But what about a program developed using GPL header files...
The GPL does not regulate the *development* of programs. To quote: "Activities other than copying, distribution and modification are not covered by this License."
The typical header file contains only an interface to the library, and there is already case law that you cannot copyright an interface. A binary that was created using a header file does not distribute that header file.
One possible complication is with header files that actually include code (like inlines, templates, etc). This is problematic, but is still a corner case. For many of these fair use is applicable, but for a few, the terms of the GPL apply.
I do believe someone who does things to support the good of all is a better person than one who does not.
I agree. But someone who downloads Linux for free and never contributes any code, documentation, money, or anything else back, supports no one else but themselves.
Merely using Linux does not make you a better person from any angle that I look at.
Which in the end makes your post hypocritical...
Reread my post. I attributed no moral relativity to anything (which I why I used the neutral yardstick of utilitarianism). I did, however, attribute the adjective of "stupid" to the idea that using Linux makes people morally superior.
It seems to me that if GPL does indeed allow this than it is a definite loophole that perhaps needs to be fixed in a new version of the license.
No. This would go against everything that Free Software stands for. The only way to implement it is to restrict/prohibit/regulate the use of the software. If the FSF does this and calls it freedom, I might as well throw away my dictionary.
Do not restrict runtime linkage and call it freedom. This is absurd. Of course it's a loophole. That's why it's free. If you didn't want any loopholes stick with proprietary software!
It doesn't matter what the FSF says, or what RMS says, or what the general opinion on Slashdot is. All that matters is what copyright law and the GPL say. A program linked by the end user at run time to a GPL library is NOT a derivative work! If you disagree, please cite copyright law where I am wrong. I've searched and searched and I can't find it.
Balderdash! This is attaching your personal economic motivations upon another. You might feel you are a better person because you use one product over another, but that has absolutely no bearing on anyone else.
A) Download Linux for free. You benefit.
B) Purchase Windows. You and Bill Gates both benefit.
Option B has a greater positive economic benefit. Unless you're contributing back code to someone else's project, option A doesn't benefit anyone but you.
I do not chose option B because Windows is a shoddy product. But I certainly don't consider myself a better person for it. That's stupid!
Why not install KDE, Gnome or your favourite X Window environment of choice ?
I can't install KDE because it's Solaris 2.5.1 (not ICE or SM). I did install WindowMaker, but I had to install it in my own quota-limited home directory. I certainly didn't get any help from IT. But not of it was Sun's fault. I can only blame my employer for not preinstalling KDE, or giving me a larger home directory, or failing to grant me root access.
Claiming that similar limitations to Microsoft, as the previous poster did, is just wrong. If someone has a beef with using Windows at work, then blame the employer.
The abuses you attribute to Microsoft are common, everyday occurances in any industry where one producer uses the services of another. Discounts for exclusive vendor contracts are a dime a dozen.
You mentioned the free market, so I'll assume that you know what it means. In a free market, no party to a transaction is required to either buy or sell. Microsoft does not have to sell to Compaq, and Compaq does not have buy from Microsoft. In order for Compaq to purchase Windows, they had to agree to Microsoft's price. Exclusive contracts where part of that price. They voluntarily chose to pay a smaller monetary price with a contract than a higher monetary price without a contract.
If entire industries and sectors have come to rely upon a single producer, it would be far better to question why those industries made such a stupid mistake than to question why Microsoft chose to sell to those willing to buy.
And, to date, I have seen no Microsoft executive state that they wish to forcibly deny me a choice. Do you have any quotes and references to back up your claim that they did?
Do you know what a tied house is? It's where the pub has a contract not to sell just one brand. Sometimes they are outright owned by the brewery. Not much different than the agreements Microsoft has with a few OEMs.
I have to use their stupid products at work, and they make the frustration level of my job ten times worse.
At my work I have to use Solaris. It's awful! I get a choice between CDE and olwm. Evil Sun! Evil cruel Sun! Of course, my employer had nothing to do with it.
It has devoured company after company.
I am aware of no company that Microsoft has bought out that was not already for sale. If a company doesn't want to be bought, they shouldn't go public. Instead of blaming Microsoft, blame all the stockholders who sold.
The company I work for just got bought by a corporation at least five times the size of Microsoft. We were miniscule in size compared to them. But we made a competing product that had the number one market share in its category. How did they buy us out? Because we were for sale.
They want to make you pay to keep your software running.
So, they have decided to lease their software instead of selling it. My landlord does they same thing. I have to pay month after month to live in my own home. Awful! Of course, your choosing to use other software will be considerably easier than my choosing to buy my own home.
If you don't want to rent Microsoft software, then don't. No one is making you rent it.
