I find it difficult to believe that Triad bosses even care who votes what. But we were talking about ordinary employers, not criminals. If you knowingly sign up to work for a criminal, you get what you deserve. If you discover that your employer is a criminal after the fact, you need to get out of there as soon as safely possible. I really feel for the Triad slaves, but they have bigger problems to worry about than voting.
The solution of Triad bosses telling their slaves how to vote is not solved by devising yet another voting scheme. The solution is to send the Triad bosses to the bottom of a deep dark prison cell and to free their captives.
There's nothing to prevent your boss (or your abusive husband) from forcing you to vote in his presence.
No, there's not. And there's nothing preventing your next door neighbor from coming over with a shotgun to tell you how to vote. Or for the local Mafia to come around and break you kneecaps for the sign in your yard.
But it's all fantasy. Sure, a few wifebeaters may bosses and spouses may try it, but the threat of going to jail for a very very long time after a very public trial stops the rest of them. Did you have a boss that told you how to vote? If you did nothing then YOU are the problem, not the boss.
It's all to easy to blame evil people for your unwillingness to stop them.
...is that your thuggish boss can say "look buddy, your job is history unless you give me your login and/or let me watch over your shoulder while you vote."
Get real! You're living in pure fantasy land. Tell your fictious boss to take a long walk off a short peer, along with a promise (no threats) that you will sue his ass off and hand it to the media for disection.
A quote from some Palm Beach retiree, seen in the SJMN: "I hope they keep recounting until Gore wins."
A lot of people are calling for the electoral college to be disbanded. The above is one reason why I think it needs to stay. No matter how much the candidates whip their supporters into irrational frenzy, it all gets filtered through the electors. It ain't a perfect system by a long shot, and I'm not claiming electors are any better than condo-maniacs, but it beats the hell out of revoting every time the election gets close.
Falsifying paper votes is pretty easy. Its paper. Think bribery.
Falsifying computer records is pretty easy. Think bribery...
Seriously! Someone in a back room can alter electronic votes. With card ballots, someone has to slip out with a stack of ballots in front of the other election workers. It can happen, but the electronic fraud is easier to get away with.
RMS stepped up and made a gesture of goodwill, publically issuing a legal forgiveness for any infringements on FSF copyrights they might have commited
But KDE used no FSF code. There was nothing for Stallman to forgive. I have a hard time believing that he didn't know it. It would be like me making an announcement to the world at large that I forgave RMS for beating me as a child. He didn't do it, I know he didn't do it, and he would be fully justified in getting angry over my announcement. The situation is no different. Stallman accused KDE of illegal activities then forgave them for it.
No, it was always intended to be free. However, the licensing it was offered under was inconsistent - KDE code was released under the GPL, yet depended on the QT libraries released under the QPL, a license which is not compatible with the GPL.
None of this made KDE unfree, any more than djcpp is unfree because it depends on closed Window libraries. Every byte of KDE code was and is 100% Free Software by the commonly accepted definition of Free Software. It was 100% free to use. 100% free to copy. 100% free to redistribute. 100% free to modify. 100% free to distribute modifications. That it linked with Qt may have been problematic, but in way diminished its Free-ness.
There's a reason there is a GTKStep but no QTStep.
I will forgive:-) you for your ignorance. I, myself, personally, wrote StepStyle, a Qt widget theme based on the NeXT look and feel. Mosfet wrote KStep, a Qt widget theme based on the NeXT look and feel. That's two! Look before you leap.
Forget about writing KDE code if you don't subscribe to the C++ religion also.
It's not a religion, it's a coding preference. I'm not losing sleep over the lack of a Babbage wrapper for Qt. I'll let the Babbage guys worry about it. If they want a Babbage wrapper, it's up to them to write it. This is Open Source (Free Software for those of you living in Rio Linda), so no one is going to hold your hand. Go do it yourself. Just like in the GTK+ world (or do you think those language wrappers miraculously fall out of the sky). Trolltech has enough to do without hiring 100 new developers to port the interface to a 100 different languages.
