Boy, this author has just a few feelings of paranoia! His sense of personal oppression is overwhelming.
And why he's attributing a Norwegian arrest with an American copyright law is beyond me.
"So even legitimate owners of legally purchased DVDs can be arrested for viewing their own discs"
This has not yet been upheld in any court. There are some, including the MPAA, who believe that this is the case, but so far no one has been arrested for that. Only a Norwegian boy. And he certainly wasn't arrested for breaking the US Digital Millenium Copyright Act. Here in the US, we've had one brain-dead moron of a district court judge rule against DeCSS. But district court judges in the US have been making boneheaded decisions since 1787.
"Do we want a future where corporations can obsessively monitor and nickel-and-dime us by charging for every single instance in which we look at or listen to a recorded piece of entertainment?"
Well, now that you put it that way... of course not. But you're missing one very important point. No business of any kind, even evil insensitive IP wielding conglomerates, can tell you what you can or can't do in your own home. That DVD is still yours and you can do what ever you want with it in your own home. As much as you hate them, the MPAA is not against people watching DVDs. Of course their priorities are twisted, thinking that the smaller evil of making an illegal copy is far worse than the greater evil of keeping DVDs off certain operating systems, but heh, we see twisted priorities every day on Slashdot.
"That case went all the way to the Supreme Court, being decided in 1984 against the studios."
So what makes you think it will be a complete reversal this time (and what does this have to do with Norwegian law?) This was a Supreme Court decision. It's the highest precedence of law in a nation based on the common law of precendences. Reversing this precedence is about as likely as changing the constitution.
"But the key issue at stake here -- corporate control versus individual freedom -- is fundamentally important."
I'm sorry, but no corporation controls me. No corporation possibly could. You are mistaking money for power. The only thing that can take away your freedom is government, because only they have the force necessary to do it. Think about it - if the corporations have power, why the hell do they have to go to a New York district court or use Norwegian policemen? If they had the power to take away our freedoms they would already have their own courts and their own cops.
Going after the MPAA is like taking aspirin for a hangover. Government is the booze, the MPAA is the hangover. And you all know how to stop hangovers, take away the booze.
It doesn't really matter what version they were using. I would assume that any competent administrator does not use any development kernels, and doesn't upgrade their stable kernel everytime a new one is announced. It doesn't do anyone a bit of good to say "oh, you were using 2.2.x, that's you problem, use 2.2.y with the z patch instead".
Having compiled the Linux kernel dozens of times, and the FreeBSD kernel only thrice, I have noticed an underlying architectural difference between them. Options in BSD kernel *seems* to be more general, while stuff in the Linux kernel *seems* to be more specific. Now, I'm not an expert of DoS attacks, or even of the ways Linux or BSD handles them. However, DoS is not just a single, or even a handful of attack types. There are hundreds of DoS variants. The trick is not to include a kernel option for each attack type. Rather, it's how the kernel handles a flood of requests. I'm not sure it should even be the kernel's job to determine which requests are valid or bogus. That's up to a userland component.
"And those parents ought watch their children on the internet, not prevent access to MY child."
Every public policy is going to piss someone off. Instead of getting into a pissing contest, why not try to find a solution that pleases the most people. Like restricting access without prior permission from the parents? That way the prudes down the street won't be offended when their little Johnny peruses the Anarchist's Cookbook but your perfect tykes can have your permission to salivate over Hustler.
Oh, I know it was intended to be Gnome theme. In fact, Redhat wanted Enlightenment to be a part of Gnome. I still remember the murmurs of disbelief travelling across the SVLUG attendees as Mandrake calmly announced that, no, Enlightenment was not Gnome.
In any case, Gnome always stated that Gnome could be used with any windowmanager. That Redhat commissioned an Enlightenment theme to be used for Gnome appears to be self-deception.
Interesting that Gnome started the work of replacing Imlib and finding a new WM just after Rasterman left Redhat.
I have to agree with this. The latest Linux Magazine had a head-to-head review of all the major distros. They claimed to have three different results, for beginners, intermediates and experts. However, Corel won for all three and Debian and Slackware lost of all three.
I'm currently using Slackware, and as far as I can see, I'll stick with it indefinitely. I was not expecting it to come in first, but I didn't expect it to come in dead last by a wide margin in *all* categories. Slackware is the only distro that DOESN'T have unique features. It's the closest you could get to a "standard" linux without rolling your own.