...every unhappy customer that wanders off, shaves a little sliver off the MS block.
Yup! I couldn't agree more. The customers are in full control of Microsoft. They made every dime they had because people bought their products. They didn't pass any omnibus tax bills. They didn't commit armed robbery. They didn't find it in a bag on the beach. Perhaps, just perhaps, Microsoft got as big as they did because a lot of people actually chose to buy their software? I sure wouldn't choose to buy it. But a hell of a lot of people do.
You see, I want a choice as to what software I utilize on my computer.
Microsoft most certainly does not want me to have that choice.
I'm drinking an Anchor Steam right now. Pete's Brewing company would rather have me drinking a Pete's Wicked. My CPU is AMD. Intel doesn't like that. Even the open source community is not immune. I'm running FreeBSD. That's certainly not what the typical Slashdot poster would recommend.
In all of the above situations, the competitors to the products am an using wish I was using something else. But they will not insist upon it. Instead, they will play by the rules of the game and try to win me over by various voluntary means, such as marketing or making a better product.
Microsoft is no different. Their goal is not to deny you a choice, but instead to offer you a product that you desire more than what the competition offers. For you, I, and most of the Slashdot readship, they have failed. But they have suceeded immeasurably in the first time computer user category.
Microsoft has acted no differently than most software companies. What they are being tried for is perfectly legal and ethical for small companies. But Microsoft is not small, and are being sued for doing nothing more than being big. Exclusive contracts with OEMs is nothing new. Bundling two products together is nothing new. Offering discounts to the largest customers is nothing new.
Wishing the competition did not do so well is nothing new.
Why are do you guys hate Microsoft so much? Serious answers, please.
Proprietary software. Then why don't you hatee BeOS, Apple, or Sun even one percent as much. Why did RMS flip off the Microsoft building at Stanford a few years back, but didn't flip off the Sun or HP buildings just down the street? It can't be because Microsoft sells proprietary software, because when you guys aren't bashing Microsoft, you're defending proprietary Napster.
Monopoly. Okay, sure, by some definitions of the word, they are indeed a monopoly. Do you hate your local telco and cable provider just as much? What about the USPS?
Rich bastards. Okay, they have tons of money. But what they have is peanuts compared to some other corporations. Why don't you similarly hate IBM? Why don't you hate Cisco, Philips, or ADM every bit as much as you hate Microsoft?
Microsoft tax. I've owned three PCs in my life, and am ready to purchase my fourth next week. None of them came with any Microsoft products. The one I'm purchasing next week won't either. I don't the salesman I didn't want Windows, so he scratched it off the manifest and subtracted the full retail price off the total.
Shoddy products. Lots of companies, particularly in the software field, ship shoddy shit. Are Microsoft's products so much worse than all the other crap on the store shelves?
From what I can see, the vast majority of you guys aren't even using any Microsoft products. You've already proven beyond a shadow of a doubt tht Microsoft has absolutely no say in what software you use. One could almost get the impression is that the ONLY reason you use Linux is because it ain't Windows.
Yes, Microsoft has more money than all 19 states put together.
Does anyone have any facts to back this up? I really find it hard to believe. Of course, Microsoft has more money in all their departments put together than the individual states do in merely their AG departments, but that's comparing apples to oranges. But it's a big stretch to say that Microsoft has more money that all these states put together.
I was in college in the mid-1980's. College itself was an interesting experience. Coming straight from conservative, agricultural, clean country into liberal, urban, polluted university was a shock.
I remember when the US "invaded" Grenada. What a weird day (and day after) that was. Quite a view university folks were in fear of a nuclear exchange of some kind.
Oh, and my graduation was marred by a two hour commencement address by Herb Marcuse who told us how we had nothing to look forward too. There were no jobs because of Reagan. We would catch aids because of Reagan. We would have to wear gas masks because of Reagan's pollution. We would be arrested by Reagan's brownshirt thugs. Nuclear conflagration was inevitable. Gaagh!
It is a privelege bestowed by law, for which the constitution explicitly allows but does not grant outright.
I understand where you are coming from, but you worded your post quite badly. If the EULA has been agreed to by the school districts, then Microsoft certainly has the right to enforce those contracts. This is a much different thing than the privilege of copyright.
(whether the EULA counts as a valid contract is another matter)
Konqueror is not Linux. KDE/Konqueror runs on any POSIX/X11 system, and work is being done to get it on systems without those.
Re:Object Oriented programming is overrated
on
Why not Ruby?
·
· Score: 2
To quote from your post:
"I say Object Oriented Programming is highly overrated."
