run dual headed, optimize your 3d opengl for Maya, CAD work, or whatever, and will generate an XF86Config-4 file automatically), and restart X. At that point you should be off and running.
Note that for Radeon 9100, 8500, 7500, etc. you can use the xfree DRI 'radeon' drivers, which (being source based) are more straightforward, provided you're used to configuring your XF86Config file. Installing DRI can be a bit painful on many distros... (at the risk of sounding like a Gentoo zealot it is quite easy on that platform: simply 'emerge xfree-drm' will compile and install DRI, linked against your current xfree and kernel installation). For higher end cards like the 9800 you will need the binary drivers, however.
NVIDIA cards because ATI's Linux drivers are not very good compared to NVIDIA's. I won't be buying an ATI card until ATI supports Linux fully like NVIDIA. I do play Linux native-port games in Linux.
This hasn't been true for quite some time.
I have owned numerous high end nvidia and radeon cards, and have never had anything resembling stability from the nvidia cards using the nvidia binary driver (and yes, I've tried all of the tweaks and suggestions Nvidia and others suggest vis-a-vis AGP settings, etc.). This has been true on numerous machines, both single and dual Intel P3 and Athlon XP/MP boxes, with a variety of motherboards, memory configurations, and Linux kernels.
ATI radeon cards on the other hand have been pretty solid, with excellent support via the xfree DRI drivers for most cards, and adequate, reasonably stable support from ATI via their firegl binary-only drivers for those not yet supported.
NVidia has not been king of the Linux hill for quite sometime, and while I have had my gripes with ATI as well, the notorious instability of the Nvidia binary drivers and lackluster support via the xfree DRI drivers has placed me (and my employer) firmly in the ATI camp.
It has to be said: if McDonald's had patented, trademarked or copyrighted the 'plastic burger joint', they'd be suing Burger King and Wendy's, and never mind the competitive market...
While you cannot 'copyright' the idea of running a burger joint, ever since the 1980s you've been able to patent it under US Patent law.
Fortunately for burger lovers everywhere, McDonalds, Burger King, et al (i.e. the fast food business model) predates that appallingly ill-concieved change in patent law, and so we do have a competative marketplace in that regard.
However, as eBay and others have shown, we are now facing at least a generation or longer of time where the most innovative and promising approaches to business will enjoy little or no competition as a direct result of allowing said business models to be patented for 20 years (and probably extended to other areas when they expire, allowing them to last even longer).
Goodbye free market.
Copyright destroys competative markets as well. It has been judged, rightly or wrongly, that this is an acceptable tradeoff to allow authors and other artists to work full time on their craft, rather than being forced to hold down a day job at the same time. Perhaps this was true when copyrights lasted 14 years... however, clearly now that they have been extended to life+70 years for artists, and 95 years for corporate "art", any such balance in the tradeoff has been lost.
We should have Harry Potter knockoffs, just as we have JRR Tolkien knockoffs (Eddings, etc.), and just as we have Gibson knockoffs (indeed, he created the cyberpunk genre). This is how an innovative series of books leads to entire genres of fiction, creating entire new markets. JK Rowling is a greedy, shortsighted ass to do this, but more importantly, copyright is a dysfunctional, destructive, negative-sum system in its current form. Indeed, any system that preemtively destroys entire genres of literature or entire new markets just to protect the profitability of one work is inherently negative-sum, destructive to everyone. This is true of patents (and epitomized by patents on software, mathematics, and business models), and it is true of copyright in its current excessive form.
So, lest we dismiss the example the article's author gave initially, under our current regime of laws, if McDonalds came into being today, there would be no Burger King, for at least 20 years, possibly longer. And if JRR Tolkien were written today, much of the fantasy literature of the world would likewise be banned (remember, even 30 years ago copyright wasn't nearly as draconian as it is today).
1. There are far less Mac's out there in the world than PC's with Windows on them. Therefore when you're writing a worm which has the sole goal of infecting as many people as possible (which is what writers aim for these days) then you go for the majority.
This argument is a myth, and has been used by Microsofties to try and downplay the vastly superior security of both *BSD and GNU/Linux. Mac OS X is a FreeBSD derivative in many respects, and vastly better designed from the ground up than Microsoft windows, for whom things like networking and security were afterthoughts cobbled together in an ad-hoc frenzy of featuritis and catch-up. Such an ad-hoc approach to design will never yield acceptable security, as Microsoft's shoddy products have demonstrated so dramatically in recent years, time and time again...and once again today, with this irritating worm.
Why is the numerical argument a myth? Because the truth is that, on the internet backbone, more than half the servers are a variant of Linux, *BSD, or Unix. And servers are the real prize for system crackers looking to take control of a system or cause significant harm. Yet these systems, which present a far more tempting target in terms of power and potential harm, and their derivatives (such as Mac OS X), remain unaffected by the plethora of worms that strike the internet. These worms are almost always exclusively Microsoft worms, affecting Microsoft operating systems exclusively. Not because there are more Microsoft desktops than anything else (for, once again, servers are the real prize, and most of them are not Microsoft), but because Microsoft's operating system design is so rife with security issues that it makes a profoundly easy target, and a decent chunk of servers can be affected with very little effort on the part of the malicious cracker.
It isn't about numbers. It is about design, and everyone in the industry, with the exception of Microsoft, has taken security seriously and designed their systems appropriately.
[Excellent examples of poor design by Microsoft leading to security issues removed for brevity]
4. Generally there are far more tech savvy people using OS X or Linux than Windows who don't blindly open unknown attachments.
This is true for GNU/Linux and *BSD. It isn't true for OS X (unless the knowledge to avoid Microsoft's shoddy products is considered being "tech savvy", an argument you could make that I wouldn't dispute, except to say that (a) I don't think that is what was meant and (b) most people understand something a little more comprehensive when defining someone as more "tech savvy", so while I might grant you that point on a technicality, I would dispute the implication). A lot of OS X users are as capable, and incapable, as their Microsoft using counterparts. They do click on unknown attachments, they do download plugins without a thought, etc. BUT, they have the good fortune of using a relatively secure and very well designed system, and are thus protected from their foolishness in ways Microsoft, even with its competition-destroying Palladium, will likely never achieve.
Contratry to popular Slashdot belief, the fact that it's easy to get details of your contacts in your address book is not a major reason why worms propogate so frequently. I can write a perl script to extract the details from Pine or most other UNIX mail programs just as easily - the actual problem is getting the virus launched on the victims PC in the first place.
Absolutely right. And as you describe so well, doing so is trivial on Microsoft systems, and difficult or impossible on virtually every other system.
It's just the standard FSF press release with "SCO" pencilled in. He barely even mentions SCO except to use it as the latest example of why everyone else in the world is a cretin for confusing GNU and Linux.
Did you even read the article?
If so, you are being profoundly obtuse, perhaps deliberately so, or perhaps merely so blinded by your hatred of Richard Stallman that you cannot see past your own prejudices and comprehend what he actually wrote.
Richard Stallman has always been a stickler for licenses and for nomenclature. His entire GNU/Linux v. Linux crusade boils down to nomenclature: he is a pendant about differentiating between one projecct (the linux kernel) and another (the GNU system of utilities and programs that makes up the rest of what we consider a basic *nix-like operating system). Right or wrong, his entire GNU/Linux bit is about clarity, the antithes of the 'newspeak' you accuse him of speaking, newspeak epitomized by terms such as "intellectual property" and nearly all of the drivel eminating from Redmond and Utah.
Indeed, his entire article is about clarity with respect to the $CO nonsense, and how that clarity requires a clear, concise, and above all accurate use of language to be achieved.
He is absolutely correct in pointing out that, outside of the court room, $CO's entire strategy is one of muddying the waters and playing up anti-freedom stereotypes ('free software developers' == 'napster', i.e. giving away your own work == violating the copyrights of others, etc.). Their press releases constantly mix up trademark law ($CO does not own the UNIX trademark, the Open Group does), copyright law (Novell and IBM appear to own the copyrights in question), patent law (Novell and IBM again own the patants in question, not $CO), and contract law under one heading: "Intellectual Property."
RMS is absolutely correct in emphesizing that muddy language leads to muddy thinking, and with respect to $CO, using muddy terms such as "IP/Intellectual Property" and throwing all kinds of radically different legislative regimes into one pot inevitably plays into the hands of those who seek to sow confusion, fear, uncertaintly, and doubt, namely Microsoft and their current lackey, $CO.
He is correct in pointing out that this irresponsible misuse of terminology is getting us into trouble, and being used by $CO's propogandists masterfully. He is also right to point out that much of the confusion as to what part of the operating system (the linux kernel, other utilities, or what have you) were being targeted result from an obfuscation between was in Linux (the kernel) and what is not (the GNU system, xfree, etc.).
In short, he is right, our use of language is important if we wish to discuss and think about issues as complex as these in a coherent manner, and your ad homonem attack doesn't change that in the least.
And since his article deals with the importance of clarity in the use of language when discussing and dissecting the $CO FUD campaign, no one should be surprised that he isn't discussing free v. open or the GNU community as such, since that particular tangent is off topic for this discussion (and obviously brought up by you for the sole purpose of propogating negative stereotypes about the man and his views).
