The problem I have is that Linux score writing applications are primitive. They exist. And they "sort of" work. But only "sort of". I supposedly can import Finale export files into Linux, but that's not using Linux as a music score editor.
And also I'd really like an application that combined an svg editor with a pixel graphics editor. Inkscape is good for one, and The Gimp is good for the other. But a good replacement for my favorite graphics editor would be a combined editor.
P.S.: Can The Gimp2 do animation yet? I'd try it, but the version I currently have installed works, and apparently I can't have both installed at once. The last time I had any firm information the answer was "not yet". (It depends on an add-on toolkit in The Gimp v 1.x.)
If you don't have the right to redistribute the right to modify the code, you don't have the right to distribute the code using the GPL license. Not unless you are the sole author.
If you do have the right to distribute the right to redistribute the code, then either you are the patent holder, or you have acquired the right to redistribute the code from the patent holder (possibly via some chain of intermediaries). Or the code isn't patented.
If you are the sole author, then this reasoning isn't watertight. In that case you are not, yourself, bound by the GPL, so you have the right to redistribute the code in ways incompatible with the GPL. In that case one must rely on the doctrine of latches and various other legal traditions. It works out to the same thing, but the reasoning is too complex for me to follow. (IANAL). The only real exception is if the code being distributed is sold under a contract that specifically excludes the right to transfer the patents that would otherwise be granted under the GPL, In such a case the recipient of the code is prohibited under the GPL from redistributing the code. (I've never run across an instance of that, but it's a logical possibility.)
Again, caution, IANAL. And I didn't hire any of the people who have convinced me that this is what the law and the contracts mean.
Yeah, I wasn't very happy when they did that. But at the time there wasn't MUCH competition for the use of the term. Yeah, there was some, but not much. And the definition that they chose was pretty much in line with the most common usage.
Now compare this to what MS is doing. There is currently a lot of use of the term, and their definition is a gross perversion of all existing usage (well, all of which I am aware).
I was a bit miffed at OSI. The only reason that I'm not quite angry with MS over this, is because I'm far angrier with them over other abuses.
Actually the promise can be a lot more restrictive than that. They could merely declare that the patent is free for anyone implementing code descendant from their code. This would suffice for the GPL license (either GPL2 or GPL3) providing that the promise was legally binding on the owner of the patent. Distribution of software containing that patent under either the GPLv2 or the GPLv3 would qualify as a legally binding promise. (GPLv3 is more explicit than GPLv2, but GPLv2 is still quite clear.)
Nitpick time: If you are going to retain patents on your software, it is not open. Period. End of story.
Well, no. If you own the patent and distribute the code under the GPL, then you are either implicitly (GPL2) or explicitly (GPL3) distributing the right to use the patent in modified derived code. The problem comes if you are only licensing the right to use the patent. Then you may well not have the right to distribute the code under the GPL.
Are you certain that software doesn't think? Do you have a precise definition of think that a) covers what people do b) doesn't cover what any software does and c) matches the common usage of the term think
I've got vague and uncertain definitions that might fit, but they've got lots of corner cases that give results that say people don't think. Or software does. And since they're vague, I often can't tell whether something falls into a corner case or not.
You'd be in a stronger position if you had instead asserted that software wasn't conscious, but that basically has the same problems. Most precise definitions of conscious that I'm aware of end up with resolving to "A thermostat that controls a furnace and an air conditioner is conscious." Which doesn't match our intuitive understanding of the term, but that may be because we've never grown up with a consistent definition of conscious. I've even met people who maintain that a dog isn't conscious.
OTOH, it's also true that the GPL doesn't appear to give any rights to the software itself. So you're also right that the original argument wasn't exact. Metaphorically it makes sense, but it's not a precise and rational argument.
Any license that requires that you allow those to whom you distribute to code to modify and redistribute it requires that any patents that you require in order to modify and redistribute the code have the right to use them distributed with the code.
GPL2 isn't as explicit about it as the GPL3 is, but it's implicit in the license. (Caution: IANAL)
The BSD doesn't have that problem because it doesn't have that right of redistribution. And I happen to believe that the right of redistribution is important.
