allowng anyone who wants to bring in a DVD play it.
Not trying to start an argument or anything, but this would still be illegal. Bars are commercial establishments, and even if they just provided the TV and player and "let" customers bring in their own movies, it's still illegal, except now the person bringing the movie can be prosecuted along with the bar.
Now I'm not saying a bar couldn't get away with doing something like this, but once the MPAA (or whoever) caught on, you can bet they'd take action.
In the US, it's "private, home exhibition" that's allowed, which means I can throw a party and have music and movies going without a problem, since it's a personal venue, not commercial.
I'm sure that's how it's interpreted in the UK too, even if the law is technically phrased to prohibit what you suggest.
The answer is: open Linux DVD theaters in European resterants and bars!
Is this legal? In the US, this would be classified as illegal exhibition of copyrighted works. Bars/restaurants in the US can't just go rent movies from the local Blockbuster and play them for their customers.
Do countries in Europe just not have similar laws?
The budweiser one w/ the horse was pretty incomprehensible.
Do you mean the Anheuser-Busch commercial? They were Clydesdales, beautiful animals, and the "official" horse of the beer. I thought it was a rather tasteful commercial.
There will no doubt be those that would really prefer seeing the next film in the Star Wars saga in full DVD glory but are willing to spring for the VHS version today, as a DVD release is quite distant.
Please don't!
If we want to send Lucas a message, this is our chance to do it. If we can spread the word and get people to avoid buying the VHS version of the movie in favor of waiting for a superior DVD release, we can hopefully send a message in the language Lucas seems to speak fluently: his pocketbook.
Poor VHS sales, with enough publicity, will hopefully be attributed to everyone's preference for DVD. Since it's quite likely he's trying to milk everyone for VHS purchases in addition to DVD purchases down the road, let's try to keep this from happening.
DVD is a superior video format. Don't get suckered into getting a VHS version of the movie just because you can't wait, and for those that are even thinking about getting a DVD player in the future, STOP BUYING VHS altogether, the sooner the better.
How about this; I encrypt every book and newspaper that you own, and I say when and where you can read it? That you cannot read it in a Honda or East of Avenue C? It's part of the End Reader's License that I wrote inside the cover of the book.
It's also not in your best interests to do this.
We should be focusing our attention on getting DVD vendors to recognize their Linux market. Give them a reason to develop hardware and software that runs on Linux to play their DVD's. Convince them that the costs involved in expanding their list of operating systems is less than the revenue they will draw as a result of supporting those operating systems.
The point of suggesting stylesheets is to allow one program to be used in several operating environments. MacOS provides a fundamentally different mechanism for setting up things like menus, and has its own conventions as far as button placement, window placement, etc. Most X window managers have a concept of a "dock" where you can run tiny programs. Today you have to write programs specific for each thing. If, instead, you abstract the interface entirely, you can use a form of style sheet (something more akin to XSLT than CSS, though I suspect it might call for something much different) to render widgets, controls and control groups in a manner consistent with the system you're using.
For example, you could run programs like this using a strictly audio setup, or fold application menus into a dynamic system menu scheme (useful for cell phones, for example).
The point is you take the construction of the UI layout out of the hands of the developer and put them into the hands of a) the system and/or b) true UI designers.
I think we're aiming for the same thing, but I think that your idea of a "cross-platform UI" is one that looks exactly the same on every platform (something like Java). My idea of a cross-platform UI is one that's abstracted a lot further and can be rendered in a fashion that suits the goals of the operating environment.
It sounds like you're saying we need *another* window manager?
Not so much a window manager but something more akin to X itself. Something that takes UI elements (say, via a pipe or network connection, like X) and constructs a meaningful rendering of that UI for display. It could be graphical, text, auditory, whatever. So long as we have a consistent "widget" set, applications can use those elements to build an interface that fits in consistently with the platform the user is using.
I don't necessarily disagree about the practicality, but it seems like it'd solve a wealth of problems by removing the coder from the responsibility of creating a meaningful user interface entirely, and either leaving it up to the system, or people that know how to build style sheets to *make* a good interface.
