"The act of approving the home as a suitable worksite by a company makes them responsible for occupational injury there, just like it was any other jobsite - because it is just that, any other jobsite."
Sorry for the blunt language, but this is bullshit. I used to be a salesman that frequently visted the homes of people. These were my jobsites. Do you really expect OSHA or my employer to preceed me to the customers' homes and certify them safe before I can make a sales pitch?
I'm sorry, but the employers do not force you to work at home. It is a perk that you ask for. If you feel that your home is unsafe, then do your work at work. It is incredibly presumptuous to demand that your employer give you an ergonomic workstation when the one you currently have is perfectly acceptable to during off-work hours.
"...it's not unreasonable to expect a heavy telecommuter receive a computing environment that respects their health."
Disagree. Your employer has already furnished you space at the place of employment. That you choose to work at home is your choice, not his. If your home does not respect your health already, that's your fault, and your fault alone.
Things have progressed so far in their ridiculousness that it's time officials were reminded of government's purpose. The purpose of government is to protect the lives, liberties and properties of citizens. This is why armies and police forces are maintained, and why there are laws against theft and fraud. When a government strays too far away from this purpose, or twists the meanings of these rights, it quickly becomes a tyranny.
But this modern age has brought with it the strange notion that government must also protect people from themselves. This protection of life is counter to the protection of liberty. Although I need the government's assistance in protecting my life from foreign invaders or domestic criminals, I have no use for them trying to protect me from myself. You would get quite irate if you hired a security guard for your workplace and then discovered he removed the vending machines from the break room in order to protect the employees from heart disease.
Well government is doing the same thing. And in the U.S., OSHA is the over-zealous security guard for businesses. And now it wants to follow employees home and dictate what they can do there.
Humor is hurtful. Always has been, always will be. Humor is about denigrating. Even very benign humor like puns are still denigrating language (and why they are called "groaners"). That's why we laugh, we are masking our shock. Larry Niven's Puppeteers had it right when they said "laughter is an interupted defense mechanism".
But this does not make humor wrong. It's like a vaccine of mini-hurt to cure the big hurts of life. Humor is healing. When we laugh at our stupid mistakes of previous years, we are healing ourselves of those stupid mistakes.
Of course, there is humor that hurts too much to be tolerated. Racist jokes and cruel pranks are just examples. But if we eliminate all humor that hurts people, we are left only with puns and wordplay. We don't need to be political correctness police. User Friendly is a great strip, and genuinely funny.
If we're not allowed to pick on people, all we will have left are our noses. Ouch! That hurt!
I can only imagine what goes on inside the mind of the FSF, so here are two suppositions on what I think they want the "perfect world" to be.
1) Software is held in common by the government or government-like or appointed trusts. Private ownership of software is not allowed. But RMS has emphatically maintained that he is not communist. So I'll reject this one right off.
2) Copyright laws are repealed and no one may hold legal monopoly on any information. So what happens here? Will everything be Free Software? Hardly! Nothing would stop closed-source software. "Here's my binary, but I don't have to give my source code." I would suggest that such a world would see a sharp rise in onerous copy-protection schemes and NDAs.
Software ownership is the key to the GPL. Whether the FSF likes it or not, the only way to reach their goal of a free software world without totalitarian means is to allow software ownership.
By saying that it's wrong for me to copyright software and put restrictions on it, but that it's okay for them to do the same, the FSF is acting incredibly hypocritical and arrogant.
Okay, I'm going way off topic here, but you tempted me.
"what the hell does guns have to do with DVDs"?
Freedom. Liberty. Property rights.
I bought a DVD and I have the right to play it. If the necessary tools to play it with are not available, I have the right to create them. I also have the right to own a firearm that I have purchased. I have the right to defend myself with it, or to merely use it for target practice.
In both cases there are groups of people attempting to use the power of government (and succeeding) to deny me freedom, liberty and property rights. In neither case am I committing or intending to commit any violence, fraud or theft. I am not a criminal. I am not duplicating DVD's with DeCSS and passing them out to persons not entitled to them. I am not murdering or endangering any peaceful person with my firearms.
I am not trying to convince you that gun control is wrong. It would be as futile to do this as it would be to teach a pig to sing[1]. However, as a libertarian (as is ESR), I find no philosophical difference between gun control and DVD "control".
[1] "It wastes your time and annoys the pig", a classic libertarian saying.
Don't believe everything the American media tells you about America. For some reason they relish the negative. They aren't happy unless they're reporting homicide, rape or arson. The trouble is, it's complete bullshit.
