When is a work a derived work?
on
GPLv2 Vs. GPLv3
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· Score: 1
The FSF has some guidelines, but in the end what the FSF believes doesn't matter (except for potential damages). What matters is what a judge will consider a "derived work" according to copyright law.
My personal belief (which diverges from the FSF party line) is that the actual mechanism to communicate between the GPL'ed and proprietary code won't matter as much as whether the person distributing the proprietary code also distributes GPL'ed code.
Re:The next "One major danger"...
on
GPLv2 Vs. GPLv3
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· Score: 1
> Freedom is a limited resource, because one man's freedom is another man's restriction.
Even Libertarians know this "your right to swing your first ends where my face starts". They just pretend ignorance in most situations.
> One major danger that GPLv3.1 will block is Googlization. Googlization means services contain > GPL-covered software that you can't change, because the product is never published and so no > source code has to be provided.
This was actually up for GPLv3, but meet too much resistance through the review process.
> One major danger that GPLv3.2 will block is Xboxization. Xboxization means devices contain > GPL-covered software that connect to a network that you can't change, because the network shuts > you out if it detects modified software...
Xboxization would require DRM restrictions already forbidden in GPLv3.
> On ATI/nVidia Linux drivers.. One major danger that GPLv3.3 will block is BLOBization. > BLOBization means software packages containing GPL-covered software that communicate to a > non-GPL-covered piece of binary software (BLOB) that you can't change, because the BLOB is not > covered by the GPL...
This is already forbidden in GPLv2, the only reason ATI/nVidia can do it is because Linux is considered covered by "GPLv2 plus an implicit exception for binary BLOBs". Well, that and the fact the legal power to enforce GPL to people not actually distributing any GPL'ed software (but only binary BLOBs intended to link with GPL'ed software) is somewhat dubious. A new version of the GPL will not change either of these.
> One major danger that GPLv4 will block is GPL-less compiling. GPL-less compiling means programs > created using GPL-covered software that you can't change, because the actual program contains no > GPL-covered source code.
This is kind of silly, as the tools where this could actually be enforced (like GCC and Bison where non-trivial GPL'ed code is usually included in the result) has specific exceptions to allow "GPL-less compiling". For Bison, this exception was added recently.
> One major danger that GPLv4.1 will block is artization. artization means original works of art > created using GPL-covered software that you can't change, because the work is strictly non-GPL.
How is this different from the previous point?
> One major danger that GPLv4.2 will block is reimplementation. reimplementation means software > programs developed based on, but re-implemented in a different way of, GPL software that you > can't change, because the work is not GPL.
Given that the core of GNU is re-implementations of proprietary work, this goes beyond silly. It is also unenforceable with copyright law, you'd need a "copyleft" for patents instead (which has been suggested (albeit not by the FSF): This patent can be used by anyone who shared their own patents in a similar way).
> One major danger that GPLv5 will block is in-houseation. in-houseation means software programs > based on, developed with, and so forth and so on as set forth in the other clauses, that is only > used in-house that you can't change because the source code need not have been made available.
This would violate freedom 0, which would mean a clear breach of the contract signed to everyone who has ever donated software to the FSF. The FSF has already declared licenses with a "anti-in-houseation" clause for non-free with reference to freedom 0.
> And so forth and so on.
Actually, only your first suggestion had any basis in reality. The rest seemed made up with the sole purpose of spreading fear, uncertainty and doubt about the future of the GPL.
Living in a place where they have to make a new law before shutting you up is vastly preferable to living in a place with no such requirement.
You also forgot the "and" clause, which enumerate the specific reasons for allowing laws that limits freedom of speech, such as "national security". It looks like anything can be put under these items, but nonetheless Danish courts have overturned Danish laws by referring to this convention. So they must represent some strength. Danish courts never overturned Danish laws before EU, our own constitution is written, but extremely weak. The freedom of speech clause in our constitution boils down to that the state cannot prevent stop you before you publish, but can punish you after publishing.
The solution I prefer over restricting access to information is flooding everybody with information. OK, there will be pictures of you doing something stupid. So what? There will be pictures of everybody doing something stupid.
The only advantage I can see to restricting information is that people can keep their hypocritic attitudes. With the flooding solution, attitutes will need to change.
I guess this is why Congress attacks picture labeling, rather than the kind of privacy information that really matters, such as shopping habbits. The later just re-inforses the corporate hold over the citizens, while the prior threatens the micture of hyporacy and pre-judices commonly known as "family values".
