The BSD license grants the author of a program no greater right than anyone else. The GPL allows proprietary releases, but *only from the author*. That's not in the *spirit* of the GPL, but it is in accord with the legality. And so we have reiserfs and aladin ghostscript.
The GPL actually offers the greater possibility of reward for the author. The BSD offers greater possibility of reward for the non-authors, and in doing so reduces the possibility of reward for the authors. That's why the OpenBSD project has to put a proprietary license on their cd layout; if it were under the BSD license they would have hardly any way for monetary reward.
Of the reasons to support BSD licenses, rewarding the author is not a good one. Releasing a product under BSD actually sacrifices that ability (while granting others virtually unrestricted use of your program). The BSD license is really public domain but with requirement for credit.
(Draw your own conclusions on which is more appropriate for what.)
Proprietary: (1) of, relating to, or characteristic of a proprietor (2) used, made, or marketed by one having the exclusive legal right.
Proprietor : one who has the legal right or exclusive title to something : OWNER
Don't be silly. The FSF has exclusive TITLE over gcc - but they have given away the exclusive RIGHT over its copying, use, etc. Now according to the law they are still proprietor, but by any sane definition that pays attention to real world situations, they are not. In the same sense that OJ is a murderer, though not legally.
And keep in mind that FSF could *NOT* withdraw the GPL from gcc. They have granted the right to all people and the law does not allow them to ungrant it. That would be violation of contract.
3. The king must be able to make it to a square accessible from one of these squares [where the knight might be] for a mate to occur.
There could be a clear path from a rook to the king, except for the knight blocking it. The knight could then move out of this space putting the king in check from the rook, and then kill the rook that would have been able to move into the path himself, thus securing the checkmate.
7. If, as a consequence of a court judgment or allegation of patent infringement or for any other reason (not limited to patent issues), conditions are imposed on you (whether by court order, agreement or otherwise) that contradict the conditions of this License, they do not excuse you from the conditions of this License. If you cannot distribute so as to satisfy simultaneously your obligations under this License and any other pertinent obligations, then as a consequence you may not distribute the Program at all. For example, if a patent license would not permit royalty-free redistribution of the Program by all those who receive copies directly or indirectly through you, then the only way you could satisfy both it and this License would be to refrain entirely from distribution of the Program.
Which, in english, means that if you have a patent, but you allow free use of *all* GPL'd software (your release plus any derivative works) that infringes that patent, then the GPL'd software infringing that patent is valid and the GPL is applicable.
At least, that's what it looks like to me. I don't think it disallows the use of patents against proprietary software, only against modifications of the original GPL software. The preamble (which has no legal standing) is much less clear; that's probably the source of confusion.
Re:top 7 things I'd like to see with quake
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Quake 1 GPL'ed
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· Score: 1
You can already bind keys to change mouse-grabbing, FYI... Hmm ESD sound would be great.
The GPL goes as far as copyright law lets it go. Writing QuakeC is NOT a derivation of the source code to the internal QuakeC compiler. (Imagine that, because GCC is GPLd, all C code must be GPL'd too). The GPL doesn't place any restrictions on use either, so it wouldn't disallow using GCC to compile commercial proprietary programs. If the original QuakeC source was released under the GPL, all derivations of that would have to be GPL'd. But the original QuakeC code was released under a non-copyleft license (either non-profit use or Xfree-style, probably). You can't just take that back by releasing it again under another license. That would be like me taking a Xfree, which allows me to release it myself under new licenses, and release it under the GPL, and then try to stop other people from using Xfree in proprietary programs. Makes even less sense than real copyright law.
Re:Thats great but what about other OS's?
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Quake 1 GPL'ed
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· Score: 1
Obviously YANAL (YOU are not a lawyer). The copyright holder of a work can license it as many times as he wants under whatever different licenses he wants. ID's license to MacSoft can't just be repealed by ID. Those licenses, which were probably NDA's, are still valid. The GPL license is also valid to whomever accepts it (by copying it without another license from ID). That's why the GPL says "nothing else grants you permission to copy". But with MacSoft, something else *does* grant them that right - their original contract. I'm not a lawyer either, btw, but I have read a bit about copyright law.
