Yet again, much of/. fails to grasp the fact that most politicians don't see the Internet as a magical fairy land where the usual laws of society do not apply. Normally, the excuse is that all politicians are corrupt since no rational person would support DRM/defend copyright/enforce drug patents/etc without being in the pocket of some special interest group. This time, very few people are calling the politicians corrupt, which is wierd. Instead, the focus is on a legal technicality (nothing new), but I can't figure out why the politicians aren't being criticized more.
This is a prime example of a company getting into a business they really didn't understand (Corel), Getting into businesses they don't understand is the norm for Corel. In the last 10 years, they have jumped on every single bandwagon that has come along (and been burned every time):
- WordPerfect (it's been through so many hands, it deserves its own bandwagon) - Java (e.g. the ill fated WP port) - Network Appliances (a.k.a. Internet Toaster) - Linux - The Silicon Valley lifestyle ($50 million company Christmas parties)
I was offered a job there about 10 years ago. They bragged about the office suite strategy in the interview. I thought it sounded like a pipe dream.
Copyright is too ubiquitous to be considered merely viral. No sooner do my fingers type these words than they 'catch' the copyright disease. The only way to prevent this is to explicitly dedicate the words to the public domain.
So what you're saying is that your definition of "viral licensing" is better than the standard one...
Face it, if you want to communicate with people you have to use their terminology. I could go around on Slashdot posting comments using my own private definition of what it means for software to be "free" or "open", but I would only get flamed.
Copyright may be omni-present, but this does not make it a viral license, under the commonly accepted definition.
Okay, let me restate an assumption: the GPL only restricts your rights if you use it. I'm not saying that the GPL limits your rights by its very existence (note that it does not grant rights just by existing either). But once you agree to its terms, your rights are limited in perpetuity.
Once you distribute your software under the GPL you lose the rights I mentioned above. Most notably, you can no longer restrict the distribution of your work. Yes, you can still distribute your work under a different license, but anyone who wants to can still get the GPL'ed version, so you have lost control.
The GPL is a contract, just like any other. And like many contracts, it gives rights and it takes others away. It differs from most contracts because it has a viral nature. I don't know why so many GPL advocates are unwilling to admit this. The constant claims that a) the GPL is not viral, and b) the GPL does not restrict any rights are merely FUD.
You're leaving out a very important point: The author is the one who decides to use GPL, and so it is the author who 'takes' these rights from himself.
Oh, by all means. But it is also common to speak of a law or contract that takes away rights. How many Slashdotters complain about the evil DMCA that takes away their rights (as opposed to the evil legislators that enacted the DMCA...).
Lots of laws/contracts restrict your rights, but the GPL tries to claim that it is immune and it only grants rights. Sorry, but that is not true. Just like any other contract the GPL grants rights to some by taking from others.
I don't usually reply to people who call me a troll. Calling someone a troll just because they have an unpopular opinion on/. (which is typically the majority opinion in the real world) is way more ridiculous than calling them an idiot. However, I might as well reply, since I can debunk your argument in a mere two sentences.
The license allows the copyright holder to grant some rights to others, and also to take some away. The fact that the license is entered into voluntarily doesn't negate this fact; when you accept the terms of the GPL you are granted some new rights, but the license also strips some of your existing rights.
Besides, what's wrong with semantics? If we're talking about law, bigger issues than this have hinged on finer points. Lawyers love arguing semantics.
I don't particularly like semantics. I would say if there's one thing in particular that's wrong with the legal system, it's too much focus on semantics. I also don't like the way posters on/. like to pick apart a perfectly valid argument based on an irrelevant technicality. That one is a subset of the other doesn't make them different in a meaningful way for this analysis, however. Particularly as it should be noted that GPLed works are atypical anyway, and thus neatly fall within your 'not typical' language above.
I think it does make a difference. My entire reason for starting this thread was to refute the OP's claim that the GPL is not a viral license. (No, I wasn't planning to get drawn into a pro-GPL debate where I get called a troll every 5 seconds.) Yes, copyright allows for viral licenses, but pretty much no one ever used them until the GPL came along. So I would say that there is a big difference between regular copyright and GPL. Remember -- you said that using a work under the GPL was different than using the work "by permission or fair use." You have just admitted that that prior statement was wrong, by agreeing that the GPL is within the set of works used where "a copyright owner [grants] permission."
If your intent was to ensnare me in some kind of semantic trap by focusing on what I say rather than what I mean, then fine: you win. I still think it's relevant that if you exclude the GPL (and modern variations), 99% of copyright use by permission would be on non-viral terms. No, that case is a typical one. Hell, it regularly appears in IP textbooks. Furthermore, it is a case that is AGAINST fair use -- Time was found to have infringed and was unable to offer a defense. Time _lost_.
