Constitutionally, as soon as a work is published, it belongs to the public.
Sort of... If it is *publically* published, then it belongs to the public once copyright expires. But if I give a copy to a client with an agreement that they are restricted with it in certain ways, it is a private publication, and the constitution is silent
Which is why the vendor should be required to disclose the book's "special feature" and obtain informed consent at the point of purchase, via a separate signature than the one used for credit card authorization.
I would agree [sic]. I disagree with all forms of "shrink-wrap", and this is one. One of the other respondents assumed that I was arguing against bitching about the practice. Nothing could be further than the truth. Bitch all you want, and bitch loudly! However, some posts were advocating passing laws and regulations upon publishers and authors...
I have to ask why the outrage? What legal or moral rights of yours is the author infringing on?
I don't know how large this book it, so I'll assume 400 pages. So you have read three quarters of the book without having to make a decision on opening the sealed CD. Now that decision looms over you. Your choices are a) accept the license and unseal the CD, b) return the book for a full refund, c) ignore the license, unseal the CD, violate the license, and go through the rest of life knowing that you have broken your word.
We all agree that an author has a right to keep his work totally to himself, unpublished. He also has the right to place it in the public domain or otherwise allow every other person free access to it. If these two extremes are not immoral, then why is the middle ground, of only allowing a subset of people access to it, an immoral act?
I will agree that having the last quarter of the book in a PDF file to be very inconvenient. I will also agree that having to enter into a contract to access this PDF goes beyond inconvenience to the realm of onerous. If I encountered the above situation I would certainly choose choice (b) and also send a nasty note to the author and publisher. But in a free society I have no moral right to compell the author to publish the book in the manner that I wish. In fact, to tell the author that he cannot enter into any private agreements with his readers is the antithesis of freedom.
I'd argue that licenses on books - particularly non-trivial books (eg textbooks) ought not to be licensed.
As long as you keep the wording to "ought to", then I will agree. But past history has shown that every time a significant group has believed in an "ought to" or "should not", it becomes a "must" or "must not", then lobbyists get involved, and before you know it people get hauled into court and thrown into jail for merely offending someone's sensibilities. This is why I will defend a publisher's or author's right to decide how they will release their works even if I disagree with how they do it.
I can think of nothing more non-free (in both the dictionary and the Stallman sense) than to force publishers through the use of law, courts and jails to release their works in the manner that I want them to.
If they want to keep people from pirating, they should let classical (e.g. pre DMCA) copyright law do it's thing.
I wholeheartedly agree. DMCA is bad law and it should be repealed immediately.
So the copyright law prohibits copying this ROM and selling the copy, and precedents such as the Betamax case might help defend copying the ROM for personal use.
In the US at least, bare copyright (without a license) allows for archival copies and reverse engineering. Interoperability is also allowed, IIRC. If there is a license then it only applies to people who have agreed to it. If these devices have been mailed unsolicited to people, then there is NO presumption of agreement. Go ahead and create some drivers (though document how you received the the device!).
In the case of normal software, the user implicitly agrees to the license by clicking on the "I accept" button, or in some other mechanism. (Shrink-wrap is a beast of a different color). But in the case of:CueCat the makers are in a tenuous position. There may be an agreement that needs be made prior to the installation of the external software, but there is none for the device itself. They may claim that they are only licensing the device and not selling it, but people are receiving it for free at Radio Shack! They have sold the license to use:CueCat to no one! Unless Radio Shack and other distributors make people sign a form before they get one, as far as I am concerned, they are under no legal agreement. The most these guys can hope for is the protection of copyright, but that allows the user to reverse engineer...
Pure and virtuous open-source books don't seem to have spread beyond the computer-science ghetto
What makes these works "virtuous"? One example of non-virtue is that I recently purchased a text for $50 because I wanted the information contained therein. Upon taking the book home and opening it, I discovered that it was an "open-source" book and that I could have recieved exactly the same information without spending $50. I don't know about you, but I was pretty pissed at spending $50 for processed wood pulp. If you asked a bartender how much a glass of beer is, and he says $3 and you buy it, then he proceeds to announce all future beers on the house, you would be pissed too.
