The GPL itself has never been ruled on. The prior rulings were on the order of "this software is not in the public domain, copyright still applies," but didn't rule on the license itself or any of its terms. The claim that the license is legally bulletproof has not verified. There are a couple of clauses I think might not be wholly unassailable.
This isn't judicial activism. The judge did not legislate from the bench. He did not create any new laws or regulations. Hell, he didn't even twist the wording of the law or cite foreign precedence. All he did was rule yeah or nay.
An activist judge would have abolished copyright, or mandated the use of GPL in software, or something like that.
He just summed up what people have been trying to explain to the anti-GPL crowd for ages now.
It's not about the GPL, it's about Free Software. Every other Free Software license would have had the same ruling, as no other Free Software license would "foreclose other operating systems from entering the market."
Mr. Wallace bitched that the GPL was copyleft, he couldn't proprietarize his copy of the code. But that's *NOT* what the judge ruled on. Instead he ruled that it doesn't prevent market competition, an attribute shared by all Free Software licenses, even the unrestricted non-copyleft ones.
However, while we have a say in the workings of the former, we have little choice but to accept most decissions of owners of private property.
In terms of groups you are correct. In terms of individuals you are wrong. As an individual voter you have an infintessimally insignificant say in the laws you must follow, but have a highly significant say in the private economic transactions you engage in. For a simple example, if the government bans tomatoes, then you're shit out of luck. Good luck trying to get enough voters sufficiently interested to force a referendum on the issue. But if a private grocer decides not to sell tomatoes, you can go to another, or directly to a farmer, or even grow one yourself.
The problem isn't that government is bad. It is not. The problem is that government has become a catch-all solution to every need, want and desire. Since government is a coercive entity, free societies must limit it in order to stay free. How far one limits it depends on one's particular ideology, but at the minimum government must be limited to necessary functions. Just because government can do something isn't sufficient cause.
Government can fund science. But by itself that is insufficient cause to hand science over to it. Even if government could fund it efficiently (which it doesn't), that is still insufficient case. We must ask ourselves further if it is *necessary* for government to fund science.
But the air HAS gotten cleaner without the Kyoto treaty. Unlike the ignorant youth bamboozled into believing this is the worst of all worlds, I'm old enough to remember the bad old days. Pollution and its cousin littering were chronic problems. It used to be L.A. smog so bad it was a health hazard, but now the largest factor in air quality is the pollen count! We have cleaned ourselves up, because there *IS* an economic demand for cleanliness. Just because it isn't something that you can productize, shrinkwrap and put on the store shelf, doesn't mean it isn't an economic good.
Our current problem with the air are greenhouse gases, predominantly H2O and CO2. These are clean natural gases. Getting people to view these as noxious civilization destroying pollutants is going to be a very tough sell. So stop trying to sell them directly. Sell non-CO2 producing energy instead. Unfortunately, the same people who scream the loudest about global warming today happen to be the same people who screamed the loudest about nuclear energy in previous decades.
Of course, in a perfect world, the government wouldn't be trying to stifle the scientists either...
But we don't live in a perfect world. Imagining that this is all Bush's fault that that it wouldn't happen with anyone else is naive. As long as government funds the science, government is going to mess with the science.
You have your choice: lots of government funds and the politicizing of science, or scarce private funds and the freedom of research.
Motherboards with integrated video chip sets are cheaper than motherboards plus a separate video card. It's also cheaper to use the same motherboard on all your products, instead of one for each. So your budget offering gets the integrated video while teh l33t antisocial gamer model gets the same motherboard with additional video card, RAM, 3D sound, gigabit, etc.
If you don't like it, don't buy an OEM system, but build your own. I might be more expensive, but at least you're not paying the Intel graphics "tax".:-P
Everyone is interested in ethics and freedom. But those are very nebulous terms. The fact of the matter is that the ethics and freedom the FSF complains no one is interested in, are very specifically dfenced, boxed, delimited and defined. In fact, the FSF has pages and pages devoted to defining "freedom". This wouldn't be necessary if it had the same meaning everyone else uses. In terms of ethics, the FSF angrily rejects the notion of pragmatism, but pragmatism is itself a very ethical outlook (to everyone but the diehard ideologue, that is).
