Ok... and what if you win? Enjoy that $25, because that is all you're gonna get. Plan B, please.
Re:WxWindows is the de facto cross platform Standa
on
Qt for Mac
·
· Score: 1
Sorry, but clearly wxWindows is the clear choice for developing cross platform applications. [...] This is the toolkit that AbiSource uses to develope AbiWord.
You have been misinformed. The Abi folks do not use wxWindows to develop Abiword. There was discussion about this in the past on the mailing lists, but the conclusion was that they should use it, not that they did. A world of difference.
Your post nonetheless had the feel of any very good troll post. You seem to think that trolls are less intelligent than other posters. Granted, most of the time, they try to sound that way. But when they apply their skills "to good ends", the end result is generally really impressive and sounds like what you wrote.
In my mind, the troll who starts the thread shines more intellectually than the slashdotter who wants me suffer through his painfulm, point-by-point rebuttal. Such rebuttal posts are consistently uminaginative, chronically redundant and dreadfully boring... Sadly, rebuttals always get modded up to death.
I never have the courage to browse at 0 or -1, but I readily recognize that some really good stuff happens there: bizarre short stories, off-topic rants and off-the-wall, delirious poetry. I believe some of it to be really cool, but feel free to disagree.:-)
Apart from the "This is a joke" line, this is arguably the funniest, most intelligent post I have ever seen on Slashdot. Trolling or not, it is brilliant. Bravo.
Its screenshots of Gnome, doctored up by a graphic designer and written into director-style animations, so all the actor needs to do to interact with it is hit a key to go to the next frame or animation sequence.
Actually, the computer industry is moving away from that practice and moving towards hacker doubles: CS majors who take the actor's place when he/she is at the keyboard. We already saw this in The Net... It *looks* like Sandra Bullock sitting in front of the computer, but in fact, it's Alan Cox.
He was wearing make-up. And a hat. Not the usual one. One Sandra Bullock might wear. Were you fooled too?
One of your postulates is that when you buy a CD, for example, you are either buying the music, or buying the right to listen to it. In fact, you are buying neither.
You already know that you are not buying the music itself because that would mean a transfer of copyright. That does not take place at all in the cases you mention. You conclude that you are in fact buying the right to listen to the music. That is false. The right to listen to any music is something you already have. Music and written works are so far only protected by copyright laws, which, as we know, only cover copying, modification and distribution. Use is not covered.
Did you really think that it was illegal for you to listen to the radio just because you have not bought all the CDs played there? What about at a bar, or at a friend's place? Do you think laws expect us to walk around covering our ears for fear of committing a crime? The right to listen to music is something you already have. You can listen to any music you want, read any book you want... As long as you can obtain a medium on which it appears.
So... What do you get when you buy a CD? Neither the music in its abstract form, nor the right to listen to is. What you buy is simply a round object with a hole in it, and which presumably contains non-empty music tracks. What you buy is the medium itself. That pretty much explains why most of the time, buying a book twice costs twice as much as buying it once. There is no overlap in what is bought.
To sum up: When you buy software, what you actually get is a EULA. When you buy a music CD, all you get is a music CD.
As I have already said, I think this is amazing, and I really approve of what those people are doing. This enpowers users of free system, me included. But I did post a related Slashdot criticism yesterday in the KDE-licencing flamewar here. I was raising the issue of double standards. That criticism was largely ignored, but I feel strangely validated, now.
"[XMPS] is a GPLed app which uses a proprietary library. The licence makes no explicit exceptions. Sound familiar? Now read the Gnotices. See anyone complaining? I don't. Everyone looks thrilled. Somehow, I'm not surprised. Slashdot posters would react the same if the news got here. This is a Gtk+ app, after all."
As I say, not too far off...
"But of course, anyone writing GPLed code and linking it against Qt is a GPL-badmouthing, uptight, arrogant, crack-smoking, gay devil-worshipper. [...] When I see how such troll posts about KDE consistently get moderated up to +5 Intersting, I start looking for the button which allows me to moderate *all* of Slashdot down."
Hmmm... A double standard, maybe? Now tell me I was wrong.
If you go check out Gnotices, you will see an interesting, seemingly unrelated article: The XMPS project has just released a version which supports DivX decompression... by using a MS-Windows DLL. XMPS is a GPLed Gtk+-based MPEG player. It is a GPLed app which uses a proprietary library. The licence makes no explicit exceptions. Sound familiar? Now read the Gnotices. See anyone complaining? I don't. Everyone looks thrilled. Somehow, I'm not surprised. Slashdot posters would react the same if the news got here. This is a Gtk+ app, after all.
