I'm not putting words into your mouth; precisely the opposite. I'm showing something you would obviously never say because it makes it clear how wrong your argument is. There is no such thing as absolute freedom. Your freedom to play with chemical weapons inhibits your neighbour's freedom to live. A developer's freedom to close up a license inhibits his user's freedom to fix the code in the user's system. A slaver's freedom to keep slaves inhibits the slaves freedom. Everywhere we need to trade freedom of one person for freedom of another and the GPL is an excellent tool for doing that. Overall, because many more people use software than develop it, it increases freedom. Even in the case of developers, it doesn't decrease any freedom except their freedom to reduce other people's freedom. The developers can still write any software they want.
Allowing people who don't know about software to buy software without the source code harms those people. Allowing a market in which most software is sold without source code harms everyone. We are starting to run into lots of problems where old software written by dead people ends up needing mission critical patching.
Furthermore, if you are the original developer of the code there is everything to gain and nothing to lose from going copyleft; if you want to grant broader licenses or more possibilities to some people you can always do that later. If you realise, like the developers of Wine, for example, that allowing people to close your code was a mistake, it's very hard to take back later. For that reason projects should always start with AGPLv3 and then choose other licenses later only if they find a real benefit from doing so.
That's okay - I've discovered several loopholes in the GPL, including one that allows almost any program to use GPL code w/o violating the GPL license:-)
{{citation needed}}; and I mean a citation of someone actually willing to do it and stand up and say that they're doing it. There have always been loads of speculation about ways around things, but all of these have failed when they actually came into real use. Take for example the people who said that busybox's license was invalid.
BTW. The obvious loophole is to provide a program which fully exposes the library as a program with a completely open interface and can be linked in to equivalent proprietary libraries (to demonstrate that it isn't really depending on specifics of the internals of a GPL like piece of code). I would not call this a loophole but actually a contribution but others might see this differently, so if that's your case I won't argue.
The difference is that automatic updates are optional for Ubuntu, so if you've turned them on you have already opted in to Canonical managing your system. This is especially true because in this case there are security reasons to remove the packages.
There is a vast difference between having a platform as your main target and throwing some code over the wall to it. FreeBSD was, at one point, beginning to displace Linux as a desktop platform. It never went very far, but it certainly had that potential. Since developers moved to OS/X FreeBSD is almost entirely following Linux desktop trends. The difference, however, is that since FreeBSD is not the main target, all sorts of things like package manger software developed for the big projects aren't designed for FreeBSD. This is simply because so few developers use FreeBSD as their primary desktop even if they are developing for FreeBSD servers.
Frankly, if you look at the BSD systems; this is a more or less continuous trend. Linux comes from a much less solid design base; ends up with people with lower experience in OS design and so on and yet ends up delivering better and more interesting results. This is because as people get good at FreeBSD they can't sustain a job working directly on it; nobody's willing to pay for development that they know their competitors will then take and hide. Instead they end up forced to work on various proprietary ports which, whilst they may contribute back random support frameworks for their own work, fail to ever give back they most valuable things.
Think; JunOS ; IPSO; various CISCO systems; BSD 386 ; lots of small proprietary routers etc. etc.
Okay; I guess your use of the word "use" was ambiguous and I got the other meaning of it. As I read Eric when he says "to use any open source code in the products I supplied" he would even mean e.g. including an open source "ls" or "ping" utility bundled in the product but even where there was no derivation from it. Please be a little more careful with these terms since there's lots of FUD being spread around about the other case.
I kind of agree with your point in many cases. If the original author meant the code to be built on top of by non GPL software they should have used the LGPL. To be honest I can't really see that the cost of sending an email to get clarification about a specific case is anywhere near as high as the cost I see when bringing in any other proprietary software element. That's what I would do. Otherwise, just do the simple thing. GPL the code which is on top of the GPL utility and use open / clearly independent interfaces to other code such as sending out a flat file over a pipe.
Sorry; I thought we were talking about use cases; not development. Obviously, if you are attempting to circumvent the GPL by distributing proprietary software based on it but pretending it isn't based on it then you are going to have problems. If you have a legitimate reason to do something similar, just give the copyright owner a call and see if you can work it out. Alternatively, just license your software under the GPL and you also won't have a problem.
From what I know, you are only liable up to the cost of the product.