People leave out the "free software philosophy", because it's heavy baggage, and wholly unnecessary for free software. You don't need to be a true believer in order to promote and encourage free software. Sometimes I think the FSF is more interested in ideologically pure thinking than they are in free software.
No GPL version is compatible with any other GPL version. This is the major reason the "or later" clause is so popular. The GPL cannot accept any additional restrictions, *NOR* can it accept any relaxations of the existing restrictions. The only licenses compatible with it, are those that allow the whole to be licensed under the GPL.
You're missing the point. People keep saying that Linux is more popular than BSD because of the GPL. Yet BSD systems have more developers than Hurd, even though Hurd is pure GPL (purer than Linux, even, since it lacks the exception clause).
Thus I can only conclude that the GPL zealot's mantra that the licnese is the reason for Linux's success is bunk.
Of course copyright restricts sharing. It was bad wording on my part. Sometimes I have trouble expressing myself, which is a stupid thing to do on a site full of professional nitpickers.
Let's say ordinary copyright gives you permissions (1) and restrictions (A B C D E). Let's say a free license gives you permissions (2 3 4 5 6) but only if you do (F). That (F) is a restriction, and it is a restriction not covered by ordinary copyright.
Distribution is a pre-requisite to sharing. Therefore there is no need for traditional copyright to restrict it. Not being able to share the media is *incidental* to copyright. Here's an analogy. A copyrighted tune doesn't need to specify that you can't use it in a movie soundtrack. There's no need to restrict that, because public performance is already restricted. But what if there were a "free" music license that let you do anything you want with the tune, *except* use it as a movie soundtrack. Would that be an restriction? Of course it would!
p.s. Pragmatically speaking, I can indeed share copyrighted work. I can share my book with my friend at anytime. This is perfectly legal. That only one of us can read the book at any given time is irrelevant.
p.p.s. On a contrasting note, if you could find some traditionally copyrighted software, you could indeed lend your CD of it to a friend. It's perfectly legal if you didn't retain your own copy of it. But if it were under the GPL, such would not be the case. Your sharing would be restricted. That is because the GPL requires you to ALSO lend the second CD (the one with all the source code) at the same time. You MUST make the source code available, even if you have the legal right under copyright to "share" the software CD with your friend.
This is positively wrong. When the court found that the license had not been followed, it was treated as any other copyright infringement.
My apologies. I should have dug deeper. And the Slashdot summary could have been accurate as well. I can only blame myself for merely skimming TFA.
p.s. Is there going to be a countersuit for the fraudulent use of the term "this photo is public"?
Re:Yet Again, the BSDs get Snubbed
on
Unusual Open Source
·
· Score: 2, Insightful
It has nothing to do with the GPL. While a few developers (like Alan) are going to refuse to work on non-GPL code, there are an equal number (like Theo) who won't. The details of the licensing is irrelevant to the system's popularity.
There are a couple of things that makes Linux more popular. One is timing, as Linux arrived at a crucial moment (the advent of the cheap 32bit CPU) while BSD was stuck in court with a monopolist. More importantly, Linux is just a piece of the whole. Hackers love to put stuff together, and so the DIY nature of Linux was far more appealing to them than something that was already fully integrated and stable. Finally, Linus had a relatively low threshold for accepting code. If you managed to get his attention, and the code didn't have an obvious stench, you had a pretty good chance of getting it included. Other projects (including GNU, btw) had a much higher threshold for code acceptance.
In short, Linux become more popular because it showed up a the right time and had more of a community atomosphere. If it were all about the GPL, then why doesn't Hurd have even more developers working on it than Linux?
It is time we stopped tolerating the Steady State fundamentalists in our schools. We will continue falling behind in science and technology as a nation if we give in to those pushing the steady state agenda. The right wing nut bags are free to believe in steady state in the privacy of their own homes and churches, but they need to shut up about it in the public sphere. We need a complete separation of discredited theories and the state. This is all Bush's fault.
