I would like to ask every software developer who reads this to please do themselves and everyone else a favor: GPL your code. Even if it's already BSD.
It's none of your business what I do with my code. If I prefer to use the BSD license, it's none of your business. If Microsoft decides to leach off my code, it's none of your business. If Microsoft manages to make a billion bucks off of it, it's none of your business.
Let me repeat: It's none of your business.Get you nose out of my butt and go mind your OWN business.
If my software is just too damn free for your liking, you don't have to use it.
I can't answer that, since I am not a Republican. Didn't my earlier post make it clear that I am a we-can-do-no-wrong Democrat? Geez!
But I can guess a bit, since I know reps, dems, libs, and even some socs who considered Bill's behavior to be out of line.
First, there's the humor factor. We haven't had so much fun laughing at a president since Washington stuck his tongue to a flagpole at wintery Valley Forge.
Second, there's the titillation factor. Presidents, bad British actors, and cheesy kid show hosts all get our jeers when they get caught doing the hanky panky where they shouldn't.
Third, Lewinski was a much more serious matter than Flowers. Flowers was pure titillation. But Lewinski was about having sex with a subordinate. You don't diddle your staff. If the CEO of my company rolled one of our interns, the board would throw him out on his butt. Dammit, Packwood was a Republican and thus Evil Incarnate, but why did we demand his ouster but not Bill's?
Fourth, and most important, Bill lied about it. He lied to the newspapers, on television and during depositions. He wagged his fingers at us and said he didn't have sex that woman. Then he tried to redefine "sex" and wonder at the definition of "is". If Bill (my hero, since I'm a we-can-do-no-wrong Democrat) should have come out on day one and said "yes, I did it, I borked an aide marginally older than my daughter, but so what?" That would have been the end of it. But instead he did a Nixon and tried to cover it up. He lied to the people and he perjured himself.
Should a president get his rocks off once in a while? Hell yes! But he (or she) shouldn't get his (or her) rocks off with an employee and then lie about it afterwards.
Yeah damnit! Dems do no wrong! Clinton didn't pork Monica and Gray didn't turn off the light switch. Geez, next thing you know these guys will be saying the Simon isn't really going to shove the elderly out on the street.
Because it demonstrates that at least a few people out there understand that Open Source != Linux. Is the German Parliament moving to Open Source or just Linux? Has the Finnish government standardized on Free Software or just that written by their native son?
I could give a rat's ass as the popularity of the software I use, but for most people it's their number one concern. People who use Linux just because it's popular, cool, or the latest media darling, are the people who don't get it. Frankly, I don't think the German or Finnish governments get it.But Peru does, because they aren't waving a flag with a penguin on it.
It may not make a difference to current GnuLiX users, but it does to those who aren't.
I remember thinking Patrick Volkerding was a schmutz for coming out with Slackware 7.0, until several months ago when I heard at Fry's: "No dude! Get this Manhat 7.1, it's newer than that Redrake 7.0 you've got in your hands."
Forget about sin() and cos(), think about the STL. If you use multimap, have you created a work derivative of the STL? This is a very important question. What happens if I compile my code on a machine that has a mythical GPLd STL? Oooh...
There's another consideration you need to make for determining derivation that's related to macros. But it's a very fuzzy criteria. And that is the purpose of the macro. At some point, fair use comes into play. My opinion is that if you use the macro in its normal intended manner, you are covered by fair use.
I'm going to go out on a limb here, but I would say that the output of bison falls under fair use.
Doesn't work. Microsoft comes along and creates a derivative work. What is ours is still ours. It's still there. The CVS tree hasn't been changed at all. Nothing that is "ours" has been altered or destroyed. But now Microsoft has something that looks remarkably like ours, but is really theirs, and we get all bent out of shape about it. We talk about how software should not be owned, then we get angry when someone trespasses on it.
So basically, if you use a GPL'd program generator, it's pretty clear that the output is GPL unless the program says it's not.
