Looks like a troll, but it seems it's better to clean up other people's misconceptions anyway.
No can do. GPL and BSD are incompatible according to our friendly psychos at FSF.
Only that archaic, ancient, malicious BSD with advertising clause.
The more modern variant is not, and it's 100% OK to use it in Qt programs, it's just that the recipient has to be able to distribute it under the GPL if he so wishes.
Disclaimer: I don't live in the US, however I do know US law fairly well, particularly copyright law.
There are two different issues here:
1. Whether it is illegal to disseminate information on how to do this "hack" 2. Whether doing this "hack" and using the resulting product is illegal
Facts, such as "by changing two bytes of a work makes it behave in way X", as in (1), are not subject to copyright in the US. Copyright only protects the fruits of creative expression, but not facts or ideas of any kind (for the latter kind there is the patent system). Even some human choice is allowed here: For example, records of chess games have been found to be ineligible of copyright protection.
However, (1) _might_ be argued to be contributory copyright infringement if (and only if) (2) is found to be infringing. However the bar for contributory is quite high and especially the mere provision of information (not counting direct infringement, ie. giving out copies) is generally very well protected by the 1st Amendment. Incitement requires more than the provision of mere information, so incitement it is not. It is my belief that (1) would not be considered illegal in the end.
It is hard to find anything clear on (2) in the copyright law. However the one thing that would probably be invoked is this: The right to make derived works is one of the exclusive rights of the copyright owner. However the mere change of two bytes quite obviously doesn't meet the requirements for a new work (ie. original, creative, individual expression). Hence the modified work is actually not a derived work, which is a work created by combining an existing work with new expression.
(2) can also be attacked on basis of contract law. In this case it really comes to whether EULAs are enforceable or not, which I'm not willing to comment on because the matter is widely disputed even among people more knowledgeable of the US law than me (read: US legal scholars).
Even in case of cracks to commercial or shareware titles the case never was very clear, regardless of what some companies or representatives of shareware vendors would like you to believe.
Re:You are Totally off there
on
Revamping Freenet
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· Score: 2, Interesting
I have quite a similar experience.
When I last tried freenet, the required disk space wasn't a problem for me, CPU time was marginally so (every now and then it ate 30% of my CPU time for a period, and my CPU is in the P4 family). The memory requirements were just absurd. With a load of obscure switches to Sun JVM from an obscure wiki I could make it settle with time to slightly more than 256 MiB instead of the original 900 MiB (I'm not sure if it was still growing because I killed it then, but I guess it was).
Its bandwidth usage grew with time, and if I tried to limit it, it just ceased to work at all. As long as it was in the order of 300 MiB/day it was quite ok, but eventually it grew to something like 1.5 GiB/day, after which I first tried limiting the bandwidth, then just stopped using freenet. It got more responsive after running it for a few days or a week, but I still never got more than a few KiB/second from it. By more responsive I mean that best case response times generally dropped to seconds instead of tens of seconds, while average response times saw a smaller but still significant drop.
Not that it would ever have occurred to me if I was an Apple employee that it might be against the spirit of the GPL, or even a violation. Which it probably is not.
And now it might really be difficult to export and release the history. Perhaps not technically, but who knows what kind of obligations to third parties (and more likely just having some company secrets in the history messages) prevent them from doing this. In case of third party obligations they might even be prevented from giving out the history under an NDA.
Caveat: I'm a believer, and probably quite fundamental too (for example I consider it likely that the theory of evolution, and fundamentally the scientific way it's studied in, is just wrong).
Since it's probably just microbial life we're talking about, and since a lot of Christians believe we're living the end times and the ruler of this world (i.e. Satan) wants to deceive us all [by e.g. discrediting the biblical account of genesis], it's a no-brainer. It's really easy to say that someone just made up the story and the evidence. The possible proof of life on Mars just won't be anything as obvious as the moon landing, and there are still people disputing that!
By the way, if it sounds like a conspiracy theory, it's just because that's exactly what the Bible teaches it is.
I strongly suspect that the "or any later version" part is not legally enforcable towards the copyright holder because the copyright holder (in this case that's me) had no opportunity to review the terms of a later version when he put that line in and does not have any control over such later version. The clause would be void in most jurisdictions IMHO.
Well, it's not much different from giving it to the FSF under a BSD type license. Can't see what would be unenforceable about that (esp. since it's a license in question, not a contract, which would make a big difference)
While I do believe that the world is going to the direction described in the Revelation (yes, I'm a believer), I still do believe that the EP won't allow this kind of stomping. It has become a matter of principle now instead of a matter of software patents.