Yes, there's crime here. There's violent crime in every nation, including the UK. But it's nowhere near as bad as the American media portrays it.
Hmmm, you have a problem with people speaking their opinions? What are you doing on Slashdot then?
It's a signature, that's all. Do you really expect all of mankind to agree with you on everything? Everyone else in the world will disagree with you on at least half a dozen topics. Everyone. Including your best friend. If you think otherwise, you're fooling yourself.
A tiny company doesn't need management methodologies. There's only one or two bosses and the employees know what needs to be done. But a huge corporation has hundreds of bosses and no one knows what direction to go. MM ensures that everyone is on the right track. Sure it involves a lot of bureaucracy. But so what? Any company over a certain size is going to be bureaucratic, with or without MM.
There are several aspects to management methodologies. First, it institutes standards to ensure that everyone is building their piece of code the same way. It says "this is how we do things around here." Second, it tries to ensure a quality process. Software needs every bit as much quality assurance as a piece of hardware, but the industry is only now just coming to realize this. Finally, MM tries to ensure process improvement. If something was done right them make sure you do the same thing for the next project. If a defect was found, discover the cause and make sure it never happens again.
Those three things shouldn't be that hard for IT and Development to grasp, but for some reason they are. Follow industry standards, build a good product, improve yourself. When you have more than a dozen chiefs in a company, making sure that gets done involves either telepathy or bureaucracy.
"And keep in mind that FSF could *NOT* withdraw the GPL from gcc."
Balderdash! They, as the legal owner of gcc can do whatever they want with it, including changing the license or assigning the copyright elsewhere. No, they can't change the license on your *copy*, but what you have is just that, a copy.
"You are against granting users freedom with their software?"
Their philosophy is about much more than free software. It's also about the moral correctness of copyright violations (it would be wrong to deny your friend...), denying *use* of software to proprietary concerns (why you next library should be GPL), and even proposals for software taxes (gnu manifesto).
If this were true, then why do they go to such pains to disparage and denigrate *ALL* other Free Software licenses?
"Wrong. I suggest to read the essay on the FSF website entitled "Why Software Should Not Have Owners.""
If the FSF truly believed that software should not have owners, then they would not copyright their software. They should make up their minds one way or the other. Either software should not be owned and all of GNU becomes public domain, or that they keep the GPL/copyrights and merely remove that article.
"Why are you intent on holding the FSF in such a derogatory manner when its purpose is to write software and give it to YOU."
I am not against any individual belonging to the FSF or GNU Project. However, I am against their philosophy. This is a much different thing.
"Of course, I can take gcc, slap my own copyright on top, and market it as JasonCC. All of this is perfectly legal providing that I release it under the GPL."
If you do that, you will soon find yourself in court. You can copyright your modifications to gcc separately, but you have no ownership rights to anyone else's code.
And there are plenty of worthwile osOpinion articles as well. If it's good enough to lob potshots at osOpinion authors, then it's good enough to lob some at ACs as well.
"Could someone name a comparable product with all of the features as emacs? I doubt it."
Hah! I have no idea why Richard even continued on with his GNU quest, since emacs is an operating system all to itself. I hear the next version will even do my dishes for me! But features are not quality, and I could name a thousand people who claim that emacs is a pile of dingo droppings!
Only the Free Software Foundation has the cojones to claim that tcl is evil and lisp as morally superior.
"If I author code under BSD license and you use it, you can change it and I won't get to benefit from those changes... that restricts me."
A very common misconception. Don't feel ashamed for falling into the trap. Believe it or not, BSD code is copyrighted! Yes, folk, that right, copyrighted.
So what happens if Microsoft takes my code? Nothing! I still have it. The only thing I do not have is that code that Microsoft, and Microsoft ALONE created. Since my code is still mine, and still copyrighted, Microsoft cannot demand any onerous duties upon users of MY software.
Demanding that all my stuff derived from your stuff should be given back to you is absurd and antithetical to freedom. If I shared a bag of apples with you, then turned around and demanded any pies that you made with them, I wasn't really sharing my apples after all.
"Since you use the Randian catch-phrase "collectivist", I assume you understand what a big fraud the concept of "altruism" is."
Isn't that precisely what the FSF is all about? Altruism? Remember all that rhetoric about friends and neighbors and how it is morally wrong not to give other peoples' software to them?
You really don't know what freedom is, do you? How sad. Let me tell you again what it means: freedom is the absence of restrictions. But wait! if you imprison me, you are restricting me! If you beat me you are restricting me! Get it?
