I hate to pop all your balloons, but Canada is subject to _ALL_ the US export controls. Canada has agreed to be bound by all the US rules and becuase of it receives special status. i.e. there is no export restriction for any US crypto tech to Canada.
This is incorrect. Canada has agreed to be bound by all the US export rules for material that has been imported from the US. That's why the US allow crypto export to Canada. Material written in Canada is subject to the much more lenient Canada export rules, which allow export of freely distributable crypto without the need for a permit.
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Genetically modified food
on
Gene Leakage
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· Score: 1
If a unit of non-GM'd food is selling for X, after the introduction of a GM'd version, selling for, say 0.8X, the original version should be labelled (prominently) as un-GM'd, and then sold for 1.2X. Given this business model (which I freely admit absolutely screws the customer who wants to avoid GM'd food), it's in the best interest of the food provider to be completely up-front about the GM status of their foodstuffs.
The GM-avoiding customer however doesn't want to be screwed and therefore demands a ban on GM'd foodstuffs. The governments listen to this majority.
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Genetically modified food
on
Gene Leakage
·
· Score: 1
you can't un-invent something. An overwhelming historical fact about our species is that once we've got the power to do something that's potentially very dangerous and disasterous for all concerned, we're going to do it.
Nobody wants to un-invent anything. People are against the application of the inventions. And, contrary to your claim, there are many inventions that cannot legally be used. For example: DDT, biological/chemical weapons, land mines, police scanners etc.
If GM foods were illegal, what do you think, Monsanto goes underground and supplies the black market with soya? You've got to be kidding.
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Genetically modified food
on
Gene Leakage
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· Score: 1
If people 'prefer' anti-GM'd food, why are there government regulations to prevent its sale? I'm fine with the Invisible Hand determining market choice
People in Europe desperately want these regulations, that's why they are there. Governments couldn't care less. Also, the idea of beef and even milk from hormone-treated cows is absolutely disgusting to the average European; if you mention it at a dinner party, people will stop eating. This is not something protectionist governments made up.
Note also that the Invisible Hand only works if all market participants have full information. However, Monsanto et al. are even against labeling GM foods. Soja is ingredient of virtually every processed food.
Back to the original article: the professor's example of insects dying out seems a little contrived. My major concern would be that plants which are engineered to resist a particular herbicide will encourage higher usage levels of that herbicide, which selects for resistant weeds just as in the well known penicillin desaster.
Advertising is seldom a means of harboring influence anymore. No one buys a Coca-Cola because the advertisement convinces them to buy it, but because they hear it and think "gee, I want a coke", or "i wonder what coke tastes like, maybe i'll get one the next time I buy a pop". They don't like Coke, they will never purchase it again regardless of advertisement.
Note however that Coke ads never mention the taste or the ingredients of the stuff. They desperately try to present the drink as "cool". In other words, they try to trick people into buying the stuff for reasons completely unrelated to the product. And people don't see through this, they buy Coke like sheep.
I don't think anybody knows precisely what goes on inside the advertising victim, but it is clear that the probability of buying Coke goes up after having seen a Coke ad, for whatever reasons.
The question to be answered is: Does the probability of violent behavior go up after having played a violent video game. I don't know the answer, but I suspect it is yes. If it is, and the game manufacturers know about it, then they are partly responsible for the violent acts since they are consequences of their actions. The people committing the violent acts are of course also responsible; "I played too much Quake!" is not a valid excuse.
If you kill several people and you are not mentally ill, then you are obviously responsible for you action. That doesn't mean that you are the only one responsible.
People are probabilistic information processors. If you change the input, then the probability distribution of behavior patterns will change.
The media clearly influence behavior. Otherwise, advertising would be pointless. There is not a hard cause-and-effect relationship though. I, for instance, have seen many thousand Coca Cola ads in my life, but I have never bought Coca Cola. People as a group however are more likely to buy Coca Cola if they have seen Coca Cola ads. The fact that many people here claim "I have played Quake all my life and have never killed anybody!" is completely irrelevant. The relevant question is: "does playing Quake increase the likelihood to kill?"
