The word "support" is so overused. What exactly does support mean these days anyway? Patches that don't work? Phone calls to someone out of the country that doesn't speak your language natively and has never actually used the program in a production environment? Hold times of 45 minutes? Security updates that break other parts?
None of that. It means "paid scapegoat", i.e. job security for IT professionals who, instead of getting fired for the inevitable IT problems, can shift the blame for those onto the company providing the "support".
As far as I know, xargs doesn't have any such
limit (other than virtual memory) when it is
constructing the command-line that it is going
to execute.
Actually, if the size of the arguments exceeds the maximum command line length, xargs splits them into multiple command lines and executes the utility once for each of them. Depending on what utility you're invoking, that can lead to some interesting unexpected effects if you're not aware of that.
MySQL (the database) still works with Debian, but MySQL (the support company) no longer sells support for Debian.
For medium and large companies (which are the only entities that would buy support to begin with), that difference is purely academic. If it isn't supported, it isn't worth running.
You point actually serves to defend TFA rather than to refute it. Most users have no idea you can do anything like that with Google, and indeed some of it was news to me. None of it is visible on the front page and there's no hint these things are possible. How could something possibly be easy to use if you don't even know you can use it?
Where did they get that text from? It's not anywhere to be found in the source. Did they cheat? Or are they just tricky?
They got it from the Google category at the Open Directory Project at dmoz.org, mirrored at directory.google.com. Google is a user of dmoz.org data but has completely de-emphasized that as of late.
It's actually against the dmoz license agreement to use their data without a link back to the source, but nobody seems to care.
Slashdot is in fact a blog (i.e.: weblog) in the traditional sense of the word: a site that regularly signals pages and articles elsewhere on the web by linking to them and adding personal commentary. A weblog is a report of one or more persons' websurfing activity. In fact, I'd venture to guess that Slashdot is the original blog – started before the word even existed.
"Blog" only very recently became synonymous in the public mind with "online diary" (thanks to sites such as Blogger that allowed any bored teenager to open a blog), but that's something else altogether.
You might want to tell Eben Moglen that - since he seems of the belief (borrowed from another poster) that anyone has the choice to designate a project GPL3 unless it is specified "GPL2 only":
Q: Will existing software, which is currently released under GPLv2 automatically be released under GPLv3 when it is published? A: Under the re-versioning clause contained in section 9 of GPLv2, once GPLv3 is formally published for use, new releases of modified or unmodified GPL programs not designated 'GPLv2 only' can occur under GPLv3. The FSF will release all the software in its care under the new licence, and we expect that other projects under GPL will make the shift, too with their next release. If the projects themselves do not, under GPLv2 section 9, any person possessing a copy of the program can make a release under 'any later version' of the licence, so re-licensing, though not precisely automatic, will be swift. For programs designated 'GPLv2 only,' re-licensing requires a decision by the copyright holder or holders, or others contractually or otherwise invested with the power to make licensing decisions.
Careful reading of that statement simply confirms the fact that only the copyright holder can relicense a work to take away the GPLv2-or-later clause: "we expect that other projects under GPL will make the shift, too with their next release" (implying this requires the copyright holder to change the license), and: "If the projects themselves do not, under GPLv2 section 9, any person possessing a copy of the program can make a release under 'any later version' of the licence, so re-licensing, though not precisely automatic, will be swift" - nothing in here implies third parties can take away the option for other third parties to distribute under GPLv2, only that they have the option to distibute under either GPL2 or GPLv3 or any future later version. His statement that relicensing is "not precisely automatic" also seems to contradict that third parties can take away that right.
Reading the referenced Section 9 of GPLv2 also turns up nothing indicating anyone other than the copyright holder has the right to take away the option to distribute under GPLv2 or later versions: "[...] you have the option of following the terms and conditions
either of that version or of any later version published by the Free
Software Foundation."
All that said, Eben Moglen is not above copyright law, so even if I am grossly misreading his statement and he is in fact saying what you think he is saying, my point still stands: only the copyright holder can change the license(s) under which a program is distributed.
