... because the old square wheels weren't good enough. And the newer triangular wheels weren't much better.
Why does it matter if the wheel is constantly re-invented? No one is forcing you to do the reinvention and you don't have to use the new wheels.
Freedom to tinker is a major part of the driving force behind free software at the moment. As for fragmentation "killing adoption of unix on the desktop" (assuming that you are including GNU/Linux with unix), there are more *nix systems on desktops now than there ever have been previously. Strength through diversity, etc.
The scouts were started by Baden-Powell -- they are certainly not one of Hitler's creations. IIRC, Hitler closed down the scouts in Germany and started the Hitler Youth instead.
Re:The GPL should be a little friendler.
on
Revising the GPL
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· Score: 1
You are not suggesting we just give away our technological lead over other countries?
Why not, they use GPL code? Anyway, that was only an example of large software development projects outside the mainstream IT industry. There are many others.
When you develop code on a contract, the company already owns all your work. The choice to release it under GPL would be theirs anyway, and, for the reasons outlined above, they are not likely to make it.
It depends on the contract that is negotiated. It is perfectly possible for developers to negotiate a contract under which they only have to supply a binary. Often, these types of contract also include support, but not necessarily. The developer may however choose to give the client the source code as well, but under a licence (GPL) which prevents them from modifying the code and selling it to their competitors without making the changes public.
You act as if Slashdot has REAL editors who inspect copy and suggest changes.
That rant was directed to the editor of Newsforge, not Slashdot. I would never accuse/. of having such editors!
Re:The GPL should be a little friendler.
on
Revising the GPL
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· Score: 1
> Most software is developed in-house or as bespoke software for individual customers.
By volume perhaps, but hardly by usefulness. Most of this in-house software you refer to is nothing but customized database frontends that are of no use to anybody but the company owning it and its competitors.
Do you know how large the US DoD budget is? Do you know what proportion of that is spent on software? Do you realise how much of the cost of a modern aircraft is due to the cost of software development?
Don't make the mistake of thinking that all software development is undertaken within the mainstream software industry. There are many other industries which develop an enormous quantity of complex, expensive software for custom applications.
When this in-house releasing the code into the public domain, the company's competitors are the ones most likely to benefit from it, as they are the ones most likely to work with similar data. The developers had to be paid with company funds, so if the fruits of their labour benefit some competitor, the money could be said to have went for self-destruction.
The GPL does not require that software be distributed widely. When the company draws up a contract with the developer, they can easily insert confidentiality clauses to prevent the developer from releasing the code to the public. If the developer makes the code available to the customer under the terms of the GPL, the customer can then decide whether or not to distribute the program. They may decide to keep it secret, or they may decide to release it and share the maintenance burden, but at least they then have the choice.
It isn't the role of the GPL to make sure that you have a platform on which to run the program. Capatalism will enure that you have the freedom to run what you want. I won't buy a machine that limits the software that I can run.
And yet people frequently do buy products that have embedded software that they cannot alter. The role of the GPL is to further the aims of the Free Software Foundation and it is exactly this kind of thing which the FSF was created to overcome. Read the history of the project if you haven't already.
Re:The GPL should be a little friendler.
on
Revising the GPL
·
· Score: 2, Insightful
If a company wants to make money selling software (as opposed to support or customizations), it has no choice in the matter. GPL simply does not allow one to make money off the code.
That is totally untrue. You are free to charge whatever you like for distribution of the binaries of GPL-licensed code.
It is software companies' business to sell software. It is how they make money. To force them all to switch to providing only support and customization would create expenses
Most software is not created by software companies selling their software in boxes on the shelves of your local computer shop. Most software is developed in-house or as bespoke software for individual customers. Licensing such code under the GPL doesn't diminish the potential for revenue for the code developer.
"access to a vast reservoir of free code", most of which is crap anyway.
There is a lot of crap free code. There is a lot of crap non-free code. And there are also many examples of truly excellent free and non-free code. Many of the dead projects on Sourceforge are hobby projects which people are using to learn. There existence in no way harms the truly great free software such as Apache (not GPL), the Linux kernel, gcc, Mozilla, Octave, etc.