Everybody is responsible for their own actions. If you knowingly do something which increases the likelihood of somebody else killing someone, then you are partially responsible for the killing, along with the killer.
It is not at all far-fetched to claim that violent media are partially responsible for these highschool murders.
Correct: the tools and sim are GPL, but the only way to obtain them is to purchase the full kit from Sony. Once you buy it, you can distribute the GPL parts, but I doubt that will happen
You want to bet a buck?:-) I say the GPL'ed stuff is on sunsite about one week after release to developers. And then people will start to write GPL'ed versions of the proprietary libs and docs.
He claims that Linux is the most widely ported PC-OS. NetBSD looks a lot more impressive though. As far as I can tell, there's only one Linux platform which is not supported by NetBSD, and that is the Palm. And there are at least 10 platforms which are supported by NetBSD but not by Linux, some major ones among them.
Credit where credit is due.
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Point of the patent clause?
on
RMS on APSL
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· Score: 1
I don't see the point of the patent clause in the Apple license.
The way I understand it, it is perfectly legal to freely distribute code which uses patented techniques. It is only illegal to make, use or sell such code.
I myself distribute a couple of free programs. If I would get a letter tomorrow from some evil corporation telling me that one of my programs violates some patent, I would of course stop making that program, and would probably have to pay some compensation to them. And I wouldn't be allowed to use that program anymore. They will have to sue the thousands of actual users individually if they want to stop the use of the program. That has nothing to do with me though. Similarly, if someone writes a derivative work based on my infringing original, they are at fault, not me. My license gave them the right to create derivatives, true, but of course that license cannot overrule the rights of third parties under patent law.
In short: anyone who has every distributed free software can live without the patent clause. Why can't Apple?
They don't want to call it FSF/Linux, they want to call it GNU/Linux. Tom argues against the name FSF/Linux, and not very convincingly, since according to his own data the FSF is apparently the biggest contributor to the SUSE Linux distribution.
An operating system is different from a kernel, but it is also different from a distribution fully loaded with user applications. Who wants to argue that programs like lyx or gimp are part of the OS Linux? If you use a more sane definition of OS, the proportion of FSF code goes up.
By far the most important contribution of the FSF to the Linux world is the GPL. Tom ignored that entirely.
RMS definitely has a point and Tom doesn't. However, changing a name for marketing purposes is a technique worthy of the worst of suites.
We should simply agree to mention the achievements and contributions of the GNU project whenever we talk or write about Linux.
I was wondering if it would be useful to run Linux as guest on top of a Linux host, in order to do kernel development in the Linux guest, protected from crashes. Of course, you couldn't do much device driver development since there are not many devices in the virtual machine.
I find it strange that some OS's such as Beos and OS/2 are not supported. If they really provide a clean well-defined virtual machine, every x86 operating system should run in it, no?
Overall, it think it's good that it's so expensive. Suits don't mind paying through the nose, and the rest of us should support free and non-patented technologies anyway.
The problem is that the speech is the property of its creator. Unless specifically granted, what right do you have to take this material (someone else's property) and use it for your own benefit? Why should such a right exist?
As long as the speech is in your head and in your head alone, it is your sole property. If however you give the speech to an audience, its contents enter the brains of the listeners. They turn into electro-chemical structures in those brains. Everybody owns their own brain; nobody has a right to control other people's body parts.
Can someone refresh my memory as to how not_giving_software_away is "restricting others' freedoms"?
First of all, RMS is perfectly happy if you sell your software. He does not advocate giving it away. He rallies against proprietary software licenses, because they undoubtedly restrict other people's freedoms.
Consider this: If I buy a proprietary software product, I give up my freedom to explore, understand and improve my own property. I have to give up the freedom to help others and share my property with them. You, the software vendor, attempt to control what I do in the privacy of my own home.
I think RMS has a point when he says that proprietary software makes the world ugly.