I still see a need for reviews, especially for newbies, but I don't see a need for reviews or awards that tries to fit every distro into a one-size-fits-all category.
Now I hate the Gnome just as much as the next guy, but this is a bit overboard...
"BrushedMetal is a Gnome/E theme"
Uh, BrushedMetal is an Enlightenment theme. Enlightenment is not Gnome. I don't have one bit of Gnome on my box but I use Enlightenment and BrushedMetal, eSlate, and BlueHeart.
"I bet KDE and Windowmaker themes weren't even allowed in this stupid contest."
Did you nominate one? I was torn between Windowmakers's AIndustrial, KDE's Photon and E's BlueHeart, and I ended up with BlueHeart. There is a very good reason there were pretty much only Enlightenment themes nominated: you can do tons more with them than with any other wm themes.
The problem is, not every parent is going to think like you. Demanding that they do is extremely intolerant. It may not bother you that your kids have access porn (or tobacco, alcohol, etc) but choose not to. But many parents don't want their children having that access.
Just saying "be like me" is very poor public policy.
"Which goes to prove the point in a backward sort of way, that the Puritans wanted things THEIR way, and nobody elses."
Duh! Everybody wants things THEIR way! It's instinctive. One of the primary things parents teach to children is that they won't always get it their way.
Take a look right here on Slashdot and you'll see hundreds of posts arguing that unfettered internet access in libraries is THEIR way. And they reject everyone else's.n.
When I was in high school, the librarian kept certain books behind the counter (I recall "Ice-Station Zebra" was one). They were available for any student, but were just kept off the main stacks due to vulgar language, sex, etc. No one considered this censorship.
Now looking at a current public library, I see that Playboy, Penthouse and Hustler are not kept in the central magazine racks. Yet people are pissed that these very same magazines aren't instantly accessible from the central terminal of the very same library.
I don't see why the model used in my high school's library couldn't be used. But a strick filter on the terminals, with a note that full access is available by asking for a key at the counter.
I'm wondering what kind of nation it is that would put a liquor store owner in jail for selling Penthouse to a minor and also put his brother the librarian in jail for not letting minors read Penthouse.
Re:Quantity of Linux code in *BSD?
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BSD Quickies
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· Score: 2
"I can't understand you "BSD is the one true way" people any more than the "linux everywhere" people."
I never claimed BSD to be the one true way, or even better than linux. As far as I can recall, I've only claimed that linux is *not* the one true way or the *only* free software OS. You're confusing me with someone else.
"I respectfully suggest that you kill yourself now for the good of the genepool?"
I beg your pardon? You are in error if you presume any of my descendents would ever stoop so low as to breed with any of yours.
When I said "democratic-oligarchy", I was meaning that not every Debian user or contributor is allowed to vote. Only those that are Debian members. Both Linus Torvalds and Richard Stallman have made major contributions to Debian, but as far as I am aware, they don't have voting rights for Debian. I didn't mean to be pejorative.
"Oh really? Try writing an MFC application and distributing it with full source code under a BSD licence. You can't because Microsof won't allow their MFC code to be distributed in that way."
First of all, my users don't need the MFC source code. Why even bring this up? Nowhere was I claiming the proprietary libraries were free software. Duh!
However, I have rights from Microsoft that lets me redistribute the runtime libraries to MFC. I CANNOT do that with a GPL library and a BSD application. The most I could do is distribute the GPL source separately from my apps source, and let the user compile them themselves, with a warning that if they give the resulting binary to a friend (it would wrong if they didn't) they could find themselves in court.
I'll hold my tongue on those arrogant Linux folks...
"So as far as I'm concerned, the Arrogant BSD people can just coordinate and create their own BSD shows and stay the hell out of Linux shows."
Very good idea. Let's keep LinuxWorld for just Linux. Throw out all the freeloaders. Throw out BSD, GNU, X, Gnome, KDE, and Perl, to name just a few. All you would have left would be Torvalds, distros and commercial concerns. Even Slashdot would have to leave.
Re:Quantity of Linux code in *BSD?
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BSD Quickies
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· Score: 2
A much better question is how much of FreeBSD 4.0 is going to end up in Redhat 7.0.
