My understanding is that a simple declaration of "public domain" is insufficient to make it so. Let's take a (poor) analogy. You paint on the side of your house: "unowned home". You still own the home, you will still pay taxes on it, and you will still be liable for it. To "unown" you home, you must deed it to someone else.
In order to transfer copyright on your software, you have to have at the minimum signatures from both parties. In order to place your work in the public domain, you have to hurdle through similar but more difficult legal ropes. I would suggest contacting a copyright attorney.
However, the next best thing is simplicity itself. Use the BSD or MIT license. You get the benefit of allowing anyone to use your software for any purpose, along with the protection of an attached warranty disclaimer. Remember, even if you go through the hoops of putting the software into the public domain, you will still be liable for it...
1) You have to jump through a lot more legal hoops than that in order to place your work into the public domain. In fact, merely saying "released unconditionally to public domain" would put your work into a legal limbo since it will NOT be in the public domain but people will believe it is.
The small segment of the user community needs to get their act together. They act like the developers owe them the software. They act like we can just pull it out of our arses on their demand.
Most users are great. But for every ten of them there's one jackass who has to write "it sucks". Sure, we learn to ignore those notes, but our subconscious doesn't. It depresses us.
If you like a program, write to the author and say so. Say what it is that you like about the program. If you don't have anything good to say, then shut up. Find another program that you do like and praise it instead. Constructive criticism is useful and very valuable, but make sure it's constructive before you hit the send button.
I have to agree with you completely on this one. I know a medical transcriptionist who still uses Wordperfect 5.1 because she is much more productive with it than with any version of Word. When you can type 200 WPM and have the WP5.1 command memorized, the mouse and menu are your worst enemies.
This is why linux sucks for anyone other than nerds.
I won't comment on Linux, since I use FreeBSD instead. But I imagine the situation is the same. There are certainly parts of any Unix or unix-like system that can be streamlined and eased. But I would submit that the real problem is something else entirely: people are unwilling to learn new things.
We don't want to learn new things. It takes effort. It takes time. We just want to turn on our appliance, have it read our minds, and perform our wishes. But technology doesn't work that way, and it never has.
Do you really think anyone who has never seen an automobile before can simply get in one and start to drive? Hah! The situation is the same with operating systems. People who have only used Windows will think KDE is difficult solely because they don't already know how to use it. But stick a person in front of Windows who has never seen a computer before in their lives and that "simple" interface will be incredibly complex to them.
Ease of use under KDE is much, much better than under the Windows GUI. Once the Linux and BSD guys get the sytem configuration and maintenance stuff simplified down some more, Windows won't hold a candle to them in the ease of use department. But Windows users will never know it because they will never try it.
The Western approach is to build a product (or the packaging, at least) from scratch each time. Kaizen products are frequently updated, with minor incremental improvements.
I guess that explains what's happening at my company. We got bought out by a multinational competitor. So we had two divisions producing the same category of product. We were number one on the market, but specialized in just that product. Our competitor built a cheap knock-off, but was a huge multinational, and thus bought us for cash. The two divisions got merged under one VP, from Japan.
Two days after the our former competitor released the product that they had been working on, and designed from scratch, we were given strict orders to never again create a product from scratch. So we had to dump ours that was 90% complete. All of our new products had to be incremental upgrades to our former competitor's low end product. "Spies" were sent in from the mother company to ensure that we weren't using any design work of our own.
If that's kaizen, I don't want any of it. We used to be the equivalent of Rolls Royce, bought out by Ford, and resigned to forever building cheap Pintos.
There should be no special laws, because it is just people communicating. Then why does the DMCA exist? What about the CDBPTA? These are special laws.
The article talked about two broad categories of people: those who want cyberspace to be an expection and those who don't. But not everyone in the former category are cyberbuffs. Some want to place special restrictive exceptions on cyberspace.
Those who want special immunity exceptions are every bit as wrong as those who want special restrictive exceptions. Laws which are not uniform or impartial are bad laws, regardless of whether they are to your benefit.
I think you need to re-read the article and understand what it is saying rather than what you think it is saying. You enemy isn't the "cyberskeptic". You enemy is the exceptionalist who wants there to be exceptions to the law. Microsoft isn't a cyberskeptic. The RIAA isn't a cyberskeptic. The MPAA isn't a cyberskeptic. They are every bit as technocratically elitist as you.
