Unfortunately, yes it does (with that too), since VB probably doesn't represent 82.845 quite exactly, which isn't even possible in base 16 unless you use rational numbers.
Actually, they aren't going to suffer unendingly; Sodom and Gomorrha's smoke rose `for ever' too... but that's beside the point. Human nature won't submit to any restraint if it can be avoided.
Not unendingly? I'm not sure if I understood correctly what you're saying - English is not my native language, so pardon me if I misunderstood, but surely you aren't saying the damned will not be in Hell for eternity?
Perhaps this is some difference in the views of our respective Christian branches? If so, I'd really like to know. I'm Lutheran myself, but basically my view is just that the Bible is the entire divine revelation (so that's where I differ from at least Catholics, AFAICT) and if my church takes some position which is clearly against what the Bible says, it's the church who is wrong.
Now, back to the question, whether the punishment is eternal or not.
From Matthew 25:46 (Jesus talks about the last judgment): "And these shall go away into everlasting punishment: but the righteous into life eternal." [KJV] (emphasis added)
"And to you who are troubled rest with us, when the Lord Jesus shall be revealed from heaven with his mighty angels, In flaming fire taking vengeance on them that know not God, and that obey not the gospel of our Lord Jesus Christ: Who shall be punished with everlasting destruction from the presence of the Lord, and from the glory of his power" (II Thessalonians 1:9, KJV; emphasis added).
Sorry, I really don't know what you mean by your last sentence ("Human nature won't"...), I don't seem able to make any sense of it in this context:-). I'm sure that's only because Finnish is my native language, not English.
When they blind themselves to God, atheists blind themselves to the need to obey Him. So-called Christians who see no particular need for obedience are simply taking one less step out of the process.
I agree here. Still, it's not the deeds on which your salvation depends on; atonement was received solely from Christ's death, and without God's mercy there simply is no way for a human being to be saved. None of us is good enough for God - that is, perfect (see e.g. Matthew 5).
"For as the body without the spirit is dead, so faith without works is dead also." (James 2:26, KJV)
Basically, you are saved solely by your faith, but it does take deeds, or at least trying to abstain from sin, to keep that faith. It's hardly possible to abstain entirely from sin, even for a single day, and that's why you have to confess your sins to God and have them removed from you by the purifying blood of Christ (I'm not referring to communion here). A human is weak and unable to avoid sin by himself; it's a thing to ask help for from God. At least I have found it easier to avoid temptation after growing in faith; however, I know I will never be able to totally abstain from sin (or even recognize all the sin I commit), and actually I belive it would be sin even to think one is or will be able to totally abstain. I know I slip every day.
Your assuming eternal damnation awaits every atheist. I hope you've chosen the right brand of Christianity, because who knows what a vengeful God will do to people that worship other Gods?
Uhm, I'm not quite sure I understand what you mean.
Yes, I believe eternal damnation awaits everyone who hasn't accepted Christ as their personal saviour. I believe it's quite clearly stated in the Bible. See e.g. Mark 16:16.
I also don't believe it really matters much how you worship (or in what kind of church) - what really matters is the personal faith in God and accepting the grace and forgiveness for your sins. As long as the basics are OK - that is, as long as you believe like a christian Bible teaches - you will be saved. Faith alone saves, not religiousness or rituals.
You're assuming that atheists are concerned about an afterlife and/or eternal damnation. This is not a warranted assumption. Most atheists I know are thoroughly convinced that after death, the lights just...go out. No eternal damnation involved.
I'm not. I was an atheist (and proud of it - sometimes even quite fanatic, though less often) for the first 18 years of my life (and a believer for around 3), and I know I wasn't concerned. However, it's quite easy to get such an impression when people start mocking religion (as opposed to normal conversation) and take this oh-so-familiar "those who believe are weak" attitude. I'm sure at least some of that is because these people are so weak themselves and not sure about their ideology that they simply need to justify their point of view and make fun of believers. I saw quite a lot of that, I even took atheism classes (or actually they're called something like view of life education, really hard to translate) when probably 95% of my peers took religion (we have those at least here in Finland).