If it's "not just procedural and OO", then why are you saying OOP is highly overrated? That implies that procedural programming is not overrated, and thus better than OOP.
This may not be what you meant to say, but that's how it sounds.
Re:Object Oriented programming is overrated
on
Why not Ruby?
·
· Score: 3
Use the right tool for the job. If your domain does not fit an object oriented paradigm, then by all means don't use it! Procedural languages are algorithm-centric while OO languages are data-centric. So pick your language based on your problem.
When you domain model is appropriate for OOP, then by all means use an OO language. Sure, you can do it in C. But you could also do it in assembler. If you're going to use OO, then use a language that supports and facilitates OO.
There is no "de facto" license for software. In the absence of an agreement or grant of permission, the full scope of copyright law applies.
That means you may (in the US at least) use the program, make archival copies of it for your own personal use, and reverse engineer it (some jurisdictions don't allow the latter).
I know a town of 18,000 (okay, it's 15,000). The land area of this town is one square mile. The typical property there has a roof area of 25% of the ground area.
Putting solar cells on roofs is a great idea. When we get the right materials technology, paving our streets with it is even better. But that still won't be enough to be engergy self-sufficient.
When we get solar cells with 90% efficiency, it will be real smart to use them. But they still won't replace other sources of power.
Think of your own city or town, and where you would put that much solar cells. I live in Mountain View, California. In order for it to work for us, we would either have to pave over a significant portion of the San Fransisco Bay, or declare war on Palo Alto and take their surface area.
I didn't say he approved it. He said that the first two of the three objections he had to the APSL have been fixed by Apple. He still has an objection remaining, and that is the requirement to disclose all modifications. You can find this information in the very first paragraph of the page you site.
The four freedoms do not mention freedom from reporting modifications to the author.
2. APSL does not respect privacy
This is exactly the same as number 1. Again, the four freedoms do not mention freedom from reporting modifications to the author.
3. Apple has too much revocation power under APSL.
This flaw in the APSL was fixed. It had to be fixed before it could be officially Open Source. RMS even acknowledges that this problem is fixed.
The only thing left in the APSL that is problematic to RMS (and to me as well, by the way) is the prohibition against private modifications used commercially. But again, the Free Software definition does not mention the freedom from reporting modifications to the author.
Slashdot Mirror
But what about a program developed using GPL header files...
The GPL does not regulate the *development* of programs. To quote: "Activities other than copying, distribution and modification are not covered by this License."
The typical header file contains only an interface to the library, and there is already case law that you cannot copyright an interface. A binary that was created using a header file does not distribute that header file.
One possible complication is with header files that actually include code (like inlines, templates, etc). This is problematic, but is still a corner case. For many of these fair use is applicable, but for a few, the terms of the GPL apply.
I do believe someone who does things to support the good of all is a better person than one who does not.
I agree. But someone who downloads Linux for free and never contributes any code, documentation, money, or anything else back, supports no one else but themselves.
Merely using Linux does not make you a better person from any angle that I look at.
Which in the end makes your post hypocritical...
Reread my post. I attributed no moral relativity to anything (which I why I used the neutral yardstick of utilitarianism). I did, however, attribute the adjective of "stupid" to the idea that using Linux makes people morally superior.
It seems to me that if GPL does indeed allow this than it is a definite loophole that perhaps needs to be fixed in a new version of the license.
No. This would go against everything that Free Software stands for. The only way to implement it is to restrict/prohibit/regulate the use of the software. If the FSF does this and calls it freedom, I might as well throw away my dictionary.
Do not restrict runtime linkage and call it freedom. This is absurd. Of course it's a loophole. That's why it's free. If you didn't want any loopholes stick with proprietary software!
It doesn't matter what the FSF says, or what RMS says, or what the general opinion on Slashdot is. All that matters is what copyright law and the GPL say. A program linked by the end user at run time to a GPL library is NOT a derivative work! If you disagree, please cite copyright law where I am wrong. I've searched and searched and I can't find it.
Balderdash! This is attaching your personal economic motivations upon another. You might feel you are a better person because you use one product over another, but that has absolutely no bearing on anyone else.
A) Download Linux for free. You benefit.
B) Purchase Windows. You and Bill Gates both benefit.
Option B has a greater positive economic benefit. Unless you're contributing back code to someone else's project, option A doesn't benefit anyone but you.
I do not chose option B because Windows is a shoddy product. But I certainly don't consider myself a better person for it. That's stupid!
Why not install KDE, Gnome or your favourite X Window environment of choice ?