And fourthly, I would hardly call it likely that the directive is going to be passed any time soon in the EU. There's so much resistance to it that probably the real plan for the pro-patent Council right now is to get the directive shot down and continue the current practice of granting software patents in a system where their status is unclear, because that's probably the best they can hope for with so much resistance at all other levels of bureaucracy. The last thing they want is a directive that clearly forbids software patents, which is what the Parliament tried to turn the text into.
But the fight is not over, and it's important that we continue because otherwise the Council will sooner or later invent some working way to get the directive passed.
in most European countries it is mandatory to carry an ID _at all times_ (given you are 18 years or older)
Is it? I think that in France it is, but I don't know other countries that require this. However I'm fairly certain that for example Finland, Sweden, Norway, Denmark and Iceland do not.
Re:How about MySQL AB's interpretation of the GPL?
on
MySQL CEO Interview
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· Score: 1
If you support multiple backends and you can at compile time disable linking MySQL in, the resulting binary is distributable without source.
Re:How about MySQL AB's interpretation of the GPL?
on
MySQL CEO Interview
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· Score: 1
Only if you intend to distribute under the BSD license without the source code, ie. closed source.
In source form, the notion of "the entire work" will in this case be quite unimportant anyway, you do have the right to distribute your work under the BSD license and anyone can take that code and use it in ways that the BSDL allows (but GPL does not). If they want to go closed source, they can use a different DB or buy the commercial version of MySQL and use your product, entirely BSD licensed.
Re:How about MySQL AB's interpretation of the GPL?
on
MySQL CEO Interview
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· Score: 1
Yes, I know that. But it's only de facto. You are still distributing your own code under the BSD license and the GPL code under GPL. Sounds actually very fair to me. It doesn't restrict at all how you can distribute your code as long as it's GPL compatible.
Of course you can't just drop requirements from the GPL'd code and assume that after adding some BSD code you suddenly have more rights over that code, written by someone else...
Re:How about MySQL AB's interpretation of the GPL?
on
MySQL CEO Interview
·
· Score: 1
That's just plainly incorrect. Your code only needs to be licensed under a GPL compatible license. And the BSD license (the newer revision without that nasty old advertising clause) is.
The IBM patents we're talking about are interesting and valuable, and are mostly things that OSS isn't doing now.
Yeah, right. Like these (from the IBM's pdf):
US6292843 Quick loading of run time dynamic link library for OS/2
US6262725 Method for displaying holidays in a locale-sensitive manner across distributed computer enterprise locales
US5699534 Multiple display pointers for computer graphical user interfaces
US5692143 Method and system for recalling desktop states in a data processing system
US5564210 Method and system of providing multiple selections in text on a computer display
US5596700 System for annotating software windows
US5596345 Method for managing non-rectangular windows in a raster display
US5249263 Color palette display interface for a computer-based image editor
US5665061 Interactive computer system recognizing spoken commands
US5694595 Remote user profile management administration in a computer network
US5613002 Generic disinfection of programs infected with a computer virus
US6311177 Accessing databases when viewing text on the web
US6295559 Rating hypermedia for objectionable content
US6285777 Internet assisted mail
US5611048 Remote password administration for a computer network among a plurality of nodes sending a password update message to all nodes and updating on authorized nodes
US5274625 Traffic measurements in packet communications networks
They actually seem to have quite a broken definition of Open Source there.
From the IBM's PDF:
"Open Source Software is any computer software program whose source code is published and available for inspection and use by anyone, and is made available under a license agreement that permits recipients to copy, modify and distribute the program's source code without payment of fees or royalties".
However, the right to make private modifications (and keep them private) is essential for Open Source. Even RMS agrees, though I'm too lazy to find the proper URL.
It being against the law in no way implies that it is morally wrong.
For example, suppose you could get arrested in China for speaking against the government. I don't care if the arrest and the following procedures are constitutional (in China) or not, they're wrong.
What makes you US people generally think that your constitution is somehow a law of the nature, granted from above or something? What if something in it is _wrong_?
I believe the GNU position is that both compile-time and runtime linkage makes a derivative work. However what legally happens at runtime is not so interesting to the GNU people because they're anyway only interested in regulating distribution.
IMHO static linkage doesn't actually differ very much from what the dynamic linker does at runtime.
Slashdot Mirror
Looks like a troll, but it seems it's better to clean up other people's misconceptions anyway.
No can do. GPL and BSD are incompatible according to our friendly psychos at FSF.
Only that archaic, ancient, malicious BSD with advertising clause.