This is an idea I've been toying around with.. Most applications have a consistent set of elements and forms. What if we built a markup language out of this, with controls and forms rendered based on a style sheet instead of hard-coded pixel values defined in the GUI form itself? Each widget could be assigned a tag and could be referenced and manipulated by the application, with the results being rendered by the UI "renderer."
How much of this is already done using HTML and XML? Doesn't Mozilla already use an XML derivative to define its own internal dialog boxes? How difficult would it be to pull *all* formatting and location information out of these things and use style sheets to render it all?
This would allow us to do things like run "X" apps via telnet, using a textual transformation/style sheet, rendering controls using nice ASCII characters.
It would also let us *completely* re-do the formatting present in any application's window in a consistent manner. Move all menus to the top, all operation buttons to the bottom right, etc. Applications could come bundled with their own sets of style sheets, with broader positioning and styling done by system-wide style sheets, all the while giving the end user the option to move and resize controls to their taste. Everything could be themable, and I'm not talking just pixmaps for buttons.
IMO the summary hits it dead on. OpenSource authors are coders.
There are those of us that can design fantastic user interfaces and come up with nifty ideas, but it's very difficult for them to just enter an OSS project and re-design their interface. Despite the fact that the original interface is crap, many OSS developers like it (which brings us back to the whole "coders have no UI taste" argument) and in some cases are openly hostile to anyone that wants to change it.
Someone else mentioned that functionality and efficiency is stressed more with OSS software, and what might appear like a UI failing might just be the author trying to stress functionality over "extraneous" cruft. Unfortunately, in many cases, certain usability factors seem either unnecessary to him, or "not worth it" to code, so we end up with applications that are pretty nicely featured, but lack good thoughtful usable interface design.
I think the main hinderance that prevents UI designers from contributing to OSS projects is that the designer needs to be a good coder. It's difficult for a UI person to step into a project and simply re-design the interface. They have to be able to go into the code and make adjustments at the code-level.
Naturally, people that are experienced both in coding and interface, usability and graphics are few and far between. That's not to say that they don't exist, but typically they're quite happily employed because most companies know combinations like this are hard to find too.
"Theming" your application is a nice way to try and abstract the interface from the application. Unfortunately, unless you spend a considerable amount of coding building themes into your application, this just doesn't go far enough. Sure, you can make, say, GTK themes, but that doesn't help you re-design an application's window form.
What is the present state of "graphical" application builders? I know in your various "Visual" Windows IDE's you can create windows and forms and entire user-interfaces graphically, without necessarily needing to know much about the coding.
How easy is it for usability and interface people to contribute to your OSS project?
It's really a trade-off, IMO. Chinese people are raised in an environment where their freedoms are restricted "for the good of the state," and thus enjoy a tiny fraction of the crime rate of other countries and relatively happy, quiet lives. Lots (most?) of the population is either content to let the government censor news and information or is oblivious to the fact.
Other (most) countries take a different view, where information is relatively free and people are less encumbered when expressing their views and opinions. At the same time, we are, like you say, taught that excessive government control ("oppression") is quite the evil thing, and how can you argue, since the people teaching us this have access to all the information we need to make a qualified opinion on the matter while those on the other end of the stick don't?
Everyone says China is a corrupt government run by corrupt officials and a corrupt legal system, but you know, there's probably as many facts supporting this as there are supporting the same conclusions about America.
I'm not trying to defend China here or anything, but a lot of these decisions really are based in a person's perception (or, rather, what the media likes to stress) and the way they're brought up.
If I may refer to a Star Trek quote, logic dictates that the needs of the many outweigh the needs of the few. Unfortunately, you cannot accurately quantify (for example) a person's need for privacy with one's need for safety. They're two completely incomparable items, and comparisons like this are what makes countries and governments different, and are things most easily influenced by emotion and upbringing.
I hear this as an often quoted failing of the GPL, the fact that anyone can take a GPL'ed project private and allow people to use it (sans binary access) without necessarily being required to release the source.
Why is this a bad thing?
This allows GPL'ed, tried and tested code to make its way into proprietary networks and architectures. If we required all modifications to GPL'ed projects to be re-released, regardless of how the project was to be used, that would totally destroy the ability of companies to make proprietary, customized modifications to GPL'ed software for internal use, which is, by far, one of the most appealing things about GPL.
