Even without cocpyright law, you would still be able to restrict IP with contract law. A likely short-time outcome of removing copyright law, would be that software and music distributors would require you to sign a contract stating that you would not redistribute the software. It could work like the way you sign for a renters card in a Video shop.
US didn't sign the Berne convention until recently, yet the US has always had copyright law (The US constitution grant congress the right to restrict the right of the citizens to copy written material with copyright, in order to promote the progress of art and science.)
A tiny fraction of programmers today have jobs whose existence depends on copyright. Most programmers are payed to solve problems, i.e. creating ad-hoc solutions for their clients with no intention of resale. So the issue of "being paid for your work" is a red herring.
However, while the vast majority of the software being *created* does not depend on copyrights, the majority of software being *used* does depend on software. This is because the majority of consumers use mass produced shrink-wrapped software.
Thus, if you want to advocate copyrights, it should (ironically) not be for the sake of the creators, but for the sake of the consumers. The free software world have yet to prove that it can produce software (through other rewqrds than copyright) to fulfill the needs of the mass market, allthough it is getting closer with products like Linux, KDE, OpenOffice and Mozilla.
Digital copying of copyrighted works for personal use is forbidden, and our constitutional protection of religious freedom is limited to worshipping _God_ in any way, i.e. monotheism.
The good thing about the ad-campaign (with lots of prime-time TV spots) against MP3 files, was that the Danish RIAA-equivalent really came out as the bad guys who were going after children. They already pulled every dirty trick in the book (paying kids to turn in other kids, scanning the newsgroups for the work MP3 and spamming anyone who mentioned it woth threats of lawsuits, suing kids who *linked* to pages where you could download MP3's, and trying to bully the ISP's to block access to MP3 files).
The TV ads made the general public aware of what they did, and probably helped change the law so that making digital copies are now allowed in some circumstances.
You didn't kill people or blow things up. That alone makes it outrageous in the gaming world.
I think it demonstrated that computer games can be art, not just entertainment. Other people think like me. This of course create resentment, the arrogant claim that a game for no objective reason is more than other games containing the same elements.
The main topic of/. used to be "someone mentioned Linux somewhere". While that time is long gone, it is still interesting to see it getting more mainstream./. should not forget its roots.
> The prestige of publishing an accurate version
> of such an important work, would likely more
> than make up for the lost royalty revenue, just
> in increased consultation fees.
Unfortunetely, you gain a lot more brownie points in scietific cicles for publishing anything on dead tree than publishing it online. Even if neither version are peer-reviewed, the dead-tree version counts for more. It doesn't matter that the online version is of higher quality or have more readers.
It is also more accepted to quote from dead-tree sources than from online sources, which is a further incitament for authors to publish on dead tree.
/. doesn't pretent to work like a mainstream news media, presenting pre-digested news items in a form that pretends to be objective.
/. messages are clearly not validated, and they are clearly subjective. There is no excuse for the reader to turn of his brain. It is obvious that you need to crosscheck information you get on/. from other sources, which the comment section often is helpful in locating.
I find this a very refreshing change. With traditional media you contsantly have to remind yourself that "even though this is _appear_ to be a well researched news item, it probably isn't". And even though this _appear_ to objective reporting, there are likely hidden agendas./. is refreshingly honest about their agendas and unreliable sources.
Anyone who have first hand information about events covered by traditional media knows how far off the media "truth" can be. Unfortunately, most people just assume that their case was an exception, and that the media usually is relieable.
People who dislike thinking themselves will prefer this, and will want/. to pretent to objective and reliable like traditional media. Some of the new people at/. is moving it that way, unfortunately.
RMS is a moral man, and like any moral man he is in opposition to Ayn Rand. No "misunderstanding" necessary, Ayn Rand is not a moral authority. Quite the opposite.
And, no, RMS is not against making money. He just doesn't make it the ultimate goal, the final arbitrater between good and evil. Also in this he is in opposition to Ayn Rand.
It *is* possible to make money without preventing other people from sharing information. The far majority of the population of Earth does this.
Your examples are wrong:
The Coca-Cola formula is *not* secret, Coca-Cola remain #1 mainly because they control the distribution network, and partly because they can afford to spend more money on advertisement than any of their competitors.
Not knowing what is in a Big Rat is a pretty good reason not eat it (I promise you, whatever it is, it isn't healthy), but the best reason is that they taste bad.
