Which would be a bit of a problem with the audio playback program I'm using right now, since it's distributed under the provisio that
6. Each time you redistribute the Program (or any work based on the Program), the recipient automatically receives a license from the original licensor to copy, distribute or modify the Program subject to these terms and conditions. You may not impose any further restrictions on the recipients' exercise of the rights granted herein.
I can't give it to someone and force them to pay a royalty for every further copy they give away.
That's true, however the stated purpose of the GPL is to empower users rights, not programmers
That's interesting, and wasn't an issue until computing went mainstream. I think that when RMS founded the FSF he was working on the assumption that the users were the programmers - and for a long time this was true, especially so in the free software community (I wonder which proportion of Linux 1.x's users didn't take a look at the source?:)
To a certain extent RMS still holds this position, and in his mind the right to build upon the source of a program is just as essential as the right to 'use' it. I guess that's the fundamental difference between "free software" and "open source."
You yourself state that you're just "an end user", so what does this have to do with you? This is an issue between coders, lawyers and most significantly, distribution maintainers, so I don't see how it affects you. As an end user, you're free to download and install it yourself regardless of what RMS, the FSF or the Debian folks think.
At any rate, Patent holders can apply for patents in UK. It's done every fucking day.
Yes, but it doesn't guarantee they'll be granted. In the UK, if it's a software patent the odds are vastly against it being granted. Not to mention that prior art exists in the UK, although whether that can be applied in retrospect after declassification isn't something I'd be sure of.
I know you all want your free lunch: free songs on Napster without paying for them; free software even though someone busted their ass producing them (KeyGen anyone?); free everything.
One such program was PuTTY, which is actually written, maintained and hosted by one man, in the United Kingdom. Same with a lot of other things. Nothing illegal about him writing it, but it was illegal for an American to download and use it within their national borders.
Remember those absurd laws us Aussies were trying to prevent passing? With things heading the way they were heading, some companies were declining to use a Squid proxy/cache or similar because technically it could constitute a copyright violation.
Re:Australian ISPs take on DeCSS
on
DeCSS Down Under
·
· Score: 1
Given that I'm in Australia, what the US and Europe think doesn't do me much good! The lawyer in question also happens to be the chairman of Electronic Frontiers Australia, so I'll guess I'll trust that he's reasonably well informed, and take his word for it.
Here's the response I got from my ISPs main legal man.
>
> I intend to post a copy of DeCSS, and link to copies at other locations,
> under my homepage hierachy http://members.iinet.net.au/~locust/.
>
> My understanding is that DeCSS is completely legal in Australia (as we
> lack an equivalent to the US' Digital Millenium Copyright Act), and I was
> wondering whether iiNet knows any differently, or whether they would have
> any objections to my making DeCSS available through webspace that they
> supply.
Hi Andrew, thanks for your message.
There is divided legal opinion as to whether the DeCSS code is
illegal in Australia, though the adverse findings in other countries
aren't helpful for the proposition that it is "fair use". So far, it's
a moot point and I guess it's up to you whether you want to be a test
case.
If you host it on your website and someone/seriously/ complains, I'm
going to ask you to take it off as required under our AUP. While I have
a lot of sympathy for your point of view, I can't allow iiNet to be
caught in the crossfire.
As far as hyperlinks are concerned, always link to the page, not the
file. Linking to the file is called "deep linking", and is a borderline
copyright violation.
Hope this helps - if you run into trouble see www.efa.org.au.
With every single one of them? I've never had trouble finding someone that will sell me a computer without Windows, and the price is the sum of all the bits plus the assembly cost.
I don't think so. You don't needWindows, you could use Linux. Or *BSD. Or AtheOS.
Even if you decide that proprietary OSes are apples and free ones oranges, what about OS/2? Or x86 Solaris? Or x86 NeXTStep? Even the commercial Unix distributions...
For a nation that prides itself on capitalistic integrity, the US sure seems to lack an understanding of the basic economic concept of consumer sovereignty. If Microsoft can charge $189 for an OS it's because the consumer lets them. You know what you're buying, and how much it costs.. if you retrospectively decide you paid too much, then that's your mistake, and your problem.
Of course, I guess you could say that if you get lung cancer because you smoke it's your problem too.. at least the mindless masses are consistent in their ignorance of common sense...
IIRC, many branches of the US Government (in particular, the Department of Defense) standardised on SGML. Wordperfect was the wordprocessor of choice because it supported SGML. Of course, the US Federal Circuit makes it's rulings available in Word 7.0 format... *sigh*.