A business is not designed to make friends, engender feelings of goodwill towards puppies, or cure cancer. That, my friend, would be called a charity.
Or a Community. You know, these cooperative things people lived and took part together in, which when combined together created civilizations?
Let's face it, when the American people chose to embrace the radical right agenda that is in many ways epitomized by Ayn Randianism back in the 1980s, and exchanged their status of citizens for that of consumers, and their sense of business ethics went from a "let's find a win-win approach we can both benefit from" (positive sum game) to "let's make a fast buck, whatever the consiquences to others" (zero, or more commonly, a negative sum game), we lost our communities and became little more than faceless wage slaves serving our faceless corporate masters. Most of us are lucky enough not to live in the small southern towns our corporate masters chose to dump their toxic waste in (thanks, Monsanto), and those that are unfortunate enough are generally dead and so not a concern (thanks Reagan, Bush Sr., Clinton, and Baby Bush, for gutting the EPAs ability to be at all vigilant).
It should be no surprise that when one redefines humankind's humanity as "charity" (with all the negative baggage that implies) and humankind's inhumanity to itself as "nothing personal, it's just business, and businesses exist to make money, not friends", one loses one's own humanity in the process. What is surprising is how long American culture has managed to survive and even thrive, after having dehumanized itself and its people to such an appalling degree. One can only hope that the rest of the world retains a little more wisdom, and that emigration isn't a complete impossibility.
To illustrate this, if this clause were in the LGPL, any company suing an OSS project would be unable to use any LGPL'ed software.
I like that. I would further tweak both the GPL and LGPL to include something like:
"by using this code you agree to license, in perpetuity and at no cost, your entire patent portfolio as it relates to software to any and all (L)GPLed code."
Let the GPL's innoculative qualities extend preemtively to software, business model, and mathematical patents (which, as we know when they are normalized, are all one and the same). That, plus an 'in perpetuity' clause to cover those regions that require such to prevent retroactive license revokation, would IMHO be excellent additions to GPL v. 3 and (L)GPL v. 3. Hell, even FreeBSD might want to consider the in perpetuity, no lawsuit, and perhaps even the patent innoculation addendums (though the latter might in fact conflict with their philosophy of maximum first generation developer freedom in similiar ways to the GPL's other protections and innoculations from abuse, but that is a debate for another day, and another forum).
What Time Zone is God in Anyway?
on
Incas Used Binary?
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· Score: 2, Funny
"According to occult scientist Terence McKenna, the end of the world as we know it will occur at 11:10 PM, December 22, 2012"
Is that Eastern, Central, Mountain, or Pacific Time?
Or is God in another timezone altogether... like Greenwich or MET?...and how many people, in and out of the White House, will work full time trying to make the apocolypse happen on schedule? Prophecies, despite being nonsensical, have a way of becoming self-fullfilling once enough gullable people buy into them, and enough of those gullible people ascend to positions of power where they can actually make it happen (with or without their brother in Florida helping out).
I'll be one of the first ones in line to buy their next game.
Then you will be one of the fools responsible for our complete loss of digital rights.
It is hedonistic, short sighted fools who put their own immediate gratification over their own medium and long term interests, and worse, over the interest of their community at large, that are responsible for this sort of behavior not only working, but being richly rewarded.
Keeping your "personal fun and politics separate" when the two clearly collide like this, is remeniscent of the demise of the Tram manufacturers in America. If you are a student of history, you'll recall that they kept their quarterly profits firmly separate from their long term survival. They sold every tram they built for a number of years to the automobile companies, who were willing to pay more for the trains than were the cities. But the cities needed the trams to keep their mass transit systems running. The tram manufacturers ended up surprised when the automobile industries stopped ordering and scrapping their product (go figure) leaving none of the cities with no tram systems, and the tram manufacturers with no customers.
Go ahead and put your immediate need for gratification ahead of your interest in having access to free software and software freedom, and enjoy the fruits of that shortsighted decision just as the trams companies of America enjoyed thei fruits of their decision to sell their product to their competitors for scrap metal and leave their customers in the lurch did, when they went out of business completely less than a decade later.
Just as we have no trams as a result of the tram manufacturers incredibly shortsighted decision, if enough people like you take this approach, we will have likewise little or no have no free software.
Understandable. SCO is deliberately sowing confusion (not showing any evidence while screaming accusations publicly most of which can be proven false without their proported evidence, changing their accusations every five minutes, deliberately obfuscating and misrepresenting diverse areas of law, including trademark, trade secret, contract, copyright, and patent law, etc. etc.).
IANAL, but I have been following this rather closely, at first with consternation and concern, now with irritation and amusement.
The release of Ancient UNIX undermines any trade secret violations; The SCO Group failed to register and copyrights, making accusations of copyright infringement impossible; SCO isn't accusing IBM of patent infringement, and another company owns the trademark to UNIX.
That is essentially correct. The only thing which could hold legal water would be a contract violation. There is some speculation that SCO is persuing some of the more onerous AT&T licensing provisions, which might give AT&T/SCO some control over IBM's own code written for UNIX system V. However, even if this 'worst case scenerio' were to be true, the provisions are so onerous and absurd that they are likely to be declared unenforcable by a court of law.
There is further evidence that the case is extraordinarilly weak, although this evidence isn't admissable in court. Namely, SCO wants a jury trial, and while a courtroom is neutral on whether or not a jury vs. judge trial is selected, attorney friends of mine assure me that when a litigant chooses a jury trial it is almost always because they are uncertain of their case and hope to baboozle lay people and get a judgement anyway.
In contrast, folks who have a very good case generally choose to have a judge preside over the trial, as juries are much less predictable than judges.
So it boils down to a possible contract violation, nothing more. No copyright violation (despite their public rhetoric to the contrary), probably little or no trade secret issues given that they themselves have contributed to and distibuted Linux code long after making the allegations publicly (and continue to do so to this day), no patent violation as they do not own the patents, and as you rightly point out, no trademark violation as (a) Linux does not use the UNIX trademark and (b) they don't own the trademark anyway.
So it amounts to some arcane contract law which, in the extraordinarilly unlikely event that IBM did in fact violate their contract with AT&T/SCO in some way and lost the lawsuit, wouldn't affect the legality of Linux in any way.
It is all FUD and nonsense, created in a desperate attempt to extort money and defraud investors, underwritten by Microsoft and a nameless second entity, and will likely be viewed as a mockery of the beleagered American legal system for some time to come.
But, even if they retain the rights, the fact they had them published publicly make the source open knowledge, no ?
It certainly nukes any 'trade secrets' litigation that references that code, but with SCO's ever mutating rhetoric and accusations, it really amounts to just another stone in the pile which as become a mountain of evidence that SCO has no case, no legitimate claims whatsoever, and is merely grandstanding dramatically in a burnout that will amuse those watching, enrich their patrons (Microsoft and the other mystery party that I am becoming convinced may well be Sun Microsystems), and in the short term hurt, but in the long run vindicate with a vengeance, both GNU/Linux and the free software/open source paradigm.
We know their claims are nonsense. We know their complaint (while it must be taken seriously and fought) is groundless. We know that, were the government at all willing to enforce anti-trust law, Microsoft would not be daring to underwrite this, and we know that, were the justice department at all interested in enforcing corporate law in general (against, say, the likes of Enron and WorldCom), that most of the board of directors of this letigious group would be under serious investigation for stock market manipulation and insider trading, starting now and continuing through the end of the trial, when it will with near certainty be proven that (a) they never had a case, (b) they knew this and (c) they have violated the copyright of Linux and perhaps other projects consistently, over a long period of time, and continue to do so today (they are still distributing Linux today even while claiming their alleged code isn't under GPL).
With respect to the article itself, these people are certainly letigious thugs, and they should be taken seriously, but lets not forget the author's bias, where he frequently refers to free software developers and enthusiasts dismissively as "crunchies," so while it is interesting to know what sub-human filth comprises SCO and its umbrella group, this isn't really anything new, and the article's spin (which is an underscoring of FUD, really) contains a rather transparent and quite significant anti-free software bias.
Don't talk about compatable. GPL isn't compatable with BSD license, so we can't use your guy's code. You guys can take all you want, but we can't take. I like how GPL is "free".
Please.
First, which part of "this will contribute to Linux" didn't you understand? Linux has absolutely nothing to do with the FreeBSD license, so spreading your divisive nonsense in this thread is woefully off-topic.
Second, the FreeBSD license is perfectly compatible with the GPL. It is also compatible with Microsoft's proprietary license, not to mention anyone elses. The fact that the GPL isn't compatible with FreeBSD (meaning you can't take GPLed code and incorporate it into FreeBSD-licensed code), and the fact that Microsoft's proprietary license is likewise incompatible, is entirely irrelevant.
Indeed, that one-way compatability was a deliberate decision made by the FreeBSD folks...who valued the developer's freedom to incorporate their hard work into proprietary products over the protection of the freedom of future developers and users. Which is a perfectly legitimate stance to take, though it just so happens to be in disagreement with the decision by the GPL folks to protect their users and derivative developers freedoms above even their own.