Sharing your works with others is indeed virtuous, but charging folks money for what you already intend to give them for free is immoral. If you wish for donations to support your work, then be brutally honest about it and call it a donation! (Yes, I was pissed at paying $50, but in the end it was still my own damn fault for not being informed about the book)
...while the dark side of the force is represented by the advent of mandatory antibooks in dental school
All schools have "mandatory" textbooks. As this is a dental school (a medical profession), I am sincerely glad that some of their texts are mandatory. However, do not mistake this use of the term "mandatory" as being non-voluntary. No one is required to attend dental school or one particular dental school. Neither are the professors required to use them.
And then there is the coined term "antibooks". Apparently this is in reference to books that are password protected and licensed. I fully agree that people should have extensive rights to their own copies of works, but you you have a licensed work, it is not your copy! You have only purchased to right to use it, you have not purchased the book itself. Again, no one is being forced to use these books.
Of course, there will be those of you saying that you are forced to because your professor assigned it, and that you just can't take another class instead. This is BS and run-of-the-mill student whining. Last I heard, the general populace was not enrolled in dental school. Apparently one must make an explicit choice of their own free will to enroll.
It seems as if in their zeal for Free Software and Open Source, the slashdot crowd has lost track of what freedom and liberty are all about. Liberty is not about getting whatever you desire and damn all who stand in your way. Liberty is about being in control of your own lives, freedoms and property. If you wish to be in partial control of another's property (a textbook or software package), you must make arrangements with that person. You are not allowed to use force to get your way. If the textbook author places terms and conditions upon the use of his property that you don't like, then don't use it. But if you do agree and take the textbook, then breach the agreement who have made, then you are a liar, and that is immoral.
With:CueCat, they sent it to me in the mail, unsolicited. Therefore it is now legally mine
Absolutely! If people are being pressured by these jerks they should talk to a lawyer and their postmaster! I don't know if there is any software actually inside the:CueCat. If there isn't, do whatever you want with it. If there is, you are under no license only straight copyright law, which allows you to reverse engineer.
As a QA engineer, the software needs my approval to ship. Of course the CEO can ship it anyway, but it takes his explicit veto to do so, and he would find an empty engineering department if he ever did so. I suspect that there are quite a few companies like this, especially those that have been around for more than a few years.
But some companies do put deadlines ahead of QA. If you work for such a company GET OUT NOW!
One of my questions I like to ask QA candidates is if they would sign off on the software if their manager told them to. So here I am, fifteen minutes into the interview with another 45 minutes left, and the candidate says "yes" to the question. I reply, "I'm sorry, we don't hire rubber stamps for $25 an hour when they're only two bucks at Office Depot."
As another QA engineer, I second the motion. All too often QA gets relegated to the bottom of the food chain, but they belong on the top right next to the developer.
Some of the major quality problems I see with a most non-commercial OSS are:
1) Lack of specifications and requirements. A project that does not have a detailed plan right from the beginning is courting crud. (and a major reason why a lot of commercial code is crap as well). I offered my unpaid services to a project a while ago saying "I will write a comprehensive test plan for you if you give me access to your specs and reqs". Unfortunately, the only documentation they had was the source code tree and a README that said "sombody write this...".
2) Not adhering to the specs and reqs. This is almost as bad. All you users out there, get and read the GNOME and KDE user interface guidelines. If an individual GNOME or KDE program doesn't follow their self-stated rules, log a bug immediately.
3) Passing the blame on to someone else. It's all to easy to blame another one of the myriad projects in a Linux or BSD system as being the culprit, but that's a copout.
4) Passing off beta (or even alpha) software as "stable". Do you think just because Microsoft can get away with it that you can too? Don't call your project complete until every last one of your serious bugs are fixed, and issue a list of all ramaining minor bugs and annoyances with work-arounds. And this brings up another point. Get someone independant of the developer to rate bug severity.
It is a promise that says "If you contribute to this code you will always have access to it".
But you and I will always have access to it no matter if we give back or not, or even if MegaCorp comes along and closes up their copy of it. The "protection" clauses in the GPL are completely unnecessary to protect the code so long as the license cannot be revoked. The simple MIT license or even public domain is sufficient to protect the rights of the user.
The purpose of copyleft is not to protect the software, because the software cannot be damaged. Rather the purpose of copyleft is to protect the sensibilities of the authors.
Without that pledge, I cannot contribute my time without fear that I will have to recontribute that time all over again when I next need to access that software.
