This has nothing to do with density, after all he proposed to pay the entire cost of expanding the cable by himself. They just can't be bothered.
The problem is that to get good service for anything, you either need real competition between several commercial parties, or serious government investment in infrastructure. It seems that rural parts of the US lack both. Also, barriers to entry for new competitors are huge, and large government investment would probably mean raising taxes and the people always vote that down.
The Free Software Foundation may publish revised and/or new versions of the GNU General Public License from time to time. Such new versions will be similar in spirit to the present version, but may differ in detail to address new problems or concerns.
Each version is given a distinguishing version number. If the Program specifies that a certain numbered version of the GNU General Public License "or any later version" applies to it, you have the option of following the terms and conditions either of that numbered version or of any later version published by the Free Software Foundation. If the Program does not specify a version number of the GNU General Public License, you may choose any version ever published by the Free Software Foundation.
I don't think your idea would have a chance in hell.
Medical hardware is not a "User Product" (as defined in the license) so it's unaffected by these changes.
That said, it's not surprising that software of which the whole point is that it can be freely changed by everybody is not particularly suitable for devices where you would not want that.
As I said, yes you're allowed to changed it, but then you can't use that software in the only device it's useful for; I don't call that being able to change the software.
Even considering that the entire point of those restrictions was to tell Tivo "you may not use this software for that purpose"?
Woah - TiVo isn't using that software, their customers are using the software. The FSF is telling Tivo, if you're giving our software to your users, you have to give them the ability to change it. If you just allow them to, but then make it impossible to use those changes, then that's taking advantage of a loophole, you should have known it was, and now we're fixing that.
You are totally, completely free to _use_ a GPLv3 program for whatever you want, and you're even guaranteed to be able to do that on the device it came on, if any. Of course, if you want to distribute the program yourself, you have to give receivers all the same rights.
That doesn't sound like "you are free to use this however you want, except for things we disagree with" at all, to me.
Re:Does GPL v3 GCC imply compiling issues?
on
GCC 4.2.1 Released
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· Score: 1
Of course. The GPL only comes into play once you go into the business of distributing gcc.
And even then, it's hard to see what would have been changed compared to GPLv2, unless you have a Tivo-like device, already allow users to change the gcc that comes with it for some bizarre reason, but then don't allow them to use that changed gcc. If that is the case, then GPLv2 -> 3 would matter.
The text of Hamlet, even stripped of punctuation, contains well over 130,000 letters which would lead to a probability of one in 3.4×10^183946.
Now that may look like a large number, but we're talking about infinite time. And compared to infinity, that number is of course still as vanishingly small as any integer.
They have no problem remembering them - after all that's what they use the devices for. Functionally it's the same thing as carrying them in your head, but now you can use the neurons for other things.
This is only going to get more extreme over time, bring on the implants already.
Version 3, on the other hand, makes statements about how software is used. As far as I can tell, TiVo is one of the most predominant factors in spurring GPLv3. TiVo contributes their software back to the community, as can be seen right here. TiVo, however, runs their software on a DRM'ed box. Anybody can use TiVo's source code modifications in their own hardware projects if they so desire. The software is still just as free as if TiVo decided to run it on a non-DRM'ed box.
TiVo isn't the user of the GPLv3 code. TiVo's customers are the users and it is their freedoms that the GPL wants to protect. Saying you can get and modify the software, except you can then not run it on the box you bought is a cop-out - that means you can't really modify it. The GPLv3 fixes that loophole.
That's the main difference between BSD and GPL, imo - BSD regards other developers (i.e., TiVo) as the users whose freedom needs to be maximized, while GPL does this recursively to include all the eventual end users as well.
Rendezvous with Rama captured the weirdness of an alien species, and to my knowledge, Arthur C. Clarke is the only writer, next to Stanislaw Lem, who toys with the idea that actually communicating with aliens may not be possible.
That description reminds me of _Roadside Picnic_ by Boris and Arkady Strugatsky. Recommended reading.
Nice sentiment but I'd like to see it tested in court. Related, but different, those that thought the "shrinkwrap" license was rock solid found out otherwise.
Utterly different. The GPL is a copyright license; (shrinkwrap) EULAs are use licenses.
In the absence of a license agreement, if you are in possession of a piece of software copyrighted by someone else, the default situation is as follows: you are allowed to use without restrictions, but you are not allowed to modify or distribute, since those actions are restricted by copyright law.
The GPL only gives you extra rights over that (the right to distribute and modify, as long as you comply with its terms), and you are completely free to accept it or not, without any negative effects if you don't accept it. It's a gift, and you don't even have to accept it. Even if you could find a court that would invalidate it, that would mean you didn't have a license at all, and are still a copyright infringer if you distributed.
