All open source accomplishes for these people is letting hax0rs be able to find bugs and backdoors easier.
I work on a system which depends on open source software. I've lost track of the number of times I've saved the day by reading through the source of a program to figure out what's going wrong.
I'm definately in that ".1%" of people who benefit from having the source.
As for the other 99.9%, they are secure in the knowledge that for every black hat looking for bugs and exploits, there's a hundred white hats. How do I know this? Same way you know the 99.9% /.1% ratio I guess.
Thousand upon thousands of people like me stumble across bugs in open source every day while we're trying to get our work done. We send in a patch or at least a useful description. What happens when you hit a bug in closed source? I'll tell you what - you ring the vendor and they deny it for an hour, then they admit it but don't do anything, then you buy a premium support contract, whereupon they agree to fix the bug - in the next version. Meanwhile, your business is suffering. Open source is definately the more business-friendly option.
What client do I need
Well there's gnapster for gtk lovers.. probably other clients floating around too.
Opennap is much more hydra-headed than napster the company.. there are tons of networks and thousands of servers.. even though some of these are just plain fucked, it will be hard to shut down or even block it.
What I suggest now is a complete boycott of music cds to send the damned bloody RIAA a message.
CS degree loses currency within 3 years
This has to be at troll. CS teaches you the theory of computation. Whether you're using pseudocode and an abacus or perl 8 on a pentium-VII 9000 doesn't really matter too much. Every CS graduate I know will pick up a new language in a couple of days, and a new concept in not much longer than that. The fundamentals of CS have stayed pretty constant for almost a century.
As for management.. nothing stopping a CS student from studying other stuff on the side. I strongly recommend that any CS student take at least one subject in philosophy, arts, business or some cs-unrelated branch of science each semester, to broaden the mind - that is, be able to hold a conversation with a non cs major.
You think vendors want region-ignorant customers coming back and saying "this thing's broken, it doesn't play these movies I bought on the internet"? No way. It's easier to just chip 'em and not mention it. So they do:)
Just like with playstations.
Oh, and Australia may have some stupid tech laws, but we don't take them seriously... they're just there to make wowsers feel in control of things they don't understand.
Just remembered this old maxim:)
How very true it is in the digital world. Once you've got your hands on some music or software, legit or not, you've already won the game.
My point is, all intellectual property laws are so fuzzy and full of loopholes that it's no crime to break them. I can't see anything morally wrong in many acts of so-called "copyright violations", only take care that your legal bills don't get too high.
It seems to me that intellectual property law is necessary for a capitalist information economy to function.
There are heaps of laws inflicted upon us in order to let capitalism work. Basically, we give exclusive ownership and control of a physical or intellectual "thing" to one party at the expense of the rest of society.
The law governing physical property has had more time to mature to a semblance of fairness, not to mention that many generations of use have made it "right".
The law governing intellectual property is a bit different. It hasn't influenced the majority long enough to become "right", and it's been drafted by power elites and hence unfairly favours these elites. The point is, IP law has no credibility. That's why you don't see anything morally wrong in breaking it.
As industrial economies become information economies, we're going to need credible information laws, otherwise the bubble will burst, and we'll get another great depression.
The law needs to be changed to fit reality. People copy. Music, software, ideas, you name it, we'll copy it. People don't see any harm in copying. You can brainwash them, or you can change the law, or you can have a lawless society. Brainwashing hasn't worked. The status quo is civil disobedience. Not the best situation.
I think most people will try to uphold those laws which they see as legitimate. If I saw a mugging in progress and the attacker looked manageable, I would intervene. Otherwise I'd at least identify them to police. I think mugging is wrong and I want to do my bit against it.
Consider IP law. Would you dob in a friend for IP law violations? How about a stranger? How about somebody you really hate, like the employer who just fired you? Getting close to my point. IP law sucks. Fix it.
Both of them are in their own world. KDE2 is SLOW, Gnome is SLOW.
gmc is a slow buggy pile of shit. You can't beat bash for speed, stability, ease of use and raw power in this department.
A combination of terminals, gnome panel and lightweight window manager is very stable, fast and usable.. gmc is just a dirty dog. I might be a little biased, I thoroughly hate pointy clicky drooly file management.