Most people simply want their code to stay free and accessible, for which the LGPL is a much better choice.
BSD licenses or the public domain are better choices for people who just want their code to be available. However, the large number of projects licensed under the GPL would tend to suggest that you are wrong about what most people want.
We just go and restore the most recent version from CVS of course!
GNU Arch, surely!
Re:The GPL should be a little friendler.
on
Revising the GPL
·
· Score: 1
The concern is that by preventing code sharing, the GPL community forces duplication of already existing capabilities. This is not a big problem for the company that has to rewrite, say, libpng, but it is a problem for the user, who now has many copies of libpng wasting his disk space and available memory. If everyone used LGPL instead of GPL for all free code, this problem would not exist, but the free code will still stay free.
What a strange way of looking at it. The libpng library already exists on users' machines; it is available for other developers to use. If a company decides not to use it (because they don't like the terms of the GPL), it is they who are causing duplication of effort and wasted disk space.
Regardless of the above, there is no chance that RMS will rewrite the GPL to make it more LGPL-like. The whole point of the GPL is to tempt people into releasing their code freely with the incentive of access to a vast reservoir of free code that they can take advantage of. The locks that require code derived from GPL code to be released under the GPL are the reason that software developers release their work under the GPL in the first place.
Any idea how Opine-It! compares to Wikalong, mentioned in another post in this subthread?
Having not really used either, I can't really offer an informed opinion. Fortunately we are on/.!
From what I've seen of the two, it looks like they both need a bit of time for the communities to grow. The opine-it method looks much more robust to me. Wikis certainly have their place, but they tend to require a lot of care to prevent mindless vandalism. I can't really see dissenting opinions lasting very long on Wikalong.
I assume that you were trying to write <rant>... </rant>.
If you want to become a/. html nazi, you will need to use the html codes to create angled brackets:
< and >
However, I *really* doubt that the content of my page would make the slightest difference whatsoever to how well the page in which it is posted validates.
My favorite system was the P2P "Third Voice", a browser plugin which let the user attach popup sticky notes to any web page... The project folded, but I welcome its return. Only the flexibility, complexity and scale of the public is enough to compensate for the advantages that centralized corporate media has in lying to us.
In that case, you might be interested in the opine-it extension for Firefox.
What does it matter if some of the applications are orphanware? Adding code to the commons must be a good thing. No-one is forced to use or develop it, but it is available for anyone who finds it useful.
<Off-topic rant>the editor of Newsforge really needs to have a word with the author of the article, I say. It is really not necessary to write "so-and-so said" in every single sentence, says me. I say that you only need to mention who said the words when the author/speaker changes. I say that it is very annoying to read that article because of the poor way that it is written.</rant>
When you copy a copyrighted work wgich requires payment for legal access to said work you are depriving the copyright owner(s) of the money that would have been generated by the sale of that item. Is that not theft?
No. It is copyright infringement.
When you copy your friend's CD you are not stealing from your friend,
Correct
you are stealing from the people who own the rights to the material contained on that CD.
No, you are infringing copyright.
Why is this point so hard for people to grasp?
Because copyright infringement is not the same as theft. They may both be wrong, but they are not the same thing.
The day we grant legal rights to machines is the death of *human* rights. Time to take down the flag, shut off the lights, and move to a more rational continuum.
And just why do you think that *human* rights are any more precious than *sentient being's* rights?
Yes, children should have legal rights too. Such as the right to be protected from violence. I also think that they should be given the right to vote as soon as they ask for it. They may not have as much accumulated wisdom and experience as adults, but they have more interest in the future.
Are you disgusted when terrorists blow up schools in Russia? Were you disgusted when Saddam's sons had rape houses? Are you disgusted by the human slavery in Sudan?
Yes.
No. The piffle in Gitmo involving prisoners of war... that gets your gander.
Guantanamo Bay is even worse. If we lower ourselves to the level of the terrorists, we have lost.
