"I agree to sticking with SF cause I got a huge problem with OpenSource being tied to schools."
My only real beef in that regard, is that SF.net is not Open Source at all. Their code isn't Open Source, their formats are not Open Source, and they are wholly a 100% proprietary entity. They're just using the OSS community to get them visibility with corporate sponsors.
One of my former colleagues used to work for them. When they released 1.0 of the proprietary SF.net codebase, all of the developers were immediately fired. It was like "Thanks for helping us reach this wonderful milestone. Now we can become profitable. You're all fired."
You can't even download the last version of their OSS code and use it to run your own version of a version control hosting solution. If you wanted to migrate away from SF.net and export your projects, bugs, files, etc. you can't... because there's nothing else out there to import that data into. Its just like Microsoft documents... once you get your data in, you can't get it back out.
That also doesn't take into account how many things they've crippled in the name of "security" there. Mailman (no mbox downloads, no search, no offline use of archives), cvs (no deletions, no branches), etc.
"Microsoft properly asserts that OpenOffice.org is not 100% compatible with their product. Microsoft, however, has apparently decided not to support the OpenOffice.org formats either, for which they have no excuse: the standards for OpenOffice.org documents are publicly available, whereas Microsoft makes it a habit to sue people for reverse engineering their own formats."
"Um, no, you are most certainly NOT required to carry ID or a driver's license. You are required to carry a driver's license when you are driving, but that's it. If I'm a passenger in a car, or walking down the street, there is no requirement for me to have identification."
I've actually been issued an infraction before, as a passenger in a vehicle in the state of Connecticut (my home state), for not carrying "proper identification" with me. The officer insisted that I was being evasive for "not showing" my driver's license to him. I literally didn't have it on me, and even if I did, he had no right to require it.
I couldn't get out of the ticket in court, and had to pay it. It appears to vary state to state.
I know of a nice simple one... just add the following tag outside your starting html tag in any static HTML page, and it will crash any and all versions of MSIE:
<input type> <html> ... </html>
Doubt me? go here with MSIE and see for yourself. Yes, it even crashes MSIE running in Wine.
Obviously Microsoft, the biggest marketing company in the world, knows that by demanding that the images be removed, they are guaranteeing that the images will be mirrored, cached, torrented, put on p2p and spread further than ever before.
"Microsoft properly asserts that OpenOffice.org is not 100% compatible with their product. Microsoft, however, has apparently decided not to support the OpenOffice.org formats either, for which they have no excuse: the standards for OpenOffice.org documents are publicly available, whereas Microsoft makes it a habit to sue people for reverse engineering their own formats."
"Microsoft properly asserts that OpenOffice.org is not 100% compatible with their product. Microsoft, however, has apparently decided not to support the OpenOffice.org formats either, for which they have no excuse: the standards for OpenOffice.org documents are publicly available, whereas Microsoft makes it a habit to sue people for reverse engineering their own formats."
"If you read the LGPL and the reasons for creating it, you'd understand that the "viral rant" really is true. Your mistake is simply in not knowing the difference between GPL and LGPL. Look it up. What you think of as GPL really is the LGPL."
I guess the fault lies with the FSF then, and their training of their cousul. They've been advising us for the last 4-or-so years on the matter. I'm definately not confusing the LGPL with the GPL, and I know the differences very intimately. Perhaps you're confused.
"It seems the whole point to your posts above is that the GPL isn't viral because you don't have to GPL the code--you just have to hire a lawyer and go to court or just opt out entirely. I guess that's a compromise."
No, my whole point was that the GPL doesn't "infect" code, because it isn't viral. If you incorporate GPL code into some portion of your project or product, THAT PORTION (not your entire product) becomes a derivitive work. As such, the pieces you've changed should be released under the GPL.
Another example which counters this somewhat... If you borrow a piece of GPL code, and CHANGE NOTHING in the GPL code, it just plugs directly into your product, you don't have to release your entire product as GPL. What would the point be? The community at large doesn't gain anything, since the GPL code in the product wasn't modified in any way. This is, of course, up to the original author of the GPL code, but most don't really care that their code was used, untouched, unmodified.
The whole reason for releasing derivitive works is to gain the improvements made to the original GPL source code, not to get fishhooks into someone else's proprietary code.
Here's another example: I write a program that renders images in black and white. You take my code and add support for color images to it, and incorporate it into your non-GPL product. Obviously the feature you've added would be useful to some users in MY community, so those additional pieces (the code that adds support for color) should be contributed back. I don't need or want your entire product, only the part that you've added TO MY CODE.
You keep mulling about that using GPL code in a larger product means the entire product has to be released under the GPL, and that is just outright false. Call the FSF and talk to one of their on-staff counsul. They will tell you directly, that each and every GPL violation that is investigated, usually ends up in a compromise between the author of the GPL code, and the offending party, to the satisfaction of both.