I find a decent combination for getting work done is four or so virtual desktops, running full screen terminals. You bind ctrl-alt-h to move one screen left, ctrl-alt-l to move one screen right, never take your hands off the keyboard or even break your rhythm. Edit in vi, email in pine, cos they are powerful and lightning fast to start up and use from a shell. Mouse is evil. Ctrl-alt-blah for launching terminal, netscape or other oft-needed stuff.
The gnome panel is there for mailcheck, clock, windowlist, volume, icq and launching seldom-used stuff.
I like to leave my computers running and logged in unless I'm changing kernels... the gnome panel is pretty stable, sitting there for months at a time. It's crashed about four times this year, from applet bugs. Each time, it popped up a stupid clicky box then restored it's state and no harm done... so yeah, there's instabilities, but it's tolerable.
I do run debian, mind you, so my version of gnome is probably a good deal more mature than, say, a typical redhat install.:)
I suppose stripped-down KDE would serve just as well, so it comes down to which one starts with the letter G. Go GNOMES!!:)
Yes, the computer voting booth is pretty good if you see it print out a paper ballot in front of you.
The main problem with completely manual voting is that the average voter is far too stupid to fill out a ballot correctly.
99% of voting irregularities would be solved if you could force people to fill out their ballot correctly. Picture this: you walk up to the computer, insert your ballot card in the slot, bob the talking paper clip guides you through candidate selection on-screen, makes absolutely sure you haven't fucked up, and fills out the ballot for you. Your valid ballot pops out of the slot, you walk across the room and stick it in the other slot, where bob's cousin automatically parses it, adjusts vote totals and dumps the ballot in the audit bin.
Sound foolproof? You yanks would just invent a better fool, wouldn't you?:)
This doesn't mean the transparent window thing isn't cool, though. I'd enjoy being able to code with reference documents visible through my coding window. No window switching...woohoo...
The Berlin project can do this already.. check out their screenshots at http://www.berlin-consortium.org/screenshots.html
Don't think that just because some outcasts really want to 'fit in' it applies to the rest of us. The entire concept of fitting in never appealed to me at all. And it still doesn't.
I'm curious. Does this mean you don't want to fit in to a crowd of jocks, or you don't want to fit in anywhere at all?
An excellence-oriented '80s male does not wear a regular watch. He wears a Rolex watch, because it weighs nearly six pounds and is advertised only in excellence-oriented publications such as Fortune and Rich Protestant Golfer Magazine. The advertisements are written in incomplete sentences, which is how advertising copywriters denote excellence:
"The Rolex Hyperion. An elegant new standard in quality excellence and discriminating handcraftsmanship. For the individual who is truly able to discriminate with regard to excellent quality standards of crafting
things by hand. Fabricated of 100 percent 24-karat gold. No watch parts or anything. Just a great big chunk on your wrist. Truly a timeless
statement. For the individual who is very secure. Who doesn't need to be reminded all the time that he is very successful. Much more successful than the people who laughed at him in high school. Because of his acne. People who are probably nowhere near as successful as he is now. Maybe
he'll go to his 20th reunion, and they'll see his Rolex Hyperion. Hahahahahahahahaha."
It's easy enough to look through rose tinted spectacles now that we're not at school anymore.
Kids get treated different for being different. I copped a fair bit of abuse from students and teachers just because I found the academic side of school to be too easy.. I used to fall asleep in class then blitz exams, and people resented it. I ended up being suspended three times from refusing to take shit from teachers. I coped by being a smartass.
Abuse from students stopped when I packed a bit of muscle on. Abuse from teachers never stopped, I just learned to shrug it off.
Mind you, it's only a small minority of teachers that are abusive, but any one of them has enough power to make a kid's life miserable. Students tend to accept everyone, eventually, but some teachers are total bullies. They single out one or two people to take out their frustration on, using name calling and any forms of punishment they can muster. It was not uncommon to see one teacher with a vendetta come down hard on a kid. Fuck knows I drew enough of these idiots.
I reckon teachers should have to undergo periodical psych evaluations to weed out those sadists who would be much happier working as prison wardens or animal executioners but missed their calling. There's some really great teachers there too, and I'm sure *they* would be happier without the fuckwits in their ranks.