I've watched Stallman in several interviews (techtv, etc.), read his stuff, etc. From my novice pov, most notably, I remember his presence in Revolution OS. Torvalds had just finished speaking, was remaining on stage, and Stallman gets up to give a rambling "talk" about open sournce. The gist of what Stallman was trying to say, to me, was, "I made open source! Not Linus! It was mine! I wanted herd to be the kernel! Rosebud!..."
This information cannot possibly be correct. How do I know? Stallman completely disavows the "Open Source" movement, much less claimed to have created it. Open Source came long after Free Software and is an entirely separate movement that has little ideological in common with the Free Software movement.
GPL V3 AUTOMATICALLY REPLACES GPL V2 IF YOU USE THE STANDARD GPL V2 LANGUAGE.
NO. IN FACT IT DOES NOT DO THAT AT ALL.
Don't believe me. Go read it for yourself.
Why don't you read it first, since it appears that you haven't. What part of "GPL v2 or any later version" is so hard to understand? You continue to have the option to distribute the program under GPL v2.
With the standard licensing language, anybody who has a copy of a GPLv2 work can relicense it under the GPLv3.
Wrong again. Under copyright law, only the copyright holder can change the license under which a work is distributed. For non-copyright holders, "GPL v2 or any later version" remains "GPL v2 or any later version". Only the copyright holder can take the GPL v2 option away, and then only on versions not previously published under a GPL v2-or-later license.
There is nothing "automatic" about a relicensing by the copyright holder, and you continue to have the option to obtain the non-relicensed version and even develop it further. It is impossible, even for the copyright holder, to take away the right to redistribute and further develop the existing, GPL v2-or-later licensed program under GPL v2.
This has the potential for all sorts of interesting problems, like "If I contribute code to a GPL v3 project, can it be used under the GPLv2 fork of the same project?"
If you contribute code and retain your copyright to that code, you can license and relicense it however you like, and any licensing issue is irrelevant to you. If you sign over the copyright to your code to someone else (e.g. the FSF for GNU software), you consent to have it licensed however they want it licensed.
You're able to say all that you wrote in Australia without risking arrest for political subversion? Yes? Can't be that bad, then. Count your blessings.
Stallman's arguement that, "one is allowed to charge for GPL'd software" is laughable at best and hippocritical at worse, since what individual would pay for something he can get for free?
Ask a company like Red Hat how they make money by selling free software. No, it's not just by selling services...
I was about to post if anyone had a link to the actual draft directive, instead of that obviously alarmist rubbish, but there it is. Thank you!
I cite another article, adding emphasis:
(13) The definition of audiovisual media services covers all audiovisual mass-media services, whether scheduled or on-demand. However, its scope is limited to services as defined by the Treaty and therefore covers any form of economic activity, including that of public service enterprises, but does not cover non-economic activities, such as purely private websites.
So, this is yet another example of typical British anti-EU hysteria and the predictable Slashbot kneejerking. Nothing to see here, please move along.
(I do wish the UK would go ahead and leave the EU already.)
And yes, Spamhaus is a a non-profit corporation, yes, but it pulls in millions and millions of dollars a year from internet providers in PROFIT which is paid out to the executives every year.
That is libelous nonsense. The post, which sounds like it was written by a spammer, probably refers to Spamhaus' Data Feed service for ISP's and large organizations. You can easily see with the price check on that page that the costs per year, even for large sites, are nowhere near such amounts and are simply designed to cover the costs of the operation (including their free public DNS query servers). Don't believe something just because some kook posted it in a discussion forum.
Hey, don't insult us Mac users like that. I use Slackware and Mac OS X as my two main OSes.
Nice to see someone else who does that. I thought I might be the only one who felt that Slackware and Mac OS X are both transparent and user friendly, each in their own very different way.
Those of us who care will probably fork Linux (which *can* be done, dispite Linus' incorrect claims to the contrary). It's going to have to be done sooner or later anyway.