I haven't yet heard of a single case where an author of GPL code forced a company to release their entire product (which used that code) to be released under the GPL. That's simply ludicrous. It just doesn't happen.
Now, in the world of RMS (who, incidentally did NOT write the legal language behind the GPL), he would like all software to be "Free", and that's his dream, but that doesn't directly reflect or model reality. In the real world, people are humans, and they are compassionate, and they are willing to compromise.
So please, get off the "viral" rant, its getting old, and its just propagating more misinformation that simply isn't true.
"You use GPL - you get infected. The cure is either to GPL the entire product or pay a fine and surgically remove all GPL code."
The bold item above is exactly the kind of misinformation that propagates this myth about the GPL being viral. It is nothing of the sort.
You are required, when you agreed to the license, to release the source code to derivitive works based upon GPL software, i.e. the code you incorporated into your proprietary product. You don't have to GPL the entire product at all, and not a single case in the history of the GPL has ever even suggested that action.
When you agreed to the terms of the license by using the code covered by it in your product, you were bound by these clauses. If you think they're unworkable, you can simply stop using the code. Simple solution, write the replacement code yourself (without looking at the GPL code as a baseline, because that becomes a copyright infringement, as it isn't a cleanroom implementation).
Even the COPYING file in the Linux kernel (though LGPL) covers in detail exactly how to go about this, without making your "entire product" covered by the same license. If you borrow a socket interface from a GPL product and put it into your application, does your entire application become a derivitive work of that socket interface? Of course not!
I'm not sure where you're getting your GPL information, but it doesn't reflect reality. Please read the GPL directly, and also the GPL FAQ to correct those misconceptions you have about the license. Seriously.
Remember, the GPL is simply a license that allows you to copy and redistribute copyrighted software. It grants rights, it does not take them away.
"Non-GPL code becomes GPL. It's like an irreversible chemical reaction, unless you happen to own the copyright to all the code to begin with."
I hear this "viral" kool-aid all the time regarding the GPL, and I do find it funny every time it comes up. The GPL is not viral. Repeat that to yourself. Call the FSF and ask them.. No really, go ahead, I'll hold.
I know this intimately, because we're fighting a GPL case now (4+ years and counting) against a company that took our code, removed our names, called it their own and ship it without the license, including linking parts of it to their own products. We're FSF-backed (they've appointed us an incredible attorney), and we've gone over every angle of this hundreds of times.
If the "if it touches the GPL, it must be GPL" FUD was real, do you truly think companies like Oracle, VMware, and thousands of others would deploy their binary-only products on Linux, which links to... guess what, tools, libraries, userspace programs covered under either the GPL or the LGPL.
It goes like this. Watch carefully now:
You write a proprietary product
You want to add a feature, so you take some GPL code and add it to your proprietary product
Author of the GPL code finds that you are using his code, and requests one of two things:
The full source code to the pieces that link or modified his code, or...
That you no longer have the rights to use his code in your proprietary product
Your rights to continue to use the code under the GPL are immediately revoked.
At this point, you are no longer covered by the GPL license, and any further use of the GPL code is now a United States Copyright Violation (and possibly a Lanham Act violation, which is defined as "...false designation of origin").
So to get yourself out of this mess, you have a few options, all of which require that you stop using the GPL code in your product (well, except one; see below). There is no way to continue to use GPL code in a violating way, period. Many people believe you just pay a fine and business goes on, but it doesn't work like that. You're still guilty of the violation.
Settle with the developer for an undisclosed fee, a fine.
Go to court, and let the judge decide what your penalties are (US Copyright violations carry anywhere from $20k to $200k in fines, per-incident). They'll most-likely issue a blanket settlement in the sub-million dollar range, because its hard to determine "damages" of GPL code when its given away freely, and downloaded/shared all over the place.
Encourage the developer to relicense the code to you under a non-GPL license
Again, at no point does YOUR PRODUCT somehow become GPL code. It just doesn't happen, ever. There isn't one single precendent of this happening, because that's not how GPL violations are handled.
So please, in the future, do some research, read the GPL (actually READ it), and call the FSF or the EFF if you wish, and find out the real facts. Stop spreading FUD, you're only making the problem worse for yourself.
"If increasing the noise ratio on P2P networks is a good thing, maybe we can use a similar technique to defeat spammers?"
To really stop or dramatically slow spam, we need to think about it differently. We're trying to filter out spam from legitimate email. Back when spam was "new", it was a minority of our total incoming email. Now its a significant majority.
Why are we draining the pond to get to the fish? We should be filtering in legitimate email, not filtering out spam.