No, GPL isn't the definition of open. But I've yet to see anything that I thought of as open that was also incompatible with the GPL.
BSD is open. It has rightful claims to being more open than the GPL, But you'll notice that it's compatible with the GPL.
(Actually, there's a question as to whether the original BSD license was as open as the GPL. I feel undecided about that, but it *was* incompatible with the GPL. OTOH, I've not seen anything with the original BSD license in the last two decades. [Doesn't mean it doesn't exist, it means I don't see it.])
And in particular, I wouldn't call anything with a RAND license open. Reasonable is given so many different interpretations by so many different people. And it's incompatible with most FOSS software. So as normally interpreted RAND is hardly non-discriminatory.
Really it doesn't intrinsically matter whether the monopoly is enforced by patent or copyright, RAND is an oxymoron created for PR purposes and only serving those purposes. Because of legal peculiarities it's usually enforced by patents, but that's largely irrelevant to the basic point. The non-discriminatory part of RAND means I get to choose who I will discriminate against. O, and I also get to define what's reasonable. It's a PR term, so one would be a fool to expect it to mean anything else. (Actually I'm oversimplifying. I think that they interpret non-discriminatory to mean that they charge the same price to everybody. One can reasonably argue that that's a reasonable interpretation of the term. In practice that means that by selecting the terms I can disadvantage whomever I choose.)
It isn't a gag order. It is gagging. Were I to receive such a letter it would cause me to gag.
It's a threat wrapped around an insult, and with no legal basis behind the threat UNLESS you accept it. It's wholly based on the presumption that the person receiving it won't realize how contemptible it is. Fortunately, they appear to have realized that it fairly shouted "It's a trap!!".
It reminds me of playing Alpha Centauri. (I always play single mode.) When I'm about to drive one the automated players to extinction they always offer a bribe to let them live. And it's always so cheap that it's really insulting. (I've tried accepting, but it doesn't seem to yield ANY value.)
Apple is just as greedy, but not *quite* as immoral as Microsoft. Apple at least attempts to achieve technical excellence. They don't always succeed, and when they fail they're quite embarrassed about it, but they try. It's not much of a morality, but it's better than what MS offers.
Since my wife uses Linux, I can guarantee to you that Linux doesn't require arcane command line tools. Of course, that depends on what you're doing, and which version of Linux you're using. For her I picked Ubuntu LTS... partially because I use Debian. The only problem is that she doesn't update the system. I probably *should* set up a crontab task to do it for her, but she gets nervous when ANYTHING changes without her having, say, opened a window. So I occasionally run the updates on her machine. She doesn't like it, but she's willing to accept it if *I* do it.
Linux isn't ready for people like her, but neither is the Mac...which is what I used to recommend before they made their EULA abusive.
If you want to delve into the arcana, then you can do it on Linux. If you don't, you don't need to. It may limit what you can do, but on other systems you couldn't do those things anyway. (Actually, you can do many of them on the Mac, because it DOES have a command line, and system commands with option flags. I may think the shell is primitive, but it works, unlike the last MSWind command line, which was missing many rather basic features. CygWin partially fixed that, but only partially, because some of them were inherent in the OS. (Possibly this isn't as limited in more recent versions of MSWind, but the version I used was even more limited than the MSDOS command prompt.)
No. But it might be close to winning the lottery once a month for 10 years. Depends a lot on what you mean by winning and which lottery, though. There *might* be a lottery that fits your estimate. (Which clearly varies depending on how long you're going to live.)
P.S.: I *really* doubt your estimate of how often it would cause a house fire. I think you put the odds much too low. 1 in 100 is probably too low, though. Say 1 in 200 or 400. I imagine iPods are often stored in sock drawers or with homework papers. Or in the bed. And it depends on the range of explosion characteristics. If it mainly goes pop, then fires will be less frequent, but if it often starts to glow red hot, then they'll be more frequent. Of course white hot shrapnel would result in the largest number of fires. But I don't know. All I know is a report I heard about a notebook battery exploding. That one was on a wood surface and if it started a fire, it was quickly extinguished. But it clearly would have started a fire if there'd been paper around. iPods have smaller batteries, so they would probably be less dramatic, but it doesn't take much drama to start a fire, when circumstances are appropriate.