It is extraordinarilly disingenuous to criticize one free licenses philosophy and imply it to somehow be improper, when the very same license has led to FreeBSD code being included in products which protect neither the developers, nor the users freedom, such as Microsoft's usage of the FreeBSD network stack. Before lambasting the thousands of volunteers who have contributed millions of man hours for FREE, to enhance your FREEDOM, merely because you disagree with the aspects of freedom they choose to emphesize over the ones you would emphesize (if any, which I find questionable in this particular troll), perhaps you would like to address the use of FREE code in products that strip all said FREEDOMs away? Until you justify lambasting the 1-way compatability between two free licenses while ignorning the same 1-way compatability between FreeBSD and virtually every proprietary license, your entire argument devolves to hypocritical grandstanding, misinformation, and spin.
The GPL is free. FreeBSD is free. In different ways, with different protections, different emphesises on different aspects of freedom, and with different consiquences. Most of us who use FreeBSD are perfectly comfortable with this, and understand the differences that are part of the diversity of our community. Most of us who use GNU/Linux are likewise understanding and appreciative of both schools of thought, and can recognize the advantages and limitations of both.
It is only the few zealots on either side, and much more commonly divisive trolls like yourself, for whome this concept poses such difficulty.
The extended LoTR:FoTR plays perfectly fine on my X-Box. Has this incompatibility you speak of been documented anywhere?
It also plays fine on my laptop, in my desktop PC, and in my home theatre PC. As do the few other DVDs I own, and while I haven't gotten around to backing it up yet (though really, I should), if I can play it, I can certainly back it up. Indeed, even those which won't play in my computers, but will in a DVD player, I can back up as xvid (or any other digital format I please) with my mini-dv video camera and my firewire port.
Thank you for playing media cartels. You have managed to piss off even more of your customers, and gained absolutely nothing by doing so. Time to go back and retake Remedial Business 101 (particularly the section on "providing a good or service to your customers") again...and don't come back to the board room until you've learned the material this time!
This is really great news for Linux. For too long we've been trapped in the out-moded hierarchical/graphical paradigm. Plan 9, with its revolutionary "factotum" and "secstore" structures, could really provide a breadth of fresh hair to the Linux kernal, putting it head and shoulders above Windows.
While it is nice that the new license conforms to the requirements of the Open Source folks, that does not mean it is compatible with the GNU General Public License (GPL) under which Linux is written. Indeed, not even all free software licenses are compatibel with the GPL (though the vast majority certainly are), and as yet I have not been able to find any commentary from the FSF on whether the modified license qualifies as "free", much less is GPL compatible (the old one certainly wasn't, as RMSes comments posted to this thread quite definitely explain).
So, before getting too excited about Plan 9's potential contribution to Linux, we need to first find out whether or not the licenses are even compatible, so that code can be shared between the two projects.
Linus is more the excpetion than the rule in open source. Look at the likes of RMS and Bruce Perens
While I hate to respond to ad homonem trolls like this, letting this silly statement go by unanswered, particularly in light of the clueless moderators marking it up as insightful, and allowing this sort of misinformation to stand unrebutted, would be an even greater disservice than feeding the troll.
First, RMS and Bruce Perens are hardly the "rule" in open source and free software projects. Quite the contrary, they are exceptional in many respects, as are most public figures in the world for better or worse. Linus is actually more akin to the average coder of free software: he does it for fun, for the joy of coding, and is relatively apolitical about the whole thing.
ego maniacs desperate to keep their role at the head of their little cliques
Second, as for the alleged egos of Bruce Perens and RMS, despite their occasional public disagreements and arguments their egos are no more, nor less, developed than those of most male humans above the age of puberty. Indeed, as anyone without an axe to grind who has seen RMS speak will point out, he is actually quite soft-spoken and humble, and his opinions, while strong, controversial, and often unyielding, are born of idealism and not of self aggrandizement.
Even the whole GNU/Linux thing has nothing to do with RMS personally (notice that he isn't asking people to call it RMS/Linux), but stems from a desire to get his message about software freedom out to the public at large, and the feeling that the 95% or so of the operating system we call Linux (which includes all of the filesystem tools, etc.) was getting zero recognition and thus, the message behind the writing of those tools (in RMSes opinion) was being lost. Idealistic yes. Stubborn, yes. Egomaniacal? Hardly.
We need the RMSes and Bruce Perenses around. RMS has steered the community clear of numerous dangerous shoals with respect to licensing conflicts (the old KDE/qt license prior to TrollTech's graceful fixing of the problem, the incompatabilities of the old Mozilla license, etc. all of which have since been fixed, denying the likes of SCO and Microsoft ammunition to damage the projects and community at this stage of the game), and Bruce Perens is responsible in no small part for getting closed minded people to look at free software, first embracing its technical advantages and then, later, after seeing the empowerment of the freedom it offers, to embrace free software's freedom: the freedom to innovate as one's business requires, the freedom from having a vendor yank one's chain, the freedom to participate in a free and competative marketplace, rather than to work beneath the thumb of a convicted monopolist, the freedom to modify a tool to better match one's purpose, and so forth.
But Perens and RMS are hardly indicative of your average free software coder. Linus, while himself far above average in accomplishments, bears a far greater resemblence in temperament and attitude to most free software enthusiasts and developers, certainly far more so than either RMS or Perens.
My understanding is that Sun already has a perpetual license. So no need to pay new money.
Exactly his point. Microsoft could have gotten any code it needed from FreeBSD, free and clear. They didn't need to license a single line of code from the dinasaur product that is SCO... that they did so was a transparent move to help finance the SCO FUD campaign (and with the aforementioned options scam in place, to make it all back by ripping off SCO's investors).
Sun Microsystems could be the silent second party to this, financing it by buying a license they don't need just as Microsoft did. They may well be hoping to score a home run and sweep up all of the GNU/Linux refugess in the unlikely event a clueless judge or brainwashed jury react in SCO's favor, but unwilling to publicly alienate the Linux community should the gambit fail (and they they have to finally get on the Linux bandwagen all the way).
It is an interesting thought... Sun is one company that really could stand to benefit from this... and their business practices to date show that they really did not "get" the free software/open source paradigm, and that many of their top leadership still don't.
This is about capitalist oligarchs seeking to destroy a cooperative economy of abundance in order to maintain their own dominance of a capitalist economy of scarcity. It is the ultimate in negative-sum policy... reducing, even decimating the wealth of the world (in this case the millions of man hours of volunteer programmers that is the GPLed GNU/Linux system... and whose to say they won't move on to FreeBSD next... nothing in the previous AT&T v. FreeBSD addresses many of the ever-changing allegations of SCO) to achieve a better position for oneself. Whoever the players are should be destroyed, by whatever means... they and their mentality represent a threat to every person, every economic system, and every business they come into contact with. That Sun Microsystems might be one of these players is an intriguing thought... their past conduct certainly makes them out to have been a Microsoft wannabe in the past.
Alternately, this could spell big trouble for Apple. How will my Mom feel when she can't check her mutual funds using her Macintosh because the browser isn't compatible?
The same way my mom feels when she goes to a site that is IE specific and doesn't support even the most basic of web standards.
Mad.
But, as she has been informed by her son on Microsoft's efforts to deliberately break software compatability and internet standards in order for force their customers to use their product rather than the product of their choice, her anger is aimed squarely at the web site (or more precisely, at the company it represents) and at Microsoft, not at GNU/Linux or her browser.
She finds a competitor who is standards compliant and buys from them instead.
And guess what. She loves her Linux box, and will "give it up only when they pry it from her cold, dead hands." She is living proof that Linux is more than ready for the desktop, and not only usable, but often preferred, by those who are not computer literate and simply want to be able to use a machine simply, and without random crashes or data loss. Something Linux gives her, and Microsoft hasn't been able to deliver in nigh 20 years.
Uhm, OK, and how are you gonna prove you're just 'scraping by'? Should the government just take your workd for it? Or will you have to file paperwork and have the government putting your finances under a microscope? Will you only have to do that if you want the coupon/rebate? This would mean if you want privacy, you effectively have to pay for it. Definitely not something these mythical founding fathers intended.
First, there is nothing mythical about the founding fathers. Their existence, their opinions, their writings, and their political leanings are all a matter of well documented public record.
Second, volunteering some personal information, such as income, in order to get a voluntary service (such as welfare) is not nearly as unreasonable as allowing the government to demand any or all of the last 7 years of your financial records, to be examined under a microscope in minute detail under pain of imprisonment. Nor is it equivelent to "buying" your privacy. Quite the opposite: the default is that you have privacy, and if you choose to accept a free handout you volunteer to prove to those giving you that handout that you really need it. Trying to turn that around into some kind of "then we're discriminating against the poor" nonsense is extremely disingenuous, as the working poor not on welfare would in that scennerio exemplify.
If you want medical services you agree to give up your privacy to some degree with regards to your medical records (No, insurance companies probably shouldn't be allowed to have this information: let them calculate their numbers based on the entire population, rather than subsets who happen to be more or less healthy than others, but that doesn't change the fact that the physician treating you needs that information in order to treat you properly and safely).
If you wish to attend college you give up some privacy with regards to your high school grades, at least to those colleges you apply to.