Totally untrue. If you sell 0.1 dollar screws with a certificates that they're safe to hold a ton of equipment and then it turns out they were all bad because you completely failed to use the right metal, you can be liable for the entire cost of any accident caused.
Plus I wouldn't be surprised if you couldn't remove that liability for merchantability reasons.
There may be cases where you can't remove liability when the product is used as designed. However, you can clearly state what the product is designed for. If you say your screws are "suitable for hanging coats on; not safety critical applications" and then someone uses those screws to hold up a circus wheel the person who misused the screws becomes liable; not you.
Software is used in different things, from games through office applications up until nuclear warfare. You may be perfectly reasonable to say "use this for playing or personal finance, but don't run your operating theatre off it". The fact that you have done this may really reduce your liability in a case where, for some other reason, someone thought that it might be suitable for medical uses.
There are two versions of the GPLv3; The GPLv3 its self and the AGPLv3. Only the AGPLv3 requires contributing back for code which isn't distributed and even then it's only if the code is providing a user interface to users who don't have access to the code. If you use the GPLv3 you can still do SAS and keep your changes private. This is actually a reason for businesses to use AGPLv3 when distributing software since it means you will be more likely to get back changes.
In fact, most of the changes between the GPLv2 and v3 are specifically designed to address a bunch of business concerns with the GPLv2. For example, a clause was added which allows businesses which have made an unlicensed distribution to come back into compliance. This is specifically designed to support big companies which have situations such as where the left hand doesn't know what the right hand is doing and one division may end up breaching licenses that another division wants to respect.
Another very good reason for a business to use the GPLv3, especially for widely distributed software, is that becomes much more difficult for someone to make a patent based on slightly extending your work and then come back and use that to sue you so that they can take over the market
Right; It's precisely this which takes away the benefits of open source for the startup. Everybody knows; from the moment that they start using the BSD license or demand copyright assignment that it's a bait and switch. Thus no developers commit to work with the startup because they have almost no guarantee that there will be a support community later. I think it's better for the startups if they do something like split their work into an open / copyleft part that belongs to some foundation and another secret part that they keep for themselves until launch.
the fact that some of the most basic use cases are ambiguously specified.
Speaking as a person who has worked in big companies with big legal departments who understood the GPL: You are just spreading FUD. There are no problems with any standard use cases with the GPL. The opposite in fact. It explicitly protects them where most proprietary licenses do not or even actively restrict them. The GPL is one of the best licenses in existence from this point of view.
This is why saying that the laws against slavery are about freedom is in the same category as the classic "f***ing for virginity". Anti-slavery zealots are arguing by redefinition, and using the concept of "freedom" to mean something entirely different and wrapping themselves in its mantle.
If you want true freedom - which must always include the freedom to do things that piss others off without actually seriously harming them - then you should choose a society where slavers can do anything they want short of permanent physical damage.
There FTFY. And yes, I can see that slavery is worse than selling people code they can't fix, but immediately we start to admit that we stop discussing absolute freedom and start to have to make proper sensible moral decisions, at which point the GPL becomes an excellent trade of for the real world.
Stallman's position is clear. Proprietary software is a plague and all possible legal devices should be used against it. Free software is a benefit and it should be defended. He has, for a long time, advocated legal ju-jitsu where his enemies copyright laws should be used against them to achieve their opposite effect. You may not like this; you may find it overly simplistic, but if that is so just admit it.
Calling this hypocritical just shows you have a personal problem with Stallman. Did he reject your love or something? Not really my taste, but I guess that we should respect people who can overcome the superficial.
Any good open source project has corporate backing.
Yes; for example:
Mediawiki
Python
oooooops..
But leaving that aside, if your project is good you will get commercial backing eventually and projects which have solid commercial cooperation definitely end up better than they would otherwise. The question is does that commercial backing undermine you (e.g. like OS/X undermined FreeBSD) or does it build you up (e.g. like Red Hat has done to Linux).
I think the key determiner of that is having a solid copyleft license so that when you get involved with the corporates you don't get ripped off. We can already see Android fragmenting between Google's main version; the Kindle version; various chinese versions etc.
When you really really can't stand someone and know they are destroying your department there are two strategies.
Try to get rid of them.
Try to get them promoted elsewhere far away.
