"so how was i too know that distrubuting it to all my internet friends was actually illegal?"
Ignorance of the law is no excuse, and this part of the EULA is still covered under the copyright laws. You'd still be charged. Now if you were to say "How was I to know I couldn't use this copy of Office XP under wine?" then you'd have a legal leg to stand on.
(I believe there is something in the Office XP EULA that says you can only use it on a licensed version of Windows, I may be wrong, feel free to correct me).
I'm not a lawyer, do not wish to be, and I'm only assuming there is a law about copying software in your country.
It is easy to use. At least for me, and from the sounds of it, almost everyone else who's used it and learned it. Once I learned the syntax and how to use the config file to set up everything, I found it 1000 times better then any gui could provide. So I never bothered writing a GUI. It looks like almost all people who have done the same have found the same, hence the low number of GUI config programs for Apache. I'm sure you'll find a few on freshmeat, but I can't tell you for sure. Maybe you should look.
It's not ignorance, it's need. And once I knew the syntax for the config file, I never ever needed/wanted a gui.
Even if it doesn't fry it so the people have to buy another one, this information just got posted to a pretty major geek site. How many people will remember this when looking to purchase their wireless access point? You're sitting there looking at an SMC and a linksys, you remember this little piece of info, and you chose the linksys*. It's the geek value of "hacking" (even though you're actually more like a script kiddie unless you start trying something new with this). All in all, I'm going to support your idea of corporate planting of this type of information. Your ideas are intriguing and I wish to subscribe to your newsletter.
*Actually, you still might buy the SMC, but because it has the seriel port and the print server built in.
I've had it with this school, Skinner! Low test scores, class after class of ugly, ugly children...
-- S.I. Chalmers
The whole point of broadband is _not_ to download websites faster.
This is true, but the whole economics of broadband relies on it being used to download websites faster. Websites, E-Mail and NNTP.
The $52/month you're forking is chump change compaired to what the ISPs are paying for that bandwidth.
It's time some of you had a little bit of insight on how they can give you that bandwidth and still make money.
NNTP and E-Mail are easy, you're not actually using the ISP's bandwidth to download these. You're only using the link to your ISP. We all know local network speed is cheap. You're using their local network for these protocols (As long as you are using their news/mail servers). The web part of your bandwidth usage is a little bit harder to handle, but not much. One of the biggest helpers, and a company that has made high speed access for what we are paying possible, is Akamai. They've given some nice 1U rack mount content servers to almost every ISP out there already. Even small local ISPs will have some 1U servers in their server room. Symantec, (ping liveupdate.symantec.com , you'll see it's probably one of your ISP's IP addresses) Best Buy, Washington Post, Trend Micro and Barnes and Noble are just a few examples of their customers, and sites that will be using mostly your ISP's local network. (Taken from Akamai's site.
The next step to save even more of your traffic from hitting the ISP's big fat expensive pipe is caching servers. Inktomi and Compaq teamed up to give a nice setup. It's expensive (Somewhere in the neighbourhood of $75,000) but you save that in bandwidth pretty quickly. It's going to cache any semi to frequently viewed pages, and alot of the streamed media you watch. Five hits to ESPN.com just becomes one, and four local requests. The sites you hit and the files you download that are not cached or served from the content servers are a small matter, because a good setup and alot of "normal" internet users will actually be hitting the local servers about 80% of the time.
But you cannot cache P2P traffic, you cannot cache internet gaming traffic, and you cannot cache incoming traffic (Hence why that $52 is not enough for you to be serving up content.) The things you cannot cache are the things that will run an ISP out of business. Everyone here has heard the price of T1s in previous broadband articles or has priced them out themselves. Most realize the economics don't work. This is the only way to make it work. Traffic on alot of protocols just isn't cost effective to be given at high speeds.
I hope this clears up alot of peoples views on broadband access and how it can all work. I can't say if it's right or not, it's just the way things right now have to work. The only thing I can say is if you want a fast connection that you can use for Internet Access and not a fast connection to your ISP, you are going have to pay for it, and it's going to be alot more then $52/month.
Hobby or not, you would be surprised at how anal people will get over detail when something is their baby, their pride and joy.
The people who do it because they love to are the type of people I'd rather have making the music I listen to, writting the books I read, the programs I use, building the house I live in (yes, believe it or not, some people (myself included) love physical 'labour'), fixing my car, or doing anything for me.