I can't claim prior knowledge about this case, but I looked it up and you don't seem to remember the facts very well. It wasn't Time that got sued, it was The Nation. The courts gave four reasons for the decision, most notably that the quotes were taken from a stolen manuscript and that this caused financial damage to Time (who passed it on to Harper & Row). I recommend this excellent summary. The Nation acted unethically and they lost the case.
BTW, cases that are taught in law school are often "landmark decisions" rather than typical cases. When you publish an essay that quotes a copyrighted work, you have comitted infringement. If that infringement is not judicially resolvable, with permission, or defensible e.g. under fair use, then you're fine.
Yippee, another semantic argument. I couldn't find any evidence to support your claim that fair use is still officially considered infringement or not. To me, it's about as exciting as arguing whether justifiable homocide is murder or not. However, remember: no one made you have to seek out _that_ particular work, nor infringe upon it in the first place.
No comment... this is too much of a rathole. If GPLed software is that dangerous to you, and you are unable to use it by any other means, then I suggest that you simply don't use it.
I don't know where you got the idea that GPL'ed software is dangerous to me; I use it all the time. I merely said that it was a viral license. The GPL is dangerous to my career, but I'm not going to solve that problem by refusing to use it. I merely use GPL'ed software without contributing anything back, which I am perfectly entitled to do under the license.
I repeat: The GPL gives rights; it does not take any away.
Not true. It takes away the right of the author: - to keep his source code secret. - to limit the distribution of his work. - to pursue a traditional software business model. Getting a little silly now. You are talking about mutually exclusive events, to be murdered or not.
Fine, so it's an exagerated example, but many rights are mutually exclusive. The right of the consumer to copy a program conflicts with the right of the author to control the distribution of his creation.
BTW, there are many species of animal that don't see murder as wrong (and there are also some human cultures). My point was that there is no such thing as an inherent right. Which rights you consider important is a personal or cultural matter.
Well a) Fair use is a defense to infringement. In order to claim it you necessarily must have already infringed.
I see you like to argue semantics. The GPL does allow you to use existing material by permission. But where some people would only grant permission for a fee, or would grant it as a gift, authors of works released under the GPL grant it on condition that you do the same for your work.
In other words: - It is possible for a copyright owner to grant permission to cite a work on the condition of viral licensing, however this is not typical. - GPL'ed work is copyrighted and must be licensed virally.
So you see: the two cases are different. One is a subset of the other. Uh... I cited the case with Ford's memoirs to point out just how little need be taken in order to constitute infringement. At no time during my post did I ever argue against copyright.
Whatever. That's not the point. The point is that, just as in all the fair-use and anti-copyright rants on slashdot, the example you cite is an edge case rather than a typical one. The ethics of quoting a stolen manuscript are questionable to say the least. And if you wrote code that intermingled with GPLed code under, RATHER than the GPL, Fair Use instead, the situation would be the same.
No, it's not the same. The difference is that when I publish an essay that quotes a copyrighted work, I still retain control of what others can do with the 90% of the essay that I still own. When I am forced to release my code under the GPL, I may be able to assemble a non-GPL'ed version, but the genie is already out of the bottle and I can't control what others do with my code anymore. This makes a huge difference to anyone who is still pursuing traditional software business models.
if you write a program in which you use GPL'ed code in an unpermitted fashion, you are free to remove the GPL'ed code from your program, and continue to sell/distribute it, as long as your own work is not a derivative, which may require a court to decide upon.
Of course that's true, but you ignore the whole reason why a company might not want to release their code under the GPL, which is that they don't want to give other people rights to their code. The GPL is viral because it infects another program's license and forces the copyright owner to relinquish his right to keep the code secret and proprietary. The GPL may not be viral in every conceivable manner, but it is viral in this one important aspect. you seem to be under the misapprehension that the GPL can force you to adopt the GPL for your own work. it cannot. all it does is force you to use the GPL for your work IF AND ONLY IF you choose to use work by another person licensed under the GPL.
I'm not under that miconception (although "force" is a loaded term). I simply said that the GPL is a viral license. The flu is a virus. You can avoid getting the flu by locking yourself in the basement during flu season, but that doesn't make the flu any less of a virus.
Gotta stop those suppressive anti-GPL thoughts from getting out.