Another thing is valuation. Of what value is an iPod that you should put your house at risk? True, it's not a large risk, but then is it that large a value? Electric wires are valuable partially because they reduce the risk of acetylene explosions. (Acetylene was a previously used lighting gas.) So adding electric wiring actually reduced both the danger and severity of fires. Possibly now we would replace it with propane or butane (or propanol or...), but now electricity is also valued for other reasons.
Well, different people obviously have very different senses of humor. I just found it incomprehensible. It might have been modded troll because there wasn't a -1 Stupid modification. Then again....
What's a "gay panel"? (I'm not really that curious, but if I knew this I might have a clue as to why either you laughed or the other modded him troll.)
It used to be that every time I did something on our Mac I'd end up swearing at it. Lately, though, I think instead "Now how could I move this to Linux?" Lots of times this is very difficult because of proprietary applications with proprietary formats...but I've made a start.
What's a good application for creating scallops and binding them to a circular path in an svg format file? (I.e., I'm having trouble doing that in Inkscape.)
Guns are not better. Guns are more efficient. When they are used to defend yourself, they are better. When they are used to attack, they are worse. As simple artifacts they are morally neutral, but the AMPLIFY the moral defects of others. I don't see many ways in which they amplify the moral purity of others.
One of the reasons that I sit (and sat) safe at home is that even if it were relatively safe I still didn't think it was proper to subjugate others through violence. We don't currently have a draft, so anyone who chooses to become a soldier has chosen to use violence to impose their will upon others. I will grant, however, that in many cases it wasn't an uncoerced choice. And that much more of the evil adheres to those who command the actions than to those who merely act out the orders as if they were robots.
The primary danger of robot soldiers, though, is that it decreases the need for a government to have at least acceptance of it's policies, if not agreement with them.
Selling the code this way incurs certain obligations. One of them is that you MUST maintain the availability of the source code at a defined location for 3 years after the last sale. (I think I'd three years. It's been awhile since I checked.)
There's nothing about the GPL that says you can't sell the code for whatever price you can find buyers. It just says that those buyers must have access to the source code, and if you don't always ship the source code with the product, that you must maintain such access for 3 years after your final sale. (Well, there's lots of other details, but that's the essence.)
Personally, I'd prefer to always provide the source code with the application, and if I couldn't do that, I wouldn't distribute it that way, but that's my choice. And anyway you no longer have that option. (Judging by the above comments, you couldn't have shipped the source code as a part of each purchase, but I'm not certain that this is correct.)
Sorry, before the invention of money there was lots of communal sharing of things. Actually it was closer to either an idealized communism or to an autocracy (not so idealized) than to capitalism. Different cultures handled things differently, though, so there might have been a capitalist culture somewhere. Africa had an anarchist society, after all. (The Yk, or Yik. And *had* is the operative word. It fell apart under stress.) I don't know much about African cultures, except Egyptian.
It's theft because after they stole it from you you didn't have it anymore. Note that this is quite different from copyright infringement. You never claimed to own the copyright...you claimed to own the particular instance.
In short, your original premise is so illogical that the rest of you argument is guaranteed to be fallacious (though some of the steps might well be logical, I didn't check them).
E.g., If I begin an argument with "Since you owe me $5 trillion..." you don't need to attend any further to know that the argument is fallacious.
Did they sell it? Bet their lawyers claim they didn't.
Was it legal? I don't think so, but IANAL.
To me it looks like multiple clear cases of unauthorized computer trespass and theft. But I bet that there isn't a DA in the country that's going to pick up on it.
Slashdot Mirror
Patents can be about money, or they can be about control. Or, of course, both. Money isn't the only reason to do things.
The problem I have is that Linux score writing applications are primitive. They exist. And they "sort of" work. But only "sort of". I supposedly can import Finale export files into Linux, but that's not using Linux as a music score editor.
And also I'd really like an application that combined an svg editor with a pixel graphics editor. Inkscape is good for one, and The Gimp is good for the other. But a good replacement for my favorite graphics editor would be a combined editor.
