GNU is the single biggest "contributor", as it were,
At what point are you forced to grant credit? Shall we call it KDE/QT/GNU/Linux?
it could be argued that without GNU, Linux would just be a kernel, with no user space to run.
No it couldn't. The comparable BSD tools have been around longer than the Linux kernel.
Of course, it could equally be argued that without Linux, the GNU user space tools would just be a nice collection of tools with no OS to run on...
Before Linux, it was pretty common to install several of the GNU tools on the closed-source Unix systems of the day. Problems with the GNU tools on Minix was in fact the motivation for creating Linux. Today, everyone that has to use a Solaris system for any length of time installs the GNU tools and tries very hard to forget that the Solaris crap even exists. Bash, if nothing else, is a common install on any Unix system (even though OpenBSD's branch of pdksh, and ksh93 are actually better shells, IMO).
A compiler that has been production-quality for over 15 years, compiles everything on every architecture, and has been continuously improved every minute of its existence needs to be replaced by... Son of pcc? Because of a license?
You couldn't have gotten that statement any MORE WRONG if you had tried.
GCC's "production quality" is an on-again, off-again thing. Through most of v3.x it had too many bugs to count, and was inherently unreliable. It couldn't even compile ITSELF with the most basic optimizations or the resulting binary would generate incorrect code. Up until v4 it also misaligned stack variable. It had, and still has, MANY bugs. That GCC successfully compiles code at all is almost entirely due to it being so popular that everyone knows it, and works around its bugs without even thinking about it.
It has never had GOOD support for any other platforms than x86. Remember the RedHat GCC2.96 fiasco? They forked it because they needed it to support more platforms than it currently did. And even through v3.x the non-x86 ports of GCC had even more bugs than on x86, commonly falling apart if you attempt to use any optimizations. Now, they're DROPPING support for those platform entirely, which is a big problem for developers of operating systems for those platforms.
"Improved" is pretty vague. HURD has probably been "improved" for every minute of it's existence as well... Meanwhile the far younger ICC (Intel's compiler) beats the pants off of GCC without even trying.
What's more, GCC's "improvements" come at great cost. If you're a full-time developer, for the final release you want optimized code, but while developing, you want to compile and be able to test code frequently, and so as quickly as humanly possible. GCCv3+, even with all optimizations disabled, takes far, far longer to compile binaries than even older versions of GCC, and as it says, something like 10X slower than PCC.
The license issue is only incidental. These (and other) problems pushed them away from using GCC. Since they happen to be BSD developers, they'd prefer their work to be BSD licensed, and so it is.
Isn't the headline and summary putting this entirely backwards? Now that DHCPv6 is available IN ADDITION to auto configuration, that's one MORE reason to adopt IPv6, or rather, on less reason to stick with IPv4. It's not like auto configuration suddenly can't or doesn't work now that DHCP is available as an alternative option.
I already explained how to "fix" the license to prevent locking it up under the GPL. What you're suggesting is destroying the very basis of the *BSDs, and making it just another Linux distro, with all the problems and issues that entails.
Those who believe that using the GPL to force their political will on others is a good thing are incredibly naive about how the world works. All you're really doing is giving yourself a sense of satisfaction, since those who would have shared anyway will continue to do so, and those that wouldn't/can't just go their own way and ignore you.
Name any GPL'd software than has become a standard protocol... Name any GPL'd audio or video codec... Any wildly popular daemon. All categories are filled with BSD and other license that grant you similar freedom, unlike the GPL. The GPL only serves to continue insulating the GPL community even more from the rest of the world.
Meanwhile, most everyone would still be using telnet today, if not for the BSD licensed OpenSSH. You wouldn't have much of a GUI if not for the MIT licensed X11. Vorbis audio wouldn't be found on ANY hardware players. Hell, if not for the GPL, maybe GPG would have caught on and we'd all be using encrypted e-mail on a regular basis. Maybe we'd have an encrypted network file system with secure authentication instead of still keeping the ancient and decrepit NFS alive. Strange how GPL software just don't catch-on with the world, yet BSD does.
Seems to me that the one way code sharing will happen regardless of the 4 clause or the 3 clause.
No other entity or organization has been so prolific about taking BSD licensed code, and giving nothing back, than GPLers; the Linux kernel, GNU/FSF, etc. For whatever reason, they feel they don't need to contribute anything at all back upstream (not changes, not other code under the BSD license, not cash, damn near nothing).