Let's argue from the point of a Free but non-copylefted software. What could Apple possibly do to the FreeBSD code base that would ever limit your access to it? They cannot revoke the license from you because they are not the owner. An neither can BSDi revoke your license because they don't have a revocation clause in the license. In short, you have nothing to fear (but your sensibilities) for contributing to the non-copylefted FreeBSD.
as you do when you patent things
I was talking about copyright and source code, which are much different things than patents. I am wholly against patents applied to algorithms and formulae. Patents are the only area where an author can take away your genuine liberties with respect to free speech and the creation of software. Don't assume that because I disagree with you in one area that I must also disagree with you in all other areas. Leave that silly illogic to the political arena.
You do not have the right to any non-GPL derivative, no matter how free and permissive you make it. You can't even create a public domain derivative of GPLd works. If RMS believes that software should not be owned, then why does he restrict me from creating unowned derivitives of the works he himself says he does not own?
As you yourself impied, if I give someone your software in such a way to violate your license, you still have your software.
If, after becoming familiar with what your opponent says...
What intellectual sophistry to assume that anyone disagreeing with you is ignorant of the topic! You're completely ignoring Locke, who has much to say on the nature of property. Just as a repeal of government trespass laws would not negate the existance of land property, neither would a repeal of the government copyright laws affect the ownership of software in any way. For a radical look at a world where software is owned in the absence of any government recognition of it, see Intellectual Property Rights Viewed As Contracts. This paper also has some very good references coming off of it as well.
"If you like Free Software so much, why dont you quit your job?"
I never told the poster to quit his job. I've seen your type of posts on slashdot before. You types just can't grasp the notion of illustrating the absurd by being absurd.
Of course I am not an immoral person because I haven't given all my food away to the homeless and starved in their place! But this is the metaphorical equivalent of what the previous poster wanted Apple to do. He called them immoral because they haven't given away 100% of their software.
How do you reconcile your previous statement of "Apple is not a company I can morally approve of" with your current statements "I wholly support it for others", "I have nothing against Apple", and "I appreciete what apple has done"? I may be an old-fashioned fuddy-duddy that can barely grasp the the modern notions of morality, but I am completely bewildered by what you mean by the term. If you do not morally approve of Apple, how can you have nothing against them? Isn't moral disapproval *something* against them?
But I choose not to run their software, as I would rather be free.
I must further ask, if you like your friends why have you recommened slavery, subjugation and domination for them? Don't you want them to be free as well?
In case the above sarcasm doesn't make sense, let me put it another way. If I step into a small box and shut the lid, I have certainly lost some freedom. In terms of standing up and stretching, let alone walking to the refrigerator, I am most unfree. But I am still a free man, because I can get out of the box anytime I want to. Every choice we make limits our freedom in a very real sense. Likewise, with Apple software the user can choose not to use it at any time. But full moral and political liberty (free speech) still belongs to the user.
Your friends will be just as free as you in the moral sense whether the use Apple software or not.
I don't know anything about cable modems, but the original poster was talking about DSL. On my ADSL account I can *effortlessly* sniff all sorts of info from other people's traffic. And this is a quality DSL service, not some phone company crap. It gave me the willies when I first saw it.
The reason these "old" interfaces are going the way of the dodo is because, well, they are old and we have better alternatives that people are actually adopting this time.
You're also forgetting that people still have a lot of that old hardware out there. Some folks (not as wealthy as you) don't want to throw away a perfectly good modem, printer, or NIC if they don't have to.
And an even more relevant example, every external serial modem and 99% of internal ISA modems WORK with FreeBSD and Linux. But how many PCI modems do? Not very many. I have a few friends that want to try Linux but CANNOT because they have purchased a new computer with hardware that the OSS guys haven't figured out yet.
I think some of you guys are just too young to understand that good equipment does not become obsolete.
Apple is not a company I can morally approve of... I cannot use without feeling dirty.
what a terribly small world you must live in when your morality depends on giving away 100% of your property. Out here in reality I can give a meal to a homeless person and not be decried evil because I didn't give him my refrigerator, and I can give a hundred buck to the MDA and not be accused of immorality for not handing them my bank account. Does the homeless person feel dirty because I only gave him a sandwich? Does the MDA feel dirty because I haven't quit my job and volunteered full time? Of course not!
Apple giving back to the FreeBSD community isn't good enough for you types. Opening up (also known as freeing) other of their own code isn't good enough. It seems you want all or nothing. Well that's not how the world works. If you don't like it, then don't use it. But don't call them immoral or their users dirty. The real immorality is your self-righteousness. Listen, there is a lot more to morality then your petty licensing issues.