The first strategy may work in a small company. In a big company there are going to be a whole load of HR policies and so on which are likely to make it difficult and get you into trouble. This leaves the second strategy. Give them a good set of references; get someone to help them rewrite their CV. Get them some training in the direction they want to go. Get rid of them and let someone else have the problem. There is no possible comeback. If someone later asks if there weren't signs of incompetence you can just say "he seemed so good when he was here" or "the peter problem yet again".
Why do you say that? Quite likely they do have copyright on the clip; You would not be able to use to make a re-mixed music video with nothing else than that clip, for example. However, fair use overrides their copyright and means that they do not have the right to control this news video as long as it's distributed as a whole or in a way where the UGM owned clip is not a substantial part.
N.B. This is subtle and nasty and means that if, for example, you got permission from the news company and then cut down the news video so that it just showed the part with the UGM clip and a little bit more then then you might be in breach of copyright even though the original news video was not. Worse still, there's no real way to be 100% sure what you think is fair use is what the judge or jury in your trial will think is fair use.
BTW. Should I capitalize Astroturf or not? It's based on a real name and so I keep doing that but when I remember I then change it since it's now such a common verb..
I don't know where you live, but Public Relations/spin/astroturfing or whatever you want to call it is a fact of life inmost of the world,
Those are three different things. The fact that you can't see differences is exactly where the problem is. There are several hard barriers here between different types of company promotion; a typical public relations person will identify themselves as coming from their company; they will tell the truth but will talk up good aspects. An astroturfer will (by definition) pretend to be independent of the company that is paying for their work and will lie. Public relations is regulated by law and a mistaken promise may be treated as a contract. Astroturfers hide from responsibility behind assumed identities (e.g. multiple online accounts which claim to have no company affiliation) and avoid the legal regulation they would normally be subject to.
and it is absurd to believe that only Microsoft (or whoever your pet hate this week is) engage in it.
The claim that Google does not do PR is a rediculous strawman; a statement which I never made. I believe that Google does PR. I believe that Microsoft does Astroturfing. Please stop putting words into people's mouths that you wish they had said.
I have no great love for Microsoft, any more than for any other large corporation, but I am not so blinded by hatred that I think their marketing difffers much from Google, Chanel or Toyota.
According to judge Jackson's findings of fact, which were confirmed on appeal, Microsoft's marketing strategy involved committing Felonies repeatedly over long periods of time. I won't claim that the others have never been deceptive, or even broken the law, but this is a completely and qualitatively different from what is normal.
One of the biggest problems in the former Soviet Union in general and Russia in particular is that people have a really hard time recognising the difference between a legitimate business and a criminal one. If you look into other former communist countries you will see that whilst this difference was definitely smaller than elsewhere immediately after the fall of communism (everybody had to pay bribes just to live, for example) the difference became greater and greater over time precisely because the people knew the difference and wanted to work with legitimate business.
If we stop distinguishing legitimate businesses like Google, Samsung and maybe even Oracle (worthy of hate, but probably not much prosecution) from illegitimate businesses like Microsoft, Haliburton and Gazprom that is not just wrong it is also extremely dangerous. Look at Facebook, for example, which seems to be at a choice point. They either develop the facilities to follow the law (as Google has done with it's internal IT systems) or they develop the capabilities to avoid the law (as Microsoft has done with it's legal department, communication policies and data destruction systems). No company can afford to fully develop both since that increases costs. It's very important that people keep pressure on Facebook so that they realise that they are unlikely to get away with Microsoft's strategy.
Thanks for your comment most of which is interesting and lucid, however I don't think you are even able to recognise a favourable comment when you see one. I was quite specifically trying to rule out the extension of these power plants because I simply don't yet know enough of the details to judge.
Let's have a look at one point.
b) nuclear reactor cores are highly radioactive to the level that can even destroy electronic equipment, certainly causes contamination and makes human inspection impossible. This makes it extremely difficult to be sure that equipment degradation has not become serious (compare with aeroplane inspection which uses detailed visual inspection at close range combined with large devices wheeled right up to the plane)
Complete B.S. Radiation hardened underwater camera systems have been available for 30 years. And there are fiber optic methods available for remote inspection as well.