And, if you want free money from a government's social system, you agree to give up enough personal financial privacy in order to prove you really need the money. That is no reason for the default to be that no one, anywhere, has any such privacy, as is the current norm with the income tax system we are forced to live under today.
If you tax sales rather than income, that has an unfair effect on people scraping to get by, while assisting people that save their money, not contributing back to the economy.
People just "scraping by" can get tax coupons or other assistance to offset their 30%. The rest of us can pay the 30% tax and be glad our private finances are none of the government's business, and that the government has no excuse for examining them without a warrant (thereby returning us to the level of privacy originally intended by the founding fathers).
Flat income taxes are the only way to go. In Hong Kong, you pay (IIRC) 15% flat tax on income.
If you pay a flat income tax, you may as well pay a flat sales tax. Both are flat, both tax your money exactly once (either when you earn it or when you spend it).
Savings is something we are in dire need of in the USA, as nearly everyone here is drowning in debt...an economic catastrophe waiting to happen.
However, a sales tax could exist on more than just physical goods and services. Whenever you purchase a savings bond, stock, or derivative, you are purchasing something for a price. It would not be unreasonable to pay a sales tax on that purchase (but none on the capital gains you make from interest, dividends, etc.) Indeed, including such investment spending would likely decrease the overall sales tax from 30% downward, to maybe 15% or 20%.
Need to spur investement? Need to discourage smoking. Pump up the sales tax percentage on cigarretts, reduce it on investment spending. Ditto for any other sector of the economy that needs stimulating/slowing.
Most importantly, however, is that we get the government out of our personal finances, which IMHO is something everyone who clings to the idea of an income tax rather than a sales or transaction tax seems to ignore.
I don't have a link handy but I am sure someone does. Code from another operating system HAS been copied line for line into Linux before.
Well, yes, but the way you couch that is more than a little disingenuous. Code was taken from one free software project (FreeBSD) and placed into another free software project. The new-style FreeBSD license which the code was licensed under was GPL compatible, so the appropriation of the code itself was perfectly legal. Where the Linux developer in question fell down was by not including the copyright notice wiht the verbatim code, which was a violation of the new-style FreeBSD license. No one can be certain, but it appears to have been an honest mistake. Code was cut and pasted from FreeBSD to Linux, but the copyright notice wasn't (and it should have been). This is more indicative of carelessness and oversight than it is of ill intent (in contrast to, say, copying entire files and then removing the copyright notices, which did not happen), and while inexcusable and intolerable, was immediately fixed (c.f. Linux kernel 2.4.11).
Not to defend carelessness or thoughtlessness, but this is a far, far cry from taking code from a proprietary project and illegally placing it within the Linux kernel, which has never happened, and which almost certainly did not happen in the $CO case either.
I am sure it was more of a misunderstanding where someone just copied it with no hesitation because BSD is OSS too.
Exactly right. People were in general more careless with free software and open source licenses back then. Remember all those months when KDE was technically "illegal" because of incomaptabilities between the qt and GPL licenses? There were numerous flame fests as a result, and gnome owes its existence primarilly to that issue. Had it not been for the kind folks at Troll Tech, who ultimately fixed the incompatability, and now KDE is firmly in the free software and legal camp in every respect. No malice existed, no premeditation to violate the GPL or troll techs license, merely an overly relaxed take on various incompatible free and open source licenses.
One which, fortunately for all involved, the community has grown out of, and one for which we owe RMS's pedantic insistence on adherence to the GPL and license comatability thanks in no small part.
Again, though, this bears absolutely no resemblence to what SCO is accusing Linux of, nor does it bear any resemblence to SCO's apparent violation of copyright in using GPLed linux code within their own proprietary product, and then turning around and accusing their victim of their own crime.
If you're a woman in Egypt or Iran, and you're speaking out against sexism, then you need anonymity, or you may be scalded with acid, assaulted otherwise or murdered.
I agree with your point, but have a minor nit to pick with one of your examples.
Actually, women in Iran have it comparatively good, for an islamic state anyway. Iranian femenists have managed to make compelling religious arguments based on the Koran that demands, if not full equality, at least a very fair and kind treatment, where fair in many cases not specifically mentioned elsewhere in the Koran amounts to equality before the law. By western standardsn it is still quite lacking, but women are surprisingly far better off in fundamentalist Iran than they are in most of the rest of the islamic world.
OTOH our good friends in Saudi Arabia are the worst offendors. You should read the book "Princess" sometime for a real insite into the dirty secrets of Saudi culture and its treatment of women. Women drowned in the family swimming pool (in front of a family gathering) for sexual misconduct, women stoned to death for having been the victim of a gang rape in her own home after the "gang" united behind a story accusing her of being provactive and her own brother was too cowardly to come forward and tell her parents what really happened. Women locked up in a padded cell, with no light, no converstation, and food slid through a slat in the door, for the rest of their natural lives. The latter is so common they actually have a word for such an appalling facility: "The Women's Room." Women murdered by their families for driving a car in protest of restrictive laws at a time when women from Kuwait were doing so in droves (1991 Gulf War), and this list goes on, ad nauseum.
The damn book should be required reading. The behavior of these cultures is appalling, and our political correctness in trying to whitewash this stuff isn't helpful to anyone. And we in America have supported this disgusting system for over half a century (the American people unwittingly, the American leadership, including the Bush family, quite knowingly), while making enemies of many of the reformers.
Stand up for your words and be an adult, or shut the fuck up and sit down at the kiddy table.
I disagree with this to some degree. Anonymous speech has its place and is important, even here on slashdot. More than once I've read a telling post about an employer posted anonymously to protect the identity of the whistle blower. We would have been poorer for it had the post not been made, or been made non-anonymously resulting in the person losing their job or insider status. However, you are right to decry the abuse of anonymouty, where cowardly children say inane things without having to stand by their words, and I share your irritation with such imbecels.
Let them jabber away, but, as you say, seat them firmly at the kiddy table.
Living in sweden, the only reason that I buy stuff from Amazon is that (even including costs for transports), the books are like 10-15% cheaper, and that music cd:s are like 25% cheaper. If VAT is added, this price difference will be void, and thus I will simply stop buying stuff from USA.
That is the real point of this. If the governments in question were really interested in collecting taxes, they would be doing so at the customs level, improving oversight and checking of incoming packages. Something that, given the amount of smuggling that goes on wrt drugs, weapons, and who knows what sort of biotoxins and other nice things in the decades to come, they really ought to be doing anyway.
Instead they have laid the burden on US shopkeepers who are not under their jurisdiction. It is no different than the US belligerence in enforcing US laws outside of its own borders, and while it may be refreshing to see the US get a taste of its own medicine, this isn't the US government that is being negatively affected, it is US businesses.
But this is all really besides the point. This is really about protectionism, and keeping folks like yourself from shopping online, outside your own borders, by artificially inflating the costs of shopping abroad. Local and regional governments, including our own here in the US, don't like their citizens shopping outside of their jurisdiction, where their control (and profits) are reduced. In short, our governments don't really like globalism in any real sense all that much... only when it allows them to bypass the concerns of their local citizens, or constitutional limits on their power, not when it means people might actually shop abroad. It is quite remeniscent of DVD Region coding in a way... the media cartels don't like globalism either, except when it lets them sell to folks abroad, but only if they can keep the local folks overpaying for exactly the same material.
All that having been said, I would prefer the elimination of income tax and capital gains tax in favor of a federal sales tax (even if said tax were 30%), as it would eliminate the governments ability and excuse for examining our personal finances and private lives with a microscope at their whim, and leave only public financial transactions within their pervue. The gain in privacy and personal security (no one fears any part of the government more than the IRS) would be well worth the sticker shock.
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As it turns out, the free market just doesn't value things like environmental safety, so the government intervenes with laws and regulations.
It's just as much the consumer's fault as it is the corporation's
Regardless of whose fault it may be (and I would argue that a corporation intimately familiar with its production process and byproducts bears more guilt in the consiquences of their manufacture than an unsuspecting or unknowing customer who buys the product), the bottom line is that the free market does not work, and does not serve humanity's best interest, when it comes to addressing these issues. I.e. the free market is not the panacea laissaz-faire free marketeers and Libertarians would have us believe. It works great for some things, and falls flat on its face for others. Health Care and the environment are two areas where free markets fall flat on their face, all right-wing rhetoric to the contrary aside.
Or what happened in the 16th and 17th Centuries. All the crazy psychos from Europe wanted to escape because they were being 'persecuted' so they went and pushed the American frontiers. This is why European countries have had no major problems with each other from the 1600s onwards to now.
Modolo that little hiccup we fondly call World War II. Or how about that little bump in the Eternal Peace of Europe commonly referred to as world war one?
Or Napoleon's march across Europe? Stalins depridations that killed 20,000,000 Russians (in addition to the 20,000,000 killed by the Germans in the aforementioned hiccup immediately preceeding). Or perhaps you have already forgottene the more recent attempt by the Serbians to exterminate the muslim neighbors while Europe wrung its hands and stood by watching?