The internet on the other hand, is unlike anything before.
What a load of rubbish! This is precisely the technocratic elitism the article is talking about.
You can steal something, without depriving it's owner of his property.
You can photocopy a book without depriving it's owner of his property. All without the benefit of cyberspace.
You can destry someone's property (software) and all they have to do is put it back.
You can grafitti slogans all over a shop and all they have to do is clean it off. All without the benefit of cyberspace.
There is nothing fundamentally new about the internet. It's faster, larger and more convenient than earlier technologies, but it still follows the same old rules of physics, logic and human nature.
Even barter is backed by opinion. What good does it do me to try to trade my cow for a bushel of wheat if no one agrees that a cow is worth anything?
The probability that people will continue to value gold and diamonds is sufficiently high that it is worthwhile backing your currency with them. More than five thousand years of gold as stable currency puts the odds into my favor.
The unfortunate state of civilization today is that it is governed by men and not by laws. Thus it doesn't matter whether a EULA (any EULA) is legally binding or not. All that matters is that enough people think they are.
In terms of the law, most EULAs are completely invalid. Exercise of pre-existing rights is considered assent. There is a total lack of consideration. And there is no way to verify that a particular "licensee" has even seen the contract.
In terms of Rule by Fallible Human Beings, EULAs are completely valid if you can get enough people to believe that they are valid. But even if you can't, you can still take them to court and draw out the process to bleed them dry until the give in and settle.
I don't understand how the judicial/legislative system has allowed them to get away with this, whereas credit card companies are screwed on fraudulent online transactions.
The difference is easy. The average person cares about losing money. But the average person is very ignorant about their legal rights with regards to copyrightable materials, especially when it concerns software.
Wait until some large company starts putting the screws to enough people. Then the situation will change. Bankrupt enough grandmas in court for EULA violations, and the public opinion will change.
"open" means "accessible. If you can't touch, it's not open. My door is open, meaning you can not only peer inside, but also walk inside. The best adjective for this kind of software is "open".
I've always wondered by geeks don't bother with dictionaries.
I'm guessing this is because of build time optimizations?
Most likely. I use FreeBSD, and build everything from scratch optimized for my machine. At work, I am dual booting Win2K and FreeBSD/KDE, and there's no comparison. Win2K feels like someone dumped molasses in it. KDE doesn't feel slow at all.
Re:a companion article..
on
Built For Use
·
· Score: 1
I found a lady just last year still using win 3.11 as her OS and was *irate* to find out that she was being forced to upgrade to a brand new PC.
And I suspect that you helped *force* her to upgrade. What arrogance. Of course she was not happy with the situation. A bunch of strangers just descended on her life and told her it wasn't good enough! People can be perfectly happy without having to follow your ideals of happiness. Shocking but true.
Having something be commercial is *not* the same as being closed (propriatary).
I hate to point out the obvious, but if a company tries to charge money for something that you can download for free they're not going to make much money. Most distros are going about it all wrong. Free Software == commodity software, which means you had better find something else to sell if you want to stay around for any appreciable amount of time.
p.s. Distros that have managed to make a few quid here and there are selling stuff other than just the shrink wrapped free download.
Re:How to use another window manager under KDE?
on
GNOME 2.0 Released
·
· Score: 2
Several ways. Probably the most straightforward if you aren't afraid of editors, is to edit the file "startkde" and replace the line "ksmserver --restore" with "ksmserver --restore --windowmanager enlightenment".
The startkde script really needs to allow the --windowmanager switch to make it easier to switch between various ones. Or better yet, a ksmserver control panel to change the window manager. GNOME (at least 1.x) was definitely easier to switch windowmanagers with.
p.s. Or there's always the Billy Bob method of switching window managers the Arkansas way: bring up an xterm/konsole and put it in the middle of the screen. Kill kwin. Now launch enlightenment form that xterm...
Personally I think the biggest advantage to GNOME is that you can choose your window manager.
FUD, FUD, FUD, no go away!
GNOME will use any window manager, but prefers those that are GNOME compliant. KDE will use any window manager, but prefers those that are GNOME compliant. The fact that KDE ships with its own window manager is about as irrelevant as the fact that GNOME does as well.