I was in no way trying to suggest there's no inspection possible. I said "can even"; in other words it's not inevitable that electronics will be destroyed. Basically something you more than admit by saying that special systems are needed. That means that, instead of having the most advanced off the shelf tools, inspection can only be done with a more limited set of tools. When you inspect a plane, you walk around it; you look for anything suspicious. If you find something, you take it apart and view it with a special tool (e.g. an ultrasound scanner). When you do the same to parts of a reactor you end up limited to remote viewing and those tools that have been prepared and radiation hardened for you. This simply does make inspecting the inside of a nuclear plant harder than most other situations. Certainly harder than either aeronautic inspection or inspection of a conventional plant.
This makes no sense at all. So you are saying the people who you recruit who show the proper dedication and professionalism cannot be trusted to be nuclear plant operators BECAUSE of that professionalism? What B.S. Wow.
No; dedication and professionalism are fine. However, paranoia and an inability to communicate and discuss risk are not. The perfect example is point d). I'm clearly making a point in favour of new reactors. I'm precisely saying that reactors are improving and that that's a good thing. Instead you seem to take it as an attack on the nuclear industry. I am sorry, but I wouldn't want you to be the person judging if a new reactor is safe or not.
p>Economic darwinism favors companies that can gain an advantage and not get punished for it.
If you take a very wide definition of "punished" then this is almost a tautology so hard to disagree with. However, "not get punished" is the key caveat here. There are many ways a company can get "punished" for dishonesty. Let's put aside the normal legal ones; there is very much evidence that normal simple people like us have a strong tendency to punishment of the dishonest; customers will tend to find something out and then avoid the company. Secondly, companies are extremely vulnerable to theft and even sabotage from their employees. BTW If you are working for a dishonest company then I strongly suggest having a look at this excellent WWII sabotage manual. Companies which are dishonest tend to get dishonest staff and disloyal staff. In the long term this will put them out of business.
Honest companies don't survive long, and the so called regulators have more to gain by colluding with the private sector than they do with doing their job.
I really think that the "honest company" business strategy really works and does keep companies going long term. The problem is not with commercial survival as much as with the tendency for the management to be forced out by shareholders looking for short term gain. Typically they get a short profit boost followed (before people realise the company went bad) followed by a long term failure.
If you want stronger regulation you have to beef up government enough to stand up against the companies you want them to regulate.
This is part of it. Though the most important thing is having democratic control of the government overriding company interests. I think that in places like Switzerland. Norway and evem Iceland where that happens things tend to work better than in places like China and the US where it doesn't.
Most all power plants are life-extended past their first thirty years. Why should nuclear be different?
There are several things here.
a) nuclear plants suffer from neutron damage. Almost any material can be degraded by long term neutron bombardment through neutron capture; this means that over the long term parts of nuclear reactors have failure modes that may not be present in any other power plant
b) nuclear reactor cores are highly radioactive to the level that can even destroy electronic equipment, certainly causes contamination and makes human inspection impossible. This makes it extremely difficult to be sure that equipment degradation has not become serious (compare with aeroplane inspection which uses detailed visual inspection at close range combined with large devices wheeled right up to the plane)
c) the parts which are likely to fail (those close to the reactor core) are precisely the ones which really matter and can have worse consequences than the typical failures in a conventional power plant
d) reactor physicists (the same ones that guaranteed us that Fukashima was safe) tell us that the new generations of reactors are much safer than the old ones; hydro power, for example, hasn't really had a massive safety change in the last fifty (or even hundred) years
e) nuclear reactors are incredibly complex, difficult and precise mechanisms. They have a huge setup and teardown cost which means that the capital investment is huge, even compared to other large power plants. The more often this is done the more likely that it will go wrong.
f) nuclear reactors leave large amounts of radioactive waste during decommissioning; one part of this is the fuel, but probably more important is all of the other parts which become radioactive during the lifetime of the reactor (remember neutron capture). The fewer plants that are decommissioned the lower the volume of this waste.
Obviously a), b) and c) push in the opposite direction from d), e) and f). What this means is that basically we should have a smaller number of safer nuclear reactors run for longer by people who we can trust to ensure that a) and b) don't become a problem. Unfortunately people who support nuclear power tend to be in denial about the potential risks and so aren't the right people. I guess it's like politicians. Anybody who wants to be a politician should probably be ruled out from the job / anybody who wants to run a reactor should probably be banned from doing so:-)
Please can some international power stop them before it goes wrong!