P.S.: Can The Gimp2 do animation yet? I'd try it, but the version I currently have installed works, and apparently I can't have both installed at once. The last time I had any firm information the answer was "not yet". (It depends on an add-on toolkit in The Gimp v 1.x.)
If you don't have the right to redistribute the right to modify the code, you don't have the right to distribute the code using the GPL license. Not unless you are the sole author.
If you do have the right to distribute the right to redistribute the code, then either you are the patent holder, or you have acquired the right to redistribute the code from the patent holder (possibly via some chain of intermediaries). Or the code isn't patented.
If you are the sole author, then this reasoning isn't watertight. In that case you are not, yourself, bound by the GPL, so you have the right to redistribute the code in ways incompatible with the GPL. In that case one must rely on the doctrine of latches and various other legal traditions. It works out to the same thing, but the reasoning is too complex for me to follow. (IANAL). The only real exception is if the code being distributed is sold under a contract that specifically excludes the right to transfer the patents that would otherwise be granted under the GPL, In such a case the recipient of the code is prohibited under the GPL from redistributing the code. (I've never run across an instance of that, but it's a logical possibility.)
Again, caution, IANAL. And I didn't hire any of the people who have convinced me that this is what the law and the contracts mean.
I'm wondering what it's rate of mutation is. That may not be totally silly...mainly, of course, but possibly not totally.
Just suppose the whole thing is some grad student's artificial life project that got away. Maybe someone should ask TurnItIn to check out this guess.
Yeah, I wasn't very happy when they did that. But at the time there wasn't MUCH competition for the use of the term. Yeah, there was some, but not much. And the definition that they chose was pretty much in line with the most common usage.
Now compare this to what MS is doing. There is currently a lot of use of the term, and their definition is a gross perversion of all existing usage (well, all of which I am aware).
I was a bit miffed at OSI. The only reason that I'm not quite angry with MS over this, is because I'm far angrier with them over other abuses.
Actually the promise can be a lot more restrictive than that. They could merely declare that the patent is free for anyone implementing code descendant from their code. This would suffice for the GPL license (either GPL2 or GPL3) providing that the promise was legally binding on the owner of the patent. Distribution of software containing that patent under either the GPLv2 or the GPLv3 would qualify as a legally binding promise. (GPLv3 is more explicit than GPLv2, but GPLv2 is still quite clear.)
Caution: IANAL
Nitpick time:
If you are going to retain patents on your software, it is not open. Period. End of story.
Well, no. If you own the patent and distribute the code under the GPL, then you are either implicitly (GPL2) or explicitly (GPL3) distributing the right to use the patent in modified derived code. The problem comes if you are only licensing the right to use the patent. Then you may well not have the right to distribute the code under the GPL.
Are you certain that software doesn't think?
Do you have a precise definition of think that
a) covers what people do
b) doesn't cover what any software does
and
c) matches the common usage of the term think
I've got vague and uncertain definitions that might fit, but they've got lots of corner cases that give results that say people don't think. Or software does. And since they're vague, I often can't tell whether something falls into a corner case or not.
You'd be in a stronger position if you had instead asserted that software wasn't conscious, but that basically has the same problems. Most precise definitions of conscious that I'm aware of end up with resolving to "A thermostat that controls a furnace and an air conditioner is conscious." Which doesn't match our intuitive understanding of the term, but that may be because we've never grown up with a consistent definition of conscious. I've even met people who maintain that a dog isn't conscious.
OTOH, it's also true that the GPL doesn't appear to give any rights to the software itself. So you're also right that the original argument wasn't exact. Metaphorically it makes sense, but it's not a precise and rational argument.
Any license that requires that you allow those to whom you distribute to code to modify and redistribute it requires that any patents that you require in order to modify and redistribute the code have the right to use them distributed with the code.
GPL2 isn't as explicit about it as the GPL3 is, but it's implicit in the license. (Caution: IANAL)
The BSD doesn't have that problem because it doesn't have that right of redistribution. And I happen to believe that the right of redistribution is important.
