There are no hard and fast rules, but fair use does not ususally include making an entire copy of somthing, rather it allows using excerpts. However, the piece in question has *zero* commercial value, so they really can't collect damages.
Of course he does. Linus holds the copyright to much of the kernel. This is a condition that he set some time ago. No one else would have standing in a court to force a developer to release the source code to a binary-only module.
The document went on to detail how the agencies specifically studied Internet data. [...] it said they stored and analyzed Usenet discussions. "In the U.K., the Defence Evaluation and Research Agency maintains a 1-terabyte database containing the previous 90 days of Usenet messages."
Ha! So I guess now they know how to Make Money Fast.
Considering the quality of "Journalism" at local TV stations these days, it was just a matter of time before a hoax was reported as news. I can't imagine a professional news outfit going with a story like this without an official comment from an AOL spokesman.
I am someone who is annoyed by the whole GNU Linux movement. I would gladly put a "GNU Inside" sticker on my mini-notebook next to Tux, the Red Hat logo and "Intel Inside" stickers if it would just stop this foolish flame war.
There isn't a court of law that would uphold an unsigned contract.
Of course there is. Verbal contracts are contracts and enforceable (even though it's very difficult to enforce them). Shrinkwrap licenses have been held to be enforcable by a US district court.
There are other conditions for a valid contract that may or may not be present in this transaction.
Re:How does the GPL infect a code tree?
on
BSD vs GPL
·
· Score: 1
- I write mycode.c (using any text editor or OS), and I use functions from GNU Readline, a GPLed library. Now mycode.c must be GPLed.
I realize that this is the position of the FSF, but if I distribute a stripped binary that utilizes a shared library, I don't think that the FSF has a leg to stand on in court.
I haven't copied any of their code, so the copying argument goes away. The other argument is that it is a "derivative work". This argument may have some merit, but if my original comtent is much larger than the GPLed content, I may do that. A derivative work is not automatically a copyright infringement if there is sufficient original content.
The advice pre-CIDR was to get an official IP number for every computer that you eventually expected to be on the internet. At that time when I was getting Class-Cs we weren't even hooked up to the Internet and had no immediate plans to be, so we weren't even thinking about firewalling. I hadn't even thought about NAT or IPMasq as a possibility.
Someone who runs a web site that makes expired copyrighted material has already challanged the extension in the Federal Courts. Look for a decision in a couple of years. IIRC, the argument is that the new law is unconstitutional because it amounts to the taking of public property for private purposes without compensation.
there are far more uninteresting numbers than there are interesting ones
It was proven on sci.math that there are no interesting positive integers. Here is the proof reductio ad absurdam. Assume that there are interesting positive integers. Let n be the lowest such integer. So what? QED.
The release of 2.3.0 is news. There are a ton of new features that have been on hold while 2.2 was being prepared.
The release of kernel 2.3.x for arbitrary values of x are not news.
Re:Intellectual Property
on
DOJ vs NSI
·
· Score: 1
Now that I think about it, the data probably dosn't qualify as a trade secret either since it is made available through whois lookups. Companies must normally protect their trade secrets from disclosure if they want IP protection for them.
Midwife/Baby is probably not the best analogy for the GNU-Linux relationship.
The GNU utilities are a bunch of tools, Linux is something to use those tools on. In that sense it's more like a hot rod and mechanics tools. Someone who wants to use/tune/mess around with the Linux Hot Rod could make all of their own tools or they can walk down and pick up a set of GNU tools. Either way, it's the Hot Rod that they're interested in, not the tools. I don't name my Rod after my tools.
Re:Intellectual Property
on
DOJ vs NSI
·
· Score: 2
It is IP in the sense that Trade Secrets are IP. It is not IP in the sense of copyrightable information. There was a Supreme Court case that held that the information in an ordinary phone book is not copyrightable.
I wonder if it matters in the long run. Whois queries will eventually drain the database of this information. What is troublesome is that there won't be a universal Whois database anymore. We may have to query several whois servers to find the information unless there is some cooperation between the registrants.
It means that the Linux poeple can't write new code on the spot to improve performance even though this is one of the advantages of Linux. Only code and patches that were publically available on the date of the second test can be used.