Take a look at the real world to see any number of institutions that have a prisoner's dilemma, technically allowing one party to abuse it, but depending on the honor system to work, and generally working just fine. Quite similar to the BSD license.
YMMV, but where I live in Southern California we get a lot of sun, and my roof faces south, so photovoltaics ended up being a good deal for me.
Really? What a strange looking house you must have. I'm in Southern California too, but my roof faces UP, like every other house I've seen... How do you keep the rain out? Shingles on the wall that faces upwards?
If you cannot remove the BSD license, how can you release it under the GPL?
You can't. You can, however, link GPL'd code with BSD code, in which case to meet the terms of the GPL you must supply a copy of the BSD licensed code to all that request it. Also, any bundle of BSD licensed code, which contains even one line of GPL'd code, must be treated as GPL'd. However, you can strip that line of GPL'd code, and use the rest under the BSD license as originally intended.
The GPL is incompatible with portions of the BSD license
No it isn't. It merely imposes more restrictions. It would be "incompatible" if the BSD imposed some restriction that the GPL did not. That was exactly the case with the first version of the BSD license, which had a basically useless restriction about advertisement of BSD licensed software. Such incompatible license cannot be used with GPL licensed code.
GPL'd code can't be put into BSD licensed code, but BSD licensed code can be inserted into GPL'd code, but you must reproduce the copyright text/header/license.
a simple provision that forces the miscreants to give back their improvements.
I suggest you don't disparage the BSD license or developers. The first version of the BSD license was GPL-incompatible, and basically everyone switched to the second version specifically to allow use in GPL software. Much more bad blood and arguments, and you can expect some people are going to switch back to the first version, then this one-way code-sharing relationship will end.
Theo seems to be claiming that you somehow have to follow both sets of terms.
Nope. Neither the BSD or GPL license allows you to strip the copyright notices/header. That's what happened.
This issue has been blown way out of proportion, not really because of Theo, but really in large part because people keep making ignorant statements that nothing wrong happened, and then there's another story about someone correcting those misconceptions.
It's not like in the age of BitTorrent that you really need to be beholden to the cable companies, unless you have a real need for college football or MLB.
...because footballs and baseball bats are irregularly shaped, getting stuck in the tubes, clogging them, and so you don't get the internets people sent you for several days.
For the several hundred dollars they charge for one of their cameras, I'm sure I could find a seriously heavy duty USB (or parallel, or firewire, or...) camera out there. Once you're using a computer to secure it, there's no longer any reason to spend that kind of money on even a heavy-duty CCD and lense.
But how to know for sure if a channel is digital or analog as received?'"
Begin unscrewing the coax cable from your cable box. As you very, very slowly pull it away, if the signal starts to fade/shows static/etc., it's certainly analog. If, instead, it suddenly goes from perfect, to black, it's digital. Also, in the latter case, it will probably start to show artifacts, perfectly square 16x16 pixel macroblocks that stand out in sharp contrast to the rest of the picture.
If your argument is that a "typical" Californian home purchaser paid $200k, then I think the median of ~$450k refutes that.
I've made no arguments about what is typical. In fact I'm specifically excluding the majority, by only talking about the areas outside of SF/LA, where there are far fewer people.
we ended up disabling the wireless support, and coupling each camera with a Gumstix computer
At that point, why even use a smart/networked camera? Plug a decent USB camera into the computer, and let it encode to (M)JPEG and run the HTTP server... A ~100MHz Pentium should be able to handle that.
The EURO market is the biggest single-currency market in the world.
The Euro market is only nominally larger than the USD market. An impressive accomplishment still, but try not to over-hype it.
The EU isn't nearly as strong of a confederation as a single country (the US) and those independent nations can potentially chose to opt out of the group/market.
So I don't think the dollar has anything to worry about. The Euro includes a bit more risk, is a bit less open, and really just doesn't offer anything substantially better. I'm sure most will simply continue using the USD.
At that price, one might as well get an Asus EEE instead.
People WITH ELECTRICITY might be better off with an EEE (better know as Intel's answer to OLPC).
For those without, as keeping it powered-up will easily cost more than the laptop in no time.
