The code was copied, not stolen. Indeed, when talking about movies and music we have contingents so ready to say "copyright infringement isn't theft" but when it's unpublished source code the terms "stolen" and "theft" are used without any hesitation.
Can't we just agree to say "illegally copied" across the board? Copyright infringement is not theft. Anyway, this is not the same situation.
This is about unpublished works. In general, movies are copied _if_, and _after_ they are published.
When you share a secret, the secret does cease to exist. When you get a free copy of a published work, it doesn't change state. It's not the same thing. It's another issue, and should be judged differently.
Although it's great that FooAtWFU's comment is getting modded up a citation would have helped an interested party to investigate further. Since Slashdot's comments are archived it's likely that this article will come up in someone's search results in the future. It would be best to give them as complete a picture as possible so they don't submit the same question to Slashdot in the future looking for more information.
If FooAtWFU doesn't like my advice he's free to ignore it.
But his citation _is_ better than yours. specially Provided that the discussion is archived, "CALIFORNIA LABOR CODE SECTION 2870" is much better than an hyperlink, because websites, and domains change at a faster rate than law.
I am sure MS will offer a very cheap, slimmed down OS for this machine. The kids who get these laptops won't have to pay for it at all. They will however have access to the largest pool of free software available - free software that runs on windows. Almost all of the major OSS projects have windows versions, and there is a wealth of free/shareware that's available only on windows. Not! 1 - There is more free software for Linux than for Windows. You just need to look at freshmeat.net I am using XP for a project right now, and I'm having trouble finding free software for simple tasks, that I already have in Ubuntu.
2 - freeware is not free software, it doesn't come with source, and the only freedom it grants you is the freedom to run the software. You can't always resdistribute it as you want, or modify it, and sometimes it could have additional restrictions. shareware is not free software. It's just a free sample of proprietary software.
I run XP. I get a desktop faster that with Ubuntu. The issue, for me, is that after that, one of the first things I want to do, is connect to google talk. Usually, the wireless adapter takes a looooooong time to appear in my system tray, and to discover whether I can connect to Google Talk. For my usage, XP takes FOREVER to boot. I see that you get a desktop faster, but then, I don't want a desktop to see my wallpaper, I want a desktop I can use, to perform the tasks I need.
I am not saying that Vista is faster, I'm not trying Vista, just pointing out that "getting a desktop" means different things to different people.
As I understand it, instability in Windows operating systems comes largely from defects in drivers, such as the VxDs of Windows 9x.
mswindows should be regarded as a whole, when comparing with other systems. without third party drivers, it does a lot less than gnu/linux, and in a much uglier way.
With third party drivers in the picture, it has better hardware support, but it has a lot of instability issues.
At least I can just re-burn the copy of Vista I got from Microsoft Connect legally as opposed to violating the law to make a backup of software I own that's labeled 'Do not make copies of this disc' just so I can install it.
You don't seem to be able to tell the difference between the law and the words of ms. And you don't own the software. They own the software. You own a license to use it, maybe. If they let you. But about making copies, it's not illegal.
I didn't know. I know some (not al lot) of high level calculus, and numerical methods. Maybe not all of us share all the knowledge. Maybe we didn't learn math at the same school.
If you can't install it yourself, maybe you should pay someone to do it.
The software is free, and not just as in beer. The personalized support is not always so.
Sometimes you can expect good suppot from other people. Some other times, your problem needs more work than other people are willing to do for free, and you need to either learn something you didn't knew, or pay someone to do the work for you.
The whole idea of a community, is that other people help because they want to, not because they have to. But you can always pay someone to happily fix your issues.
And they _do_ need the version of the OS, because that implies a specific version of the bootloader, and probably some specific boot issues.
Trolling? Ok. I like trolling. In my country, there's nobody who thinks that fucking a virgin can cure aids. We don't believe that Saddam Hussein used to eat babies for lunch, either. We don't believe that the world was created in six days. I someone can create the world in six days, someone could turn the moon red, and eat it in a minute, right? We don't expose our kids to that kind of "knowledge", either.