It's not the ownership of their software that concerns you, because every software except public domain is owned. Even the FSF copyrights their own software. It's not that, it's just that you haven't been given the number of permissions to use the code that you would like. There's nothing wrong with that, it's just a price that you (and I) don't want to pay. But don't call it a case of morality. That's just bogus.
Make money fast? There is no way to do that with Free Software (now that the OSS IPO boom is over). You can't make money off of support/service until you have a large enough user base (and no one's earned decent profits off of it yet). So you're left with proprietary add-ons of some kind.
I think Corel is going the best course. Slow, steady, and ignore the pundits. Of course, if the Borland shenanigan gets resolved, they have Kylix to generate dough with.
"I don't understand why you run that Linux crap; Windows is so much easier."
Translated: that guy is *used* to Windows. Take someone who doesn't know anything about computers and Linux/FreeBSD/Unix will be easier than Windows if it is preinstalled with all user software and necessary drivers (just like Windows systems). But once someone learns a system they don't want to switch. Anything that's different is always initially harder.
This clearly demonstrates the fault in any non-GPL license: you will get ripped off by a corporation if yo create a good enough codebase.
And how exactly did FreeBSD get ripped off? How come you GNUzis always yell when some says that "software piracy", yet turn around and accuse corporations of "stealing" free software?
It's a sorry state of affairs when those most gung-ho on free software seem to have forgotten what it's all about: sharing.
The debate was not whether software should be free (gratis or otherwise), but whether people have the right to violate the copyright of another, in this case, billy's interpreter. If one receives holy heck for calling such an action "piracy", then let's keep our standards equal and not equate the free software to warez. The only reason copyright protects the GPL is because it also protects Billy Boy. Selective applications of law and/or morality is the antithesis of freedom...
The small amount of time that I have been with FreeBSD, I am amazed at the power and flexibility of the ports system.Sure there's a few rough spots, but those are easy enough to polish out.
For those that don't know, where the synopsis: the ports system is a collectin of makefiles and diffs to properly fetch, extract, configure, build, install and register a software package for the target system. A FreeBSD package is simply a port that has been precompiled, so you don't have to be afraid of typing "make" at the commandline. And these packages have utility programs along with them, like pkg_add, pkg_remove, pkg_info, etc. Dependencies are kept track of, including checking for individual libraries instead of monolithic packages. Very similar to Debian's method.
So how does this fit into the Linux continuum? Well, right now there is a concerted effort to make a unified BSD ports system, instead of separate ones for each *BSD. There is no reason that Linux could not get involved so that there will be a linux-ports variant. Hell, there's no reason that it couldn't be a grand unified UNIX-PORTS! And there's no reason that deb and rpm packages can't be fit into the system as well. I keep hearing rumours that Slackware will go to a ports-style system, and I hope they do.
If you're a potato or hamm head, and have always criticized the ports because it didn't have some minor feature, now is the time to get involved.
I submitted a bug on this to FreeBSD quite a while back. I should have known their response beforehand, but it simply was "gif licensing sucks, and we don't want our asses sued off by Unisys."
Absolutely! Which is why we have clinicians, nurses and physicians working for us. They use the equipment/software in actual clinical conditions. Then we have external clinicals. Then we have beta sites where the stuff is used in real life situations.
But what it all eventually comes down to is "the customer is always right, even when they are wrong". If there is a feature that they need/b but they do not use, then they do not use it, QED. And if they don't like it we cannot force them to use it. In one instance we improved our medical imaging quality so much that the customers hated it. Physicians are very set in their ways, and the new improved medical imaging was *different*, so much so that they could not recognize the "texture" of a tumor with the new imaging, but relied on the older blurry "texture". However, younger physicians who are not so set in their ways prefer the new style imaging. Go figure:-)
Open Source non-commercial projects have the freedom to work on whatever they want without worry of financial loss. But commercial projects, whether proprietary or open source, cannot afford thousands of man hours for features that they customers will not purchase.
Slashdot Mirror
Constitutionally, as soon as a work is published, it belongs to the public.
Sort of... If it is *publically* published, then it belongs to the public once copyright expires. But if I give a copy to a client with an agreement that they are restricted with it in certain ways, it is a private publication, and the constitution is silent
Which is why the vendor should be required to disclose the book's "special feature" and obtain informed consent at the point of purchase, via a separate signature than the one used for credit card authorization.