Note the number of books titled 'The Joy of _____' and the severe lack of books titled 'How to Make Money doing ______'. (On a side note, notice the number of spam letters that are about 'How to Make Money doing...' and the lack of 'The Joy of doing...' spams)
People who view it as work are the ones I'll avoid. A good hobbyist/employee does his work for the love and joy of doing it. A good creator loves to create, so he/she creates. They do not create because they feel the need for money. They will put more into a creation then anyone who views their job as work.
These people view the job as the benificial part, and the money as a nice bonus.
This is not to say if you get paid, you will not do a good job. If you can find a job you love, and don't view as work, then more power to you. You're in the right field for yourself.
And this does not break down around what you may consider menial jobs, such as a janitor. I've met janitors who love their jobs. In high school there was a janitor who loved being around the kids (And he wasn't a pedophile, what's this world coming to?!). He didn't want to teach, he just loved the atmosphere, the people, and loved doing the job. I used to think this was very strange, until I grew up. I got a job I love doing and though some may think someone programming their routers or ensuring the server they keep their work on keeps their work as a lower life form (I don't know, you may not think of people like that, some do, not accusing you of anything), I quite enjoy it (Especially seeing the people who do think of me as a lower life form begin to weep when all their hard work is gone, because some strange bug (triggered by something he did of course) wiped out his home directory. (Miraculously every other users home directory was left unscathed. I'm a spiteful bastard.)) I enjoy my job. I fix computers for free for some people. It's not so they owe me something, it's not to show off my 'k-rad skillz', sometimes it's because she's hot but... I just love to solve the problem and make it work once again. These people pay me back however or not, doesn't matter to me.
In short, if you love doing something, you'll do it very well. If you do it very well, you will be well compensated for it, both monetarily, and more importantly, spiritually.
I know the domain will show up, I'm not attempting to hide it. No obfusication with google's translations or whatever. I just wanted to show you not everyone really cares about karma.
(Plus I just once wanted to post a goat link.. Scratch that one off the list of things to do before I kill everyone.)
FUD. You have no clue if Microsoft is involved, have no evidence to back up your statements, and are, how can I say this politely.. talking out of your ass.
I hate Microsoft as much as the next man, but I think misinformation is worse. Statements like this help no one and do no harm to your intended target, only yourself. Everytime I (and others who noticed this post) read something you post, I will now have to think much harder about if your statements have substance or just some idle FUD-laden speculation. After a few such posts you're just regarded as a crazy microsoft basher and not taken seriously anymore.
In the Empire Strikes Back, you didn't know the Empire was going to Strike Back? I do agree with you about the name Matrix: Reloaded, it does not give away anything and allows for idle, uninformed speculation... the kind we love on slashdot!
Instead I told him how much I liked the idea since it would probably impact spammers and script kiddies
Yes. I don't care about freedom as long as I stop getting spam, and those damn script kiddies stop 4dm1n15tr4t0ring/r00ting my servers that I don't know how to admin.
Christ almighty Microsoft made it simple with Windows update, yet over 300,000 of you cannot get it right (Code Red). If you cannot secure a windows box (a daily check with Windows Update!! then please don't ever take any job (and quit if you currently have one) in the computer industry. Security does not come free. It never has. Not with life, not with computers.
Unix/Linux/Whatever OS you're running is easy to secure IFF you have a clue, or a clue stick handy to beat yourself with, and are willing to put the same effort you put in for security in other aspects of your life.
You, Mr. Anonymous Coward sir, are a twit. You're broken. Anyone who would give up freedom (even others freedom, they have as much right to it as you do) for security is broken. (Within reason. We should not become a bunch of murderous bastards for freedom, but we should also not become a bunch of slaves for security.)
You should fight against any freedom being taken away. You may not need that freedom now, but who knows when it may come in handy. Lazyness or money is not a legitimit reason to stomp someone elses freedom.
That said, I don't agree with spam, because spammers are not flipping the bill with their advertising, but knowledge should never be hindered from spreading. This kind of law can and will definately hinder it.
The Canadian page makes no mention of the DMCA so hopefully not use it as a template, but from reading the site and linked sites, I highly doubt it.
It should be submitted as "What not to do when making digital copyright laws" but it not the source of the problem. New WIPO treaties are the source.
The WIPO treaty (signed by many contries, someone already posted a link to them) requires laws to be put in place for the following:
1) create a new exclusive right in favour of copyright owners, including sound recording producers and performers, to make their works available on-line to the public
2) prevent the circumvention of copyright protection (i.e., as technology is developed to protect copyright, circumvention of such protection would be made illegal
3) prohibit tampering with rights management information.