And that's not even mentioning the infinitely more flexible and durable hardware of the OLPC that will stand up to abuse from children, or the incredible (open source) educational software and interface it comes with, and the hardware that ties in with it.
Slashdot Mirror
At what point are you forced to grant credit? Shall we call it KDE/QT/GNU/Linux?
No it couldn't. The comparable BSD tools have been around longer than the Linux kernel.
Before Linux, it was pretty common to install several of the GNU tools on the closed-source Unix systems of the day. Problems with the GNU tools on Minix was in fact the motivation for creating Linux. Today, everyone that has to use a Solaris system for any length of time installs the GNU tools and tries very hard to forget that the Solaris crap even exists. Bash, if nothing else, is a common install on any Unix system (even though OpenBSD's branch of pdksh, and ksh93 are actually better shells, IMO).
Okay, I'll take a crack at this one.
To compile objective C on your microwave:
- Lift PC.
- Place on microwave.
- Compile.
You couldn't have gotten that statement any MORE WRONG if you had tried.
GCC's "production quality" is an on-again, off-again thing. Through most of v3.x it had too many bugs to count, and was inherently unreliable. It couldn't even compile ITSELF with the most basic optimizations or the resulting binary would generate incorrect code. Up until v4 it also misaligned stack variable. It had, and still has, MANY bugs. That GCC successfully compiles code at all is almost entirely due to it being so popular that everyone knows it, and works around its bugs without even thinking about it.
It has never had GOOD support for any other platforms than x86. Remember the RedHat GCC2.96 fiasco? They forked it because they needed it to support more platforms than it currently did. And even through v3.x the non-x86 ports of GCC had even more bugs than on x86, commonly falling apart if you attempt to use any optimizations. Now, they're DROPPING support for those platform entirely, which is a big problem for developers of operating systems for those platforms.
"Improved" is pretty vague. HURD has probably been "improved" for every minute of it's existence as well... Meanwhile the far younger ICC (Intel's compiler) beats the pants off of GCC without even trying.
What's more, GCC's "improvements" come at great cost. If you're a full-time developer, for the final release you want optimized code, but while developing, you want to compile and be able to test code frequently, and so as quickly as humanly possible. GCCv3+, even with all optimizations disabled, takes far, far longer to compile binaries than even older versions of GCC, and as it says, something like 10X slower than PCC.
The license issue is only incidental. These (and other) problems pushed them away from using GCC. Since they happen to be BSD developers, they'd prefer their work to be BSD licensed, and so it is.
Isn't the headline and summary putting this entirely backwards? Now that DHCPv6 is available IN ADDITION to auto configuration, that's one MORE reason to adopt IPv6, or rather, on less reason to stick with IPv4. It's not like auto configuration suddenly can't or doesn't work now that DHCP is available as an alternative option.
It matters, you're just wrong about it.
I already explained how to "fix" the license to prevent locking it up under the GPL. What you're suggesting is destroying the very basis of the *BSDs, and making it just another Linux distro, with all the problems and issues that entails.
Those who believe that using the GPL to force their political will on others is a good thing are incredibly naive about how the world works. All you're really doing is giving yourself a sense of satisfaction, since those who would have shared anyway will continue to do so, and those that wouldn't/can't just go their own way and ignore you.
Name any GPL'd software than has become a standard protocol... Name any GPL'd audio or video codec... Any wildly popular daemon. All categories are filled with BSD and other license that grant you similar freedom, unlike the GPL. The GPL only serves to continue insulating the GPL community even more from the rest of the world.
Meanwhile, most everyone would still be using telnet today, if not for the BSD licensed OpenSSH. You wouldn't have much of a GUI if not for the MIT licensed X11. Vorbis audio wouldn't be found on ANY hardware players. Hell, if not for the GPL, maybe GPG would have caught on and we'd all be using encrypted e-mail on a regular basis. Maybe we'd have an encrypted network file system with secure authentication instead of still keeping the ancient and decrepit NFS alive. Strange how GPL software just don't catch-on with the world, yet BSD does.
No other entity or organization has been so prolific about taking BSD licensed code, and giving nothing back, than GPLers; the Linux kernel, GNU/FSF, etc. For whatever reason, they feel they don't need to contribute anything at all back upstream (not changes, not other code under the BSD license, not cash, damn near nothing).