I would agree [sic]. I disagree with all forms of "shrink-wrap", and this is one. One of the other respondents assumed that I was arguing against bitching about the practice. Nothing could be further than the truth. Bitch all you want, and bitch loudly! However, some posts were advocating passing laws and regulations upon publishers and authors...
I have to ask why the outrage? What legal or moral rights of yours is the author infringing on?
I don't know how large this book it, so I'll assume 400 pages. So you have read three quarters of the book without having to make a decision on opening the sealed CD. Now that decision looms over you. Your choices are a) accept the license and unseal the CD, b) return the book for a full refund, c) ignore the license, unseal the CD, violate the license, and go through the rest of life knowing that you have broken your word.
We all agree that an author has a right to keep his work totally to himself, unpublished. He also has the right to place it in the public domain or otherwise allow every other person free access to it. If these two extremes are not immoral, then why is the middle ground, of only allowing a subset of people access to it, an immoral act?
I will agree that having the last quarter of the book in a PDF file to be very inconvenient. I will also agree that having to enter into a contract to access this PDF goes beyond inconvenience to the realm of onerous. If I encountered the above situation I would certainly choose choice (b) and also send a nasty note to the author and publisher. But in a free society I have no moral right to compell the author to publish the book in the manner that I wish. In fact, to tell the author that he cannot enter into any private agreements with his readers is the antithesis of freedom.
I'd argue that licenses on books - particularly non-trivial books (eg textbooks) ought not to be licensed.
As long as you keep the wording to "ought to", then I will agree. But past history has shown that every time a significant group has believed in an "ought to" or "should not", it becomes a "must" or "must not", then lobbyists get involved, and before you know it people get hauled into court and thrown into jail for merely offending someone's sensibilities. This is why I will defend a publisher's or author's right to decide how they will release their works even if I disagree with how they do it.
I can think of nothing more non-free (in both the dictionary and the Stallman sense) than to force publishers through the use of law, courts and jails to release their works in the manner that I want them to.
If they want to keep people from pirating, they should let classical (e.g. pre DMCA) copyright law do it's thing.
I wholeheartedly agree. DMCA is bad law and it should be repealed immediately.
So the copyright law prohibits copying this ROM and selling the copy, and precedents such as the Betamax case might help defend copying the ROM for personal use.
:CueCat the makers are in a tenuous position. There may be an agreement that needs be made prior to the installation of the external software, but there is none for the device itself. They may claim that they are only licensing the device and not selling it, but people are receiving it for free at Radio Shack! They have sold the license to use :CueCat to no one! Unless Radio Shack and other distributors make people sign a form before they get one, as far as I am concerned, they are under no legal agreement. The most these guys can hope for is the protection of copyright, but that allows the user to reverse engineer...
In the US at least, bare copyright (without a license) allows for archival copies and reverse engineering. Interoperability is also allowed, IIRC. If there is a license then it only applies to people who have agreed to it. If these devices have been mailed unsolicited to people, then there is NO presumption of agreement. Go ahead and create some drivers (though document how you received the the device!).
In the case of normal software, the user implicitly agrees to the license by clicking on the "I accept" button, or in some other mechanism. (Shrink-wrap is a beast of a different color). But in the case of
Damn, you're right! Someone go arrest Stephen King!
Pure and virtuous open-source books don't seem to have spread beyond the computer-science ghetto
...while the dark side of the force is represented by the advent of mandatory antibooks in dental school
What makes these works "virtuous"? One example of non-virtue is that I recently purchased a text for $50 because I wanted the information contained therein. Upon taking the book home and opening it, I discovered that it was an "open-source" book and that I could have recieved exactly the same information without spending $50. I don't know about you, but I was pretty pissed at spending $50 for processed wood pulp. If you asked a bartender how much a glass of beer is, and he says $3 and you buy it, then he proceeds to announce all future beers on the house, you would be pissed too.
Sharing your works with others is indeed virtuous, but charging folks money for what you already intend to give them for free is immoral. If you wish for donations to support your work, then be brutally honest about it and call it a donation! (Yes, I was pissed at paying $50, but in the end it was still my own damn fault for not being informed about the book)
All schools have "mandatory" textbooks. As this is a dental school (a medical profession), I am sincerely glad that some of their texts are mandatory. However, do not mistake this use of the term "mandatory" as being non-voluntary. No one is required to attend dental school or one particular dental school. Neither are the professors required to use them.