Some of those mocking people are a lot like school bullies, actually. I don't mean expressing your atheist views is necessarily in any way wrong like bullying, just that mocking religion is a good way to show your own weakness. Now, most of those who really believe have grown quite a thick skin when it comes to mocking or outright insultations, and believe it, we do recognize the weakness when we see it and at least I feel often more pitiful than insulted:-)
So I'm really confident I'm not assuming. I still remember my previously atheist views very well, though they are beginning to feel more and more foreign at quite a scary pace.
Besides which, I personally believe that God would rather have an honest follower that examined the facts, than a sycophantic follower that "believes" because s/he's afraid of Hell. Either way, it profits the atheist or agnostic little to consider Hell in his or her calculations.
There's also the other side of the coin - it's either heaven or hell. Christians are more than anxious to get to heaven. It's not like normal life continues if you go to heaven, but more like exact opposite to the torments of hell, a fulfilment in the presence of God.
And I'm not saying _all_ atheists are afraid of afterlife. Probably most of those who have thought about these things thoroughly are not. I wasn't. (Then I converted.:P)
Probably not, but that doesn't do anything to discount psychology's explanation for religious belief.
Only if we consider religion false from the very beginning. My point was more like psychology is not a good "justification" for not believing (I know atheists don't necessarily need to justify it to themselves, but many like to justify their views to other people), but a mere model created after people who do believe. That is, the argument "the credibility of religion is questionable because there's a psychological explanation for it" is logically totally bogus, a vicious circle.
Actually, there are many things about religion which I were very wrong about as an atheist. One relevant to this discussion is the misconception (which I at least had) that it's somehow easy to believe, like turning your brain off or something. I can tell you, it was lot easier in a way to be an atheist than a believer - the views seemed quite justified and logical and there was a mass of scientific evidence to support the view. Not only that, there wasn't actually any need to justify the view, it was more like those who do believe in God should have justified theirs.
Only now I know it's not so "easy" to believe, at least not in the way I thought back then. As a christian, you really have to struggle every day to keep your faith. It's really easy to slip. That's even acknowledged in the Bible: "If anyone would come after me, he must deny himself and take up his cross daily and follow me." (Luke 9:23) [NIV]
What happens to those who lived before the man commonly refered to as Jesus?
They will too be saved (yes, retroactively) through the grace of Christ's death on the cross - if they believed in God and his promises, of course. What they had to believe differed, however, quite a lot from what God requires from us who live after Christ.
What about those who have never heard of the fellow?
There's a promise that everybody hears at least something - even if that may not be very much...
From Romans 1:20: "For the invisible things of him from the creation of the world are clearly seen, being understood by the things that are made, even his eternal power and Godhead; so that they are without excuse" [KJV].
That's even more reason for taking the mission to spread christianity seriously. So that everybody at least may hear.
What about babies?
The Bible is not very clear on this. That probably means the details are not very relevant, since there's not much we can do about it anyway. My guess is that little children will be saved, but I'm really nobody to speculate on that.
However, we have a promise (Psalms 98:9) that God will judge the earth with righteousness and the people with equity. I believe this means that after the judgment absolutely nobody will feel they were treated unfairly.
What about those who do not worship Jesus, but worship the same deity?
[Jesus said,] "I am the way, the truth, and the life: no man cometh unto the Father, but by me" (John 14:6).
This is one of the things which Jesus was quite explicit about. Without Christ, there is no salvation.
Again, I'm not trying to be a jerk, I just have never been given an answer that didn't require me to leave my sensabilities at the door.
I know the feeling. I don't think I got very good answers before converting, either.
And of course, conversely, nonbelievers have a strong interest in explaining religion through psychology. I admit at least I didn't think of that before I converted (to christianity).
They need the assurance that there is no God - or at least that the existence of God is very unlikely. Otherwise the thought that they are going to suffer for eternity after death gets unnerving.