Stallman has more than once extended the proverbial olive branch to the KDE team
You mean like declaring KDE distributors to be illegal? Like arrogantly granting forgiveness for using code that they, in fact, did not use?
Even though they finally, relunctantly, took the steps needed to make their software free
Their software always was free. It met every definition of the OSD, and every definition of FS stated in the GNU pages. Everyone always had from day one the explicit permission to use, distribute and modify KDE source code. The only thing that changed RMS' mind about the criminal status of folks like me (who gave a copy of KDE to their friend (it would be wrong to deny them if they asked)) was done by Trolltech in their triple-licensing. The KDE core team had nothing to do with it.
Considering that Kylix uses the Qt library for its GUI, and paid good money to Trolltech for services to boot, it's a safe bet to say that it will look as good (or slightly better) under KDE than under GNOME.
Of course, if this GNOME announcement is genuine and not just a spin, then Kylix will be able to use both Qt and GTK+, and it will look great on both desktops (or none at all) at the same time.
they will reject Kylix because of its KDE/Qt associations. You can't accept non-free software just because it's cool.
Both KDE and Qt are 101% Free (as in RMS). KDE has been Free since day one. Qt has been Free for over a year. Face it, KDE/Qt is both Kool and Free. It may not fit into your world view, but then again, reality doesn't give a fig what your world view is.
The problem is that derivation has a distinct direction.
It's perfectly acceptable for a GPL application to include BSD code (as in the Linux kernel) or link to a BSD application, since the BSD license is compatible with the GPL. However, the opposite direction is not allowed. You may not dynamically link an application to a GPL library and release the application under anything but the GPL, because the resulting executable is considered to be a derivative (in the copyright sense) of the library. And the GPL clearly says that the Program, and any work based on the program, must use the same license.
Section 1 of the GPL requires that the original work always and forever be under the GPL. Section 2 pertains to derivative and collective works. However, section three requires all linking code to follow section 1 AND section 2. So even if I could successfully argue that my BSD program is an "independent and separate" work, and it would easy to do so, I would still have to follow section 1 if I distributed a binary executable even though it is clearly not a verbatum copy of the library.
There are many ways to interpret the GPL, and I personally do not feel that dynamic linkage results is derivation. But the above is how RMS and the majority of GPL developers interpret it.
Preferring one license over another is not paranoia. If you don't like my preference, tough. All I am doing is expressing my opinion that Trolltech should license their embedded tool the same as their X11 tool. It's supposed to be "free" software, so stop trying to make it a one party system. No Florida jokes, please.
If you BSD license an application that uses a GPL'd library...
Can't do it. It's illegal. I would be sued by Trolltech. You see, the GPL considers mere linkage to be derivation, and requires any application that merely has an "#include <qt.h>" line to be licensed under the GPL. If you use a GPL library, your own code MUST be GPL.
That's why.
But under the QPL, you have a copylefted library that allows *any* Free or Open Source Software application to link to it.
...anyone can still take your BSD code and use it in a closed source application.
Yes, and that's okay with me for my own code. My BSD license gives the user ZERO rights to any applications it links to. The Qt library is still safe under either the GPL or the QPL. But the QPL Qt is safe without dictating to me what kind of house I can build with their hammer.
As I understand it, a DTD is an interface. As such, it should be completely unrestricted. No proprietary licenses, no copyleft, just plain old BSD, MIT or like license.
I believe that copyright law says that you cannot prevent anyone from using an interface. Any license that restricts access to the interface is taking *away* a right that the user already possesses. This is a pretty big step for copyleft to take, and I don't know that it is legally valid without an end user license.
Another option would be a "weak" copyleft, that guarantees access to the original DTD, but does not restrict any software that uses the DTD. Sort of an LGPL for DTDs. I know you guys want a world where the people you don't like don't exist, but you twist the meaning of "freedom" beyond recognition when you dictate the license that other people's XML documents must be under. (I'm not leveling this solely at the copyleft community, but also at the commercial firms that do the same with proprietary licenses).
Where is the QPL for QtEmbedded? Why is it now legal to write a BSD program in Qt-X11, but illegal for the very same program to use the very same interface on an embedded device? I really like Trolltech, but I think they have painted themselves into a corner trying to please the FSF.