Canada has signed this treaty and said it will honour it, so we will have the Canadian DMCA.
There is a link on the Canadian site to the framework for the law that will be passed.
From the framework:
The Government is committed to ensuring that copyright law promotes both the creation and the dissemination of works.
This sounds like the reverse engineering portion. Say bye to free Satalite television soon.
Other parts seem to cover some of the other issues brought up on here before:
by allowing specific exemptions to aid users such as libraries, schools and archives to fulfill their vital institutional roles in Canadian society
Hopefully they do this part right, and we don't have corporations going after libraries, etc, but I have no faith in my elected officials.
Copyright lasts only for a defined period of time. In Canada the term of copyright, in most cases, is set at the lifetime of the author plus fifty years after the author's death. The issue is whether or not the term of protection ought to be extended to life plus seventy years
It will be extended, there's little doubt about that. The United States and the EU have both already increased theirs to this, Canada will follow suit.
I do not expect all of this to come in under one law. That's not how the Canadian government works. It will create a law that's tolerable. Then they will begin ammending that law. It will mutate over time and will become the DMCA.
Yes, mc. Should have previewed my post, but the message still holds true. Religion is fed to alot of people since birth (even more true 300+ years ago when the catholic church had much more influence).
In early times it went something like this:
You are born, your whole life everyone tells you the world in flat, everything revolves around the earth, some big bad ass mean man from the sky created us all, you die, and go to heaven if you're good, hell if you're bad. This was not taught as 'we believe that...', it was taught as fact. If someone came along and told you the world was round, you'd pick up your nearest clue stick and smack him upside the head.
The longer a belief is believed, the harder it will be, even with irrefutable proof to back yourself up, to convince people you're right, and their father, mother, teachers, and leaders were wrong.
Element 118 did not have 2000+ years of being 'fact'. It's easy for us to dismiss it as a mistake. Proof of the existance of a god (or proof there is no god) would never be swallowed that quick. The older the belief, the larger the truth pill becomes. The bigger the pill, the harder it is to swallow, and some people are going to choke and spit it back up.
This is why religious beliefs are hard to shake, and most scientific proofs are easy to forget if it is shown to be flawed or flat out wrong. They haven't been around long enough to carry the same weight.
Now we just have to convince the families of the programmers who created the format the data was stored in to sue NASA when they finally do reverse engineer it. Reverse engineering is illegal now.
On a different note, there's been a few stories about mars and life on mars popping up lately. It makes me wonder who's in the process of making a movie about mars?
You're still free to say it under your own name. It's not/.'s fault you're a coward and won't waste your precious karma (Which, I hate to inform you, is not good for anything. You will not impress your friends, women, make you money, and if it gives you a warm feeling inside, you've got to much of a need for acceptance by your peers).
Plus the fact that you're free to post anonymously if you so chose says something to. I think maybe you're mistaking a lack of freedom for a lack of backbone and a screwed up sense of how karma can benefit you. (Hint: It Can't.)
"What is real? How do you define real? If you're talking about what you
can feel, what you can smell, what you can taste and see, then real is simply
electrical signals interpretted by your brain. This is the world that you know...
the world as it was at the end of the 20th century. It exists now only as a neural interactive simulation that we call the Matrix. You've been living in a dream world
Michael. This is the world as it exists today... Welcome to the desert of the real."
I don't want to seem anti GPL here, but that would not be a good idea.
Forcing them to release it under the GPL would stop most competitors from building on it and producing their own competing product. I see no problems with them having to give NT source into the public domain, or released under BSD license, but forcing them to use the GPL would then hamper the compitition who could benefit from this.
There is a place for the GPL, but this definately isn't one.
Slashdot Mirror
"so how was i too know that distrubuting it to all my internet friends was actually illegal?"
Ignorance of the law is no excuse, and this part of the EULA is still covered under the copyright laws. You'd still be charged. Now if you were to say "How was I to know I couldn't use this copy of Office XP under wine?" then you'd have a legal leg to stand on.
(I believe there is something in the Office XP EULA that says you can only use it on a licensed version of Windows, I may be wrong, feel free to correct me).
I'm not a lawyer, do not wish to be, and I'm only assuming there is a law about copying software in your country.
Hey, it's got a bigger userbase then OS/2... I'm impressed.