EULAs restrict your normal rights by saying that you can't use the software if you don't comply with its terms; they're a restriction on your normal rights (by what law can they say you're not allowed to use a bit of software that is in your possession?). They're double dodgy since you can't read them before buying the software (that's the shrinkwrap part). And if you don't accept the terms, then suddenly you're not allowed to use the software, even though copyright law doesn't restrict that. Utterly different.
Microsoft has bought Suse vouchers from Novell, and sold them to customers. The vouchers have no expiration date.
According to FSF lawyers, when someone hands one in for a copy of Suse, then at that moment Microsoft distributes that version of the software; if it contains GPLv3 code, then there you are.
No. There have been cases of infringement, but a case has never been necessary - some diplomatic talk by a FSF lawyer has always been enough to let infringers see the error of their ways.
There's no real need to "uphold" the GPL, it is utterly rock solid. Anybody is free to choose whether they want to accept its terms or not, if you accept it only gives you extra options you didn't previously have (like being allowed to distribute software that contains other people's GPL code, under the GPL).
The bite is: if you don't accept the GPL, then you have no license to the software at all, and default copyright law situation applies - you're not allowed to modify or distribute software relying on GPL'ed parts at all!
Fighting the GPL would mean arguing that you voluntarily accepted its terms (how else did you get the right to modify / distribute), got extra options without any payment or anything in return - but still you're not actually bound by those terms. Good luck.
Well, it's a nice dream, but it's going to take money. Just handing the order to NASA without giving them any extra money wasn't going to make it happen anyway, so it's good that this publicity stunt is scrapped.
If Bush really wants this, he can allocate money for it in the budget.
On the other - the cat is out of the bag. We have an Internet, sharing of any digital content is unstoppable, and anybody relying on feeble copyright law is living in the past. Time to find a new line of business, people are bound to spend their money on something else now.
Slashdot Mirror
Bullshit, this is 2007, not 1997.
This has nothing to do with density, after all he proposed to pay the entire cost of expanding the cable by himself. They just can't be bothered.
The problem is that to get good service for anything, you either need real competition between several commercial parties, or serious government investment in infrastructure. It seems that rural parts of the US lack both. Also, barriers to entry for new competitors are huge, and large government investment would probably mean raising taxes and the people always vote that down.
So the rural US can forget it.
It says at least.
This is what the fine license says:
14. Revised Versions of this License.
The Free Software Foundation may publish revised and/or new versions of the GNU General Public License from time to time. Such new versions will be similar in spirit to the present version, but may differ in detail to address new problems or concerns.
Each version is given a distinguishing version number. If the Program specifies that a certain numbered version of the GNU General Public License "or any later version" applies to it, you have the option of following the terms and conditions either of that numbered version or of any later version published by the Free Software Foundation. If the Program does not specify a version number of the GNU General Public License, you may choose any version ever published by the Free Software Foundation.
I don't think your idea would have a chance in hell.
Medical hardware is not a "User Product" (as defined in the license) so it's unaffected by these changes.
That said, it's not surprising that software of which the whole point is that it can be freely changed by everybody is not particularly suitable for devices where you would not want that.
As I said, yes you're allowed to changed it, but then you can't use that software in the only device it's useful for; I don't call that being able to change the software.
It's a loophole that GPLv3 fixes.
Basically, Microsoft says "we won't sue Linspire users as long as they only do X, Y and Z".
Where X, Y and Z include paying Microsoft.
Even considering that the entire point of those restrictions was to tell Tivo "you may not use this software for that purpose"?
Woah - TiVo isn't using that software, their customers are using the software. The FSF is telling Tivo, if you're giving our software to your users, you have to give them the ability to change it. If you just allow them to, but then make it impossible to use those changes, then that's taking advantage of a loophole, you should have known it was, and now we're fixing that.
You are totally, completely free to _use_ a GPLv3 program for whatever you want, and you're even guaranteed to be able to do that on the device it came on, if any. Of course, if you want to distribute the program yourself, you have to give receivers all the same rights.
That doesn't sound like "you are free to use this however you want, except for things we disagree with" at all, to me.
Of course. The GPL only comes into play once you go into the business of distributing gcc.
And even then, it's hard to see what would have been changed compared to GPLv2, unless you have a Tivo-like device, already allow users to change the gcc that comes with it for some bizarre reason, but then don't allow them to use that changed gcc. If that is the case, then GPLv2 -> 3 would matter.
Or perhaps the hiring binge was mostly in non-US parts of Google, and the US parts can't hire the people they want.
The text of Hamlet, even stripped of punctuation, contains well over 130,000 letters which would lead to a probability of one in 3.4×10^183946.
Now that may look like a large number, but we're talking about infinite time. And compared to infinity, that number is of course still as vanishingly small as any integer.