How would you like a band-aid manufacturer who sells his product under the following license agreement: "Buyer agrees to apply product only to his or her own body". It is probably legal, and with the right marketing and price, it may even be successful. But there can be no question that it is immoral since it tries to prevent cooperation. Cooperation is a good thing.
Note that RMS does not want to force anyone to abandon proprietary software. His approach is twofold: customers should avoid proprietary software because selling away ones freedom to cooperate is ugly, and developers should stop selling proprietary software because enticing people to stop cooperating is ugly. His arguments, at the core, are aestethical ones.
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RMS is a fanatic; Linus isn't.
on
Wired on RMS
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· Score: 1
[Free code] is not more ethical than proprietary software
It clearly is. Proprietary software licenses prohibit learning, improving, sharing and helping others. Free code does not. Learning, improving, sharing and helping are good things, therefore free code is more ethical.
For that matter, it's worth pointing out that the GPL actually restricts my freedom! I cannot do just anything with GPL-ed code.
That's right. You are not free to restrict other people's freedom. That is a basic tenet of all civilized definitions of freedom. Unless you go with Thomas Hobbes, who defined "Freedom means I can do whatever I want".
Which one do you agree with:
All people are free, therefore they should be free to capture other people as slaves.
All people are free, therefore they should not be free to capture other people as slaves.
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RMS made a larger contribution than Linus.
on
Wired on RMS
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· Score: 1
However, you don't seem to realize what software RMS wrote:
gcc
gdb
emacs
command reimplementations (cp, sh..)
surely a lot of other things (shells, etc.)
He wrote gcc, gdb, emacs and make. The utilities, bash and the C library were written by the FSF, but not by him personally. However, by far the most important thing he created is the GPL. A wonderful legal hack.
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Having children a sacrifice?
on
Wired on RMS
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· Score: 1
having children and taking care of them, if done with love and keeping them first in your mind, can be one of the greatest self-sacrifices. I kind of long to have a kid (or two -- maybe), and I feel like I would make a good father, if given the chance. I love children.
If you love children and you long to have them, then having them won't be "one of the greatest self-sacrifices". You want to have kids for the same reason other people want to have pets: to satisfy your own emotional needs.
Now, if you, like me, hated kids, then having children would amount to a self-sacrifice.
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A man of high responsibility.
on
Wired on RMS
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· Score: 1
His life is described as a chain of avoidance of responsibilities. He doesn't want children because he doesn't want to work to make enough to support them.
I hope you don't mean to imply that it is "responsible" to pollute the world with ever more suckers. If only more people would devote their lives to some mission instead of just selling away 40 years of their lives to corporations and/or popping out kids left and right.
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QPL superior to LGPL, maybe better than GPL
on
QPL 1.0 Released
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· Score: 1
The QPL actively discourages development of proprietary and shareware software (you have to pay if you want to develop proprietary apps derived from QPL'ed code). From a free software philosophical standpoint, there can be no question that QPL is better than LGPL as a license for libraries. Unfortunately, Gnome still uses LGPL.
QPL may even be better than GPL! Read section 6c carefully. People have to disclose in-house software which uses QPL'ed software. This is just beautiful. I have always hated the fact that people can take a GPL'ed app, improve it in-house, use the improvement internally and never return the patches back to the community.
Of course, the QPL is somewhat weaker than the GPL in that it is not as virulent: you may write patches to QPL'ed works and license those patches under any license you choose, unless you distribute binaries.
The fact that modifications can only be distributed as patches or in binary form is only a minor problem IMHO. If you look at the Linux kernel for example, you'll see that all modification with each new version are always distributed as patches as well.
I have two little technical objection though:
4 b) and 6 a) and b) talk about "machine-readable source code". This is considerably weaker than the GPL, since it allows for obfuscated source code. The GPL demands "preferred form of the work for making modifications to it", which is a very good definition and excludes obfuscation.