"...but keep in mind that by choosing BSD, you could be working for Microsoft for free."
So what? Are you so arrogant to believe that Microsoft even wants your code? The number of incidents where Microsoft used BSD code can be counted on one hand. Compare that to the myriad BSD packages out there and it's insignificant. And the number of BSD packages which withered away because some "proprietary" Microsoft version existed is exactly ZERO.
Besides which, all you Anonymous Cowards keep telling me that Free Software is not about "free beer". If it's not, then who cares if Microsoft sells your "beer" for money?
So, you demand that all people return modifications of your code to you, but you want a license on their code that does not require the same of you? Sounds like a double standard to me. Did you ever think that other people might prefer *your* code to be under the BSD as well?
"Perhaps you should look proprietary up in the dictionary before you apply it to gcc."
----- Proprietary: (1) of, relating to, or characteristic of a proprietor (2) used, made, or marketed by one having the exclusive legal right.
Proprietor : one who has the legal right or exclusive title to something : OWNER -----
Proprietary software is owned software. The FSF owns gcc. By retaining a copyright, they have retained exclusive legal rights to gcc.
The FSF is the owner and proprietor of gcc, and thus gcc is proprietary. Perhaps you should use a real dictionary, instead of the redefinitions the FSF uses.
Maddog said that trying to get Compaq to work with the FSF was just too hard. He also said that nothing's too hard with Linux. Why is this? Simple.
FSF operates under a philosophy that only allows one way of doing things. They (obstensibly) relinquish ownership of their software, but keep an incredibly tight leash upon it. They are obsessed with MIT's "Right Thing".
Linux, on the other hand, allows any philosophy at all. Linus kept ownership of his software, but shared it with the world. And the world shared with him. Linux is about coding, not preaching.
FSF and GNU are about exclusive freedom. Linux is about inclusive freedom; freedom for all developers and users, not just the chosen few.
And you too, have an excellent point. An elementary school teacher once told me that she never taught knowlege to her students. Instead she taught them how to find knowlege. Needless to say, she was at the top of her profession.
"Teacher, what happened to the dinosaurs?" "I don't know. Why don't you find out and let me know..."
Slashdot Mirror
"The act of approving the home as a suitable worksite by a company makes them responsible for occupational injury there, just like it was any other jobsite - because it is just that, any other jobsite."
Sorry for the blunt language, but this is bullshit. I used to be a salesman that frequently visted the homes of people. These were my jobsites. Do you really expect OSHA or my employer to preceed me to the customers' homes and certify them safe before I can make a sales pitch?
I'm sorry, but the employers do not force you to work at home. It is a perk that you ask for. If you feel that your home is unsafe, then do your work at work. It is incredibly presumptuous to demand that your employer give you an ergonomic workstation when the one you currently have is perfectly acceptable to during off-work hours.
"...it's not unreasonable to expect a heavy telecommuter receive a computing environment that respects their health."
Disagree. Your employer has already furnished you space at the place of employment. That you choose to work at home is your choice, not his. If your home does not respect your health already, that's your fault, and your fault alone.
Things have progressed so far in their ridiculousness that it's time officials were reminded of government's purpose. The purpose of government is to protect the lives, liberties and properties of citizens. This is why armies and police forces are maintained, and why there are laws against theft and fraud. When a government strays too far away from this purpose, or twists the meanings of these rights, it quickly becomes a tyranny.
But this modern age has brought with it the strange notion that government must also protect people from themselves. This protection of life is counter to the protection of liberty. Although I need the government's assistance in protecting my life from foreign invaders or domestic criminals, I have no use for them trying to protect me from myself. You would get quite irate if you hired a security guard for your workplace and then discovered he removed the vending machines from the break room in order to protect the employees from heart disease.
Well government is doing the same thing. And in the U.S., OSHA is the over-zealous security guard for businesses. And now it wants to follow employees home and dictate what they can do there.
Humor is hurtful. Always has been, always will be. Humor is about denigrating. Even very benign humor like puns are still denigrating language (and why they are called "groaners"). That's why we laugh, we are masking our shock. Larry Niven's Puppeteers had it right when they said "laughter is an interupted defense mechanism".
But this does not make humor wrong. It's like a vaccine of mini-hurt to cure the big hurts of life. Humor is healing. When we laugh at our stupid mistakes of previous years, we are healing ourselves of those stupid mistakes.
Of course, there is humor that hurts too much to be tolerated. Racist jokes and cruel pranks are just examples. But if we eliminate all humor that hurts people, we are left only with puns and wordplay. We don't need to be political correctness police. User Friendly is a great strip, and genuinely funny.