I can't install KDE because it's Solaris 2.5.1 (not ICE or SM). I did install WindowMaker, but I had to install it in my own quota-limited home directory. I certainly didn't get any help from IT. But not of it was Sun's fault. I can only blame my employer for not preinstalling KDE, or giving me a larger home directory, or failing to grant me root access.
Claiming that similar limitations to Microsoft, as the previous poster did, is just wrong. If someone has a beef with using Windows at work, then blame the employer.
The abuses you attribute to Microsoft are common, everyday occurances in any industry where one producer uses the services of another. Discounts for exclusive vendor contracts are a dime a dozen.
You mentioned the free market, so I'll assume that you know what it means. In a free market, no party to a transaction is required to either buy or sell. Microsoft does not have to sell to Compaq, and Compaq does not have buy from Microsoft. In order for Compaq to purchase Windows, they had to agree to Microsoft's price. Exclusive contracts where part of that price. They voluntarily chose to pay a smaller monetary price with a contract than a higher monetary price without a contract.
If entire industries and sectors have come to rely upon a single producer, it would be far better to question why those industries made such a stupid mistake than to question why Microsoft chose to sell to those willing to buy.
And, to date, I have seen no Microsoft executive state that they wish to forcibly deny me a choice. Do you have any quotes and references to back up your claim that they did?
Do you know what a tied house is? It's where the pub has a contract not to sell just one brand. Sometimes they are outright owned by the brewery. Not much different than the agreements Microsoft has with a few OEMs.
I have to use their stupid products at work, and they make the frustration level of my job ten times worse.
...every unhappy customer that wanders off, shaves a little sliver off the MS block.
At my work I have to use Solaris. It's awful! I get a choice between CDE and olwm. Evil Sun! Evil cruel Sun! Of course, my employer had nothing to do with it.
It has devoured company after company.
I am aware of no company that Microsoft has bought out that was not already for sale. If a company doesn't want to be bought, they shouldn't go public. Instead of blaming Microsoft, blame all the stockholders who sold.
The company I work for just got bought by a corporation at least five times the size of Microsoft. We were miniscule in size compared to them. But we made a competing product that had the number one market share in its category. How did they buy us out? Because we were for sale.
They want to make you pay to keep your software running.
So, they have decided to lease their software instead of selling it. My landlord does they same thing. I have to pay month after month to live in my own home. Awful! Of course, your choosing to use other software will be considerably easier than my choosing to buy my own home.
If you don't want to rent Microsoft software, then don't. No one is making you rent it.
Yup! I couldn't agree more. The customers are in full control of Microsoft. They made every dime they had because people bought their products. They didn't pass any omnibus tax bills. They didn't commit armed robbery. They didn't find it in a bag on the beach. Perhaps, just perhaps, Microsoft got as big as they did because a lot of people actually chose to buy their software? I sure wouldn't choose to buy it. But a hell of a lot of people do.
Always allow alliteration in all allegories!
You see, I want a choice as to what software I utilize on my computer.
Microsoft most certainly does not want me to have that choice.
I'm drinking an Anchor Steam right now. Pete's Brewing company would rather have me drinking a Pete's Wicked. My CPU is AMD. Intel doesn't like that. Even the open source community is not immune. I'm running FreeBSD. That's certainly not what the typical Slashdot poster would recommend.
In all of the above situations, the competitors to the products am an using wish I was using something else. But they will not insist upon it. Instead, they will play by the rules of the game and try to win me over by various voluntary means, such as marketing or making a better product.
Microsoft is no different. Their goal is not to deny you a choice, but instead to offer you a product that you desire more than what the competition offers. For you, I, and most of the Slashdot readship, they have failed. But they have suceeded immeasurably in the first time computer user category.
Microsoft has acted no differently than most software companies. What they are being tried for is perfectly legal and ethical for small companies. But Microsoft is not small, and are being sued for doing nothing more than being big. Exclusive contracts with OEMs is nothing new. Bundling two products together is nothing new. Offering discounts to the largest customers is nothing new.
Wishing the competition did not do so well is nothing new.
Why are do you guys hate Microsoft so much? Serious answers, please.
Proprietary software. Then why don't you hatee BeOS, Apple, or Sun even one percent as much. Why did RMS flip off the Microsoft building at Stanford a few years back, but didn't flip off the Sun or HP buildings just down the street? It can't be because Microsoft sells proprietary software, because when you guys aren't bashing Microsoft, you're defending proprietary Napster.
Monopoly. Okay, sure, by some definitions of the word, they are indeed a monopoly. Do you hate your local telco and cable provider just as much? What about the USPS?
Rich bastards. Okay, they have tons of money. But what they have is peanuts compared to some other corporations. Why don't you similarly hate IBM? Why don't you hate Cisco, Philips, or ADM every bit as much as you hate Microsoft?