Religion is explainable through modern psychology. Therefore, it's very likely that religion was invented by people themselves for their own, primitive need. Right? Think about it.
I don't think so. Psychology is experimental science - theories are created and they become widely accepted only if they seem to work in practice. So what I'm saying is, if psychology didn't have an explanation for religion, would it be worth anything?
Religion is lot older than psychology. Psychology was created to explain human nature, religion being part of it. So in fact those who don't believe because psychology gives them an adequate explanation on why other people do believe have come to a vicious circle.
BTW, it's just as easy to explain the need to explain religion through psychology. Curious?;)
I believe there's a crucial difference between making software which runs on some platform and linking with someone else's code.
For example, making programs which run on Linux (the kernel is under GPL) is not considered making a derivative work. I think this is quite logical since the kernel just sits there, one image, providing services to the program through a narrow, specific and well published API.
When you link some executable with a dynamic library, in this case one distributed under the GPL, you're making a derivative work - at least the resulting image in memory is definitely a derivative work, combined of the codes of the two different products. Making a derivative work is one of the exclusive rights of the copyright owner.
The GPL is obviously written to and considered to prohibit even linking non-free code with GPL code (where LGPL allows this), and even a lot of companies originally in violation have had to submit and either remove the portions licensed under the GPL from their producs or release their products under the GPL. Somehow I assume that the founding principles of the GPL would already have been challenged if they weren't legally quite watertight - instead the lawyer who (I think) wrote GPL has stated he has found it easy to enforce without the need to take the issue into courtroom.
I believe you can find better legal interpretations from some relevant mailing list, after all I'm not at all that well versed in US copyright law (simply because I'm Finnish, though I've had to deal a fair bit with US copyright law anyway:-).
So, does this mean that all programs that link to kde/gnome libraries have to be GPL? How about programs that require glibc?
For KDE, yes.
For Gnome and glibc, no, because they are not GPL, but LGPL, which permits linking them into a non-free program on some conditions (mainly they must be separate so that everybody who wants to change the LGPL library and run the binary with the modified library can do so. Using a shared library (.so or.dll) does fine).
Actually, most of the base KDE libraries are LGPL too so you can develop non-free programs for KDE too, but in that case you'll have to obtain a commercial Qt license from Trolltech.
No. If it's already released under the BSD license, it's released under the BSD license. Once it's licensed, you can't revoke it and back off from your promise that they can use your code in their proprietary products.
On the other hand, the BSD licensed code (under the modern BSD license without the advertising clause) can be incorporated in a GPL program, so nothing prevents you from licensing all your _future_ code under the GPL only. Of course people still retain the right to use the old code under the BSD license.
In any case, I believe the other contributors agreeing or not agreeing is not very important in this case. Except of course that they have no obligation to accept your GPL code to the project otherwise licensed under the BSD license, so in that case you'll have to fork.
I gave it a try a couple of days ago as a way to test the root filesystem on a boot floppy. I was surprised by it's simple usage, you just compile the binary and run it like./linux ubd0=root.fs, and your root.fs will be available on the UML kernel's/dev/ubd0 which can be mounted as the root. It just works.
On Debian, even easier. Just 'apt-get install user-mode-linux' && linux ubd0=root.fs and off you go.
KVim is released under the smae 'charityware' licence as vim. Please see the vim website for more info.
Why do I smell licensing problems here? That is, unless the developers have a commercial Qt license, they are required to distribute any software linked with Qt under the GNU GPL.
I believe that would be the second time, as Vim was previously linked with libgpm (I don't know if it currently is), which is also distributed under the GNU GPL.
Is there a single good reason to have a bunch of different ones?
Differences in the filesystem layout. Especially configuration files under/etc, but also others. If there were no differences, we would have several largely identical distributions. That wouldn't make sense.