America has plenty of problems, and more than a few of them stem from the remnants of the religious hysteria of those puritans who first colonized the continent, but to suggest Europe has been a font of light for the last 3-4 centuries is patently absurd. Indeed, as humiliating as it is to have the likes of Baby Bush running the country, and quite possibly the world, into the ground, even if our worst fears are true and his leadership does come to resemble that of Napolean or other European despots of the last 3 centuries, this will be a first for America, in contrast to Europe's repetative habits in that regard.
So, while I fear our current administration as much as the next person, and will quite possibly try to emigrate to Canada if Baby Bush wins a second term (assuming, of course, the Canadians will let me), your ethnocentric and historically illiterate representation of geopolitical events makes even Baby Bush look well informed and balanced.
Hmm! It has been improved lately. I might be wanting an ATI card then. After reading ... it said that the drivers are hard to install. Is this true?
... (at the risk of sounding like a Gentoo zealot it is quite easy on that platform: simply 'emerge xfree-drm' will compile and install DRI, linked against your current xfree and kernel installation). For higher end cards like the 9800 you will need the binary drivers, however.
It probably depends on your distro, although in general I found them to be relatively easy to install. Whether using Red Hat's RPM, uncompressing and installing from a tarball, or using Gentoo's portage (the easiest approach I suspect, and the only one I've used personally: simply 'emerge ati-drivers'), once the software is installed configuration is easy. Just follow the ATI README, run the configuration utility (it will identify the card, ask you some questions as to whether or not you want to run dual headed, optimize your 3d opengl for Maya, CAD work, or whatever, and will generate an XF86Config-4 file automatically), and restart X. At that point you should be off and running.
Note that for Radeon 9100, 8500, 7500, etc. you can use the xfree DRI 'radeon' drivers, which (being source based) are more straightforward, provided you're used to configuring your XF86Config file. Installing DRI can be a bit painful on many distros
Good luck!
NVIDIA cards because ATI's Linux drivers are not very good compared to NVIDIA's. I won't be buying an ATI card until ATI supports Linux fully like NVIDIA. I do play Linux native-port games in Linux.
This hasn't been true for quite some time.
I have owned numerous high end nvidia and radeon cards, and have never had anything resembling stability from the nvidia cards using the nvidia binary driver (and yes, I've tried all of the tweaks and suggestions Nvidia and others suggest vis-a-vis AGP settings, etc.). This has been true on numerous machines, both single and dual Intel P3 and Athlon XP/MP boxes, with a variety of motherboards, memory configurations, and Linux kernels.
ATI radeon cards on the other hand have been pretty solid, with excellent support via the xfree DRI drivers for most cards, and adequate, reasonably stable support from ATI via their firegl binary-only drivers for those not yet supported.
NVidia has not been king of the Linux hill for quite sometime, and while I have had my gripes with ATI as well, the notorious instability of the Nvidia binary drivers and lackluster support via the xfree DRI drivers has placed me (and my employer) firmly in the ATI camp.
It has to be said: if McDonald's had patented, trademarked or copyrighted the 'plastic burger joint', they'd be suing Burger King and Wendy's, and never mind the competitive market...
... however, clearly now that they have been extended to life+70 years for artists, and 95 years for corporate "art", any such balance in the tradeoff has been lost.
While you cannot 'copyright' the idea of running a burger joint, ever since the 1980s you've been able to patent it under US Patent law.
Fortunately for burger lovers everywhere, McDonalds, Burger King, et al (i.e. the fast food business model) predates that appallingly ill-concieved change in patent law, and so we do have a competative marketplace in that regard.
However, as eBay and others have shown, we are now facing at least a generation or longer of time where the most innovative and promising approaches to business will enjoy little or no competition as a direct result of allowing said business models to be patented for 20 years (and probably extended to other areas when they expire, allowing them to last even longer).
Goodbye free market.
Copyright destroys competative markets as well. It has been judged, rightly or wrongly, that this is an acceptable tradeoff to allow authors and other artists to work full time on their craft, rather than being forced to hold down a day job at the same time. Perhaps this was true when copyrights lasted 14 years
We should have Harry Potter knockoffs, just as we have JRR Tolkien knockoffs (Eddings, etc.), and just as we have Gibson knockoffs (indeed, he created the cyberpunk genre). This is how an innovative series of books leads to entire genres of fiction, creating entire new markets. JK Rowling is a greedy, shortsighted ass to do this, but more importantly, copyright is a dysfunctional, destructive, negative-sum system in its current form. Indeed, any system that preemtively destroys entire genres of literature or entire new markets just to protect the profitability of one work is inherently negative-sum, destructive to everyone. This is true of patents (and epitomized by patents on software, mathematics, and business models), and it is true of copyright in its current excessive form.
So, lest we dismiss the example the article's author gave initially, under our current regime of laws, if McDonalds came into being today, there would be no Burger King, for at least 20 years, possibly longer. And if JRR Tolkien were written today, much of the fantasy literature of the world would likewise be banned (remember, even 30 years ago copyright wasn't nearly as draconian as it is today).
Big difference between theoretical discussion and debugged, tuned code.
Yup. A gaping chasm separated by months or years in the proprietary, closed source world.
A difference usually bridged by hours, days, or perhaps weeks in the free world.
1. There are far less Mac's out there in the world than PC's with Windows on them. Therefore when you're writing a worm which has the sole goal of infecting as many people as possible (which is what writers aim for these days) then you go for the majority.
This argument is a myth, and has been used by Microsofties to try and downplay the vastly superior security of both *BSD and GNU/Linux. Mac OS X is a FreeBSD derivative in many respects, and vastly better designed from the ground up than Microsoft windows, for whom things like networking and security were afterthoughts cobbled together in an ad-hoc frenzy of featuritis and catch-up. Such an ad-hoc approach to design will never yield acceptable security, as Microsoft's shoddy products have demonstrated so dramatically in recent years, time and time again...and once again today, with this irritating worm.
Why is the numerical argument a myth? Because the truth is that, on the internet backbone, more than half the servers are a variant of Linux, *BSD, or Unix. And servers are the real prize for system crackers looking to take control of a system or cause significant harm. Yet these systems, which present a far more tempting target in terms of power and potential harm, and their derivatives (such as Mac OS X), remain unaffected by the plethora of worms that strike the internet. These worms are almost always exclusively Microsoft worms, affecting Microsoft operating systems exclusively. Not because there are more Microsoft desktops than anything else (for, once again, servers are the real prize, and most of them are not Microsoft), but because Microsoft's operating system design is so rife with security issues that it makes a profoundly easy target, and a decent chunk of servers can be affected with very little effort on the part of the malicious cracker.
It isn't about numbers. It is about design, and everyone in the industry, with the exception of Microsoft, has taken security seriously and designed their systems appropriately.
[Excellent examples of poor design by Microsoft leading to security issues removed for brevity]
4. Generally there are far more tech savvy people using OS X or Linux than Windows who don't blindly open unknown attachments.
This is true for GNU/Linux and *BSD. It isn't true for OS X (unless the knowledge to avoid Microsoft's shoddy products is considered being "tech savvy", an argument you could make that I wouldn't dispute, except to say that (a) I don't think that is what was meant and (b) most people understand something a little more comprehensive when defining someone as more "tech savvy", so while I might grant you that point on a technicality, I would dispute the implication). A lot of OS X users are as capable, and incapable, as their Microsoft using counterparts. They do click on unknown attachments, they do download plugins without a thought, etc. BUT, they have the good fortune of using a relatively secure and very well designed system, and are thus protected from their foolishness in ways Microsoft, even with its competition-destroying Palladium, will likely never achieve.
Contratry to popular Slashdot belief, the fact that it's easy to get details of your contacts in your address book is not a major reason why worms propogate so frequently. I can write a perl script to extract the details from Pine or most other UNIX mail programs just as easily - the actual problem is getting the virus launched on the victims PC in the first place.
Absolutely right. And as you describe so well, doing so is trivial on Microsoft systems, and difficult or impossible on virtually every other system.
It's just the standard FSF press release with "SCO" pencilled in. He barely even mentions SCO except to use it as the latest example of why everyone else in the world is a cretin for confusing GNU and Linux.
Did you even read the article?
If so, you are being profoundly obtuse, perhaps deliberately so, or perhaps merely so blinded by your hatred of Richard Stallman that you cannot see past your own prejudices and comprehend what he actually wrote.
Richard Stallman has always been a stickler for licenses and for nomenclature. His entire GNU/Linux v. Linux crusade boils down to nomenclature: he is a pendant about differentiating between one projecct (the linux kernel) and another (the GNU system of utilities and programs that makes up the rest of what we consider a basic *nix-like operating system). Right or wrong, his entire GNU/Linux bit is about clarity, the antithes of the 'newspeak' you accuse him of speaking, newspeak epitomized by terms such as "intellectual property" and nearly all of the drivel eminating from Redmond and Utah.
Indeed, his entire article is about clarity with respect to the $CO nonsense, and how that clarity requires a clear, concise, and above all accurate use of language to be achieved.