They can fork Linux all they want, and to the best of my knowledge, Linus never denied that. But they can still not cause their fork to be licensed under the GPL version 3. The many copyright holders have specifically licensed their contributions to the kernel under the GPL version 2 only, and only the copyright holders can change the license under which a work is published. That's simply a fact.
No, piracy is the misappropriation of a sea vessel with or without intent to return. Copying without profit is intellectual property infringement.
That's just as wrong, but more subtly so, and therefore more damaging. There is no such thing as "intellectual property infringement" because the term "intellectual property" is newspeak made up by the publishing industry in attempt to muddy the distinction between patents, copyright, and property. The proper term for the misdemeanor in question is copyright infringement.
How can hackers, scattered across the globe, working for no pay, linked only by the net and shared values, apparently outperform the smartest software company on the planet?
Why do people keep perpetuating this myth? It should be widely known by now that all the important Linux developers get paid by their respective employers to work on the kernel. That's possibly the most significant sign of widespread acceptance of the open-source development model -- that companies such as IBM would pay their own employees to do work on a public project that is not exclusively to their own benefit.
In the same sentence, the author managed to confuse "richest" with "smartest" as well. I'm not very impressed with this article.
Slashdot Mirror
But maybe he should have meant ELinks, an even more advanced derivative that's actually in active development.
And here's another one. Even The WELL still has its gopher.
None of that. It means "paid scapegoat", i.e. job security for IT professionals who, instead of getting fired for the inevitable IT problems, can shift the blame for those onto the company providing the "support".
Actually, if the size of the arguments exceeds the maximum command line length, xargs splits them into multiple command lines and executes the utility once for each of them. Depending on what utility you're invoking, that can lead to some interesting unexpected effects if you're not aware of that.
For medium and large companies (which are the only entities that would buy support to begin with), that difference is purely academic. If it isn't supported, it isn't worth running.
You point actually serves to defend TFA rather than to refute it. Most users have no idea you can do anything like that with Google, and indeed some of it was news to me. None of it is visible on the front page and there's no hint these things are possible. How could something possibly be easy to use if you don't even know you can use it?
They got it from the Google category at the Open Directory Project at dmoz.org, mirrored at directory.google.com. Google is a user of dmoz.org data but has completely de-emphasized that as of late.
It's actually against the dmoz license agreement to use their data without a link back to the source, but nobody seems to care.
No no no! That should be like this:
Cun Jeem Hensun sooe-a Guugle-a oofer zeeur oopshun tu trunslete-a tu Svedeesh Cheff?
Bork bork bork!
Well no, because it would still have been little-known/accepted, violating the notability requirement.
Slashdot is in fact a blog (i.e.: weblog) in the traditional sense of the word: a site that regularly signals pages and articles elsewhere on the web by linking to them and adding personal commentary. A weblog is a report of one or more persons' websurfing activity. In fact, I'd venture to guess that Slashdot is the original blog – started before the word even existed.
"Blog" only very recently became synonymous in the public mind with "online diary" (thanks to sites such as Blogger that allowed any bored teenager to open a blog), but that's something else altogether.
Careful reading of that statement simply confirms the fact that only the copyright holder can relicense a work to take away the GPLv2-or-later clause: "we expect that other projects under GPL will make the shift, too with their next release" (implying this requires the copyright holder to change the license), and: "If the projects themselves do not, under GPLv2 section 9, any person possessing a copy of the program can make a release under 'any later version' of the licence, so re-licensing, though not precisely automatic, will be swift" - nothing in here implies third parties can take away the option for other third parties to distribute under GPLv2, only that they have the option to distibute under either GPL2 or GPLv3 or any future later version. His statement that relicensing is "not precisely automatic" also seems to contradict that third parties can take away that right.
Reading the referenced Section 9 of GPLv2 also turns up nothing indicating anyone other than the copyright holder has the right to take away the option to distribute under GPLv2 or later versions: "[...] you have the option of following the terms and conditions either of that version or of any later version published by the Free Software Foundation."