From the Qt/Embedded FAQ: "t has been almost two months since we released Qt/X11 under the GPL, and no adverse effects have occurred because of it, therefore we felt it was safe to proceed with the GPL version of Qt/E." Well, to play devils advocate, it has been almost two months since they released a dual-licensed GPL/QPL Qt/X11, and no adverse effects have occured because of it. Therefore it is safe to proceed with a dual-licensed Qt/Embedded.
I would hate to have to buy a proprietary commercial license to write non-proprietary and non-commercial software.
It has been RMS-certified Free for more than a year. It has been under the GPL for a month. You guys got everything you said you wanted. So why are you still bitching? Two or three years ago your group should have been HONEST and said that nothing that Trolltech would do could satisfy you...
I fully expect Qt to come down in price for Closed Source use in the future, but before it does there needs to be another revenue source. The alternative revenues commonly cited just don't work for Qt. Charging for support is ludicrous: their customer is precisely that type that needs little support, and the library itself has wonderful documentation and and excellent mailing list. To base their revenue on support is to encourage them to ship a product that *needs* support. And giving it away then begging for donations (or kickbacks from Redhat) just isn't realistic.
I do see some movement in the way of alternate revenue streams though. Opera and Kylix both paid good money for Trolltech services. As desktop unices become more common, this revenue will grow. And I see that they are looking into the proprietary add-on market for Qt modules.
But in the end, I still see this huge fact staring out from the window of reality: people who are charging money for their own software are bitching that Trolltech is doing the same. Although the shareware writers may be left out in the cold, it is more than affordable for the vast majority of commercial developers. Go ask your auto mechanic what his tools cost.
I think in the current environment, choosing GPL for something as fundamental as a GUI library is, ultimately, harmful to the goals of free software.
I fully agree. But Qt is not under the GPL. It is under the GPL *and* the QPL.
If you're just a user, it doesn't make any difference. If you're a developer, you can STILL use KDE without having to program for it. I don't like GTK, but I still use GIMP, AbiWord, XMMS and others.
All philosophical issues have evaporated: you can use it under the GPL if software under other licenses are distasteful to use. The aesthetics issue is gone: several OS-emulating widget themes are standard, other themes can be written, KDE has written a bunch of their own, you can use the KDE themes to create your own without having to know programming. Performance is equal to GTK: it always has been, but most distros ship the default build, so build it for multithreading and with -fno-exceptions and it's damn fast!
So the difference is the same as that between pizzas and calzones. There are some people who like pizza but hate calzones. Go figure...
Almost a year ago I posted in the midst of a KDE/GNOME flamewar that it didn't matter what KDE or Trolltech did. They will *never* be accepted by GNU and its sycophants. Now that EVERY stated objection of GNU to KDE is gone, removed, excised and exorcised, I find myself proven correct. These guys just aren't satisified with making their own decisions to use GNOME. With their warped view of freedom, they just can't stand it when people make their own decisions to use KDE.
Okay, all you trolls go home. Nobody's dead, there's no blood on the highway. Not even a banged shin. KDE2 is staying on my desktop. I don't give a shit what Sun says. They aren't my master.
KDE2 still crashes every few hours and they're writing docu?
Proper software engineering says that the documentation should be finished before releasing the software. I hardly think that they're early. Hell, they're late! But in any case, KDE is not crashing on my box (Slackware 7.1). I find it extremely stable. KOffice has a ways to go, but the rest of the standard KDE2 is quite nice.
Qt is Free Software for Free Software, Open Source for Open Source, and Proprietary for Proprietary. What more could you want?
Instead of asking yourself if you really want to use a library under the GPL/QPL, instead ask yourself if you want to write an Open or Closed application...
The *information* is open, not the specific format of a particular copy. If I buy the renewable resource version in paper, I also am unable to modify it without resorting to pencil, pen or crayon.