Re:A new slogan for Linux
on
Is Linux Dead?
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· Score: 2
Maybe those "*BSD is Dying" posts really are trolls and not true at all!
I read the article, and my conclusion is that it is low grade scare-mongering aimed at geeks to absorbed with technology to understand the way the real world works.
You can take any action by [insert opponent here] and construct a worst case scenario that would cause you grandmother to keel over. The media does this all the time. And it works. Put the right spin on it and the frightened public will vote for anything.
So let's try it. Suppose Microsoft decided to drop support for Windows 98 and 2000. The scare-mongering conclusion: this will force millions of Windows users to upgrade to XP, giving untold extra billions to Bill Gates, allowing him to buy off Peruvian, Finnish, and German politicians (since he has already bought every US politician). Suddenly Linux is banned in those countries just like it is in the US. But wait! Billy Boy still has five billion left over. Now he bribes people to turn in Linux users. You can't trust your neighbors anymore. You could get turned in and go to jail for wearing a Slashdot shirt. All because Microsoft dropped support for Win98/2K.
Ludicrous of course. But no more ludicrous than the conclusion of this article. Yes, there could be serious repercussions to Palladium. Yes, the public needs to be informed about it. But no, the sky isn't falling and Linux/BSD/Apple/Sun/IBM aren't going to die because of it.
There is no right of privacy. No, this isn't a troll. It's the truth. Our expections of privacy are not rights, just expectations. Legally transforming these expectations into rights is a guarantee that the Law of Unexpected Consequences will be invoked.
Throughout most of human existance privacy was a virtual unknown. Communities were small enough that everyone knew everyone else. Everyone knew where you were, where you were going, and what you were going to do when you got there. The only privacy you had was within your own home if you were lucky enough to have one. Back then (prior to a mere few decades ago) privacy meant solitude
Jump to today. We are so confused over privacy it's almost funny. We would be incensed if everyone knew that we were buying condoms online, yet we buy them at the local drug store in plain sight. We display outrage when a website tracks our addresses, yet we post our real estate listings in the local paper. We wonder why PGP hasn't caught on for email with the general public, yet we yack on the cell phone in the clear all day long.
The big disconnect is easy to explain. We think we have an expectation of privacy because we are sitting in a chair in our homes with the curtains closed. But in reality we are online spewing out personal information as fast as we can over the internet. Here's an experiment. Go buy the very same product three times. The first time buy it online using your personal computer from your home. The second time buy it online using a computer sitting in a public library. The third time buy it from a brick and mortar retailer.
We should have, and must have, privacy within our own homes, including the harddrives of the computers within our homes. But that privacy ends at the walls of our homes. Once we engage in communication beyond our house walls, it's up to us to make our own privacy by using encryption, anonymizers or whatnot.
Neither the GPL nor the LGPL are appropriate for commercial embedded products for precisely the reason you mention.
If you're a hardware manufacturer, opening the source also opens up your proprietary hardware. If you're a software company and you GPL the source, you've just become a support or consulting company. Good luck. Software makes a good complement to hardware, but only if it doesn not commoditize the hardware.
For copyleft to work in the embedded field, we need a new paradigm. Perhaps Trolltech's idea is the way (you can buy a proprietary license to free (as in speech) yourself from the GPL). Perhaps we need a new license that does not require disclosure of source if the software is distributed embedded in the hardware. Perhaps copyleft won't work at all in this field. Just pondering.
In fact if you publish source under the GPL you are free to use that source in another commercial product and do not need to open up the source. But as soon as you accept paptches, you cant include those patches in your closed product, cause they will be under the GPL and you do not have the copyright.
If you require submissions to have their copyright assigned to you, you can do whatever you wish with them. Requiring assignments of copyright is not unheard of. In fact, it is policy for the FSF.
I agree that the clause in question is very one sided, and I hope Macromedia does not insist upon it. But I don't see that it will disqualify the license as either Open Source or Free. It will just end up being another unused license since no one will want to contribute to projects under it.
And exactly how is this different from the GPL? Where in the GPL does it state that the original author must specify where the source code located? Licenses are restrictions upon the licensee, not the licensor. They are not, and have never been, two way streets.