Nothing of the sort. I respect alternate views,
Yeah, but you're clearly not a moderator in this thread. Otherwise, explain how Zeinfeld got modded as troll for his post above. The problem is that there are people (like the "tripe" guy, above) who aren't thinking about the relative merits of X or Y, but just absolutely taking a stance of the GPL being evil.
Pardon? I never said anything about the GPL being evil. I just said that it was viral, and that the OP who said it wasn't viral is full of crap. Are you equating "viral" with "evil"? People keep replying to me as though I was saying that the GPL was evil and I keep trying to steer the conversation back to viral. Go back and look at my earlier post and tell me where I said the GPL was evil. The GPL is an optional license, and as such, it's no more viral than you want it to be. Don't want to be bound by it's terms?
Okay, fine. If you want to mince words then I admit it: The GPL is only viral if you try to sell or publish software. Pretty much all the people who have called it viral represent companies that sell software.
The major difference is that if you include a copyrighted image/paragraph/etc in your original work (whether by permission or via fair use) the copyright on the cited work does not infect the remaining 90% of your original work. ditto for the GPL. If you copy with permission other than the GPL, no problem.
Aha... so the GPL is not viral as long as you are not using the GPL.
The fact is, copyright is not inherently viral:
Some copyright-based licenses are viral. The GPL is a viral license. The GPL is enforceable under copyright.
But no combination of the above statements will prove the OP's contention, which is that copyright is viral (and the GPL is not).
The GPL gives rights; it does not take any away.
Another absurd statement, but I digress. "Rights" is such a loaded word; it makes laws sound like unalienable laws. Copyright gives certain "rights" to the author at the expense of the consumer. The GPL takes away some of those rights from the author and gives them to the consumer. There is always a conservation of rights. If society gives you the "right" not to be murdered, it impinges on my "right" to murder you. Our perception of which laws are "rights" is coloured by our nature and nurture; there are no absolute rights.
The GPL may seem viral, but it is just a license agreement like any other.
The GPL doesn't just seem viral; it is viral. It is a license agreement like any other, but not a viral license agreement like any other, because most license agreements aren't viral. Personally, I would consider a Microsoft EULA to be much more viral than the GPL.
Except that it's not. You can't just go around redefining other people's terminology just because you don't agree with the connotation. I am forced to use jargon like "free software" in a special way when talking to geeks. You need to get over it, and start using the same definition of "viral" as everyone else (in the software community). I think his point was that you don't have to accept the terms of the GPL. Don't use the copyrighted work and you don't have to adhere to the license.
The OP said that copyright was viral and the GPL wasn't. So no, I don't think that was his point.
I'm ignoring your other (pro-GPL) comments because they are unrelated to the issue of whether the GPL is viral.
If you take even a very small amount of content from someone else and incorporate it into your own work, you cannot publish your work without infringing on the other person's copyright.
It seems that you didn't read my post that carefully, since I explictly stated "by permission or via fair use". Check out the case with Gerald Ford's memoirs.
Wherein a magazine obtained an unauthorized copy of the manuscript prior to publication, thus causing financial damage to the author (Time magazine backed out of a contract). These fair-use/anti-copyright rants always seem to have a back story that is conveniently glossed over. You _may_ be able to seperate the two in your work, such that the new portion you created can be seperately published, but blocking copyrights can wind up being a significant PITA.
Let's say that I publish a scholarly essay in which I quote from another work without permission (under fair use). Then I later rewrite the essay as a novella, without using the quote. Are you saying that the author of the quote could somehow block publication of my novella? BS.
I'm getting very tired of this mistake. It's being pushed by MS, but it was started by the likes of Slashdotters who don't understand the terminology. The GPL is not viral, copyright law is.
Dude, you are completely full of shit. Copyright law is a little bit viral, but the GPL is ebola viral. The major difference is that if you include a copyrighted image/paragraph/etc in your original work (whether by permission or via fair use) the copyright on the cited work does not infect the remaining 90% of your original work. How can you gloss over a detail like that. It makes ALL the difference. However, like all copyrighted works, GPLed software cannot be modified and "made your own". A modified (or "derived") work is just that.
Get a sense of proportion. There is a huge difference between someone who wants to take a GPL'ed app, tweak it a bit, and sell it under a non-GPL license, and someone who wants to take a GPL'ed library and include it as a small part of a non-GPL'ed program. That would be stretching the definition of "derivative work" beyond the level of common sense. However, to say that it's the GPL that's viral is silly. Try cutting up a magazine, reassembling the articles and then publishing the result.
