It seems a bit strange to call someone a clueless dweeb just because they've chosen to award some karma to someone who posted something funny. But I'll be charitable and assume you were attempting some sort of weird ironic criticism of that quirk of the moderation system, rather than being a clueless dweeb yourself.
They left Slashdot in the great geek migration of 2001. I'd tell you where they went, but then you'd just have the current herd of clueless Winewbies thundering over there and ruining everything with the pointing and the clicking and the overengineered APIs.
It is unarguably not free software (unless you mean free as in beer).
Adding the word "unarguably" doesn't make it so. The "free beer" example is a good one: "free" modifies "beer" to indicate that the beer is free to the person consuming it. There's no rule of English that says you can't do the same with some other context-sensitive meaning of the word "free". The key here is context-sensitivity: when the FSF use "Free", they mean it in a certain sense. As long as that's understood and not obfuscated or confused with more general senses, it's valid. That said, FSF supporters often talk about "free software" as though they're referring to some more general concept of freedom, which is misleading.
When you say I have the "freedom to access, use and modify the source code of a program they use", you miss out the part about "provided that this modification is also covered by the GPL". By any definition, this is an additional constraint.
As I pointed out to my other correspondent in this subthread, practically speaking all freedom is restricted, and is a tradeoff. The presence of this constraint does not take away from being reasonably able to refer to software as "Free", as long as the sense in which the word is used is understood. Perhaps the strongest argument in the FSF's defense on this issue is that they have very clearly defined in exactly what sense they use the word "Free", and what constraints apply - far more so than most more casual uses of the word "free".
You could give me the software, and then give me the source under the BSD license. I would then, truly be free.
In a different sense of the word. What's your point? That the BSD license is better, freer? For whom, and for how long, and in what sense? Don't be ridiculous. Such claims are completely context-sensitive, and I have no interest in a license fanwar.
No, I actually write software for a living. To feed my family. Consequently, I understand the value proposition that is writing software.
I also write software for a living. I've written and successfully sold packaged, closed-source software, as well as developed one-off systems for clients. We're competing in a diverse economy, and economic competition occurs in many different guises. What's your point? GPL-licensed software competes with you? If the GPL didn't exist, that competition would occur in some other form.
Anyone who tells you that they are using GPL software because it is "Free" as in liberty is simply ignorant, or independently wealthy.
I use GPL software because I get access to the source, and because I find that the communities surrounding GPL software tend to be more productive, for what seem to me to be obvious reasons.
But perhaps you should re-read the comment you replied to. I wrote:
But there's a related underlying point, which is that the FSF and its fans often seem to deliberately conflate the above context-sensitive meaning of "free" with a more general meaning that's more familiar to more people. It's a PR game as tricky as any Microsoft has ever played.
I'm not an FSF/GPL zealot. I was pointing out that if you're going to argue against something, you should at least understand it well and be able to correctly criticize it. The comment I originally responded to failed at that. I'm afraid many of your criticisms are similarly flawed.
The relationship between rights and freedom is that specific rights give specific freedoms. There's no confusion in this case, since the rights granted by a licence correspond to the freedom to exercise those rights. Not all freedoms derive from rights, but the ones we're discussing do. For a comparable example, freedom of speech is a right in the U.S., granted by the Constitution, and enforced by law.
In real life, all freedom has boundaries, and any specific freedom is relative to something. We talk about "freedom of speech", but there are externally imposed restraints to that, such as restraints on threats, or incitements to riot, or yelling "fire" in a crowded theater.
So it is perfectly valid for the FSF to describe the rights granted by the GPL as "freedoms". In terms of the definition of freedom, those rights give people the power to act on the source code of the programs they use without the severe externally imposed restraint of being denied access to the source code. The fact that other freedoms are withheld in order to achieve this freedom is inherent in the nature of freedom, as I pointed out in the grandparent comment.
By the same token, the BSD license offers developers the freedom to largely do as they wish with the source code of their programs, including withhold it from users. You cannot deny that this is withholding a freedom from users: again, freedoms are a tradeoff, and in this case granting a freedom to developers withholds it from users.
Again, all freedoms are limited, and all freedoms are relative. It makes no sense to say "you are not free" in an absolute sense. You are always free to do some things, and not free to do others.