Students aren't such a problem.. being notorious never hurt anyone's popularity:)
Ok, I agree that any probems with the patent office stem from the politics behind the patent office. Goes for any government agency.
To tell you the truth, shame and ostracism is probably as far as I'd be prepared to go in the fight against the information fascists. I just hope harder heads than mine are taking action on other fronts.
I agree that all "intellectual property" is a commons, but I hate calling it IP. To me IP implies that it's natural state is to have one owner, and "stealing" it is a crime. I think that "stealing" it is ok and monopilising is the real crime.
I think it differs from, say, a pasture, in that everyone can glut themselves on knowledge without taking any of it away from the rest of us. All you take away is monopoly power, that is, money.
Geez, all sarcasm aside, I'm running Win2k, and my computer has been stable as hell since I installed it. (2 weeks and counting, no crashes/BSODs/etc)
Only a microserf could possibly be excited by a mere two weeks uptime.
No, it's not a perfect analogy, but it gets the point across. For every company that abuses the patent office, there is another that does not. Just because a system allows you to exploit it doesn't make it your obligation to do so, nor does it remove any moral obligations to behave responsibly.
I don't agree. This smells like the tragedy of the commons. Either you "abuse" the patent office, or you don't. If you don't, somebody else will. You have to "abuse" just to survive.
The way to fix this is not to ask "why can't we all just get along". The way to fix this is through legislation which forces the patent office to function properly. A no questions asked automatic death penalty for anyone who attempts to obfuscate an obvious idea would fix things pretty quickly.
Firstly because never before has such a large scale social movement ever existed - I mean one in which skilled craftsmen (software engineers in this case) have given away for free not only their work, but also their knowledge and skills. And not only giving it away for free, but offering support and aid to those who wish to learn this knowledge. And this is occuring not only as a few isolated incidents, but as a large and powerfully growing community.
These are all good things, but I think the best thing about Free software is giving up control of the software. It's not easy to do this. Once you give up control, you can't extract royalties. You can't say who gets to use it or for what purpose. You can't change it on the sly to break your competitors' software. You risk somebody coming along and forking and getting all the credit.
I suspect RMS finds losing the limelight to Linux a bit rich. In his position I'd be feeling a bit ripped off too. I doubt he's even upset that he's not getting the credit he's due, he just desperately want his beloved GNU's name up in lights, and with good reason.
Giving up your "intellectual property" and control over others is what the GPL is all about. The only thing you ask in return is that nobody usurps that power. That's the only thing that gives the GPL a shred of rationality; you'd have to be crazy or reckless to give up control just so somebody else could nab it.
For someone like me who considers "intellectual property" a public asset, it would be nice if the GPL applied to all ephemeral things, to save me butting heads with the control freaks.
The GPL is the way ideal society is meant to work - you agree to give up certain harmful rights, such as the right to punish others for doing things that you did first, in exchange for the same concession from everybody else. The Free software community somehow got closer to the perfection of this idea than any other community ever has. How did we get so close to ideal? Maybe having a starking raving mad idealist for a figurehead has something to do with it.
As a proud geek, I have no desire to take advice from someone who doesn't know what "console" means.Console is a very broad term, but in a geek context it refers to the highest I/O layer - the point where information is traded between human and computer.This guy made a mistake thinking Stallman was a friendly chap who'd give legal advice on how best to circumvent the LGPL he wrote, and ended up with moral advice instead.Nobody likes getting moral advice, because the fact that they're getting usually means they've transgressed.Wait a second. It's been almost a week since I last spouted my moral opinion of the GPL. Brace yourself. <cold_hard_truth> I use and propogate the software that comes into my posession exactly as I wish, regardless of license terms. When software comes to me in source form, it is more useful. Now, the social convention called "law" allegedly aims to maximise the general wellbeing of society, so most of society adheres to it most of the time. The GPL exploits law to deliver the greatest possible amount of source code to me. Therefore it is the best possible license for software.When you strip away all my pretentiousness and righteous indignation, I am only interested in maximising the wellbeing of society because being part of a healthy society benefits me. When faced with an opportunity that will bring significant gains to me with a negligible detriment to society, I invariably act against society. That is why I routinely violate software licenses. Strangely, I have never been faced with a situation where I've stood to gain by violating the GPL, but I have at times improved my lot greatly and society's lot slightly by fixing showstopper bugs in GPLed code and sharing it back. Gives me a warm fuzzy feeling.