Again, you're full of shit. Each of the excerpts is covered by its own copyright; they aren't infecting each other. If you take some excerpts from Tom Clancy and mix them in with some quotes from Charles Dickens, it doesn't mean that Tom Clancy gets copyright over the Dickens quotes, nor does the public domain status of the Dickens quotes cause the Clancy quotes to fall into the public domain. *THAT* would be viral licensing, and that's what the GPL does.
So maybe you ought to think about this issue a little more before you post this tripe again.
When a U.S. firm exports a video tape or DVD to China, they expect to be paid in U.S. dollars by the importer. They don't give a rat's ass about the cost of living in China. Do you think that MGM will sell a $20 DVD for 44 in China (because China's per-capita income is 1/45th of that in the U.S.)? Do you think that Microsoft will sell them Windows XP upgrades for $4 (US retail of $180 divided by 45)? Do you honestly believe that U.S. firms will sell below their costs?
Actually, companies do sell products for different prices in different markets, as long as they have some confidence that the cheap versions won't find their way back to the rich countries. In fact, that's part of the rationale behind region encoding in DVDs. Of course this fact is pretty much lost on the/. crowd, who can hardly suppress their righteous indignation over the fact that that cheap DVD they bought in Burundi doesn't work in the US. Even Canada has special CD releases, which are adjusted for the low exchange rate. Alas, globalization is working against us, and Internet shopping is now forcing many Canadians to pay US prices for commercial goods. Thanks, globalization.
If the RIAA quit spending their money trying to shoot down file sharing networks, buying senators, and getting the attention of schools, corporate America, etc and instead channelled their resources into building a new business model, they might just come out on top.
I wish you'd stop complaining about corrupt senators. The honest ones are just using an obsolete business model. Oh yeah, and supermarkets should stop complaining about shoplifting because they're just using an obsolete business model as well. If they really wanted to stop theft, they would add those ink cartriges onto food like they do in clothing stores.
This has honestly got to be the lamest argument that gets consistently modded up to +5 on/.
Oh, so we now (mindlessly) slashdot [slashdot.org] shashdot [slashdot.org]? poor slashdot [slashdot.org]. That too in the first (visible) post? Honestly, I ask you. Poor slashdot [slashdot.org].
If I go around and try and bilk old ladies out of their retirement funds, is that a crime? Just because people are gullible and stupid (unsecured networks) doesn't make it your right (or make it legal) to take advantage of that.
But that's how the GMs play the game. Your reviewing every game of your opponent before starting the match.
It's not the same thing. GMs don't get a move oracle to play with before the game. It would have been more fair if Fritz had played a bunch of games against grandmasters and Kramnik had been given a transcript of the results. (And the team had been allowed to tweak the program afterwards.)
I'm not the least bit surprised to see a human beating a computer in a complex activity like chess, and that's with lots of handicaps in Fritz' favor (it doesn't have to analyze an image of the board in order to determine where the pieces are, for instance).
Oh come on... it would take a relatively simple image recognition system to recognize the layout of pieces on a board. Designing a robotic arm to move the pieces would me a much bigger challenge.
Face it, the absolute biggest advantage is the fact that Kramnik got a copy of Fritz to play with and Fritz doesn't have a copy of Kramnik to play with. With a computer, you don't just have access to your opponent's playing style; you can keep trying minor variations of the same line until you find one where the computer consistently makes a mistake (I wonder how much randomness there is in Fritz's move selection algorithm). I wonder if the unusual choice of openings was an attempt to avoid lines that Kramnik might have prepared for in this manner.
There already is good "cut and paste" support... its called "gpm". Works like a charm... highlight a piece of text, then go somewhere else and simply click the middle mouse button to paste. Its quicker than ctrl-c ctrl-v because no keystrokes are involved.
Oh you got to be kidding me. I use both Windows and Linux/KDE on a daily basis and I hate the cut and paste support in X. No, I don't want to paste at the mouse cursor; I want to paste at the text cursor. Even for console windows, I still get frustrated by the fact that the mouse has to be over the window.
For KDE apps, the cut and paste functionality is very inconsistent. No, I don't want double-clicking a word to copy it to the clipboard; half the time I'm selecting the word so I can overwrite it with whatever was in the clipboard before. Luckily, some apps let me turn this 'feature' off. Also, I hate the fact that when I close the app, the data in the clipboard is lost.
Take your blinders off. The OP was right. Cut and paste is the worst thing about Linux today.
Fill in the blanks for your own personal broad, sweeping statement:
There has grown up in the minds of certain groups in this country the notion that because a man has been alive for a number of years, the government and the courts are charged with the duty of preventing others from killing him, even in the face of changing circumstances and contrary personal or economic interest. This strange doctrine is not supported by natural selection, physics, or any other law of nature. Neither individuals nor corporations have any right to come into court and ask that warmongering be stopped, or antagonists be jailed, for their private benefit.