He is absolutely correct in pointing out that, outside of the court room, $CO's entire strategy is one of muddying the waters and playing up anti-freedom stereotypes ('free software developers' == 'napster', i.e. giving away your own work == violating the copyrights of others, etc.). Their press releases constantly mix up trademark law ($CO does not own the UNIX trademark, the Open Group does), copyright law (Novell and IBM appear to own the copyrights in question), patent law (Novell and IBM again own the patants in question, not $CO), and contract law under one heading: "Intellectual Property."
RMS is absolutely correct in emphesizing that muddy language leads to muddy thinking, and with respect to $CO, using muddy terms such as "IP/Intellectual Property" and throwing all kinds of radically different legislative regimes into one pot inevitably plays into the hands of those who seek to sow confusion, fear, uncertaintly, and doubt, namely Microsoft and their current lackey, $CO.
He is correct in pointing out that this irresponsible misuse of terminology is getting us into trouble, and being used by $CO's propogandists masterfully. He is also right to point out that much of the confusion as to what part of the operating system (the linux kernel, other utilities, or what have you) were being targeted result from an obfuscation between was in Linux (the kernel) and what is not (the GNU system, xfree, etc.).
In short, he is right, our use of language is important if we wish to discuss and think about issues as complex as these in a coherent manner, and your ad homonem attack doesn't change that in the least.
And since his article deals with the importance of clarity in the use of language when discussing and dissecting the $CO FUD campaign, no one should be surprised that he isn't discussing free v. open or the GNU community as such, since that particular tangent is off topic for this discussion (and obviously brought up by you for the sole purpose of propogating negative stereotypes about the man and his views).
A business is not designed to make friends, engender feelings of goodwill towards puppies, or cure cancer. That, my friend, would be called a charity.
Or a Community. You know, these cooperative things people lived and took part together in, which when combined together created civilizations?
Let's face it, when the American people chose to embrace the radical right agenda that is in many ways epitomized by Ayn Randianism back in the 1980s, and exchanged their status of citizens for that of consumers, and their sense of business ethics went from a "let's find a win-win approach we can both benefit from" (positive sum game) to "let's make a fast buck, whatever the consiquences to others" (zero, or more commonly, a negative sum game), we lost our communities and became little more than faceless wage slaves serving our faceless corporate masters. Most of us are lucky enough not to live in the small southern towns our corporate masters chose to dump their toxic waste in (thanks, Monsanto), and those that are unfortunate enough are generally dead and so not a concern (thanks Reagan, Bush Sr., Clinton, and Baby Bush, for gutting the EPAs ability to be at all vigilant).
It should be no surprise that when one redefines humankind's humanity as "charity" (with all the negative baggage that implies) and humankind's inhumanity to itself as "nothing personal, it's just business, and businesses exist to make money, not friends", one loses one's own humanity in the process. What is surprising is how long American culture has managed to survive and even thrive, after having dehumanized itself and its people to such an appalling degree. One can only hope that the rest of the world retains a little more wisdom, and that emigration isn't a complete impossibility.
To illustrate this, if this clause were in the LGPL, any company suing an OSS project would be unable to use any LGPL'ed software.
I like that. I would further tweak both the GPL and LGPL to include something like:
"by using this code you agree to license, in perpetuity and at no cost, your entire patent portfolio as it relates to software to any and all (L)GPLed code."
Let the GPL's innoculative qualities extend preemtively to software, business model, and mathematical patents (which, as we know when they are normalized, are all one and the same). That, plus an 'in perpetuity' clause to cover those regions that require such to prevent retroactive license revokation, would IMHO be excellent additions to GPL v. 3 and (L)GPL v. 3. Hell, even FreeBSD might want to consider the in perpetuity, no lawsuit, and perhaps even the patent innoculation addendums (though the latter might in fact conflict with their philosophy of maximum first generation developer freedom in similiar ways to the GPL's other protections and innoculations from abuse, but that is a debate for another day, and another forum).
"According to occult scientist Terence McKenna, the end of the world as we know it will occur at 11:10 PM, December 22, 2012"
... like Greenwich or MET? ...and how many people, in and out of the White House, will work full time trying to make the apocolypse happen on schedule? Prophecies, despite being nonsensical, have a way of becoming self-fullfilling once enough gullable people buy into them, and enough of those gullible people ascend to positions of power where they can actually make it happen (with or without their brother in Florida helping out).
Is that Eastern, Central, Mountain, or Pacific Time?
Or is God in another timezone altogether
I keep my personal fun and my politics separate.
I'll be one of the first ones in line to buy their next game.
Then you will be one of the fools responsible for our complete loss of digital rights.
It is hedonistic, short sighted fools who put their own immediate gratification over their own medium and long term interests, and worse, over the interest of their community at large, that are responsible for this sort of behavior not only working, but being richly rewarded.
Keeping your "personal fun and politics separate" when the two clearly collide like this, is remeniscent of the demise of the Tram manufacturers in America. If you are a student of history, you'll recall that they kept their quarterly profits firmly separate from their long term survival. They sold every tram they built for a number of years to the automobile companies, who were willing to pay more for the trains than were the cities. But the cities needed the trams to keep their mass transit systems running. The tram manufacturers ended up surprised when the automobile industries stopped ordering and scrapping their product (go figure) leaving none of the cities with no tram systems, and the tram manufacturers with no customers.
Go ahead and put your immediate need for gratification ahead of your interest in having access to free software and software freedom, and enjoy the fruits of that shortsighted decision just as the trams companies of America enjoyed thei fruits of their decision to sell their product to their competitors for scrap metal and leave their customers in the lurch did, when they went out of business completely less than a decade later.
Just as we have no trams as a result of the tram manufacturers incredibly shortsighted decision, if enough people like you take this approach, we will have likewise little or no have no free software.
OK, now I am confused...
Understandable. SCO is deliberately sowing confusion (not showing any evidence while screaming accusations publicly most of which can be proven false without their proported evidence, changing their accusations every five minutes, deliberately obfuscating and misrepresenting diverse areas of law, including trademark, trade secret, contract, copyright, and patent law, etc. etc.).
IANAL, but I have been following this rather closely, at first with consternation and concern, now with irritation and amusement.
The release of Ancient UNIX undermines any trade secret violations; The SCO Group failed to register and copyrights, making accusations of copyright infringement impossible; SCO isn't accusing IBM of patent infringement, and another company owns the trademark to UNIX.
That is essentially correct. The only thing which could hold legal water would be a contract violation. There is some speculation that SCO is persuing some of the more onerous AT&T licensing provisions, which might give AT&T/SCO some control over IBM's own code written for UNIX system V. However, even if this 'worst case scenerio' were to be true, the provisions are so onerous and absurd that they are likely to be declared unenforcable by a court of law.
There is further evidence that the case is extraordinarilly weak, although this evidence isn't admissable in court. Namely, SCO wants a jury trial, and while a courtroom is neutral on whether or not a jury vs. judge trial is selected, attorney friends of mine assure me that when a litigant chooses a jury trial it is almost always because they are uncertain of their case and hope to baboozle lay people and get a judgement anyway.
In contrast, folks who have a very good case generally choose to have a judge preside over the trial, as juries are much less predictable than judges.
So it boils down to a possible contract violation, nothing more. No copyright violation (despite their public rhetoric to the contrary), probably little or no trade secret issues given that they themselves have contributed to and distibuted Linux code long after making the allegations publicly (and continue to do so to this day), no patent violation as they do not own the patents, and as you rightly point out, no trademark violation as (a) Linux does not use the UNIX trademark and (b) they don't own the trademark anyway.
So it amounts to some arcane contract law which, in the extraordinarilly unlikely event that IBM did in fact violate their contract with AT&T/SCO in some way and lost the lawsuit, wouldn't affect the legality of Linux in any way.
It is all FUD and nonsense, created in a desperate attempt to extort money and defraud investors, underwritten by Microsoft and a nameless second entity, and will likely be viewed as a mockery of the beleagered American legal system for some time to come.
"But that's just my opinion, I could be wrong..."
But, even if they retain the rights, the fact they had them published publicly make the source open knowledge, no ?
It certainly nukes any 'trade secrets' litigation that references that code, but with SCO's ever mutating rhetoric and accusations, it really amounts to just another stone in the pile which as become a mountain of evidence that SCO has no case, no legitimate claims whatsoever, and is merely grandstanding dramatically in a burnout that will amuse those watching, enrich their patrons (Microsoft and the other mystery party that I am becoming convinced may well be Sun Microsystems), and in the short term hurt, but in the long run vindicate with a vengeance, both GNU/Linux and the free software/open source paradigm.
We know their claims are nonsense. We know their complaint (while it must be taken seriously and fought) is groundless. We know that, were the government at all willing to enforce anti-trust law, Microsoft would not be daring to underwrite this, and we know that, were the justice department at all interested in enforcing corporate law in general (against, say, the likes of Enron and WorldCom), that most of the board of directors of this letigious group would be under serious investigation for stock market manipulation and insider trading, starting now and continuing through the end of the trial, when it will with near certainty be proven that (a) they never had a case, (b) they knew this and (c) they have violated the copyright of Linux and perhaps other projects consistently, over a long period of time, and continue to do so today (they are still distributing Linux today even while claiming their alleged code isn't under GPL).