I personally feel there is nothing wrong with what the XMPS project is doing. I actually applaud that clever trick and what it allows for users of free systems. I know my free software history: Emacs and GCC were born on non-free systems. They did what they could with what they had. So does XMPS. So does KDE. Hopefully, the situation will someday improve. But in the meantime, the people writing the GPLed code are the good guys and gals... Remember? (I guess not.)
But of course, anyone writing GPLed code and linking it against Qt is a GPL-badmouthing, uptight, arrogant, crack-smoking, gay devil-worshipper. Hundreds of posts and e-mails will tell you that. And I'm not even kidding about the "gay" part, which you know if you have read the comments on Freshmeat. When I see how such troll posts about KDE consistently get moderated up to +5 Intersting, I start looking for the button which allows me to moderate *all* of Slashdot down.
I would trolling if I did not have a point.
PS: I bought a Gnome T-shirt from Copyleft just so Gnome and the FSF would get a donation. Think about that before you write me off as an anti-GPL bigot.
I was listening to the CBC radion the other day. A pianist was talking about his personal experiences with mp3.com. He was originally very optimistic about it because his personal weak points were "selling himself" and business sense. He hoped mp3.com would free him and allow him to directly benefit from his musical talent alone.
He registered and put up a few songs for free download. The others were up for sale. He was apparently quite talented, because he quickly got to the top ten download list in his category, and stayed there for months. He was very excited about all of this, and saw possibilities for fame and an honest, hassle-free living.
After four months IIRC, he got his first check. It was an mount of just over seventy dollars. Needless to say he stopped bothering with mp3.com. He still gets fan e-mail, which makes him feel good about himself, but the man has to eat, too. So much for the theory that mp3.com is allowing artists to benefit from their art. Maybe their poster childs aren't so representative of what really goes on.
Funny how no MySQL fan here even mentions licencing terms. Does nobody care that the current releases of MySQL are nowhere near being free? I remember a time when free licences mattered. Maybe RMS is right when he warns us we are caring more and more about expediency, less and less about freedom.
I have nothing against the MySQL folks (they seem like nice people), and I will be genuinely happy if they relicence some day. But in the meantime, MySQL has the same fundamental problem as RealPlayer or Microsoft Office. No offense intended.
The Free Software Foundation is very old-school in the sense that it never seemed to really "get" the Internet revolution. Sure, there is www.gnu.org, ftp sites, and such, but... (rhetorical questions)
Why is there no FSF www.emacs.org, or www.emacs-hq.org or some such? Why is there no website with news items and todo lists for the next version?
Why is there no public, easily-accessible, easily-browsable emacs-devel mailing list where people could post, as well as an emacs-cvs?
Why is the Hurd's website buried so deep inside www.gnu.org and not at ie www.thehurd.org? Why is it the same for so many GNU projects?
Why are the layouts so drab? (No offense intended: I love your ideas!)
It feels like the FSF as a whole invests less time in leveraging the Internet than much smaller projects -- related or not -- like GNUStep, FlightGear, Gnome or... the Linux kernel.
My question is... why? Has the FSF missed the Internet Revolution? Is the Brave GNU World Column an attempt to remedy this? Will we be seeing a more concerted effort regarding that? Or do you not agree that there is a problem?
Cool websites make free software more fun. And there is nothing wrong with fun. Not everyone attends conferences, and sometimes the best place to share your ideas with party-goers is at a party.
No, I have not met Richard Stallman personally. You do indeed seem to know him personally quite well. But that was not my point. I respect him in the only way I can know him, which is as a public person. I really respect Diderot as well, though he could very well have been a real bastard, for all I know. However, your knowing him does not necessarily mean you understand him, the FSF, the GPL, or other key issues in this matter. I will not go into details once again because I am sure you would not agree. It would therefore be a waste of both our time. However, I will correct you on one thing. You said that the GPL is a shrink-wrap license. That is not true. This is not a matter of opinion, it is a legal fact (which is why I take the time to mention it here, as opposed to the other issues). Please go see my post at http://slashdot.org/comments.pl?sid=00/02/01/21122 2&cid=189 for details. Have a nice day.
Just so everyone knows where I stand: I personnally respect Richard Stallman wholeheartedly, and morally support the FSF in most all of its activities.