Get real! Just take a look at Redhat, SuSE, Mandrake, Caldera, Debian, et al, to see how much BSD software is ALREADY THERE. And not only is the software there, it is absolutely essential to the proper running of the GNU/BSD/X/Linux operating system.
Get a clue before you start raggin on BSD for doing what Linux has been doing since day one.
Re:Who is getting this money?
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BSD Quickies
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· Score: 2
No, I didn't get the joke. You can get FreeBSD, all of it, with sources, for zero dollars and no cents. Unlike the Linux world, FreeBSD has only a distributor. There are no soulless public corporations. No venture capitalists dictating how it is to be run. No IPOs.
Gee, and what was all of last week? Every two-bit company porting a closed source ecommerce solution had a press release that was duly reported by the Linux press.
Private coercion is also known as crime. No guns, no threats of violence, no fraud, no deception, -- no coercion. Some corporations have committed fraud and deception, and as such have commited crimes.
The US Libertarian Party has always been against government and private coercion. However, to refresh your memory on what coercion means, corporations are not a coercion. Natural monopolies are not coercion. Even though you might want the LP to be opposed to big business, property rights and market forces have nothing to do with coercion.
True. But as of now, all we have are opinions. That's why I said "intellectually valid" as opposed to "legally valid", which would be innacurate.
"...whether or not the restrictions of the QPL are sufficient to make it proprietary..."
The issue is not whether the QPL is proprietary or not. It is certainly *not* proprietary. The issue is whether it is "compatible" with the GPL. Many point to Section 6, which talks about extra restrictions. Although the QPL has fewer restrictions than the GPL, a couple of them are *different* from the GPL, and are thus additional.
Other issues that relate to this are: whether Qt is a module in KDE; whether dynamic linking to non-GPL libraries is or is not allowed; and whether the GPL is binding on third parties. Although the answers to these issues may seem obvious to you, there is by no means a unanimous agreement on them.
"...may not be linked with GPLed code in this fashion (unless you're the copyright holder, of course)..."
But KDE *is* the copyright holder for KDE:-) Again, that's not the problem. Debian can but won't distribute KDE because they are of the opinion that they do not have permission from KDE to do so.
Of coure, KDE may have used some GPL code within its own GPL code, and some are claiming that this is illegal on the face of it, and are seeking an injunction against every distribution that contains KDE.
"In this case, what we're talking about is almost certainly not the QPL."
No, it's not. The announcement said "proprietary" and the QPL is 100% Free Software. But the same situation applies with Debian. Even though the authors of Beam-it have a written document saying that everyone and their grandmother can freely redistribute Beam-it, Debian still won't distribute it since they say they do not have the permission to do so (confused yet?). However, if Beam-it has an exception of some kind granting everyone the explicit permission to link to whatever proprietary code they used, then Debian would include it.
Of course, lest you misconstrue my comments, not every Debian developer holds to this current view. But being a democratic-oligarchy, they can't include KDE until everyone important agrees to.
"And if the library has a ten-user limit, then any software you distribute using the library will have a ten-user limit."
The ten-user limit comes from the proprietary license. I could legally put a 100-user or unlimited user limit on my own. It is the proprietary license that is limiting, not my application. They are getting the program from me, and the library from its owner, since such restrictive terms would not let me distribute runtime libraries with the application. So that can express their displeasure with the library manufacturer.
"If you consider the program+library as a whole..."
But it is not a whole. If I program using the MFC, my application doesn't suddenly become part of Windows, or owned by Microsoft or anything. It is a completely separate entity. It is I that chooses whether to distribute it or not, I who decides whether my users can distribute it or not, and Microsoft has nothing to say in the matter. To put it another way, my application may be "derived" from the library, just as my child is "derived" from me. However, my child IS NOT me.
"Not really - the final program's copyright will be shared between you and the FSF (or whoever)"
No it is not. Not even the FSF claims this. And it is certainly contrary to classic copyright law (as opposed to the shoddy digital millenium copyright thingy). My program is solely mine, and the library belongs solely to the author.
It is impossible to live or labor in isolation. This was the principle reason the concept of property arose, so that one could know what was whose when people worked together. If I build an automobile using Craftsman tools, Sears has no legal claim over my car. And if I use a GPL library, the FSF has no legal claim over my work. They can certainly dictate how I use their library, but they demand nothing of my users. That the GPL seems to be claiming this is probably its weakest point. The FSF lawyers say there is nothing wrong, but until it has been tested in court, the concept of passing terms onto third parties is legally uncertain. Until such a time that a court finds in favor of this concept, I will rightfully consider my own software to be mine.