Disney was in a bit of trouble a year or so ago when the copyright or whatever on Mickey Mouse expired and he would suddenly be in the public domain, and anyone could make profits on him. I forget how they solved the issue, but what a frightening thought, that your popular culture doesn't even belong to you.
They got Congress to extend copyright for existing holders so that MM is still covered. The law is currently being challanged in the courts. Stay tuned.
From a March NYT article on possible settlements: Another idea is to break the company into three equal parts, each of which would have complete copies of Microsoft's source code and intellectual property. They then would begin competing with each other. One problem with this idea is deciding which company would get Gates.
The Generic SCSI support is not support for generic SCSI cards. Rather it is support for generic devices on supported SCSI cards.
Using SCSI devices requires two levels of drivers. The low level driver handles setting up the card and scanning the SCSI bus for devices. Once this is properly installed, then higher level drivers are needed for the SCSI devices themselves: i.e. SCSI disk (/dev/sd?), SCSI CDROM (/dev/scd?), SCSI tape (/dev/st? and/dev/snt? is that right?) and generic SCSI devices (/dev/sg?).
A cat of/proc/scsi/scsi lists the SCSI devices in the order they were identified. The first device in the list can be accessed through the generic SCSI driver with/dev/sga, the next with/dev/sgb etc.
There will always be a need for closed source development. Most of the money spent on software development is in-house development. Companies make software for their own use. This will always be the case. OS gives these companies open tools to do this work so that hey are not locked into a proprietary solution from a closed source vendor.
The economic model for existing commercial software is flawed. The development costs, while substancial, are fixed up front costs. The more units you sell, the less the development cost of each. This economic model gets us locked into single OS, single Office Suite solutions because those are the most economically efficient even though there are long-term costs accisiated with this solution: i.e. vulnerability to viruses and upgrade extortion.
OS is a different economic model. Hardware vendors build drivers and give them away. They recognize that software is a necessary cost of doing business -- not a profit center. under the OS economic model we get the source because we need it to adapt the HW to different operating systems. Once OS has a greater hold in the marketplace, HW vendors will see the advantage of OS drivers -- a larger marketplace for their products.
As a result, there is not less demand for programmers, there is at least as much.
I don't have a set top box anymore. But, even when I did, I usually used the TV or VCR tuner and not the box to switch channels. I'd only use the box to view a scrambled channel which wasn't that often. Man that was a maze of wires and switches that I had back there so that I could tape and view at the same time.
However, both Beethoven and Mozart are considered to be masters of all Ages, with equal fame and respect. Yet, nobody ever would say Beethoven is a slacker. One of the underlying reason is, Beethoven carefully crafted and tweaked his work to make sure they're Perfect. I'm not saying Mozart does not care about the quality, it's just that Beethoven spent much more time on that.
Are you kidding? Mozart was a hacker and Beethoven was a suit. I'd much rather listen to practically anything by Mozart than overblown Beethoven.
You do not lose the source code for production modules. There is software specifically designed to preserve production code from unapproved changes. The fact is, 30 year old code gets recompiled with new bits added all the time.
The watch analogy used by the poster over on Ars is flawed. An actual device is not the same as the instructions necessary to build a devise. Code is a series of istructions to build a virtual device that is sufficiently precise so that the virtual device can be built without ambiguity from the instructions. Code is no less speech just because it is more precise than ordinary English language.
Its illegal to give a bomb to someone, but it is not illegal to give someone the instructions to make a bomb. The courts have already held that these instructions are protected speech. I don't see any difference between plain English instructions to make a device and code.
Code is also a matter of expression. There are choices made when writing code so that a functionally equivalent device may be made from source files that are very different. Often the choices made are to make the flow of the algorithm clear or to make the execution faster or even to make the algorithm obscure.
But even if code is speech, that dosn't mean that there can be no penalties for exercising the right to speech. Shouting "fire" in a crowded theatre is the canonical example of non-protected speech. Certain speech to a foreign national could carry the penalty of espionage. Thus, the Government is probably wihin its rights to restrict this type of speech. I believe the standard that they have to meet is "compelling state interest". The fact that encryption technology is widely available overseas is probably a valid argument against "compelling state interest". The courts will be considering these issues. It is good that the constitution gives the power to review government actions to the judiciary. The system is working as it was intended.
