UAC is not a security feature. Improving it's interface and security simultaneously would be simple by just automatically answering all questions with "no". Doing that "securely" would mean giving the user / administrator a set of instructions for which privileges need to be given to the application at the beginning which is precisely what is too complicated.
Privacy and freedom of information are two sides of the same coin. The idea is that the people need to be defended from oppressive states and that the people need to have power over oppressive states. State information should be freely available. People's information should only be available when it can be clearly proven that it is the states information.
What is wrong here is that the data of innocent people should be theirs to control. The state and the sites republishing should be 100% liable for any even potential reputation damage of leaking the data of such people.
The second thing which is wrong is the vindictiveness of US justice. There needs to be a clear period after which minor crimes are forgiven and there is no effective difference between that person and an innocent person. Unfortunately the US uses bad tools like plea bargains which mean it is impossible to differentiate the evil guilty who got away with a good deal from the people who thought they would be declared innocent and chose to fight.
You can cross link by putting a link to the comment numbered link on the top right in this case #36966086.
Having said that, that post is totally beside the point. The way the deal is publicly presented makes it look like it's a good opportunity for developers. You get a chance to get some cash now and increase your installed base at the risk of some loss of full price sales. You also get good placement. That makes Amazon's app store more attractive for those developers.
The trick is that when you actually do get offered a free placement, then it turns out that the deal which is published is not the deal which is really available. By that time you have already committed to Amazon's app store so it is too late to back out. This looks to me like a bait and switch situation which would be illegal for a consumer product sale.
It's important to note, that if you had Read The Fine Article Properly you would have seen that they went into this as an experiment and are publishing not to complain but to warn others. You would also have seen that Amazon stated that the promotion gives
"highly valuable placements"
but it turned out that the influence on app sales beyond the promotion was very small, possibly even negative.
Further note that, even when asked
If I read this correctly youâ(TM)d like to give away our application for free, and pay us nothing?
Amazon responded
We want to promote your app and in exchange of the placements, at the 0% rev share for one day only.
instead of just clearly stating that there would be no revenue. What does that mean? That Amazon will take 0% of the revenue? That the promotion will cost you 0% of the revenue or that you will get 0% of the revenue. Now, thanks to Shift Jelly's valuable posting, we know exactly.
Computers weren't designed for security. They still aren't. We shouldn't feel bad though, 'god' didn't do much better.
Modern ones maybe not. Many older ones, back when a big buyer was the military, and some smaller ones still designed for such areas, are. What we have now is an upgraded micro-controller architecture with security bolted on the back. The problem isn't that we don't know how to do security much better. The problem is that nobody who's building the systems cares enough.
To give Microsoft their due, I think Windows (that is to say Windows NT on which current Windows is based) was quite specifically designed for security. Remember the NT kernel was designed by guys stolen from Digital who had worked on VMS. What seems to have gone wrong is that Microsoft has different priorities from their customers. Uncontrollable automatic installation of things like Active X was done because they wanted their new system to push others out of the market place. Look at the big recent push to get the DotNet runtime installed.
The other thing that went wrong is more interesting and fundamental. Windows design for security actually seems to have achieved the opposite. For example, Windows uses full access lists where Unix traditionally only had file modes. Full access lists should be more "secure" because it should be possible to have the exactly the access you need. In practice, however, users don't understand the access lists and end up either giving too much access or locking themselves out of something. This leads to a situation where the standard practice in many companies is to not allow the users to set their own access lists and completely defeats the entire benefit. Process security is similar and UAC and a bunch of other recent ideas were basically the same problem.
I think they can; but they don't. There's a big difference between what they could do and what they believe is safe and reasonable to do. On the other hand, if you give them your real name a whole load of consent issues go away.
Its also plenty fine for law enforcement since it's sufficient to get a search warrant. After they watch you and then search you then they have to have "sufficient" proof or a planted hard disk in order to proceed.
Most honest thing I have ever heard from a lawyer.
No; actually it's a trick. His ethics code means he can only dissemble, mislead and omit. Now that he has you believing that he tells total lies he can tell you something truthful and get you believe the opposite.