However, I can understand someone disagreeing with Stallman. But to disagree with someone, you first have to understand what they are seeing. You, obviously, do not.
You say Richard Stallman created the FSF and the GNU GPL out of anger. I think you are probably partly right. You say it was out of spite towards some ex-colleagues, or the typical programmer. There, you are wrong.
Richard Stallman was screwed, and screwed good by proprietary software companies. If you have read the GNU Manifesto, you know this. And the truth is, we all have. Yes, he was angry. But all I can say about that is "How could I be so comatose as to have not been angered by it?"
Today, I am angry when I have to click "I agree" to some outrageous claims just so I can play a game. I'm glad I get angry. It shows me I've woken up. And Richard Stallman is one of the people who did that.
Richard Stallman does not wish for free software programmers to be poor. He does wish for proprietary software manufacturers to make less money. Is he wrong?
Exploitation will make you rich. Slave traders (they still exist) have never been poor. Richard Stallman believes proprietary software to be exploitation. Looking at how much money Microsoft is worth, I'd agree. RMS would like software making to no longer exploit the end user. That will undoubtedly mean less money for those who try to exploit. All the better.
A few months ago, it was reported that Linus Torvalds had already cost Bill Gates several billions in shares value. I, for one, cheered. Many others did as well. Yet when you quote Richard Stallman as having done the same to proprietary Unix companies, he is somehow evil.
When people are free, the slave traders go bankrupt. That does not mean the the liberators were the bad guys to begin with.
Richard Stallman paid the rent for many years by selling tapes with GNU Emacs on it. So stop the "He's a commie!" lingo already. It's getting really old.
It looks like you are getting the treatment most newbies get: a thorough bashing. Not much help, is it?
That being said, you probably should have read the documentation a bit more intently. The installation guide is fairly clear on this: if you need to tinker with partitions, you need to use the custom install. However, if Anaconda wiped your HD without so much as warning you, that is indeed utterly tactless. Filing a polite bug report would porobably be in order. See: http://bugzilla.redhat.com/
There is also the question of the Master Boot Record. You talk about RedHat overwriting the MBR as though that was a bad thing. I know there are reasons not to use it, but LILO is hardly an impediment to your running NT and GNU/Linux on the same machine. You could have just re-configured LILO, if you had a problem.
Had you chosen the custom install, you could have tinkered your partitions a little bit, installed non-destructively, and not overwritten the MBR. Better yet, you could have overwritten the MBR with a properly-configured LILO. The problem is you did not chose the proper installation method.
For future reference, always read the installation manual before going ahead with a new OS on a machine. Otherwise, problems can an do happen. However, if you feel RedHat did something utterly destructive to your machine without warning you, write a nice bug report and users everywhere will thank you for it.
Some people seem to believe that the GPL is somehow related to shrink-wrapped licences. It is not even close, either legally, morally or factually.
The GNU GPL is a copyright notice. As such, like any copyright notice, it covers modification and distribution only. There is nothing in the GPL about usage. The GPL even states that usage is not governed by its terms. You can therefore do whatever you want. You have no obligation to anyone.
Of course, if you want to distribute or modify it, you have to do so under the terms of the license. Not because you signed it or used the software, but because due to copyright law, the license is your only permission to do so.
That is an important part: since the GPL is just a copyright notice, it only covers only usage and modification. Contrary to popular belief, you do not have to agree to the GPL before using GPLed software, and are not bound by its terms simply by using the software.
Shrink-wrap licenses are not copyright notices. They are contracts. Contracts as in "I signed on a new mortgage", "I got married" or "I signed a NDA". And contracts can cover a LOT of ground, much more than mere distribution of modification.
With shrink-wrap licenses, you basically end up with legal obligations towards the other party. And with UCITA, shrink-wrap licenses can apply to internet content (articles and such) and be retroactively modified.
Question: do you really want to have legal obligations towards every news site you visit that feels like it? Remember, hitting the "Back" does not mean you never visited the site, never broke the "shrink wrap".
Well, I don't. Regardless of whether or not that power would be misused. But I'm in luck: I don't live in the US. If I did, I probably would be writing to my elected representatives, right now.
Dislike the GPL, if you must... But at least know it for what it is: a copyright notice, nothing more, nothing less.
Slashdot Mirror
In the best GNU fashion they should call it KINI (KINI Is Not Illustrator).