And then there is the coined term "antibooks". Apparently this is in reference to books that are password protected and licensed. I fully agree that people should have extensive rights to their own copies of works, but you you have a licensed work, it is not your copy! You have only purchased to right to use it, you have not purchased the book itself. Again, no one is being forced to use these books.
Of course, there will be those of you saying that you are forced to because your professor assigned it, and that you just can't take another class instead. This is BS and run-of-the-mill student whining. Last I heard, the general populace was not enrolled in dental school. Apparently one must make an explicit choice of their own free will to enroll.
It seems as if in their zeal for Free Software and Open Source, the slashdot crowd has lost track of what freedom and liberty are all about. Liberty is not about getting whatever you desire and damn all who stand in your way. Liberty is about being in control of your own lives, freedoms and property. If you wish to be in partial control of another's property (a textbook or software package), you must make arrangements with that person. You are not allowed to use force to get your way. If the textbook author places terms and conditions upon the use of his property that you don't like, then don't use it. But if you do agree and take the textbook, then breach the agreement who have made, then you are a liar, and that is immoral.
With :CueCat, they sent it to me in the mail, unsolicited. Therefore it is now legally mine
:CueCat. If there isn't, do whatever you want with it. If there is, you are under no license only straight copyright law, which allows you to reverse engineer.
Absolutely! If people are being pressured by these jerks they should talk to a lawyer and their postmaster! I don't know if there is any software actually inside the
As a QA engineer, the software needs my approval to ship. Of course the CEO can ship it anyway, but it takes his explicit veto to do so, and he would find an empty engineering department if he ever did so. I suspect that there are quite a few companies like this, especially those that have been around for more than a few years.
But some companies do put deadlines ahead of QA. If you work for such a company GET OUT NOW!
One of my questions I like to ask QA candidates is if they would sign off on the software if their manager told them to. So here I am, fifteen minutes into the interview with another 45 minutes left, and the candidate says "yes" to the question. I reply, "I'm sorry, we don't hire rubber stamps for $25 an hour when they're only two bucks at Office Depot."
Open software enjoys the benefit of massive code review which provides dramatic improvements in overall quality.>/em>
So what? Code review is not quality. It's only the first tiny step on the long road to quality.
The problem is I can't say how many people are testing it and how.
Absolutely! QA is one of those non-glamorous jobs that OSS often ignores. But its a needed role.
As another QA engineer, I second the motion. All too often QA gets relegated to the bottom of the food chain, but they belong on the top right next to the developer.
Some of the major quality problems I see with a most non-commercial OSS are:
1) Lack of specifications and requirements. A project that does not have a detailed plan right from the beginning is courting crud. (and a major reason why a lot of commercial code is crap as well). I offered my unpaid services to a project a while ago saying "I will write a comprehensive test plan for you if you give me access to your specs and reqs". Unfortunately, the only documentation they had was the source code tree and a README that said "sombody write this...".
2) Not adhering to the specs and reqs. This is almost as bad. All you users out there, get and read the GNOME and KDE user interface guidelines. If an individual GNOME or KDE program doesn't follow their self-stated rules, log a bug immediately.
3) Passing the blame on to someone else. It's all to easy to blame another one of the myriad projects in a Linux or BSD system as being the culprit, but that's a copout.
4) Passing off beta (or even alpha) software as "stable". Do you think just because Microsoft can get away with it that you can too? Don't call your project complete until every last one of your serious bugs are fixed, and issue a list of all ramaining minor bugs and annoyances with work-arounds. And this brings up another point. Get someone independant of the developer to rate bug severity.
It is a promise that says "If you contribute to this code you will always have access to it".
But you and I will always have access to it no matter if we give back or not, or even if MegaCorp comes along and closes up their copy of it. The "protection" clauses in the GPL are completely unnecessary to protect the code so long as the license cannot be revoked. The simple MIT license or even public domain is sufficient to protect the rights of the user.
The purpose of copyleft is not to protect the software, because the software cannot be damaged. Rather the purpose of copyleft is to protect the sensibilities of the authors.
Without that pledge, I cannot contribute my time without fear that I will have to recontribute that time all over again when I next need to access that software.