> Until such time you can provide proof there
> were no clause 3 violations go by the statement > and CONTIUNE to point out
Of course you will. Your cause is far to important to let such minor consideration such as "the burden of proof is on the procecution" matter. It is basically impossible to prove anyone innocent, which mean you will be able to continue your groundless accusations.
BTW: First, you *don't* lose your right under copyright if you don't defend them (you are confusing copyright law with trademark law), so UofC haven't lost any rights. However, they probably didn't have them in the first place, since clause 3 go beyond copyright law.
glibc is under the LGPL, not the GPL. There is no conflict between the LGPL and the old BSDL.
"mr" has a long history of spreading untruths about the FSF on/.. It seems clear that he is on some sort of personal vendeta, where truth no longer matter.
All free software is also open source, using RMS' definitions. You are allowed (morally and legally) to charge money for developing free (open source) software. RMS does so himself.
He is not proposing anyone should starve to create software. Nobody has starved to create Linux, GCC, or Apache, which are all quite impressive feats of software engineering.
PS: We don't need your "new license", it is basic copyright law. Your basic problem seems to be that RMS excercises his freedom of speech, to suggest other people what they do with their software.
RMS never got around to answering the legal question, which would have been that there is no problem running a LGPL library on top of a closed source driver.
Bill Gates is doing what people in our society are expected to do, gather power and personal wealth. He is not a rebel, he is working within the system and for the system. He is just more succesful than most.
RMS is the real madman, he is giving up both power and personal wealth in the pursuit of a dream of a better world. In our society, this is insanity.
I don't agree with a many of RMS' views, but I admire his madness. We desperately need mad people like RMS to remind us of dreams that go beyond wealth, power or even the geeky technical goals most of us here follow. We also need people like ESR to reformulate the dream in socially acceptable terms.
Linus isn't important because of the code he writes. It is just a small part of the code written today. He isn't even important because of the administrative and coordination work he does. Other people could do that, probably even better.
He is important because of the respect he commands. Even when other developers disagree with his technical decisions, no matter how strongly, they don't challenge his right to make these decisions.
This mean we don't get real source forks. Of course, we get lots of minor forks, when people need to add features and fix bugs for another schedule than Linus they have to fork the code. But these forks are clearly so, they define themselves compared to the main trunk, and there is no debate about what is the main trunk.
If Linus was kidnapped by flying saucers[2], and Dave Miller and Alan Cox disagreed about the future of Linux, there would no longer be clear what the "real" Linux was. Alan's or Miller's?
Or what would make them more real than all the practical branches?
--
Per A.
[1] Well, I just did, but I like catchy headlines.
[2] Hope that is less morbid.
You can't have a stable ABI when the language itself is still evolving. GCC 3.0 will be the first GCC version implementing the final C++ standard (including the standard library), and it will be the first GCC versions to promise a stable ABI.
"I may disagree with what you have to say, but I shall defend, to the death, your right to say it." - often attributed to Voltaire
The FSF exists to protect the right of Red Hat to do exactly what they have done. But that doesn't mean they (or the Steering Committe, which are managing GCC on behalf of the FSF) have to agree with it. There is an important difference between saying "I forbid you to do that" and saying "You are allowed to do that, but I believe you should not do it anyway, and here is why..."
is actually a common practice. Sun for a long time shipped a separate cc that they supported only for building the kernel (this was before dynamic loaded kernel modules). I suspect most of the closed source OS companies also use older versions of the compiler.
What you have to realise is that kernel code is very low level, and often relies on features and missing optimizations that would never affact application code.
While one should of course fix the kernel (or provide hooks in the compiler) to make them work together, holding back the release of one for the sake of the other is rarely a good idea.
Like Joe, I have used GCC since the early days, and 2.95.2 is by far the best and most stable release.
What Red Hat should have done, was to release their own version under a different label, like they (the Cygnus part of the company) earlier have released their own GCC versions under their "GNUPro" label.
Slashdot Mirror
Even without cocpyright law, you would still be able to restrict IP with contract law. A likely short-time outcome of removing copyright law, would be that software and music distributors would require you to sign a contract stating that you would not redistribute the software. It could work like the way you sign for a renters card in a Video shop.