Don't stop there. Go for gold! Call it Bikini!
Bikini Illustrates KIllustrator Is Not Illustrator
Bikini In KDE Is Not Illegal
Bikini Is King, Invites Naughty Inspiration
I can think of dozens more, if needed. :-)
Ok... and what if you win? Enjoy that $25, because that is all you're gonna get. Plan B, please.
Sorry, but clearly wxWindows is the clear choice for developing cross platform applications. [...] This is the toolkit that AbiSource uses to develope AbiWord.
You have been misinformed. The Abi folks do not use wxWindows to develop Abiword. There was discussion about this in the past on the mailing lists, but the conclusion was that they should use it, not that they did. A world of difference.
Your post nonetheless had the feel of any very good troll post. You seem to think that trolls are less intelligent than other posters. Granted, most of the time, they try to sound that way. But when they apply their skills "to good ends", the end result is generally really impressive and sounds like what you wrote.
In my mind, the troll who starts the thread shines more intellectually than the slashdotter who wants me suffer through his painfulm, point-by-point rebuttal. Such rebuttal posts are consistently uminaginative, chronically redundant and dreadfully boring... Sadly, rebuttals always get modded up to death.
I never have the courage to browse at 0 or -1, but I readily recognize that some really good stuff happens there: bizarre short stories, off-topic rants and off-the-wall, delirious poetry. I believe some of it to be really cool, but feel free to disagree. :-)
Apart from the "This is a joke" line, this is arguably the funniest, most intelligent post I have ever seen on Slashdot. Trolling or not, it is brilliant. Bravo.
This always happens. I think the site admins hate me. Why was the story rejected when _I_ submitted it two weeks ago?
J.
Its screenshots of Gnome, doctored up by a graphic designer and written into director-style animations, so all the actor needs to do to interact with it is hit a key to go to the next frame or animation sequence.
Actually, the computer industry is moving away from that practice and moving towards hacker doubles: CS majors who take the actor's place when he/she is at the keyboard. We already saw this in The Net... It *looks* like Sandra Bullock sitting in front of the computer, but in fact, it's Alan Cox.
He was wearing make-up. And a hat. Not the usual one. One Sandra Bullock might wear. Were you fooled too?
One of your postulates is that when you buy a CD, for example, you are either buying the music, or buying the right to listen to it. In fact, you are buying neither.
You already know that you are not buying the music itself because that would mean a transfer of copyright. That does not take place at all in the cases you mention. You conclude that you are in fact buying the right to listen to the music. That is false. The right to listen to any music is something you already have. Music and written works are so far only protected by copyright laws, which, as we know, only cover copying, modification and distribution. Use is not covered.
Did you really think that it was illegal for you to listen to the radio just because you have not bought all the CDs played there? What about at a bar, or at a friend's place? Do you think laws expect us to walk around covering our ears for fear of committing a crime? The right to listen to music is something you already have. You can listen to any music you want, read any book you want... As long as you can obtain a medium on which it appears.
So... What do you get when you buy a CD? Neither the music in its abstract form, nor the right to listen to is. What you buy is simply a round object with a hole in it, and which presumably contains non-empty music tracks. What you buy is the medium itself. That pretty much explains why most of the time, buying a book twice costs twice as much as buying it once. There is no overlap in what is bought.
To sum up: When you buy software, what you actually get is a EULA. When you buy a music CD, all you get is a music CD.
As I have already said, I think this is amazing, and I really approve of what those people are doing. This enpowers users of free system, me included. But I did post a related Slashdot criticism yesterday in the KDE-licencing flamewar here. I was raising the issue of double standards. That criticism was largely ignored, but I feel strangely validated, now.
"[XMPS] is a GPLed app which uses a proprietary library. The licence makes no explicit exceptions. Sound familiar? Now read the Gnotices. See anyone complaining? I don't. Everyone looks thrilled. Somehow, I'm not surprised. Slashdot posters would react the same if the news got here. This is a Gtk+ app, after all."
As I say, not too far off...
"But of course, anyone writing GPLed code and linking it against Qt is a GPL-badmouthing, uptight, arrogant, crack-smoking, gay devil-worshipper. [...] When I see how such troll posts about KDE consistently get moderated up to +5 Intersting, I start looking for the button which allows me to moderate *all* of Slashdot down."
Hmmm... A double standard, maybe? Now tell me I was wrong.
Actually, if you follow the link, you will see that the project I was referring to is called XMPS. :-) But thanks for the show of support.