The situation where big_gain_for_me leads to small_loss_for_society is sometimes called the tragedy of the commons. This is where reckless self-indulgence of the majority eventually leads to a collapse of society. The point is, even universal disregard of software licenses will not lead to social collapse, because the losers are a very tiny fraction of society.
Yes, only a tiny fraction. Because only the peddlers of extortive software licenses suffer from my disregard of licensing. Even if all people relying on software licenses for their income are bankrupted, large subsets of society which need certain software that doesn't exist will either collaborate to write it themselves, or buy the time of programmers like me until the software is written. Either way, I win and society also tends to win or break even.My arguments will be moot eventually anyway. The GPL is the only stable licensing model I've ever encountered, all other models are at a mathematical disadvantage. This fact alone explains Stallman's ridiculous level of confidence in 'Free' software. He knows with mathematical certaintity that it's going to win.</warm_fuzzy_truth>
Have a nice day.
But you see, that's the thing though. If RMS was ideologically pure, he'd just say "screw the corporate bastards" and make no compromises about being able to use proprietary programs. That's what he basically said in the e-mail exchange. If you need to be able to make consessions so you can work with proprietary things, it's not worth it. LGPLing libc is a strategical move.. the FSF lost that battle in order to win the war. If you read the exchange between Richard and this guy who explicitly asked RMS for advice, you'd see the last message hints that a compromise in this case may actually strike a blow against Sega by letting people use a portable API - Crystal Space.I'm sure RMS is playing dumb in that exchange but what do you expect? He's speaking for the FSF, his advice is libre is more important than gratis (sp?)..Personally I think enabling people to write portable games is worth the compromise.. especially if it might mean a game that would have been locked in to PS2 or Direct3D becomes available for Free platforms as well.I have a friend who has in his room a Playstation, Dreamcast, N64 and PC. That's a ridiculous situation and portable APIs will help put a stop to it. I've settled on two PCs in my room:)... more power to Crystal Space!
Iraq and Serbia are getting pretty boring. How about some fresh targets?
Columbia is looking pretty ripe, and they fit the required criteria of not being able to bomb you back. It'd be nice symmetry - help the Albanian drug runners, hurt the Columbian ones. Maintain equilibrium in the world:)
Right now, DC is throwing very fat lawyers at people who can't afford to fight them, and that's wrong, becuase it sets a *very* bad precedent.
I'm not in a position to interfere, since I don't live in the US, but I hope you guys over there make a lot of noise about this. Spread free drivers, write letters to media and politicians, and inform everyone who cares about this blatant abuse of your legal system.
Collecting marketing information is not very polite, but it's nothing compared to the legal stunts DC is pulling. Their "IP" claim is a joke, so do everything you can to undermine it.. because if they get away with it, thousands of imitators will crawl out of the woodwork to restrict your freedom on the internet in ways you've never imagined.
Because most of this shit starts in the USA, it's up to you Americans to protect the rest of the world by stomping it before it spreads. It's much harder to fight a corporation across international borders.
Consider the plight of Yugoslavs. The recent Yugoslav election was anything but boring...
Let's see:
The NATO nations insinuating that voting for Milosevic will precipitate more bombing.
Billions of dollars in bribes if you vote ABM (anything but milosevic). A lifting of sanctions. Rebuilding of destroyed infrastructure.. so what if it ends up being foriegnly owned.. sure beats rubble. An end to demonisation... ah...
A bunch of enemy warships lurking around just to spice things up...
Hmmm.. makes for a nice level playing field.. now, who you gonna vote for..?
Be glad your elections are boring, you clueless twit.
Hopefully the next Yugoslav elections will be just as boring:)
Hmmm... no doubt Microsoft would be eager to fund such a court and pick a few judges fit for this noble task, being so innovative and 30 years ahead of the competition in all matters technical, and all. The MPAA will chip in too!