I agree wholeheartedly. I'm an OSS developer myself and, frankly, I don't care if some user who barely knows how to turn on his computer can't use software developed by me. I won't try to make it harder than it is, but I'm *not* going to sacrifice flexibility and lightness for eye candy like installer slideshows or such. You know what's good about Debian installer compared to Mandrake, for example? Ever tried to install Mandrake on a computer with 4 or 8 MiB memory? And now, please nobody start with how every computer nowadays has at least 128 MiB, my old 486 laptop doesn't, and I USE IT. Why shouldn't I? It works for me.
Ok, I'm just rather amazed at the concept that you can't give American youngsters any responsibility at all until they move away from their parents' house and have to take the enormous burden of responsibility in a very short time. I believe it's not as prevalent here in Finland where I live, though it can be seen.
Though I must say it seems to a foreigner like me to fit well in the mentality of taking some values like nationalism as granted (well, here in Finland we don't for example pledge allegiance to the flag in school; You still do it over there, don't you? In fact I have yet to see a Finnish school with a flag inside, except on Finnish independence day celebrations and such).
I think my parents had a rather balanced approach regarding my privacy - sometimes I felt they were too intrusive, and in retrospect I'm *really* happy I sometimes rebelled.
The US can't control the people both by law, and by the sheer impossibility of it.
In China for example the government DOES control people (or at least that's the impression you get from American pro-democracy "propaganda"). We could well have similar control in the US, and with more advanced technology.
And parents are already responsible more than you can imagine. In NY state, a parent is legally responsible for children living in the house until they are 21. That means that if junior is 19, gets drunk and wrecks a car (taking others out with them), the parents are responsible and can be hauled into court. If a child between 16 and 18 emancipates, the parents are still legally responsible.
Makes me *really* glad I don't live in NY state. Is this similar elsewhere in the US? I live in Finland, not with my parents anymore for a few years, and am very happy that they gave me some freedom.
I'm a scout leader (though I believe it's quite different here than in the US), and one of the things I've learned is that you learn to take responsibility by - surprise! - taking responsibility. Of course the younger leaders (I'm talking about 15-18 years old or so) take less responsibility, but they still certainly do, and would never be able to take full responsibility for their own groups of little scouts if they didn't first learn to take care of themselves.
By the way, yes, we can have a 15-16 year old leader take a group of five or six 11 year olds camping over a weekend into a forest, sleeping in a tent. Does that horrify you? I believe it might if you're used to 18 year olds having no responsibility after all... Here scouting is quite recognized anyway, though not as popular nowadays as it used to be.
And when you live in the country where *I* am the president, you live by my *MY* rules. Right? Right. Now, let us in and we'll install the camera in your house. Welcome to United Soviet States of America.
So why not extend this to adults and government supervision? Why not ban encryption, surely legitimate e-mails have nothing to hide from the government? Why not require every citizen to carry a broadcasting GPS so that authorities can locate them?
You seem to imply that adults will not commit crimes if left to their own devices. Reality proves that to be incorrect.
In summary, the code can and show be written so that most of it documents itself. If the application is well designed and the code is written well, the need for a lot of in-code commenting goes way down. This is assuming we're not talking about assembler, which in my opinion should have a nearly 1:1 ratio of code/comments.
I don't agree at all about assembler being so much different from other languages. When you have a good command of the language, whether it's asm or some higher level one, well-written code is clean and self-commenting. That means carefully picked variable names and labels.
And "Hiding" is an interesting term here. It's not hidden, if it's not encrypted; and if it's encrypted, why bother with such nonsense...
Well, suppose you live in a remote tyranny where you land in jail for only, say, 15 years for using encryption instead of being executed when caught with the message.
In that case a good encryption is a bliss and a way to hide the encryption a huge convenience in any case.:)
So this type of hiding is silly, even if encrypted.
Well, I don't know. You might have a reason to hide the fact that you have encrypted data at all. Although this doesn't probably work quite as well unless a lot of people with "nothing to hide" start to format their disks so that unused areas have random data...
Anyway, with a good encryption scheme it's even theoretically impossible to distinguish encrypted data from random data.