I don't think someone should be talking shit about culture in the third world, when talking from an US centric forum. People in Europe enjoy a better degree of literacy and culture than most third wolrd countries, but the US has a long way to go, especially in the stuff that we are talking about, like believing myths above science and stuff.
Yes, we in the third world, as the uneducated subhumans that we are, will look at the big tit in the ceiling, as we like to call it, turn red and dissapear, and believe that the world has come to an end, running around with our arms up in the sky.
I just dislike Microsoft, and don't want or need to have anything to do with them. It might not be a sound bussiness decision, but I am entitled to that. In the unlikely case that I produced some custom hardware, and its drivers, I might be able to afford, but not willing to agree with MS certification. That doesn't say anything about the quality of my eventual hardware, I think.
Yes, you are missing something. Aza Raskin is the son of recently dead Jef Raskin, responsible for the most relevant stuff in the Apple Macintosh, probably the guy who is most responsible of your usage of a windowed environment. The guy is following on some of his fathers work, which was brilliant, in my opinion.
Go read The Humane Interface, by Jef Raskin, and then you will not be missiong anything.
I think the "article" has enough merit to be posted on slashdot. Because slashdot is supposed to be news for _nerds_, not arrogant know-it-alls.
I just bought an HP Pavillion dv2135LA , I installed ubuntu edgy, and it was plug and play. After initial install, I opened the eth1 device properties, entered the essid and password, and got connected. Bluetooth was just as easy, video and everything works ok.
The GPL doesn't do that. When you work for free on GPLed works, and release under GPL terms, you work for free for everybody, without dual licenses or per-seat charges.
Giving your copyright to the original author has that potential, like if you contribute to MySQL and give them the potential. Of if you contribute to the FSF, and they somehow turn into an evil corporation overnight. When granting copyrights, you are always giving up all your claims on its "ownership".
But that would be a copyright flaw, at most, the GPL has absolutely nothing to do with that.
It's a shame that copyright is such a difficult issue. There is not such a thing as a FAQ about it, where people can actually learn.
The GPL is very simple, but its consequences are difficult to grasp, because of the underlying complexity of copyrights.
You are right, I stand corrected, and the first child of your post clarifies it ok.
Aside from that, to argue with another sibling, copyright is not a right. It's only a restriction on free speech (which is actually a right), with some purpose.
I don't think authors have a right to profit from their works, per se. They have the advantage of a monopoly, in the first round of distribution, that could even be enough, for the next wave of media, where everybody has access to the channels of distribution. Copyright made sense when the author needed to show his work to a distributor to sell it, in order to protect him from being ripped off. Now that it is increasingly easier to distribute works (not promote, but distribute) , and the channels are more easily accessible, authors can sell their works themselves, and there would be no distributors to protect them from.
In the future, works could be produced a la Elephant Dream, raising the money based on your reputation, and then producing the work, free for everyone. It does work, and it could be powerful, and even make copyright useless.
Aside from that, trademark laws, I can understand, because they protect the reputation of a company, but copyright has no actual foundation.
How is it not orwellian, trying to prescript human communication. Come on! Yeah sure he has fears about freedoms lost, and he's asking us to give up freedoms (by letting him do our thing for us). Extremism on either angle is always a bad thing. We are not giving him any power over us when we use and promote free software. RMS wants people to give our freedom as dstributors, and give it to the users, he doesn't want that power for himself in order to do good. No need to trust him.
There's no need to argue explanation whether it's orwellian, it just isn't, it's a bad comparison that comes from nowhere.
Extremism is not always a bad thing. There are some times when you are just right, and the others are just wrong. Failure to make concessions might be regarded as extremism and close mindedness, but regarding freedom in software, RMS has always been right.
I quote myself:
if there is anything useful there, it has been setup by an administrator who knows their stuff. If you buy the stuff in Dell, then there is nothing in/usr/local/bin. If there is something, it's because the admin put it there. No admin, no/usr/local/bin .
KDE and Gnome cater to different users. Former expert windows users sometimes prefer KDE, because it resembles mswindows better. Gnome is, in my opinion, better for completely new users. The magic bullet is that, Kubuntu for switchers, and Ubuntu for everybody else.