Remember that wonderful war crimes court in the hague, which, though it may be funded by NATO, consist of staff hand-picked by NATO, and lack any jurisdiction over NATO, nevertheless has proven it's integrity by not dancing to NATO's fiddle. Indicting (with perfect timing) the elected president of the country NATO was bombing, was just a coincidence.
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All open source accomplishes for these people is letting hax0rs be able to find bugs and backdoors easier. I work on a system which depends on open source software. I've lost track of the number of times I've saved the day by reading through the source of a program to figure out what's going wrong. I'm definately in that ".1%" of people who benefit from having the source. As for the other 99.9%, they are secure in the knowledge that for every black hat looking for bugs and exploits, there's a hundred white hats. How do I know this? Same way you know the 99.9% / .1% ratio I guess.
Thousand upon thousands of people like me stumble across bugs in open source every day while we're trying to get our work done. We send in a patch or at least a useful description. What happens when you hit a bug in closed source? I'll tell you what - you ring the vendor and they deny it for an hour, then they admit it but don't do anything, then you buy a premium support contract, whereupon they agree to fix the bug - in the next version. Meanwhile, your business is suffering. Open source is definately the more business-friendly option.
What client do I need Well there's gnapster for gtk lovers.. probably other clients floating around too. Opennap is much more hydra-headed than napster the company.. there are tons of networks and thousands of servers.. even though some of these are just plain fucked, it will be hard to shut down or even block it. What I suggest now is a complete boycott of music cds to send the damned bloody RIAA a message.
CS degree loses currency within 3 years This has to be at troll. CS teaches you the theory of computation. Whether you're using pseudocode and an abacus or perl 8 on a pentium-VII 9000 doesn't really matter too much. Every CS graduate I know will pick up a new language in a couple of days, and a new concept in not much longer than that. The fundamentals of CS have stayed pretty constant for almost a century. As for management.. nothing stopping a CS student from studying other stuff on the side. I strongly recommend that any CS student take at least one subject in philosophy, arts, business or some cs-unrelated branch of science each semester, to broaden the mind - that is, be able to hold a conversation with a non cs major.
You think vendors want region-ignorant customers coming back and saying "this thing's broken, it doesn't play these movies I bought on the internet"? No way. It's easier to just chip 'em and not mention it. So they do :)
Just like with playstations.
Oh, and Australia may have some stupid tech laws, but we don't take them seriously... they're just there to make wowsers feel in control of things they don't understand.
Just remembered this old maxim :)
How very true it is in the digital world. Once you've got your hands on some music or software, legit or not, you've already won the game.
My point is, all intellectual property laws are so fuzzy and full of loopholes that it's no crime to break them. I can't see anything morally wrong in many acts of so-called "copyright violations", only take care that your legal bills don't get too high. It seems to me that intellectual property law is necessary for a capitalist information economy to function. There are heaps of laws inflicted upon us in order to let capitalism work. Basically, we give exclusive ownership and control of a physical or intellectual "thing" to one party at the expense of the rest of society. The law governing physical property has had more time to mature to a semblance of fairness, not to mention that many generations of use have made it "right". The law governing intellectual property is a bit different. It hasn't influenced the majority long enough to become "right", and it's been drafted by power elites and hence unfairly favours these elites. The point is, IP law has no credibility. That's why you don't see anything morally wrong in breaking it. As industrial economies become information economies, we're going to need credible information laws, otherwise the bubble will burst, and we'll get another great depression. The law needs to be changed to fit reality. People copy. Music, software, ideas, you name it, we'll copy it. People don't see any harm in copying. You can brainwash them, or you can change the law, or you can have a lawless society. Brainwashing hasn't worked. The status quo is civil disobedience. Not the best situation. I think most people will try to uphold those laws which they see as legitimate. If I saw a mugging in progress and the attacker looked manageable, I would intervene. Otherwise I'd at least identify them to police. I think mugging is wrong and I want to do my bit against it. Consider IP law. Would you dob in a friend for IP law violations? How about a stranger? How about somebody you really hate, like the employer who just fired you? Getting close to my point. IP law sucks. Fix it.