I really don't have a problem with the *ads* themselves. Advertisements are what pays for sites like Slashdot. Blocking them out decreases revenue for Slashdot, so I'm quite happy to leave them in place, so long as they're benign (which seems to not be the case with DoubleClick).
Hell, I occasionally (like once every few months) even click on one.
You may wish to re-read the part of the article dealing with file I/O. The article goes to lengths to state that both Novell and Linux beat out Windows 2000 for file transfers.
Red Hat Linux followed NetWare in file performance overall and even outpaced the leader in file tests where the read/write loads were small.
Windows 2000 demonstrated poor write performance across all our file tests.
Under the TCP transaction tests, however, Windows 2000 comes in top (attributed to its multi-threaded IP stack).
The author of the previous comment was likely referring to this major shortcoming when he used the word "faster." Though, in all fairness, the TCP/IP performance tests were ignored.
I think the point he was trying to make is that most Linux "newbies" don't fully grasp the concept of a multi-user operating system. Thus, they tend to either spend all of their time logged in as 'root' or at least use their root account at least as much as their normal user account (interchangeably).
For this class of user, the potential for a Linux virus infection is much greater, since lots of Linux newbies (like their Windows counterparts) will quite happily run things as root without knowing what they do or where it came from.
Most modern unices have some form of configurable resource limits. Things like number of processes, amount of memory, CPU usage, etc. can usually be limited per user, making "attacks" of this nature worthless.
Disk quotas can prevent users from filling up filesystems, also.
Regardless, any decent court would see it for what it's worth: an attempt to redistribute the software against the terms of the license.
Plus there's a whole range of technicalities that must be dealt with. *Corporations* are legal entities, not "clubs." You would have to sign up to be a member in such a way that you would be and act as part of that corporation, keeping your interests in the software within the framework of that arrangement.
Once you begin using the software for your own personal purposes or in any way outside of the corporation's need for the software, you are either a) breach of contract; and/or b) acting *for* the company by redistributing the software outside the boundaries of the corporation (to yourself). Assuming the latter, you could still be breaching contract by doing so, which could nullify your rights to redistribute (as well as the rights of those that have received the software from you).
So really in order for something like this to be legal, the corporation would have to have a contract set up in such a way that your interest in the software remains within the boundaries and charter of the corporation. Once that ceases to be the case, either you're guilty of using the software incorrectly, or the corporation is guilty of restricting it incorrectly.
As far as I know, no "clubs" have membership agreements that set their members up as employees/agents of the host corporation, which would be required if their use of the software is to be considered "internal."
I guess maybe you and I just see things differently here.
I have no problems with a company taking a GPL'ed program, making trivial changes, making moderate changes, or customizing it quite heavily and using it for their own proprietary needs. Isn't that kinda the point?
What's wrong with taking an ordering processing application and bastardizing it or just cleaning it up quite a lot and using it for your own site? Sure, it would be nice if you released your enhancements under the GPL, but you're under no obligation to, and I don't really see why someone should be forced to do so.
If you don't want your programs used in this manner, simply don't release it under the GPL. Write up your own license.
Now, am I receiving that software under the terms of the GPL or under the terms of my non-disclosure/non-compete/etc agreements?
So long as the code doesn't change hands from one legal entity to another, it's not being distributed. Since you're acting in your job capacity for the same company that's giving you the program (plus proprietary modifications), you have no rights to redistribute the software because your rights over the GPL'ed portion of the code are in conflict with whatever NDA agreements you signed in addition to state/federal law. The GPL (and the law) states that when such a conflict arises, you lose your rights under the GPL to redistribute.
The company isn't "distributing" it to you any more than your lungs are "selling" oxygen-enriched blood to your heart. It doesn't leave the closed system.
You can do whatever you want with the GPL'ed portions of the software, but any bit that someone else in the company has added or modified is controlled by its own copyright/license agreement, which effectively means you can't do anything with it outside of your normal job functions.
Consider code whose entire purpose is to manage a complex website.
