Legally? probably not. Ignoring the lawyers though, this kind of namespace collision should be avoided in the OSS community just as a matter of principle. People get confused as it is knowing what program to use for what.
Yeah, I'll give you that. It was handled poorly on both ends. Firebird should have been a little less aggressive, Mozilla should never have picked that name to begin with.
I agree to an extent (the Pontiac example is a little extreme though). However, if it were the other way around I would bet good money that Mozilla would have gone after them. And if nothing else, it sets a bad precedence. This kind of namespace collision should be avoided in the OSS community where people are confused about what programs to use as it is.
Personally I don't care except that it sets a bad precedent. In this particular case few people really would care BUT I don't like the idea that it is OK to do this at all. You know if it were the other wat around Mozilla would have gone after them.
Specifically what did they do wrong in your eyes? When Mozilla takes an existing project's name are they just supposed to accept it and change their name? That doesn't sound very fair.
Coming from the same incompetent people that have tried to sue people who DO NOT OWN COMPUTERS I don't take their claims as very credible. Also (as the AC pointed out) they thought Prof Usher was sharing their copyrighted works and issued a cease and desist order. Fortunately our security office didn't give the RIAA any credit for being competent and checked it out on their own before shutting anything down.
Hence one of the main reasons Linux will never be more than a hobbyist OS.
Congratulations on your recovery from what must have been a four or five year coma. Please feel free to check out some tech news sites to see what has been happening in the computer industry these last few years.
I didn't start the comparison, pal. I only mentioned that if you have a beef with Lucas and his "Star Wars revision of the week" games, comparing that to Peter Jackson isn't exactly fair since Jackson has totally up front about how many releases there would be.
Not if the robots.txt file prevents you from accessing that data, which it does.
No, it does not. It provides absolutely NO access control what so ever. It simply tells the a search engine crawler "please do not catalogue these pages".
We use some type of fancy sensor to convert a real world analog signal to digital information, then we convert the digital information back to analog to humans can understand it intuitively?
You pretty much described every electronice device in the world that has a user interface.
And how is this bad? It is an additional layer of security built on top of an already pretty secure system. Security by obscurity is good, as long as it is not all you have. A little bit of obscurity adds a bit, certainly doesn't detract any.
All of the information about this PSU/Napster deal has been stating that it is completly funded by the student technology fee (a $160/semester fee). Now you can make the arguement that money would be spend from that fee is now (possibly) being spend by taxpayer money, but technically tax dollars are not going to Napster
Also, PSU is a Land Grant institution, and state appropriation are much lower for us than actual State Schools.
Heh, look, I wasn't the one to bring up "communist"...
And that is easy to counter with "I don't, as I have already said a quazillion times in this thread. However, as I have also said, I am not against sharing, in fact I wish I could share, but I cannot get involved with GPL'd code. For me, therefore, the GPL is restrictive."
Well, then you are being perfectly reasonable and I probably shouldn't have jumped into this discussion:)
Precisely. Thanks for making my point. There are many scenarios in which it is clearly not worth it.
Well, it seems to be awfully popular, so I guess there are also many scenarios in which it IS worth it...
Me? A communist? We're in a discussion about RMS, and I'm siding slightly against the GPL, and I'm a communist? Interesting.
I never understood the whole "GPL is communist" thing. Communists did not invent the concept of "sharing", so why it is that everything that remotely seems about sharing and not greed is labeled "communist"?
As for the rest of my code, you never had any right to that, and you still don't, so you haven't lost anything.
That is a valid point, but it it is easy to counter with "if you don't like it, don't use GPL code". I release code as GPL, LGPL, and BSD depending on which I feel is most suitable for the particular project, so I would never tell anyone else what license they should use. Just respect whatever license was used and move on. If something you want is GPL'd and you can't use it, rewrite it from scratch under a BSD license:)
Finkployd
Re:CBS Censors MoveOn.org Ad
on
Superbowling
·
· Score: 1
Ooooh you are right, it is total censorship that CBS wouldn't run an add during the superbowl that would piss off the majority of their viewers. They should be forced too.
How would you feel about them not running a KKK ad on principal? Would that also be censorship?
Slashdot Mirror
Actually, that somewhat dorky statement about feeling guilty was relentlessly added into my post as though I said it.
;)
Actually it only looks that way if you lack understanding of how quotes work. Such as the grandparent poster
Finkployd
So was AOL Legal wrong?
Legally? probably not. Ignoring the lawyers though, this kind of namespace collision should be avoided in the OSS community just as a matter of principle. People get confused as it is knowing what program to use for what.
Finkployd
Pfft, Pink Floyd's Money is entirely in 7/4 time (well ok, except for the guitar solo, I think it switched to 4/4 for that).
Finkployd
Yeah, I'll give you that. It was handled poorly on both ends. Firebird should have been a little less aggressive, Mozilla should never have picked that name to begin with.
Finkployd
I agree to an extent (the Pontiac example is a little extreme though). However, if it were the other way around I would bet good money that Mozilla would have gone after them. And if nothing else, it sets a bad precedence. This kind of namespace collision should be avoided in the OSS community where people are confused about what programs to use as it is.