I believe that showing the code in that fashion would fall under the moniker of "fair use", and hence the code can be used in such a fashion without adhering to the GPL.
Aucb.759
fa.editor-p
utcsrgv!utzoo!decvax!ucbvax!C70:editor-people
Tue Mar 23 11:50:48 1982
Moratorium on statements about EMACS
>From Goldberg@RUTGERS Tue Mar 23 10:46:25 1982
It seems that any statement of the form "EMACS does X", where "X" can
be interpreted by someone as undesirable, will be followed up by at
least one message, and usually several, saying how EMACS can be reconfigured
to avoid the problem. Taking note of this trend, I suggest that correspondents
on this mailing list adopt at least one, and maybe both, of the following
suggestions:
1. THOU SHALT NOT make any negative comments about the operation or
user interface of EMACS. Like the Lord, EMACS appears in many
forms. The true form defies description in human terms.
2. HONOR THY SENDER: If someone took the time to analyze and describe
a user interface issue, give this person the benefit of the doubt.
Do not berate this person on the technicality that a completely
extensible language has no inherent fixed properties. Rather,
consider the impact of the comment on the space of properties
that one may want to choose as the "default" for a given system.
Luckily, my school appears to believe that they're better off with the free solution anyway. We had a whole bunch of machines running the copies of NT4/Office/MSDEV that Microsoft gave to us, but when I got back from semester break I was pleased to discover that all but one of the remaining MS labs had been switched over to the Redhat install that the rest of the labs were running.
Now the only machines in the building running Windows are the one lab used for word processing tutorials, and the labs used by the School of Maths (who rely on a few proprietary maths applications).
The idea is that we have to write the code to run perfectly the first time, as opposed to writing, compiling, debugging until it works.. anyone could hand in an A+ solution if they had the ability to try it before submitting it (why do you think most CS assignments attribute so little of the marking to the code itself?)
For my introductory C++ unit (no, I don't show up half the time), the development environment is tcsh, the project manager is GNU Make, the compiler g++, and the only supported (ie, the tutor will give you help with it) editor is vi, although a few people use emacs or Midnight Commander. I'd say come study here but we don't have enough lab machines as it is!
Although I admit I've never tried developing a major project, I've never had any compatability problems between this Wintel machine, my Linux box, and the Linux machines at uni.
Slashdot Mirror
I'm trying not to rant too much about someone's work that I enjoy, but if i can make one recommendation.. everyone should go read Egan's Diaspora.
*raises hand* *g* These lab machines and the uni's pipe to the backbone could come in useful as well....
6. Each time you redistribute the Program (or any work based on the Program), the recipient automatically receives a license from the original licensor to copy, distribute or modify the Program subject to these terms and conditions. You may not impose any further restrictions on the recipients' exercise of the rights granted herein.
I can't give it to someone and force them to pay a royalty for every further copy they give away.
I see from the link that you guys lost. Sorry to hear it, and good luck.
That's interesting, and wasn't an issue until computing went mainstream. I think that when RMS founded the FSF he was working on the assumption that the users were the programmers - and for a long time this was true, especially so in the free software community (I wonder which proportion of Linux 1.x's users didn't take a look at the source? :)
To a certain extent RMS still holds this position, and in his mind the right to build upon the source of a program is just as essential as the right to 'use' it. I guess that's the fundamental difference between "free software" and "open source."
You yourself state that you're just "an end user", so what does this have to do with you? This is an issue between coders, lawyers and most significantly, distribution maintainers, so I don't see how it affects you. As an end user, you're free to download and install it yourself regardless of what RMS, the FSF or the Debian folks think.
Yes, but it doesn't guarantee they'll be granted. In the UK, if it's a software patent the odds are vastly against it being granted. Not to mention that prior art exists in the UK, although whether that can be applied in retrospect after declassification isn't something I'd be sure of.
And now Bertelsmann wants free money.
One such program was PuTTY, which is actually written, maintained and hosted by one man, in the United Kingdom. Same with a lot of other things. Nothing illegal about him writing it, but it was illegal for an American to download and use it within their national borders.
You've never used Emacs? Oh, he put a lot into gcc as well..
Remember those absurd laws us Aussies were trying to prevent passing? With things heading the way they were heading, some companies were declining to use a Squid proxy/cache or similar because technically it could constitute a copyright violation.