No, GPL isn't the definition of open. But I've yet to see anything that I thought of as open that was also incompatible with the GPL.
BSD is open. It has rightful claims to being more open than the GPL, But you'll notice that it's compatible with the GPL.
(Actually, there's a question as to whether the original BSD license was as open as the GPL. I feel undecided about that, but it *was* incompatible with the GPL. OTOH, I've not seen anything with the original BSD license in the last two decades. [Doesn't mean it doesn't exist, it means I don't see it.])
And in particular, I wouldn't call anything with a RAND license open. Reasonable is given so many different interpretations by so many different people. And it's incompatible with most FOSS software. So as normally interpreted RAND is hardly non-discriminatory.
Really it doesn't intrinsically matter whether the monopoly is enforced by patent or copyright, RAND is an oxymoron created for PR purposes and only serving those purposes. Because of legal peculiarities it's usually enforced by patents, but that's largely irrelevant to the basic point. The non-discriminatory part of RAND means I get to choose who I will discriminate against. O, and I also get to define what's reasonable. It's a PR term, so one would be a fool to expect it to mean anything else. (Actually I'm oversimplifying. I think that they interpret non-discriminatory to mean that they charge the same price to everybody. One can reasonably argue that that's a reasonable interpretation of the term. In practice that means that by selecting the terms I can disadvantage whomever I choose.)
It isn't a gag order. It is gagging. Were I to receive such a letter it would cause me to gag.
It's a threat wrapped around an insult, and with no legal basis behind the threat UNLESS you accept it. It's wholly based on the presumption that the person receiving it won't realize how contemptible it is. Fortunately, they appear to have realized that it fairly shouted "It's a trap!!".
With a *REALLY* chintzy bribe.
It reminds me of playing Alpha Centauri. (I always play single mode.) When I'm about to drive one the automated players to extinction they always offer a bribe to let them live. And it's always so cheap that it's really insulting. (I've tried accepting, but it doesn't seem to yield ANY value.)
Apple is just as greedy, but not *quite* as immoral as Microsoft. Apple at least attempts to achieve technical excellence. They don't always succeed, and when they fail they're quite embarrassed about it, but they try. It's not much of a morality, but it's better than what MS offers.
Since my wife uses Linux, I can guarantee to you that Linux doesn't require arcane command line tools. Of course, that depends on what you're doing, and which version of Linux you're using. For her I picked Ubuntu LTS ... partially because I use Debian. The only problem is that she doesn't update the system. I probably *should* set up a crontab task to do it for her, but she gets nervous when ANYTHING changes without her having, say, opened a window. So I occasionally run the updates on her machine. She doesn't like it, but she's willing to accept it if *I* do it.
Linux isn't ready for people like her, but neither is the Mac...which is what I used to recommend before they made their EULA abusive.
If you want to delve into the arcana, then you can do it on Linux. If you don't, you don't need to. It may limit what you can do, but on other systems you couldn't do those things anyway. (Actually, you can do many of them on the Mac, because it DOES have a command line, and system commands with option flags. I may think the shell is primitive, but it works, unlike the last MSWind command line, which was missing many rather basic features. CygWin partially fixed that, but only partially, because some of them were inherent in the OS. (Possibly this isn't as limited in more recent versions of MSWind, but the version I used was even more limited than the MSDOS command prompt.)
No. But it might be close to winning the lottery once a month for 10 years. Depends a lot on what you mean by winning and which lottery, though. There *might* be a lottery that fits your estimate. (Which clearly varies depending on how long you're going to live.)
P.S.: I *really* doubt your estimate of how often it would cause a house fire. I think you put the odds much too low. 1 in 100 is probably too low, though. Say 1 in 200 or 400. I imagine iPods are often stored in sock drawers or with homework papers. Or in the bed. And it depends on the range of explosion characteristics. If it mainly goes pop, then fires will be less frequent, but if it often starts to glow red hot, then they'll be more frequent. Of course white hot shrapnel would result in the largest number of fires. But I don't know. All I know is a report I heard about a notebook battery exploding. That one was on a wood surface and if it started a fire, it was quickly extinguished. But it clearly would have started a fire if there'd been paper around. iPods have smaller batteries, so they would probably be less dramatic, but it doesn't take much drama to start a fire, when circumstances are appropriate.
