Never forget that the BSD and most other license are very weak at protecting our collective work in the current environment.
The whole premise of GNU and the FSF is that "software should not be owned". That means that software has no rights to be protected. All rights derive from property, wether it be your mind, your body, your home, etc. If software is not owned, then there can be no rights associated with the software.
The fact that the BSD license is weak at protecting the "rights" of the author means that it is truer to the ideals of GNU than the GPL. If you don't want to own your software, then stop claiming ownership rights over it.
Under BSD, any company could take our code, slightly change a protocol, patent it and sue the original authors
Absolutely false. I don't know where this idea got started, but it's pure bullshit. The very existance of the original code is proof of prior art and non-innovation.
...and even without patent it could sue for frivolous legal reasons or prevent any further work on the original source base.
Lawyers sue over anything. They sue as a hobby. They aren't happy unless they are suing. They can just as easily sue you over your GPL code as they can sue me over my BSD code.
I don't know why the 'first sale doctrine' does *not* apply to software.
Because some numbnut judge decided that the act of transferring software into memory for the purpose execution was "copying". You couldn't sell your original copy because you had *already* made a copy.
"Why are software licenses more restrictive than books?"
From my limited knowledge of history, backed, of course, by personal experience:
In the beginning software was not covered by copyright. Or not covered very well. At first it was no big deal because your software came with your computer, and was thought of as a component of the computer. Then the first stand-alone, off-the-shelf software hit the market. The authors didn't know what to do. The law was silent with regards to software.
Copyright law was no use, so they resorted to contract law. Thus the invention of the software license. This was a radical step, because these licenses were one-sided unilateral beasts. Negotiation of terms was impossible. At first they weren't too bad. They were printed on the back of the box and contained relatively sensible terms. The bad news was, the courts let it slide.
Then the software manufacturers upped the ante. They started putting the licenses *inside* the box, so that you didn't know the terms you were agreeing to until _after_ you have agreed to them. The courts let that one slide to. Then the licenses started taking away your ability to reverse engineer, make archival copies, etc. We all know the state that software licensing is in today. A software license could have a term mandating blood tests for the user and everyone would yawn.
All because copyright didn't cover software way back when. When I buy a book, all the legal information I need is the words "Copyright [author], [date]". Period. The same should be true for software. There is no need for licensing. Copyright law gives the author all the proprietary rights the need. If you want to release free software, a permission statement is sufficient.
The reason software licenses are more restrictive than books is because books are not licensed.
The "free software license", as you call it, is great for the "takers" out there.
Code can not be taken. If I have one apple and you take it I don't have an apple anymore. But if I have free software and you "take" it, then we BOTH both free software.
Consider the case of the Magic Apple(tm). This apple can be taken, and taken, and taken, but it still remains. I have one Magic Apple(tm). You "take" it. Now you have an apple and I have an apple. You take your apple and make an apple pie and sell it for $5. Did you take an apple pie from me? No. Did you take $5 from me? No. Have I lost anything at all? No.
Unrestricted software (BSD/MIT/etc) is that Magic Apple(tm). Take all you want because the original will still be there unchanged.
DEAR GOD NO. Plain text is okay, but HTML-formatted E-mail should be illegal.
I would have listed HTML under the proscribed formats but I hesitated for a couple of reasons: I leave open the possibility that some messages might need more markup than plain text can provide (at least that's the excuse other people give me); and that fact that the unwashed masses are completely incapable of configuring their email clients to use plain text. In any case, I vastly prefer receiving HTML in my mailbox instead of MS Word documents. It took over one thousand man hours of bitching to get our HR department to stop sending one line notices in.doc format. Getting them to drop HTML is beyond our capabilities.
Great, just great. How am I supposed to know that there's a free Word viewer when I don't have the free Word viewer to read that email that tells me there's a free Word viewer.
Of course, once you get past that hurdle: "Thank you for the information on the free Word viewer. Unfortunately I still can't read your email. Please send me $199.99 for a copy of Windows and $99.99 for a new harddrive so that I can dual-boot to that Windows. Alternatively you can send me $349.99 for a copy of VMWare 3.0. That email must be pretty damn important for all the work you're putting me through."