Let's argue from the point of a Free but non-copylefted software. What could Apple possibly do to the FreeBSD code base that would ever limit your access to it? They cannot revoke the license from you because they are not the owner. An neither can BSDi revoke your license because they don't have a revocation clause in the license. In short, you have nothing to fear (but your sensibilities) for contributing to the non-copylefted FreeBSD.
as you do when you patent things
I was talking about copyright and source code, which are much different things than patents. I am wholly against patents applied to algorithms and formulae. Patents are the only area where an author can take away your genuine liberties with respect to free speech and the creation of software. Don't assume that because I disagree with you in one area that I must also disagree with you in all other areas. Leave that silly illogic to the political arena.
the FSF does not take any rights away from me
You do not have the right to any non-GPL derivative, no matter how free and permissive you make it. You can't even create a public domain derivative of GPLd works. If RMS believes that software should not be owned, then why does he restrict me from creating unowned derivitives of the works he himself says he does not own?
As you yourself impied, if I give someone your software in such a way to violate your license, you still have your software.
If, after becoming familiar with what your opponent says...
What intellectual sophistry to assume that anyone disagreeing with you is ignorant of the topic! You're completely ignoring Locke, who has much to say on the nature of property. Just as a repeal of government trespass laws would not negate the existance of land property, neither would a repeal of the government copyright laws affect the ownership of software in any way. For a radical look at a world where software is owned in the absence of any government recognition of it, see Intellectual Property Rights Viewed As Contracts. This paper also has some very good references coming off of it as well.
"If you like Free Software so much, why dont you quit your job?"
I never told the poster to quit his job. I've seen your type of posts on slashdot before. You types just can't grasp the notion of illustrating the absurd by being absurd.
Of course I am not an immoral person because I haven't given all my food away to the homeless and starved in their place! But this is the metaphorical equivalent of what the previous poster wanted Apple to do. He called them immoral because they haven't given away 100% of their software.
How do you reconcile your previous statement of "Apple is not a company I can morally approve of" with your current statements "I wholly support it for others", "I have nothing against Apple", and "I appreciete what apple has done"? I may be an old-fashioned fuddy-duddy that can barely grasp the the modern notions of morality, but I am completely bewildered by what you mean by the term. If you do not morally approve of Apple, how can you have nothing against them? Isn't moral disapproval *something* against them?
But I choose not to run their software, as I would rather be free.
I must further ask, if you like your friends why have you recommened slavery, subjugation and domination for them? Don't you want them to be free as well?
In case the above sarcasm doesn't make sense, let me put it another way. If I step into a small box and shut the lid, I have certainly lost some freedom. In terms of standing up and stretching, let alone walking to the refrigerator, I am most unfree. But I am still a free man, because I can get out of the box anytime I want to. Every choice we make limits our freedom in a very real sense. Likewise, with Apple software the user can choose not to use it at any time. But full moral and political liberty (free speech) still belongs to the user.
Your friends will be just as free as you in the moral sense whether the use Apple software or not.
So if they gave back exactly what they took, then how is this immoral, as the original post implied? Actually Apple gave back more.
I don't know anything about cable modems, but the original poster was talking about DSL. On my ADSL account I can *effortlessly* sniff all sorts of info from other people's traffic. And this is a quality DSL service, not some phone company crap. It gave me the willies when I first saw it.
The reason these "old" interfaces are going the way of the dodo is because, well, they are old and we have better alternatives that people are actually adopting this time.
You're also forgetting that people still have a lot of that old hardware out there. Some folks (not as wealthy as you) don't want to throw away a perfectly good modem, printer, or NIC if they don't have to.
And an even more relevant example, every external serial modem and 99% of internal ISA modems WORK with FreeBSD and Linux. But how many PCI modems do? Not very many. I have a few friends that want to try Linux but CANNOT because they have purchased a new computer with hardware that the OSS guys haven't figured out yet.
I think some of you guys are just too young to understand that good equipment does not become obsolete.
Apple is not a company I can morally approve of... I cannot use without feeling dirty.
...and goes back to his Debian GNU/Linux machine
what a terribly small world you must live in when your morality depends on giving away 100% of your property. Out here in reality I can give a meal to a homeless person and not be decried evil because I didn't give him my refrigerator, and I can give a hundred buck to the MDA and not be accused of immorality for not handing them my bank account. Does the homeless person feel dirty because I only gave him a sandwich? Does the MDA feel dirty because I haven't quit my job and volunteered full time? Of course not!