All that said, Eben Moglen is not above copyright law, so even if I am grossly misreading his statement and he is in fact saying what you think he is saying, my point still stands: only the copyright holder can change the license(s) under which a program is distributed.
This information cannot possibly be correct. How do I know? Stallman completely disavows the "Open Source" movement, much less claimed to have created it. Open Source came long after Free Software and is an entirely separate movement that has little ideological in common with the Free Software movement.
NO. IN FACT IT DOES NOT DO THAT AT ALL.
Why don't you read it first, since it appears that you haven't. What part of "GPL v2 or any later version" is so hard to understand? You continue to have the option to distribute the program under GPL v2.
Wrong again. Under copyright law, only the copyright holder can change the license under which a work is distributed. For non-copyright holders, "GPL v2 or any later version" remains "GPL v2 or any later version". Only the copyright holder can take the GPL v2 option away, and then only on versions not previously published under a GPL v2-or-later license.
There is nothing "automatic" about a relicensing by the copyright holder, and you continue to have the option to obtain the non-relicensed version and even develop it further. It is impossible, even for the copyright holder, to take away the right to redistribute and further develop the existing, GPL v2-or-later licensed program under GPL v2.
If you contribute code and retain your copyright to that code, you can license and relicense it however you like, and any licensing issue is irrelevant to you. If you sign over the copyright to your code to someone else (e.g. the FSF for GNU software), you consent to have it licensed however they want it licensed.
You're able to say all that you wrote in Australia without risking arrest for political subversion? Yes? Can't be that bad, then. Count your blessings.
Ask a company like Red Hat how they make money by selling free software. No, it's not just by selling services...
I was about to post if anyone had a link to the actual draft directive, instead of that obviously alarmist rubbish, but there it is. Thank you!
I cite another article, adding emphasis:
So, this is yet another example of typical British anti-EU hysteria and the predictable Slashbot kneejerking. Nothing to see here, please move along.
(I do wish the UK would go ahead and leave the EU already.)
Errr, just that they buy hosting in the US doesn't mean they have a US presence.
That is libelous nonsense. The post, which sounds like it was written by a spammer, probably refers to Spamhaus' Data Feed service for ISP's and large organizations. You can easily see with the price check on that page that the costs per year, even for large sites, are nowhere near such amounts and are simply designed to cover the costs of the operation (including their free public DNS query servers). Don't believe something just because some kook posted it in a discussion forum.
For those who don't like 8.1 meg PDF files, here is a 2.1 meg HTML mirror including images and all.
Bit late, but maybe better late than never.
Trogre wrote:
That just leaves us with the slight problem of forcing all XXX sites in the world to move under the .xxx domain.
Nice to see someone else who does that. I thought I might be the only one who felt that Slackware and Mac OS X are both transparent and user friendly, each in their own very different way.
That's actually not true. In other theocracies it's often the same or even worse.
They can fork Linux all they want, and to the best of my knowledge, Linus never denied that. But they can still not cause their fork to be licensed under the GPL version 3. The many copyright holders have specifically licensed their contributions to the kernel under the GPL version 2 only, and only the copyright holders can change the license under which a work is published. That's simply a fact.
That's just as wrong, but more subtly so, and therefore more damaging. There is no such thing as "intellectual property infringement" because the term "intellectual property" is newspeak made up by the publishing industry in attempt to muddy the distinction between patents, copyright, and property. The proper term for the misdemeanor in question is copyright infringement.
From the article:
Why do people keep perpetuating this myth? It should be widely known by now that all the important Linux developers get paid by their respective employers to work on the kernel. That's possibly the most significant sign of widespread acceptance of the open-source development model -- that companies such as IBM would pay their own employees to do work on a public project that is not exclusively to their own benefit.
In the same sentence, the author managed to confuse "richest" with "smartest" as well. I'm not very impressed with this article.