It is easy to use. At least for me, and from the sounds of it, almost everyone else who's used it and learned it. Once I learned the syntax and how to use the config file to set up everything, I found it 1000 times better then any gui could provide. So I never bothered writing a GUI. It looks like almost all people who have done the same have found the same, hence the low number of GUI config programs for Apache. I'm sure you'll find a few on freshmeat, but I can't tell you for sure. Maybe you should look.
It's not ignorance, it's need. And once I knew the syntax for the config file, I never ever needed/wanted a gui.
Even if it doesn't fry it so the people have to buy another one, this information just got posted to a pretty major geek site. How many people will remember this when looking to purchase their wireless access point? You're sitting there looking at an SMC and a linksys, you remember this little piece of info, and you chose the linksys*. It's the geek value of "hacking" (even though you're actually more like a script kiddie unless you start trying something new with this). All in all, I'm going to support your idea of corporate planting of this type of information. Your ideas are intriguing and I wish to subscribe to your newsletter.
*Actually, you still might buy the SMC, but because it has the seriel port and the print server built in.
I've had it with this school, Skinner! Low test scores, class after class of ugly, ugly children...
-- S.I. Chalmers
The whole point of broadband is _not_ to download websites faster.
This is true, but the whole economics of broadband relies on it being used to download websites faster. Websites, E-Mail and NNTP.
The $52/month you're forking is chump change compaired to what the ISPs are paying for that bandwidth.
It's time some of you had a little bit of insight on how they can give you that bandwidth and still make money.
NNTP and E-Mail are easy, you're not actually using the ISP's bandwidth to download these. You're only using the link to your ISP. We all know local network speed is cheap. You're using their local network for these protocols (As long as you are using their news/mail servers). The web part of your bandwidth usage is a little bit harder to handle, but not much. One of the biggest helpers, and a company that has made high speed access for what we are paying possible, is Akamai. They've given some nice 1U rack mount content servers to almost every ISP out there already. Even small local ISPs will have some 1U servers in their server room. Symantec, (ping liveupdate.symantec.com , you'll see it's probably one of your ISP's IP addresses) Best Buy, Washington Post, Trend Micro and Barnes and Noble are just a few examples of their customers, and sites that will be using mostly your ISP's local network. (Taken from Akamai's site.
The next step to save even more of your traffic from hitting the ISP's big fat expensive pipe is caching servers. Inktomi and Compaq teamed up to give a nice setup. It's expensive (Somewhere in the neighbourhood of $75,000) but you save that in bandwidth pretty quickly. It's going to cache any semi to frequently viewed pages, and alot of the streamed media you watch. Five hits to ESPN.com just becomes one, and four local requests. The sites you hit and the files you download that are not cached or served from the content servers are a small matter, because a good setup and alot of "normal" internet users will actually be hitting the local servers about 80% of the time.
But you cannot cache P2P traffic, you cannot cache internet gaming traffic, and you cannot cache incoming traffic (Hence why that $52 is not enough for you to be serving up content.) The things you cannot cache are the things that will run an ISP out of business. Everyone here has heard the price of T1s in previous broadband articles or has priced them out themselves. Most realize the economics don't work. This is the only way to make it work. Traffic on alot of protocols just isn't cost effective to be given at high speeds.
I hope this clears up alot of peoples views on broadband access and how it can all work. I can't say if it's right or not, it's just the way things right now have to work. The only thing I can say is if you want a fast connection that you can use for Internet Access and not a fast connection to your ISP, you are going have to pay for it, and it's going to be alot more then $52/month.
Now to patent the method of exercising my cat with one.
Hobby or not, you would be surprised at how anal people will get over detail when something is their baby, their pride and joy.
The people who do it because they love to are the type of people I'd rather have making the music I listen to, writting the books I read, the programs I use, building the house I live in (yes, believe it or not, some people (myself included) love physical 'labour'), fixing my car, or doing anything for me.
Note the number of books titled 'The Joy of _____' and the severe lack of books titled 'How to Make Money doing ______'. (On a side note, notice the number of spam letters that are about 'How to Make Money doing...' and the lack of 'The Joy of doing...' spams)
People who view it as work are the ones I'll avoid. A good hobbyist/employee does his work for the love and joy of doing it. A good creator loves to create, so he/she creates. They do not create because they feel the need for money. They will put more into a creation then anyone who views their job as work.
These people view the job as the benificial part, and the money as a nice bonus.