These all work great on Debian and have for years, if you use the w32codecs package from a non-Debian package repository.
I'm sure SuSE can't ship it because it requires packaging some potentially copyright-violating codecs that are the byproduct of reverse-engineered streams and other "unscrupulous" things.
I can use mplayer, xine, xmms to play dvd, cd, mp3, mpeg, wav, ogg, ogm, avi, RealMedia, Windows Media, QuickTime, and probably a dozen of others that don't come to mind right now...
Just because SuSE doesn't have it, doesn't mean it can't be done with Linux.
"The situation I propose is that the original developer announces that anyone using
the software now needs to pay a licensing fee, claiming that the GPL is not a valid license to
begin with..."
Also not possible, since the GPL is simply a license to copy and redistribute copyrighted
software, if the GPL is revoked, I still have been granted rights to the version I was
given, via the U.S. Copyright system. I am free to do whatever I wish with it, including
rebrand it as my own and sell it as a competing product.
When the GPL is stripped away, what is left is a stronger legal standing, not a weaker one.
Trust me on this, We've been fighting 3 cases of GPL violation with our FSF-appointed attorney in
towe, for the last 4-5 years now. Commercial companies seem to think because we're "spare time
hackers", we can't afford attorneys, and that they can pick and claw at whatever pieces of our code
they wish. They are sorely mistaken.
In the case of a GPL investigation, if the violation of that license is proven to be accurate,
all rights to continue to use that GPL'd code are revoked, making EVERY SINGLE SALE OR
DOWNLOAD of that GPL code from that point, a United States Copyright Violation, subject to
fines of $20,000/USD to $200,000/USD per-incident. Its VERY expensive to violate the
GPL.
In one case, the vendor took our project, every single piece of it, slapped their own names on
it, removed ours, stripped out the licensing, put their icons on it, and began selling it to
"partners", without letting them know that it was based on GPL code (and without transferring that
GPL license to those "partners"). Since they were openly advertising that it was "their" product,
written by them (they gave copies away by the thousands at "beaming" kiosks at tradeshows), this
was now what is called a "Lanham Act Violation", otherwise known as "...false designation of
origin". When we approached their "partners" and asked for source, we were directly threatened by
the CEO of the original violating company with bankruptcy and other things. I quote: "If we end
up in court, I will bankrupt these guys! I have millions of dollars of investor money to play
with..."
It never ceases to amaze me how stupid and ignorant companies like this continue to be, but the number of GPL violations continues in the industry every single day, there are thousands of known violators out there right now, just waiting for someone to slap them with an injunction and a subponea to audit their source code.
Once someone grants you rights to a piece of software, it cannot be revoked after the fact.
"They own the copyright on the entire thing, so unilaterally announce that anyone using the software now needs to pay a licensing fee."
You cannot retroactively revoke existing licensed software.
All new users of that software would be bound by the new licensing fees, but all copies in existance that were licensed under the GPL, are still covered by the GPL, and can be redistributed under the clause of that license.
"I'm using Firefox with Adblock extension. This blocks out unwanted images, and in addition, I block out certain elements of my internet banking provider, like uneeded images, and such. This speeds up browsing, as I'm on 56K modem."
As I'm sure you know, AdBlock doesn't "block" ads from being downloaded to your local browser's cache, it just blocks them from being displayed by your browser. Your browsing can't possibly be "faster" in terms of remote server sending you data, because its the same amount of data, whether you block all images or not. Your browser just happens to render pages faster, because its rendering less elements on the page.
"Of course, making it explicitly legal to refuse ID wouldn't change much. Then they'd just hold you until they could find *some* tiny infraction and get you on that. ID is the least of our problems. The entire legal code needs to be VASTLY simplified such that the average citizen can understand it in its entirety; otherwise, there is no justification for holding someone accountable under laws they can't be reasonably expected to know."
Back in 1992, I was in the back-seat of a car with two of my friends, with my elbows propped up on the headrest of each of the front seats, talking to them. We made a gentle turn, and were hit head-on by 4 elderly ladies who had crossed the yellow line and slammed into us. I was ejected from the back seat, through the windshield, and across two lanes of traffic.
After coming to at the hospital, the cops were already there, because apparently the kid who was driving had his father's car, where there was a ton of alcohol stashed in the trunk. When we were hit, all of the bottles broke, and everything smelled like beer.
Cops get there, 3 late-teens kids in a car, 4 elderly women, head-on collission, beer everywhere.. of course we were guilty.
The cops were taking my blood as I was unconscious, and they also took all of my belongings (money, house keys, etc.)
The next day, I went to the police station to pick up my belongings, and they told me that they couldn't release them to me until I made a confession. Confession for what? I just went through the windshield of a car, was bloody and unconscious most of the night, and I need my keys so I can get back into my house.