If you go check out Gnotices, you will see an interesting, seemingly unrelated article: The XMPS project has just released a version which supports DivX decompression... by using a MS-Windows DLL. XMPS is a GPLed Gtk+-based MPEG player. It is a GPLed app which uses a proprietary library. The licence makes no explicit exceptions. Sound familiar? Now read the Gnotices. See anyone complaining? I don't. Everyone looks thrilled. Somehow, I'm not surprised. Slashdot posters would react the same if the news got here. This is a Gtk+ app, after all.
I personally feel there is nothing wrong with what the XMPS project is doing. I actually applaud that clever trick and what it allows for users of free systems. I know my free software history: Emacs and GCC were born on non-free systems. They did what they could with what they had. So does XMPS. So does KDE. Hopefully, the situation will someday improve. But in the meantime, the people writing the GPLed code are the good guys and gals... Remember? (I guess not.)
But of course, anyone writing GPLed code and linking it against Qt is a GPL-badmouthing, uptight, arrogant, crack-smoking, gay devil-worshipper. Hundreds of posts and e-mails will tell you that. And I'm not even kidding about the "gay" part, which you know if you have read the comments on Freshmeat. When I see how such troll posts about KDE consistently get moderated up to +5 Intersting, I start looking for the button which allows me to moderate *all* of Slashdot down.
I would trolling if I did not have a point.
PS: I bought a Gnome T-shirt from Copyleft just so Gnome and the FSF would get a donation. Think about that before you write me off as an anti-GPL bigot.
I was listening to the CBC radion the other day. A pianist was talking about his personal experiences with mp3.com. He was originally very optimistic about it because his personal weak points were "selling himself" and business sense. He hoped mp3.com would free him and allow him to directly benefit from his musical talent alone.
He registered and put up a few songs for free download. The others were up for sale. He was apparently quite talented, because he quickly got to the top ten download list in his category, and stayed there for months. He was very excited about all of this, and saw possibilities for fame and an honest, hassle-free living.
After four months IIRC, he got his first check. It was an mount of just over seventy dollars. Needless to say he stopped bothering with mp3.com. He still gets fan e-mail, which makes him feel good about himself, but the man has to eat, too. So much for the theory that mp3.com is allowing artists to benefit from their art. Maybe their poster childs aren't so representative of what really goes on.
Funny how no MySQL fan here even mentions licencing terms. Does nobody care that the current releases of MySQL are nowhere near being free? I remember a time when free licences mattered. Maybe RMS is right when he warns us we are caring more and more about expediency, less and less about freedom.
I have nothing against the MySQL folks (they seem like nice people), and I will be genuinely happy if they relicence some day. But in the meantime, MySQL has the same fundamental problem as RealPlayer or Microsoft Office. No offense intended.
The Free Software Foundation is very old-school in the sense that it never seemed to really "get" the Internet revolution. Sure, there is www.gnu.org, ftp sites, and such, but... (rhetorical questions)
It feels like the FSF as a whole invests less time in leveraging the Internet than much smaller projects -- related or not -- like GNUStep, FlightGear, Gnome or... the Linux kernel.
My question is... why? Has the FSF missed the Internet Revolution? Is the Brave GNU World Column an attempt to remedy this? Will we be seeing a more concerted effort regarding that? Or do you not agree that there is a problem?
Cool websites make free software more fun. And there is nothing wrong with fun. Not everyone attends conferences, and sometimes the best place to share your ideas with party-goers is at a party.
Yes, reading it would be a horrendous pain... But then again, no-one actually has to read it in order to create a sound file. One word: emacspeak.
For a real laugh though, have it go through Jive, first. What it is, Mama!
No, I have not met Richard Stallman personally. You do indeed seem to know him personally quite well. But that was not my point. I respect him in the only way I can know him, which is as a public person. I really respect Diderot as well, though he could very well have been a real bastard, for all I know. However, your knowing him does not necessarily mean you understand him, the FSF, the GPL, or other key issues in this matter. I will not go into details once again because I am sure you would not agree. It would therefore be a waste of both our time. However, I will correct you on one thing. You said that the GPL is a shrink-wrap license. That is not true. This is not a matter of opinion, it is a legal fact (which is why I take the time to mention it here, as opposed to the other issues). Please go see my post at http://slashdot.org/comments.pl?sid=00/02/01/21122 2&cid=189 for details. Have a nice day.