Freedom is the ability to make a choide. The GPL is *not* about freedom. It's about Openness. It makes several huge restrictions on what a person can do with GPLed software in order to keep it visible to all. Wrong. The GPL is not about Openness. LEt's not start a disinformation battle here. The BSD license and the GPL are about freedom but they choose different people to give it to.
FreeBSD gives the most freedom to the first tier of users. The guys who get the software fromt he author have the freedom to do pretty much anything they want with it, even restricting the freedom of people they distribute the software to, or creating proprietary derivatives.
The GPL takes some of that freedom away fromt he first tier, in order to assure that everybody who gets the software, no matter how deep in the distribution chain, gets the same freedom. So, when they distribute it, they are prevented from restricting further users, and from creating proprietary derivatives. In exchange, the freedom to use, study, share, improve, and modify improvements of the software, is assured for every user of the GPL software.
The BSD license grants freedom for the first tier of users, and that's it. The GPL takes some freedom from them as distributors, but ensures the freedom of all users.
The admin wouldn't want you to change the names of directories.
I use Ubuntu, and I know that you don't even need to know that stuff.
The only directory you need to know about is your home directory. There lays your config, and your data. "Desktop" is your gnome desktop "folder", and your configuration is hidden in.* files. Administration is handled either by system tools in the case of home users, or by administrators.
The particular case of the guy who wants to admin his own computer, but knows some things about windows, but doesn't want to take the time to learn the standards doesn't matter that much in the big picture.
You don't need to know what the difference is between/usr/local/bin and/usr/share/bin, because if there is anything useful there, it has been setup by an administrator who knows their stuff.
I did like Solaris, but I like Ubuntu more. Now that Solaris is free, or trying to be free, it's worth investing time in, but again, there is not that much of a reason to do that. About OSX, it's not a free operating system, it would have to do lots of interest stuff in order to get some interest from me, in the form of trying it at a friends house.
An opinion piece against the GPL v3 in Forbes. Great. The guy who writes it is against the new restrictions. He shouldn't resort to ridicule, and flawed analogies.
Anybody who has read or listened to some RMS speech (or at least knows some philosophy) knows that absolute freedom is not possible, and restrictions are needed to assure freedom. The "orwellian" part is uncalled for.
RMS, long ago, had the insight of putting some restrictions in the GPL v2 in order to protect basic freedom for the users. He was right, and the mere existance of a free software community is mostly due to his restrictions, forcing distributors to empower users.
Right now, he says that more restrictions are necessary in order to protect that freedom. Who should I believe? The guy who gave me the gift of free software through the GPL, the most important tool for the existance of free software, or the journalist who doesn't even begin to understand what he means, and tries to make a point in favor of current big tech companies and against him?
Free software is not about source code, it's about freedom. Source code is a part of that freedom, but there's more to it, like for example rights for distribution, and rights for distribution of improvements.
Slashdot Mirror
Can't we just agree to say "illegally copied" across the board? Copyright infringement is not theft.
Anyway, this is not the same situation.
This is about unpublished works.
In general, movies are copied _if_, and _after_ they are published.
When you share a secret, the secret does cease to exist.
When you get a free copy of a published work, it doesn't change state.
It's not the same thing. It's another issue, and should be judged differently.
1 - There is more free software for Linux than for Windows.
You just need to look at freshmeat.net
I am using XP for a project right now, and I'm having trouble finding free software for simple tasks, that I already have in Ubuntu.
2 - freeware is not free software, it doesn't come with source, and the only freedom it grants you is the freedom to run the software. You can't always resdistribute it as you want, or modify it, and sometimes it could have additional restrictions.
shareware is not free software. It's just a free sample of proprietary software.
I run XP.
I get a desktop faster that with Ubuntu. The issue, for me, is that after that, one of the first things I want to do, is connect to google talk.
Usually, the wireless adapter takes a looooooong time to appear in my system tray, and to discover whether I can connect to Google Talk.
For my usage, XP takes FOREVER to boot.
I see that you get a desktop faster, but then, I don't want a desktop to see my wallpaper, I want a desktop I can use, to perform the tasks I need.
I am not saying that Vista is faster, I'm not trying Vista, just pointing out that "getting a desktop" means different things to different people.