6 only applies to items which are "distributed", but 6 c) talks about items "not available to the general public". It is not clear what exactly "distributed" means here. I think it should only apply to 6 a) and 6 b), but not to 6 c).
The guy says he writes emulators as a hobby and in order to learn. Fine. Then he complains that all people do with his emulator is play games. Duh! How can I learn from his emulator and take up emulation as a hobby if he doesn't give out the source? What am I supposed to do, admire the shiny binary all day long?
Once upon a time the internet was text based. One could move about and read Usenet and ftp files with a 2400 baud modem. A 9600 was a real speed demon. Now the internet has graphics. Lots of graphics. I have a 56k modem and it is too slow. I need a much faster connection. Why? Banner ads. Advertiseing. Business. Suits stuff. Yes I like the graphical nature of the web these days. And it is mostly driven by and fought over by the suits. They rule. Again. As they always do.
No they don't. Hackers rule. And hackers created Junkbuster which lets you filter out the mind pollution created by the suits. It's a beautiful tool and hits the suits where it hurts.
All awards (except Slashdot's) went to corporations. Why don't the free software hackers get recognized? They did all the work after all.
The most offensive is the "killerapp award" going to Corel's vaporware. What about Gimp, Samba, KDE, Gnome, Apache, Lyx, Wine? Every single one is more important than Corel's contribution. But I guess free software hackers didn't pay for expensive floor space.
The only source they have to provide is the modified kernel, because it's a derivative work. Their module is their own code.
The module uses GPL'ed kernel header files and requires extensive kernel modifications to function; the module cannot be separated from the modifications: it is one functioning whole. And that whole is a derivative work of the kernel and hence has to be licensed under GPL unless Linus et al. grant an exception.
Their page says that they will stop distribution if there are license problems. That, however, won't cut it. If Linus et al. determine that the binary module exception doesn't apply since the mosix module requires kernel modifications, the binaries which have been distributed since yesterday automatically fall under GPL. This means that source for the module has to be provided for the cost of shipping. Linus et al. can demand that, and I sure hope they will.
What do you do with people who drag others behind cars?
Be a good Christian and love them.
If you don't like the core messages of Jesus (love your enemies, don't judge, forgive, live poor, turn the other cheek etc.) you can of course always pick some other religion.
Unfortunately, the destruction of commercial software, commercial markets, and job opportunities is what the GPL was designed to do.
Not quite. The destruction of proprietary software and its market has been the design goal of the GPL from the start. This stems from the conviction that it is immoral to prevent people from understanding, improving and sharing their property.
The insight that free software has a potential to be technically superior because of the peer review process and because it attracts highly self-motivated talented programmers came much later. For RMS this is irrelevant, for others who followed him it isn't.
I agree with your point that ESR deceives businesses when he stresses the latter advantage without mentioning the original motive for the GPL. However, deceiving is what marketing is all about.
Slashdot Mirror
This is incorrect. Canada has agreed to be bound by all the US export rules for material that has been imported from the US. That's why the US allow crypto export to Canada. Material written in Canada is subject to the much more lenient Canada export rules, which allow export of freely distributable crypto without the need for a permit.
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The GM-avoiding customer however doesn't want to be screwed and therefore demands a ban on GM'd foodstuffs. The governments listen to this majority.
--
Nobody wants to un-invent anything. People are against the application of the inventions. And, contrary to your claim, there are many inventions that cannot legally be used. For example: DDT, biological/chemical weapons, land mines, police scanners etc.
If GM foods were illegal, what do you think, Monsanto goes underground and supplies the black market with soya? You've got to be kidding.
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People in Europe desperately want these regulations, that's why they are there. Governments couldn't care less. Also, the idea of beef and even milk from hormone-treated cows is absolutely disgusting to the average European; if you mention it at a dinner party, people will stop eating. This is not something protectionist governments made up.
Note also that the Invisible Hand only works if all market participants have full information. However, Monsanto et al. are even against labeling GM foods. Soja is ingredient of virtually every processed food.