Well seeing as how I've been in prison myself and did quite a bit of research on it, and spent a lot of time on forums where former and soon-to-be inmates post on topics just like this, I'll take my research over your assertions.
Absolutely fair enough, though you'll excuse me if, in the absence of a link to your research where we can analyse it and then learn from it, I don't take it as given.
Having said that, I think there are several factors here. Firstly we tend to discuss computer crimes here which are often stupidly classified together with things like terrorism and so can easily end up with non violent people being sent to places they shouldn't be. Secondly, lots of the people making the statements you are describing to aren't making them because they believe in them. They are making them because they are nasty people, so I will admit that they are "playing it up" in order to scare other people and make sick jokes. However, the fact that a bunch of sick people do that doesn't mean that serious campaigners aren't. Finally, these crimes are pretty nasty. The people who experience them and are willing to talk about it obviously talk about them lots. I don't think that that is "playing it up".
Or maybe Daniel was framed by th3j35t3r; I think I'll wait for the forensics on the Scottish guy's hard disk before I decide. Thanks. This being the UK there's a fairly good chance we'll get to see at least the results of that instead of getting some stupid plea bargain excuse for justice. In any case, if you dig through a few more articles, the locals thought the guy "might" be German, which actually matches quite well with him being Swedish, which actually contradicts one of the main pieces of evidence in the DailyTech article..
Would you not agree that the iPad is a better choice for those who do not wish to tinker? If not please explain why.
This is to do with a difficult (for those people) to explain concept called "lock in". When you use a device, gradually you get used to and start using it's features. Much of the time, changing to a different device will be easy and no problem, but there are some applications such as office documents; film editing; social networking and so on where the data you use is so specific and complex (e.g. the exact layout and fonts in the office documents) that it's almost impossible to switch to an equivalent application. At the point where you have put a large investment into such an application you are vulnerable to "lock in" and if you need a new feature (e.g. your supplier demands you export office documents in PDF) you will have to pay whatever your supplier demands for that feature.
If you choose a device where you can tinker; even if you personally don't tinker, this means that there are other people who can also supply your needs and reduces the price you have to pay for new features you need from the price the original supplier is willing to charge down to the price that the competitive market is willing to charge. That price may still be high (e.g. you may have to hire a programmer and get a custom software project done) but it will be lower than the price is likely to be otherwise (if you have to persuade Apple to do custom development just for you).
I don't want to leave it with just this simple case; there are other "freedom" related facts; you may well find that someone has already developed the software you want. You may find that, once you experience a bit of freedom you start to want to and benefit from tinkering. However it's important to understand that the availability of freedom improves your life even if you, personally, just choose to do what Apple would have wanted you to do anyway. Even people who buy Apple platforms benefit from this because features available on Android and missing from IOS become targets for Apple to fill in.
I think that the "green" can be understood in comparison to the alternatives. If you don't power these things with radio waves, you have to use something like either batteries or a proper power installation connected to the mains. Either one of those things is likely to use much more resources. However, the fact you can do these installations without batteries will likely lead to many more of them being done. That will only be "green" if each installation saves much more energy than is used in it's production. I find that unlikely.
As a first stage; breaking it into paragraphs and grouping the statements into related logical units within those paragraphs would probably help too. I tried to read it and started getting a headache. Chardansearavitriol; I think you are missing the paragraph marker. Remember slashdot comments are HTML. You need a
Well; let's assume that "they" already have, from traffic analysis by GCHQ and their collaborators over at the NSA, a complete list of the guys "in Anonymous" (==real own IP & MAC address of anyone who has recently used LOIC + real own IP & MAC anyone who has ever/recently chatted on the IRC channel + real own IP & MAC of anyone who has posted on most of their discussion forums + reasonable ID of most people who have turned up for their demonstrations) together with information about exactly what involvement they have. They can't afford to arrest them all since that would give away the extent of their monitoring of the internet. Where would you start? What would be your order of arrests? I guess that the aim is to reduce the embarrassment. The only constraint is that you need a semi-plausible reason to investigate a given individual. Going for the spokesmen and the people who are releasing information seems to me like a logical start.