As I understand it, instability in Windows operating systems comes largely from defects in drivers, such as the VxDs of Windows 9x.
mswindows should be regarded as a whole, when comparing with other systems. without third party drivers, it does a lot less than gnu/linux, and in a much uglier way.
With third party drivers in the picture, it has better hardware support, but it has a lot of instability issues.
At least I can just re-burn the copy of Vista I got from Microsoft Connect legally as opposed to violating the law to make a backup of software I own that's labeled 'Do not make copies of this disc' just so I can install it.
You don't seem to be able to tell the difference between the law and the words of ms.
And you don't own the software. They own the software. You own a license to use it, maybe. If they let you.
But about making copies, it's not illegal.
I didn't know.
I know some (not al lot) of high level calculus, and numerical methods.
Maybe not all of us share all the knowledge.
Maybe we didn't learn math at the same school.
Enough yelling.
If you can't install it yourself, maybe you should pay someone to do it.
The software is free, and not just as in beer. The personalized support is not always so.
Sometimes you can expect good suppot from other people. Some other times, your problem needs more work than other people are willing to do for free, and you need to either learn something you didn't knew, or pay someone to do the work for you.
The whole idea of a community, is that other people help because they want to, not because they have to. But you can always pay someone to happily fix your issues.
And they _do_ need the version of the OS, because that implies a specific version of the bootloader, and probably some specific boot issues.
Trolling? Ok. I like trolling.
In my country, there's nobody who thinks that fucking a virgin can cure aids.
We don't believe that Saddam Hussein used to eat babies for lunch, either.
We don't believe that the world was created in six days. I someone can create the world in six days, someone could turn the moon red, and eat it in a minute, right? We don't expose our kids to that kind of "knowledge", either.
I don't think someone should be talking shit about culture in the third world, when talking from an US centric forum.
People in Europe enjoy a better degree of literacy and culture than most third wolrd countries, but the US has a long way to go, especially in the stuff that we are talking about, like believing myths above science and stuff.
Yes, we in the third world, as the uneducated subhumans that we are, will look at the big tit in the ceiling, as we like to call it, turn red and dissapear, and believe that the world has come to an end, running around with our arms up in the sky.
I just dislike Microsoft, and don't want or need to have anything to do with them. It might not be a sound bussiness decision, but I am entitled to that.
In the unlikely case that I produced some custom hardware, and its drivers, I might be able to afford, but not willing to agree with MS certification. That doesn't say anything about the quality of my eventual hardware, I think.
Yes, you are missing something.
Aza Raskin is the son of recently dead Jef Raskin, responsible for the most relevant stuff in the Apple Macintosh, probably the guy who is most responsible of your usage of a windowed environment.
The guy is following on some of his fathers work, which was brilliant, in my opinion.
Go read The Humane Interface, by Jef Raskin, and then you will not be missiong anything.
I think the "article" has enough merit to be posted on slashdot. Because slashdot is supposed to be news for _nerds_, not arrogant know-it-alls.
I just bought an HP Pavillion dv2135LA , I installed ubuntu edgy, and it was plug and play.
After initial install, I opened the eth1 device properties, entered the essid and password, and got connected.
Bluetooth was just as easy, video and everything works ok.
Martians were previoulsy killed by all the MSG in the spacecraft
The GPL doesn't do that. When you work for free on GPLed works, and release under GPL terms, you work for free for everybody, without dual licenses or per-seat charges.
Giving your copyright to the original author has that potential, like if you contribute to MySQL and give them the potential. Of if you contribute to the FSF, and they somehow turn into an evil corporation overnight. When granting copyrights, you are always giving up all your claims on its "ownership".
But that would be a copyright flaw, at most, the GPL has absolutely nothing to do with that.
It's a shame that copyright is such a difficult issue.
There is not such a thing as a FAQ about it, where people can actually learn.
The GPL is very simple, but its consequences are difficult to grasp, because of the underlying complexity of copyrights.
You are right, I stand corrected, and the first child of your post clarifies it ok.
Aside from that, to argue with another sibling, copyright is not a right. It's only a restriction on free speech (which is actually a right), with some purpose.
I don't think authors have a right to profit from their works, per se. They have the advantage of a monopoly, in the first round of distribution, that could even be enough, for the next wave of media, where everybody has access to the channels of distribution.
