The QPL is still in contradiction to the principles that the GPL was written to uphold, which includes the freedom to use the software for internal purposes.
Is that entirely true though? The GPL uses the term 'distribution' which is a grey area. IANAL but, it would seem to me that many people could twist the word distribution up and down.
It's my understanding that a corporation 'distributing' to their workers would probably not be called distribution because it's inside one giant entity, but does the same apply if you give a piece of internal GPL software to, for example, a temporary worker who is not an entity of the company? I'd like to see it shown, not implied, what the exact standing of that is.
For all those forms, I simply reply with the following address:
privacy@them.tld.
That way, they can get their own mail to their privacy account and I don't get bothered. Maybe if they get annoyed enough, they'll stop asking for your email just to download a piece of 'free' software. Of course 'free' means "If you sell^H^H^H^Hgive your e-mail address to us:)"
Is this polite? Probably not. Neither is sending junk mail to people or selling your "private" databases when you go bankrupt.
>>>>> QUOTE One sadly amusing story I heard from a Canadian friend is that Quebec has a law stating that any signs written in English must also be written in French, and that the French text must be no less than twice the size of the English text. There is supposedly a 'police force' that actually goes around measuring signs to make sure this law is met, and they issue fines if it's not. How's that for being anal? >>>>> END QUOTE
All of that is quite true, right down to the language police which are operating under a government mandate to nail anyone who does not comply with their laws. It's rather fascist actually. I believe totally that they have the right to protect their culture, but they do not have the right to make my culture illegal. It's much as the settlers did to the Native Americans when they took over.
The laws extend futher to the point that no business may have an english name and be legally registered in the province of Quebec. It even goes to the extent that if you are taken to a Hospital and the doctor doesn't speak english, you're shit out of luck.
Then there's how if you are arrested, the police will not speak to you english, your charges will be said in french, the trial itself will even be in french. I know this because I had to testify against a person here a couple years ago; He spoke no french, and neither did I. The funny part was that no one even translated for him. Though the detective who made the arrest (Great guy) translated for me what they were asking me. It's quite insane here.
There are other trivial things, like how people working in sales are prohibited from starting any conversation in english, they MUST ask / greet you in french first. Some take this as far as speaking french to you even when they understand english and you greet them in english. If I did not like Montreal so much, I would get the hell of this mad place.
Well, I'm happy (I think) to report that it does run seemingly well under FreeBSD 4.0's Linux emulation. However, are they not supposed to be fixing memory issues, not creating more?
[somewhat snipped data from top] PID SIZE RES WCPU CPU COMMAND 6755 27212K 21768K 39.79% 17.97% mozilla-bin
6641 15072K 12172K 2.85% 2.64% netscape-4.72
[Note; I did not run them at the same time.]
Call me a M$ traitor if you wish (even though I'm solely dedicated to FreeBSD) but I would be very happy for a linux copy of MSIE (to run under FreeBSD's Linux emulation) - Netscape did NOT lose 70% of the market share because M$ bundled MSIE with Windows, they lost it because M$ sadly made a better browser, don't you find that sad?
PS: These are personal opinions, send your flames elsewhere please. Thank you.
Slashdot Mirror
The QPL is still in contradiction to the principles that the GPL was written to uphold, which includes the freedom to use the software for internal purposes.
Is that entirely true though? The GPL uses the term 'distribution' which is a grey area. IANAL but, it would seem to me that many people could twist the word distribution up and down.
It's my understanding that a corporation 'distributing' to their workers would probably not be called distribution because it's inside one giant entity, but does the same apply if you give a piece of internal GPL software to, for example, a temporary worker who is not an entity of the company? I'd like to see it shown, not implied, what the exact standing of that is.
Matt
For all those forms, I simply reply with the following address:
privacy@them.tld.
That way, they can get their own mail to their privacy account and I don't get bothered. Maybe if they get annoyed enough, they'll stop asking for your email just to download a piece of 'free' software. Of course 'free' means "If you sell^H^H^H^Hgive your e-mail address to us
Is this polite? Probably not. Neither is sending junk mail to people or selling your "private" databases when you go bankrupt.
Regards,
Matt Heckaman
>>>>> QUOTE
One sadly amusing story I heard from a Canadian friend is that Quebec has a law stating that any signs written in English must also be written in French, and that the French text must be no less than twice the size of the English text. There is supposedly a 'police force' that actually goes around measuring signs to make sure this law is met, and they issue fines if it's not. How's that for being anal?
>>>>> END QUOTE
All of that is quite true, right down to the language police which are operating under a government mandate to nail anyone who does not comply with their laws. It's rather fascist actually. I believe totally that they have the right to protect their culture, but they do not have the right to make my culture illegal. It's much as the settlers did to the Native Americans when they took over.
The laws extend futher to the point that no business may have an english name and be legally registered in the province of Quebec. It even goes to the extent that if you are taken to a Hospital and the doctor doesn't speak english, you're shit out of luck.
Then there's how if you are arrested, the police will not speak to you english, your charges will be said in french, the trial itself will even be in french. I know this because I had to testify against a person here a couple years ago; He spoke no french, and neither did I. The funny part was that no one even translated for him. Though the detective who made the arrest (Great guy) translated for me what they were asking me. It's quite insane here.
There are other trivial things, like how people working in sales are prohibited from starting any conversation in english, they MUST ask / greet you in french first. Some take this as far as speaking french to you even when they understand english and you greet them in english. If I did not like Montreal so much, I would get the hell of this mad place.
Well, I'm happy (I think) to report that it does run seemingly well under FreeBSD 4.0's Linux emulation. However, are they not supposed to be fixing memory issues, not creating more?
[somewhat snipped data from top]
PID SIZE RES WCPU CPU COMMAND
6755 27212K 21768K 39.79% 17.97% mozilla-bin
6641 15072K 12172K 2.85% 2.64% netscape-4.72
[Note; I did not run them at the same time.]
Call me a M$ traitor if you wish (even though I'm solely dedicated to FreeBSD) but I would be very happy for a linux copy of MSIE (to run under FreeBSD's Linux emulation) - Netscape did NOT lose 70% of the market share because M$ bundled MSIE with Windows, they lost it because M$ sadly made a better browser, don't you find that sad?
PS: These are personal opinions, send your flames elsewhere please. Thank you.