US didn't sign the Berne convention until recently, yet the US has always had copyright law (The US constitution grant congress the right to restrict the right of the citizens to copy written material with copyright, in order to promote the progress of art and science.)
A tiny fraction of programmers today have jobs whose existence depends on copyright. Most programmers are payed to solve problems, i.e. creating ad-hoc solutions for their clients with no intention of resale. So the issue of "being paid for your work" is a red herring.
However, while the vast majority of the software being *created* does not depend on copyrights, the majority of software being *used* does depend on software. This is because the majority of consumers use mass produced shrink-wrapped software.
Thus, if you want to advocate copyrights, it should (ironically) not be for the sake of the creators, but for the sake of the consumers. The free software world have yet to prove that it can produce software (through other rewqrds than copyright) to fulfill the needs of the mass market, allthough it is getting closer with products like Linux, KDE, OpenOffice and Mozilla.
> There in this for the money.
Yes, which is why we should filter out ISP's who support spammers. This will cost them customers, and thus money.
Digital copying of copyrighted works for personal use is forbidden, and our constitutional protection of religious freedom is limited to worshipping _God_ in any way, i.e. monotheism.
The good thing about the ad-campaign (with lots of prime-time TV spots) against MP3 files, was that the Danish RIAA-equivalent really came out as the bad guys who were going after children. They already pulled every dirty trick in the book (paying kids to turn in other kids, scanning the newsgroups for the work MP3 and spamming anyone who mentioned it woth threats of lawsuits, suing kids who *linked* to pages where you could download MP3's, and trying to bully the ISP's to block access to MP3 files).
The TV ads made the general public aware of what they did, and probably helped change the law so that making digital copies are now allowed in some circumstances.
They GartnerGroup clearly doesn't read slashdot. Whether this makes them more or less trustworthy is up to interpretation.
You didn't kill people or blow things up. That alone makes it outrageous in the gaming world.
I think it demonstrated that computer games can be art, not just entertainment. Other people think like me. This of course create resentment, the arrogant claim that a game for no objective reason is more than other games containing the same elements.
The main topic of /. used to be "someone mentioned Linux somewhere". While that time is long gone, it is still interesting to see it getting more mainstream. /. should not forget its roots.
> The prestige of publishing an accurate version
> of such an important work, would likely more
> than make up for the lost royalty revenue, just
> in increased consultation fees.
Unfortunetely, you gain a lot more brownie points in scietific cicles for publishing anything on dead tree than publishing it online. Even if neither version are peer-reviewed, the dead-tree version counts for more. It doesn't matter that the online version is of higher quality or have more readers.
It is also more accepted to quote from dead-tree sources than from online sources, which is a further incitament for authors to publish on dead tree.
/. doesn't pretent to work like a mainstream news media, presenting pre-digested news items in a form that pretends to be objective.
/. from other sources, which the comment section often is helpful in locating.
/. is refreshingly honest about their agendas and unreliable sources.
/. to pretent to objective and reliable like traditional media. Some of the new people at /. is moving it that way, unfortunately.
/. messages are clearly not validated, and they are clearly subjective. There is no excuse for the reader to turn of his brain. It is obvious that you need to crosscheck information you get on
I find this a very refreshing change. With traditional media you contsantly have to remind yourself that "even though this is _appear_ to be a well researched news item, it probably isn't". And even though this _appear_ to objective reporting, there are likely hidden agendas.
Anyone who have first hand information about events covered by traditional media knows how far off the media "truth" can be. Unfortunately, most people just assume that their case was an exception, and that the media usually is relieable.
People who dislike thinking themselves will prefer this, and will want
RMS is a moral man, and like any moral man he is in opposition to Ayn Rand. No "misunderstanding" necessary, Ayn Rand is not a moral authority. Quite the opposite.
And, no, RMS is not against making money. He just doesn't make it the ultimate goal, the final arbitrater between good and evil. Also in this he is in opposition to Ayn Rand.
It *is* possible to make money without preventing other people from sharing information. The far majority of the population of Earth does this.
Your examples are wrong:
The Coca-Cola formula is *not* secret, Coca-Cola remain #1 mainly because they control the distribution network, and partly because they can afford to spend more money on advertisement than any of their competitors.
Not knowing what is in a Big Rat is a pretty good reason not eat it (I promise you, whatever it is, it isn't healthy), but the best reason is that they taste bad.