Finkployd
Personally I don't care except that it sets a bad precedent. In this particular case few people really would care BUT I don't like the idea that it is OK to do this at all. You know if it were the other wat around Mozilla would have gone after them.
Finkployd
Not quite true, it cause some maning conflicts in some distros (in gentoo firebird refers to the DB and mozilla-firebird refered to the browser).
How hard is it really to do a search on freshmeat, sourceforge, and google before you name a project? I do it all the time.
Plus it isn't like it was a dead project or a one person project, it had a (albiet not MySQL size) following and was under active development.
Sorry, I love Mozilla but they were in the wrong here.
Finkployd
Specifically what did they do wrong in your eyes? When Mozilla takes an existing project's name are they just supposed to accept it and change their name? That doesn't sound very fair.
Finkployd
It's not a matter of ease, they were around for a lot longer and had the name long before Mozilla co-opted it.
Finkployd
Well congrats, that was very good.
Finkployd
I am pretty much in favor of science. I am not in favor of mixing science with politics.
So science should not be publicly funded? How do you keep that but keep politics out of it?
Finkployd
Coming from the same incompetent people that have tried to sue people who DO NOT OWN COMPUTERS I don't take their claims as very credible. Also (as the AC pointed out) they thought Prof Usher was sharing their copyrighted works and issued a cease and desist order. Fortunately our security office didn't give the RIAA any credit for being competent and checked it out on their own before shutting anything down.
Finkployd
Actually it's a bit under 30,000
Finkployd
"Asteriods, the icebergs of the sky" - Zap
Finkployd
Hence one of the main reasons Linux will never be more than a hobbyist OS.
Congratulations on your recovery from what must have been a four or five year coma. Please feel free to check out some tech news sites to see what has been happening in the computer industry these last few years.
Finkployd
I didn't start the comparison, pal. I only mentioned that if you have a beef with Lucas and his "Star Wars revision of the week" games, comparing that to Peter Jackson isn't exactly fair since Jackson has totally up front about how many releases there would be.
Finkployd
Peter Jackson at least came clean ahead of time and told everyone exactly what he was going to do and why.
Finkployd
Not if the robots.txt file prevents you from accessing that data, which it does.
No, it does not. It provides absolutely NO access control what so ever. It simply tells the a search engine crawler "please do not catalogue these pages".
Finkployd
So let me get this straight...
We use some type of fancy sensor to convert a real world analog signal to digital information, then we convert the digital information back to analog to humans can understand it intuitively?
You pretty much described every electronice device in the world that has a user interface.
Finkployd
One time pad? Do you know what that is?
And how is this bad? It is an additional layer of security built on top of an already pretty secure system. Security by obscurity is good, as long as it is not all you have. A little bit of obscurity adds a bit, certainly doesn't detract any.
Finkployd
All of the information about this PSU/Napster deal has been stating that it is completly funded by the student technology fee (a $160/semester fee). Now you can make the arguement that money would be spend from that fee is now (possibly) being spend by taxpayer money, but technically tax dollars are not going to Napster
Also, PSU is a Land Grant institution, and state appropriation are much lower for us than actual State Schools.
Finkployd
So yeah. I'm a PSU student. They've just installed firewalls everywhere on campus to block out everything, but internet, napster, im.
Nope, just dorms. Still sucks I agree, but let's be factual.
Also technically it blocks everything but port 80 and 443. Guess which ports Napster uses?
PSU signed a deal with napster because one of the board members is on the RIAA commision. There is also some administrative link to Napster.
You are refering to Berry Robinson, who is on PSU's Board of Trustees and is the Senior Counsel for the RIAA.
Finkployd
Heh, look, I wasn't the one to bring up "communist"...
:)
And that is easy to counter with "I don't, as I have already said a quazillion times in this thread. However, as I have also said, I am not against sharing, in fact I wish I could share, but I cannot get involved with GPL'd code. For me, therefore, the GPL is restrictive."
Well, then you are being perfectly reasonable and I probably shouldn't have jumped into this discussion
Finkployd
Precisely. Thanks for making my point. There are many scenarios in which it is clearly not worth it.
:)
Well, it seems to be awfully popular, so I guess there are also many scenarios in which it IS worth it...
Me? A communist? We're in a discussion about RMS, and I'm siding slightly against the GPL, and I'm a communist? Interesting.
I never understood the whole "GPL is communist" thing. Communists did not invent the concept of "sharing", so why it is that everything that remotely seems about sharing and not greed is labeled "communist"?
As for the rest of my code, you never had any right to that, and you still don't, so you haven't lost anything.
That is a valid point, but it it is easy to counter with "if you don't like it, don't use GPL code". I release code as GPL, LGPL, and BSD depending on which I feel is most suitable for the particular project, so I would never tell anyone else what license they should use. Just respect whatever license was used and move on. If something you want is GPL'd and you can't use it, rewrite it from scratch under a BSD license
Finkployd
Ooooh you are right, it is total censorship that CBS wouldn't run an add during the superbowl that would piss off the majority of their viewers. They should be forced too.
How would you feel about them not running a KKK ad on principal? Would that also be censorship?
Finkployd