Microsoft tax. I've owned three PCs in my life, and am ready to purchase my fourth next week. None of them came with any Microsoft products. The one I'm purchasing next week won't either. I don't the salesman I didn't want Windows, so he scratched it off the manifest and subtracted the full retail price off the total.
Shoddy products. Lots of companies, particularly in the software field, ship shoddy shit. Are Microsoft's products so much worse than all the other crap on the store shelves?
From what I can see, the vast majority of you guys aren't even using any Microsoft products. You've already proven beyond a shadow of a doubt tht Microsoft has absolutely no say in what software you use. One could almost get the impression is that the ONLY reason you use Linux is because it ain't Windows.
Yes, Microsoft has more money than all 19 states put together.
Does anyone have any facts to back this up? I really find it hard to believe. Of course, Microsoft has more money in all their departments put together than the individual states do in merely their AG departments, but that's comparing apples to oranges. But it's a big stretch to say that Microsoft has more money that all these states put together.
I was in college in the mid-1980's. College itself was an interesting experience. Coming straight from conservative, agricultural, clean country into liberal, urban, polluted university was a shock.
I remember when the US "invaded" Grenada. What a weird day (and day after) that was. Quite a view university folks were in fear of a nuclear exchange of some kind.
Oh, and my graduation was marred by a two hour commencement address by Herb Marcuse who told us how we had nothing to look forward too. There were no jobs because of Reagan. We would catch aids because of Reagan. We would have to wear gas masks because of Reagan's pollution. We would be arrested by Reagan's brownshirt thugs. Nuclear conflagration was inevitable. Gaagh!
I think the whole situation is funny. One monopoly is charging high prices to another :-)
Microsoft has about a 90-95% market share. Public schools have about a 95-98% market share.
It is a privelege bestowed by law, for which the constitution explicitly allows but does not grant outright.
I understand where you are coming from, but you worded your post quite badly. If the EULA has been agreed to by the school districts, then Microsoft certainly has the right to enforce those contracts. This is a much different thing than the privilege of copyright.
(whether the EULA counts as a valid contract is another matter)
That's all well and good, but...
Konqueror is not Linux. KDE/Konqueror runs on any POSIX/X11 system, and work is being done to get it on systems without those.
To quote from your post:
"I say Object Oriented Programming is highly overrated."
If it's "not just procedural and OO", then why are you saying OOP is highly overrated? That implies that procedural programming is not overrated, and thus better than OOP.
This may not be what you meant to say, but that's how it sounds.
Use the right tool for the job. If your domain does not fit an object oriented paradigm, then by all means don't use it! Procedural languages are algorithm-centric while OO languages are data-centric. So pick your language based on your problem.
When you domain model is appropriate for OOP, then by all means use an OO language. Sure, you can do it in C. But you could also do it in assembler. If you're going to use OO, then use a language that supports and facilitates OO.
So to use the gun analogy... Ban metallurgy?
There is no "de facto" license for software. In the absence of an agreement or grant of permission, the full scope of copyright law applies.
That means you may (in the US at least) use the program, make archival copies of it for your own personal use, and reverse engineer it (some jurisdictions don't allow the latter).
I know a town of 18,000 (okay, it's 15,000). The land area of this town is one square mile. The typical property there has a roof area of 25% of the ground area.
Putting solar cells on roofs is a great idea. When we get the right materials technology, paving our streets with it is even better. But that still won't be enough to be engergy self-sufficient.
When we get solar cells with 90% efficiency, it will be real smart to use them. But they still won't replace other sources of power.
One square mile is a LOT of area.
Think of your own city or town, and where you would put that much solar cells. I live in Mountain View, California. In order for it to work for us, we would either have to pave over a significant portion of the San Fransisco Bay, or declare war on Palo Alto and take their surface area.
I didn't say he approved it. He said that the first two of the three objections he had to the APSL have been fixed by Apple. He still has an objection remaining, and that is the requirement to disclose all modifications. You can find this information in the very first paragraph of the page you site.
1. APSL requires reporting to Apple.
The four freedoms do not mention freedom from reporting modifications to the author.
2. APSL does not respect privacy
This is exactly the same as number 1. Again, the four freedoms do not mention freedom from reporting modifications to the author.
3. Apple has too much revocation power under APSL.
This flaw in the APSL was fixed. It had to be fixed before it could be officially Open Source. RMS even acknowledges that this problem is fixed.
The only thing left in the APSL that is problematic to RMS (and to me as well, by the way) is the prohibition against private modifications used commercially. But again, the Free Software definition does not mention the freedom from reporting modifications to the author.