Slashdot Mirror
My understanding is that a simple declaration of "public domain" is insufficient to make it so. Let's take a (poor) analogy. You paint on the side of your house: "unowned home". You still own the home, you will still pay taxes on it, and you will still be liable for it. To "unown" you home, you must deed it to someone else.
In order to transfer copyright on your software, you have to have at the minimum signatures from both parties. In order to place your work in the public domain, you have to hurdle through similar but more difficult legal ropes. I would suggest contacting a copyright attorney.
However, the next best thing is simplicity itself. Use the BSD or MIT license. You get the benefit of allowing anyone to use your software for any purpose, along with the protection of an attached warranty disclaimer. Remember, even if you go through the hoops of putting the software into the public domain, you will still be liable for it...
1) You have to jump through a lot more legal hoops than that in order to place your work into the public domain. In fact, merely saying "released unconditionally to public domain" would put your work into a legal limbo since it will NOT be in the public domain but people will believe it is.
2) Public domain is not a license.
The small segment of the user community needs to get their act together. They act like the developers owe them the software. They act like we can just pull it out of our arses on their demand.
Most users are great. But for every ten of them there's one jackass who has to write "it sucks". Sure, we learn to ignore those notes, but our subconscious doesn't. It depresses us.
If you like a program, write to the author and say so. Say what it is that you like about the program. If you don't have anything good to say, then shut up. Find another program that you do like and praise it instead. Constructive criticism is useful and very valuable, but make sure it's constructive before you hit the send button.
I have to agree with you completely on this one. I know a medical transcriptionist who still uses Wordperfect 5.1 because she is much more productive with it than with any version of Word. When you can type 200 WPM and have the WP5.1 command memorized, the mouse and menu are your worst enemies.
This is why linux sucks for anyone other than nerds.
I won't comment on Linux, since I use FreeBSD instead. But I imagine the situation is the same. There are certainly parts of any Unix or unix-like system that can be streamlined and eased. But I would submit that the real problem is something else entirely: people are unwilling to learn new things.
We don't want to learn new things. It takes effort. It takes time. We just want to turn on our appliance, have it read our minds, and perform our wishes. But technology doesn't work that way, and it never has.
Do you really think anyone who has never seen an automobile before can simply get in one and start to drive? Hah! The situation is the same with operating systems. People who have only used Windows will think KDE is difficult solely because they don't already know how to use it. But stick a person in front of Windows who has never seen a computer before in their lives and that "simple" interface will be incredibly complex to them.
Ease of use under KDE is much, much better than under the Windows GUI. Once the Linux and BSD guys get the sytem configuration and maintenance stuff simplified down some more, Windows won't hold a candle to them in the ease of use department. But Windows users will never know it because they will never try it.
The Western approach is to build a product (or the packaging, at least) from scratch each time. Kaizen products are frequently updated, with minor incremental improvements.
I guess that explains what's happening at my company. We got bought out by a multinational competitor. So we had two divisions producing the same category of product. We were number one on the market, but specialized in just that product. Our competitor built a cheap knock-off, but was a huge multinational, and thus bought us for cash. The two divisions got merged under one VP, from Japan.
Two days after the our former competitor released the product that they had been working on, and designed from scratch, we were given strict orders to never again create a product from scratch. So we had to dump ours that was 90% complete. All of our new products had to be incremental upgrades to our former competitor's low end product. "Spies" were sent in from the mother company to ensure that we weren't using any design work of our own.
If that's kaizen, I don't want any of it. We used to be the equivalent of Rolls Royce, bought out by Ford, and resigned to forever building cheap Pintos.
There should be no special laws, because it is just people communicating. Then why does the DMCA exist? What about the CDBPTA? These are special laws.
The article talked about two broad categories of people: those who want cyberspace to be an expection and those who don't. But not everyone in the former category are cyberbuffs. Some want to place special restrictive exceptions on cyberspace.
Those who want special immunity exceptions are every bit as wrong as those who want special restrictive exceptions. Laws which are not uniform or impartial are bad laws, regardless of whether they are to your benefit.
I think you need to re-read the article and understand what it is saying rather than what you think it is saying. You enemy isn't the "cyberskeptic". You enemy is the exceptionalist who wants there to be exceptions to the law. Microsoft isn't a cyberskeptic. The RIAA isn't a cyberskeptic. The MPAA isn't a cyberskeptic. They are every bit as technocratically elitist as you.