Slashdot Mirror
I find it difficult to believe that Triad bosses even care who votes what. But we were talking about ordinary employers, not criminals. If you knowingly sign up to work for a criminal, you get what you deserve. If you discover that your employer is a criminal after the fact, you need to get out of there as soon as safely possible. I really feel for the Triad slaves, but they have bigger problems to worry about than voting.
The solution of Triad bosses telling their slaves how to vote is not solved by devising yet another voting scheme. The solution is to send the Triad bosses to the bottom of a deep dark prison cell and to free their captives.
There's nothing to prevent your boss (or your abusive husband) from forcing you to vote in his presence.
No, there's not. And there's nothing preventing your next door neighbor from coming over with a shotgun to tell you how to vote. Or for the local Mafia to come around and break you kneecaps for the sign in your yard.
But it's all fantasy. Sure, a few wifebeaters may bosses and spouses may try it, but the threat of going to jail for a very very long time after a very public trial stops the rest of them. Did you have a boss that told you how to vote? If you did nothing then YOU are the problem, not the boss.
It's all to easy to blame evil people for your unwillingness to stop them.
You do know, don't you, that your post is borderline libel?
...is that your thuggish boss can say "look buddy, your job is history unless you give me your login and/or let me watch over your shoulder while you vote."
Get real! You're living in pure fantasy land. Tell your fictious boss to take a long walk off a short peer, along with a promise (no threats) that you will sue his ass off and hand it to the media for disection.
A quote from some Palm Beach retiree, seen in the SJMN: "I hope they keep recounting until Gore wins."
A lot of people are calling for the electoral college to be disbanded. The above is one reason why I think it needs to stay. No matter how much the candidates whip their supporters into irrational frenzy, it all gets filtered through the electors. It ain't a perfect system by a long shot, and I'm not claiming electors are any better than condo-maniacs, but it beats the hell out of revoting every time the election gets close.
Falsifying paper votes is pretty easy. Its paper. Think bribery.
Falsifying computer records is pretty easy. Think bribery...
Seriously! Someone in a back room can alter electronic votes. With card ballots, someone has to slip out with a stack of ballots in front of the other election workers. It can happen, but the electronic fraud is easier to get away with.
RMS stepped up and made a gesture of goodwill, publically issuing a legal forgiveness for any infringements on FSF copyrights they might have commited
:-) you for your ignorance. I, myself, personally, wrote StepStyle, a Qt widget theme based on the NeXT look and feel. Mosfet wrote KStep, a Qt widget theme based on the NeXT look and feel. That's two! Look before you leap.
But KDE used no FSF code. There was nothing for Stallman to forgive. I have a hard time believing that he didn't know it. It would be like me making an announcement to the world at large that I forgave RMS for beating me as a child. He didn't do it, I know he didn't do it, and he would be fully justified in getting angry over my announcement. The situation is no different. Stallman accused KDE of illegal activities then forgave them for it.
No, it was always intended to be free. However, the licensing it was offered under was inconsistent - KDE code was released under the GPL, yet depended on the QT libraries released under the QPL, a license which is not compatible with the GPL.
None of this made KDE unfree, any more than djcpp is unfree because it depends on closed Window libraries. Every byte of KDE code was and is 100% Free Software by the commonly accepted definition of Free Software. It was 100% free to use. 100% free to copy. 100% free to redistribute. 100% free to modify. 100% free to distribute modifications. That it linked with Qt may have been problematic, but in way diminished its Free-ness.
There's a reason there is a GTKStep but no QTStep.
I will forgive
Forget about writing KDE code if you don't subscribe to the C++ religion also.
It's not a religion, it's a coding preference. I'm not losing sleep over the lack of a Babbage wrapper for Qt. I'll let the Babbage guys worry about it. If they want a Babbage wrapper, it's up to them to write it. This is Open Source (Free Software for those of you living in Rio Linda), so no one is going to hold your hand. Go do it yourself. Just like in the GTK+ world (or do you think those language wrappers miraculously fall out of the sky). Trolltech has enough to do without hiring 100 new developers to port the interface to a 100 different languages.
Stallman has more than once extended the proverbial olive branch to the KDE team
You mean like declaring KDE distributors to be illegal? Like arrogantly granting forgiveness for using code that they, in fact, did not use?