Most posters here have missed the main point. And though RMS makes some very good points on the political side of things, he still misses the main point.
What if MS Word were Free Software? Would it then be okay to send all your email with MS Word? NO!
Email should always be formatted in a text format such as plain text or HTML. The only attachments in non-text format should be either media files or with the prior permission of the receiver. This is common courtesy. I don't care if the email is formatted in MS Word, AbiWord or OpenOffice. If I get it I will delete it.
Or even better: "I'm sorry, but I cannot access the file you sent me because I do not have MS Word installed. Please use a free document format such as plain text, HTML or PDF, or send me $299.99 so that I can purchase MS Office for the sole purpose of reading your missives."
I'm all rooting for OpenPackages (not OpenPKG) to get stable. It won't cover Solaris, but it will cover Linux, Darwin and OSX.
But that said, I see one advantage to OpenPKG. Since the binaries inside the OpenPKGs will be different, they aren't portable. The advantage must be that the numbnut build managers at these companies only have to learn one tool. I don't see any advantages for the enduser.
The tips offered in that article weren't meant to be taken as rigid inflexible law. Obviously your users need their home directories to be world readable, then make them world readable. But if they don't need it, then setting the directories to 0700 is a wise precaution.
It's not that big of a pain to set up if you have a decent distro that's done the work already. I use FreeBSD, and getting a DocBook environment set up is trivial. It's equally simple under Debian. Slackware has a single package in contribs. Etc.
If your distro doesn't have a docbook package then it can be a major hassle building and setting it up from scratch.
The authors of the application are not distributing it. KDE is distributing the source, and they have mirrors in Germany, so a better question is why Buttplug and Company aren't suing KDE.
Linux was chosen because GNUStep is a GNU project. That means that they prefer building it on The GNU System. The potentates at GNU believe that LinuxOS is really The GNU System with a trivial kernel replacement. So they chose LiGNuX (the old name that RMS preferred).
Funny thing is, if this distro is under the aegis of GNU, it might actually be the first *genuine* GNU System.
It's because of people like you, with your 'BSD is the best' elitism
Go look at the parent post again. He's *starting* to move his systems to BSD. That means he's not all the way there, thus he can't be an elitist yet. In all probability he finds BSD to be better suited to his needs (as opposed to yours) than Linux.
Because you never know when you need that support. Sometimes you get a brand new computer with hardware that's too new. And sometimes you need to install on an old system with ancient parts. The more devices that FreeBSD (or Linux, or even Windows out-of-the-box) supports the greater the chance that I can get it to install.
It's not a bad price if you compare similar products. Looking at SuSE, Redhat, Slackware, Mandrake, this price is right in the ballpark. I see Linux distros averaging between $35 and $50 US. It wasn't all that long ago that Redhat sold for $80.
This is four CDs, has official status, and you get a big discount if you set up a subscription. The price hasn't changed since the heyday of Walnut Creek.
Cylogistics (DaemonNews) just isn't big enough to be the main support stop for FreeBSD. Although I believe that they offer support, there's no way they could handle all the support calls even for just North America.
No, it's not yellow journalism. This is DaemonNews' first official release of FreeBSD. Before this time DaemonNews only *distributed* the CDs from Windriver and BSDi. This release is their own, and it's official.
Re:The one thing I wish macs had...
on
New iMac Announced
·
· Score: 2, Insightful
Slow CPU speeds? If the *only* thing you're comparing is Mhz, then of course Pentium wins hands down. But the effective speed of a processor is derived from much more than the clock speed. A 1.5Ghz G5 would make a 1.5Ghz PIV seem like a turtle on exlax.
I don't audit it because I expect those I get it from to have audited it, or at least tested it out before moving it from incoming to final destination.
So you're paranoid. Good for you. But not everyone who uses Linux is paranoid. Witnessing the number of Linux distros and BSD variants that offer precompiled binary updates I think a problem still exists.
Is is just be, or does it seem silly to give any time to a "virus" that requires you to run a binary while rooted?
It's not silly at all. You do it all the time I suspect. I know I do. Do you run every new program, package and update in a jail or sandbox? If not, then shut up.
Slashdot Mirror
Never forget that the BSD and most other license are very weak at protecting our collective work in the current environment.
