One of my favorite features of TiVo, that just isn't emphasized enough, is that all your recordings are available as random access. Want to watch Buffy? Click on it, and it's playing. Want to watch something else? No changing tapes, rewinding, searching. TiVo knows where it is.
As far as I can tell, [adding GPL to code for homework] protects me in the event that a student is accused of cheating while still allowing me to show anyone my code.
Not at my school. Here, both giving and receiving aid can be violations of the honor code. Just because I put a notice on the top of my code saying "I can distribute this any way I see fit" doesn't mean that I can. I'd think twice about this if your honor code is similar.
Ok, flamebait aside, I still find it amazing that people can deal with this stuff on a regular basis.
It all comes down to what kind of natural disaster you prefer. You have to deal with hurricanes and floods in the east coast, tornados in the midwest, and snowstorms in the north. A lot of people don't like the fact that earthquakes come with no warning. However, I prefer that to the constant warnings for hurricanes that always turn at the last minute, as always happened when I grew up in Texas. Call me unrational if you will...
Python is distributed under a BSD-ish license that allows people to fork off their own, if they don't like what Guido is doing. In fact, this has happened several times (Ka-Ping Yee's extensions, Viperi, Stackless). Because of the way that the language is set up (small language, rich modules), it's unlikely that a corporation will be able to usurp the language by adding in rich proprietary features and not distributing the code. It's very possible that one might distribute nice closed source modules, but that could happen with any language. Aside from the fact that it's non-GPL, RMS probably wouldn't complain about the control issue.
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One of my favorite features of TiVo, that just isn't emphasized enough, is that all your recordings are available as random access. Want to watch Buffy? Click on it, and it's playing. Want to watch something else? No changing tapes, rewinding, searching. TiVo knows where it is.
Not at my school. Here, both giving and receiving aid can be violations of the honor code. Just because I put a notice on the top of my code saying "I can distribute this any way I see fit" doesn't mean that I can. I'd think twice about this if your honor code is similar.
Ok, flamebait aside, I still find it amazing that people can deal with this stuff on a regular basis.
It all comes down to what kind of natural disaster you prefer. You have to deal with hurricanes and floods in the east coast, tornados in the midwest, and snowstorms in the north. A lot of people don't like the fact that earthquakes come with no warning. However, I prefer that to the constant warnings for hurricanes that always turn at the last minute, as always happened when I grew up in Texas. Call me unrational if you will...
Python is distributed under a BSD-ish license that allows people to fork off their own, if they don't like what Guido is doing. In fact, this has happened several times (Ka-Ping Yee's extensions, Viperi, Stackless). Because of the way that the language is set up (small language, rich modules), it's unlikely that a corporation will be able to usurp the language by adding in rich proprietary features and not distributing the code. It's very possible that one might distribute nice closed source modules, but that could happen with any language. Aside from the fact that it's non-GPL, RMS probably wouldn't complain about the control issue.