They put me in a holding cell at the police station for about 4 hours, where I kept refusing to admit or confess anything (because I was in great pain and because I had nothing to do with the accident, aside from possibly not wearing my seat belt).
They wanted to fingerprint me "for their records", and this is the catch... since fingerprints are considered "property", since I had not given up my right to property or "search", their taking my fingerprints (without arresting me) was a violation of my rights. They tried, I squirmed, I made it hard for them, I howled in pain as they twisted my arms and tried to force my fingers onto the card.
Apparently, since I was the oldest one in the vehicle, age 20, they immediately assumed I had bought the alcohol, and that we were all drunk at the time, and slammed into the old ladies. I had no license on me, and no shirt, no shoes (it was a hot summer). The alcohol came from two separate package stores on opposite sides of town. How is a 20-year old kid, with no ID, no shirt, no shoes, going to walk into two package stores, and buy $74.00 worth of beer and alcohol, without being carded? Ludicrious.
Luckily for us, when the cops brought charges against us for under-age drinking, I noticed that none of the broken bottles had their caps off, they were all broken at the neck and below. How is it that we were drunk driving, when none of the bottles were opened? The elderly ladies hired private investigators to come and harrass us for weeks, follow us around, record our actions, see where we went, who we hung out with, and other stuff, trying to pin some guilt on us. Those elderly ladies fucked me for the rest of my life because of this accident, and I got screwed.
In any case, it got ugly, there were lots of court cases, and I got completely screwed out of any settlement money. I had 7 broken bones and a 4-inch fracture in my forehead. I don't remember a single day of my life prior to 1992, like growing up, my parents, high-school, nothing. I'm 35 now, and I still have no memories of my childhood because of my head slamming into and through the windshield.
One of the elderly ladies broke her shin, and got $60,000 in settlement. I got $3k, most of which I had to use to pay for my own post-accident treatment, because the insurance company refused to pay for anything they couldn't directly attribute to the accident (like headaches, ringing in the ears, etc.)
I will always, until the day I die, hate cops. Period.
"Once was being pulled over in my car because I had long hair, and I had not stopped in a gas station ( I had pulled in, thinking they were open, then kept moving after I got close enough to realize that they were not, apparently, suspicious behaviour ), the other was having a friend of mine thrown against a wall by a police officer for asking the office ( very politely ) what the officer was trying to accomplish, and on what grounds he was doing so."
I hate to pounce on this older thread, but it caught my eye. When I was in my early 20's (I'm in my mid 30's now), I too had long hair (then short hair, then normal hair). I worked for a major pharmaceutical company, and I drove a very nice car. I'm also white.
In once month's time in one particular town (Willimantic, CT), I was pulled over 17 times by the same police officer (Officer "Buckner"), while driving through town (it was between work and home). 17 times!!! He even drove past a one-way street where I was parked, and turned down it the wrong way, just to tell me my stereo (in my car) was too loud. The stock, factory stereo (which we all know clips, so the speakers don't sound horrible at higher volumes).
100% pure, absolute harrassment, by another white cop, no less.
In the 4-year span around those times, I was pulled over no less than 57 times total (I have a huge stack of copies of each infraction and ticket in my files). I moved to different towns, changed my car, shaved my head, and nothing I did could stop the cops in many different towns from pulling me over for complete bullshit reasons (for example, having a dealership frame around my rear license plate, apparently illegal in CT).
I have no record, and there was absolutely no reason for the cops to pull me over all those times. Just an utter waste of my time fighting ticket after ticket after ticket in court.
I feel your pain. I've been profiled by the cops in CT for well over a decade now. Luckily for me, I moved to CA, and now back to CT, and have been laying low since.
"If you need help in doing this Simply set your shell to cmd.exe in the registry."
Surely you jest... you can't possibly be comparing the cromagnon capabilities of cmd.exe to a real shell like csh or bash, could you? Naw, I didn't think so.
"Yeah, a moving platform. With countless widget sets, multiple clipboards, different directory structures, an infinite number of combinations and permutations of shared libraries, and just as many sources of outdated, incorrect, misleading or utterly superb documentation, and crap vendors like Redhat which drop version support in a third the time of Microsoft."
Many of us call that CHOICE.
I can pick the Linux distribution that best fits my needs, be they toolkit-driven, tool-driven, UI driven or otherwise.
With Windows, you get... well, Windows. You have to shim other things onto it to get it to be useful. For example, I don't use icons, toolbars, window frames or titlebars. Show me how I can configure Windows to provide that interface, in an easy way... you can't. Not without 10 different third-party products.
Why is it that every time someone hears Linux, they immediately think "Hey, its an alternative OS, so their competition is Microsoft (or Apple), so they must be competing for the same space..."