Even though they finally, relunctantly, took the steps needed to make their software free
Their software always was free. It met every definition of the OSD, and every definition of FS stated in the GNU pages. Everyone always had from day one the explicit permission to use, distribute and modify KDE source code. The only thing that changed RMS' mind about the criminal status of folks like me (who gave a copy of KDE to their friend (it would be wrong to deny them if they asked)) was done by Trolltech in their triple-licensing. The KDE core team had nothing to do with it.
Considering that Kylix uses the Qt library for its GUI, and paid good money to Trolltech for services to boot, it's a safe bet to say that it will look as good (or slightly better) under KDE than under GNOME.
Of course, if this GNOME announcement is genuine and not just a spin, then Kylix will be able to use both Qt and GTK+, and it will look great on both desktops (or none at all) at the same time.
they will reject Kylix because of its KDE/Qt associations. You can't accept non-free software just because it's cool.
Both KDE and Qt are 101% Free (as in RMS). KDE has been Free since day one. Qt has been Free for over a year. Face it, KDE/Qt is both Kool and Free. It may not fit into your world view, but then again, reality doesn't give a fig what your world view is.
The problem is that derivation has a distinct direction.
It's perfectly acceptable for a GPL application to include BSD code (as in the Linux kernel) or link to a BSD application, since the BSD license is compatible with the GPL. However, the opposite direction is not allowed. You may not dynamically link an application to a GPL library and release the application under anything but the GPL, because the resulting executable is considered to be a derivative (in the copyright sense) of the library. And the GPL clearly says that the Program, and any work based on the program, must use the same license.
Section 1 of the GPL requires that the original work always and forever be under the GPL. Section 2 pertains to derivative and collective works. However, section three requires all linking code to follow section 1 AND section 2. So even if I could successfully argue that my BSD program is an "independent and separate" work, and it would easy to do so, I would still have to follow section 1 if I distributed a binary executable even though it is clearly not a verbatum copy of the library.
There are many ways to interpret the GPL, and I personally do not feel that dynamic linkage results is derivation. But the above is how RMS and the majority of GPL developers interpret it.
Preferring one license over another is not paranoia. If you don't like my preference, tough. All I am doing is expressing my opinion that Trolltech should license their embedded tool the same as their X11 tool. It's supposed to be "free" software, so stop trying to make it a one party system. No Florida jokes, please.
If you BSD license an application that uses a GPL'd library...
...anyone can still take your BSD code and use it in a closed source application.
Can't do it. It's illegal. I would be sued by Trolltech. You see, the GPL considers mere linkage to be derivation, and requires any application that merely has an "#include <qt.h>" line to be licensed under the GPL. If you use a GPL library, your own code MUST be GPL.
That's why.
But under the QPL, you have a copylefted library that allows *any* Free or Open Source Software application to link to it.
Yes, and that's okay with me for my own code. My BSD license gives the user ZERO rights to any applications it links to. The Qt library is still safe under either the GPL or the QPL. But the QPL Qt is safe without dictating to me what kind of house I can build with their hammer.
As I understand it, a DTD is an interface. As such, it should be completely unrestricted. No proprietary licenses, no copyleft, just plain old BSD, MIT or like license.
I believe that copyright law says that you cannot prevent anyone from using an interface. Any license that restricts access to the interface is taking *away* a right that the user already possesses. This is a pretty big step for copyleft to take, and I don't know that it is legally valid without an end user license.
Another option would be a "weak" copyleft, that guarantees access to the original DTD, but does not restrict any software that uses the DTD. Sort of an LGPL for DTDs. I know you guys want a world where the people you don't like don't exist, but you twist the meaning of "freedom" beyond recognition when you dictate the license that other people's XML documents must be under. (I'm not leveling this solely at the copyleft community, but also at the commercial firms that do the same with proprietary licenses).
Where is the QPL for QtEmbedded? Why is it now legal to write a BSD program in Qt-X11, but illegal for the very same program to use the very same interface on an embedded device? I really like Trolltech, but I think they have painted themselves into a corner trying to please the FSF.