Copyright made sense when the author needed to show his work to a distributor to sell it, in order to protect him from being ripped off.
Now that it is increasingly easier to distribute works (not promote, but distribute) , and the channels are more easily accessible, authors can sell their works themselves, and there would be no distributors to protect them from.
In the future, works could be produced a la Elephant Dream, raising the money based on your reputation, and then producing the work, free for everyone.
It does work, and it could be powerful, and even make copyright useless.
Aside from that, trademark laws, I can understand, because they protect the reputation of a company, but copyright has no actual foundation.
RMS wants people to give our freedom as dstributors, and give it to the users, he doesn't want that power for himself in order to do good. No need to trust him.
There's no need to argue explanation whether it's orwellian, it just isn't, it's a bad comparison that comes from nowhere.
Extremism is not always a bad thing. There are some times when you are just right, and the others are just wrong. Failure to make concessions might be regarded as extremism and close mindedness, but regarding freedom in software, RMS has always been right.
If there is something, it's because the admin put it there.
No admin, no
Next!
KDE and Gnome cater to different users.
Former expert windows users sometimes prefer KDE, because it resembles mswindows better.
Gnome is, in my opinion, better for completely new users.
The magic bullet is that, Kubuntu for switchers, and Ubuntu for everybody else.
The GPL is not about Openness. LEt's not start a disinformation battle here.
The BSD license and the GPL are about freedom but they choose different people to give it to.
FreeBSD gives the most freedom to the first tier of users. The guys who get the software fromt he author have the freedom to do pretty much anything they want with it, even restricting the freedom of people they distribute the software to, or creating proprietary derivatives.
The GPL takes some of that freedom away fromt he first tier, in order to assure that everybody who gets the software, no matter how deep in the distribution chain, gets the same freedom. So, when they distribute it, they are prevented from restricting further users, and from creating proprietary derivatives.
In exchange, the freedom to use, study, share, improve, and modify improvements of the software, is assured for every user of the GPL software.
The BSD license grants freedom for the first tier of users, and that's it.
The GPL takes some freedom from them as distributors, but ensures the freedom of all users.
The admin wouldn't want you to change the names of directories.
.* files. Administration is handled either by system tools in the case of home users, or by administrators.
/usr/local/bin and /usr/share/bin, because if there is anything useful there, it has been setup by an administrator who knows their stuff.
I use Ubuntu, and I know that you don't even need to know that stuff.
The only directory you need to know about is your home directory. There lays your config, and your data. "Desktop" is your gnome desktop "folder", and your configuration is hidden in
The particular case of the guy who wants to admin his own computer, but knows some things about windows, but doesn't want to take the time to learn the standards doesn't matter that much in the big picture.
You don't need to know what the difference is between
I did like Solaris, but I like Ubuntu more.
Now that Solaris is free, or trying to be free, it's worth investing time in, but again, there is not that much of a reason to do that.
About OSX, it's not a free operating system, it would have to do lots of interest stuff in order to get some interest from me, in the form of trying it at a friends house.
He convinced the BSD people to remove the advertising clause.
That just makes it more practical, and of course, GPL compatible.
An opinion piece against the GPL v3 in Forbes. Great.
The guy who writes it is against the new restrictions. He shouldn't resort to ridicule, and flawed analogies.
Anybody who has read or listened to some RMS speech (or at least knows some philosophy) knows that absolute freedom is not possible, and restrictions are needed to assure freedom. The "orwellian" part is uncalled for.
RMS, long ago, had the insight of putting some restrictions in the GPL v2 in order to protect basic freedom for the users. He was right, and the mere existance of a free software community is mostly due to his restrictions, forcing distributors to empower users.
Right now, he says that more restrictions are necessary in order to protect that freedom. Who should I believe? The guy who gave me the gift of free software through the GPL, the most important tool for the existance of free software, or the journalist who doesn't even begin to understand what he means, and tries to make a point in favor of current big tech companies and against him?
Though choice!
Free software is not about source code, it's about freedom.
Source code is a part of that freedom, but there's more to it, like for example rights for distribution, and rights for distribution of improvements.