The more modern variant is not, and it's 100% OK to use it in Qt programs, it's just that the recipient has to be able to distribute it under the GPL if he so wishes.
Disclaimer: I don't live in the US, however I do know US law fairly well, particularly copyright law.
There are two different issues here:
1. Whether it is illegal to disseminate information on how to do this "hack"
2. Whether doing this "hack" and using the resulting product is illegal
Facts, such as "by changing two bytes of a work makes it behave in way X", as in (1), are not subject to copyright in the US. Copyright only protects the fruits of creative expression, but not facts or ideas of any kind (for the latter kind there is the patent system). Even some human choice is allowed here: For example, records of chess games have been found to be ineligible of copyright protection.
However, (1) _might_ be argued to be contributory copyright infringement if (and only if) (2) is found to be infringing. However the bar for contributory is quite high and especially the mere provision of information (not counting direct infringement, ie. giving out copies) is generally very well protected by the 1st Amendment. Incitement requires more than the provision of mere information, so incitement it is not. It is my belief that (1) would not be considered illegal in the end.
It is hard to find anything clear on (2) in the copyright law. However the one thing that would probably be invoked is this: The right to make derived works is one of the exclusive rights of the copyright owner. However the mere change of two bytes quite obviously doesn't meet the requirements for a new work (ie. original, creative, individual expression). Hence the modified work is actually not a derived work, which is a work created by combining an existing work with new expression.
(2) can also be attacked on basis of contract law. In this case it really comes to whether EULAs are enforceable or not, which I'm not willing to comment on because the matter is widely disputed even among people more knowledgeable of the US law than me (read: US legal scholars).
Even in case of cracks to commercial or shareware titles the case never was very clear, regardless of what some companies or representatives of shareware vendors would like you to believe.
I have quite a similar experience.
When I last tried freenet, the required disk space wasn't a problem for me, CPU time was marginally so (every now and then it ate 30% of my CPU time for a period, and my CPU is in the P4 family). The memory requirements were just absurd. With a load of obscure switches to Sun JVM from an obscure wiki I could make it settle with time to slightly more than 256 MiB instead of the original 900 MiB (I'm not sure if it was still growing because I killed it then, but I guess it was).
Its bandwidth usage grew with time, and if I tried to limit it, it just ceased to work at all. As long as it was in the order of 300 MiB/day it was quite ok, but eventually it grew to something like 1.5 GiB/day, after which I first tried limiting the bandwidth, then just stopped using freenet. It got more responsive after running it for a few days or a week, but I still never got more than a few KiB/second from it. By more responsive I mean that best case response times generally dropped to seconds instead of tens of seconds, while average response times saw a smaller but still significant drop.
... people who miss the point would be saying "of course there are collisions in hashes". Well, now I'm going to say the obvious in the same tone.
Of course there are factors in a composite number. Nothing new to see here. Move along.
Not that it would ever have occurred to me if I was an Apple employee that it might be against the spirit of the GPL, or even a violation. Which it probably is not.
And now it might really be difficult to export and release the history. Perhaps not technically, but who knows what kind of obligations to third parties (and more likely just having some company secrets in the history messages) prevent them from doing this. In case of third party obligations they might even be prevented from giving out the history under an NDA.
Makes me somewhat wonder if a big diff with no history actually is the preferred form of modification mentioned in GPL.
Caveat: I'm a believer, and probably quite fundamental too (for example I consider it likely that the theory of evolution, and fundamentally the scientific way it's studied in, is just wrong).
Since it's probably just microbial life we're talking about, and since a lot of Christians believe we're living the end times and the ruler of this world (i.e. Satan) wants to deceive us all [by e.g. discrediting the biblical account of genesis], it's a no-brainer. It's really easy to say that someone just made up the story and the evidence. The possible proof of life on Mars just won't be anything as obvious as the moon landing, and there are still people disputing that!
By the way, if it sounds like a conspiracy theory, it's just because that's exactly what the Bible teaches it is.
We are for the most part just trying to help.
Well, then there's just one thing that the rest of the world would want you to understand, and I think I'm very much speaking for the majority here.
WE DON'T NEED OR WANT YOUR STINKING HELP, thank you very much. Please mind your own business.
I strongly suspect that the "or any later version" part is not legally enforcable towards the copyright holder because the copyright holder (in this case that's me) had no opportunity to review the terms of a later version when he put that line in and does not have any control over such later version. The clause would be void in most jurisdictions IMHO.
Well, it's not much different from giving it to the FSF under a BSD type license. Can't see what would be unenforceable about that (esp. since it's a license in question, not a contract, which would make a big difference)
Yes.