Apple giving back to the FreeBSD community isn't good enough for you types. Opening up (also known as freeing) other of their own code isn't good enough. It seems you want all or nothing. Well that's not how the world works. If you don't like it, then don't use it. But don't call them immoral or their users dirty. The real immorality is your self-righteousness. Listen, there is a lot more to morality then your petty licensing issues.
It's not the ownership of their software that concerns you, because every software except public domain is owned. Even the FSF copyrights their own software. It's not that, it's just that you haven't been given the number of permissions to use the code that you would like. There's nothing wrong with that, it's just a price that you (and I) don't want to pay. But don't call it a case of morality. That's just bogus.
How did I know that was coming?
Make money fast? There is no way to do that with Free Software (now that the OSS IPO boom is over). You can't make money off of support/service until you have a large enough user base (and no one's earned decent profits off of it yet). So you're left with proprietary add-ons of some kind.
I think Corel is going the best course. Slow, steady, and ignore the pundits. Of course, if the Borland shenanigan gets resolved, they have Kylix to generate dough with.
"I don't understand why you run that Linux crap; Windows is so much easier."
Translated: that guy is *used* to Windows. Take someone who doesn't know anything about computers and Linux/FreeBSD/Unix will be easier than Windows if it is preinstalled with all user software and necessary drivers (just like Windows systems). But once someone learns a system they don't want to switch. Anything that's different is always initially harder.
This clearly demonstrates the fault in any non-GPL license: you will get ripped off by a corporation if yo create a good enough codebase.
And how exactly did FreeBSD get ripped off? How come you GNUzis always yell when some says that "software piracy", yet turn around and accuse corporations of "stealing" free software?
It's a sorry state of affairs when those most gung-ho on free software seem to have forgotten what it's all about: sharing.
The debate was not whether software should be free (gratis or otherwise), but whether people have the right to violate the copyright of another, in this case, billy's interpreter. If one receives holy heck for calling such an action "piracy", then let's keep our standards equal and not equate the free software to warez. The only reason copyright protects the GPL is because it also protects Billy Boy. Selective applications of law and/or morality is the antithesis of freedom...
The small amount of time that I have been with FreeBSD, I am amazed at the power and flexibility of the ports system.Sure there's a few rough spots, but those are easy enough to polish out.
For those that don't know, where the synopsis: the ports system is a collectin of makefiles and diffs to properly fetch, extract, configure, build, install and register a software package for the target system. A FreeBSD package is simply a port that has been precompiled, so you don't have to be afraid of typing "make" at the commandline. And these packages have utility programs along with them, like pkg_add, pkg_remove, pkg_info, etc. Dependencies are kept track of, including checking for individual libraries instead of monolithic packages. Very similar to Debian's method.
So how does this fit into the Linux continuum? Well, right now there is a concerted effort to make a unified BSD ports system, instead of separate ones for each *BSD. There is no reason that Linux could not get involved so that there will be a linux-ports variant. Hell, there's no reason that it couldn't be a grand unified UNIX-PORTS! And there's no reason that deb and rpm packages can't be fit into the system as well. I keep hearing rumours that Slackware will go to a ports-style system, and I hope they do.
If you're a potato or hamm head, and have always criticized the ports because it didn't have some minor feature, now is the time to get involved.
I submitted a bug on this to FreeBSD quite a while back. I should have known their response beforehand, but it simply was "gif licensing sucks, and we don't want our asses sued off by Unisys."
Absolutely! Which is why we have clinicians, nurses and physicians working for us. They use the equipment/software in actual clinical conditions. Then we have external clinicals. Then we have beta sites where the stuff is used in real life situations.
:-)
But what it all eventually comes down to is "the customer is always right, even when they are wrong". If there is a feature that they need/b but they do not use, then they do not use it, QED. And if they don't like it we cannot force them to use it. In one instance we improved our medical imaging quality so much that the customers hated it. Physicians are very set in their ways, and the new improved medical imaging was *different*, so much so that they could not recognize the "texture" of a tumor with the new imaging, but relied on the older blurry "texture". However, younger physicians who are not so set in their ways prefer the new style imaging. Go figure
Open Source non-commercial projects have the freedom to work on whatever they want without worry of financial loss. But commercial projects, whether proprietary or open source, cannot afford thousands of man hours for features that they customers will not purchase.