I'm not sure I see what the problem is. Let's say I write a bunch of code, based on something that's been GPL'ed that allows people to make updates to my web site from remote locations (hell, a guestbook application might qualify). Are you of the opinion that I should be required to make the source code to this type of application available?
The GPL doesn't require making the source available to *users* of the program, only to those that you make the binaries available to. You're not distributing the binaries; you're just making the application available for use, so you're not obligated to redistribute the source code with it.
All it takes is a judge saying, "The club is a sham. By selling/distributing memberships, they're just trying to hide the fact that they're really selling/distributing the program, contrary to the license."
If you can prove this, I can't think of any reason a judge would disagree with you.
Re:The real way to cheat GPL (and why it will fail
on
Hole in GNU GPL?
·
· Score: 2
I thought someone was finally going to bring up the possibility of reducing a piece GPL'd software to a sort of daemon which acts as a shared library. If the interface is designed rationally (i.e. code for it can be written from scratch easily), there would be no need to reuse headers or other GPL'd files. Then proprietary additions to the software could be made through the creation of a proprietary client program.
I'm not quite sure I'm following here.
You can compile proprietary code against GPL'ed (or, more likely, LGPL'ed) headers and libraries without problem.
I can copyright my scripts under whatever super-restricting licenses I want. Just because the architecture or the interpreter is GPL'ed doesn't in any way translate to the things using/running on them.
What you're describing sounds an awful lot like, say, kernel modules. Proprietary, non-GPL'ed binary kernel modules do exist. Their usefulness is limited, but they're out there and it's perfectly legal.
Their online banking system rejects all browsers but, like Netscape 3.x and 4.x, and IE 3.x, 4.x and 5.0x.
They say IE5.5 is in beta and won't be permitted on their site until it's publicly released. Which sucks, since the only way I can seem to uninstall IE 5.5 is by re-installing Windows. Grr. (God knows I've tried.) Good thing I have Netscape.
The reason, I'm surmising, is precisely what the other author mentioned -- support. The site uses a lot of JavaScript (mainly for keeping things secure, timing out sessions, and routing people between pages), but a lot more browsers out there would work fine, so I really don't see what the big deal is. Maybe they're just too cheap to get a few copies of other browsers and try them out.
Fortunately, Netscape under Linux works fine as well.
Slashdot Mirror
allowng anyone who wants to bring in a DVD play it.
Not trying to start an argument or anything, but this would still be illegal. Bars are commercial establishments, and even if they just provided the TV and player and "let" customers bring in their own movies, it's still illegal, except now the person bringing the movie can be prosecuted along with the bar.
Now I'm not saying a bar couldn't get away with doing something like this, but once the MPAA (or whoever) caught on, you can bet they'd take action.
In the US, it's "private, home exhibition" that's allowed, which means I can throw a party and have music and movies going without a problem, since it's a personal venue, not commercial.
I'm sure that's how it's interpreted in the UK too, even if the law is technically phrased to prohibit what you suggest.
The answer is: open Linux DVD theaters in European resterants and bars!
Is this legal? In the US, this would be classified as illegal exhibition of copyrighted works. Bars/restaurants in the US can't just go rent movies from the local Blockbuster and play them for their customers.
Do countries in Europe just not have similar laws?
The budweiser one w/ the horse was pretty incomprehensible.
Do you mean the Anheuser-Busch commercial? They were Clydesdales, beautiful animals, and the "official" horse of the beer. I thought it was a rather tasteful commercial.
There will no doubt be those that would really prefer seeing the next film in the Star Wars saga in full DVD glory but are willing to spring for the VHS version today, as a DVD release is quite distant.
Please don't!
If we want to send Lucas a message, this is our chance to do it. If we can spread the word and get people to avoid buying the VHS version of the movie in favor of waiting for a superior DVD release, we can hopefully send a message in the language Lucas seems to speak fluently: his pocketbook.
Poor VHS sales, with enough publicity, will hopefully be attributed to everyone's preference for DVD. Since it's quite likely he's trying to milk everyone for VHS purchases in addition to DVD purchases down the road, let's try to keep this from happening.
DVD is a superior video format. Don't get suckered into getting a VHS version of the movie just because you can't wait, and for those that are even thinking about getting a DVD player in the future, STOP BUYING VHS altogether, the sooner the better.