Of all the people I've talked to in and out of prison
I guess you are American, and that means you know quite a few former prisoners because of this, but as the meme goes, the plural of Anecdote is not "statistic". Prison rape tends to happen to more normal / weaker prisoners in violent prisons. It is more common in state prisons than federal. It's also very area specific. The target group is unlikely to be a main group of friends of the average Slashdot reader. It's completely likely that it's happening and that the people that you know don't know about it.
Nope; cos this is Microsoft, they don't need to come up with anything at all. All they have to do is that a) Windows update will default to adding it to all your web browsers and b) your operating system gives you a chance to opt out of sharing your data. Plus they can automatically build your social network not only from your webmail, but also from your corporate directories and stuff. Facebook is going to be so screwed. An excellent lesson in "partnering" with Microsoft. I think we'll be calling him Suckerberg from now on.
Deliberately writing a comment which tries to confuse the term "soverign nation" with "nation" does not make your comment on topic. As a hint, if there wasn't a difference between the terms "soveriegn nation" and "nation" then people wouldn't tend to write it out in full.
Everything in this Universe is a manifestation of Mathematics/Logic; everything is just information.
If you can provide a clear proof of that, I think the Nobel committee has a few things lying around waiting for you.
Even if it were true; it's pretty clear there is currently a legal and practical difference beween on the one hand matter & possessions and on the other information and virtual things. There is no "freedom of possession" which entitles you to have any object you want to have.
So what? It's always easier for a project if they can re-relicense the code.
We aren't discussing what's easy for Canonical here. We are discussing what should Canonical contributors do. The point, here is dead simple. Don't give your contributions to Canonical; there are many alternative organizations which will take your contribution on many different licenses and offer many different arrangements which are beneficial to you. Examples include the Apache foundation, the Free Software Foundation, The Gnome Foundation etc. etc. Other examples also include commercial organisations like Red Hat who will give you promises about how they will re-license your code. Canonical is not one of these.
Imagine if you pick a popular license (say, the BSD license), then find it's not compatible with the latest GPL (as is the case with the old BSD license). Do you track down every contributor, and ask them to relicense their code, or just be stuck with the limitations your license has?
The MIT license is pretty much compatible with anything. If a license is not compatible with the MIT license then it will be easier to change that license. This means there is a simple out.
I guess the solution is to use the GPL, as it can be "upgraded" without contributor permission. But the GPL is not everyone's cup of tea.
So if you don't want to go GPL, you may be best getting permission to "do whatever I want" with the code.
We can have a troll-war over GPL vs copy-center vs left-of-the-GPL licenses that prevent people from wrapping it in an XML web interface to circumvent the viral nature of the license; but the reality is that different projects have come to different conclusions.
I think you are confused about the issue here. It's not copyleft vs. other. The Apache foundation I listed above, for example, is pretty much explicitly anti-copyleft. This is about who gets the right to relicense your code and what terms they do that under. If you give your code to Canonical then you are giving it to an organisation which has a mixed record of delivering "open core" software instead of FOSS and at the same time the agreement they use seems to have very suspicious flaws. At this stage it is best not to contribute and to tell them that explicitly since it seems that whilst there is competition in play there is a real chance of persuading Canonical to change.
P.S. If you do use the GPL please remember that it's the exact terms you put in your source code which allow the license upgrade. It's really worth while to explicitly allow the license upgrade.
Your question is becoming badly formed. The natural state of things is not that everything is patented and then we get a certain set of things which we are allowed to do because they have already been patented and the patent has lapsed. The natural state of things should be that people are free to do what they want. The first question you should answer is:
why should anything be patentable?
and then
why should mathematics be patentable?
and next
why should this particular bit of mathematics I have in front of me be patentable?
and finally
why does the value of patenting this mathematics outweigh the freedom of millions of other people to use it without patents?
if you can't give a clear and convincing argument, then you are interfering with other people's freedom with no justification. If there was no patent they would be able to do something. With the patent you are stopping them from doing that.
Monopoly
1
exclusive ownership through legal privilege, command of supply, or concerted action
2
exclusive possession or control
3
a commodity controlled by one party
Definition 2 definitely doesn't need market power. Please don't confuse a "monopoly" (english language word) with being found guilty of abusing an "illegal monopoly" (legal term) which requires a much more stringent standard.