This is not to say if you get paid, you will not do a good job. If you can find a job you love, and don't view as work, then more power to you. You're in the right field for yourself.
And this does not break down around what you may consider menial jobs, such as a janitor. I've met janitors who love their jobs. In high school there was a janitor who loved being around the kids (And he wasn't a pedophile, what's this world coming to?!). He didn't want to teach, he just loved the atmosphere, the people, and loved doing the job. I used to think this was very strange, until I grew up. I got a job I love doing and though some may think someone programming their routers or ensuring the server they keep their work on keeps their work as a lower life form (I don't know, you may not think of people like that, some do, not accusing you of anything), I quite enjoy it (Especially seeing the people who do think of me as a lower life form begin to weep when all their hard work is gone, because some strange bug (triggered by something he did of course) wiped out his home directory. (Miraculously every other users home directory was left unscathed. I'm a spiteful bastard.)) I enjoy my job. I fix computers for free for some people. It's not so they owe me something, it's not to show off my 'k-rad skillz', sometimes it's because she's hot but... I just love to solve the problem and make it work once again. These people pay me back however or not, doesn't matter to me.
In short, if you love doing something, you'll do it very well. If you do it very well, you will be well compensated for it, both monetarily, and more importantly, spiritually.
Some of the most beautiful hacks have come from some of the ugliest code.
That one does not fall into this catagory though.
oh and by the way, i am a karma whore...isn't everyone?
I'm not.. Karma This!
I know the domain will show up, I'm not attempting to hide it. No obfusication with google's translations or whatever. I just wanted to show you not everyone really cares about karma.
(Plus I just once wanted to post a goat link.. Scratch that one off the list of things to do before I kill everyone.)
FUD. You have no clue if Microsoft is involved, have no evidence to back up your statements, and are, how can I say this politely.. talking out of your ass.
I hate Microsoft as much as the next man, but I think misinformation is worse. Statements like this help no one and do no harm to your intended target, only yourself. Everytime I (and others who noticed this post) read something you post, I will now have to think much harder about if your statements have substance or just some idle FUD-laden speculation. After a few such posts you're just regarded as a crazy microsoft basher and not taken seriously anymore.
Bash on facts, not fiction.
In the Empire Strikes Back, you didn't know the Empire was going to Strike Back? I do agree with you about the name Matrix: Reloaded, it does not give away anything and allows for idle, uninformed speculation... the kind we love on slashdot!
(In his best Arnold Schwarzenegger voice)
Who is your daddy, and what does he do?
Instead I told him how much I liked the idea since it would probably impact spammers and script kiddies
Yes. I don't care about freedom as long as I stop getting spam, and those damn script kiddies stop 4dm1n15tr4t0ring/r00ting my servers that I don't know how to admin.
Christ almighty Microsoft made it simple with Windows update, yet over 300,000 of you cannot get it right (Code Red). If you cannot secure a windows box (a daily check with Windows Update!! then please don't ever take any job (and quit if you currently have one) in the computer industry. Security does not come free. It never has. Not with life, not with computers.
Unix/Linux/Whatever OS you're running is easy to secure IFF you have a clue, or a clue stick handy to beat yourself with, and are willing to put the same effort you put in for security in other aspects of your life.
You, Mr. Anonymous Coward sir, are a twit. You're broken. Anyone who would give up freedom (even others freedom, they have as much right to it as you do) for security is broken. (Within reason. We should not become a bunch of murderous bastards for freedom, but we should also not become a bunch of slaves for security.)
You should fight against any freedom being taken away. You may not need that freedom now, but who knows when it may come in handy. Lazyness or money is not a legitimit reason to stomp someone elses freedom.
That said, I don't agree with spam, because spammers are not flipping the bill with their advertising, but knowledge should never be hindered from spreading. This kind of law can and will definately hinder it.
Now where's my car?
No shit. That little Eddie Munster mother fucker freaks me out.
The Canadian page makes no mention of the DMCA so hopefully not use it as a template, but from reading the site and linked sites, I highly doubt it.
It should be submitted as "What not to do when making digital copyright laws" but it not the source of the problem. New WIPO treaties are the source.
The WIPO treaty (signed by many contries, someone already posted a link to them) requires laws to be put in place for the following:
1) create a new exclusive right in favour of copyright owners, including sound recording producers and performers, to make their works available on-line to the public
2) prevent the circumvention of copyright protection (i.e., as technology is developed to protect copyright, circumvention of such protection would be made illegal
3) prohibit tampering with rights management information.