Art produced for cash-raising purposed is art that quickly degenerates into standard pulp.
This is elitism of the bluest sort. Who are you to judge what art is worthy or not?
The internet on the other hand, is unlike anything before.
What a load of rubbish! This is precisely the technocratic elitism the article is talking about.
You can steal something, without depriving it's owner of his property.
You can photocopy a book without depriving it's owner of his property. All without the benefit of cyberspace.
You can destry someone's property (software) and all they have to do is put it back.
You can grafitti slogans all over a shop and all they have to do is clean it off. All without the benefit of cyberspace.
There is nothing fundamentally new about the internet. It's faster, larger and more convenient than earlier technologies, but it still follows the same old rules of physics, logic and human nature.
Even barter is backed by opinion. What good does it do me to try to trade my cow for a bushel of wheat if no one agrees that a cow is worth anything?
The probability that people will continue to value gold and diamonds is sufficiently high that it is worthwhile backing your currency with them. More than five thousand years of gold as stable currency puts the odds into my favor.
And which is why I prefer currency backed by something other than a politician's signature.
How legally binding *IS* the EULA?
The unfortunate state of civilization today is that it is governed by men and not by laws. Thus it doesn't matter whether a EULA (any EULA) is legally binding or not. All that matters is that enough people think they are.
In terms of the law, most EULAs are completely invalid. Exercise of pre-existing rights is considered assent. There is a total lack of consideration. And there is no way to verify that a particular "licensee" has even seen the contract.
In terms of Rule by Fallible Human Beings, EULAs are completely valid if you can get enough people to believe that they are valid. But even if you can't, you can still take them to court and draw out the process to bleed them dry until the give in and settle.
I don't understand how the judicial/legislative system has allowed them to get away with this, whereas credit card companies are screwed on fraudulent online transactions.
The difference is easy. The average person cares about losing money. But the average person is very ignorant about their legal rights with regards to copyrightable materials, especially when it concerns software.
Wait until some large company starts putting the screws to enough people. Then the situation will change. Bankrupt enough grandmas in court for EULA violations, and the public opinion will change.
"open" means "accessible. If you can't touch, it's not open. My door is open, meaning you can not only peer inside, but also walk inside. The best adjective for this kind of software is "open".
I've always wondered by geeks don't bother with dictionaries.
I'm guessing this is because of build time optimizations?
Most likely. I use FreeBSD, and build everything from scratch optimized for my machine. At work, I am dual booting Win2K and FreeBSD/KDE, and there's no comparison. Win2K feels like someone dumped molasses in it. KDE doesn't feel slow at all.
I found a lady just last year still using win 3.11 as her OS and was *irate* to find out that she was being forced to upgrade to a brand new PC.
And I suspect that you helped *force* her to upgrade. What arrogance. Of course she was not happy with the situation. A bunch of strangers just descended on her life and told her it wasn't good enough! People can be perfectly happy without having to follow your ideals of happiness. Shocking but true.
Having something be commercial is *not* the same as being closed (propriatary).
I hate to point out the obvious, but if a company tries to charge money for something that you can download for free they're not going to make much money. Most distros are going about it all wrong. Free Software == commodity software, which means you had better find something else to sell if you want to stay around for any appreciable amount of time.
p.s. Distros that have managed to make a few quid here and there are selling stuff other than just the shrink wrapped free download.
Several ways. Probably the most straightforward if you aren't afraid of editors, is to edit the file "startkde" and replace the line "ksmserver --restore" with "ksmserver --restore --windowmanager enlightenment".
The startkde script really needs to allow the --windowmanager switch to make it easier to switch between various ones. Or better yet, a ksmserver control panel to change the window manager. GNOME (at least 1.x) was definitely easier to switch windowmanagers with.
p.s. Or there's always the Billy Bob method of switching window managers the Arkansas way: bring up an xterm/konsole and put it in the middle of the screen. Kill kwin. Now launch enlightenment form that xterm...
Personally I think the biggest advantage to GNOME is that you can choose your window manager.
FUD, FUD, FUD, no go away!
GNOME will use any window manager, but prefers those that are GNOME compliant. KDE will use any window manager, but prefers those that are GNOME compliant. The fact that KDE ships with its own window manager is about as irrelevant as the fact that GNOME does as well.