But I have yet to see a rational argument for why physical inventions but not virtual inventions should be patentable.
There are lots of clear rational arguments against software patents
Freedom of speech;
Software source code is a form of Speech; it is a method of communication from one programmer to another about mathematical concepts and their usage. Free software, in particular (though probably not most "Open Source" software) is often political speech. As such, under the UN Convention on Human Rights, the European Convention on Human Rights and the Constitution of the USA, it is the most highly protected form of free speech. Software patents attempt to interfere with that and are clearly criminal.
mathematics / algorithms
A program is; simply; a large integer. Running a program is, exactly running a series of mathematical operations on that large integer. Mathematics is explicitly recognised as non patentable in most patent regimes.
A similar argument can be stated in terms of algorithms. Software patents always claim a "method and aparatus". The reason for this that a pure algorithm is recognized as not patentable, only things with
the nature of software development
Software is developed differently from bridges electronics and other areas of physical engineering. In other areas we much more start with a design, apply known techniques and get to a given end. New forms of bridges come out of separate explicit research where prototypes are built and actual work is done separately from the development process. This means that advances come more slowly and explicitly from research to development. In software, every new software development effort includes and should include new ideas explicitly. Once these ideas are developed it is very easy to package them up into libraries and make them available. The same ideas are re-invented repeatedly. At the same time, it is almost unheard of for a software developer to benefit from reading a software patent. Finally, a bridge builder will probably take days or weeks to consider a single idea. A programmer will probably use a hundred patentable ideas in a single day. The only reason that the programmer is able to work at all is that software patents are a new idea so 99.9% of those ideas will already have been used by someone else. In other areas, a patent search taking several days may be done for every new idea.
there is no need for patents because ideas are continually re-invented;
software ideas are cheap; the loss of one single new idea is not a big worry
patents do not provide the benefit they should to the software development process.
software can be developed by home developers who can't afford patent lawyers.
the cost of patents to software development is much higher than to other areas
handling software patents properly would need 1000 lawyers for every programmer
The FSF contracts require that the FSF always release the software under licenses which are substantially similar to the one you released it under. That gives the FSF no possibility to close the source. Canonical's agreements aren't the same at all since Canonical gets the right to release the code under any license they like. That's unfair and rediculous. If Canonical wants to do that then they should be paying you since you are essentially working 100% for them.
Slashdot Mirror
UAC is not a security feature. Improving it's interface and security simultaneously would be simple by just automatically answering all questions with "no". Doing that "securely" would mean giving the user / administrator a set of instructions for which privileges need to be given to the application at the beginning which is precisely what is too complicated.
Privacy and freedom of information are two sides of the same coin. The idea is that the people need to be defended from oppressive states and that the people need to have power over oppressive states. State information should be freely available. People's information should only be available when it can be clearly proven that it is the states information.
What is wrong here is that the data of innocent people should be theirs to control. The state and the sites republishing should be 100% liable for any even potential reputation damage of leaking the data of such people.
The second thing which is wrong is the vindictiveness of US justice. There needs to be a clear period after which minor crimes are forgiven and there is no effective difference between that person and an innocent person. Unfortunately the US uses bad tools like plea bargains which mean it is impossible to differentiate the evil guilty who got away with a good deal from the people who thought they would be declared innocent and chose to fight.
You can cross link by putting a link to the comment numbered link on the top right in this case #36966086.
Having said that, that post is totally beside the point. The way the deal is publicly presented makes it look like it's a good opportunity for developers. You get a chance to get some cash now and increase your installed base at the risk of some loss of full price sales. You also get good placement. That makes Amazon's app store more attractive for those developers.
The trick is that when you actually do get offered a free placement, then it turns out that the deal which is published is not the deal which is really available. By that time you have already committed to Amazon's app store so it is too late to back out. This looks to me like a bait and switch situation which would be illegal for a consumer product sale.
It's important to note, that if you had Read The Fine Article Properly you would have seen that they went into this as an experiment and are publishing not to complain but to warn others. You would also have seen that Amazon stated that the promotion gives
"highly valuable placements"
but it turned out that the influence on app sales beyond the promotion was very small, possibly even negative.