Wieners who sit around daydreaming about sentient computers are the last people I want trying to get our legal system "up with the times".
Much of our current law has been strongly influenced by people who were able to think in abstract terms without getting tangled in the nitty gritty of everyday reality. It is then left to the judges to apply that law in real cases. In former times, those people were called philosophers. Good sci-fi authors aren't that far removed.
Could you supply a short [preferably documented] list of "rights" that were lost since GWB assumed the presidency?
Simple. Guantanamo Bay. As a non-US citizen, I am absolutely disgusted at the way that the Bush administration has violated the human rights of those captives. I am also very disgusted at the way that the UK government is holding foreign suspected terrorists without charge or trial in Belmarsh prison, but at least those inmates have a choice.
why are all those p2p networks shut down and one of the oldest sources (usenet) is still there?
Well, firstly, USENET doesn't have a single controller -- so who could the *AA threaten? Secondly, USENET was around LONG before the entertainment industry started complaining about "piracy" on the net. There is absolutely no way whatsoever that they could convince a judge that the main purpose of USENET is copyright infringement.
Slashdot Mirror
Why does it matter if the wheel is constantly re-invented? No one is forcing you to do the reinvention and you don't have to use the new wheels.
Freedom to tinker is a major part of the driving force behind free software at the moment. As for fragmentation "killing adoption of unix on the desktop" (assuming that you are including GNU/Linux with unix), there are more *nix systems on desktops now than there ever have been previously. Strength through diversity, etc.
The scouts were started by Baden-Powell -- they are certainly not one of Hitler's creations. IIRC, Hitler closed down the scouts in Germany and started the Hitler Youth instead.
Why not, they use GPL code? Anyway, that was only an example of large software development projects outside the mainstream IT industry. There are many others.
When you develop code on a contract, the company already owns all your work. The choice to release it under GPL would be theirs anyway, and, for the reasons outlined above, they are not likely to make it.
It depends on the contract that is negotiated. It is perfectly possible for developers to negotiate a contract under which they only have to supply a binary. Often, these types of contract also include support, but not necessarily. The developer may however choose to give the client the source code as well, but under a licence (GPL) which prevents them from modifying the code and selling it to their competitors without making the changes public.
That rant was directed to the editor of Newsforge, not Slashdot. I would never accuse /. of having such editors!
Do you know how large the US DoD budget is? Do you know what proportion of that is spent on software? Do you realise how much of the cost of a modern aircraft is due to the cost of software development?
Don't make the mistake of thinking that all software development is undertaken within the mainstream software industry. There are many other industries which develop an enormous quantity of complex, expensive software for custom applications.
The GPL does not require that software be distributed widely. When the company draws up a contract with the developer, they can easily insert confidentiality clauses to prevent the developer from releasing the code to the public. If the developer makes the code available to the customer under the terms of the GPL, the customer can then decide whether or not to distribute the program. They may decide to keep it secret, or they may decide to release it and share the maintenance burden, but at least they then have the choice.
And yet people frequently do buy products that have embedded software that they cannot alter. The role of the GPL is to further the aims of the Free Software Foundation and it is exactly this kind of thing which the FSF was created to overcome. Read the history of the project if you haven't already.
That is totally untrue. You are free to charge whatever you like for distribution of the binaries of GPL-licensed code.
It is software companies' business to sell software. It is how they make money. To force them all to switch to providing only support and customization would create expenses
Most software is not created by software companies selling their software in boxes on the shelves of your local computer shop. Most software is developed in-house or as bespoke software for individual customers. Licensing such code under the GPL doesn't diminish the potential for revenue for the code developer.
"access to a vast reservoir of free code", most of which is crap anyway.
There is a lot of crap free code. There is a lot of crap non-free code. And there are also many examples of truly excellent free and non-free code. Many of the dead projects on Sourceforge are hobby projects which people are using to learn. There existence in no way harms the truly great free software such as Apache (not GPL), the Linux kernel, gcc, Mozilla, Octave, etc.