But; they have a really big army and might not agree to be ordered around by the Yanks. I know; Let's attack them with Nuclear weapons. It's the only reasonable response to countries which create a radiation risk by building reactors without permission. Of course they might retaliate a little bit, but safety must always be number one priority, so sacrifices have to be made.
Most of them. Oh I'm sure that with big corporations the proportion of honesty falls. I doubt more than 50% use such things as a matter of policy. Small and family owned businesses live on their reputation and know that if they get caught doing that kind of thing it will be in tatters. I think the "everybody's doing it" meme is partly self justification but is mostly a lie spread by the few that do it as a kind of self justification. This is why strong regulators (effectively enforcing existing regulations; making sure that they are relevant; not just adding new ones) are better for almost everybody.
Slashdot Mirror
I'm not putting words into your mouth; precisely the opposite. I'm showing something you would obviously never say because it makes it clear how wrong your argument is. There is no such thing as absolute freedom. Your freedom to play with chemical weapons inhibits your neighbour's freedom to live. A developer's freedom to close up a license inhibits his user's freedom to fix the code in the user's system. A slaver's freedom to keep slaves inhibits the slaves freedom. Everywhere we need to trade freedom of one person for freedom of another and the GPL is an excellent tool for doing that. Overall, because many more people use software than develop it, it increases freedom. Even in the case of developers, it doesn't decrease any freedom except their freedom to reduce other people's freedom. The developers can still write any software they want.
Allowing people who don't know about software to buy software without the source code harms those people. Allowing a market in which most software is sold without source code harms everyone. We are starting to run into lots of problems where old software written by dead people ends up needing mission critical patching.
Furthermore, if you are the original developer of the code there is everything to gain and nothing to lose from going copyleft; if you want to grant broader licenses or more possibilities to some people you can always do that later. If you realise, like the developers of Wine, for example, that allowing people to close your code was a mistake, it's very hard to take back later. For that reason projects should always start with AGPLv3 and then choose other licenses later only if they find a real benefit from doing so.
That's okay - I've discovered several loopholes in the GPL, including one that allows almost any program to use GPL code w/o violating the GPL license :-)
{{citation needed}}; and I mean a citation of someone actually willing to do it and stand up and say that they're doing it. There have always been loads of speculation about ways around things, but all of these have failed when they actually came into real use. Take for example the people who said that busybox's license was invalid.
BTW. The obvious loophole is to provide a program which fully exposes the library as a program with a completely open interface and can be linked in to equivalent proprietary libraries (to demonstrate that it isn't really depending on specifics of the internals of a GPL like piece of code). I would not call this a loophole but actually a contribution but others might see this differently, so if that's your case I won't argue.
The difference is that automatic updates are optional for Ubuntu, so if you've turned them on you have already opted in to Canonical managing your system. This is especially true because in this case there are security reasons to remove the packages.
There is a vast difference between having a platform as your main target and throwing some code over the wall to it. FreeBSD was, at one point, beginning to displace Linux as a desktop platform. It never went very far, but it certainly had that potential. Since developers moved to OS/X FreeBSD is almost entirely following Linux desktop trends. The difference, however, is that since FreeBSD is not the main target, all sorts of things like package manger software developed for the big projects aren't designed for FreeBSD. This is simply because so few developers use FreeBSD as their primary desktop even if they are developing for FreeBSD servers.
Frankly, if you look at the BSD systems; this is a more or less continuous trend. Linux comes from a much less solid design base; ends up with people with lower experience in OS design and so on and yet ends up delivering better and more interesting results. This is because as people get good at FreeBSD they can't sustain a job working directly on it; nobody's willing to pay for development that they know their competitors will then take and hide. Instead they end up forced to work on various proprietary ports which, whilst they may contribute back random support frameworks for their own work, fail to ever give back they most valuable things.
Think; JunOS ; IPSO; various CISCO systems; BSD 386 ; lots of small proprietary routers etc. etc.
Okay; I guess your use of the word "use" was ambiguous and I got the other meaning of it. As I read Eric when he says "to use any open source code in the products I supplied" he would even mean e.g. including an open source "ls" or "ping" utility bundled in the product but even where there was no derivation from it. Please be a little more careful with these terms since there's lots of FUD being spread around about the other case.