Further note that, even when asked
If I read this correctly youâ(TM)d like to give away our application for free, and pay us nothing?
Amazon responded
instead of just clearly stating that there would be no revenue. What does that mean? That Amazon will take 0% of the revenue? That the promotion will cost you 0% of the revenue or that you will get 0% of the revenue. Now, thanks to Shift Jelly's valuable posting, we know exactly.
Computers weren't designed for security. They still aren't. We shouldn't feel bad though, 'god' didn't do much better.
Modern ones maybe not. Many older ones, back when a big buyer was the military, and some smaller ones still designed for such areas, are. What we have now is an upgraded micro-controller architecture with security bolted on the back. The problem isn't that we don't know how to do security much better. The problem is that nobody who's building the systems cares enough.
To give Microsoft their due, I think Windows (that is to say Windows NT on which current Windows is based) was quite specifically designed for security. Remember the NT kernel was designed by guys stolen from Digital who had worked on VMS. What seems to have gone wrong is that Microsoft has different priorities from their customers. Uncontrollable automatic installation of things like Active X was done because they wanted their new system to push others out of the market place. Look at the big recent push to get the DotNet runtime installed.
The other thing that went wrong is more interesting and fundamental. Windows design for security actually seems to have achieved the opposite. For example, Windows uses full access lists where Unix traditionally only had file modes. Full access lists should be more "secure" because it should be possible to have the exactly the access you need. In practice, however, users don't understand the access lists and end up either giving too much access or locking themselves out of something. This leads to a situation where the standard practice in many companies is to not allow the users to set their own access lists and completely defeats the entire benefit. Process security is similar and UAC and a bunch of other recent ideas were basically the same problem.
I think they can; but they don't. There's a big difference between what they could do and what they believe is safe and reasonable to do. On the other hand, if you give them your real name a whole load of consent issues go away.
Its also plenty fine for law enforcement since it's sufficient to get a search warrant. After they watch you and then search you then they have to have "sufficient" proof or a planted hard disk in order to proceed.
Most honest thing I have ever heard from a lawyer.
No; actually it's a trick. His ethics code means he can only dissemble, mislead and omit. Now that he has you believing that he tells total lies he can tell you something truthful and get you believe the opposite.
:-) (I hope/wish)
Well seeing as how I've been in prison myself and did quite a bit of research on it, and spent a lot of time on forums where former and soon-to-be inmates post on topics just like this, I'll take my research over your assertions.
Absolutely fair enough, though you'll excuse me if, in the absence of a link to your research where we can analyse it and then learn from it, I don't take it as given.
Having said that, I think there are several factors here. Firstly we tend to discuss computer crimes here which are often stupidly classified together with things like terrorism and so can easily end up with non violent people being sent to places they shouldn't be. Secondly, lots of the people making the statements you are describing to aren't making them because they believe in them. They are making them because they are nasty people, so I will admit that they are "playing it up" in order to scare other people and make sick jokes. However, the fact that a bunch of sick people do that doesn't mean that serious campaigners aren't. Finally, these crimes are pretty nasty. The people who experience them and are willing to talk about it obviously talk about them lots. I don't think that that is "playing it up".
Or maybe Daniel was framed by th3j35t3r; I think I'll wait for the forensics on the Scottish guy's hard disk before I decide. Thanks. This being the UK there's a fairly good chance we'll get to see at least the results of that instead of getting some stupid plea bargain excuse for justice. In any case, if you dig through a few more articles, the locals thought the guy "might" be German, which actually matches quite well with him being Swedish, which actually contradicts one of the main pieces of evidence in the DailyTech article..
Would you not agree that the iPad is a better choice for those who do not wish to tinker? If not please explain why.
This is to do with a difficult (for those people) to explain concept called "lock in". When you use a device, gradually you get used to and start using it's features. Much of the time, changing to a different device will be easy and no problem, but there are some applications such as office documents; film editing; social networking and so on where the data you use is so specific and complex (e.g. the exact layout and fonts in the office documents) that it's almost impossible to switch to an equivalent application. At the point where you have put a large investment into such an application you are vulnerable to "lock in" and if you need a new feature (e.g. your supplier demands you export office documents in PDF) you will have to pay whatever your supplier demands for that feature.