Slashdot Mirror
Yet again, much of /. fails to grasp the fact that most politicians don't see the Internet as a magical fairy land where the usual laws of society do not apply. Normally, the excuse is that all politicians are corrupt since no rational person would support DRM/defend copyright/enforce drug patents/etc without being in the pocket of some special interest group. This time, very few people are calling the politicians corrupt, which is wierd. Instead, the focus is on a legal technicality (nothing new), but I can't figure out why the politicians aren't being criticized more.
-a
This is a prime example of a company getting into a business they really didn't understand (Corel),
Getting into businesses they don't understand is the norm for Corel. In the last 10 years, they have jumped on every single bandwagon that has come along (and been burned every time):
- WordPerfect (it's been through so many hands, it deserves its own bandwagon)
- Java (e.g. the ill fated WP port)
- Network Appliances (a.k.a. Internet Toaster)
- Linux
- The Silicon Valley lifestyle ($50 million company Christmas parties)
I was offered a job there about 10 years ago. They bragged about the office suite strategy in the interview. I thought it sounded like a pipe dream.
-a
Copyright is too ubiquitous to be considered merely viral. No sooner do my fingers type these words than they 'catch' the copyright disease. The only way to prevent this is to explicitly dedicate the words to the public domain.
So what you're saying is that your definition of "viral licensing" is better than the standard one...
Face it, if you want to communicate with people you have to use their terminology. I could go around on Slashdot posting comments using my own private definition of what it means for software to be "free" or "open", but I would only get flamed.
Copyright may be omni-present, but this does not make it a viral license, under the commonly accepted definition.
-a
There is no "infection"
having to use the GPL for your own code is the price you pay for having access to a huge library of GPL code.
You're not proving anything. The infection *is* the price.
-a
Okay, let me restate an assumption: the GPL only restricts your rights if you use it. I'm not saying that the GPL limits your rights by its very existence (note that it does not grant rights just by existing either). But once you agree to its terms, your rights are limited in perpetuity.
Once you distribute your software under the GPL you lose the rights I mentioned above. Most notably, you can no longer restrict the distribution of your work. Yes, you can still distribute your work under a different license, but anyone who wants to can still get the GPL'ed version, so you have lost control.
The GPL is a contract, just like any other. And like many contracts, it gives rights and it takes others away. It differs from most contracts because it has a viral nature. I don't know why so many GPL advocates are unwilling to admit this. The constant claims that a) the GPL is not viral, and b) the GPL does not restrict any rights are merely FUD.
-a
You're leaving out a very important point: The author is the one who decides to use GPL, and so it is the author who 'takes' these rights from himself.
Oh, by all means. But it is also common to speak of a law or contract that takes away rights. How many Slashdotters complain about the evil DMCA that takes away their rights (as opposed to the evil legislators that enacted the DMCA...).
Lots of laws/contracts restrict your rights, but the GPL tries to claim that it is immune and it only grants rights. Sorry, but that is not true. Just like any other contract the GPL grants rights to some by taking from others.
-a
I don't usually reply to people who call me a troll. Calling someone a troll just because they have an unpopular opinion on /. (which is typically the majority opinion in the real world) is way more ridiculous than calling them an idiot. However, I might as well reply, since I can debunk your argument in a mere two sentences.
The license allows the copyright holder to grant some rights to others, and also to take some away. The fact that the license is entered into voluntarily doesn't negate this fact; when you accept the terms of the GPL you are granted some new rights, but the license also strips some of your existing rights.
-a
Besides, what's wrong with semantics? If we're talking about law, bigger issues than this have hinged on finer points. Lawyers love arguing semantics.
I don't particularly like semantics. I would say if there's one thing in particular that's wrong with the legal system, it's too much focus on semantics. I also don't like the way posters on
That one is a subset of the other doesn't make them different in a meaningful way for this analysis, however. Particularly as it should be noted that GPLed works are atypical anyway, and thus neatly fall within your 'not typical' language above.
I think it does make a difference. My entire reason for starting this thread was to refute the OP's claim that the GPL is not a viral license. (No, I wasn't planning to get drawn into a pro-GPL debate where I get called a troll every 5 seconds.) Yes, copyright allows for viral licenses, but pretty much no one ever used them until the GPL came along. So I would say that there is a big difference between regular copyright and GPL.