Class action? Only whomever owns the copyright can sue. (Do you think that multiple developers on one project *share* copyright? No, if that were true the GPL would not be enforcable. Derivative works are controlled under the copyright of the author of the work from which they are derived.) Will the FSF really protect any copyrights assigned to them (as opposed to just the ones that are officially part of the GNU project)?
> or write your own codec, or converter, or something, anything
Is that possible? Is the specification open? Is the algorithm patent-free? There's no excuse for closed formats and protocols, there's certainly no reason to support Apple (or Sorenson) just to be able to use its proprietary format. You do that, you're not paying them for their work, you're paying them for compatibility that they went out of their way to take away from you in the first place. They're essentially removing your rights and then selling them back to you. Some places, they call that extortion.
Of course if you're going to bitch, it makes no sense to do it at apple, or Sorenson. These are companies that make all their money from doing exactly what they're doing with this codec. The problem is that people *use* these proprietary formats to share information. Though I'm sure no exclusion was intended. A note explaining your position to the author and asking for an alternative, open format in addition or instead would not be unwarranted.
http://www.aclu.org/news/1999/n092099b.html for instance. They're sending lawyers to court over this type of stuff and they've done so before. Give credit where it's due!
Assuming the government did not threaten any sort of actual force, this is "only" a violation of the ethics of free speech, not the legality. The ISP in question has the right of free speech - they have the right not to publish information they don't want published. They have an ethical responsibility to continue publishing what they have been payed to publish, but not a legal one. (If they do have a legal one, it is contractual, not constitutional).
Still, ethical violations of free speech are always odious, whether by government or by business. Either way, it's an abuse of power that no person should have.
The solution to this, in case you were wondering, is the FREENET. The goal of freenet is to allow content distribution and access to be inexpensive and (optionally) anonymous. (Sorta like USEnet, but without requiring 6gb/day to serve. Freenet seeks to eliminate the slashdot effect as a barrier to free speech.) Essentially, censorship is made technologically impossible on the freenet, short of stopping people before they ever post.
Hopefully, all of the public information on the internet will be on something similar to freenet eventually. If it is, we won't ever see a story like this again.
Why limit yourself to decimal dates? In base 2000+ it's an odd day every other day.
Can anyone provide a link to the full text?
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Using Samba
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· Score: 1
Like the subject says. This book might be worth buying in print, but since it's not out (or even finished, apparantly) yet It'd be great to get online in the meantime.
Slashdot Mirror
The BSD license grants the author of a program no greater right than anyone else. The GPL allows proprietary releases, but *only from the author*. That's not in the *spirit* of the GPL, but it is in accord with the legality. And so we have reiserfs and aladin ghostscript.
The GPL actually offers the greater possibility of reward for the author. The BSD offers greater possibility of reward for the non-authors, and in doing so reduces the possibility of reward for the authors. That's why the OpenBSD project has to put a proprietary license on their cd layout; if it were under the BSD license they would have hardly any way for monetary reward.
Of the reasons to support BSD licenses, rewarding the author is not a good one. Releasing a product under BSD actually sacrifices that ability (while granting others virtually unrestricted use of your program). The BSD license is really public domain but with requirement for credit.
(Draw your own conclusions on which is more appropriate for what.)
Don't be silly. The FSF has exclusive TITLE over gcc - but they have given away the exclusive RIGHT over its copying, use, etc. Now according to the law they are still proprietor, but by any sane definition that pays attention to real world situations, they are not. In the same sense that OJ is a murderer, though not legally.
And keep in mind that FSF could *NOT* withdraw the GPL from gcc. They have granted the right to all people and the law does not allow them to ungrant it. That would be violation of contract.
Which, in english, means that if you have a patent, but you allow free use of *all* GPL'd software (your release plus any derivative works) that infringes that patent, then the GPL'd software infringing that patent is valid and the GPL is applicable.