Given that I'm in Australia, what the US and Europe think doesn't do me much good! The lawyer in question also happens to be the chairman of Electronic Frontiers Australia, so I'll guess I'll trust that he's reasonably well informed, and take his word for it.
Here's the response I got from my ISPs main legal man.
/seriously/ complains, I'm
>
> I intend to post a copy of DeCSS, and link to copies at other locations,
> under my homepage hierachy http://members.iinet.net.au/~locust/.
>
> My understanding is that DeCSS is completely legal in Australia (as we
> lack an equivalent to the US' Digital Millenium Copyright Act), and I was
> wondering whether iiNet knows any differently, or whether they would have
> any objections to my making DeCSS available through webspace that they
> supply.
Hi Andrew, thanks for your message.
There is divided legal opinion as to whether the DeCSS code is
illegal in Australia, though the adverse findings in other countries
aren't helpful for the proposition that it is "fair use". So far, it's
a moot point and I guess it's up to you whether you want to be a test
case.
If you host it on your website and someone
going to ask you to take it off as required under our AUP. While I have
a lot of sympathy for your point of view, I can't allow iiNet to be
caught in the crossfire.
As far as hyperlinks are concerned, always link to the page, not the
file. Linking to the file is called "deep linking", and is a borderline
copyright violation.
Hope this helps - if you run into trouble see www.efa.org.au.
Regards,
Can you make them out of Lego?
With every single one of them? I've never had trouble finding someone that will sell me a computer without Windows, and the price is the sum of all the bits plus the assembly cost.
Even if you decide that proprietary OSes are apples and free ones oranges, what about OS/2? Or x86 Solaris? Or x86 NeXTStep? Even the commercial Unix distributions...
For a nation that prides itself on capitalistic integrity, the US sure seems to lack an understanding of the basic economic concept of consumer sovereignty. If Microsoft can charge $189 for an OS it's because the consumer lets them. You know what you're buying, and how much it costs.. if you retrospectively decide you paid too much, then that's your mistake, and your problem.
Of course, I guess you could say that if you get lung cancer because you smoke it's your problem too.. at least the mindless masses are consistent in their ignorance of common sense...
IIRC, many branches of the US Government (in particular, the Department of Defense) standardised on SGML. Wordperfect was the wordprocessor of choice because it supported SGML. Of course, the US Federal Circuit makes it's rulings available in Word 7.0 format... *sigh*.
They're doing more than linking to it - you can actually access the source code on a Deja HTTP server :)
Yep, and it costs even more than satellite :) In general, internet expensive over here is hell expensive, and hell slow.
I believe that showing the code in that fashion would fall under the moniker of "fair use", and hence the code can be used in such a fashion without adhering to the GPL.
Aucb.759
fa.editor-p
utcsrgv!utzoo!decvax!ucbvax!C70:editor-people
Tue Mar 23 11:50:48 1982
Moratorium on statements about EMACS
>From Goldberg@RUTGERS Tue Mar 23 10:46:25 1982
It seems that any statement of the form "EMACS does X", where "X" can
be interpreted by someone as undesirable, will be followed up by at
least one message, and usually several, saying how EMACS can be reconfigured
to avoid the problem. Taking note of this trend, I suggest that correspondents
on this mailing list adopt at least one, and maybe both, of the following
suggestions:
1. THOU SHALT NOT make any negative comments about the operation or
user interface of EMACS. Like the Lord, EMACS appears in many
forms. The true form defies description in human terms.
2. HONOR THY SENDER: If someone took the time to analyze and describe
a user interface issue, give this person the benefit of the doubt.
Do not berate this person on the technicality that a completely
extensible language has no inherent fixed properties. Rather,
consider the impact of the comment on the space of properties
that one may want to choose as the "default" for a given system.
Bob
Now the only machines in the building running Windows are the one lab used for word processing tutorials, and the labs used by the School of Maths (who rely on a few proprietary maths applications).
The idea is that we have to write the code to run perfectly the first time, as opposed to writing, compiling, debugging until it works.. anyone could hand in an A+ solution if they had the ability to try it before submitting it (why do you think most CS assignments attribute so little of the marking to the code itself?)
For my introductory C++ unit (no, I don't show up half the time), the development environment is tcsh, the project manager is GNU Make, the compiler g++, and the only supported (ie, the tutor will give you help with it) editor is vi, although a few people use emacs or Midnight Commander. I'd say come study here but we don't have enough lab machines as it is!
Although I admit I've never tried developing a major project, I've never had any compatability problems between this Wintel machine, my Linux box, and the Linux machines at uni.