While I do believe that the world is going to the direction described in the Revelation (yes, I'm a believer), I still do believe that the EP won't allow this kind of stomping. It has become a matter of principle now instead of a matter of software patents.
Ever heard that gassing is a legal method of exter^H^H^Hecution in the US?
Stop spreading that misinformation.
It's 1/2, not 2/3.
And fourthly, I would hardly call it likely that the directive is going to be passed any time soon in the EU. There's so much resistance to it that probably the real plan for the pro-patent Council right now is to get the directive shot down and continue the current practice of granting software patents in a system where their status is unclear, because that's probably the best they can hope for with so much resistance at all other levels of bureaucracy. The last thing they want is a directive that clearly forbids software patents, which is what the Parliament tried to turn the text into.
But the fight is not over, and it's important that we continue because otherwise the Council will sooner or later invent some working way to get the directive passed.
IANAAmerican, so pardon my ignorance, but do you actually get into trouble there for something like this?
Why on earth?!
Funny. He proved my point of why the GPL is good and actually works.
in most European countries it is mandatory to carry an ID _at all times_ (given you are 18 years or older)
Is it? I think that in France it is, but I don't know other countries that require this. However I'm fairly certain that for example Finland, Sweden, Norway, Denmark and Iceland do not.
If you support multiple backends and you can at compile time disable linking MySQL in, the resulting binary is distributable without source.
Only if you intend to distribute under the BSD license without the source code, ie. closed source.
In source form, the notion of "the entire work" will in this case be quite unimportant anyway, you do have the right to distribute your work under the BSD license and anyone can take that code and use it in ways that the BSDL allows (but GPL does not). If they want to go closed source, they can use a different DB or buy the commercial version of MySQL and use your product, entirely BSD licensed.
Yes, I know that. But it's only de facto. You are still distributing your own code under the BSD license and the GPL code under GPL. Sounds actually very fair to me. It doesn't restrict at all how you can distribute your code as long as it's GPL compatible.
Of course you can't just drop requirements from the GPL'd code and assume that after adding some BSD code you suddenly have more rights over that code, written by someone else...
That's just plainly incorrect. Your code only needs to be licensed under a GPL compatible license. And the BSD license (the newer revision without that nasty old advertising clause) is.
The IBM patents we're talking about are interesting and valuable, and are mostly things that OSS isn't doing now.
Yeah, right. Like these (from the IBM's pdf):
US6292843 Quick loading of run time dynamic link library for OS/2
US6262725 Method for displaying holidays in a locale-sensitive manner across distributed computer enterprise locales
US5699534 Multiple display pointers for computer graphical user interfaces
US5692143 Method and system for recalling desktop states in a data processing system
US5564210 Method and system of providing multiple selections in text on a computer display
US5596700 System for annotating software windows
US5596345 Method for managing non-rectangular windows in a raster display
US5249263 Color palette display interface for a computer-based image editor
US5665061 Interactive computer system recognizing spoken commands
US5694595 Remote user profile management administration in a computer network
US5613002 Generic disinfection of programs infected with a computer virus
US6311177 Accessing databases when viewing text on the web
US6295559 Rating hypermedia for objectionable content
US6285777 Internet assisted mail
US5611048 Remote password administration for a computer network among a plurality of nodes sending a password update message to all nodes and updating on authorized nodes
US5274625 Traffic measurements in packet communications networks
And so on...
They actually seem to have quite a broken definition of Open Source there.
From the IBM's PDF:
"Open Source Software is any computer software program whose source code is published and available for inspection and use by anyone, and is made available under a license agreement that permits recipients to copy, modify and distribute the program's source code without payment of fees or royalties".
However, the right to make private modifications (and keep them private) is essential for Open Source. Even RMS agrees, though I'm too lazy to find the proper URL.
Still small compared to the 22 gigatons of a magnitude 8.9 earthquake.
See this page on the US Geological Survey for some figures on earthquakes.
Not that I'd like to defend piracy, but...
It being against the law in no way implies that it is morally wrong.
For example, suppose you could get arrested in China for speaking against the government. I don't care if the arrest and the following procedures are constitutional (in China) or not, they're wrong.
What makes you US people generally think that your constitution is somehow a law of the nature, granted from above or something? What if something in it is _wrong_?
I believe the GNU position is that both compile-time and runtime linkage makes a derivative work. However what legally happens at runtime is not so interesting to the GNU people because they're anyway only interested in regulating distribution.
IMHO static linkage doesn't actually differ very much from what the dynamic linker does at runtime.