How about this; I encrypt every book and newspaper that you own, and I say when and where you can read it? That you cannot read it in a Honda or East of Avenue C? It's part of the End Reader's License that I wrote inside the cover of the book.
It's also not in your best interests to do this.
We should be focusing our attention on getting DVD vendors to recognize their Linux market. Give them a reason to develop hardware and software that runs on Linux to play their DVD's. Convince them that the costs involved in expanding their list of operating systems is less than the revenue they will draw as a result of supporting those operating systems.
The point of suggesting stylesheets is to allow one program to be used in several operating environments. MacOS provides a fundamentally different mechanism for setting up things like menus, and has its own conventions as far as button placement, window placement, etc. Most X window managers have a concept of a "dock" where you can run tiny programs. Today you have to write programs specific for each thing. If, instead, you abstract the interface entirely, you can use a form of style sheet (something more akin to XSLT than CSS, though I suspect it might call for something much different) to render widgets, controls and control groups in a manner consistent with the system you're using.
For example, you could run programs like this using a strictly audio setup, or fold application menus into a dynamic system menu scheme (useful for cell phones, for example).
The point is you take the construction of the UI layout out of the hands of the developer and put them into the hands of a) the system and/or b) true UI designers.
I think we're aiming for the same thing, but I think that your idea of a "cross-platform UI" is one that looks exactly the same on every platform (something like Java). My idea of a cross-platform UI is one that's abstracted a lot further and can be rendered in a fashion that suits the goals of the operating environment.
It sounds like you're saying we need *another* window manager?
Not so much a window manager but something more akin to X itself. Something that takes UI elements (say, via a pipe or network connection, like X) and constructs a meaningful rendering of that UI for display. It could be graphical, text, auditory, whatever. So long as we have a consistent "widget" set, applications can use those elements to build an interface that fits in consistently with the platform the user is using.
I don't necessarily disagree about the practicality, but it seems like it'd solve a wealth of problems by removing the coder from the responsibility of creating a meaningful user interface entirely, and either leaving it up to the system, or people that know how to build style sheets to *make* a good interface.
This is an idea I've been toying around with.. Most applications have a consistent set of elements and forms. What if we built a markup language out of this, with controls and forms rendered based on a style sheet instead of hard-coded pixel values defined in the GUI form itself? Each widget could be assigned a tag and could be referenced and manipulated by the application, with the results being rendered by the UI "renderer."
How much of this is already done using HTML and XML? Doesn't Mozilla already use an XML derivative to define its own internal dialog boxes? How difficult would it be to pull *all* formatting and location information out of these things and use style sheets to render it all?
This would allow us to do things like run "X" apps via telnet, using a textual transformation/style sheet, rendering controls using nice ASCII characters.
It would also let us *completely* re-do the formatting present in any application's window in a consistent manner. Move all menus to the top, all operation buttons to the bottom right, etc. Applications could come bundled with their own sets of style sheets, with broader positioning and styling done by system-wide style sheets, all the while giving the end user the option to move and resize controls to their taste. Everything could be themable, and I'm not talking just pixmaps for buttons.
How feasible would this be to do?
IMO the summary hits it dead on. OpenSource authors are coders.
There are those of us that can design fantastic user interfaces and come up with nifty ideas, but it's very difficult for them to just enter an OSS project and re-design their interface. Despite the fact that the original interface is crap, many OSS developers like it (which brings us back to the whole "coders have no UI taste" argument) and in some cases are openly hostile to anyone that wants to change it.
Someone else mentioned that functionality and efficiency is stressed more with OSS software, and what might appear like a UI failing might just be the author trying to stress functionality over "extraneous" cruft. Unfortunately, in many cases, certain usability factors seem either unnecessary to him, or "not worth it" to code, so we end up with applications that are pretty nicely featured, but lack good thoughtful usable interface design.
I think the main hinderance that prevents UI designers from contributing to OSS projects is that the designer needs to be a good coder. It's difficult for a UI person to step into a project and simply re-design the interface. They have to be able to go into the code and make adjustments at the code-level.