I don't know about Canada, but in Denmark the accuser has to pay what the judge estimates the defense ought to cost, not the actual cost. So if your lawyer is any good, you will have to pay most of his salary yourself, even if you win.
I have always thought that all the constant high pitched noise on MMORPG fora were just spoiled kids and other immature people whining because the virtual world didn't revolve around them.
It probably still is, but at least this article suggest that there can be more to it than that. Groups of people trying to create "events" by coordinated manipulation of the fora means that the in-game groups are trying to extend their actions to the real world, or at least a level of virtuality close to the real world (fora like/.). This is so much more interesting.
> How on Earth do you create the *illusion* of problem free computer usage?
Advertising. This is totally unrelated to how the software works in practice.
Advertising for various commercial diets create a similar illusion. The illusion breaks down when you actually try it, just like the "problem free computer usage" illusion breaks down when you actually try to use their (or anyone elses) software.
I suspect he was referring to US internal politics...
Seen from my point the dividing line in US politics seem to be between right wing extremists and right wing lunatics. Showing "both sides" in such a situation does not really bring any additional light to the subject.
I'd love to be able to see where a story came from. Especially for online news sources, we often have the situation where 20 different sites all post the same story, but the details differ. The stories are translated back and forth between languages, each site has to use their own words (otherwise it is a copyright violation), and many sites have their own angles.
Being able to track down the relationship between the reports would greatly help separating the facts from the fiction in the story.
Adding such user preferences would muddy up their message about automatic matching of adds to web pages.
Google has never been about adding choices, their trademark is their ultra-simple, yet functional, interfaces. Just about everybody else had Boolean operators in their search before Google, in fact, the idea of providing a search service with only AND was quite revolutionary in its time.
The list of banned adds reflect what Google's AdSense clients, the people who put Google adds on their web pages, are willing to put up with. Many people would be unhappy to see adds for prostitution, guns or tobacco on their web pages, and choose another advertising partner if Google let those through. Losing those partners would hurt more than losing the advertisement customers for the listed products.
Now homework cheating services are on that list.
So this is a case where maximizing profit also happens to be "do no evil" (depending on your definition of evil).
The Palestine article doesn't seem like garbage to me. It is probably too long, and seem like an example of why a "hide references" would be good.
The article about the Danisg Muhammad Cartppms was also surprisingly good while the event was current. Actually one of the best descriptions of the case you could fidn anywhere on the net at the time.
I agree that the talk pages are often horrible, but surprisingly often that horror doesn't reflect on the main articles.
Maybe you simply are more optimistic than me, I keep getting surprised of how good many articles are. I don't notice the bad articles so much, as that is pretty much my default expectation. It took me ages before I started using (and contributing) to Wikipedia, I was so certain the concept couldn't possible work.
> Seems equally likely that the native lifeforms would be unable to compete with the > Earth-based invasive species...
The native have home advantage. More specifically, fertile soil is very much alive, with a complex ecosystem which the locals life forms have adapted to. Even on Earth, it is rare that species flourish when moved to a different ecosystem (but when they do, it is often quite damaging). Even if some Earth-based species would flourish, it is far from certain that it would be the species we prefer.
The best bet would probably be to kill off the native life in the soil somehow, perhaps with radiation, and then seed the soil would a complete Earth based ecosystem. The border line would still be a combat zone between the ecosystems, with those species that can cross doing damage to both sides. And because of size, the Earth life zones would be much more fragile. Unless we nuke the entire planet, but then we probably should be terraforming some uninhabited planet instead.
Viruses are DNA specific, most can't even swap between species on Earth.
Bacteria are slightly worse. The ones that cause us trouble tend to be highly specialized, which of course wouldn't be a problem on another planet. But there are also generalist. Most likely, our natural defense would have no trouble with those, but we could be unlucky.
The defense is also the largest problem, we would not be a good food source for the native life, but neither would the native life provide the necessary nutrients for us. We would at least need a supplement of Earth based life forms. And the Earth based life forms would be unlikely to be able to compete with the native life forms, so a sustainable colony would be a challenge.
There are plenty of scientific areas where are pretty much as good as they get, that is, where the effort needed to make the models better is not really reasonable given what little improvements in predictive power it will get us.
At least partly. The fantasy that many people, both in the popular press and here on/., suffer under, namely that free software is developed by a bunch of unpaid amateurs, is no longer true, and probably never was. Apparently Hilf believes it once was true.