...and even without patent it could sue for frivolous legal reasons or prevent any further work on the original source base.
The whole premise of GNU and the FSF is that "software should not be owned". That means that software has no rights to be protected. All rights derive from property, wether it be your mind, your body, your home, etc. If software is not owned, then there can be no rights associated with the software.
The fact that the BSD license is weak at protecting the "rights" of the author means that it is truer to the ideals of GNU than the GPL. If you don't want to own your software, then stop claiming ownership rights over it.
Under BSD, any company could take our code, slightly change a protocol, patent it and sue the original authors
Absolutely false. I don't know where this idea got started, but it's pure bullshit. The very existance of the original code is proof of prior art and non-innovation.
Lawyers sue over anything. They sue as a hobby. They aren't happy unless they are suing. They can just as easily sue you over your GPL code as they can sue me over my BSD code.
I don't know why the 'first sale doctrine' does *not* apply to software.
Because some numbnut judge decided that the act of transferring software into memory for the purpose execution was "copying". You couldn't sell your original copy because you had *already* made a copy.
"Why are software licenses more restrictive than books?"
From my limited knowledge of history, backed, of course, by personal experience:
In the beginning software was not covered by copyright. Or not covered very well. At first it was no big deal because your software came with your computer, and was thought of as a component of the computer. Then the first stand-alone, off-the-shelf software hit the market. The authors didn't know what to do. The law was silent with regards to software.
Copyright law was no use, so they resorted to contract law. Thus the invention of the software license. This was a radical step, because these licenses were one-sided unilateral beasts. Negotiation of terms was impossible. At first they weren't too bad. They were printed on the back of the box and contained relatively sensible terms. The bad news was, the courts let it slide.
Then the software manufacturers upped the ante. They started putting the licenses *inside* the box, so that you didn't know the terms you were agreeing to until _after_ you have agreed to them. The courts let that one slide to. Then the licenses started taking away your ability to reverse engineer, make archival copies, etc. We all know the state that software licensing is in today. A software license could have a term mandating blood tests for the user and everyone would yawn.
All because copyright didn't cover software way back when. When I buy a book, all the legal information I need is the words "Copyright [author], [date]". Period. The same should be true for software. There is no need for licensing. Copyright law gives the author all the proprietary rights the need. If you want to release free software, a permission statement is sufficient.
The reason software licenses are more restrictive than books is because books are not licensed.
The "free software license", as you call it, is great for the "takers" out there.
Code can not be taken. If I have one apple and you take it I don't have an apple anymore. But if I have free software and you "take" it, then we BOTH both free software.
Consider the case of the Magic Apple(tm). This apple can be taken, and taken, and taken, but it still remains. I have one Magic Apple(tm). You "take" it. Now you have an apple and I have an apple. You take your apple and make an apple pie and sell it for $5. Did you take an apple pie from me? No. Did you take $5 from me? No. Have I lost anything at all? No.
Unrestricted software (BSD/MIT/etc) is that Magic Apple(tm). Take all you want because the original will still be there unchanged.
A can a week is all we ask...
DEAR GOD NO. Plain text is okay, but HTML-formatted E-mail should be illegal.
.doc format. Getting them to drop HTML is beyond our capabilities.
I would have listed HTML under the proscribed formats but I hesitated for a couple of reasons: I leave open the possibility that some messages might need more markup than plain text can provide (at least that's the excuse other people give me); and that fact that the unwashed masses are completely incapable of configuring their email clients to use plain text. In any case, I vastly prefer receiving HTML in my mailbox instead of MS Word documents. It took over one thousand man hours of bitching to get our HR department to stop sending one line notices in
Great, just great. How am I supposed to know that there's a free Word viewer when I don't have the free Word viewer to read that email that tells me there's a free Word viewer.
Of course, once you get past that hurdle: "Thank you for the information on the free Word viewer. Unfortunately I still can't read your email. Please send me $199.99 for a copy of Windows and $99.99 for a new harddrive so that I can dual-boot to that Windows. Alternatively you can send me $349.99 for a copy of VMWare 3.0. That email must be pretty damn important for all the work you're putting me through."
Most posters here have missed the main point. And though RMS makes some very good points on the political side of things, he still misses the main point.