Naturally, people that are experienced both in coding and interface, usability and graphics are few and far between. That's not to say that they don't exist, but typically they're quite happily employed because most companies know combinations like this are hard to find too.
"Theming" your application is a nice way to try and abstract the interface from the application. Unfortunately, unless you spend a considerable amount of coding building themes into your application, this just doesn't go far enough. Sure, you can make, say, GTK themes, but that doesn't help you re-design an application's window form.
What is the present state of "graphical" application builders? I know in your various "Visual" Windows IDE's you can create windows and forms and entire user-interfaces graphically, without necessarily needing to know much about the coding.
How easy is it for usability and interface people to contribute to your OSS project?
Perhaps a combination of both?
It's really a trade-off, IMO. Chinese people are raised in an environment where their freedoms are restricted "for the good of the state," and thus enjoy a tiny fraction of the crime rate of other countries and relatively happy, quiet lives. Lots (most?) of the population is either content to let the government censor news and information or is oblivious to the fact.
Other (most) countries take a different view, where information is relatively free and people are less encumbered when expressing their views and opinions. At the same time, we are, like you say, taught that excessive government control ("oppression") is quite the evil thing, and how can you argue, since the people teaching us this have access to all the information we need to make a qualified opinion on the matter while those on the other end of the stick don't?
Everyone says China is a corrupt government run by corrupt officials and a corrupt legal system, but you know, there's probably as many facts supporting this as there are supporting the same conclusions about America.
I'm not trying to defend China here or anything, but a lot of these decisions really are based in a person's perception (or, rather, what the media likes to stress) and the way they're brought up.
If I may refer to a Star Trek quote, logic dictates that the needs of the many outweigh the needs of the few. Unfortunately, you cannot accurately quantify (for example) a person's need for privacy with one's need for safety. They're two completely incomparable items, and comparisons like this are what makes countries and governments different, and are things most easily influenced by emotion and upbringing.
I hear this as an often quoted failing of the GPL, the fact that anyone can take a GPL'ed project private and allow people to use it (sans binary access) without necessarily being required to release the source.
Why is this a bad thing?
This allows GPL'ed, tried and tested code to make its way into proprietary networks and architectures. If we required all modifications to GPL'ed projects to be re-released, regardless of how the project was to be used, that would totally destroy the ability of companies to make proprietary, customized modifications to GPL'ed software for internal use, which is, by far, one of the most appealing things about GPL.
I really don't have a problem with the *ads* themselves. Advertisements are what pays for sites like Slashdot. Blocking them out decreases revenue for Slashdot, so I'm quite happy to leave them in place, so long as they're benign (which seems to not be the case with DoubleClick).
Hell, I occasionally (like once every few months) even click on one.
The author of the previous comment was likely referring to this major shortcoming when he used the word "faster." Though, in all fairness, the TCP/IP performance tests were ignored.
I think the point he was trying to make is that most Linux "newbies" don't fully grasp the concept of a multi-user operating system. Thus, they tend to either spend all of their time logged in as 'root' or at least use their root account at least as much as their normal user account (interchangeably).
For this class of user, the potential for a Linux virus infection is much greater, since lots of Linux newbies (like their Windows counterparts) will quite happily run things as root without knowing what they do or where it came from.
Most modern unices have some form of configurable resource limits. Things like number of processes, amount of memory, CPU usage, etc. can usually be limited per user, making "attacks" of this nature worthless.
Disk quotas can prevent users from filling up filesystems, also.
Regardless, any decent court would see it for what it's worth: an attempt to redistribute the software against the terms of the license.
Plus there's a whole range of technicalities that must be dealt with. *Corporations* are legal entities, not "clubs." You would have to sign up to be a member in such a way that you would be and act as part of that corporation, keeping your interests in the software within the framework of that arrangement.
Once you begin using the software for your own personal purposes or in any way outside of the corporation's need for the software, you are either a) breach of contract; and/or b) acting *for* the company by redistributing the software outside the boundaries of the corporation (to yourself). Assuming the latter, you could still be breaching contract by doing so, which could nullify your rights to redistribute (as well as the rights of those that have received the software from you).