There are probably five different and intellectually valid interpretations of the GPL as it applies to this situation. Debian subscribes to the one that says you can't unless you include a disclaimer or additional exception. This certainly isn't the view of any of the other distributions, some of whome employ GNU members.
I'm willing to follow the rules of the library. If those rules happen to be paying a lot of money, or not selling my software to certain countries, or even dressing up like a chicken, that fine. If that price is too high, I won't use the library. With this, I am in full agreement with you.
However, there is one crucial difference. GPL libraries tell me what restrictions I have to put on my own users. They are dictating terms to a third party. No other license that I am aware of does this. Even if I have to dress up like a chicken and pay $10000 and promise not to sell to their competitors, the ProprietaryIncLib++ does not tell me that I have to ensure *my* customers also dress up like chickens.
Now, I'm perfectly willing to pass along the GPLd libraries license to any of my customers, and would likely accept terms that require me to. And it could require that my own source code be available and all that. But by demanding, even indirectly, the terms that *my* users get for *my* software, the GPL is stepping beyond the bounds of copyright. They are attempting to place their own copyright ownership over software that is not theirs.
So, of course, I am not developing with any GPL libraries.
"Maybe we should abolish lobbying altogether, and if that's what you want, don't bitch at us for working with the system we have. If you can't beat 'em, join 'em."
The proposal was not to lobby to overturn this stupid law. Instead it was to give Free Software developers special legal rights OVER AND ABOVE those held by closed source developers.
"It is presently illegal to write an open source DeCSS, without explicit permission from DVD CAA"
It is also presently illegal to write a CLOSED source DeCSS, without explicit permission from DVD CAA. We shouldn't be lobbying for special dispensation for Open Source. It's a weird and bizarre sense of justice that would allow Free Software developers to write certain classes of programs that would land shareware authors in court. Instead, we should be lobbying to remove this stupid law altogether!
Slashdot Mirror
"...a turning point in American society...abuse our programmers to the point of arrest and imprisonment"
Uh, that arrest and imprisonment happened in Norway.
Boy, this author has just a few feelings of paranoia! His sense of personal oppression is overwhelming.
And why he's attributing a Norwegian arrest with an American copyright law is beyond me.
"So even legitimate owners of legally purchased DVDs can be arrested for viewing their own discs"
This has not yet been upheld in any court. There are some, including the MPAA, who believe that this is the case, but so far no one has been arrested for that. Only a Norwegian boy. And he certainly wasn't arrested for breaking the US Digital Millenium Copyright Act. Here in the US, we've had one brain-dead moron of a district court judge rule against DeCSS. But district court judges in the US have been making boneheaded decisions since 1787.
"Do we want a future where corporations can obsessively monitor and nickel-and-dime us by charging for every single instance in which we look at or listen to a recorded piece of entertainment?"
Well, now that you put it that way... of course not. But you're missing one very important point. No business of any kind, even evil insensitive IP wielding conglomerates, can tell you what you can or can't do in your own home. That DVD is still yours and you can do what ever you want with it in your own home. As much as you hate them, the MPAA is not against people watching DVDs. Of course their priorities are twisted, thinking that the smaller evil of making an illegal copy is far worse than the greater evil of keeping DVDs off certain operating systems, but heh, we see twisted priorities every day on Slashdot.
"That case went all the way to the Supreme Court, being decided in 1984 against the studios."
So what makes you think it will be a complete reversal this time (and what does this have to do with Norwegian law?) This was a Supreme Court decision. It's the highest precedence of law in a nation based on the common law of precendences. Reversing this precedence is about as likely as changing the constitution.
"But the key issue at stake here -- corporate control versus individual freedom -- is fundamentally important."
I'm sorry, but no corporation controls me. No corporation possibly could. You are mistaking money for power. The only thing that can take away your freedom is government, because only they have the force necessary to do it. Think about it - if the corporations have power, why the hell do they have to go to a New York district court or use Norwegian policemen? If they had the power to take away our freedoms they would already have their own courts and their own cops.
Going after the MPAA is like taking aspirin for a hangover. Government is the booze, the MPAA is the hangover. And you all know how to stop hangovers, take away the booze.