(It's ironic that the GPL is so beneficial to Microsoft, but it is. It kills Microsoft's potential competition in the cradle.)
Wouldn't bite if this troll hadn't a score of four, but...
... then why on earth is it that Microsoft uses a lot of their resources for lobbying against GPL while touting that there are freer, less "unamerican" open source licenses (like BSD)?
Slashdot Mirror
Unfortunately, yes it does (with that too), since VB probably doesn't represent 82.845 quite exactly, which isn't even possible in base 16 unless you use rational numbers.
Actually, they aren't going to suffer unendingly; Sodom and Gomorrha's smoke rose `for ever' too... but that's beside the point. Human nature won't submit to any restraint if it can be avoided.
:-). I'm sure that's only because Finnish is my native language, not English.
Not unendingly? I'm not sure if I understood correctly what you're saying - English is not my native language, so pardon me if I misunderstood, but surely you aren't saying the damned will not be in Hell for eternity?
Perhaps this is some difference in the views of our respective Christian branches? If so, I'd really like to know. I'm Lutheran myself, but basically my view is just that the Bible is the entire divine revelation (so that's where I differ from at least Catholics, AFAICT) and if my church takes some position which is clearly against what the Bible says, it's the church who is wrong.
Now, back to the question, whether the punishment is eternal or not.
From Matthew 25:46 (Jesus talks about the last judgment): "And these shall go away into everlasting punishment: but the righteous into life eternal." [KJV] (emphasis added)
"And to you who are troubled rest with us, when the Lord Jesus shall be revealed from heaven with his mighty angels, In flaming fire taking vengeance on them that know not God, and that obey not the gospel of our Lord Jesus Christ: Who shall be punished with everlasting destruction from the presence of the Lord, and from the glory of his power" (II Thessalonians 1:9, KJV; emphasis added).
Sorry, I really don't know what you mean by your last sentence ("Human nature won't"...), I don't seem able to make any sense of it in this context
When they blind themselves to God, atheists blind themselves to the need to obey Him. So-called Christians who see no particular need for obedience are simply taking one less step out of the process.
I agree here. Still, it's not the deeds on which your salvation depends on; atonement was received solely from Christ's death, and without God's mercy there simply is no way for a human being to be saved. None of us is good enough for God - that is, perfect (see e.g. Matthew 5).
"For as the body without the spirit is dead, so faith without works is dead also." (James 2:26, KJV)
Basically, you are saved solely by your faith, but it does take deeds, or at least trying to abstain from sin, to keep that faith. It's hardly possible to abstain entirely from sin, even for a single day, and that's why you have to confess your sins to God and have them removed from you by the purifying blood of Christ (I'm not referring to communion here). A human is weak and unable to avoid sin by himself; it's a thing to ask help for from God. At least I have found it easier to avoid temptation after growing in faith; however, I know I will never be able to totally abstain from sin (or even recognize all the sin I commit), and actually I belive it would be sin even to think one is or will be able to totally abstain. I know I slip every day.
Your assuming eternal damnation awaits every atheist. I hope you've chosen the right brand of Christianity, because who knows what a vengeful God will do to people that worship other Gods?
Uhm, I'm not quite sure I understand what you mean.
Yes, I believe eternal damnation awaits everyone who hasn't accepted Christ as their personal saviour. I believe it's quite clearly stated in the Bible. See e.g. Mark 16:16.
I also don't believe it really matters much how you worship (or in what kind of church) - what really matters is the personal faith in God and accepting the grace and forgiveness for your sins. As long as the basics are OK - that is, as long as you believe like a christian Bible teaches - you will be saved. Faith alone saves, not religiousness or rituals.
You're assuming that atheists are concerned about an afterlife and/or eternal damnation. This is not a warranted assumption. Most atheists I know are thoroughly convinced that after death, the lights just...go out. No eternal damnation involved.