Canada has signed this treaty and said it will honour it, so we will have the Canadian DMCA.
There is a link on the Canadian site to the framework for the law that will be passed.
http://strategis.ic.gc.ca/SSG/rp01101e.html
From the framework:
The Government is committed to ensuring that copyright law promotes both the creation and the dissemination of works.
This sounds like the reverse engineering portion. Say bye to free Satalite television soon.
Other parts seem to cover some of the other issues brought up on here before:
by allowing specific exemptions to aid users such as libraries, schools and archives to fulfill their vital institutional roles in Canadian society
Hopefully they do this part right, and we don't have corporations going after libraries, etc, but I have no faith in my elected officials.
Copyright lasts only for a defined period of time. In Canada the term of copyright, in most cases, is set at the lifetime of the author plus fifty years after the author's death. The issue is whether or not the term of protection ought to be extended to life plus seventy years
It will be extended, there's little doubt about that. The United States and the EU have both already increased theirs to this, Canada will follow suit.
I do not expect all of this to come in under one law. That's not how the Canadian government works. It will create a law that's tolerable. Then they will begin ammending that law. It will mutate over time and will become the DMCA.
I'm moving to Russia, the new land of the free.
Yes, mc. Should have previewed my post, but the message still holds true. Religion is fed to alot of people since birth (even more true 300+ years ago when the catholic church had much more influence).
In early times it went something like this:
You are born, your whole life everyone tells you the world in flat, everything revolves around the earth, some big bad ass mean man from the sky created us all, you die, and go to heaven if you're good, hell if you're bad. This was not taught as 'we believe that...', it was taught as fact. If someone came along and told you the world was round, you'd pick up your nearest clue stick and smack him upside the head.
The longer a belief is believed, the harder it will be, even with irrefutable proof to back yourself up, to convince people you're right, and their father, mother, teachers, and leaders were wrong.
Element 118 did not have 2000+ years of being 'fact'. It's easy for us to dismiss it as a mistake. Proof of the existance of a god (or proof there is no god) would never be swallowed that quick. The older the belief, the larger the truth pill becomes. The bigger the pill, the harder it is to swallow, and some people are going to choke and spit it back up.
This is why religious beliefs are hard to shake, and most scientific proofs are easy to forget if it is shown to be flawed or flat out wrong. They haven't been around long enough to carry the same weight.
If one day we find out E really does not equal MC^2, I think it will take a very long time to get everyone to stop saying it/believing it.
I guess how well something is entrenched in our minds is relative to the amount of time it takes to finally get it out.
Now we just have to convince the families of the programmers who created the format the data was stored in to sue NASA when they finally do reverse engineer it. Reverse engineering is illegal now.
On a different note, there's been a few stories about mars and life on mars popping up lately. It makes me wonder who's in the process of making a movie about mars?
I'll take the hunters view on this:
It's only alright to kill a newborn if you're going to eat it.
The envelope please...
And the award for 'Support professional most likely to cause suicide/homocide by computer users...'
Clippy!
The computer industries little population control agent.
Actually, there are 3 bills up that claim will "blast open the closed door to a national space economy".
Private investment may allow things to happen faster then you think. Read up at
http://www.spaceref.com/news/viewnews.html?id=378
You're still free to say it under your own name. It's not /.'s fault you're a coward and won't waste your precious karma (Which, I hate to inform you, is not good for anything. You will not impress your friends, women, make you money, and if it gives you a warm feeling inside, you've got to much of a need for acceptance by your peers).
Plus the fact that you're free to post anonymously if you so chose says something to. I think maybe you're mistaking a lack of freedom for a lack of backbone and a screwed up sense of how karma can benefit you. (Hint: It Can't.)
"What is real? How do you define real? If you're talking about what you
can feel, what you can smell, what you can taste and see, then real is simply
electrical signals interpretted by your brain. This is the world that you know...
the world as it was at the end of the 20th century. It exists now only as a neural
interactive simulation that we call the Matrix. You've been living in a dream world
Michael. This is the world as it exists today... Welcome to the desert of the real."
I don't want to seem anti GPL here, but that would not be a good idea.
Forcing them to release it under the GPL would stop most competitors from building on it and producing their own competing product. I see no problems with them having to give NT source into the public domain, or released under BSD license, but forcing them to use the GPL would then hamper the compitition who could benefit from this.
There is a place for the GPL, but this definately isn't one.