If we're not allowed to pick on people, all we will have left are our noses. Ouch! That hurt!
I can only imagine what goes on inside the mind of the FSF, so here are two suppositions on what I think they want the "perfect world" to be.
1) Software is held in common by the government or government-like or appointed trusts. Private ownership of software is not allowed. But RMS has emphatically maintained that he is not communist. So I'll reject this one right off.
2) Copyright laws are repealed and no one may hold legal monopoly on any information. So what happens here? Will everything be Free Software? Hardly! Nothing would stop closed-source software. "Here's my binary, but I don't have to give my source code." I would suggest that such a world would see a sharp rise in onerous copy-protection schemes and NDAs.
Software ownership is the key to the GPL. Whether the FSF likes it or not, the only way to reach their goal of a free software world without totalitarian means is to allow software ownership.
By saying that it's wrong for me to copyright software and put restrictions on it, but that it's okay for them to do the same, the FSF is acting incredibly hypocritical and arrogant.
Okay, I'm going way off topic here, but you tempted me.
"what the hell does guns have to do with DVDs"?
Freedom. Liberty. Property rights.
I bought a DVD and I have the right to play it. If the necessary tools to play it with are not available, I have the right to create them. I also have the right to own a firearm that I have purchased. I have the right to defend myself with it, or to merely use it for target practice.
In both cases there are groups of people attempting to use the power of government (and succeeding) to deny me freedom, liberty and property rights. In neither case am I committing or intending to commit any violence, fraud or theft. I am not a criminal. I am not duplicating DVD's with DeCSS and passing them out to persons not entitled to them. I am not murdering or endangering any peaceful person with my firearms.
I am not trying to convince you that gun control is wrong. It would be as futile to do this as it would be to teach a pig to sing[1]. However, as a libertarian (as is ESR), I find no philosophical difference between gun control and DVD "control".
[1] "It wastes your time and annoys the pig", a classic libertarian saying.
Don't believe everything the American media tells you about America. For some reason they relish the negative. They aren't happy unless they're reporting homicide, rape or arson. The trouble is, it's complete bullshit.
Yes, there's crime here. There's violent crime in every nation, including the UK. But it's nowhere near as bad as the American media portrays it.
Hmmm, you have a problem with people speaking their opinions? What are you doing on Slashdot then?
It's a signature, that's all. Do you really expect all of mankind to agree with you on everything? Everyone else in the world will disagree with you on at least half a dozen topics. Everyone. Including your best friend. If you think otherwise, you're fooling yourself.
That's life. Live with it.
A tiny company doesn't need management methodologies. There's only one or two bosses and the employees know what needs to be done. But a huge corporation has hundreds of bosses and no one knows what direction to go. MM ensures that everyone is on the right track. Sure it involves a lot of bureaucracy. But so what? Any company over a certain size is going to be bureaucratic, with or without MM.
There are several aspects to management methodologies. First, it institutes standards to ensure that everyone is building their piece of code the same way. It says "this is how we do things around here." Second, it tries to ensure a quality process. Software needs every bit as much quality assurance as a piece of hardware, but the industry is only now just coming to realize this. Finally, MM tries to ensure process improvement. If something was done right them make sure you do the same thing for the next project. If a defect was found, discover the cause and make sure it never happens again.
Those three things shouldn't be that hard for IT and Development to grasp, but for some reason they are. Follow industry standards, build a good product, improve yourself. When you have more than a dozen chiefs in a company, making sure that gets done involves either telepathy or bureaucracy.
ISO 900x is a hilarious set of standards that basically come down to : Document and be consistent.
WRONG!
ISO 900x certification is proof that you documented your activities and were consistant.
"And keep in mind that FSF could *NOT* withdraw the GPL from gcc."
Balderdash! They, as the legal owner of gcc can do whatever they want with it, including changing the license or assigning the copyright elsewhere. No, they can't change the license on your *copy*, but what you have is just that, a copy.
"You are against granting users freedom with their software?"
Their philosophy is about much more than free software. It's also about the moral correctness of copyright violations (it would be wrong to deny your friend...), denying *use* of software to proprietary concerns (why you next library should be GPL), and even proposals for software taxes (gnu manifesto).
"No. The FSF is about free software. Period."
If this were true, then why do they go to such pains to disparage and denigrate *ALL* other Free Software licenses?
"Wrong. I suggest to read the essay on the FSF website entitled "Why Software Should Not Have Owners.""