Linux does not exist to compete with Microsoft Windows. Repeat that to yourself 10 times over please.
Many vendors who package Linux in various flavors are attempting to gain a larger userbase by making their version of the Linux operating system packaged with their components work better for end-users, but Linux was not created to supplant Microsoft Windows.
I would venture to guess that a good 80% (a rectal approximation) of Linux developers and many users don't care how many Microsoft Windows machines Linux can replace. That's not the point. The point is to provide a Unix-like operating system for inexpensive hardware. It just so happens that Linux runs on something like 32 architectures, from embedded targets to PDA to 128-way (or more) CPU machines.
Can Microsoft Windows run hardware in a 2-meg footprint? Linux can (and does, happily).
Linux has already beaten Microsoft Windows if that is the metric that we're measuring it by.
If you're measuring "sales" of Linux vs. sales of Microsoft Windows, of course Linux will not compare, because more people download Linux (and burn copies to give to dozens of their friends or hand out at LUGs) than those that purchase it in a boxed-copy with a printed manual.
Linux will succeed, and already has far surpassed Windows in hardware, driver, and application numbers. Linux supports more chipsets, more peripherals, and more applications than Microsoft Windows itself. Sure, many of the applications aren't "pretty" or polished, but put a million dollars behind each project, and you'll see some major improvements.
Does Microsoft Windows support that 10 year old video card in Windows 2003? Linux does.
Since most developers aren't getting paid or funded (or supported by the vendor) for their applications, it evolves at the speed of their free time and motivation to improve it. "Pretty" interfaces are the last thing on a developer's mind. Fixing the last bug or adding the next feature are much more important than a graphical installer and a pretty icon.
So we've already won, despite how the media likes to contort the matter.
Slashdot Mirror
My only real beef in that regard, is that SF.net is not Open Source at all. Their code isn't Open Source, their formats are not Open Source, and they are wholly a 100% proprietary entity. They're just using the OSS community to get them visibility with corporate sponsors.
One of my former colleagues used to work for them. When they released 1.0 of the proprietary SF.net codebase, all of the developers were immediately fired. It was like "Thanks for helping us reach this wonderful milestone. Now we can become profitable. You're all fired."
You can't even download the last version of their OSS code and use it to run your own version of a version control hosting solution. If you wanted to migrate away from SF.net and export your projects, bugs, files, etc. you can't... because there's nothing else out there to import that data into. Its just like Microsoft documents... once you get your data in, you can't get it back out.
That also doesn't take into account how many things they've crippled in the name of "security" there. Mailman (no mbox downloads, no search, no offline use of archives), cvs (no deletions, no branches), etc.
Pitiful.
SF.net, until recently, ran on 1 server and 1 backup. Now I think they have 4 front-line servers and 2 backup (total of 6).
I'm sure many OSS projects have more hardware than SF.net (in fact I know the projects I host at SourceFubar.Net do).
There's a difference between "Doing It", and "Doing it Right". SF.net is a case of the former.
"Microsoft properly asserts that OpenOffice.org is not 100% compatible with their product. Microsoft, however, has apparently decided not to support the OpenOffice.org formats either, for which they have no excuse: the standards for OpenOffice.org documents are publicly available, whereas Microsoft makes it a habit to sue people for reverse engineering their own formats."
I've actually been issued an infraction before, as a passenger in a vehicle in the state of Connecticut (my home state), for not carrying "proper identification" with me. The officer insisted that I was being evasive for "not showing" my driver's license to him. I literally didn't have it on me, and even if I did, he had no right to require it.
I couldn't get out of the ticket in court, and had to pay it. It appears to vary state to state.
Doubt me? go here with MSIE and see for yourself. Yes, it even crashes MSIE running in Wine.
Come on Microsoft, haven't you learned yet?
I need not say anything more.
I guess the fault lies with the FSF then, and their training of their cousul. They've been advising us for the last 4-or-so years on the matter. I'm definately not confusing the LGPL with the GPL, and I know the differences very intimately. Perhaps you're confused.
No, my whole point was that the GPL doesn't "infect" code, because it isn't viral. If you incorporate GPL code into some portion of your project or product, THAT PORTION (not your entire product) becomes a derivitive work. As such, the pieces you've changed should be released under the GPL.
Another example which counters this somewhat... If you borrow a piece of GPL code, and CHANGE NOTHING in the GPL code, it just plugs directly into your product, you don't have to release your entire product as GPL. What would the point be? The community at large doesn't gain anything, since the GPL code in the product wasn't modified in any way. This is, of course, up to the original author of the GPL code, but most don't really care that their code was used, untouched, unmodified.