Of course, there are probably more students and amateurs working on free software as ever before, but the large impact free software project is mainly being developed by full time professionals.
Free software has become a mean of collaboration between commercial entities, still with some participation from students and hobbyists.
Interestingly, the GPL -- so often accused of being anti-commercial -- has been a great enabler of the commercial involvement. It creates a level playing field by making it difficult for any one player to keep their own improvement away from the others. While such proprietary branches are often fine with the hobbyists and students, they are devastating for the remaining commercial players. An example is WINE, which went from a BSD'ish license to LGPL, when one commercial WINE developer decided to keep their improvement proprietary. This was of course totally unacceptable to the remaining companies based on the WINE code, hence the license change and resulting code fork.
Microsoft mentioned the Linux kernel proper, the "Linux GUI", and OpenOffice.org as the software in violation of Microsoft patents. None of these are owned by the FSF, and only Gnome (if that is what the "Linux GUI" refers to) is the only GNU project among them.
There are two good reasons why no FSF owned code has been challenged:
1) The FSF is a legal entity, and can actually defend itself. The FUD factor is much higher for the project with no/many owners. Who is going to stand up for them?
2) The FSF is very careful about patents, it is quite common on the GCC list to see comments along the line of "the obvious technique for doing this is patented, but I found an alternative way to do it, so let's implement that". The core GCC developers seems to read patents in order to know what to avoid.
The obvious exception seems to be OpenOffice.org which is owned by Sun, but Microsoft has a cross-license agreement with Sun (like most of the large technological companies has with each other), which may make it difficult for Sun to defend OpenOffice.org. After all, thanks to the cross-license agreement, Microsoft is not accusing Sun of any wrongdoing.
I had a 2P dual-core opteron 2.6GHz box as my workstation for several months. To be honest I couldn't really find a legitimate use for it. And I was running gentoo and doing a lot of my own OSS development [re: builds].
Uh, doesn't "make -j 3" gives you a good speedup? I'd imagine multi-core being great for development, at least for compiled languages.
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The FSF has some guidelines, but in the end what the FSF believes doesn't matter (except for potential damages). What matters is what a judge will consider a "derived work" according to copyright law.
My personal belief (which diverges from the FSF party line) is that the actual mechanism to communicate between the GPL'ed and proprietary code won't matter as much as whether the person distributing the proprietary code also distributes GPL'ed code.
> Freedom is a limited resource, because one man's freedom is another man's restriction.
Even Libertarians know this "your right to swing your first ends where my face starts". They just pretend ignorance in most situations.
> One major danger that GPLv3.1 will block is Googlization. Googlization means services contain
> GPL-covered software that you can't change, because the product is never published and so no
> source code has to be provided.
This was actually up for GPLv3, but meet too much resistance through the review process.
> One major danger that GPLv3.2 will block is Xboxization. Xboxization means devices contain
> GPL-covered software that connect to a network that you can't change, because the network shuts
> you out if it detects modified software...
Xboxization would require DRM restrictions already forbidden in GPLv3.
> On ATI/nVidia Linux drivers.. One major danger that GPLv3.3 will block is BLOBization.
> BLOBization means software packages containing GPL-covered software that communicate to a
> non-GPL-covered piece of binary software (BLOB) that you can't change, because the BLOB is not
> covered by the GPL...
This is already forbidden in GPLv2, the only reason ATI/nVidia can do it is because Linux is considered covered by "GPLv2 plus an implicit exception for binary BLOBs". Well, that and the fact the legal power to enforce GPL to people not actually distributing any GPL'ed software (but only binary BLOBs intended to link with GPL'ed software) is somewhat dubious. A new version of the GPL will not change either of these.
> One major danger that GPLv4 will block is GPL-less compiling. GPL-less compiling means programs
> created using GPL-covered software that you can't change, because the actual program contains no
> GPL-covered source code.
This is kind of silly, as the tools where this could actually be enforced (like GCC and Bison where non-trivial GPL'ed code is usually included in the result) has specific exceptions to allow "GPL-less compiling". For Bison, this exception was added recently.
> One major danger that GPLv4.1 will block is artization. artization means original works of art
> created using GPL-covered software that you can't change, because the work is strictly non-GPL.
How is this different from the previous point?
> One major danger that GPLv4.2 will block is reimplementation. reimplementation means software
> programs developed based on, but re-implemented in a different way of, GPL software that you
> can't change, because the work is not GPL.