If you choose a device where you can tinker; even if you personally don't tinker, this means that there are other people who can also supply your needs and reduces the price you have to pay for new features you need from the price the original supplier is willing to charge down to the price that the competitive market is willing to charge. That price may still be high (e.g. you may have to hire a programmer and get a custom software project done) but it will be lower than the price is likely to be otherwise (if you have to persuade Apple to do custom development just for you).
I don't want to leave it with just this simple case; there are other "freedom" related facts; you may well find that someone has already developed the software you want. You may find that, once you experience a bit of freedom you start to want to and benefit from tinkering. However it's important to understand that the availability of freedom improves your life even if you, personally, just choose to do what Apple would have wanted you to do anyway. Even people who buy Apple platforms benefit from this because features available on Android and missing from IOS become targets for Apple to fill in.
I think that the "green" can be understood in comparison to the alternatives. If you don't power these things with radio waves, you have to use something like either batteries or a proper power installation connected to the mains. Either one of those things is likely to use much more resources. However, the fact you can do these installations without batteries will likely lead to many more of them being done. That will only be "green" if each installation saves much more energy than is used in it's production. I find that unlikely.
at the start of each paragraph.
Well; let's assume that "they" already have, from traffic analysis by GCHQ and their collaborators over at the NSA, a complete list of the guys "in Anonymous" (==real own IP & MAC address of anyone who has recently used LOIC + real own IP & MAC anyone who has ever /recently chatted on the IRC channel + real own IP & MAC of anyone who has posted on most of their discussion forums + reasonable ID of most people who have turned up for their demonstrations) together with information about exactly what involvement they have. They can't afford to arrest them all since that would give away the extent of their monitoring of the internet. Where would you start? What would be your order of arrests? I guess that the aim is to reduce the embarrassment. The only constraint is that you need a semi-plausible reason to investigate a given individual. Going for the spokesmen and the people who are releasing information seems to me like a logical start.
Of all the people I've talked to in and out of prison
I guess you are American, and that means you know quite a few former prisoners because of this, but as the meme goes, the plural of Anecdote is not "statistic". Prison rape tends to happen to more normal / weaker prisoners in violent prisons. It is more common in state prisons than federal. It's also very area specific. The target group is unlikely to be a main group of friends of the average Slashdot reader. It's completely likely that it's happening and that the people that you know don't know about it.
Nope; cos this is Microsoft, they don't need to come up with anything at all. All they have to do is that a) Windows update will default to adding it to all your web browsers and b) your operating system gives you a chance to opt out of sharing your data. Plus they can automatically build your social network not only from your webmail, but also from your corporate directories and stuff. Facebook is going to be so screwed. An excellent lesson in "partnering" with Microsoft. I think we'll be calling him Suckerberg from now on.
Deliberately writing a comment which tries to confuse the term "soverign nation" with "nation" does not make your comment on topic. As a hint, if there wasn't a difference between the terms "soveriegn nation" and "nation" then people wouldn't tend to write it out in full.
Typical historically ignorant bullshit; Under that "accepted usage", the United Kingdom is not a nation since it is part of the European Union.
No it isn't; the racist one is the one which has little comment;
Yeah, they're mostly friendly drunks..
the differences include
Everything in this Universe is a manifestation of Mathematics/Logic; everything is just information.
If you can provide a clear proof of that, I think the Nobel committee has a few things lying around waiting for you.
Even if it were true; it's pretty clear there is currently a legal and practical difference beween on the one hand matter & possessions and on the other information and virtual things. There is no "freedom of possession" which entitles you to have any object you want to have.
So what? It's always easier for a project if they can re-relicense the code.
We aren't discussing what's easy for Canonical here. We are discussing what should Canonical contributors do. The point, here is dead simple. Don't give your contributions to Canonical; there are many alternative organizations which will take your contribution on many different licenses and offer many different arrangements which are beneficial to you. Examples include the Apache foundation, the Free Software Foundation, The Gnome Foundation etc. etc. Other examples also include commercial organisations like Red Hat who will give you promises about how they will re-license your code. Canonical is not one of these.