Take a look at the real world to see any number of institutions that have a prisoner's dilemma, technically allowing one party to abuse it, but depending on the honor system to work, and generally working just fine. Quite similar to the BSD license.
Really? What a strange looking house you must have. I'm in Southern California too, but my roof faces UP, like every other house I've seen... How do you keep the rain out? Shingles on the wall that faces upwards?
You can't. You can, however, link GPL'd code with BSD code, in which case to meet the terms of the GPL you must supply a copy of the BSD licensed code to all that request it. Also, any bundle of BSD licensed code, which contains even one line of GPL'd code, must be treated as GPL'd. However, you can strip that line of GPL'd code, and use the rest under the BSD license as originally intended.
No it isn't. It merely imposes more restrictions. It would be "incompatible" if the BSD imposed some restriction that the GPL did not. That was exactly the case with the first version of the BSD license, which had a basically useless restriction about advertisement of BSD licensed software. Such incompatible license cannot be used with GPL licensed code.
GPL'd code can't be put into BSD licensed code, but BSD licensed code can be inserted into GPL'd code, but you must reproduce the copyright text/header/license.
I suggest you don't disparage the BSD license or developers. The first version of the BSD license was GPL-incompatible, and basically everyone switched to the second version specifically to allow use in GPL software. Much more bad blood and arguments, and you can expect some people are going to switch back to the first version, then this one-way code-sharing relationship will end.
Nope. Neither the BSD or GPL license allows you to strip the copyright notices/header. That's what happened.
This issue has been blown way out of proportion, not really because of Theo, but really in large part because people keep making ignorant statements that nothing wrong happened, and then there's another story about someone correcting those misconceptions.
Even Microsoft properly preserves the copyright information.
How is this comment not -1 Flamebait by now?
Who are these supposed BSD zealots of which you speak?
Demanding extra fees from a few people is a way to make money.
Demanding extra fees from EVERYONE is a way to quickly go out of business.
What part of "Begin unscrewing the coax cable" did you not understand?
Or do you really believe that at the exact instant you're trying this out, the upstream is just coincidentally going to have a 1 in 1,000 problem?
What? dada21 for once forgot to tell us how libertarianism is going to magically solve this problem, and force companies to give you what you want.
I've been recording and editing shows for years now, and they're always in the range of 20-22 minutes. I have never seen a 17.5 minute show so far.
So name this incredibly crappy show you watch, that is pushing 50% commercials.
For the several hundred dollars they charge for one of their cameras, I'm sure I could find a seriously heavy duty USB (or parallel, or firewire, or...) camera out there. Once you're using a computer to secure it, there's no longer any reason to spend that kind of money on even a heavy-duty CCD and lense.
A 30 minute show, without ads, is a 21 minute show.
Begin unscrewing the coax cable from your cable box. As you very, very slowly pull it away, if the signal starts to fade/shows static/etc., it's certainly analog. If, instead, it suddenly goes from perfect, to black, it's digital. Also, in the latter case, it will probably start to show artifacts, perfectly square 16x16 pixel macroblocks that stand out in sharp contrast to the rest of the picture.
I've made no arguments about what is typical. In fact I'm specifically excluding the majority, by only talking about the areas outside of SF/LA, where there are far fewer people.
At that point, why even use a smart/networked camera? Plug a decent USB camera into the computer, and let it encode to (M)JPEG and run the HTTP server... A ~100MHz Pentium should be able to handle that.
Of course not. Why create a new currency when the USD is already standard and established? That wasn't the point, anyhow.
Potentially... Or not.
And in the mean time, the US continues expanding NAFTA/FTA to accomplish much the same thing.
Predictions can go either way.
The Euro market is only nominally larger than the USD market. An impressive accomplishment still, but try not to over-hype it.
The EU isn't nearly as strong of a confederation as a single country (the US) and those independent nations can potentially chose to opt out of the group/market.
So I don't think the dollar has anything to worry about. The Euro includes a bit more risk, is a bit less open, and really just doesn't offer anything substantially better. I'm sure most will simply continue using the USD.
People WITH ELECTRICITY might be better off with an EEE (better know as Intel's answer to OLPC).
For those without, as keeping it powered-up will easily cost more than the laptop in no time.
And that's not even mentioning the infinitely more flexible and durable hardware of the OLPC that will stand up to abuse from children, or the incredible (open source) educational software and interface it comes with, and the hardware that ties in with it.