Back to the original article: the professor's example of insects dying out seems a little contrived. My major concern would be that plants which are engineered to resist a particular herbicide will encourage higher usage levels of that herbicide, which selects for resistant weeds just as in the well known penicillin desaster.
--
Note however that Coke ads never mention the taste or the ingredients of the stuff. They desperately try to present the drink as "cool". In other words, they try to trick people into buying the stuff for reasons completely unrelated to the product. And people don't see through this, they buy Coke like sheep.
I don't think anybody knows precisely what goes on inside the advertising victim, but it is clear that the probability of buying Coke goes up after having seen a Coke ad, for whatever reasons.
The question to be answered is: Does the probability of violent behavior go up after having played a violent video game. I don't know the answer, but I suspect it is yes. If it is, and the game manufacturers know about it, then they are partly responsible for the violent acts since they are consequences of their actions. The people committing the violent acts are of course also responsible; "I played too much Quake!" is not a valid excuse.
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People are probabilistic information processors. If you change the input, then the probability distribution of behavior patterns will change.
The media clearly influence behavior. Otherwise, advertising would be pointless. There is not a hard cause-and-effect relationship though. I, for instance, have seen many thousand Coca Cola ads in my life, but I have never bought Coca Cola. People as a group however are more likely to buy Coca Cola if they have seen Coca Cola ads. The fact that many people here claim "I have played Quake all my life and have never killed anybody!" is completely irrelevant. The relevant question is: "does playing Quake increase the likelihood to kill?"
Everybody is responsible for their own actions. If you knowingly do something which increases the likelihood of somebody else killing someone, then you are partially responsible for the killing, along with the killer.
It is not at all far-fetched to claim that violent media are partially responsible for these highschool murders.
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You want to bet a buck? :-) I say the GPL'ed stuff is on sunsite about one week after release to developers. And then people will start to write GPL'ed versions of the proprietary libs and docs.
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Credit where credit is due.
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The way I understand it, it is perfectly legal to freely distribute code which uses patented techniques. It is only illegal to make, use or sell such code.
I myself distribute a couple of free programs. If I would get a letter tomorrow from some evil corporation telling me that one of my programs violates some patent, I would of course stop making that program, and would probably have to pay some compensation to them. And I wouldn't be allowed to use that program anymore. They will have to sue the thousands of actual users individually if they want to stop the use of the program. That has nothing to do with me though. Similarly, if someone writes a derivative work based on my infringing original, they are at fault, not me. My license gave them the right to create derivatives, true, but of course that license cannot overrule the rights of third parties under patent law.
In short: anyone who has every distributed free software can live without the patent clause. Why can't Apple?
--
--
I find it strange that some OS's such as Beos and OS/2 are not supported. If they really provide a clean well-defined virtual machine, every x86 operating system should run in it, no?
Overall, it think it's good that it's so expensive. Suits don't mind paying through the nose, and the rest of us should support free and non-patented technologies anyway.
--
As long as the speech is in your head and in your head alone, it is your sole property. If however you give the speech to an audience, its contents enter the brains of the listeners. They turn into electro-chemical structures in those brains. Everybody owns their own brain; nobody has a right to control other people's body parts.
--
First of all, RMS is perfectly happy if you sell your software. He does not advocate giving it away. He rallies against proprietary software licenses, because they undoubtedly restrict other people's freedoms.
Consider this: If I buy a proprietary software product, I give up my freedom to explore, understand and improve my own property. I have to give up the freedom to help others and share my property with them. You, the software vendor, attempt to control what I do in the privacy of my own home.
I think RMS has a point when he says that proprietary software makes the world ugly.
How would you like a band-aid manufacturer who sells his product under the following license agreement: "Buyer agrees to apply product only to his or her own body". It is probably legal, and with the right marketing and price, it may even be successful. But there can be no question that it is immoral since it tries to prevent cooperation. Cooperation is a good thing.