The court did not force anyone to comply with a CC license. The defendant must stop using the photos, unless he acts in accordance with the license. That is simply and purely copyright law.
Then the press is reporting this very badly. Which isn't surprising. Thanks for clearing this up.
Re:So, what options does this release remove?
on
Gnome 2.14 Review
·
· Score: 1
That's it because that's all it needs. Ask Mac OS X. Ask Windows. Just don't ask XScreensaver.
I take it you haven't used Windows or OSX. In Windows every screensaver has a ton of options. OSX is dumbed down far more than it should be, but even there you still get to pick the images for the slideshow screensaver.
You want GNOME to be truly "usable"? Dump all the screensavers, and give the user just one with a default timeout. It's far too confusing to the user to give them a list to choose from. Get with the program! Chant the mantra!
Wait until KDE 4, and you'll get your socks blown off. Even without hardware video acceleration, Qt4's new Arthur paint engine delivers some serious eyecandy.
Most of us have at least some sort of NVidia graphics accelerator in our systems
I sure don't! I got sick and tired of the proprietary driver that crashed my kernel and kept me from upgrading when I wanted to. So I dumped it for a Radeon. It ain't perfect, but at least the Open Source driver works and is stable, and I don't have to say "please, sir" before using it.
The new XGL and AIGLX stuff looks cools, but what we need much more than that is unemcumbered video hardware. If I need the proprietary Nvidia or Radeon drivers to run the next generation Free Software desktops, you can count me out.
Re:The things is you have a choice
on
Gnome 2.14 Review
·
· Score: 1
KDE and GNOME are not fancy window managers. They are desktops. There is a huge difference between the two. The actual window managers in KDE/GNOME are KWin and Metacity, both of which are smaller and snappier than Windowmaker. KDE and GNOME also include actual desktops (where the icons and wallpaper go), file managers (both of which are damned fine file managers), panels (though WM has the dock), etc.
Beyond this though, there is a complete application development framework. This provides a set of applications that have the same look, style and feel, and which integrate with the desktop and each other. Windowmaker has none. There is the GNUstep framework, but Windowmaker is not a GNUstep application, and GNUstep is just a framework, and not a desktop.
There is nothing wrong with just having a window manager. But you can't compare it to a desktop anymore than you can compare a hammer to a toolbox.
That's what makes this a bad ruling, because the court DID make the license binding without the "licensee" accepting it. Copyright did not "kick in" and make this a case of copyright infringement. There are severe implications in this ruling.
CC licenses do not restrict the behavior of anyone who obeys traditional copyright.
Yes they do! Read the damned licenses! Any condition to the license is also a restriction. Consider the Share Alike licenses. Copyright does not have a restriction against not sharing. So a condition that requires sharing is an additional restriction over and above what copyright imposes. It doesn't matter the permissions outweight the restrictions, because the restrictions are STILL there. It doesn't matter if you feel the restrictions are ideologically or pragmatically necessary, because the restrictions are STILL there.
Restrictions weigh differently on different people. While you might feel the the permission in a license far outweigh the restrictions, someone else may not. For an example from the software realm, you may feel perfectly happy with a copylefted Qt, but for many businesses the proprietary version is less restrictive for them. This is how Trolltech makes its money. In fact, the number one Slashdot complaint against Qt is that you have to pay to get rid of the GPL restrictions!
This ruling wasn't about defaulting to copyright, it was about upholding license terms that were never even seen, let along agreed to. Imagine thsi ruling being applied, as it will, to proprietary EULAs and other onerous licenses. Imagine being subject to the Sony license on a CD that you didn't even know was there.
But you don't even need to go that far. Every condition in a "free" license is in reality a restriction, and thus in some tiny small way a restriction over and above what copyright imposes. That you feel these restrictions are somehow balanced by the increased permissions doesn't change this fact. We must not impose these restrictions unilaterally upon the user without his consent!
What this court should have done instead, was to say "you didn't agree to the license, so you violated therefor copyright law by distributing the media." But that's NOT what it said! This ruling imposed the license restrictions upon someone who did not agree to it. That is a far different thing, and has far more scarier implications.