What if MS Word were Free Software? Would it then be okay to send all your email with MS Word? NO!
Email should always be formatted in a text format such as plain text or HTML. The only attachments in non-text format should be either media files or with the prior permission of the receiver. This is common courtesy. I don't care if the email is formatted in MS Word, AbiWord or OpenOffice. If I get it I will delete it.
Or even better: "I'm sorry, but I cannot access the file you sent me because I do not have MS Word installed. Please use a free document format such as plain text, HTML or PDF, or send me $299.99 so that I can purchase MS Office for the sole purpose of reading your missives."
I'm all rooting for OpenPackages (not OpenPKG) to get stable. It won't cover Solaris, but it will cover Linux, Darwin and OSX.
But that said, I see one advantage to OpenPKG. Since the binaries inside the OpenPKGs will be different, they aren't portable. The advantage must be that the numbnut build managers at these companies only have to learn one tool. I don't see any advantages for the enduser.
The tips offered in that article weren't meant to be taken as rigid inflexible law. Obviously your users need their home directories to be world readable, then make them world readable. But if they don't need it, then setting the directories to 0700 is a wise precaution.
It's not that big of a pain to set up if you have a decent distro that's done the work already. I use FreeBSD, and getting a DocBook environment set up is trivial. It's equally simple under Debian. Slackware has a single package in contribs. Etc.
If your distro doesn't have a docbook package then it can be a major hassle building and setting it up from scratch.
The authors of the application are not distributing it. KDE is distributing the source, and they have mirrors in Germany, so a better question is why Buttplug and Company aren't suing KDE.
:-)
Maybe US Crayola should sue German Crayon
Linux was chosen because GNUStep is a GNU project. That means that they prefer building it on The GNU System. The potentates at GNU believe that LinuxOS is really The GNU System with a trivial kernel replacement. So they chose LiGNuX (the old name that RMS preferred).
Funny thing is, if this distro is under the aegis of GNU, it might actually be the first *genuine* GNU System.
It's because of people like you, with your 'BSD is the best' elitism
Go look at the parent post again. He's *starting* to move his systems to BSD. That means he's not all the way there, thus he can't be an elitist yet. In all probability he finds BSD to be better suited to his needs (as opposed to yours) than Linux.
Dream FreeOS:
Linux hardware support, howtos, support channels
FreeBSD integration, userland, ports, documentation
Because you never know when you need that support. Sometimes you get a brand new computer with hardware that's too new. And sometimes you need to install on an old system with ancient parts. The more devices that FreeBSD (or Linux, or even Windows out-of-the-box) supports the greater the chance that I can get it to install.
It's not a bad price if you compare similar products. Looking at SuSE, Redhat, Slackware, Mandrake, this price is right in the ballpark. I see Linux distros averaging between $35 and $50 US. It wasn't all that long ago that Redhat sold for $80.
This is four CDs, has official status, and you get a big discount if you set up a subscription. The price hasn't changed since the heyday of Walnut Creek.
woo no more isos. now even people with dialup can use FreeBSD
People with dialups have always been able to use FreeBSD. CDs were always available.
Cylogistics (DaemonNews) just isn't big enough to be the main support stop for FreeBSD. Although I believe that they offer support, there's no way they could handle all the support calls even for just North America.
No, it's not yellow journalism. This is DaemonNews' first official release of FreeBSD. Before this time DaemonNews only *distributed* the CDs from Windriver and BSDi. This release is their own, and it's official.
Slow CPU speeds? If the *only* thing you're comparing is Mhz, then of course Pentium wins hands down. But the effective speed of a processor is derived from much more than the clock speed. A 1.5Ghz G5 would make a 1.5Ghz PIV seem like a turtle on exlax.
I don't audit it because I expect those I get it from to have audited it, or at least tested it out before moving it from incoming to final destination.
So you're paranoid. Good for you. But not everyone who uses Linux is paranoid. Witnessing the number of Linux distros and BSD variants that offer precompiled binary updates I think a problem still exists.
Is is just be, or does it seem silly to give any time to a "virus" that requires you to run a binary while rooted?
It's not silly at all. You do it all the time I suspect. I know I do. Do you run every new program, package and update in a jail or sandbox? If not, then shut up.