It really depends on the program. In the case of Bison, it spit out line after line of verbatum GPLd code. This isn't code generation, it's code copying. All output for a true code generator would be derivative of your input. An example is the object code that comes out the other end of gcc.
Yeah, lots of music infringement suits are relevent. Artist A writes a song. Artist B writes a song. Artist A says that Artist B ripped off his works. Judge listens to both songs and says "they're similar", bangs his gavel, and Artist B is up the doodoo river
The sad thing is that this type of infringement is very hard to avoid. You hear a song in the background while you're running to catch your train, and three weeks later you come up with a catchy new tune.
Fortunately, software is much more deterministic than music, but that doesn't prevent the lawsuits.Although no two bytes may be equivalent, you could still have run the other code through a mangler, renamed all variables, reordered code, unwrapped loops, et., in an effort to avoid detection.
When you go through all the formalities of a formal sale (retail counter, retail salesgirl, retail receipt), then you have made a sale. When I buy a box of WindowsXP, a sale of a product has been made. That box did not say "WindowsXP License", it said "WindowsXP". I now am the legal possessor of a copy of WindowsXP.
Instead, under the GPL, you are only licensing the software
If I do not agree to the GPL, I am not bound by it. As long as I don't distribute, modify or generally copy the software (which might be considered assenting to the license), I have the legal right to use the software, make a single archival copy, and to sell my copy (after destroying the archive) of the software.
The guy who "sold" QDOS to Bill Gates understands the distinction between the two
That guy did not sell Bill Gates a copy of QDOS. He sold Bill Gates the rights to QDOS. There is a very big difference.
The problem is that we're using licenses to begin with. We don't need licenses. Books don't have licenses. Poems don't have licenses. Music, despite the RIAA's wishes to the contrary, doesn't have licenses.
There are in essense only three sets of rights available to the recipient of any copyrighted work:
1) Rights previously granted under Copyright Law. 2) 1 + additional rights 3) 1 - rights already granted
Only number 3 requires a license, because only number three has to be agreed to by the recipient. This is a EULA.
Number one doesn't need any license at all. Just put the words "Copyright 2002 Joe Schmoe, all rights reserved" at the top, and you're done. 90% of commercial software could be released like this with zero problems for the authors. This is known as simple copyright.
Number two doesn't need a license either. You're granting additional rights, not taking anything away. Even if these additional rights have conditions attached to them, as with copyleft, the recipient does not need to agree to anything, because they cannot excercise those additional rights outside of the context of those conditions. I refer to this as a Permission Statement.
The general public, over the course of three decades of concerted brainwashing by the software industry, has come to believe that you need a license to use software. This is very sad. Instead of perpetuating this myth, we need to be proactive and declare that the user doesn't have to agree to any damn thing to use the software we gave them!
Since the dawn of Copyright laws. The right of First Sale has been confirmed a couple of times, most notably in the early 1900's when book publishers started licensing their wares to prevent used book salses. The courts ruled this invalid.
It's tricky when it comes to software, since it hasn't been determined yet by the courts whether a software sale is a sale of a product or a sale of a license. In my opinion, it's a sale of a product, since it takes the form of a sale of a product, but the law has rarely followed common sense.
If you purchased GPL software as a binary-only copy, then you do have the right of First Sale. The trick is getting the buying that binary-only copy to begin with. I don't think the First Sale doctrine applies to free-beer software, and if you did "buy" the software (otherwise known as making a donation), it's going to going to come with the source code.
The API for KDE is fully documented. And KDE is a componentized desktop. Mix and match to your heart's content, and as long as your replacement components follow the API, everything will work with no loss of functionality.
Between the money they spend on Bush/Ashcroft clique...
They learned their lesson well. The Microsoft monopoly was created during the Clinton/Reno era. But they failed to offer monetary tribute to Clinton/Reno, so they got slapped around.