:-)
:P)
I'm not. I was an atheist (and proud of it - sometimes even quite fanatic, though less often) for the first 18 years of my life (and a believer for around 3), and I know I wasn't concerned. However, it's quite easy to get such an impression when people start mocking religion (as opposed to normal conversation) and take this oh-so-familiar "those who believe are weak" attitude. I'm sure at least some of that is because these people are so weak themselves and not sure about their ideology that they simply need to justify their point of view and make fun of believers. I saw quite a lot of that, I even took atheism classes (or actually they're called something like view of life education, really hard to translate) when probably 95% of my peers took religion (we have those at least here in Finland).
Some of those mocking people are a lot like school bullies, actually. I don't mean expressing your atheist views is necessarily in any way wrong like bullying, just that mocking religion is a good way to show your own weakness. Now, most of those who really believe have grown quite a thick skin when it comes to mocking or outright insultations, and believe it, we do recognize the weakness when we see it and at least I feel often more pitiful than insulted
So I'm really confident I'm not assuming. I still remember my previously atheist views very well, though they are beginning to feel more and more foreign at quite a scary pace.
Besides which, I personally believe that God would rather have an honest follower that examined the facts, than a sycophantic follower that "believes" because s/he's afraid of Hell. Either way, it profits the atheist or agnostic little to consider Hell in his or her calculations.
There's also the other side of the coin - it's either heaven or hell. Christians are more than anxious to get to heaven. It's not like normal life continues if you go to heaven, but more like exact opposite to the torments of hell, a fulfilment in the presence of God.
And I'm not saying _all_ atheists are afraid of afterlife. Probably most of those who have thought about these things thoroughly are not. I wasn't. (Then I converted.
Probably not, but that doesn't do anything to discount psychology's explanation for religious belief.
Only if we consider religion false from the very beginning. My point was more like psychology is not a good "justification" for not believing (I know atheists don't necessarily need to justify it to themselves, but many like to justify their views to other people), but a mere model created after people who do believe. That is, the argument "the credibility of religion is questionable because there's a psychological explanation for it" is logically totally bogus, a vicious circle.
Actually, there are many things about religion which I were very wrong about as an atheist. One relevant to this discussion is the misconception (which I at least had) that it's somehow easy to believe, like turning your brain off or something. I can tell you, it was lot easier in a way to be an atheist than a believer - the views seemed quite justified and logical and there was a mass of scientific evidence to support the view. Not only that, there wasn't actually any need to justify the view, it was more like those who do believe in God should have justified theirs.
Only now I know it's not so "easy" to believe, at least not in the way I thought back then. As a christian, you really have to struggle every day to keep your faith. It's really easy to slip. That's even acknowledged in the Bible: "If anyone would come after me, he must deny himself and take up his cross daily and follow me." (Luke 9:23) [NIV]
What happens to those who lived before the man commonly refered to as Jesus?
They will too be saved (yes, retroactively) through the grace of Christ's death on the cross - if they believed in God and his promises, of course. What they had to believe differed, however, quite a lot from what God requires from us who live after Christ.
What about those who have never heard of the fellow?
There's a promise that everybody hears at least something - even if that may not be very much...
From Romans 1:20: "For the invisible things of him from the creation of the world are clearly seen, being understood by the things that are made, even his eternal power and Godhead; so that they are without excuse" [KJV].
That's even more reason for taking the mission to spread christianity seriously. So that everybody at least may hear.
What about babies?
The Bible is not very clear on this. That probably means the details are not very relevant, since there's not much we can do about it anyway. My guess is that little children will be saved, but I'm really nobody to speculate on that.
However, we have a promise (Psalms 98:9) that God will judge the earth with righteousness and the people with equity. I believe this means that after the judgment absolutely nobody will feel they were treated unfairly.
What about those who do not worship Jesus, but worship the same deity?
[Jesus said,] "I am the way, the truth, and the life: no man cometh unto the Father, but by me" (John 14:6).
This is one of the things which Jesus was quite explicit about. Without Christ, there is no salvation.