It doesn't really matter what version they were using. I would assume that any competent administrator does not use any development kernels, and doesn't upgrade their stable kernel everytime a new one is announced. It doesn't do anyone a bit of good to say "oh, you were using 2.2.x, that's you problem, use 2.2.y with the z patch instead".
Having compiled the Linux kernel dozens of times, and the FreeBSD kernel only thrice, I have noticed an underlying architectural difference between them. Options in BSD kernel *seems* to be more general, while stuff in the Linux kernel *seems* to be more specific. Now, I'm not an expert of DoS attacks, or even of the ways Linux or BSD handles them. However, DoS is not just a single, or even a handful of attack types. There are hundreds of DoS variants. The trick is not to include a kernel option for each attack type. Rather, it's how the kernel handles a flood of requests. I'm not sure it should even be the kernel's job to determine which requests are valid or bogus. That's up to a userland component.
"And those parents ought watch their children on the internet, not prevent access to MY child."
Every public policy is going to piss someone off. Instead of getting into a pissing contest, why not try to find a solution that pleases the most people. Like restricting access without prior permission from the parents? That way the prudes down the street won't be offended when their little Johnny peruses the Anarchist's Cookbook but your perfect tykes can have your permission to salivate over Hustler.
Oh, I know it was intended to be Gnome theme. In fact, Redhat wanted Enlightenment to be a part of Gnome. I still remember the murmurs of disbelief travelling across the SVLUG attendees as Mandrake calmly announced that, no, Enlightenment was not Gnome.
In any case, Gnome always stated that Gnome could be used with any windowmanager. That Redhat commissioned an Enlightenment theme to be used for Gnome appears to be self-deception.
Interesting that Gnome started the work of replacing Imlib and finding a new WM just after Rasterman left Redhat.
I have to agree with this. The latest Linux Magazine had a head-to-head review of all the major distros. They claimed to have three different results, for beginners, intermediates and experts. However, Corel won for all three and Debian and Slackware lost of all three.
I'm currently using Slackware, and as far as I can see, I'll stick with it indefinitely. I was not expecting it to come in first, but I didn't expect it to come in dead last by a wide margin in *all* categories. Slackware is the only distro that DOESN'T have unique features. It's the closest you could get to a "standard" linux without rolling your own.
I still see a need for reviews, especially for newbies, but I don't see a need for reviews or awards that tries to fit every distro into a one-size-fits-all category.
Now I hate the Gnome just as much as the next guy, but this is a bit overboard...
"BrushedMetal is a Gnome/E theme"
Uh, BrushedMetal is an Enlightenment theme. Enlightenment is not Gnome. I don't have one bit of Gnome on my box but I use Enlightenment and BrushedMetal, eSlate, and BlueHeart.
"I bet KDE and Windowmaker themes weren't even allowed in this stupid contest."
Did you nominate one? I was torn between Windowmakers's AIndustrial, KDE's Photon and E's BlueHeart, and I ended up with BlueHeart. There is a very good reason there were pretty much only Enlightenment themes nominated: you can do tons more with them than with any other wm themes.
The problem is, not every parent is going to think like you. Demanding that they do is extremely intolerant. It may not bother you that your kids have access porn (or tobacco, alcohol, etc) but choose not to. But many parents don't want their children having that access.
Just saying "be like me" is very poor public policy.
"Which goes to prove the point in a backward sort of way, that the Puritans wanted things THEIR way, and nobody elses."
Duh! Everybody wants things THEIR way! It's instinctive. One of the primary things parents teach to children is that they won't always get it their way.
Take a look right here on Slashdot and you'll see hundreds of posts arguing that unfettered internet access in libraries is THEIR way. And they reject everyone else's.n.
When I was in high school, the librarian kept certain books behind the counter (I recall "Ice-Station Zebra" was one). They were available for any student, but were just kept off the main stacks due to vulgar language, sex, etc. No one considered this censorship.
Now looking at a current public library, I see that Playboy, Penthouse and Hustler are not kept in the central magazine racks. Yet people are pissed that these very same magazines aren't instantly accessible from the central terminal of the very same library.
I don't see why the model used in my high school's library couldn't be used. But a strick filter on the terminals, with a note that full access is available by asking for a key at the counter.