Slashdot Mirror
The GPL itself has never been ruled on. The prior rulings were on the order of "this software is not in the public domain, copyright still applies," but didn't rule on the license itself or any of its terms. The claim that the license is legally bulletproof has not verified. There are a couple of clauses I think might not be wholly unassailable.
No, I'm not kidding.
Do you have any references for that? No I'm not kidding, do you?
This isn't judicial activism. The judge did not legislate from the bench. He did not create any new laws or regulations. Hell, he didn't even twist the wording of the law or cite foreign precedence. All he did was rule yeah or nay.
An activist judge would have abolished copyright, or mandated the use of GPL in software, or something like that.
He just summed up what people have been trying to explain to the anti-GPL crowd for ages now.
It's not about the GPL, it's about Free Software. Every other Free Software license would have had the same ruling, as no other Free Software license would "foreclose other operating systems from entering the market."
Mr. Wallace bitched that the GPL was copyleft, he couldn't proprietarize his copy of the code. But that's *NOT* what the judge ruled on. Instead he ruled that it doesn't prevent market competition, an attribute shared by all Free Software licenses, even the unrestricted non-copyleft ones.
However, while we have a say in the workings of the former, we have little choice but to accept most decissions of owners of private property.
In terms of groups you are correct. In terms of individuals you are wrong. As an individual voter you have an infintessimally insignificant say in the laws you must follow, but have a highly significant say in the private economic transactions you engage in. For a simple example, if the government bans tomatoes, then you're shit out of luck. Good luck trying to get enough voters sufficiently interested to force a referendum on the issue. But if a private grocer decides not to sell tomatoes, you can go to another, or directly to a farmer, or even grow one yourself.
The problem isn't that government is bad. It is not. The problem is that government has become a catch-all solution to every need, want and desire. Since government is a coercive entity, free societies must limit it in order to stay free. How far one limits it depends on one's particular ideology, but at the minimum government must be limited to necessary functions. Just because government can do something isn't sufficient cause.
Government can fund science. But by itself that is insufficient cause to hand science over to it. Even if government could fund it efficiently (which it doesn't), that is still insufficient case. We must ask ourselves further if it is *necessary* for government to fund science.
But the air HAS gotten cleaner without the Kyoto treaty. Unlike the ignorant youth bamboozled into believing this is the worst of all worlds, I'm old enough to remember the bad old days. Pollution and its cousin littering were chronic problems. It used to be L.A. smog so bad it was a health hazard, but now the largest factor in air quality is the pollen count! We have cleaned ourselves up, because there *IS* an economic demand for cleanliness. Just because it isn't something that you can productize, shrinkwrap and put on the store shelf, doesn't mean it isn't an economic good.
Our current problem with the air are greenhouse gases, predominantly H2O and CO2. These are clean natural gases. Getting people to view these as noxious civilization destroying pollutants is going to be a very tough sell. So stop trying to sell them directly. Sell non-CO2 producing energy instead. Unfortunately, the same people who scream the loudest about global warming today happen to be the same people who screamed the loudest about nuclear energy in previous decades.
Of course, in a perfect world, the government wouldn't be trying to stifle the scientists either...
But we don't live in a perfect world. Imagining that this is all Bush's fault that that it wouldn't happen with anyone else is naive. As long as government funds the science, government is going to mess with the science.
You have your choice: lots of government funds and the politicizing of science, or scarce private funds and the freedom of research.
Motherboards with integrated video chip sets are cheaper than motherboards plus a separate video card. It's also cheaper to use the same motherboard on all your products, instead of one for each. So your budget offering gets the integrated video while teh l33t antisocial gamer model gets the same motherboard with additional video card, RAM, 3D sound, gigabit, etc.
:-P
If you don't like it, don't buy an OEM system, but build your own. I might be more expensive, but at least you're not paying the Intel graphics "tax".
When are they going to release Free Software drivers for them? Or alternatively, complete technical specs?
By the end of next week there will be a game out on the market that will require one of these cards...