With respect to the article itself, these people are certainly letigious thugs, and they should be taken seriously, but lets not forget the author's bias, where he frequently refers to free software developers and enthusiasts dismissively as "crunchies," so while it is interesting to know what sub-human filth comprises SCO and its umbrella group, this isn't really anything new, and the article's spin (which is an underscoring of FUD, really) contains a rather transparent and quite significant anti-free software bias.
Don't talk about compatable. GPL isn't compatable with BSD license, so we can't use your guy's code. You guys can take all you want, but we can't take. I like how GPL is "free".
Please.
First, which part of "this will contribute to Linux" didn't you understand? Linux has absolutely nothing to do with the FreeBSD license, so spreading your divisive nonsense in this thread is woefully off-topic.
Second, the FreeBSD license is perfectly compatible with the GPL. It is also compatible with Microsoft's proprietary license, not to mention anyone elses. The fact that the GPL isn't compatible with FreeBSD (meaning you can't take GPLed code and incorporate it into FreeBSD-licensed code), and the fact that Microsoft's proprietary license is likewise incompatible, is entirely irrelevant.
Indeed, that one-way compatability was a deliberate decision made by the FreeBSD folks...who valued the developer's freedom to incorporate their hard work into proprietary products over the protection of the freedom of future developers and users. Which is a perfectly legitimate stance to take, though it just so happens to be in disagreement with the decision by the GPL folks to protect their users and derivative developers freedoms above even their own.
It is extraordinarilly disingenuous to criticize one free licenses philosophy and imply it to somehow be improper, when the very same license has led to FreeBSD code being included in products which protect neither the developers, nor the users freedom, such as Microsoft's usage of the FreeBSD network stack. Before lambasting the thousands of volunteers who have contributed millions of man hours for FREE, to enhance your FREEDOM, merely because you disagree with the aspects of freedom they choose to emphesize over the ones you would emphesize (if any, which I find questionable in this particular troll), perhaps you would like to address the use of FREE code in products that strip all said FREEDOMs away? Until you justify lambasting the 1-way compatability between two free licenses while ignorning the same 1-way compatability between FreeBSD and virtually every proprietary license, your entire argument devolves to hypocritical grandstanding, misinformation, and spin.
The GPL is free. FreeBSD is free. In different ways, with different protections, different emphesises on different aspects of freedom, and with different consiquences. Most of us who use FreeBSD are perfectly comfortable with this, and understand the differences that are part of the diversity of our community. Most of us who use GNU/Linux are likewise understanding and appreciative of both schools of thought, and can recognize the advantages and limitations of both.
It is only the few zealots on either side, and much more commonly divisive trolls like yourself, for whome this concept poses such difficulty.
The extended LoTR:FoTR plays perfectly fine on my X-Box. Has this incompatibility you speak of been documented anywhere?
It also plays fine on my laptop, in my desktop PC, and in my home theatre PC. As do the few other DVDs I own, and while I haven't gotten around to backing it up yet (though really, I should), if I can play it, I can certainly back it up. Indeed, even those which won't play in my computers, but will in a DVD player, I can back up as xvid (or any other digital format I please) with my mini-dv video camera and my firewire port.
Thank you for playing media cartels. You have managed to piss off even more of your customers, and gained absolutely nothing by doing so. Time to go back and retake Remedial Business 101 (particularly the section on "providing a good or service to your customers") again...and don't come back to the board room until you've learned the material this time!
This is really great news for Linux. For too long we've been trapped in the out-moded hierarchical/graphical paradigm. Plan 9, with its revolutionary "factotum" and "secstore" structures, could really provide a breadth of fresh hair to the Linux kernal, putting it head and shoulders above Windows.
While it is nice that the new license conforms to the requirements of the Open Source folks, that does not mean it is compatible with the GNU General Public License (GPL) under which Linux is written. Indeed, not even all free software licenses are compatibel with the GPL (though the vast majority certainly are), and as yet I have not been able to find any commentary from the FSF on whether the modified license qualifies as "free", much less is GPL compatible (the old one certainly wasn't, as RMSes comments posted to this thread quite definitely explain).
So, before getting too excited about Plan 9's potential contribution to Linux, we need to first find out whether or not the licenses are even compatible, so that code can be shared between the two projects.
Linus is more the excpetion than the rule in open source. Look at the likes of RMS and Bruce Perens
While I hate to respond to ad homonem trolls like this, letting this silly statement go by unanswered, particularly in light of the clueless moderators marking it up as insightful, and allowing this sort of misinformation to stand unrebutted, would be an even greater disservice than feeding the troll.
First, RMS and Bruce Perens are hardly the "rule" in open source and free software projects. Quite the contrary, they are exceptional in many respects, as are most public figures in the world for better or worse. Linus is actually more akin to the average coder of free software: he does it for fun, for the joy of coding, and is relatively apolitical about the whole thing.
ego maniacs desperate to keep their role at the head of their little cliques
Second, as for the alleged egos of Bruce Perens and RMS, despite their occasional public disagreements and arguments their egos are no more, nor less, developed than those of most male humans above the age of puberty. Indeed, as anyone without an axe to grind who has seen RMS speak will point out, he is actually quite soft-spoken and humble, and his opinions, while strong, controversial, and often unyielding, are born of idealism and not of self aggrandizement.
Even the whole GNU/Linux thing has nothing to do with RMS personally (notice that he isn't asking people to call it RMS/Linux), but stems from a desire to get his message about software freedom out to the public at large, and the feeling that the 95% or so of the operating system we call Linux (which includes all of the filesystem tools, etc.) was getting zero recognition and thus, the message behind the writing of those tools (in RMSes opinion) was being lost. Idealistic yes. Stubborn, yes. Egomaniacal? Hardly.
We need the RMSes and Bruce Perenses around. RMS has steered the community clear of numerous dangerous shoals with respect to licensing conflicts (the old KDE/qt license prior to TrollTech's graceful fixing of the problem, the incompatabilities of the old Mozilla license, etc. all of which have since been fixed, denying the likes of SCO and Microsoft ammunition to damage the projects and community at this stage of the game), and Bruce Perens is responsible in no small part for getting closed minded people to look at free software, first embracing its technical advantages and then, later, after seeing the empowerment of the freedom it offers, to embrace free software's freedom: the freedom to innovate as one's business requires, the freedom from having a vendor yank one's chain, the freedom to participate in a free and competative marketplace, rather than to work beneath the thumb of a convicted monopolist, the freedom to modify a tool to better match one's purpose, and so forth.
But Perens and RMS are hardly indicative of your average free software coder. Linus, while himself far above average in accomplishments, bears a far greater resemblence in temperament and attitude to most free software enthusiasts and developers, certainly far more so than either RMS or Perens.
My understanding is that Sun already has a perpetual license. So no need to pay new money.
... that they did so was a transparent move to help finance the SCO FUD campaign (and with the aforementioned options scam in place, to make it all back by ripping off SCO's investors).
... Sun is one company that really could stand to benefit from this ... and their business practices to date show that they really did not "get" the free software/open source paradigm, and that many of their top leadership still don't.
... reducing, even decimating the wealth of the world (in this case the millions of man hours of volunteer programmers that is the GPLed GNU/Linux system ... and whose to say they won't move on to FreeBSD next ... nothing in the previous AT&T v. FreeBSD addresses many of the ever-changing allegations of SCO) to achieve a better position for oneself. Whoever the players are should be destroyed, by whatever means ... they and their mentality represent a threat to every person, every economic system, and every business they come into contact with. That Sun Microsystems might be one of these players is an intriguing thought ... their past conduct certainly makes them out to have been a Microsoft wannabe in the past.
Exactly his point. Microsoft could have gotten any code it needed from FreeBSD, free and clear. They didn't need to license a single line of code from the dinasaur product that is SCO
Sun Microsystems could be the silent second party to this, financing it by buying a license they don't need just as Microsoft did. They may well be hoping to score a home run and sweep up all of the GNU/Linux refugess in the unlikely event a clueless judge or brainwashed jury react in SCO's favor, but unwilling to publicly alienate the Linux community should the gambit fail (and they they have to finally get on the Linux bandwagen all the way).
It is an interesting thought
This is about capitalist oligarchs seeking to destroy a cooperative economy of abundance in order to maintain their own dominance of a capitalist economy of scarcity. It is the ultimate in negative-sum policy
Alternately, this could spell big trouble for Apple. How will my Mom feel when she can't check her mutual funds using her Macintosh because the browser isn't compatible?
The same way my mom feels when she goes to a site that is IE specific and doesn't support even the most basic of web standards.
Mad.
But, as she has been informed by her son on Microsoft's efforts to deliberately break software compatability and internet standards in order for force their customers to use their product rather than the product of their choice, her anger is aimed squarely at the web site (or more precisely, at the company it represents) and at Microsoft, not at GNU/Linux or her browser.
She finds a competitor who is standards compliant and buys from them instead.
And guess what. She loves her Linux box, and will "give it up only when they pry it from her cold, dead hands." She is living proof that Linux is more than ready for the desktop, and not only usable, but often preferred, by those who are not computer literate and simply want to be able to use a machine simply, and without random crashes or data loss. Something Linux gives her, and Microsoft hasn't been able to deliver in nigh 20 years.