The whole reason for releasing derivitive works is to gain the improvements made to the original GPL source code, not to get fishhooks into someone else's proprietary code.
Here's another example: I write a program that renders images in black and white. You take my code and add support for color images to it, and incorporate it into your non-GPL product. Obviously the feature you've added would be useful to some users in MY community, so those additional pieces (the code that adds support for color) should be contributed back. I don't need or want your entire product, only the part that you've added TO MY CODE.
You keep mulling about that using GPL code in a larger product means the entire product has to be released under the GPL, and that is just outright false. Call the FSF and talk to one of their on-staff counsul. They will tell you directly, that each and every GPL violation that is investigated, usually ends up in a compromise between the author of the GPL code, and the offending party, to the satisfaction of both.
I haven't yet heard of a single case where an author of GPL code forced a company to release their entire product (which used that code) to be released under the GPL. That's simply ludicrous. It just doesn't happen.
Now, in the world of RMS (who, incidentally did NOT write the legal language behind the GPL), he would like all software to be "Free", and that's his dream, but that doesn't directly reflect or model reality. In the real world, people are humans, and they are compassionate, and they are willing to compromise.
So please, get off the "viral" rant, its getting old, and its just propagating more misinformation that simply isn't true.
The bold item above is exactly the kind of misinformation that propagates this myth about the GPL being viral. It is nothing of the sort.
You are required, when you agreed to the license, to release the source code to derivitive works based upon GPL software, i.e. the code you incorporated into your proprietary product. You don't have to GPL the entire product at all, and not a single case in the history of the GPL has ever even suggested that action.
When you agreed to the terms of the license by using the code covered by it in your product, you were bound by these clauses. If you think they're unworkable, you can simply stop using the code. Simple solution, write the replacement code yourself (without looking at the GPL code as a baseline, because that becomes a copyright infringement, as it isn't a cleanroom implementation).
Even the COPYING file in the Linux kernel (though LGPL) covers in detail exactly how to go about this, without making your "entire product" covered by the same license. If you borrow a socket interface from a GPL product and put it into your application, does your entire application become a derivitive work of that socket interface? Of course not!
I'm not sure where you're getting your GPL information, but it doesn't reflect reality. Please read the GPL directly, and also the GPL FAQ to correct those misconceptions you have about the license. Seriously.
Remember, the GPL is simply a license that allows you to copy and redistribute copyrighted software. It grants rights, it does not take them away.
I hear this "viral" kool-aid all the time regarding the GPL, and I do find it funny every time it comes up. The GPL is not viral. Repeat that to yourself. Call the FSF and ask them.. No really, go ahead, I'll hold.
I know this intimately, because we're fighting a GPL case now (4+ years and counting) against a company that took our code, removed our names, called it their own and ship it without the license, including linking parts of it to their own products. We're FSF-backed (they've appointed us an incredible attorney), and we've gone over every angle of this hundreds of times.
If the "if it touches the GPL, it must be GPL" FUD was real, do you truly think companies like Oracle, VMware, and thousands of others would deploy their binary-only products on Linux, which links to... guess what, tools, libraries, userspace programs covered under either the GPL or the LGPL.
It goes like this. Watch carefully now:
At this point, you are no longer covered by the GPL license, and any further use of the GPL code is now a United States Copyright Violation (and possibly a Lanham Act violation, which is defined as "...false designation of origin").
So to get yourself out of this mess, you have a few options, all of which require that you stop using the GPL code in your product (well, except one; see below). There is no way to continue to use GPL code in a violating way, period. Many people believe you just pay a fine and business goes on, but it doesn't work like that. You're still guilty of the violation.
Again, at no point does YOUR PRODUCT somehow become GPL code. It just doesn't happen, ever. There isn't one single precendent of this happening, because that's not how GPL violations are handled.
So please, in the future, do some research, read the GPL (actually READ it), and call the FSF or the EFF if you wish, and find out the real facts. Stop spreading FUD, you're only making the problem worse for yourself.
To really stop or dramatically slow spam, we need to think about it differently. We're trying to filter out spam from legitimate email. Back when spam was "new", it was a minority of our total incoming email. Now its a significant majority.
Why are we draining the pond to get to the fish? We should be filtering in legitimate email, not filtering out spam.
It'll take awhile, but it will happen...
These all work great on Debian and have for years, if you use the w32codecs package from a non-Debian package repository.
I'm sure SuSE can't ship it because it requires packaging some potentially copyright-violating codecs that are the byproduct of reverse-engineered streams and other "unscrupulous" things.
I can use mplayer, xine, xmms to play dvd, cd, mp3, mpeg, wav, ogg, ogm, avi, RealMedia, Windows Media, QuickTime, and probably a dozen of others that don't come to mind right now...
Just because SuSE doesn't have it, doesn't mean it can't be done with Linux.