When one thug breaks your kneecaps for not paying protection money, you are more apt to pay the successor thug on a timely basis. If Algore was in office now, Billy Boy would be paying him just as much.
Honestly I as a software producer... I am perfectly willing to require you to sign terms of use before you purchase the software.
Sounds good to me. I might even consider purchasing your software based solely on your honesty.
What gets my goat are all the other software producers pretending they're retailers or that their software is a retail product. I haven't see too many websites that say "Buy a Fubarino2002 License Here!" Nor have I seen and shrinkwrapped boxes that say "New! Snafuwitz Plus License!" Nope. They all pretend that they're selling a product, then get mad when someone believes them.
On the other side I as a consumer would not purchase a product that did not have a contract I was willing to live with.
Putting aside the point that you don't even know what the contract is until you've purchased the right to enter into it, I don't know of too many consumer products that require a contract to begin with. Toasters? Windshield wipers? Ceramic floor tile? Hah!
If it walks like a sale, and quacks like a sale, then it must be a sale, and the UCC applies.
A tricky part is reverse engineering.
Correct me if I'm wrong, but I don't recall that reverse engineering is an exclusive right of the author. I also happen to live in a state where reverse engineering is explicitely a right of the public. Of course, that's not much you can *do* with the reversed engineering under the DMCA, such as telling other people about it, but it's still your right if you wish to excercise it in privacy of your own home and hard drive.
Read the EULA before you click "accept". If you don't agree with the terms and conditions then don't install the software.
But I already have the legal right to install the software! Do I have to quote chapter and verse of Copyright Law?
Here's how it works. The author creates a work and publishes or distributes it. At this point in time there are two sets of right bound to the work. The first set of rights are exclusive to the author. These include the right to distribute, modify and generally copy the work. The second set is not exclusive to the author, but belong to the public or to the possessors/owners of the copies. These rights include using the work in its customary manner. If it's software, the author does not have the right to prevent you from using it.
If I don't accept the terms of the EULA, and I can somehow install the software without assenting to the EULA, then I have the right to use the software.
Software that companies write belongs to them so they should be free to do whatever
Absolutely not. The only thing that belongs to the software companies are the rights to copy, distribute and modify the software. They do not have the exclusive right to use the software.
"Intellectual Property" is not property. This has been asserted by the courts before. Don't let the name fool you, it is just a linguistic shorthand.
If I don't agree to the my landlord's rental agreement, I still can't live in his/her apartment, because that apartment is his/her property. But if I don't agree to your EULA, you can't prevent me from using the software, because the copy in my possession is not your property.
If you want more restrictive terms over the use of the software, then you may attempt to get me to agree to them. But you will have to do so before I aquire the software. That may mean you have to forego selling your software through traditional retail channels. Too bad. You are not king of the world so you don't have the right to make up the rules as you go along.
...even if they require handing over your first born or something.
It's because we (US Americans) let our politicians run our schools systems. Granted, just about every other nation on earth has government run schools, but I don't know of any that have been politicized to the extent that ours has.
Every new State Superindendent of Schools (or whatever the term is in the other states) has to mark their territory just like a cat. They can't do what the previous administration did. So we end up with four years of Three R's followed by four years of new math followed by four years of phonics followed by four years of whatever the latest psychobabble is, then back to the Three R's and start all over again.
The NSF researches the US and finds the average American flunks science. CNN ran a poll that shows the average American thinks their know science. But where are the polls and surveys for other nations?
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I would like to ask every software developer who reads this to please do themselves and everyone else a favor: GPL your code. Even if it's already BSD.
It's none of your business what I do with my code. If I prefer to use the BSD license, it's none of your business. If Microsoft decides to leach off my code, it's none of your business. If Microsoft manages to make a billion bucks off of it, it's none of your business.
Let me repeat: It's none of your business.Get you nose out of my butt and go mind your OWN business.
If my software is just too damn free for your liking, you don't have to use it.
I can't answer that, since I am not a Republican. Didn't my earlier post make it clear that I am a we-can-do-no-wrong Democrat? Geez!