Uhm, OK, and how are you gonna prove you're just 'scraping by'? Should the government just take your workd for it? Or will you have to file paperwork and have the government putting your finances under a microscope? Will you only have to do that if you want the coupon/rebate? This would mean if you want privacy, you effectively have to pay for it. Definitely not something these mythical founding fathers intended.
First, there is nothing mythical about the founding fathers. Their existence, their opinions, their writings, and their political leanings are all a matter of well documented public record.
Second, volunteering some personal information, such as income, in order to get a voluntary service (such as welfare) is not nearly as unreasonable as allowing the government to demand any or all of the last 7 years of your financial records, to be examined under a microscope in minute detail under pain of imprisonment. Nor is it equivelent to "buying" your privacy. Quite the opposite: the default is that you have privacy, and if you choose to accept a free handout you volunteer to prove to those giving you that handout that you really need it. Trying to turn that around into some kind of "then we're discriminating against the poor" nonsense is extremely disingenuous, as the working poor not on welfare would in that scennerio exemplify.
If you want medical services you agree to give up your privacy to some degree with regards to your medical records (No, insurance companies probably shouldn't be allowed to have this information: let them calculate their numbers based on the entire population, rather than subsets who happen to be more or less healthy than others, but that doesn't change the fact that the physician treating you needs that information in order to treat you properly and safely).
If you wish to attend college you give up some privacy with regards to your high school grades, at least to those colleges you apply to.
And, if you want free money from a government's social system, you agree to give up enough personal financial privacy in order to prove you really need the money. That is no reason for the default to be that no one, anywhere, has any such privacy, as is the current norm with the income tax system we are forced to live under today.
If you tax sales rather than income, that has an unfair effect on people scraping to get by, while assisting people that save their money, not contributing back to the economy.
People just "scraping by" can get tax coupons or other assistance to offset their 30%. The rest of us can pay the 30% tax and be glad our private finances are none of the government's business, and that the government has no excuse for examining them without a warrant (thereby returning us to the level of privacy originally intended by the founding fathers).
Flat income taxes are the only way to go. In Hong Kong, you pay (IIRC) 15% flat tax on income.
If you pay a flat income tax, you may as well pay a flat sales tax. Both are flat, both tax your money exactly once (either when you earn it or when you spend it).
Savings is something we are in dire need of in the USA, as nearly everyone here is drowning in debt...an economic catastrophe waiting to happen.
However, a sales tax could exist on more than just physical goods and services. Whenever you purchase a savings bond, stock, or derivative, you are purchasing something for a price. It would not be unreasonable to pay a sales tax on that purchase (but none on the capital gains you make from interest, dividends, etc.) Indeed, including such investment spending would likely decrease the overall sales tax from 30% downward, to maybe 15% or 20%.
Need to spur investement? Need to discourage smoking. Pump up the sales tax percentage on cigarretts, reduce it on investment spending. Ditto for any other sector of the economy that needs stimulating/slowing.
Most importantly, however, is that we get the government out of our personal finances, which IMHO is something everyone who clings to the idea of an income tax rather than a sales or transaction tax seems to ignore.
I don't have a link handy but I am sure someone does. Code from another operating system HAS been copied line for line into Linux before.
Well, yes, but the way you couch that is more than a little disingenuous. Code was taken from one free software project (FreeBSD) and placed into another free software project. The new-style FreeBSD license which the code was licensed under was GPL compatible, so the appropriation of the code itself was perfectly legal. Where the Linux developer in question fell down was by not including the copyright notice wiht the verbatim code, which was a violation of the new-style FreeBSD license. No one can be certain, but it appears to have been an honest mistake. Code was cut and pasted from FreeBSD to Linux, but the copyright notice wasn't (and it should have been). This is more indicative of carelessness and oversight than it is of ill intent (in contrast to, say, copying entire files and then removing the copyright notices, which did not happen), and while inexcusable and intolerable, was immediately fixed (c.f. Linux kernel 2.4.11).
Not to defend carelessness or thoughtlessness, but this is a far, far cry from taking code from a proprietary project and illegally placing it within the Linux kernel, which has never happened, and which almost certainly did not happen in the $CO case either.
I am sure it was more of a misunderstanding where someone just copied it with no hesitation because BSD is OSS too.
Exactly right. People were in general more careless with free software and open source licenses back then. Remember all those months when KDE was technically "illegal" because of incomaptabilities between the qt and GPL licenses? There were numerous flame fests as a result, and gnome owes its existence primarilly to that issue. Had it not been for the kind folks at Troll Tech, who ultimately fixed the incompatability, and now KDE is firmly in the free software and legal camp in every respect. No malice existed, no premeditation to violate the GPL or troll techs license, merely an overly relaxed take on various incompatible free and open source licenses.
One which, fortunately for all involved, the community has grown out of, and one for which we owe RMS's pedantic insistence on adherence to the GPL and license comatability thanks in no small part.
Again, though, this bears absolutely no resemblence to what SCO is accusing Linux of, nor does it bear any resemblence to SCO's apparent violation of copyright in using GPLed linux code within their own proprietary product, and then turning around and accusing their victim of their own crime.
If you're a woman in Egypt or Iran, and you're speaking out against sexism, then you need anonymity, or you may be scalded with acid, assaulted otherwise or murdered.
I agree with your point, but have a minor nit to pick with one of your examples.
Actually, women in Iran have it comparatively good, for an islamic state anyway. Iranian femenists have managed to make compelling religious arguments based on the Koran that demands, if not full equality, at least a very fair and kind treatment, where fair in many cases not specifically mentioned elsewhere in the Koran amounts to equality before the law. By western standardsn it is still quite lacking, but women are surprisingly far better off in fundamentalist Iran than they are in most of the rest of the islamic world.
OTOH our good friends in Saudi Arabia are the worst offendors. You should read the book "Princess" sometime for a real insite into the dirty secrets of Saudi culture and its treatment of women. Women drowned in the family swimming pool (in front of a family gathering) for sexual misconduct, women stoned to death for having been the victim of a gang rape in her own home after the "gang" united behind a story accusing her of being provactive and her own brother was too cowardly to come forward and tell her parents what really happened. Women locked up in a padded cell, with no light, no converstation, and food slid through a slat in the door, for the rest of their natural lives. The latter is so common they actually have a word for such an appalling facility: "The Women's Room." Women murdered by their families for driving a car in protest of restrictive laws at a time when women from Kuwait were doing so in droves (1991 Gulf War), and this list goes on, ad nauseum.
The damn book should be required reading. The behavior of these cultures is appalling, and our political correctness in trying to whitewash this stuff isn't helpful to anyone. And we in America have supported this disgusting system for over half a century (the American people unwittingly, the American leadership, including the Bush family, quite knowingly), while making enemies of many of the reformers.
Stand up for your words and be an adult, or shut the fuck up and sit down at the kiddy table.
I disagree with this to some degree. Anonymous speech has its place and is important, even here on slashdot. More than once I've read a telling post about an employer posted anonymously to protect the identity of the whistle blower. We would have been poorer for it had the post not been made, or been made non-anonymously resulting in the person losing their job or insider status. However, you are right to decry the abuse of anonymouty, where cowardly children say inane things without having to stand by their words, and I share your irritation with such imbecels.
Let them jabber away, but, as you say, seat them firmly at the kiddy table.
Living in sweden, the only reason that I buy stuff from Amazon is that (even including costs for transports), the books are like 10-15% cheaper, and that music cd:s are like 25% cheaper. If VAT is added, this price difference will be void, and thus I will simply stop buying stuff from USA.
... only when it allows them to bypass the concerns of their local citizens, or constitutional limits on their power, not when it means people might actually shop abroad. It is quite remeniscent of DVD Region coding in a way ... the media cartels don't like globalism either, except when it lets them sell to folks abroad, but only if they can keep the local folks overpaying for exactly the same material.
That is the real point of this. If the governments in question were really interested in collecting taxes, they would be doing so at the customs level, improving oversight and checking of incoming packages. Something that, given the amount of smuggling that goes on wrt drugs, weapons, and who knows what sort of biotoxins and other nice things in the decades to come, they really ought to be doing anyway.
Instead they have laid the burden on US shopkeepers who are not under their jurisdiction. It is no different than the US belligerence in enforcing US laws outside of its own borders, and while it may be refreshing to see the US get a taste of its own medicine, this isn't the US government that is being negatively affected, it is US businesses.
But this is all really besides the point. This is really about protectionism, and keeping folks like yourself from shopping online, outside your own borders, by artificially inflating the costs of shopping abroad. Local and regional governments, including our own here in the US, don't like their citizens shopping outside of their jurisdiction, where their control (and profits) are reduced. In short, our governments don't really like globalism in any real sense all that much
All that having been said, I would prefer the elimination of income tax and capital gains tax in favor of a federal sales tax (even if said tax were 30%), as it would eliminate the governments ability and excuse for examining our personal finances and private lives with a microscope at their whim, and leave only public financial transactions within their pervue. The gain in privacy and personal security (no one fears any part of the government more than the IRS) would be well worth the sticker shock.