Note that RMS does not want to force anyone to abandon proprietary software. His approach is twofold: customers should avoid proprietary software because selling away ones freedom to cooperate is ugly, and developers should stop selling proprietary software because enticing people to stop cooperating is ugly. His arguments, at the core, are aestethical ones.
--
It clearly is. Proprietary software licenses prohibit learning, improving, sharing and helping others. Free code does not. Learning, improving, sharing and helping are good things, therefore free code is more ethical.
For that matter, it's worth pointing out that the GPL actually restricts my freedom! I cannot do just anything with GPL-ed code.
That's right. You are not free to restrict other people's freedom. That is a basic tenet of all civilized definitions of freedom. Unless you go with Thomas Hobbes, who defined "Freedom means I can do whatever I want".
Which one do you agree with:
--
- gcc
- gdb
- emacs
- command reimplementations (cp, sh..)
- surely a lot of other things (shells, etc.)
He wrote gcc, gdb, emacs and make. The utilities, bash and the C library were written by the FSF, but not by him personally. However, by far the most important thing he created is the GPL. A wonderful legal hack.--
If you love children and you long to have them, then having them won't be "one of the greatest self-sacrifices". You want to have kids for the same reason other people want to have pets: to satisfy your own emotional needs.
Now, if you, like me, hated kids, then having children would amount to a self-sacrifice.
--
I hope you don't mean to imply that it is "responsible" to pollute the world with ever more suckers. If only more people would devote their lives to some mission instead of just selling away 40 years of their lives to corporations and/or popping out kids left and right.
--
QPL may even be better than GPL! Read section 6c carefully. People have to disclose in-house software which uses QPL'ed software. This is just beautiful. I have always hated the fact that people can take a GPL'ed app, improve it in-house, use the improvement internally and never return the patches back to the community.
Of course, the QPL is somewhat weaker than the GPL in that it is not as virulent: you may write patches to QPL'ed works and license those patches under any license you choose, unless you distribute binaries.
The fact that modifications can only be distributed as patches or in binary form is only a minor problem IMHO. If you look at the Linux kernel for example, you'll see that all modification with each new version are always distributed as patches as well.
I have two little technical objection though:
- 4 b) and 6 a) and b) talk about "machine-readable source code". This is considerably weaker than the GPL, since it allows for obfuscated source code. The GPL demands "preferred form of the work for making modifications to it", which is a very good definition and excludes obfuscation.
- 6 only applies to items which are "distributed", but 6 c) talks about items "not available to the general public". It is not clear what exactly "distributed" means here. I think it should only apply to 6 a) and 6 b), but not to 6 c).
Thanks for a job well done, Trolls!--
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No they don't. Hackers rule. And hackers created Junkbuster which lets you filter out the mind pollution created by the suits. It's a beautiful tool and hits the suits where it hurts.
--
The most offensive is the "killerapp award" going to Corel's vaporware. What about Gimp, Samba, KDE, Gnome, Apache, Lyx, Wine? Every single one is more important than Corel's contribution. But I guess free software hackers didn't pay for expensive floor space.
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The module uses GPL'ed kernel header files and requires extensive kernel modifications to function; the module cannot be separated from the modifications: it is one functioning whole. And that whole is a derivative work of the kernel and hence has to be licensed under GPL unless Linus et al. grant an exception.
--
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Be a good Christian and love them.
If you don't like the core messages of Jesus (love your enemies, don't judge, forgive, live poor, turn the other cheek etc.) you can of course always pick some other religion.
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Unfortunately, the destruction of commercial software, commercial markets, and job opportunities is what the GPL was designed to do.
Not quite. The destruction of proprietary software and its market has been the design goal of the GPL from the start. This stems from the conviction that it is immoral to prevent people from understanding, improving and sharing their property.
The insight that free software has a potential to be technically superior because of the peer review process and because it attracts highly self-motivated talented programmers came much later. For RMS this is irrelevant, for others who followed him it isn't.
I agree with your point that ESR deceives businesses when he stresses the latter advantage without mentioning the original motive for the GPL. However, deceiving is what marketing is all about.
--