I kind of agree with your point in many cases. If the original author meant the code to be built on top of by non GPL software they should have used the LGPL. To be honest I can't really see that the cost of sending an email to get clarification about a specific case is anywhere near as high as the cost I see when bringing in any other proprietary software element. That's what I would do. Otherwise, just do the simple thing. GPL the code which is on top of the GPL utility and use open / clearly independent interfaces to other code such as sending out a flat file over a pipe.
Sorry; I thought we were talking about use cases; not development. Obviously, if you are attempting to circumvent the GPL by distributing proprietary software based on it but pretending it isn't based on it then you are going to have problems. If you have a legitimate reason to do something similar, just give the copyright owner a call and see if you can work it out. Alternatively, just license your software under the GPL and you also won't have a problem.
E-mail always works (the Windows mail servers were frequently unavailable).
Do you find many formatting problems working with companies outside the city?
Do you have a citation for that. Not questioning it as such, but I would like to see one.
From what I know, you are only liable up to the cost of the product.
Totally untrue. If you sell 0.1 dollar screws with a certificates that they're safe to hold a ton of equipment and then it turns out they were all bad because you completely failed to use the right metal, you can be liable for the entire cost of any accident caused.
Plus I wouldn't be surprised if you couldn't remove that liability for merchantability reasons.
There may be cases where you can't remove liability when the product is used as designed. However, you can clearly state what the product is designed for. If you say your screws are "suitable for hanging coats on; not safety critical applications" and then someone uses those screws to hold up a circus wheel the person who misused the screws becomes liable; not you.
Software is used in different things, from games through office applications up until nuclear warfare. You may be perfectly reasonable to say "use this for playing or personal finance, but don't run your operating theatre off it". The fact that you have done this may really reduce your liability in a case where, for some other reason, someone thought that it might be suitable for medical uses.
Yet more FUD
There are two versions of the GPLv3; The GPLv3 its self and the AGPLv3. Only the AGPLv3 requires contributing back for code which isn't distributed and even then it's only if the code is providing a user interface to users who don't have access to the code. If you use the GPLv3 you can still do SAS and keep your changes private. This is actually a reason for businesses to use AGPLv3 when distributing software since it means you will be more likely to get back changes.
In fact, most of the changes between the GPLv2 and v3 are specifically designed to address a bunch of business concerns with the GPLv2. For example, a clause was added which allows businesses which have made an unlicensed distribution to come back into compliance. This is specifically designed to support big companies which have situations such as where the left hand doesn't know what the right hand is doing and one division may end up breaching licenses that another division wants to respect.
Another very good reason for a business to use the GPLv3, especially for widely distributed software, is that becomes much more difficult for someone to make a patent based on slightly extending your work and then come back and use that to sue you so that they can take over the market
Right; It's precisely this which takes away the benefits of open source for the startup. Everybody knows; from the moment that they start using the BSD license or demand copyright assignment that it's a bait and switch. Thus no developers commit to work with the startup because they have almost no guarantee that there will be a support community later. I think it's better for the startups if they do something like split their work into an open / copyleft part that belongs to some foundation and another secret part that they keep for themselves until launch.
the fact that some of the most basic use cases are ambiguously specified.
Speaking as a person who has worked in big companies with big legal departments who understood the GPL: You are just spreading FUD. There are no problems with any standard use cases with the GPL. The opposite in fact. It explicitly protects them where most proprietary licenses do not or even actively restrict them. The GPL is one of the best licenses in existence from this point of view.
This is why saying that the laws against slavery are about freedom is in the same category as the classic "f***ing for virginity". Anti-slavery zealots are arguing by redefinition, and using the concept of "freedom" to mean something entirely different and wrapping themselves in its mantle.
If you want true freedom - which must always include the freedom to do things that piss others off without actually seriously harming them - then you should choose a society where slavers can do anything they want short of permanent physical damage.
There FTFY. And yes, I can see that slavery is worse than selling people code they can't fix, but immediately we start to admit that we stop discussing absolute freedom and start to have to make proper sensible moral decisions, at which point the GPL becomes an excellent trade of for the real world.
Stallman's position is clear. Proprietary software is a plague and all possible legal devices should be used against it. Free software is a benefit and it should be defended. He has, for a long time, advocated legal ju-jitsu where his enemies copyright laws should be used against them to achieve their opposite effect. You may not like this; you may find it overly simplistic, but if that is so just admit it.