But I can guess a bit, since I know reps, dems, libs, and even some socs who considered Bill's behavior to be out of line.
First, there's the humor factor. We haven't had so much fun laughing at a president since Washington stuck his tongue to a flagpole at wintery Valley Forge.
Second, there's the titillation factor. Presidents, bad British actors, and cheesy kid show hosts all get our jeers when they get caught doing the hanky panky where they shouldn't.
Third, Lewinski was a much more serious matter than Flowers. Flowers was pure titillation. But Lewinski was about having sex with a subordinate. You don't diddle your staff. If the CEO of my company rolled one of our interns, the board would throw him out on his butt. Dammit, Packwood was a Republican and thus Evil Incarnate, but why did we demand his ouster but not Bill's?
Fourth, and most important, Bill lied about it. He lied to the newspapers, on television and during depositions. He wagged his fingers at us and said he didn't have sex that woman. Then he tried to redefine "sex" and wonder at the definition of "is". If Bill (my hero, since I'm a we-can-do-no-wrong Democrat) should have come out on day one and said "yes, I did it, I borked an aide marginally older than my daughter, but so what?" That would have been the end of it. But instead he did a Nixon and tried to cover it up. He lied to the people and he perjured himself.
Should a president get his rocks off once in a while? Hell yes! But he (or she) shouldn't get his (or her) rocks off with an employee and then lie about it afterwards.
Yeah damnit! Dems do no wrong! Clinton didn't pork Monica and Gray didn't turn off the light switch. Geez, next thing you know these guys will be saying the Simon isn't really going to shove the elderly out on the street.
BSD, Linux, who cares?
Because it demonstrates that at least a few people out there understand that Open Source != Linux. Is the German Parliament moving to Open Source or just Linux? Has the Finnish government standardized on Free Software or just that written by their native son?
I could give a rat's ass as the popularity of the software I use, but for most people it's their number one concern. People who use Linux just because it's popular, cool, or the latest media darling, are the people who don't get it. Frankly, I don't think the German or Finnish governments get it.But Peru does, because they aren't waving a flag with a penguin on it.
It may not make a difference to current GnuLiX users, but it does to those who aren't.
I remember thinking Patrick Volkerding was a schmutz for coming out with Slackware 7.0, until several months ago when I heard at Fry's: "No dude! Get this Manhat 7.1, it's newer than that Redrake 7.0 you've got in your hands."
I wonder what I would do with $40 billion?
Duh! Give it to the stockholders! It's theirs, not yours.
If it means your poor sysadmins are going to die when the precious mainframe catches fire, then no, it isn't an acceptable risk. Period.
I can think of some situations where it would be acceptable (ships), but the last time I saw a halon system was at a university datacenter.
Forget about sin() and cos(), think about the STL. If you use multimap, have you created a work derivative of the STL? This is a very important question. What happens if I compile my code on a machine that has a mythical GPLd STL? Oooh...
There's another consideration you need to make for determining derivation that's related to macros. But it's a very fuzzy criteria. And that is the purpose of the macro. At some point, fair use comes into play. My opinion is that if you use the macro in its normal intended manner, you are covered by fair use.
I'm going to go out on a limb here, but I would say that the output of bison falls under fair use.
Doesn't work. Microsoft comes along and creates a derivative work. What is ours is still ours. It's still there. The CVS tree hasn't been changed at all. Nothing that is "ours" has been altered or destroyed. But now Microsoft has something that looks remarkably like ours, but is really theirs, and we get all bent out of shape about it. We talk about how software should not be owned, then we get angry when someone trespasses on it.
So basically, if you use a GPL'd program generator, it's pretty clear that the output is GPL unless the program says it's not.
It really depends on the program. In the case of Bison, it spit out line after line of verbatum GPLd code. This isn't code generation, it's code copying. All output for a true code generator would be derivative of your input. An example is the object code that comes out the other end of gcc.