Maybe those "*BSD is Dying" posts really are trolls and not true at all!
I read the article, and my conclusion is that it is low grade scare-mongering aimed at geeks to absorbed with technology to understand the way the real world works.
You can take any action by [insert opponent here] and construct a worst case scenario that would cause you grandmother to keel over. The media does this all the time. And it works. Put the right spin on it and the frightened public will vote for anything.
So let's try it. Suppose Microsoft decided to drop support for Windows 98 and 2000. The scare-mongering conclusion: this will force millions of Windows users to upgrade to XP, giving untold extra billions to Bill Gates, allowing him to buy off Peruvian, Finnish, and German politicians (since he has already bought every US politician). Suddenly Linux is banned in those countries just like it is in the US. But wait! Billy Boy still has five billion left over. Now he bribes people to turn in Linux users. You can't trust your neighbors anymore. You could get turned in and go to jail for wearing a Slashdot shirt. All because Microsoft dropped support for Win98/2K.
Ludicrous of course. But no more ludicrous than the conclusion of this article. Yes, there could be serious repercussions to Palladium. Yes, the public needs to be informed about it. But no, the sky isn't falling and Linux/BSD/Apple/Sun/IBM aren't going to die because of it.
They'll be there. The teaser at the end of the FOTR showed a glimpse of one.
There is no right of privacy. No, this isn't a troll. It's the truth. Our expections of privacy are not rights, just expectations. Legally transforming these expectations into rights is a guarantee that the Law of Unexpected Consequences will be invoked.
Throughout most of human existance privacy was a virtual unknown. Communities were small enough that everyone knew everyone else. Everyone knew where you were, where you were going, and what you were going to do when you got there. The only privacy you had was within your own home if you were lucky enough to have one. Back then (prior to a mere few decades ago) privacy meant solitude
Jump to today. We are so confused over privacy it's almost funny. We would be incensed if everyone knew that we were buying condoms online, yet we buy them at the local drug store in plain sight. We display outrage when a website tracks our addresses, yet we post our real estate listings in the local paper. We wonder why PGP hasn't caught on for email with the general public, yet we yack on the cell phone in the clear all day long.
The big disconnect is easy to explain. We think we have an expectation of privacy because we are sitting in a chair in our homes with the curtains closed. But in reality we are online spewing out personal information as fast as we can over the internet. Here's an experiment. Go buy the very same product three times. The first time buy it online using your personal computer from your home. The second time buy it online using a computer sitting in a public library. The third time buy it from a brick and mortar retailer.
We should have, and must have, privacy within our own homes, including the harddrives of the computers within our homes. But that privacy ends at the walls of our homes. Once we engage in communication beyond our house walls, it's up to us to make our own privacy by using encryption, anonymizers or whatnot.
Neither the GPL nor the LGPL are appropriate for commercial embedded products for precisely the reason you mention.
If you're a hardware manufacturer, opening the source also opens up your proprietary hardware. If you're a software company and you GPL the source, you've just become a support or consulting company. Good luck. Software makes a good complement to hardware, but only if it doesn not commoditize the hardware.
For copyleft to work in the embedded field, we need a new paradigm. Perhaps Trolltech's idea is the way (you can buy a proprietary license to free (as in speech) yourself from the GPL). Perhaps we need a new license that does not require disclosure of source if the software is distributed embedded in the hardware. Perhaps copyleft won't work at all in this field. Just pondering.
In fact if you publish source under the GPL you are free to use that source in another commercial product and do not need to open up the source. But as soon as you accept paptches, you cant include those patches in your closed product, cause they will be under the GPL and you do not have the copyright.
If you require submissions to have their copyright assigned to you, you can do whatever you wish with them. Requiring assignments of copyright is not unheard of. In fact, it is policy for the FSF.
I agree that the clause in question is very one sided, and I hope Macromedia does not insist upon it. But I don't see that it will disqualify the license as either Open Source or Free. It will just end up being another unused license since no one will want to contribute to projects under it.
And exactly how is this different from the GPL? Where in the GPL does it state that the original author must specify where the source code located? Licenses are restrictions upon the licensee, not the licensor. They are not, and have never been, two way streets.