In a similar vein, the Uncyclopedia article on Java is pretty funny. Especially the comparison with other languages below the Java Hello World...
Touché :-)
We only use, what, 10% of our brains anyway ---
Myth. Please don't act as if that sort of nonsense is true...
They have no problem remembering them - after all that's what they use the devices for. Functionally it's the same thing as carrying them in your head, but now you can use the neurons for other things.
This is only going to get more extreme over time, bring on the implants already.
Version 3, on the other hand, makes statements about how software is used. As far as I can tell, TiVo is one of the most predominant factors in spurring GPLv3. TiVo contributes their software back to the community, as can be seen right here. TiVo, however, runs their software on a DRM'ed box. Anybody can use TiVo's source code modifications in their own hardware projects if they so desire. The software is still just as free as if TiVo decided to run it on a non-DRM'ed box.
TiVo isn't the user of the GPLv3 code. TiVo's customers are the users and it is their freedoms that the GPL wants to protect. Saying you can get and modify the software, except you can then not run it on the box you bought is a cop-out - that means you can't really modify it. The GPLv3 fixes that loophole.
That's the main difference between BSD and GPL, imo - BSD regards other developers (i.e., TiVo) as the users whose freedom needs to be maximized, while GPL does this recursively to include all the eventual end users as well.
There will never be a "year of the Linux desktop", because the desktop OS is dead.
All the cool new things recently don't come from apps, they come through the Web. And the OS you run is pretty much irrelevant.
Linux already is the OS of choice for development, in my opinion, and that's good enough for me.
Rendezvous with Rama captured the weirdness of an alien species, and to my knowledge, Arthur C. Clarke is the only writer, next to Stanislaw Lem, who toys with the idea that actually communicating with aliens may not be possible.
That description reminds me of _Roadside Picnic_ by Boris and Arkady Strugatsky. Recommended reading.
Nice sentiment but I'd like to see it tested in court. Related, but different, those that thought the "shrinkwrap" license was rock solid found out otherwise.
Utterly different. The GPL is a copyright license; (shrinkwrap) EULAs are use licenses.
In the absence of a license agreement, if you are in possession of a piece of software copyrighted by someone else, the default situation is as follows: you are allowed to use without restrictions, but you are not allowed to modify or distribute, since those actions are restricted by copyright law.
The GPL only gives you extra rights over that (the right to distribute and modify, as long as you comply with its terms), and you are completely free to accept it or not, without any negative effects if you don't accept it. It's a gift, and you don't even have to accept it. Even if you could find a court that would invalidate it, that would mean you didn't have a license at all, and are still a copyright infringer if you distributed.
EULAs restrict your normal rights by saying that you can't use the software if you don't comply with its terms; they're a restriction on your normal rights (by what law can they say you're not allowed to use a bit of software that is in your possession?). They're double dodgy since you can't read them before buying the software (that's the shrinkwrap part). And if you don't accept the terms, then suddenly you're not allowed to use the software, even though copyright law doesn't restrict that. Utterly different.
Microsoft has bought Suse vouchers from Novell, and sold them to customers. The vouchers have no expiration date.
According to FSF lawyers, when someone hands one in for a copy of Suse, then at that moment Microsoft distributes that version of the software; if it contains GPLv3 code, then there you are.
See this Groklaw article. Eben Moglen knows copyright law.
No. There have been cases of infringement, but a case has never been necessary - some diplomatic talk by a FSF lawyer has always been enough to let infringers see the error of their ways.
There's no real need to "uphold" the GPL, it is utterly rock solid. Anybody is free to choose whether they want to accept its terms or not, if you accept it only gives you extra options you didn't previously have (like being allowed to distribute software that contains other people's GPL code, under the GPL).
The bite is: if you don't accept the GPL, then you have no license to the software at all, and default copyright law situation applies - you're not allowed to modify or distribute software relying on GPL'ed parts at all!
Fighting the GPL would mean arguing that you voluntarily accepted its terms (how else did you get the right to modify / distribute), got extra options without any payment or anything in return - but still you're not actually bound by those terms. Good luck.
Well, it's a nice dream, but it's going to take money. Just handing the order to NASA without giving them any extra money wasn't going to make it happen anyway, so it's good that this publicity stunt is scrapped.
If Bush really wants this, he can allocate money for it in the budget.
On one hand, I agree with your sentiment.
On the other - the cat is out of the bag. We have an Internet, sharing of any digital content is unstoppable, and anybody relying on feeble copyright law is living in the past. Time to find a new line of business, people are bound to spend their money on something else now.
Whatever encoding e-mail addresses should be called, DRM it is not. It doesn't limit you in any way.
Let's not confuse the meaning of terms like this, that's not helpful.