Slashdot Mirror
There are no hard and fast rules, but fair use does not ususally include making an entire copy of somthing, rather it allows using excerpts. However, the piece in question has *zero* commercial value, so they really can't collect damages.
Of course he does. Linus holds the copyright to much of the kernel. This is a condition that he set some time ago. No one else would have standing in a court to force a developer to release the source code to a binary-only module.
The document went on to detail how the agencies specifically studied Internet data. [...] it said they stored and analyzed Usenet discussions. "In the U.K., the Defence Evaluation and Research Agency maintains a 1-terabyte database containing the previous 90 days of Usenet messages."
Ha! So I guess now they know how to Make Money Fast.
Considering the quality of "Journalism" at local TV stations these days, it was just a matter of time before a hoax was reported as news. I can't imagine a professional news outfit going with a story like this without an official comment from an AOL spokesman.
I am someone who is annoyed by the whole GNU Linux movement. I would gladly put a "GNU Inside" sticker on my mini-notebook next to Tux, the Red Hat logo and "Intel Inside" stickers if it would just stop this foolish flame war.
There isn't a court of law that would uphold an unsigned contract.
Of course there is. Verbal contracts are contracts and enforceable (even though it's very difficult to enforce them). Shrinkwrap licenses have been held to be enforcable by a US district court.
There are other conditions for a valid contract that may or may not be present in this transaction.
- I write mycode.c (using any text editor or OS), and I use functions from GNU Readline, a GPLed library. Now mycode.c must be GPLed.
I realize that this is the position of the FSF, but if I distribute a stripped binary that utilizes a shared library, I don't think that the FSF has a leg to stand on in court.
I haven't copied any of their code, so the copying argument goes away. The other argument is that it is a "derivative work". This argument may have some merit, but if my original comtent is much larger than the GPLed content, I may do that. A derivative work is not automatically a copyright infringement if there is sufficient original content.
The advice pre-CIDR was to get an official IP number for every computer that you eventually expected to be on the internet. At that time when I was getting Class-Cs we weren't even hooked up to the Internet and had no immediate plans to be, so we weren't even thinking about firewalling. I hadn't even thought about NAT or IPMasq as a possibility.
Someone who runs a web site that makes expired copyrighted material has already challanged the extension in the Federal Courts. Look for a decision in a couple of years. IIRC, the argument is that the new law is unconstitutional because it amounts to the taking of public property for private purposes without compensation.
there are far more uninteresting numbers than there are interesting ones
It was proven on sci.math that there are no interesting positive integers. Here is the proof reductio ad absurdam. Assume that there are interesting positive integers. Let n be the lowest such integer. So what? QED.
The release of 2.3.0 is news. There are a ton of new features that have been on hold while 2.2 was being prepared.
The release of kernel 2.3.x for arbitrary values of x are not news.
Now that I think about it, the data probably dosn't qualify as a trade secret either since it is made available through whois lookups. Companies must normally protect their trade secrets from disclosure if they want IP protection for them.
Midwife/Baby is probably not the best analogy for the GNU-Linux relationship.
The GNU utilities are a bunch of tools, Linux is something to use those tools on. In that sense it's more like a hot rod and mechanics tools. Someone who wants to use/tune/mess around with the Linux Hot Rod could make all of their own tools or they can walk down and pick up a set of GNU tools. Either way, it's the Hot Rod that they're interested in, not the tools. I don't name my Rod after my tools.
It is IP in the sense that Trade Secrets are IP. It is not IP in the sense of copyrightable information. There was a Supreme Court case that held that the information in an ordinary phone book is not copyrightable.
I wonder if it matters in the long run. Whois queries will eventually drain the database of this information. What is troublesome is that there won't be a universal Whois database anymore. We may have to query several whois servers to find the information unless there is some cooperation between the registrants.
It means that the Linux poeple can't write new code on the spot to improve performance even though this is one of the advantages of Linux. Only code and patches that were publically available on the date of the second test can be used.
Disney was in a bit of trouble a year or so ago when the copyright or whatever on Mickey Mouse expired and he would suddenly be in the public domain, and anyone could make profits on him. I forget how they solved the issue, but what a frightening thought, that your popular culture doesn't even belong to you.