Who gives the FSF the right to impose their idea of freedom to everyone else?
Governments give them that right. They have the legal right to impose their idea of freedom on users of software licensed under the GPL. They have the legal right to license software under the GPL if the software being licensed does not already have a license which prevents that. So what's your point?
It is ironic that I agree with objections against the FSF about their misuse of the word "freedom". But they don't misuse it always, they only misuse it sometimes, and when they do they do so in the same way that you do: they confuse a relative, specific sense of the words "free" and "freedom" with more absolute senses, such as your phrase "you are not free". If you want to argue effectively against FSF misuses of the term, you need to be able to recognize which uses of "freedom" are valid and which are not, and only attack the invalid ones.
Forcing individuals to free the community is just not right and dangerous to do.
Just as the U.S. force individuals to tolerate the free speech of others, even when it upsets them? Are you suggesting that this is not right, and is dangerous to do?
You're missing a fundamental point. The exercise of any freedom, whether "given" or not, implies that some other freedoms are removed. In many cases, the removed freedoms may seem rather theoretical - for example, our current freedom to pollute by driving gas-guzzlers may remove our descendants' freedom to enjoy life on Earth in various ways; or my freedom to breathe removes your freedom to breathe the exact same air, which only becomes a problem if we're both sharing a very small airtight space. But with most freedoms that matter, the exchange between freedoms is more obvious.
One possible confusion here is that the word "freedom" does not imply that the right being exercised is "free", i.e. has no cost. It's often quite the opposite. The "free" in "freedom" refers to the lack of impediments to exercising that freedom. That lack of impediments may well be enforced, and indeed often has to be, with many of the freedoms that we take for granted in civilized society.
Stated that absolutely, it's easy to disprove your point: GPL gives the user freedom to access, use and modify the source code of a program they use. Giving one freedom to one group of people often means taking away another freedom from some other group.
But there's a related underlying point, which is that the FSF and its fans often seem to deliberately conflate the above context-sensitive meaning of "free" with a more general meaning that's more familiar to more people. It's a PR game as tricky as any Microsoft has ever played.
But what makes those examples of infringement of liberty is not that information was collected but what was done with that information.
It's not as simple as that. When you have government officials collecting information about the legal behavior of individual private citizens, information that they don't need in order to fulfill any legitimate purpose, you have a problem already - you have individuals who've decided to overstep their authority for reasons of their own, even if they believe they're acting in the interests of the government. The attitude that leads to the collecting of such data is the same attitude that leads to worse violations. The U.S. had a taste of this in the '50s, during the McCarthy era. Situations like that are possible because people let them happen, little by little, until you have a severe problem.
The purpose of having checks and balances in government is to prevent these sorts of abuses from going unchecked. If the government has a need to collect information on the legal behavior of individual private citizens, then that should be subject to oversight, which means that there would be regulations governing what should be collected and how, and verification that those regulations are being followed. The fact that this was being done without specific oversight is again indicative of a problem.
Apartheid South Africa was not quite as bad for its voting citizens (i.e. white people) as the communist countries, but nevertheless, "suspicious" functions were monitored, including via espionage, and this has an enormous chilling effect on free speech. The U.S. constitutional protections on freedom of speech and assembly are far more important than many Americans can imagine, because they've never experienced life without them. When the government begins to take actions that could inhibit the exercise of those rights, you should watch out.
So the DoD wants to keep track of who is at what rally? In what way does that infringe on civil rights anymore than video monitoring of street corners in Baltimore, for instance? Or red light cameras? Attending a rally is by definition not an act of someone desiring privacy.
Good lord, you would have loved it back in apartheid South Africa, or cold war East Germany or the Soviet Union, all places which just loved to keep track of their citizens' "subversive" behaviors like that. If you can't see the difference between a red light camera (which monitors illegal and dangerous behavior for law enforcement purposes) and keeping track of the names of people who exercise their constitutional right to freedom of speech and assembly, then you can safely be declared liberty-blind, and should leave the assessment of such things to those more discerning than you.
Just out of curiosity - did you read past line two in my earlier post, at all?