I'm wondering what kind of nation it is that would put a liquor store owner in jail for selling Penthouse to a minor and also put his brother the librarian in jail for not letting minors read Penthouse.
"I can't understand you "BSD is the one true way" people any more than the "linux everywhere" people."
I never claimed BSD to be the one true way, or even better than linux. As far as I can recall, I've only claimed that linux is *not* the one true way or the *only* free software OS. You're confusing me with someone else.
"I respectfully suggest that you kill yourself now for the good of the genepool?"
I beg your pardon? You are in error if you presume any of my descendents would ever stoop so low as to breed with any of yours.
When I said "democratic-oligarchy", I was meaning that not every Debian user or contributor is allowed to vote. Only those that are Debian members. Both Linus Torvalds and Richard Stallman have made major contributions to Debian, but as far as I am aware, they don't have voting rights for Debian. I didn't mean to be pejorative.
"Oh really? Try writing an MFC application and distributing it with full source code under a BSD licence. You can't because Microsof won't allow their MFC code to be distributed in that way."
First of all, my users don't need the MFC source code. Why even bring this up? Nowhere was I claiming the proprietary libraries were free software. Duh!
However, I have rights from Microsoft that lets me redistribute the runtime libraries to MFC. I CANNOT do that with a GPL library and a BSD application. The most I could do is distribute the GPL source separately from my apps source, and let the user compile them themselves, with a warning that if they give the resulting binary to a friend (it would wrong if they didn't) they could find themselves in court.
I'll hold my tongue on those arrogant Linux folks...
"So as far as I'm concerned, the Arrogant BSD people can just coordinate and create their own BSD shows and stay the hell out of Linux shows."
Very good idea. Let's keep LinuxWorld for just Linux. Throw out all the freeloaders. Throw out BSD, GNU, X, Gnome, KDE, and Perl, to name just a few. All you would have left would be Torvalds, distros and commercial concerns. Even Slashdot would have to leave.
A much better question is how much of FreeBSD 4.0 is going to end up in Redhat 7.0.
Get real! Just take a look at Redhat, SuSE, Mandrake, Caldera, Debian, et al, to see how much BSD software is ALREADY THERE. And not only is the software there, it is absolutely essential to the proper running of the GNU/BSD/X/Linux operating system.
Get a clue before you start raggin on BSD for doing what Linux has been doing since day one.
No, I didn't get the joke. You can get FreeBSD, all of it, with sources, for zero dollars and no cents. Unlike the Linux world, FreeBSD has only a distributor. There are no soulless public corporations. No venture capitalists dictating how it is to be run. No IPOs.
"Anyone notice how there is no real bsd news?"
Gee, and what was all of last week? Every two-bit company porting a closed source ecommerce solution had a press release that was duly reported by the Linux press.
"Reason != The Libertarian Party"
Of course not. And Linux != Free Software.
However, Reason Magazine is the only magazine that you could find at a newsstand that even comes close to expressing libertarianism.
Private coercion is also known as crime. No guns, no threats of violence, no fraud, no deception, -- no coercion. Some corporations have committed fraud and deception, and as such have commited crimes.
The US Libertarian Party has always been against government and private coercion. However, to refresh your memory on what coercion means, corporations are not a coercion. Natural monopolies are not coercion. Even though you might want the LP to be opposed to big business, property rights and market forces have nothing to do with coercion.
"Legally, there can only be one."
:-) Again, that's not the problem. Debian can but won't distribute KDE because they are of the opinion that they do not have permission from KDE to do so.
True. But as of now, all we have are opinions. That's why I said "intellectually valid" as opposed to "legally valid", which would be innacurate.
"...whether or not the restrictions of the QPL are sufficient to make it proprietary..."
The issue is not whether the QPL is proprietary or not. It is certainly *not* proprietary. The issue is whether it is "compatible" with the GPL. Many point to Section 6, which talks about extra restrictions. Although the QPL has fewer restrictions than the GPL, a couple of them are *different* from the GPL, and are thus additional.
Other issues that relate to this are: whether Qt is a module in KDE; whether dynamic linking to non-GPL libraries is or is not allowed; and whether the GPL is binding on third parties. Although the answers to these issues may seem obvious to you, there is by no means a unanimous agreement on them.
"...may not be linked with GPLed code in this fashion (unless you're the copyright holder, of course)..."