Most people simply want their code to stay free and accessible, for which the LGPL is a much better choice.
BSD licenses or the public domain are better choices for people who just want their code to be available. However, the large number of projects licensed under the GPL would tend to suggest that you are wrong about what most people want.
GNU Arch, surely!
What a strange way of looking at it. The libpng library already exists on users' machines; it is available for other developers to use. If a company decides not to use it (because they don't like the terms of the GPL), it is they who are causing duplication of effort and wasted disk space.
Regardless of the above, there is no chance that RMS will rewrite the GPL to make it more LGPL-like. The whole point of the GPL is to tempt people into releasing their code freely with the incentive of access to a vast reservoir of free code that they can take advantage of. The locks that require code derived from GPL code to be released under the GPL are the reason that software developers release their work under the GPL in the first place.
There is an interesting point raised here. Have you got any reply for that?
Having not really used either, I can't really offer an informed opinion. Fortunately we are on /.!
From what I've seen of the two, it looks like they both need a bit of time for the communities to grow. The opine-it method looks much more robust to me. Wikis certainly have their place, but they tend to require a lot of care to prevent mindless vandalism. I can't really see dissenting opinions lasting very long on Wikalong.
Welcome to /.
... </rant>.
If you want to become a /. html nazi, you will need to use the html codes to create angled brackets:
< and >
I assume that you were trying to write <rant>
However, I *really* doubt that the content of my page would make the slightest difference whatsoever to how well the page in which it is posted validates.
In that case, you might be interested in the opine-it extension for Firefox.
Nah, that's the old kinky version. The new Linux version is more along the lines of "Li Li Li Li Lilo".
<Off-topic rant>the editor of Newsforge really needs to have a word with the author of the article, I say. It is really not necessary to write "so-and-so said" in every single sentence, says me. I say that you only need to mention who said the words when the author/speaker changes. I say that it is very annoying to read that article because of the poor way that it is written.</rant>
No. It is copyright infringement.
When you copy your friend's CD you are not stealing from your friend,
Correct
you are stealing from the people who own the rights to the material contained on that CD.
No, you are infringing copyright.
Why is this point so hard for people to grasp?
Because copyright infringement is not the same as theft. They may both be wrong, but they are not the same thing.
Is there any reason for this other than the fact that they are in close proximity? China and Japan are also close, but have wildly different laws.
Correct. And "copyright infringement" is "copyright infringement".
If you stole something from someone, then you stole it, you didn't "deprive them of a theoritical sale"
Also correct (except for the spelling). Whereas, if you copy something and leave them with the original, you haven't stolen it.
And just why do you think that *human* rights are any more precious than *sentient being's* rights?
And how many people have you personally killed in defence of your rights? Rights exist because society believes in them. Violence is irrelevant.
Yes, children should have legal rights too. Such as the right to be protected from violence. I also think that they should be given the right to vote as soon as they ask for it. They may not have as much accumulated wisdom and experience as adults, but they have more interest in the future.
Yes.
No. The piffle in Gitmo involving prisoners of war... that gets your gander.
Guantanamo Bay is even worse. If we lower ourselves to the level of the terrorists, we have lost.
Much of our current law has been strongly influenced by people who were able to think in abstract terms without getting tangled in the nitty gritty of everyday reality. It is then left to the judges to apply that law in real cases. In former times, those people were called philosophers. Good sci-fi authors aren't that far removed.
Simple. Guantanamo Bay. As a non-US citizen, I am absolutely disgusted at the way that the Bush administration has violated the human rights of those captives. I am also very disgusted at the way that the UK government is holding foreign suspected terrorists without charge or trial in Belmarsh prison, but at least those inmates have a choice.
Land of the free. Yeah, right!
Well, firstly, USENET doesn't have a single controller -- so who could the *AA threaten? Secondly, USENET was around LONG before the entertainment industry started complaining about "piracy" on the net. There is absolutely no way whatsoever that they could convince a judge that the main purpose of USENET is copyright infringement.