Remember -- you said that using a work under the GPL was different than using the work "by permission or fair use." You have just admitted that that prior statement was wrong, by agreeing that the GPL is within the set of works used where "a copyright owner [grants] permission."
If your intent was to ensnare me in some kind of semantic trap by focusing on what I say rather than what I mean, then fine: you win. I still think it's relevant that if you exclude the GPL (and modern variations), 99% of copyright use by permission would be on non-viral terms.
No, that case is a typical one. Hell, it regularly appears in IP textbooks. Furthermore, it is a case that is AGAINST fair use -- Time was found to have infringed and was unable to offer a defense. Time _lost_.
I can't claim prior knowledge about this case, but I looked it up and you don't seem to remember the facts very well. It wasn't Time that got sued, it was The Nation. The courts gave four reasons for the decision, most notably that the quotes were taken from a stolen manuscript and that this caused financial damage to Time (who passed it on to Harper & Row). I recommend this excellent summary. The Nation acted unethically and they lost the case.
BTW, cases that are taught in law school are often "landmark decisions" rather than typical cases.
When you publish an essay that quotes a copyrighted work, you have comitted infringement. If that infringement is not judicially resolvable, with permission, or defensible e.g. under fair use, then you're fine.
Yippee, another semantic argument. I couldn't find any evidence to support your claim that fair use is still officially considered infringement or not. To me, it's about as exciting as arguing whether justifiable homocide is murder or not.
However, remember: no one made you have to seek out _that_ particular work, nor infringe upon it in the first place.
No comment... this is too much of a rathole.
If GPLed software is that dangerous to you, and you are unable to use it by any other means, then I suggest that you simply don't use it.
I don't know where you got the idea that GPL'ed software is dangerous to me; I use it all the time. I merely said that it was a viral license. The GPL is dangerous to my career, but I'm not going to solve that problem by refusing to use it. I merely use GPL'ed software without contributing anything back, which I am perfectly entitled to do under the license.
-a
I repeat: The GPL gives rights; it does not take any away.
Not true. It takes away the right of the author:
- to keep his source code secret.
- to limit the distribution of his work.
- to pursue a traditional software business model.
Getting a little silly now. You are talking about mutually exclusive events, to be murdered or not.
Fine, so it's an exagerated example, but many rights are mutually exclusive. The right of the consumer to copy a program conflicts with the right of the author to control the distribution of his creation.
BTW, there are many species of animal that don't see murder as wrong (and there are also some human cultures). My point was that there is no such thing as an inherent right. Which rights you consider important is a personal or cultural matter.
-a
Well a) Fair use is a defense to infringement. In order to claim it you necessarily must have already infringed.
I see you like to argue semantics.
The GPL does allow you to use existing material by permission. But where some people would only grant permission for a fee, or would grant it as a gift, authors of works released under the GPL grant it on condition that you do the same for your work.
In other words:
- It is possible for a copyright owner to grant permission to cite a work on the condition of viral licensing, however this is not typical.
- GPL'ed work is copyrighted and must be licensed virally.
So you see: the two cases are different. One is a subset of the other.
Uh... I cited the case with Ford's memoirs to point out just how little need be taken in order to constitute infringement. At no time during my post did I ever argue against copyright.
Whatever. That's not the point. The point is that, just as in all the fair-use and anti-copyright rants on slashdot, the example you cite is an edge case rather than a typical one. The ethics of quoting a stolen manuscript are questionable to say the least.
And if you wrote code that intermingled with GPLed code under, RATHER than the GPL, Fair Use instead, the situation would be the same.
No, it's not the same. The difference is that when I publish an essay that quotes a copyrighted work, I still retain control of what others can do with the 90% of the essay that I still own. When I am forced to release my code under the GPL, I may be able to assemble a non-GPL'ed version, but the genie is already out of the bottle and I can't control what others do with my code anymore. This makes a huge difference to anyone who is still pursuing traditional software business models.
-a
if you write a program in which you use GPL'ed code in an unpermitted fashion, you are free to remove the GPL'ed code from your program, and continue to sell/distribute it, as long as your own work is not a derivative, which may require a court to decide upon.
Of course that's true, but you ignore the whole reason why a company might not want to release their code under the GPL, which is that they don't want to give other people rights to their code. The GPL is viral because it infects another program's license and forces the copyright owner to relinquish his right to keep the code secret and proprietary. The GPL may not be viral in every conceivable manner, but it is viral in this one important aspect.
you seem to be under the misapprehension that the GPL can force you to adopt the GPL for your own work. it cannot. all it does is force you to use the GPL for your work IF AND ONLY IF you choose to use work by another person licensed under the GPL.