But KDE *is* the copyright holder for KDE
Of coure, KDE may have used some GPL code within its own GPL code, and some are claiming that this is illegal on the face of it, and are seeking an injunction against every distribution that contains KDE.
"In this case, what we're talking about is almost certainly not the QPL."
No, it's not. The announcement said "proprietary" and the QPL is 100% Free Software. But the same situation applies with Debian. Even though the authors of Beam-it have a written document saying that everyone and their grandmother can freely redistribute Beam-it, Debian still won't distribute it since they say they do not have the permission to do so (confused yet?). However, if Beam-it has an exception of some kind granting everyone the explicit permission to link to whatever proprietary code they used, then Debian would include it.
Of course, lest you misconstrue my comments, not every Debian developer holds to this current view. But being a democratic-oligarchy, they can't include KDE until everyone important agrees to.
"And if the library has a ten-user limit, then any software you distribute using the library will have a ten-user limit."
The ten-user limit comes from the proprietary license. I could legally put a 100-user or unlimited user limit on my own. It is the proprietary license that is limiting, not my application. They are getting the program from me, and the library from its owner, since such restrictive terms would not let me distribute runtime libraries with the application. So that can express their displeasure with the library manufacturer.
"If you consider the program+library as a whole..."
But it is not a whole. If I program using the MFC, my application doesn't suddenly become part of Windows, or owned by Microsoft or anything. It is a completely separate entity. It is I that chooses whether to distribute it or not, I who decides whether my users can distribute it or not, and Microsoft has nothing to say in the matter. To put it another way, my application may be "derived" from the library, just as my child is "derived" from me. However, my child IS NOT me.
"Not really - the final program's copyright will be shared between you and the FSF (or whoever)"
No it is not. Not even the FSF claims this. And it is certainly contrary to classic copyright law (as opposed to the shoddy digital millenium copyright thingy). My program is solely mine, and the library belongs solely to the author.
It is impossible to live or labor in isolation. This was the principle reason the concept of property arose, so that one could know what was whose when people worked together. If I build an automobile using Craftsman tools, Sears has no legal claim over my car. And if I use a GPL library, the FSF has no legal claim over my work. They can certainly dictate how I use their library, but they demand nothing of my users. That the GPL seems to be claiming this is probably its weakest point. The FSF lawyers say there is nothing wrong, but until it has been tested in court, the concept of passing terms onto third parties is legally uncertain. Until such a time that a court finds in favor of this concept, I will rightfully consider my own software to be mine.
There are probably five different and intellectually valid interpretations of the GPL as it applies to this situation. Debian subscribes to the one that says you can't unless you include a disclaimer or additional exception. This certainly isn't the view of any of the other distributions, some of whome employ GNU members.
I'm willing to follow the rules of the library. If those rules happen to be paying a lot of money, or not selling my software to certain countries, or even dressing up like a chicken, that fine. If that price is too high, I won't use the library. With this, I am in full agreement with you.
However, there is one crucial difference. GPL libraries tell me what restrictions I have to put on my own users. They are dictating terms to a third party. No other license that I am aware of does this. Even if I have to dress up like a chicken and pay $10000 and promise not to sell to their competitors, the ProprietaryIncLib++ does not tell me that I have to ensure *my* customers also dress up like chickens.
Now, I'm perfectly willing to pass along the GPLd libraries license to any of my customers, and would likely accept terms that require me to. And it could require that my own source code be available and all that. But by demanding, even indirectly, the terms that *my* users get for *my* software, the GPL is stepping beyond the bounds of copyright. They are attempting to place their own copyright ownership over software that is not theirs.
So, of course, I am not developing with any GPL libraries.
"Maybe we should abolish lobbying altogether, and if that's what you want, don't bitch at us for working with the system we have. If you can't beat 'em, join 'em."
The proposal was not to lobby to overturn this stupid law. Instead it was to give Free Software developers special legal rights OVER AND ABOVE those held by closed source developers.
"It is presently illegal to write an open source DeCSS, without explicit permission from DVD CAA"
It is also presently illegal to write a CLOSED source DeCSS, without explicit permission from DVD CAA. We shouldn't be lobbying for special dispensation for Open Source. It's a weird and bizarre sense of justice that would allow Free Software developers to write certain classes of programs that would land shareware authors in court. Instead, we should be lobbying to remove this stupid law altogether!