From the Qt/Embedded FAQ: "t has been almost two months since we released Qt/X11 under the GPL, and no adverse effects have occurred because of it, therefore we felt it was safe to proceed with the GPL version of Qt/E." Well, to play devils advocate, it has been almost two months since they released a dual-licensed GPL/QPL Qt/X11, and no adverse effects have occured because of it. Therefore it is safe to proceed with a dual-licensed Qt/Embedded.
I would hate to have to buy a proprietary commercial license to write non-proprietary and non-commercial software.
Because then it would involve work, and we would have nothing left to complain about.
It has been RMS-certified Free for more than a year. It has been under the GPL for a month. You guys got everything you said you wanted. So why are you still bitching? Two or three years ago your group should have been HONEST and said that nothing that Trolltech would do could satisfy you...
You misunderstand me! I called no one evil! I'll leave the moralizing name calling to the stallmanistas...
:-)
There's nothing wrong in bitching. Hell, I bitch sometimes myself
I fully expect Qt to come down in price for Closed Source use in the future, but before it does there needs to be another revenue source. The alternative revenues commonly cited just don't work for Qt. Charging for support is ludicrous: their customer is precisely that type that needs little support, and the library itself has wonderful documentation and and excellent mailing list. To base their revenue on support is to encourage them to ship a product that *needs* support. And giving it away then begging for donations (or kickbacks from Redhat) just isn't realistic.
I do see some movement in the way of alternate revenue streams though. Opera and Kylix both paid good money for Trolltech services. As desktop unices become more common, this revenue will grow. And I see that they are looking into the proprietary add-on market for Qt modules.
But in the end, I still see this huge fact staring out from the window of reality: people who are charging money for their own software are bitching that Trolltech is doing the same. Although the shareware writers may be left out in the cold, it is more than affordable for the vast majority of commercial developers. Go ask your auto mechanic what his tools cost.
I think in the current environment, choosing GPL for something as fundamental as a GUI library is, ultimately, harmful to the goals of free software.
I fully agree. But Qt is not under the GPL. It is under the GPL *and* the QPL.
If you're just a user, it doesn't make any difference. If you're a developer, you can STILL use KDE without having to program for it. I don't like GTK, but I still use GIMP, AbiWord, XMMS and others.
All philosophical issues have evaporated: you can use it under the GPL if software under other licenses are distasteful to use. The aesthetics issue is gone: several OS-emulating widget themes are standard, other themes can be written, KDE has written a bunch of their own, you can use the KDE themes to create your own without having to know programming. Performance is equal to GTK: it always has been, but most distros ship the default build, so build it for multithreading and with -fno-exceptions and it's damn fast!
So the difference is the same as that between pizzas and calzones. There are some people who like pizza but hate calzones. Go figure...
Almost a year ago I posted in the midst of a KDE/GNOME flamewar that it didn't matter what KDE or Trolltech did. They will *never* be accepted by GNU and its sycophants. Now that EVERY stated objection of GNU to KDE is gone, removed, excised and exorcised, I find myself proven correct. These guys just aren't satisified with making their own decisions to use GNOME. With their warped view of freedom, they just can't stand it when people make their own decisions to use KDE.
Oh my god! There's a corpse on my desk!
Okay, all you trolls go home. Nobody's dead, there's no blood on the highway. Not even a banged shin. KDE2 is staying on my desktop. I don't give a shit what Sun says. They aren't my master.
KDE2 still crashes every few hours and they're writing docu?
Proper software engineering says that the documentation should be finished before releasing the software. I hardly think that they're early. Hell, they're late! But in any case, KDE is not crashing on my box (Slackware 7.1). I find it extremely stable. KOffice has a ways to go, but the rest of the standard KDE2 is quite nice.
Qt is Free Software for Free Software, Open Source for Open Source, and Proprietary for Proprietary. What more could you want?
Instead of asking yourself if you really want to use a library under the GPL/QPL, instead ask yourself if you want to write an Open or Closed application...
The *information* is open, not the specific format of a particular copy. If I buy the renewable resource version in paper, I also am unable to modify it without resorting to pencil, pen or crayon.