Also not possible, since the GPL is simply a license to copy and redistribute copyrighted software, if the GPL is revoked, I still have been granted rights to the version I was given, via the U.S. Copyright system. I am free to do whatever I wish with it, including rebrand it as my own and sell it as a competing product.
When the GPL is stripped away, what is left is a stronger legal standing, not a weaker one. Trust me on this, We've been fighting 3 cases of GPL violation with our FSF-appointed attorney in towe, for the last 4-5 years now. Commercial companies seem to think because we're "spare time hackers", we can't afford attorneys, and that they can pick and claw at whatever pieces of our code they wish. They are sorely mistaken.
In the case of a GPL investigation, if the violation of that license is proven to be accurate, all rights to continue to use that GPL'd code are revoked, making EVERY SINGLE SALE OR DOWNLOAD of that GPL code from that point, a United States Copyright Violation, subject to fines of $20,000/USD to $200,000/USD per-incident. Its VERY expensive to violate the GPL.
In one case, the vendor took our project, every single piece of it, slapped their own names on it, removed ours, stripped out the licensing, put their icons on it, and began selling it to "partners", without letting them know that it was based on GPL code (and without transferring that GPL license to those "partners"). Since they were openly advertising that it was "their" product, written by them (they gave copies away by the thousands at "beaming" kiosks at tradeshows), this was now what is called a "Lanham Act Violation", otherwise known as "...false designation of origin". When we approached their "partners" and asked for source, we were directly threatened by the CEO of the original violating company with bankruptcy and other things. I quote: "If we end up in court, I will bankrupt these guys! I have millions of dollars of investor money to play with..."
It never ceases to amaze me how stupid and ignorant companies like this continue to be, but the number of GPL violations continues in the industry every single day, there are thousands of known violators out there right now, just waiting for someone to slap them with an injunction and a subponea to audit their source code.
Once someone grants you rights to a piece of software, it cannot be revoked after the fact.
You cannot retroactively revoke existing licensed software.
All new users of that software would be bound by the new licensing fees, but all copies in existance that were licensed under the GPL, are still covered by the GPL, and can be redistributed under the clause of that license.
Just correcting your minor inaccuracy...
As I'm sure you know, AdBlock doesn't "block" ads from being downloaded to your local browser's cache, it just blocks them from being displayed by your browser. Your browsing can't possibly be "faster" in terms of remote server sending you data, because its the same amount of data, whether you block all images or not. Your browser just happens to render pages faster, because its rendering less elements on the page.
I think this is a case of.. if they have NOTHING else to charge you with, they can at least get you on that one. Bastards!
Back in 1992, I was in the back-seat of a car with two of my friends, with my elbows propped up on the headrest of each of the front seats, talking to them. We made a gentle turn, and were hit head-on by 4 elderly ladies who had crossed the yellow line and slammed into us. I was ejected from the back seat, through the windshield, and across two lanes of traffic.
After coming to at the hospital, the cops were already there, because apparently the kid who was driving had his father's car, where there was a ton of alcohol stashed in the trunk. When we were hit, all of the bottles broke, and everything smelled like beer.
Cops get there, 3 late-teens kids in a car, 4 elderly women, head-on collission, beer everywhere.. of course we were guilty.
The cops were taking my blood as I was unconscious, and they also took all of my belongings (money, house keys, etc.)
The next day, I went to the police station to pick up my belongings, and they told me that they couldn't release them to me until I made a confession. Confession for what? I just went through the windshield of a car, was bloody and unconscious most of the night, and I need my keys so I can get back into my house.
They put me in a holding cell at the police station for about 4 hours, where I kept refusing to admit or confess anything (because I was in great pain and because I had nothing to do with the accident, aside from possibly not wearing my seat belt).
They wanted to fingerprint me "for their records", and this is the catch... since fingerprints are considered "property", since I had not given up my right to property or "search", their taking my fingerprints (without arresting me) was a violation of my rights. They tried, I squirmed, I made it hard for them, I howled in pain as they twisted my arms and tried to force my fingers onto the card.
Apparently, since I was the oldest one in the vehicle, age 20, they immediately assumed I had bought the alcohol, and that we were all drunk at the time, and slammed into the old ladies. I had no license on me, and no shirt, no shoes (it was a hot summer). The alcohol came from two separate package stores on opposite sides of town. How is a 20-year old kid, with no ID, no shirt, no shoes, going to walk into two package stores, and buy $74.00 worth of beer and alcohol, without being carded? Ludicrious.