Imagine if you pick a popular license (say, the BSD license), then find it's not compatible with the latest GPL (as is the case with the old BSD license). Do you track down every contributor, and ask them to relicense their code, or just be stuck with the limitations your license has?
The MIT license is pretty much compatible with anything. If a license is not compatible with the MIT license then it will be easier to change that license. This means there is a simple out.
I guess the solution is to use the GPL, as it can be "upgraded" without contributor permission. But the GPL is not everyone's cup of tea.
So if you don't want to go GPL, you may be best getting permission to "do whatever I want" with the code.
We can have a troll-war over GPL vs copy-center vs left-of-the-GPL licenses that prevent people from wrapping it in an XML web interface to circumvent the viral nature of the license; but the reality is that different projects have come to different conclusions.
I think you are confused about the issue here. It's not copyleft vs. other. The Apache foundation I listed above, for example, is pretty much explicitly anti-copyleft. This is about who gets the right to relicense your code and what terms they do that under. If you give your code to Canonical then you are giving it to an organisation which has a mixed record of delivering "open core" software instead of FOSS and at the same time the agreement they use seems to have very suspicious flaws. At this stage it is best not to contribute and to tell them that explicitly since it seems that whilst there is competition in play there is a real chance of persuading Canonical to change.
P.S. If you do use the GPL please remember that it's the exact terms you put in your source code which allow the license upgrade. It's really worth while to explicitly allow the license upgrade.
why should anything be patentable?
and then
why should mathematics be patentable?
and next
why should this particular bit of mathematics I have in front of me be patentable?
and finally
why does the value of patenting this mathematics outweigh the freedom of millions of other people to use it without patents?
if you can't give a clear and convincing argument, then you are interfering with other people's freedom with no justification. If there was no patent they would be able to do something. With the patent you are stopping them from doing that.
Definition 2 definitely doesn't need market power. Please don't confuse a "monopoly" (english language word) with being found guilty of abusing an "illegal monopoly" (legal term) which requires a much more stringent standard.
But I have yet to see a rational argument for why physical inventions but not virtual inventions should be patentable.
There are lots of clear rational arguments against software patents
Freedom of speech;
Software source code is a form of Speech; it is a method of communication from one programmer to another about mathematical concepts and their usage. Free software, in particular (though probably not most "Open Source" software) is often political speech. As such, under the UN Convention on Human Rights, the European Convention on Human Rights and the Constitution of the USA, it is the most highly protected form of free speech. Software patents attempt to interfere with that and are clearly criminal.
mathematics / algorithms
A program is; simply; a large integer. Running a program is, exactly running a series of mathematical operations on that large integer. Mathematics is explicitly recognised as non patentable in most patent regimes.
A similar argument can be stated in terms of algorithms. Software patents always claim a "method and aparatus". The reason for this that a pure algorithm is recognized as not patentable, only things with
the nature of software development
Software is developed differently from bridges electronics and other areas of physical engineering. In other areas we much more start with a design, apply known techniques and get to a given end. New forms of bridges come out of separate explicit research where prototypes are built and actual work is done separately from the development process. This means that advances come more slowly and explicitly from research to development. In software, every new software development effort includes and should include new ideas explicitly. Once these ideas are developed it is very easy to package them up into libraries and make them available. The same ideas are re-invented repeatedly. At the same time, it is almost unheard of for a software developer to benefit from reading a software patent. Finally, a bridge builder will probably take days or weeks to consider a single idea. A programmer will probably use a hundred patentable ideas in a single day. The only reason that the programmer is able to work at all is that software patents are a new idea so 99.9% of those ideas will already have been used by someone else. In other areas, a patent search taking several days may be done for every new idea.
I'm not nearly the first person to put these forward. If you haven't heard them before, then you might want to have a look at Groklaw, the league for programming freedom. There is a long list of reasons given on the end software patents web site.
The FSF contracts require that the FSF always release the software under licenses which are substantially similar to the one you released it under. That gives the FSF no possibility to close the source. Canonical's agreements aren't the same at all since Canonical gets the right to release the code under any license they like. That's unfair and rediculous. If Canonical wants to do that then they should be paying you since you are essentially working 100% for them.