Again, I'm not trying to be a jerk, I just have never been given an answer that didn't require me to leave my sensabilities at the door.
I know the feeling. I don't think I got very good answers before converting, either.
And of course, conversely, nonbelievers have a strong interest in explaining religion through psychology. I admit at least I didn't think of that before I converted (to christianity).
;)
They need the assurance that there is no God - or at least that the existence of God is very unlikely. Otherwise the thought that they are going to suffer for eternity after death gets unnerving.
Religion is explainable through modern psychology. Therefore, it's very likely that religion was invented by people themselves for their own, primitive need. Right? Think about it.
I don't think so. Psychology is experimental science - theories are created and they become widely accepted only if they seem to work in practice. So what I'm saying is, if psychology didn't have an explanation for religion, would it be worth anything?
Religion is lot older than psychology. Psychology was created to explain human nature, religion being part of it. So in fact those who don't believe because psychology gives them an adequate explanation on why other people do believe have come to a vicious circle.
BTW, it's just as easy to explain the need to explain religion through psychology. Curious?
I believe there's a crucial difference between making software which runs on some platform and linking with someone else's code.
:-).
For example, making programs which run on Linux (the kernel is under GPL) is not considered making a derivative work. I think this is quite logical since the kernel just sits there, one image, providing services to the program through a narrow, specific and well published API.
When you link some executable with a dynamic library, in this case one distributed under the GPL, you're making a derivative work - at least the resulting image in memory is definitely a derivative work, combined of the codes of the two different products. Making a derivative work is one of the exclusive rights of the copyright owner.
The GPL is obviously written to and considered to prohibit even linking non-free code with GPL code (where LGPL allows this), and even a lot of companies originally in violation have had to submit and either remove the portions licensed under the GPL from their producs or release their products under the GPL. Somehow I assume that the founding principles of the GPL would already have been challenged if they weren't legally quite watertight - instead the lawyer who (I think) wrote GPL has stated he has found it easy to enforce without the need to take the issue into courtroom.
I believe you can find better legal interpretations from some relevant mailing list, after all I'm not at all that well versed in US copyright law (simply because I'm Finnish, though I've had to deal a fair bit with US copyright law anyway
There is a difference between being allowed to use and being someone's property.
And yes, the post you replied to is correct.
So, does this mean that all programs that link to kde/gnome libraries have to be GPL? How about programs that require glibc?
.dll) does fine).
For KDE, yes.
For Gnome and glibc, no, because they are not GPL, but LGPL, which permits linking them into a non-free program on some conditions (mainly they must be separate so that everybody who wants to change the LGPL library and run the binary with the modified library can do so. Using a shared library (.so or
Actually, most of the base KDE libraries are LGPL too so you can develop non-free programs for KDE too, but in that case you'll have to obtain a commercial Qt license from Trolltech.
Did this answer your questions?
Yes on that piece of software, but not on the methods or technology.
Wrong.
Patents cover methods and technology. Copyright covers the software itself.
No. If it's already released under the BSD license, it's released under the BSD license. Once it's licensed, you can't revoke it and back off from your promise that they can use your code in their proprietary products.
On the other hand, the BSD licensed code (under the modern BSD license without the advertising clause) can be incorporated in a GPL program, so nothing prevents you from licensing all your _future_ code under the GPL only. Of course people still retain the right to use the old code under the BSD license.
In any case, I believe the other contributors agreeing or not agreeing is not very important in this case. Except of course that they have no obligation to accept your GPL code to the project otherwise licensed under the BSD license, so in that case you'll have to fork.
How about User Mode Linux?
./linux ubd0=root.fs, and your root.fs will be available on the UML kernel's /dev/ubd0 which can be mounted as the root. It just works.
I gave it a try a couple of days ago as a way to test the root filesystem on a boot floppy. I was surprised by it's simple usage, you just compile the binary and run it like
On Debian, even easier. Just 'apt-get install user-mode-linux' && linux ubd0=root.fs and off you go.