If the FSF truly believed that software should not have owners, then they would not copyright their software. They should make up their minds one way or the other. Either software should not be owned and all of GNU becomes public domain, or that they keep the GPL/copyrights and merely remove that article.
"Why are you intent on holding the FSF in such a derogatory manner when its purpose is to write software and give it to YOU."
I am not against any individual belonging to the FSF or GNU Project. However, I am against their philosophy. This is a much different thing.
"Of course, I can take gcc, slap my own copyright on top, and market it as JasonCC. All of this is perfectly legal providing that I release it under the GPL."
If you do that, you will soon find yourself in court. You can copyright your modifications to gcc separately, but you have no ownership rights to anyone else's code.
And there are plenty of worthwile osOpinion articles as well. If it's good enough to lob potshots at osOpinion authors, then it's good enough to lob some at ACs as well.
"Could someone name a comparable product with all of the features as emacs? I doubt it."
Hah! I have no idea why Richard even continued on with his GNU quest, since emacs is an operating system all to itself. I hear the next version will even do my dishes for me! But features are not quality, and I could name a thousand people who claim that emacs is a pile of dingo droppings!
Only the Free Software Foundation has the cojones to claim that tcl is evil and lisp as morally superior.
"If I author code under BSD license and you use it, you can change it and I won't get to benefit from those changes ... that restricts me."
A very common misconception. Don't feel ashamed for falling into the trap. Believe it or not, BSD code is copyrighted! Yes, folk, that right, copyrighted.
So what happens if Microsoft takes my code? Nothing! I still have it. The only thing I do not have is that code that Microsoft, and Microsoft ALONE created. Since my code is still mine, and still copyrighted, Microsoft cannot demand any onerous duties upon users of MY software.
Demanding that all my stuff derived from your stuff should be given back to you is absurd and antithetical to freedom. If I shared a bag of apples with you, then turned around and demanded any pies that you made with them, I wasn't really sharing my apples after all.
"Since you use the Randian catch-phrase "collectivist", I assume you understand what a big fraud the concept of "altruism" is."
Isn't that precisely what the FSF is all about? Altruism? Remember all that rhetoric about friends and neighbors and how it is morally wrong not to give other peoples' software to them?
You really don't know what freedom is, do you? How sad. Let me tell you again what it means: freedom is the absence of restrictions. But wait! if you imprison me, you are restricting me! If you beat me you are restricting me! Get it?
"...but keep in mind that by choosing BSD, you could be working for Microsoft for free."
So what? Are you so arrogant to believe that Microsoft even wants your code? The number of incidents where Microsoft used BSD code can be counted on one hand. Compare that to the myriad BSD packages out there and it's insignificant. And the number of BSD packages which withered away because some "proprietary" Microsoft version existed is exactly ZERO.
Besides which, all you Anonymous Cowards keep telling me that Free Software is not about "free beer". If it's not, then who cares if Microsoft sells your "beer" for money?
So, you demand that all people return modifications of your code to you, but you want a license on their code that does not require the same of you? Sounds like a double standard to me. Did you ever think that other people might prefer *your* code to be under the BSD as well?
"Perhaps you should look proprietary up in the dictionary before you apply it to gcc."
-----
Proprietary: (1) of, relating to, or characteristic of a proprietor (2) used, made, or marketed by one having the exclusive legal right.
Proprietor : one who has the legal right or exclusive title to something : OWNER
-----
Proprietary software is owned software. The FSF owns gcc. By retaining a copyright, they have retained exclusive legal rights to gcc.
The FSF is the owner and proprietor of gcc, and thus gcc is proprietary. Perhaps you should use a real dictionary, instead of the redefinitions the FSF uses.
One could say the same thing about Anonymous Cowards.
Maddog said that trying to get Compaq to work with the FSF was just too hard. He also said that nothing's too hard with Linux. Why is this? Simple.
FSF operates under a philosophy that only allows one way of doing things. They (obstensibly) relinquish ownership of their software, but keep an incredibly tight leash upon it. They are obsessed with MIT's "Right Thing".
Linux, on the other hand, allows any philosophy at all. Linus kept ownership of his software, but shared it with the world. And the world shared with him. Linux is about coding, not preaching.
FSF and GNU are about exclusive freedom. Linux is about inclusive freedom; freedom for all developers and users, not just the chosen few.
And you too, have an excellent point. An elementary school teacher once told me that she never taught knowlege to her students. Instead she taught them how to find knowlege. Needless to say, she was at the top of her profession.
"Teacher, what happened to the dinosaurs?"
"I don't know. Why don't you find out and let me know..."