Calling this hypocritical just shows you have a personal problem with Stallman. Did he reject your love or something? Not really my taste, but I guess that we should respect people who can overcome the superficial.
Any good open source project has corporate backing.
Yes; for example:
But leaving that aside, if your project is good you will get commercial backing eventually and projects which have solid commercial cooperation definitely end up better than they would otherwise. The question is does that commercial backing undermine you (e.g. like OS/X undermined FreeBSD) or does it build you up (e.g. like Red Hat has done to Linux).
I think the key determiner of that is having a solid copyleft license so that when you get involved with the corporates you don't get ripped off. We can already see Android fragmenting between Google's main version; the Kindle version; various chinese versions etc.
The first strategy may work in a small company. In a big company there are going to be a whole load of HR policies and so on which are likely to make it difficult and get you into trouble. This leaves the second strategy. Give them a good set of references; get someone to help them rewrite their CV. Get them some training in the direction they want to go. Get rid of them and let someone else have the problem. There is no possible comeback. If someone later asks if there weren't signs of incompetence you can just say "he seemed so good when he was here" or "the peter problem yet again".
They did not have the copyright to it.
Why do you say that? Quite likely they do have copyright on the clip; You would not be able to use to make a re-mixed music video with nothing else than that clip, for example. However, fair use overrides their copyright and means that they do not have the right to control this news video as long as it's distributed as a whole or in a way where the UGM owned clip is not a substantial part.
N.B. This is subtle and nasty and means that if, for example, you got permission from the news company and then cut down the news video so that it just showed the part with the UGM clip and a little bit more then then you might be in breach of copyright even though the original news video was not. Worse still, there's no real way to be 100% sure what you think is fair use is what the judge or jury in your trial will think is fair use.
I was quite specifically not trying to rule out the extension of these power plants because I simply don't yet know enough of the details to judge.
ARRRRGGGHH... ..
BTW. Should I capitalize Astroturf or not? It's based on a real name and so I keep doing that but when I remember I then change it since it's now such a common verb..
I don't know where you live, but Public Relations/spin/astroturfing or whatever you want to call it is a fact of life inmost of the world,
Those are three different things. The fact that you can't see differences is exactly where the problem is. There are several hard barriers here between different types of company promotion; a typical public relations person will identify themselves as coming from their company; they will tell the truth but will talk up good aspects. An astroturfer will (by definition) pretend to be independent of the company that is paying for their work and will lie. Public relations is regulated by law and a mistaken promise may be treated as a contract. Astroturfers hide from responsibility behind assumed identities (e.g. multiple online accounts which claim to have no company affiliation) and avoid the legal regulation they would normally be subject to.
and it is absurd to believe that only Microsoft (or whoever your pet hate this week is) engage in it.
The claim that Google does not do PR is a rediculous strawman; a statement which I never made. I believe that Google does PR. I believe that Microsoft does Astroturfing. Please stop putting words into people's mouths that you wish they had said.
I have no great love for Microsoft, any more than for any other large corporation, but I am not so blinded by hatred that I think their marketing difffers much from Google, Chanel or Toyota.
According to judge Jackson's findings of fact, which were confirmed on appeal, Microsoft's marketing strategy involved committing Felonies repeatedly over long periods of time. I won't claim that the others have never been deceptive, or even broken the law, but this is a completely and qualitatively different from what is normal.
One of the biggest problems in the former Soviet Union in general and Russia in particular is that people have a really hard time recognising the difference between a legitimate business and a criminal one. If you look into other former communist countries you will see that whilst this difference was definitely smaller than elsewhere immediately after the fall of communism (everybody had to pay bribes just to live, for example) the difference became greater and greater over time precisely because the people knew the difference and wanted to work with legitimate business.
If we stop distinguishing legitimate businesses like Google, Samsung and maybe even Oracle (worthy of hate, but probably not much prosecution) from illegitimate businesses like Microsoft, Haliburton and Gazprom that is not just wrong it is also extremely dangerous. Look at Facebook, for example, which seems to be at a choice point. They either develop the facilities to follow the law (as Google has done with it's internal IT systems) or they develop the capabilities to avoid the law (as Microsoft has done with it's legal department, communication policies and data destruction systems). No company can afford to fully develop both since that increases costs. It's very important that people keep pressure on Facebook so that they realise that they are unlikely to get away with Microsoft's strategy.