Anyone know any precedents?
Yeah, lots of music infringement suits are relevent. Artist A writes a song. Artist B writes a song. Artist A says that Artist B ripped off his works. Judge listens to both songs and says "they're similar", bangs his gavel, and Artist B is up the doodoo river
The sad thing is that this type of infringement is very hard to avoid. You hear a song in the background while you're running to catch your train, and three weeks later you come up with a catchy new tune.
Fortunately, software is much more deterministic than music, but that doesn't prevent the lawsuits.Although no two bytes may be equivalent, you could still have run the other code through a mangler, renamed all variables, reordered code, unwrapped loops, et., in an effort to avoid detection.
When you go through all the formalities of a formal sale (retail counter, retail salesgirl, retail receipt), then you have made a sale. When I buy a box of WindowsXP, a sale of a product has been made. That box did not say "WindowsXP License", it said "WindowsXP". I now am the legal possessor of a copy of WindowsXP.
Instead, under the GPL, you are only licensing the software
If I do not agree to the GPL, I am not bound by it. As long as I don't distribute, modify or generally copy the software (which might be considered assenting to the license), I have the legal right to use the software, make a single archival copy, and to sell my copy (after destroying the archive) of the software.
The guy who "sold" QDOS to Bill Gates understands the distinction between the two
That guy did not sell Bill Gates a copy of QDOS. He sold Bill Gates the rights to QDOS. There is a very big difference.
What does the author want me to do with his software?
Answer: use it.
What does the author not want me to do with his software?
Answer: Don't copy, distribute or modify it.
What is the simplest means to ensure the author's wishes are met?
Answer: A simply copyright statement.
Granted, there's some bozos who want to place further restrictions on you, but they should be the exceptions and not the rule.
That's precisely what I was referring to. Was the original poster referring to something else?
Licenses are naturally complex things.
The problem is that we're using licenses to begin with. We don't need licenses. Books don't have licenses. Poems don't have licenses. Music, despite the RIAA's wishes to the contrary, doesn't have licenses.
There are in essense only three sets of rights available to the recipient of any copyrighted work:
1) Rights previously granted under Copyright Law.
2) 1 + additional rights
3) 1 - rights already granted
Only number 3 requires a license, because only number three has to be agreed to by the recipient. This is a EULA.
Number one doesn't need any license at all. Just put the words "Copyright 2002 Joe Schmoe, all rights reserved" at the top, and you're done. 90% of commercial software could be released like this with zero problems for the authors. This is known as simple copyright.
Number two doesn't need a license either. You're granting additional rights, not taking anything away. Even if these additional rights have conditions attached to them, as with copyleft, the recipient does not need to agree to anything, because they cannot excercise those additional rights outside of the context of those conditions. I refer to this as a Permission Statement.
The general public, over the course of three decades of concerted brainwashing by the software industry, has come to believe that you need a license to use software. This is very sad. Instead of perpetuating this myth, we need to be proactive and declare that the user doesn't have to agree to any damn thing to use the software we gave them!
Since the dawn of Copyright laws. The right of First Sale has been confirmed a couple of times, most notably in the early 1900's when book publishers started licensing their wares to prevent used book salses. The courts ruled this invalid.
It's tricky when it comes to software, since it hasn't been determined yet by the courts whether a software sale is a sale of a product or a sale of a license. In my opinion, it's a sale of a product, since it takes the form of a sale of a product, but the law has rarely followed common sense.
If you purchased GPL software as a binary-only copy, then you do have the right of First Sale. The trick is getting the buying that binary-only copy to begin with. I don't think the First Sale doctrine applies to free-beer software, and if you did "buy" the software (otherwise known as making a donation), it's going to going to come with the source code.
The API for KDE is fully documented. And KDE is a componentized desktop. Mix and match to your heart's content, and as long as your replacement components follow the API, everything will work with no loss of functionality.
Between the money they spend on Bush/Ashcroft clique...