Given that the core of GNU is re-implementations of proprietary work, this goes beyond silly. It is also unenforceable with copyright law, you'd need a "copyleft" for patents instead (which has been suggested (albeit not by the FSF): This patent can be used by anyone who shared their own patents in a similar way).
> One major danger that GPLv5 will block is in-houseation. in-houseation means software programs
> based on, developed with, and so forth and so on as set forth in the other clauses, that is only
> used in-house that you can't change because the source code need not have been made available.
This would violate freedom 0, which would mean a clear breach of the contract signed to everyone who has ever donated software to the FSF. The FSF has already declared licenses with a "anti-in-houseation" clause for non-free with reference to freedom 0.
> And so forth and so on.
Actually, only your first suggestion had any basis in reality. The rest seemed made up with the sole purpose of spreading fear, uncertainty and doubt about the future of the GPL.
The Soviets (for which the Soviet Union was named) is a more recent example of an experiment in direct democracy. Worked out great there, too.
BTW: I was being sarcastic.
Just ignorance of the proper legal terminology. Few laypeople know the difference between "criminal" and "illegal".
"Ballmer is the head of an organization that has based its success on illegal activities" is the proper phrasing, if somewhat awkward.
Living in a place where they have to make a new law before shutting you up is vastly preferable to living in a place with no such requirement.
You also forgot the "and" clause, which enumerate the specific reasons for allowing laws that limits freedom of speech, such as "national security". It looks like anything can be put under these items, but nonetheless Danish courts have overturned Danish laws by referring to this convention. So they must represent some strength. Danish courts never overturned Danish laws before EU, our own constitution is written, but extremely weak. The freedom of speech clause in our constitution boils down to that the state cannot prevent stop you before you publish, but can punish you after publishing.
> Why did the 8 jurors think they were guilty, if it was an open and shut case?
Because the defendant was a transsexual prostitute?
Just guessing.
The solution I prefer over restricting access to information is flooding everybody with information. OK, there will be pictures of you doing something stupid. So what? There will be pictures of everybody doing something stupid.
The only advantage I can see to restricting information is that people can keep their hypocritic attitudes. With the flooding solution, attitutes will need to change.
I guess this is why Congress attacks picture labeling, rather than the kind of privacy information that really matters, such as shopping habbits. The later just re-inforses the corporate hold over the citizens, while the prior threatens the micture of hyporacy and pre-judices commonly known as "family values".
Does God hate you?
I don't know about Canada, but in Denmark the accuser has to pay what the judge estimates the defense ought to cost, not the actual cost. So if your lawyer is any good, you will have to pay most of his salary yourself, even if you win.
I have always thought that all the constant high pitched noise on MMORPG fora were just spoiled kids and other immature people whining because the virtual world didn't revolve around them.
/.). This is so much more interesting.
It probably still is, but at least this article suggest that there can be more to it than that. Groups of people trying to create "events" by coordinated manipulation of the fora means that the in-game groups are trying to extend their actions to the real world, or at least a level of virtuality close to the real world (fora like
> How on Earth do you create the *illusion* of problem free computer usage?
Advertising. This is totally unrelated to how the software works in practice.
Advertising for various commercial diets create a similar illusion. The illusion breaks down when you actually try it, just like the "problem free computer usage" illusion breaks down when you actually try to use their (or anyone elses) software.
I suspect he was referring to US internal politics...
Seen from my point the dividing line in US politics seem to be between right wing extremists and right wing lunatics. Showing "both sides" in such a situation does not really bring any additional light to the subject.
I'd love to be able to see where a story came from. Especially for online news sources, we often have the situation where 20 different sites all post the same story, but the details differ. The stories are translated back and forth between languages, each site has to use their own words (otherwise it is a copyright violation), and many sites have their own angles.
Being able to track down the relationship between the reports would greatly help separating the facts from the fiction in the story.
Adding such user preferences would muddy up their message about automatic matching of adds to web pages.
Google has never been about adding choices, their trademark is their ultra-simple, yet functional, interfaces. Just about everybody else had Boolean operators in their search before Google, in fact, the idea of providing a search service with only AND was quite revolutionary in its time.
The list of banned adds reflect what Google's AdSense clients, the people who put Google adds on their web pages, are willing to put up with. Many people would be unhappy to see adds for prostitution, guns or tobacco on their web pages, and choose another advertising partner if Google let those through. Losing those partners would hurt more than losing the advertisement customers for the listed products.