Luckily for us, when the cops brought charges against us for under-age drinking, I noticed that none of the broken bottles had their caps off, they were all broken at the neck and below. How is it that we were drunk driving, when none of the bottles were opened? The elderly ladies hired private investigators to come and harrass us for weeks, follow us around, record our actions, see where we went, who we hung out with, and other stuff, trying to pin some guilt on us. Those elderly ladies fucked me for the rest of my life because of this accident, and I got screwed.
In any case, it got ugly, there were lots of court cases, and I got completely screwed out of any settlement money. I had 7 broken bones and a 4-inch fracture in my forehead. I don't remember a single day of my life prior to 1992, like growing up, my parents, high-school, nothing. I'm 35 now, and I still have no memories of my childhood because of my head slamming into and through the windshield.
One of the elderly ladies broke her shin, and got $60,000 in settlement. I got $3k, most of which I had to use to pay for my own post-accident treatment, because the insurance company refused to pay for anything they couldn't directly attribute to the accident (like headaches, ringing in the ears, etc.)
I will always, until the day I die, hate cops. Period.
I hate to pounce on this older thread, but it caught my eye. When I was in my early 20's (I'm in my mid 30's now), I too had long hair (then short hair, then normal hair). I worked for a major pharmaceutical company, and I drove a very nice car. I'm also white.
In once month's time in one particular town (Willimantic, CT), I was pulled over 17 times by the same police officer (Officer "Buckner"), while driving through town (it was between work and home). 17 times!!! He even drove past a one-way street where I was parked, and turned down it the wrong way, just to tell me my stereo (in my car) was too loud. The stock, factory stereo (which we all know clips, so the speakers don't sound horrible at higher volumes).
100% pure, absolute harrassment, by another white cop, no less.
In the 4-year span around those times, I was pulled over no less than 57 times total (I have a huge stack of copies of each infraction and ticket in my files). I moved to different towns, changed my car, shaved my head, and nothing I did could stop the cops in many different towns from pulling me over for complete bullshit reasons (for example, having a dealership frame around my rear license plate, apparently illegal in CT).
I have no record, and there was absolutely no reason for the cops to pull me over all those times. Just an utter waste of my time fighting ticket after ticket after ticket in court.
I feel your pain. I've been profiled by the cops in CT for well over a decade now. Luckily for me, I moved to CA, and now back to CT, and have been laying low since.
Excuse my ignorance, but what is "xlm"? Did you mean XML perhaps? If you did, XML is most-certainly text.
If you didn't, perhaps "xlm" is some Sun proprietary binary format. I don't have my Solaris 10 image handy to boot up and check.
Any details on what this "xlm" format is?
Surely you jest... you can't possibly be comparing the cromagnon capabilities of cmd.exe to a real shell like csh or bash, could you? Naw, I didn't think so.
Many of us call that CHOICE .
I can pick the Linux distribution that best fits my needs, be they toolkit-driven, tool-driven, UI driven or otherwise.
With Windows, you get... well, Windows. You have to shim other things onto it to get it to be useful. For example, I don't use icons, toolbars, window frames or titlebars. Show me how I can configure Windows to provide that interface, in an easy way... you can't. Not without 10 different third-party products.
Its all about choice.
Linux does not exist to compete with Microsoft Windows . Repeat that to yourself 10 times over please.
Many vendors who package Linux in various flavors are attempting to gain a larger userbase by making their version of the Linux operating system packaged with their components work better for end-users, but Linux was not created to supplant Microsoft Windows.
I would venture to guess that a good 80% (a rectal approximation) of Linux developers and many users don't care how many Microsoft Windows machines Linux can replace. That's not the point. The point is to provide a Unix-like operating system for inexpensive hardware. It just so happens that Linux runs on something like 32 architectures, from embedded targets to PDA to 128-way (or more) CPU machines.
Can Microsoft Windows run hardware in a 2-meg footprint? Linux can (and does, happily).
Linux has already beaten Microsoft Windows if that is the metric that we're measuring it by.
If you're measuring "sales" of Linux vs. sales of Microsoft Windows, of course Linux will not compare, because more people download Linux (and burn copies to give to dozens of their friends or hand out at LUGs) than those that purchase it in a boxed-copy with a printed manual.
Linux will succeed, and already has far surpassed Windows in hardware, driver, and application numbers. Linux supports more chipsets, more peripherals, and more applications than Microsoft Windows itself. Sure, many of the applications aren't "pretty" or polished, but put a million dollars behind each project, and you'll see some major improvements.
Does Microsoft Windows support that 10 year old video card in Windows 2003? Linux does.
Since most developers aren't getting paid or funded (or supported by the vendor) for their applications, it evolves at the speed of their free time and motivation to improve it. "Pretty" interfaces are the last thing on a developer's mind. Fixing the last bug or adding the next feature are much more important than a graphical installer and a pretty icon.
So we've already won, despite how the media likes to contort the matter.