So really in order for something like this to be legal, the corporation would have to have a contract set up in such a way that your interest in the software remains within the boundaries and charter of the corporation. Once that ceases to be the case, either you're guilty of using the software incorrectly, or the corporation is guilty of restricting it incorrectly.
As far as I know, no "clubs" have membership agreements that set their members up as employees/agents of the host corporation, which would be required if their use of the software is to be considered "internal."
I guess maybe you and I just see things differently here.
I have no problems with a company taking a GPL'ed program, making trivial changes, making moderate changes, or customizing it quite heavily and using it for their own proprietary needs. Isn't that kinda the point?
What's wrong with taking an ordering processing application and bastardizing it or just cleaning it up quite a lot and using it for your own site? Sure, it would be nice if you released your enhancements under the GPL, but you're under no obligation to, and I don't really see why someone should be forced to do so.
If you don't want your programs used in this manner, simply don't release it under the GPL. Write up your own license.
.
Now, am I receiving that software under the terms of the GPL or under the terms of my non-disclosure/non-compete/etc agreements?
So long as the code doesn't change hands from one legal entity to another, it's not being distributed. Since you're acting in your job capacity for the same company that's giving you the program (plus proprietary modifications), you have no rights to redistribute the software because your rights over the GPL'ed portion of the code are in conflict with whatever NDA agreements you signed in addition to state/federal law. The GPL (and the law) states that when such a conflict arises, you lose your rights under the GPL to redistribute.
The company isn't "distributing" it to you any more than your lungs are "selling" oxygen-enriched blood to your heart. It doesn't leave the closed system.
You can do whatever you want with the GPL'ed portions of the software, but any bit that someone else in the company has added or modified is controlled by its own copyright/license agreement, which effectively means you can't do anything with it outside of your normal job functions.
Consider code whose entire purpose is to manage a complex website.
I'm not sure I see what the problem is. Let's say I write a bunch of code, based on something that's been GPL'ed that allows people to make updates to my web site from remote locations (hell, a guestbook application might qualify). Are you of the opinion that I should be required to make the source code to this type of application available?
The GPL doesn't require making the source available to *users* of the program, only to those that you make the binaries available to. You're not distributing the binaries; you're just making the application available for use, so you're not obligated to redistribute the source code with it.
I'm afraid I don't see the negative point here.
I think this AC is right on the nose. Too bad it was posted as an AC and probably won't be seen by many people.
All it takes is a judge saying, "The club is a sham. By selling/distributing memberships, they're just trying to hide the fact that they're really selling/distributing the program, contrary to the license."
If you can prove this, I can't think of any reason a judge would disagree with you.
I thought someone was finally going to bring up the possibility of reducing a piece GPL'd software to a sort of daemon which acts as a shared library. If the interface is designed rationally (i.e. code for it can be written from scratch easily), there would be no need to reuse headers or other GPL'd files. Then proprietary additions to the software could be made through the creation of a proprietary client program.
I'm not quite sure I'm following here.
You can compile proprietary code against GPL'ed (or, more likely, LGPL'ed) headers and libraries without problem.
I can copyright my scripts under whatever super-restricting licenses I want. Just because the architecture or the interpreter is GPL'ed doesn't in any way translate to the things using/running on them.
What you're describing sounds an awful lot like, say, kernel modules. Proprietary, non-GPL'ed binary kernel modules do exist. Their usefulness is limited, but they're out there and it's perfectly legal.
What exactly is it that you're objecting to here?
Their online banking system rejects all browsers but, like Netscape 3.x and 4.x, and IE 3.x, 4.x and 5.0x.
They say IE5.5 is in beta and won't be permitted on their site until it's publicly released. Which sucks, since the only way I can seem to uninstall IE 5.5 is by re-installing Windows. Grr. (God knows I've tried.) Good thing I have Netscape.
The reason, I'm surmising, is precisely what the other author mentioned -- support. The site uses a lot of JavaScript (mainly for keeping things secure, timing out sessions, and routing people between pages), but a lot more browsers out there would work fine, so I really don't see what the big deal is. Maybe they're just too cheap to get a few copies of other browsers and try them out.
Fortunately, Netscape under Linux works fine as well.