Now homework cheating services are on that list.
So this is a case where maximizing profit also happens to be "do no evil" (depending on your definition of evil).
The Palestine article doesn't seem like garbage to me. It is probably too long, and seem like an example of why a "hide references" would be good.
The article about the Danisg Muhammad Cartppms was also surprisingly good while the event was current. Actually one of the best descriptions of the case you could fidn anywhere on the net at the time.
I agree that the talk pages are often horrible, but surprisingly often that horror doesn't reflect on the main articles.
Maybe you simply are more optimistic than me, I keep getting surprised of how good many articles are. I don't notice the bad articles so much, as that is pretty much my default expectation. It took me ages before I started using (and contributing) to Wikipedia, I was so certain the concept couldn't possible work.
> Seems equally likely that the native lifeforms would be unable to compete with the
> Earth-based invasive species...
The native have home advantage. More specifically, fertile soil is very much alive, with a complex ecosystem which the locals life forms have adapted to. Even on Earth, it is rare that species flourish when moved to a different ecosystem (but when they do, it is often quite damaging). Even if some Earth-based species would flourish, it is far from certain that it would be the species we prefer.
The best bet would probably be to kill off the native life in the soil somehow, perhaps with radiation, and then seed the soil would a complete Earth based ecosystem. The border line would still be a combat zone between the ecosystems, with those species that can cross doing damage to both sides. And because of size, the Earth life zones would be much more fragile. Unless we nuke the entire planet, but then we probably should be terraforming some uninhabited planet instead.
Viruses are DNA specific, most can't even swap between species on Earth.
Bacteria are slightly worse. The ones that cause us trouble tend to be highly specialized, which of course wouldn't be a problem on another planet. But there are also generalist. Most likely, our natural defense would have no trouble with those, but we could be unlucky.
The defense is also the largest problem, we would not be a good food source for the native life, but neither would the native life provide the necessary nutrients for us. We would at least need a supplement of Earth based life forms. And the Earth based life forms would be unlikely to be able to compete with the native life forms, so a sustainable colony would be a challenge.
There are plenty of scientific areas where are pretty much as good as they get, that is, where the effort needed to make the models better is not really reasonable given what little improvements in predictive power it will get us.
Obvious to a compiler expert is not the same as obvious to a patent examiner.
At least partly. The fantasy that many people, both in the popular press and here on /., suffer under, namely that free software is developed by a bunch of unpaid amateurs, is no longer true, and probably never was. Apparently Hilf believes it once was true.
Of course, there are probably more students and amateurs working on free software as ever before, but the large impact free software project is mainly being developed by full time professionals.
Free software has become a mean of collaboration between commercial entities, still with some participation from students and hobbyists.
Interestingly, the GPL -- so often accused of being anti-commercial -- has been a great enabler of the commercial involvement. It creates a level playing field by making it difficult for any one player to keep their own improvement away from the others. While such proprietary branches are often fine with the hobbyists and students, they are devastating for the remaining commercial players. An example is WINE, which went from a BSD'ish license to LGPL, when one commercial WINE developer decided to keep their improvement proprietary. This was of course totally unacceptable to the remaining companies based on the WINE code, hence the license change and resulting code fork.
Microsoft mentioned the Linux kernel proper, the "Linux GUI", and OpenOffice.org as the software in violation of Microsoft patents. None of these are owned by the FSF, and only Gnome (if that is what the "Linux GUI" refers to) is the only GNU project among them.
There are two good reasons why no FSF owned code has been challenged:
1) The FSF is a legal entity, and can actually defend itself. The FUD factor is much higher for the project with no/many owners. Who is going to stand up for them?
2) The FSF is very careful about patents, it is quite common on the GCC list to see comments along the line of "the obvious technique for doing this is patented, but I found an alternative way to do it, so let's implement that". The core GCC developers seems to read patents in order to know what to avoid.
The obvious exception seems to be OpenOffice.org which is owned by Sun, but Microsoft has a cross-license agreement with Sun (like most of the large technological companies has with each other), which may make it difficult for Sun to defend OpenOffice.org. After all, thanks to the cross-license agreement, Microsoft is not accusing Sun of any wrongdoing.
Scandinavia is often used as a synonym for the Nordic countries in an English language context.
Uh, doesn't "make -j 3" gives you a good speedup? I'd imagine multi-core being great for development, at least for compiled languages.