Nobody is arguing anything criminal.
This discussion is about a civil matter.
DMCA is a criminal matter, not a civil one.
From the KVim page:
KVim is released under the smae 'charityware' licence as vim. Please see the vim website for more info.
Why do I smell licensing problems here? That is, unless the developers have a commercial Qt license, they are required to distribute any software linked with Qt under the GNU GPL.
I believe that would be the second time, as Vim was previously linked with libgpm (I don't know if it currently is), which is also distributed under the GNU GPL.
Differences in the filesystem layout. Especially configuration files under /etc, but also others.
If there were no differences, we would have several largely identical distributions. That wouldn't make sense.
I agree wholeheartedly. I'm an OSS developer myself and, frankly, I don't care if some user who barely knows how to turn on his computer can't use software developed by me. I won't try to make it harder than it is, but I'm *not* going to sacrifice flexibility and lightness for eye candy like installer slideshows or such. You know what's good about Debian installer compared to Mandrake, for example? Ever tried to install Mandrake on a computer with 4 or 8 MiB memory? And now, please nobody start with how every computer nowadays has at least 128 MiB, my old 486 laptop doesn't, and I USE IT. Why shouldn't I? It works for me.
Though I must say it seems to a foreigner like me to fit well in the mentality of taking some values like nationalism as granted (well, here in Finland we don't for example pledge allegiance to the flag in school; You still do it over there, don't you? In fact I have yet to see a Finnish school with a flag inside, except on Finnish independence day celebrations and such).
I think my parents had a rather balanced approach regarding my privacy - sometimes I felt they were too intrusive, and in retrospect I'm *really* happy I sometimes rebelled.
In China for example the government DOES control people (or at least that's the impression you get from American pro-democracy "propaganda"). We could well have similar control in the US, and with more advanced technology.
Makes me *really* glad I don't live in NY state. Is this similar elsewhere in the US? I live in Finland, not with my parents anymore for a few years, and am very happy that they gave me some freedom.
I'm a scout leader (though I believe it's quite different here than in the US), and one of the things I've learned is that you learn to take responsibility by - surprise! - taking responsibility. Of course the younger leaders (I'm talking about 15-18 years old or so) take less responsibility, but they still certainly do, and would never be able to take full responsibility for their own groups of little scouts if they didn't first learn to take care of themselves.
By the way, yes, we can have a 15-16 year old leader take a group of five or six 11 year olds camping over a weekend into a forest, sleeping in a tent. Does that horrify you? I believe it might if you're used to 18 year olds having no responsibility after all... Here scouting is quite recognized anyway, though not as popular nowadays as it used to be.
And when you live in the country where *I* am the president, you live by my *MY* rules. Right? Right. Now, let us in and we'll install the camera in your house. Welcome to United Soviet States of America.
So why not extend this to adults and government supervision?
Why not ban encryption, surely legitimate e-mails have nothing to hide from the government?
Why not require every citizen to carry a broadcasting GPS so that authorities can locate them?
You seem to imply that adults will not commit crimes if left to their own devices. Reality proves that to be incorrect.
I don't agree at all about assembler being so much different from other languages. When you have a good command of the language, whether it's asm or some higher level one, well-written code is clean and self-commenting. That means carefully picked variable names and labels.
Well, suppose you live in a remote tyranny where you land in jail for only, say, 15 years for using encryption instead of being executed when caught with the message.
In that case a good encryption is a bliss and a way to hide the encryption a huge convenience in any case. :)
Well, I don't know. You might have a reason to hide the fact that you have encrypted data at all. Although this doesn't probably work quite as well unless a lot of people with "nothing to hide" start to format their disks so that unused areas have random data...
Anyway, with a good encryption scheme it's even theoretically impossible to distinguish encrypted data from random data.
Wouldn't bite if this troll hadn't a score of four, but...
... then why on earth is it that Microsoft uses a lot of their resources for lobbying against GPL while touting that there are freer, less "unamerican" open source licenses (like BSD)?