They learned their lesson well. The Microsoft monopoly was created during the Clinton/Reno era. But they failed to offer monetary tribute to Clinton/Reno, so they got slapped around.
When one thug breaks your kneecaps for not paying protection money, you are more apt to pay the successor thug on a timely basis. If Algore was in office now, Billy Boy would be paying him just as much.
Overhead? What overhead? Or where you referring to the overhead of running an email server under Windows.
Honestly I as a software producer ... I am perfectly willing to require you to sign terms of use before you purchase the software.
Sounds good to me. I might even consider purchasing your software based solely on your honesty.
What gets my goat are all the other software producers pretending they're retailers or that their software is a retail product. I haven't see too many websites that say "Buy a Fubarino2002 License Here!" Nor have I seen and shrinkwrapped boxes that say "New! Snafuwitz Plus License!" Nope. They all pretend that they're selling a product, then get mad when someone believes them.
On the other side I as a consumer would not purchase a product that did not have a contract I was willing to live with.
Putting aside the point that you don't even know what the contract is until you've purchased the right to enter into it, I don't know of too many consumer products that require a contract to begin with. Toasters? Windshield wipers? Ceramic floor tile? Hah!
If it walks like a sale, and quacks like a sale, then it must be a sale, and the UCC applies.
A tricky part is reverse engineering.
Correct me if I'm wrong, but I don't recall that reverse engineering is an exclusive right of the author. I also happen to live in a state where reverse engineering is explicitely a right of the public. Of course, that's not much you can *do* with the reversed engineering under the DMCA, such as telling other people about it, but it's still your right if you wish to excercise it in privacy of your own home and hard drive.
Read the EULA before you click "accept". If you don't agree with the terms and conditions then don't install the software.
...even if they require handing over your first born or something.
But I already have the legal right to install the software! Do I have to quote chapter and verse of Copyright Law?
Here's how it works. The author creates a work and publishes or distributes it. At this point in time there are two sets of right bound to the work. The first set of rights are exclusive to the author. These include the right to distribute, modify and generally copy the work. The second set is not exclusive to the author, but belong to the public or to the possessors/owners of the copies. These rights include using the work in its customary manner. If it's software, the author does not have the right to prevent you from using it.
If I don't accept the terms of the EULA, and I can somehow install the software without assenting to the EULA, then I have the right to use the software.
Software that companies write belongs to them so they should be free to do whatever
Absolutely not. The only thing that belongs to the software companies are the rights to copy, distribute and modify the software. They do not have the exclusive right to use the software.
"Intellectual Property" is not property. This has been asserted by the courts before. Don't let the name fool you, it is just a linguistic shorthand.
If I don't agree to the my landlord's rental agreement, I still can't live in his/her apartment, because that apartment is his/her property. But if I don't agree to your EULA, you can't prevent me from using the software, because the copy in my possession is not your property.
If you want more restrictive terms over the use of the software, then you may attempt to get me to agree to them. But you will have to do so before I aquire the software. That may mean you have to forego selling your software through traditional retail channels. Too bad. You are not king of the world so you don't have the right to make up the rules as you go along.
Such a clause would be illegal.
That is, the situation may be that you own the disk, but not the right to run the program, unless you agree to the EULA.
Where does it say this in 17 USC 117? I don't care what the EULA says, I care what the law says. And I can't find what you're referring to.
It's because we (US Americans) let our politicians run our schools systems. Granted, just about every other nation on earth has government run schools, but I don't know of any that have been politicized to the extent that ours has.
Every new State Superindendent of Schools (or whatever the term is in the other states) has to mark their territory just like a cat. They can't do what the previous administration did. So we end up with four years of Three R's followed by four years of new math followed by four years of phonics followed by four years of whatever the latest psychobabble is, then back to the Three R's and start all over again.
The NSF researches the US and finds the average American flunks science. CNN ran a poll that shows the average American thinks their know science. But where are the polls and surveys for other nations?