Thanks for your comment most of which is interesting and lucid, however I don't think you are even able to recognise a favourable comment when you see one. I was quite specifically trying to rule out the extension of these power plants because I simply don't yet know enough of the details to judge.
Let's have a look at one point.
Complete B.S. Radiation hardened underwater camera systems have been available for 30 years. And there are fiber optic methods available for remote inspection as well.
I was in no way trying to suggest there's no inspection possible. I said "can even"; in other words it's not inevitable that electronics will be destroyed. Basically something you more than admit by saying that special systems are needed. That means that, instead of having the most advanced off the shelf tools, inspection can only be done with a more limited set of tools. When you inspect a plane, you walk around it; you look for anything suspicious. If you find something, you take it apart and view it with a special tool (e.g. an ultrasound scanner). When you do the same to parts of a reactor you end up limited to remote viewing and those tools that have been prepared and radiation hardened for you. This simply does make inspecting the inside of a nuclear plant harder than most other situations. Certainly harder than either aeronautic inspection or inspection of a conventional plant.
This makes no sense at all. So you are saying the people who you recruit who show the proper dedication and professionalism cannot be trusted to be nuclear plant operators BECAUSE of that professionalism? What B.S. Wow.
No; dedication and professionalism are fine. However, paranoia and an inability to communicate and discuss risk are not. The perfect example is point d). I'm clearly making a point in favour of new reactors. I'm precisely saying that reactors are improving and that that's a good thing. Instead you seem to take it as an attack on the nuclear industry. I am sorry, but I wouldn't want you to be the person judging if a new reactor is safe or not.
p>Economic darwinism favors companies that can gain an advantage and not get punished for it.
If you take a very wide definition of "punished" then this is almost a tautology so hard to disagree with. However, "not get punished" is the key caveat here. There are many ways a company can get "punished" for dishonesty. Let's put aside the normal legal ones; there is very much evidence that normal simple people like us have a strong tendency to punishment of the dishonest; customers will tend to find something out and then avoid the company. Secondly, companies are extremely vulnerable to theft and even sabotage from their employees. BTW If you are working for a dishonest company then I strongly suggest having a look at this excellent WWII sabotage manual. Companies which are dishonest tend to get dishonest staff and disloyal staff. In the long term this will put them out of business.
Honest companies don't survive long, and the so called regulators have more to gain by colluding with the private sector than they do with doing their job.
I really think that the "honest company" business strategy really works and does keep companies going long term. The problem is not with commercial survival as much as with the tendency for the management to be forced out by shareholders looking for short term gain. Typically they get a short profit boost followed (before people realise the company went bad) followed by a long term failure.
If you want stronger regulation you have to beef up government enough to stand up against the companies you want them to regulate.
This is part of it. Though the most important thing is having democratic control of the government overriding company interests. I think that in places like Switzerland. Norway and evem Iceland where that happens things tend to work better than in places like China and the US where it doesn't.
Most all power plants are life-extended past their first thirty years. Why should nuclear be different?
There are several things here.
Obviously a), b) and c) push in the opposite direction from d), e) and f). What this means is that basically we should have a smaller number of safer nuclear reactors run for longer by people who we can trust to ensure that a) and b) don't become a problem. Unfortunately people who support nuclear power tend to be in denial about the potential risks and so aren't the right people. I guess it's like politicians. Anybody who wants to be a politician should probably be ruled out from the job / anybody who wants to run a reactor should probably be banned from doing so :-)
Please can some international power stop them before it goes wrong!
But; they have a really big army and might not agree to be ordered around by the Yanks. I know; Let's attack them with Nuclear weapons. It's the only reasonable response to countries which create a radiation risk by building reactors without permission. Of course they might retaliate a little bit, but safety must always be number one priority, so sacrifices have to be made.
Most of them. Oh I'm sure that with big corporations the proportion of honesty falls. I doubt more than 50% use such things as a matter of policy. Small and family owned businesses live on their reputation and know that if they get caught doing that kind of thing it will be in tatters. I think the "everybody's doing it" meme is partly self justification but is mostly a lie spread by the few that do it as a kind of self justification. This is why strong regulators (effectively enforcing existing regulations; making sure that they are relevant; not just adding new ones) are better for almost everybody.