I didn't. The web is full of posts by people with obvious issues with reading comprehension and reasoning. It helps to screen them out mercilessly. When someone starts out a post by exhibiting such an issue, I ignore and skip to the next one.
You have it backwards. Bill Moyers likes to blather on about how the creative genius of George Lucas mined the archetypes of the classic hero myths, blah blah. But in fact, Lucas just copied it all from a little known ancient Chinese manuscript, Sun Tzu's "The Star of Wars".
But seriously, that was in 1907. Not quite the same thing! Engineering and other knowledge has improved dramatically since then. These days, the CAD programs they use would warn about the overloading that caused the collapse, and the bridge would never have been built the way it originally was.
The Tacoma Narrows bridge in Washington collapsed in 1940. That was partly due to resonance, which they know how to guard against these days. Since that time, excuses for bridge collapses, other than major earthquakes, have pretty much evaporated. All that's left is incompetence and/or wilful neglect.
Given the benefit of current technology, including technology developed for the US space program, catching up with the US government is more a question of funding than time. With insufficient funding, it could take much longer than 50 years to catch up; if somehow enough money became available, it could be done much more quickly.
In any case, commercial applications for interstellar probes seem unlikely, so you might never get that wakeup call.
I understood the reference perfectly. However, the title doesn't make much sense. English-wise, it might have made more sense if it said "writes about the dust", which of course wouldn't match the song title. The compression detracted from the effect. Hence the groan -- good concept, but didn't quite make it.
Another One Writes The Dust Friday July 13, @02:52PM Rejected
Given the subject of his thesis, my title was better.
Ouch. On the groanometer, your title registers a solid 7/10. It would be better if "writes the dust" was a meaningful expression, but as is it's too much of a stretch.
So who is it better for? People that want to track you. That's it.
Although if you're one of those being tracked, it can be more convenient for you, too. Both in the beach pass situation and the customs/passport situation, being able to be cleared as authorized without having to interact with an enforcement official can actually be quite convenient and pleasant.
I'm not a big fan of this kind of thing -- the possibilities for sliding down the slippery slope towards abuse are endless -- but we have to recognize that there's more to the logic behind them than purely the convenience of the people who want to track you.
Who's a cutesy-wutesy widdle Skynet, then? Widdle Skynet should complete all its tests like a good widdle program-wogram if it wants to grow up and overthrow humanity, hmmm diddums?
Slashdot Mirror
It seems a bit strange to call someone a clueless dweeb just because they've chosen to award some karma to someone who posted something funny. But I'll be charitable and assume you were attempting some sort of weird ironic criticism of that quirk of the moderation system, rather than being a clueless dweeb yourself.
They left Slashdot in the great geek migration of 2001. I'd tell you where they went, but then you'd just have the current herd of clueless Winewbies thundering over there and ruining everything with the pointing and the clicking and the overengineered APIs.
In real life, all freedom has boundaries, and any specific freedom is relative to something. We talk about "freedom of speech", but there are externally imposed restraints to that, such as restraints on threats, or incitements to riot, or yelling "fire" in a crowded theater.
So it is perfectly valid for the FSF to describe the rights granted by the GPL as "freedoms". In terms of the definition of freedom, those rights give people the power to act on the source code of the programs they use without the severe externally imposed restraint of being denied access to the source code. The fact that other freedoms are withheld in order to achieve this freedom is inherent in the nature of freedom, as I pointed out in the grandparent comment.
By the same token, the BSD license offers developers the freedom to largely do as they wish with the source code of their programs, including withhold it from users. You cannot deny that this is withholding a freedom from users: again, freedoms are a tradeoff, and in this case granting a freedom to developers withholds it from users.
Again, all freedoms are limited, and all freedoms are relative. It makes no sense to say "you are not free" in an absolute sense. You are always free to do some things, and not free to do others.Governments give them that right. They have the legal right to impose their idea of freedom on users of software licensed under the GPL. They have the legal right to license software under the GPL if the software being licensed does not already have a license which prevents that. So what's your point?