Just so everyone knows where I stand: I personnally respect Richard Stallman wholeheartedly, and morally support the FSF in most all of its activities.
However, I can understand someone disagreeing with Stallman. But to disagree with someone, you first have to understand what they are seeing. You, obviously, do not.
You say Richard Stallman created the FSF and the GNU GPL out of anger. I think you are probably partly right. You say it was out of spite towards some ex-colleagues, or the typical programmer. There, you are wrong.
Richard Stallman was screwed, and screwed good by proprietary software companies. If you have read the GNU Manifesto, you know this. And the truth is, we all have. Yes, he was angry. But all I can say about that is "How could I be so comatose as to have not been angered by it?"
Today, I am angry when I have to click "I agree" to some outrageous claims just so I can play a game. I'm glad I get angry. It shows me I've woken up. And Richard Stallman is one of the people who did that.
Richard Stallman does not wish for free software programmers to be poor. He does wish for proprietary software manufacturers to make less money. Is he wrong?
Exploitation will make you rich. Slave traders (they still exist) have never been poor. Richard Stallman believes proprietary software to be exploitation. Looking at how much money Microsoft is worth, I'd agree. RMS would like software making to no longer exploit the end user. That will undoubtedly mean less money for those who try to exploit. All the better.
A few months ago, it was reported that Linus Torvalds had already cost Bill Gates several billions in shares value. I, for one, cheered. Many others did as well. Yet when you quote Richard Stallman as having done the same to proprietary Unix companies, he is somehow evil.
When people are free, the slave traders go bankrupt. That does not mean the the liberators were the bad guys to begin with.
Richard Stallman paid the rent for many years by selling tapes with GNU Emacs on it. So stop the "He's a commie!" lingo already. It's getting really old.
It looks like you are getting the treatment most newbies get: a thorough bashing. Not much help, is it?
That being said, you probably should have read the documentation a bit more intently. The installation guide is fairly clear on this: if you need to tinker with partitions, you need to use the custom install. However, if Anaconda wiped your HD without so much as warning you, that is indeed utterly tactless. Filing a polite bug report would porobably be in order. See: http://bugzilla.redhat.com/
There is also the question of the Master Boot Record. You talk about RedHat overwriting the MBR as though that was a bad thing. I know there are reasons not to use it, but LILO is hardly an impediment to your running NT and GNU/Linux on the same machine. You could have just re-configured LILO, if you had a problem.
Had you chosen the custom install, you could have tinkered your partitions a little bit, installed non-destructively, and not overwritten the MBR. Better yet, you could have overwritten the MBR with a properly-configured LILO. The problem is you did not chose the proper installation method.
For future reference, always read the installation manual before going ahead with a new OS on a machine. Otherwise, problems can an do happen. However, if you feel RedHat did something utterly destructive to your machine without warning you, write a nice bug report and users everywhere will thank you for it.
The best of luck to you.
Some people seem to believe that the GPL is somehow related to shrink-wrapped licences. It is not even close, either legally, morally or factually.
The GNU GPL is a copyright notice. As such, like any copyright notice, it covers modification and distribution only. There is nothing in the GPL about usage. The GPL even states that usage is not governed by its terms. You can therefore do whatever you want. You have no obligation to anyone.
Of course, if you want to distribute or modify it, you have to do so under the terms of the license. Not because you signed it or used the software, but because due to copyright law, the license is your only permission to do so.
That is an important part: since the GPL is just a copyright notice, it only covers only usage and modification. Contrary to popular belief, you do not have to agree to the GPL before using GPLed software, and are not bound by its terms simply by using the software.
Shrink-wrap licenses are not copyright notices. They are contracts. Contracts as in "I signed on a new mortgage", "I got married" or "I signed a NDA". And contracts can cover a LOT of ground, much more than mere distribution of modification.
With shrink-wrap licenses, you basically end up with legal obligations towards the other party. And with UCITA, shrink-wrap licenses can apply to internet content (articles and such) and be retroactively modified.
Question: do you really want to have legal obligations towards every news site you visit that feels like it? Remember, hitting the "Back" does not mean you never visited the site, never broke the "shrink wrap".
Well, I don't. Regardless of whether or not that power would be misused. But I'm in luck: I don't live in the US. If I did, I probably would be writing to my elected representatives, right now.
Dislike the GPL, if you must... But at least know it for what it is: a copyright notice, nothing more, nothing less.