but the KDE League is specifically for PR only. Good heavens! An organisation that's 100% marketing department. You'll give Mr Gates a coronary ;-)
Both of them are in their own world. KDE2 is SLOW, Gnome is SLOW. gmc is a slow buggy pile of shit. You can't beat bash for speed, stability, ease of use and raw power in this department. A combination of terminals, gnome panel and lightweight window manager is very stable, fast and usable.. gmc is just a dirty dog. I might be a little biased, I thoroughly hate pointy clicky drooly file management. I find a decent combination for getting work done is four or so virtual desktops, running full screen terminals. You bind ctrl-alt-h to move one screen left, ctrl-alt-l to move one screen right, never take your hands off the keyboard or even break your rhythm. Edit in vi, email in pine, cos they are powerful and lightning fast to start up and use from a shell. Mouse is evil. Ctrl-alt-blah for launching terminal, netscape or other oft-needed stuff. The gnome panel is there for mailcheck, clock, windowlist, volume, icq and launching seldom-used stuff. I like to leave my computers running and logged in unless I'm changing kernels... the gnome panel is pretty stable, sitting there for months at a time. It's crashed about four times this year, from applet bugs. Each time, it popped up a stupid clicky box then restored it's state and no harm done... so yeah, there's instabilities, but it's tolerable. I do run debian, mind you, so my version of gnome is probably a good deal more mature than, say, a typical redhat install. :)
I suppose stripped-down KDE would serve just as well, so it comes down to which one starts with the letter G. Go GNOMES!! :)
Yes, the computer voting booth is pretty good if you see it print out a paper ballot in front of you. The main problem with completely manual voting is that the average voter is far too stupid to fill out a ballot correctly. 99% of voting irregularities would be solved if you could force people to fill out their ballot correctly. Picture this: you walk up to the computer, insert your ballot card in the slot, bob the talking paper clip guides you through candidate selection on-screen, makes absolutely sure you haven't fucked up, and fills out the ballot for you. Your valid ballot pops out of the slot, you walk across the room and stick it in the other slot, where bob's cousin automatically parses it, adjusts vote totals and dumps the ballot in the audit bin. Sound foolproof? You yanks would just invent a better fool, wouldn't you? :)
This doesn't mean the transparent window thing isn't cool, though. I'd enjoy being able to code with reference documents visible through my coding window. No window switching...woohoo... The Berlin project can do this already.. check out their screenshots at http://www.berlin-consortium.org/screenshots.html
How many people just *had to* correct the parent? Even the most accomplished trollkings can not compete with ignorance :)
Don't think that just because some outcasts really want to 'fit in' it applies to the rest of us. The entire concept of fitting in never appealed to me at all. And it still doesn't. I'm curious. Does this mean you don't want to fit in to a crowd of jocks, or you don't want to fit in anywhere at all?
It's easy enough to look through rose tinted spectacles now that we're not at school anymore. Kids get treated different for being different. I copped a fair bit of abuse from students and teachers just because I found the academic side of school to be too easy.. I used to fall asleep in class then blitz exams, and people resented it. I ended up being suspended three times from refusing to take shit from teachers. I coped by being a smartass. Abuse from students stopped when I packed a bit of muscle on. Abuse from teachers never stopped, I just learned to shrug it off. Mind you, it's only a small minority of teachers that are abusive, but any one of them has enough power to make a kid's life miserable. Students tend to accept everyone, eventually, but some teachers are total bullies. They single out one or two people to take out their frustration on, using name calling and any forms of punishment they can muster. It was not uncommon to see one teacher with a vendetta come down hard on a kid. Fuck knows I drew enough of these idiots. I reckon teachers should have to undergo periodical psych evaluations to weed out those sadists who would be much happier working as prison wardens or animal executioners but missed their calling. There's some really great teachers there too, and I'm sure *they* would be happier without the fuckwits in their ranks. Students aren't such a problem.. being notorious never hurt anyone's popularity :)
Ok, I agree that any probems with the patent office stem from the politics behind the patent office. Goes for any government agency. To tell you the truth, shame and ostracism is probably as far as I'd be prepared to go in the fight against the information fascists. I just hope harder heads than mine are taking action on other fronts. I agree that all "intellectual property" is a commons, but I hate calling it IP. To me IP implies that it's natural state is to have one owner, and "stealing" it is a crime. I think that "stealing" it is ok and monopilising is the real crime. I think it differs from, say, a pasture, in that everyone can glut themselves on knowledge without taking any of it away from the rest of us. All you take away is monopoly power, that is, money.