Another thing is valuation. Of what value is an iPod that you should put your house at risk? True, it's not a large risk, but then is it that large a value? Electric wires are valuable partially because they reduce the risk of acetylene explosions. (Acetylene was a previously used lighting gas.) So adding electric wiring actually reduced both the danger and severity of fires. Possibly now we would replace it with propane or butane (or propanol or...), but now electricity is also valued for other reasons.
I don't know. I saying that Apple hires sleazier lawyers than SCOx really keeping Apple guilt-free?
Well, different people obviously have very different senses of humor. I just found it incomprehensible. It might have been modded troll because there wasn't a -1 Stupid modification. Then again....
What's a "gay panel"? (I'm not really that curious, but if I knew this I might have a clue as to why either you laughed or the other modded him troll.)
It used to be that every time I did something on our Mac I'd end up swearing at it. Lately, though, I think instead "Now how could I move this to Linux?" Lots of times this is very difficult because of proprietary applications with proprietary formats...but I've made a start.
What's a good application for creating scallops and binding them to a circular path in an svg format file? (I.e., I'm having trouble doing that in Inkscape.)
Guns are not better. Guns are more efficient. When they are used to defend yourself, they are better. When they are used to attack, they are worse. As simple artifacts they are morally neutral, but the AMPLIFY the moral defects of others. I don't see many ways in which they amplify the moral purity of others.
One of the reasons that I sit (and sat) safe at home is that even if it were relatively safe I still didn't think it was proper to subjugate others through violence. We don't currently have a draft, so anyone who chooses to become a soldier has chosen to use violence to impose their will upon others. I will grant, however, that in many cases it wasn't an uncoerced choice. And that much more of the evil adheres to those who command the actions than to those who merely act out the orders as if they were robots.
The primary danger of robot soldiers, though, is that it decreases the need for a government to have at least acceptance of it's policies, if not agreement with them.
Selling the code this way incurs certain obligations. One of them is that you MUST maintain the availability of the source code at a defined location for 3 years after the last sale. (I think I'd three years. It's been awhile since I checked.)
There's nothing about the GPL that says you can't sell the code for whatever price you can find buyers. It just says that those buyers must have access to the source code, and if you don't always ship the source code with the product, that you must maintain such access for 3 years after your final sale. (Well, there's lots of other details, but that's the essence.)
Personally, I'd prefer to always provide the source code with the application, and if I couldn't do that, I wouldn't distribute it that way, but that's my choice. And anyway you no longer have that option. (Judging by the above comments, you couldn't have shipped the source code as a part of each purchase, but I'm not certain that this is correct.)
It's theft because it meets the definition of theft.
Sorry if that bothers you.
Sorry, before the invention of money there was lots of communal sharing of things. Actually it was closer to either an idealized communism or to an autocracy (not so idealized) than to capitalism. Different cultures handled things differently, though, so there might have been a capitalist culture somewhere. Africa had an anarchist society, after all. (The Yk, or Yik. And *had* is the operative word. It fell apart under stress.) I don't know much about African cultures, except Egyptian.
It wasn't just stupid. It was evil and immoral.
I'm not certain it was stupid. I AM certain it was evil and immoral. (If you prefer you may substitute unethical for immoral. It's also true.)
It's theft because after they stole it from you you didn't have it anymore. Note that this is quite different from copyright infringement. You never claimed to own the copyright...you claimed to own the particular instance.
In short, your original premise is so illogical that the rest of you argument is guaranteed to be fallacious (though some of the steps might well be logical, I didn't check them).
E.g., If I begin an argument with "Since you owe me $5 trillion..." you don't need to attend any further to know that the argument is fallacious.
That's the point.
Did they sell it? Bet their lawyers claim they didn't.
Was it legal? I don't think so, but IANAL.
To me it looks like multiple clear cases of unauthorized computer trespass and theft. But I bet that there isn't a DA in the country that's going to pick up on it.