At least, that's what it looks like to me. I don't think it disallows the use of patents against proprietary software, only against modifications of the original GPL software. The preamble (which has no legal standing) is much less clear; that's probably the source of confusion.
You can already bind keys to change mouse-grabbing, FYI... Hmm ESD sound would be great.
The GPL goes as far as copyright law lets it go. Writing QuakeC is NOT a derivation of the source code to the internal QuakeC compiler. (Imagine that, because GCC is GPLd, all C code must be GPL'd too). The GPL doesn't place any restrictions on use either, so it wouldn't disallow using GCC to compile commercial proprietary programs.
If the original QuakeC source was released under the GPL, all derivations of that would have to be GPL'd. But the original QuakeC code was released under a non-copyleft license (either non-profit use or Xfree-style, probably). You can't just take that back by releasing it again under another license. That would be like me taking a Xfree, which allows me to release it myself under new licenses, and release it under the GPL, and then try to stop other people from using Xfree in proprietary programs. Makes even less sense than real copyright law.
Obviously YANAL (YOU are not a lawyer). The copyright holder of a work can license it as many times as he wants under whatever different licenses he wants. ID's license to MacSoft can't just be repealed by ID. Those licenses, which were probably NDA's, are still valid. The GPL license is also valid to whomever accepts it (by copying it without another license from ID).
That's why the GPL says "nothing else grants you permission to copy". But with MacSoft, something else *does* grant them that right - their original contract.
I'm not a lawyer either, btw, but I have read a bit about copyright law.
Multiple authors can share copyright if they are both original authors, but generally that's not how open source software is developed.
Class action? Only whomever owns the copyright can sue. (Do you think that multiple developers on one project *share* copyright? No, if that were true the GPL would not be enforcable. Derivative works are controlled under the copyright of the author of the work from which they are derived.)
Will the FSF really protect any copyrights assigned to them (as opposed to just the ones that are officially part of the GNU project)?
> or write your own codec, or converter, or something, anything
Is that possible? Is the specification open? Is the algorithm patent-free? There's no excuse for closed formats and protocols, there's certainly no reason to support Apple (or Sorenson) just to be able to use its proprietary format. You do that, you're not paying them for their work, you're paying them for compatibility that they went out of their way to take away from you in the first place. They're essentially removing your rights and then selling them back to you. Some places, they call that extortion.
Of course if you're going to bitch, it makes no sense to do it at apple, or Sorenson. These are companies that make all their money from doing exactly what they're doing with this codec. The problem is that people *use* these proprietary formats to share information. Though I'm sure no exclusion was intended. A note explaining your position to the author and asking for an alternative, open format in addition or instead would not be unwarranted.
http://www.aclu.org/news/1999/n092099b.html for instance. They're sending lawyers to court over this type of stuff and they've done so before. Give credit where it's due!
Assuming the government did not threaten any sort of actual force, this is "only" a violation of the ethics of free speech, not the legality. The ISP in question has the right of free speech - they have the right not to publish information they don't want published. They have an ethical responsibility to continue publishing what they have been payed to publish, but not a legal one. (If they do have a legal one, it is contractual, not constitutional).
Still, ethical violations of free speech are always odious, whether by government or by business. Either way, it's an abuse of power that no person should have.
The solution to this, in case you were wondering, is the FREENET. The goal of freenet is to allow content distribution and access to be inexpensive and (optionally) anonymous. (Sorta like USEnet, but without requiring 6gb/day to serve. Freenet seeks to eliminate the slashdot effect as a barrier to free speech.) Essentially, censorship is made technologically impossible on the freenet, short of stopping people before they ever post.
Hopefully, all of the public information on the internet will be on something similar to freenet eventually. If it is, we won't ever see a story like this again.
There aren't 31 days in November dude.
Why limit yourself to decimal dates? In base 2000+ it's an odd day every other day.
Like the subject says. This book might be worth buying in print, but since it's not out (or even finished, apparantly) yet It'd be great to get online in the meantime.
So anybody know where?