I'm not under that miconception (although "force" is a loaded term). I simply said that the GPL is a viral license. The flu is a virus. You can avoid getting the flu by locking yourself in the basement during flu season, but that doesn't make the flu any less of a virus.
-a
Nothing of the sort. I respect alternate views,
Yeah, but you're clearly not a moderator in this thread. Otherwise, explain how Zeinfeld got modded as troll for his post above.
The problem is that there are people (like the "tripe" guy, above) who aren't thinking about the relative merits of X or Y, but just absolutely taking a stance of the GPL being evil.
Pardon? I never said anything about the GPL being evil. I just said that it was viral, and that the OP who said it wasn't viral is full of crap. Are you equating "viral" with "evil"? People keep replying to me as though I was saying that the GPL was evil and I keep trying to steer the conversation back to viral. Go back and look at my earlier post and tell me where I said the GPL was evil.
The GPL is an optional license, and as such, it's no more viral than you want it to be. Don't want to be bound by it's terms?
Okay, fine. If you want to mince words then I admit it: The GPL is only viral if you try to sell or publish software. Pretty much all the people who have called it viral represent companies that sell software.
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The major difference is that if you include a copyrighted image/paragraph/etc in your original work (whether by permission or via fair use) the copyright on the cited work does not infect the remaining 90% of your original work.
ditto for the GPL. If you copy with permission other than the GPL, no problem.
Aha... so the GPL is not viral as long as you are not using the GPL.
The fact is, copyright is not inherently viral:
Some copyright-based licenses are viral.
The GPL is a viral license.
The GPL is enforceable under copyright.
But no combination of the above statements will prove the OP's contention, which is that copyright is viral (and the GPL is not).
The GPL gives rights; it does not take any away.
Another absurd statement, but I digress. "Rights" is such a loaded word; it makes laws sound like unalienable laws. Copyright gives certain "rights" to the author at the expense of the consumer. The GPL takes away some of those rights from the author and gives them to the consumer. There is always a conservation of rights. If society gives you the "right" not to be murdered, it impinges on my "right" to murder you. Our perception of which laws are "rights" is coloured by our nature and nurture; there are no absolute rights.
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The GPL may seem viral, but it is just a license agreement like any other.
The GPL doesn't just seem viral; it is viral. It is a license agreement like any other, but not a viral license agreement like any other, because most license agreements aren't viral.
Personally, I would consider a Microsoft EULA to be much more viral than the GPL.
Except that it's not. You can't just go around redefining other people's terminology just because you don't agree with the connotation. I am forced to use jargon like "free software" in a special way when talking to geeks. You need to get over it, and start using the same definition of "viral" as everyone else (in the software community).
I think his point was that you don't have to accept the terms of the GPL. Don't use the copyrighted work and you don't have to adhere to the license.
The OP said that copyright was viral and the GPL wasn't. So no, I don't think that was his point.
I'm ignoring your other (pro-GPL) comments because they are unrelated to the issue of whether the GPL is viral.
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If you take even a very small amount of content from someone else and incorporate it into your own work, you cannot publish your work without infringing on the other person's copyright.
It seems that you didn't read my post that carefully, since I explictly stated "by permission or via fair use".
Check out the case with Gerald Ford's memoirs.
Wherein a magazine obtained an unauthorized copy of the manuscript prior to publication, thus causing financial damage to the author (Time magazine backed out of a contract). These fair-use/anti-copyright rants always seem to have a back story that is conveniently glossed over.
You _may_ be able to seperate the two in your work, such that the new portion you created can be seperately published, but blocking copyrights can wind up being a significant PITA.
Let's say that I publish a scholarly essay in which I quote from another work without permission (under fair use). Then I later rewrite the essay as a novella, without using the quote. Are you saying that the author of the quote could somehow block publication of my novella? BS.
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I'm getting very tired of this mistake. It's being pushed by MS, but it was started by the likes of Slashdotters who don't understand the terminology. The GPL is not viral, copyright law is.
Dude, you are completely full of shit. Copyright law is a little bit viral, but the GPL is ebola viral. The major difference is that if you include a copyrighted image/paragraph/etc in your original work (whether by permission or via fair use) the copyright on the cited work does not infect the remaining 90% of your original work. How can you gloss over a detail like that. It makes ALL the difference.
However, like all copyrighted works, GPLed software cannot be modified and "made your own". A modified (or "derived") work is just that.
Get a sense of proportion. There is a huge difference between someone who wants to take a GPL'ed app, tweak it a bit, and sell it under a non-GPL license, and someone who wants to take a GPL'ed library and include it as a small part of a non-GPL'ed program. That would be stretching the definition of "derivative work" beyond the level of common sense.