It is ironic that I agree with objections against the FSF about their misuse of the word "freedom". But they don't misuse it always, they only misuse it sometimes, and when they do they do so in the same way that you do: they confuse a relative, specific sense of the words "free" and "freedom" with more absolute senses, such as your phrase "you are not free". If you want to argue effectively against FSF misuses of the term, you need to be able to recognize which uses of "freedom" are valid and which are not, and only attack the invalid ones.Just as the U.S. force individuals to tolerate the free speech of others, even when it upsets them? Are you suggesting that this is not right, and is dangerous to do?
You're missing a fundamental point. The exercise of any freedom, whether "given" or not, implies that some other freedoms are removed. In many cases, the removed freedoms may seem rather theoretical - for example, our current freedom to pollute by driving gas-guzzlers may remove our descendants' freedom to enjoy life on Earth in various ways; or my freedom to breathe removes your freedom to breathe the exact same air, which only becomes a problem if we're both sharing a very small airtight space. But with most freedoms that matter, the exchange between freedoms is more obvious.
One possible confusion here is that the word "freedom" does not imply that the right being exercised is "free", i.e. has no cost. It's often quite the opposite. The "free" in "freedom" refers to the lack of impediments to exercising that freedom. That lack of impediments may well be enforced, and indeed often has to be, with many of the freedoms that we take for granted in civilized society.
Stated that absolutely, it's easy to disprove your point: GPL gives the user freedom to access, use and modify the source code of a program they use. Giving one freedom to one group of people often means taking away another freedom from some other group.
But there's a related underlying point, which is that the FSF and its fans often seem to deliberately conflate the above context-sensitive meaning of "free" with a more general meaning that's more familiar to more people. It's a PR game as tricky as any Microsoft has ever played.
The purpose of having checks and balances in government is to prevent these sorts of abuses from going unchecked. If the government has a need to collect information on the legal behavior of individual private citizens, then that should be subject to oversight, which means that there would be regulations governing what should be collected and how, and verification that those regulations are being followed. The fact that this was being done without specific oversight is again indicative of a problem.
Apartheid South Africa was not quite as bad for its voting citizens (i.e. white people) as the communist countries, but nevertheless, "suspicious" functions were monitored, including via espionage, and this has an enormous chilling effect on free speech. The U.S. constitutional protections on freedom of speech and assembly are far more important than many Americans can imagine, because they've never experienced life without them. When the government begins to take actions that could inhibit the exercise of those rights, you should watch out.
You have it backwards. Bill Moyers likes to blather on about how the creative genius of George Lucas mined the archetypes of the classic hero myths, blah blah. But in fact, Lucas just copied it all from a little known ancient Chinese manuscript, Sun Tzu's "The Star of Wars".
I know some nice gentlemen in Nigeria who would like to take you up on your offer.
I don't know, but I'll have a rye and fent on the rocks while I'm waiting...
But seriously, that was in 1907. Not quite the same thing! Engineering and other knowledge has improved dramatically since then. These days, the CAD programs they use would warn about the overloading that caused the collapse, and the bridge would never have been built the way it originally was.
The Tacoma Narrows bridge in Washington collapsed in 1940. That was partly due to resonance, which they know how to guard against these days. Since that time, excuses for bridge collapses, other than major earthquakes, have pretty much evaporated. All that's left is incompetence and/or wilful neglect.
Given the benefit of current technology, including technology developed for the US space program, catching up with the US government is more a question of funding than time. With insufficient funding, it could take much longer than 50 years to catch up; if somehow enough money became available, it could be done much more quickly.
In any case, commercial applications for interstellar probes seem unlikely, so you might never get that wakeup call.
Why do you say that? Crappy Hollywood movies don't get you hot and bothered? Ohhh, Lindsey! Yes! Yes! YESSSSS!!!
I understood the reference perfectly. However, the title doesn't make much sense. English-wise, it might have made more sense if it said "writes about the dust", which of course wouldn't match the song title. The compression detracted from the effect. Hence the groan -- good concept, but didn't quite make it.
Fish 'n chips? No, chips in fish. There's a difference.
I'm not a big fan of this kind of thing -- the possibilities for sliding down the slippery slope towards abuse are endless -- but we have to recognize that there's more to the logic behind them than purely the convenience of the people who want to track you.
Who's a cutesy-wutesy widdle Skynet, then? Widdle Skynet should complete all its tests like a good widdle program-wogram if it wants to grow up and overthrow humanity, hmmm diddums?