Everyone is interested in ethics and freedom. But those are very nebulous terms. The fact of the matter is that the ethics and freedom the FSF complains no one is interested in, are very specifically dfenced, boxed, delimited and defined. In fact, the FSF has pages and pages devoted to defining "freedom". This wouldn't be necessary if it had the same meaning everyone else uses. In terms of ethics, the FSF angrily rejects the notion of pragmatism, but pragmatism is itself a very ethical outlook (to everyone but the diehard ideologue, that is).
People leave out the "free software philosophy", because it's heavy baggage, and wholly unnecessary for free software. You don't need to be a true believer in order to promote and encourage free software. Sometimes I think the FSF is more interested in ideologically pure thinking than they are in free software.
No GPL version is compatible with any other GPL version. This is the major reason the "or later" clause is so popular. The GPL cannot accept any additional restrictions, *NOR* can it accept any relaxations of the existing restrictions. The only licenses compatible with it, are those that allow the whole to be licensed under the GPL.
You're missing the point. People keep saying that Linux is more popular than BSD because of the GPL. Yet BSD systems have more developers than Hurd, even though Hurd is pure GPL (purer than Linux, even, since it lacks the exception clause).
Thus I can only conclude that the GPL zealot's mantra that the licnese is the reason for Linux's success is bunk.
Of course copyright restricts sharing. It was bad wording on my part. Sometimes I have trouble expressing myself, which is a stupid thing to do on a site full of professional nitpickers.
Let's say ordinary copyright gives you permissions (1) and restrictions (A B C D E). Let's say a free license gives you permissions (2 3 4 5 6) but only if you do (F). That (F) is a restriction, and it is a restriction not covered by ordinary copyright.
Distribution is a pre-requisite to sharing. Therefore there is no need for traditional copyright to restrict it. Not being able to share the media is *incidental* to copyright. Here's an analogy. A copyrighted tune doesn't need to specify that you can't use it in a movie soundtrack. There's no need to restrict that, because public performance is already restricted. But what if there were a "free" music license that let you do anything you want with the tune, *except* use it as a movie soundtrack. Would that be an restriction? Of course it would!
p.s. Pragmatically speaking, I can indeed share copyrighted work. I can share my book with my friend at anytime. This is perfectly legal. That only one of us can read the book at any given time is irrelevant.
p.p.s. On a contrasting note, if you could find some traditionally copyrighted software, you could indeed lend your CD of it to a friend. It's perfectly legal if you didn't retain your own copy of it. But if it were under the GPL, such would not be the case. Your sharing would be restricted. That is because the GPL requires you to ALSO lend the second CD (the one with all the source code) at the same time. You MUST make the source code available, even if you have the legal right under copyright to "share" the software CD with your friend.
This is positively wrong. When the court found that the license had not been followed, it was treated as any other copyright infringement.
My apologies. I should have dug deeper. And the Slashdot summary could have been accurate as well. I can only blame myself for merely skimming TFA.
p.s. Is there going to be a countersuit for the fraudulent use of the term "this photo is public"?
It has nothing to do with the GPL. While a few developers (like Alan) are going to refuse to work on non-GPL code, there are an equal number (like Theo) who won't. The details of the licensing is irrelevant to the system's popularity.
There are a couple of things that makes Linux more popular. One is timing, as Linux arrived at a crucial moment (the advent of the cheap 32bit CPU) while BSD was stuck in court with a monopolist. More importantly, Linux is just a piece of the whole. Hackers love to put stuff together, and so the DIY nature of Linux was far more appealing to them than something that was already fully integrated and stable. Finally, Linus had a relatively low threshold for accepting code. If you managed to get his attention, and the code didn't have an obvious stench, you had a pretty good chance of getting it included. Other projects (including GNU, btw) had a much higher threshold for code acceptance.
In short, Linux become more popular because it showed up a the right time and had more of a community atomosphere. If it were all about the GPL, then why doesn't Hurd have even more developers working on it than Linux?
It is time we stopped tolerating the Steady State fundamentalists in our schools. We will continue falling behind in science and technology as a nation if we give in to those pushing the steady state agenda. The right wing nut bags are free to believe in steady state in the privacy of their own homes and churches, but they need to shut up about it in the public sphere. We need a complete separation of discredited theories and the state. This is all Bush's fault.