They got Congress to extend copyright for existing holders so that MM is still covered. The law is currently being challanged in the courts. Stay tuned.
From a March NYT article on possible settlements: Another idea is to break the company into three equal parts, each of which would have complete copies of Microsoft's source code and intellectual property. They then would begin competing with each other. One problem with this idea is deciding which company would get Gates.
The complete article is here.
Ouch! I probably deserved that.
/me slinks off into a corner.
He's taken down the page. But, you can get to the actual cartoons with a different URL. Try this. There are navigation icons on the page.
/. effect. Bwa ha ha ha!
No one can escape the
The Generic SCSI support is not support for generic SCSI cards. Rather it is support for generic devices on supported SCSI cards.
/dev/snt? is that right?) and generic SCSI devices (/dev/sg?).
/proc/scsi/scsi lists the SCSI devices in the order they were identified. The first device in the list can be accessed through the generic SCSI driver with /dev/sga, the next with /dev/sgb etc.
Using SCSI devices requires two levels of drivers. The low level driver handles setting up the card and scanning the SCSI bus for devices. Once this is properly installed, then higher level drivers are needed for the SCSI devices themselves: i.e. SCSI disk (/dev/sd?), SCSI CDROM (/dev/scd?), SCSI tape (/dev/st? and
A cat of
There will always be a need for closed source development. Most of the money spent on software development is in-house development. Companies make software for their own use. This will always be the case. OS gives these companies open tools to do this work so that hey are not locked into a proprietary solution from a closed source vendor.
The economic model for existing commercial software is flawed. The development costs, while substancial, are fixed up front costs. The more units you sell, the less the development cost of each. This economic model gets us locked into single OS, single Office Suite solutions because those are the most economically efficient even though there are long-term costs accisiated with this solution: i.e. vulnerability to viruses and upgrade extortion.
OS is a different economic model. Hardware vendors build drivers and give them away. They recognize that software is a necessary cost of doing business -- not a profit center. under the OS economic model we get the source because we need it to adapt the HW to different operating systems. Once OS has a greater hold in the marketplace, HW vendors will see the advantage of OS drivers -- a larger marketplace for their products.
As a result, there is not less demand for programmers, there is at least as much.
I don't have a set top box anymore. But, even when I did, I usually used the TV or VCR tuner and not the box to switch channels. I'd only use the box to view a scrambled channel which wasn't that often. Man that was a maze of wires and switches that I had back there so that I could tape and view at the same time.
However, both Beethoven and Mozart are considered to be masters of all Ages, with equal fame and respect. Yet, nobody ever would say Beethoven is a slacker. One of the underlying reason is, Beethoven carefully crafted and tweaked his work to make sure they're Perfect. I'm not saying Mozart does not care about the quality, it's just that Beethoven spent much more time on that.
Are you kidding? Mozart was a hacker and Beethoven was a suit. I'd much rather listen to practically anything by Mozart than overblown Beethoven.
You do not lose the source code for production modules. There is software specifically designed to preserve production code from unapproved changes. The fact is, 30 year old code gets recompiled with new bits added all the time.
The watch analogy used by the poster over on Ars is flawed. An actual device is not the same as the instructions necessary to build a devise. Code is a series of istructions to build a virtual device that is sufficiently precise so that the virtual device can be built without ambiguity from the instructions. Code is no less speech just because it is more precise than ordinary English language.
Its illegal to give a bomb to someone, but it is not illegal to give someone the instructions to make a bomb. The courts have already held that these instructions are protected speech. I don't see any difference between plain English instructions to make a device and code.
Code is also a matter of expression. There are choices made when writing code so that a functionally equivalent device may be made from source files that are very different. Often the choices made are to make the flow of the algorithm clear or to make the execution faster or even to make the algorithm obscure.
But even if code is speech, that dosn't mean that there can be no penalties for exercising the right to speech. Shouting "fire" in a crowded theatre is the canonical example of non-protected speech. Certain speech to a foreign national could carry the penalty of espionage. Thus, the Government is probably wihin its rights to restrict this type of speech. I believe the standard that they have to meet is "compelling state interest". The fact that encryption technology is widely available overseas is probably a valid argument against "compelling state interest". The courts will be considering these issues. It is good that the constitution gives the power to review government actions to the judiciary. The system is working as it was intended.