However, to say that it's the GPL that's viral is silly. Try cutting up a magazine, reassembling the articles and then publishing the result.
Again, you're full of shit. Each of the excerpts is covered by its own copyright; they aren't infecting each other. If you take some excerpts from Tom Clancy and mix them in with some quotes from Charles Dickens, it doesn't mean that Tom Clancy gets copyright over the Dickens quotes, nor does the public domain status of the Dickens quotes cause the Clancy quotes to fall into the public domain. *THAT* would be viral licensing, and that's what the GPL does.
So maybe you ought to think about this issue a little more before you post this tripe again.
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When a U.S. firm exports a video tape or DVD to China, they expect to be paid in U.S. dollars by the importer. They don't give a rat's ass about the cost of living in China. Do you think that MGM will sell a $20 DVD for 44 in China (because China's per-capita income is 1/45th of that in the U.S.)? Do you think that Microsoft will sell them Windows XP upgrades for $4 (US retail of $180 divided by 45)? Do you honestly believe that U.S. firms will sell below their costs?
Actually, companies do sell products for different prices in different markets, as long as they have some confidence that the cheap versions won't find their way back to the rich countries. In fact, that's part of the rationale behind region encoding in DVDs. Of course this fact is pretty much lost on the
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If the RIAA quit spending their money trying to shoot down file sharing networks, buying senators, and getting the attention of schools, corporate America, etc and instead channelled their resources into building a new business model, they might just come out on top.
I wish you'd stop complaining about corrupt senators. The honest ones are just using an obsolete business model. Oh yeah, and supermarkets should stop complaining about shoplifting because they're just using an obsolete business model as well. If they really wanted to stop theft, they would add those ink cartriges onto food like they do in clothing stores.
This has honestly got to be the lamest argument that gets consistently modded up to +5 on
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Oh, so we now (mindlessly) slashdot [slashdot.org] shashdot [slashdot.org]? poor slashdot [slashdot.org]. That too in the first (visible) post? Honestly, I ask you. Poor slashdot [slashdot.org].
This is ridiculous. Someone smurf me a smurf.
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If I go around and try and bilk old ladies out of their retirement funds, is that a crime? Just because people are gullible and stupid (unsecured networks) doesn't make it your right (or make it legal) to take advantage of that.
PT Barnum would disagree.
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But that's how the GMs play the game.
Your reviewing every game of your opponent before starting the match.
It's not the same thing. GMs don't get a move oracle to play with before the game. It would have been more fair if Fritz had played a bunch of games against grandmasters and Kramnik had been given a transcript of the results. (And the team had been allowed to tweak the program afterwards.)
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I'm not the least bit surprised to see a human beating a computer in a complex activity like chess, and that's with lots of handicaps in Fritz' favor (it doesn't have to analyze an image of the board in order to determine where the pieces are, for instance).
Oh come on... it would take a relatively simple image recognition system to recognize the layout of pieces on a board. Designing a robotic arm to move the pieces would me a much bigger challenge.
Face it, the absolute biggest advantage is the fact that Kramnik got a copy of Fritz to play with and Fritz doesn't have a copy of Kramnik to play with. With a computer, you don't just have access to your opponent's playing style; you can keep trying minor variations of the same line until you find one where the computer consistently makes a mistake (I wonder how much randomness there is in Fritz's move selection algorithm). I wonder if the unusual choice of openings was an attempt to avoid lines that Kramnik might have prepared for in this manner.
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There already is good "cut and paste" support... its called "gpm". Works like a charm... highlight a piece of text, then go somewhere else and simply click the middle mouse button to paste. Its quicker than ctrl-c ctrl-v because no keystrokes are involved.
Oh you got to be kidding me. I use both Windows and Linux/KDE on a daily basis and I hate the cut and paste support in X. No, I don't want to paste at the mouse cursor; I want to paste at the text cursor. Even for console windows, I still get frustrated by the fact that the mouse has to be over the window.
For KDE apps, the cut and paste functionality is very inconsistent. No, I don't want double-clicking a word to copy it to the clipboard; half the time I'm selecting the word so I can overwrite it with whatever was in the clipboard before. Luckily, some apps let me turn this 'feature' off. Also, I hate the fact that when I close the app, the data in the clipboard is lost.
Take your blinders off. The OP was right. Cut and paste is the worst thing about Linux today.
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But then again, you can assume a good programmer would pick a good programming language.
Unlikely... most likely they enjoy a challenge.
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