The court did not force anyone to comply with a CC license. The defendant must stop using the photos, unless he acts in accordance with the license. That is simply and purely copyright law.
Then the press is reporting this very badly. Which isn't surprising. Thanks for clearing this up.
That's it because that's all it needs. Ask Mac OS X. Ask Windows. Just don't ask XScreensaver.
I take it you haven't used Windows or OSX. In Windows every screensaver has a ton of options. OSX is dumbed down far more than it should be, but even there you still get to pick the images for the slideshow screensaver.
You want GNOME to be truly "usable"? Dump all the screensavers, and give the user just one with a default timeout. It's far too confusing to the user to give them a list to choose from. Get with the program! Chant the mantra!
KDE still looks better than Gnome.
Wait until KDE 4, and you'll get your socks blown off. Even without hardware video acceleration, Qt4's new Arthur paint engine delivers some serious eyecandy.
Most of us have at least some sort of NVidia graphics accelerator in our systems
I sure don't! I got sick and tired of the proprietary driver that crashed my kernel and kept me from upgrading when I wanted to. So I dumped it for a Radeon. It ain't perfect, but at least the Open Source driver works and is stable, and I don't have to say "please, sir" before using it.
The new XGL and AIGLX stuff looks cools, but what we need much more than that is unemcumbered video hardware. If I need the proprietary Nvidia or Radeon drivers to run the next generation Free Software desktops, you can count me out.
KDE and GNOME are not fancy window managers. They are desktops. There is a huge difference between the two. The actual window managers in KDE/GNOME are KWin and Metacity, both of which are smaller and snappier than Windowmaker. KDE and GNOME also include actual desktops (where the icons and wallpaper go), file managers (both of which are damned fine file managers), panels (though WM has the dock), etc.
Beyond this though, there is a complete application development framework. This provides a set of applications that have the same look, style and feel, and which integrate with the desktop and each other. Windowmaker has none. There is the GNUstep framework, but Windowmaker is not a GNUstep application, and GNUstep is just a framework, and not a desktop.
There is nothing wrong with just having a window manager. But you can't compare it to a desktop anymore than you can compare a hammer to a toolbox.
That's what makes this a bad ruling, because the court DID make the license binding without the "licensee" accepting it. Copyright did not "kick in" and make this a case of copyright infringement. There are severe implications in this ruling.
CC licenses do not restrict the behavior of anyone who obeys traditional copyright.
Yes they do! Read the damned licenses! Any condition to the license is also a restriction. Consider the Share Alike licenses. Copyright does not have a restriction against not sharing. So a condition that requires sharing is an additional restriction over and above what copyright imposes. It doesn't matter the permissions outweight the restrictions, because the restrictions are STILL there. It doesn't matter if you feel the restrictions are ideologically or pragmatically necessary, because the restrictions are STILL there.
Restrictions weigh differently on different people. While you might feel the the permission in a license far outweigh the restrictions, someone else may not. For an example from the software realm, you may feel perfectly happy with a copylefted Qt, but for many businesses the proprietary version is less restrictive for them. This is how Trolltech makes its money. In fact, the number one Slashdot complaint against Qt is that you have to pay to get rid of the GPL restrictions!
This ruling wasn't about defaulting to copyright, it was about upholding license terms that were never even seen, let along agreed to. Imagine thsi ruling being applied, as it will, to proprietary EULAs and other onerous licenses. Imagine being subject to the Sony license on a CD that you didn't even know was there.
But you don't even need to go that far. Every condition in a "free" license is in reality a restriction, and thus in some tiny small way a restriction over and above what copyright imposes. That you feel these restrictions are somehow balanced by the increased permissions doesn't change this fact. We must not impose these restrictions unilaterally upon the user without his consent!
What this court should have done instead, was to say "you didn't agree to the license, so you violated therefor copyright law by distributing the media." But that's NOT what it said! This ruling imposed the license restrictions upon someone who did not agree to it. That is a far different thing, and has far more scarier implications.