> Nothing about execution that I see.
Nor any violation, unless you can find some FSF advertizement for glibc mentioning features from or use of the BSD code.
> Until such time you can provide proof there
> were no clause 3 violations go by the statement > and CONTIUNE to point out
Of course you will. Your cause is far to important to let such minor consideration such as "the burden of proof is on the procecution" matter. It is basically impossible to prove anyone innocent, which mean you will be able to continue your groundless accusations.
BTW: First, you *don't* lose your right under copyright if you don't defend them (you are confusing copyright law with trademark law), so UofC haven't lost any rights. However, they probably didn't have them in the first place, since clause 3 go beyond copyright law.
I actually think you got it ;-)
glibc is under the LGPL, not the GPL. There is no conflict between the LGPL and the old BSDL.
/.. It seems clear that he is on some sort of personal vendeta, where truth no longer matter.
"mr" has a long history of spreading untruths about the FSF on
All free software is also open source, using RMS' definitions. You are allowed (morally and legally) to charge money for developing free (open source) software. RMS does so himself.
He is not proposing anyone should starve to create software. Nobody has starved to create Linux, GCC, or Apache, which are all quite impressive feats of software engineering.
PS: We don't need your "new license", it is basic copyright law. Your basic problem seems to be that RMS excercises his freedom of speech, to suggest other people what they do with their software.
RMS never got around to answering the legal question, which would have been that there is no problem running a LGPL library on top of a closed source driver.
Bill Gates is doing what people in our society are expected to do, gather power and personal wealth. He is not a rebel, he is working within the system and for the system. He is just more succesful than most.
RMS is the real madman, he is giving up both power and personal wealth in the pursuit of a dream of a better world. In our society, this is insanity.
I don't agree with a many of RMS' views, but I admire his madness. We desperately need mad people like RMS to remind us of dreams that go beyond wealth, power or even the geeky technical goals most of us here follow. We also need people like ESR to reformulate the dream in socially acceptable terms.
> Many of these basic debates have stopped
> entirely, e.g. the argument of vi vs. emacs.
That's hardly surpising, since Emacs is obviously technically and morally superior to vi at every level. No need for an argument there.
Linus isn't important because of the code he writes. It is just a small part of the code written today. He isn't even important because of the administrative and coordination work he does. Other people could do that, probably even better.
He is important because of the respect he commands. Even when other developers disagree with his technical decisions, no matter how strongly, they don't challenge his right to make these decisions.
This mean we don't get real source forks. Of course, we get lots of minor forks, when people need to add features and fix bugs for another schedule than Linus they have to fork the code. But these forks are clearly so, they define themselves compared to the main trunk, and there is no debate about what is the main trunk.
If Linus was kidnapped by flying saucers[2], and Dave Miller and Alan Cox disagreed about the future of Linux, there would no longer be clear what the "real" Linux was. Alan's or Miller's?
Or what would make them more real than all the practical branches?
--
Per A.
[1] Well, I just did, but I like catchy headlines.
[2] Hope that is less morbid.
You can't have a stable ABI when the language itself is still evolving. GCC 3.0 will be the first GCC version implementing the final C++ standard (including the standard library), and it will be the first GCC versions to promise a stable ABI.
"I may disagree with what you have to say, but I shall defend, to the death, your right to say it." - often attributed to Voltaire
The FSF exists to protect the right of Red Hat to do exactly what they have done. But that doesn't mean they (or the Steering Committe, which are managing GCC on behalf of the FSF) have to agree with it. There is an important difference between saying "I forbid you to do that" and saying "You are allowed to do that, but I believe you should not do it anyway, and here is why..."
is actually a common practice. Sun for a long time shipped a separate cc that they supported only for building the kernel (this was before dynamic loaded kernel modules). I suspect most of the closed source OS companies also use older versions of the compiler.
What you have to realise is that kernel code is very low level, and often relies on features and missing optimizations that would never affact application code.
While one should of course fix the kernel (or provide hooks in the compiler) to make them work together, holding back the release of one for the sake of the other is rarely a good idea.
Like Joe, I have used GCC since the early days, and 2.95.2 is by far the best and most stable release.
What Red Hat should have done, was to release their own version under a different label, like they (the Cygnus part of the company) earlier have released their own GCC versions under their "GNUPro" label.