Geez, all sarcasm aside, I'm running Win2k, and my computer has been stable as hell since I installed it. (2 weeks and counting, no crashes/BSODs/etc) Only a microserf could possibly be excited by a mere two weeks uptime.
No, it's not a perfect analogy, but it gets the point across. For every company that abuses the patent office, there is another that does not. Just because a system allows you to exploit it doesn't make it your obligation to do so, nor does it remove any moral obligations to behave responsibly. I don't agree. This smells like the tragedy of the commons. Either you "abuse" the patent office, or you don't. If you don't, somebody else will. You have to "abuse" just to survive. The way to fix this is not to ask "why can't we all just get along". The way to fix this is through legislation which forces the patent office to function properly. A no questions asked automatic death penalty for anyone who attempts to obfuscate an obvious idea would fix things pretty quickly.
Firstly because never before has such a large scale social movement ever existed - I mean one in which skilled craftsmen (software engineers in this case) have given away for free not only their work, but also their knowledge and skills. And not only giving it away for free, but offering support and aid to those who wish to learn this knowledge. And this is occuring not only as a few isolated incidents, but as a large and powerfully growing community. These are all good things, but I think the best thing about Free software is giving up control of the software. It's not easy to do this. Once you give up control, you can't extract royalties. You can't say who gets to use it or for what purpose. You can't change it on the sly to break your competitors' software. You risk somebody coming along and forking and getting all the credit. I suspect RMS finds losing the limelight to Linux a bit rich. In his position I'd be feeling a bit ripped off too. I doubt he's even upset that he's not getting the credit he's due, he just desperately want his beloved GNU's name up in lights, and with good reason. Giving up your "intellectual property" and control over others is what the GPL is all about. The only thing you ask in return is that nobody usurps that power. That's the only thing that gives the GPL a shred of rationality; you'd have to be crazy or reckless to give up control just so somebody else could nab it. For someone like me who considers "intellectual property" a public asset, it would be nice if the GPL applied to all ephemeral things, to save me butting heads with the control freaks. The GPL is the way ideal society is meant to work - you agree to give up certain harmful rights, such as the right to punish others for doing things that you did first, in exchange for the same concession from everybody else. The Free software community somehow got closer to the perfection of this idea than any other community ever has. How did we get so close to ideal? Maybe having a starking raving mad idealist for a figurehead has something to do with it.
yet Bush acts dumb He's not acting ;-)
As a proud geek, I have no desire to take advice from someone who doesn't know what "console" means. Console is a very broad term, but in a geek context it refers to the highest I/O layer - the point where information is traded between human and computer.This guy made a mistake thinking Stallman was a friendly chap who'd give legal advice on how best to circumvent the LGPL he wrote, and ended up with moral advice instead.Nobody likes getting moral advice, because the fact that they're getting usually means they've transgressed.Wait a second. It's been almost a week since I last spouted my moral opinion of the GPL. Brace yourself. <cold_hard_truth> I use and propogate the software that comes into my posession exactly as I wish, regardless of license terms. When software comes to me in source form, it is more useful. Now, the social convention called "law" allegedly aims to maximise the general wellbeing of society, so most of society adheres to it most of the time. The GPL exploits law to deliver the greatest possible amount of source code to me. Therefore it is the best possible license for software.When you strip away all my pretentiousness and righteous indignation, I am only interested in maximising the wellbeing of society because being part of a healthy society benefits me. When faced with an opportunity that will bring significant gains to me with a negligible detriment to society, I invariably act against society. That is why I routinely violate software licenses. Strangely, I have never been faced with a situation where I've stood to gain by violating the GPL, but I have at times improved my lot greatly and society's lot slightly by fixing showstopper bugs in GPLed code and sharing it back. Gives me a warm fuzzy feeling. The situation where big_gain_for_me leads to small_loss_for_society is sometimes called the tragedy of the commons. This is where reckless self-indulgence of the majority eventually leads to a collapse of society. The point is, even universal disregard of software licenses will not lead to social collapse, because the losers are a very tiny fraction of society. Yes, only a tiny fraction. Because only the peddlers of extortive software licenses suffer from my disregard of licensing. Even if all people relying on software licenses for their income are bankrupted, large subsets of society which need certain software that doesn't exist will either collaborate to write it themselves, or buy the time of programmers like me until the software is written. Either way, I win and society also tends to win or break even.My arguments will be moot eventually anyway. The GPL is the only stable licensing model I've ever encountered, all other models are at a mathematical disadvantage. This fact alone explains Stallman's ridiculous level of confidence in 'Free' software. He knows with mathematical certaintity that it's going to win. </warm_fuzzy_truth> Have a nice day.
But you see, that's the thing though. If RMS was ideologically pure, he'd just say "screw the corporate bastards" and make no compromises about being able to use proprietary programs. That's what he basically said in the e-mail exchange. If you need to be able to make consessions so you can work with proprietary things, it's not worth it. LGPLing libc is a strategical move.. the FSF lost that battle in order to win the war. If you read the exchange between Richard and this guy who explicitly asked RMS for advice, you'd see the last message hints that a compromise in this case may actually strike a blow against Sega by letting people use a portable API - Crystal Space.I'm sure RMS is playing dumb in that exchange but what do you expect? He's speaking for the FSF, his advice is libre is more important than gratis (sp?)..Personally I think enabling people to write portable games is worth the compromise.. especially if it might mean a game that would have been locked in to PS2 or Direct3D becomes available for Free platforms as well.I have a friend who has in his room a Playstation, Dreamcast, N64 and PC. That's a ridiculous situation and portable APIs will help put a stop to it. I've settled on two PCs in my room :)... more power to Crystal Space!
Iraq and Serbia are getting pretty boring. How about some fresh targets?
:)
Columbia is looking pretty ripe, and they fit the required criteria of not being able to bomb you back. It'd be nice symmetry - help the Albanian drug runners, hurt the Columbian ones. Maintain equilibrium in the world
Enough cuecat, when cuecat ceases to be an issue.
Right now, DC is throwing very fat lawyers at people who can't afford to fight them, and that's wrong, becuase it sets a *very* bad precedent.
I'm not in a position to interfere, since I don't live in the US, but I hope you guys over there make a lot of noise about this. Spread free drivers, write letters to media and politicians, and inform everyone who cares about this blatant abuse of your legal system.
Collecting marketing information is not very polite, but it's nothing compared to the legal stunts DC is pulling. Their "IP" claim is a joke, so do everything you can to undermine it.. because if they get away with it, thousands of imitators will crawl out of the woodwork to restrict your freedom on the internet in ways you've never imagined.
Because most of this shit starts in the USA, it's up to you Americans to protect the rest of the world by stomping it before it spreads. It's much harder to fight a corporation across international borders.
Consider the plight of Yugoslavs. The recent Yugoslav election was anything but boring...
:)
Let's see:
The NATO nations insinuating that voting for Milosevic will precipitate more bombing.
Billions of dollars in bribes if you vote ABM (anything but milosevic). A lifting of sanctions. Rebuilding of destroyed infrastructure.. so what if it ends up being foriegnly owned.. sure beats rubble. An end to demonisation... ah...
A bunch of enemy warships lurking around just to spice things up...
Hmmm.. makes for a nice level playing field.. now, who you gonna vote for..?
Be glad your elections are boring, you clueless twit.
Hopefully the next Yugoslav elections will be just as boring
Hmmm... no doubt Microsoft would be eager to fund such a court and pick a few judges fit for this noble task, being so innovative and 30 years ahead of the competition in all matters technical, and all. The MPAA will chip in too!
Remember that wonderful war crimes court in the hague, which, though it may be funded by NATO, consist of staff hand-picked by NATO, and lack any jurisdiction over NATO, nevertheless has proven it's integrity by not dancing to NATO's fiddle. Indicting (with perfect timing) the elected president of the country NATO was bombing, was just a coincidence.
What a great idea!