I've never gotten an award, so I should definitely get it;-) Well, seriously though, maybe this one should go to Bruce Perens. He certainly deserves an award of sorts.
Well, Yeltsin has reigned for 9 years now I think, and he did some pretty amazing things in the early years, but those have more or less been clouded by more recent events. So it's not bad at all that Russia gets a new leader. It's definitely time for some new blood to lead Russia in the next few years.
Well, he couldn't have done it at any better time. People in Russia apparently combine christmas and new years celebrations to one big festivity on new years. I wouldn't be surprised if this resignation will be on everyones lips tonight. Putin is also at the peak of his popularity now, so unless something happens, chances are pretty big that Putin will be able to reign even after the forthcoming election.
For FSF-copyrighted code, they will stand up and go to court against whoever violated the GPL. There has been incidents in the past, but they have always been solved out-of-court though. The FSF lawyers tells us that this is why we should recommend that GNU software is copyrighted by the FSF (and the reason I assign my copyrights to the FSF); I don't honestly know how it will be handled otherwise (a class-action suit by all developers?), someone with more knowledge about US law can probably enlighten.
In general, the FSF tries to be the highest price seller of the things they sell. So it's interesting to know where you got the idea that RMS thinks that maximizing profit is a bad thing.
I hope that people in GNU doesn't do this, and indeed, I can't think of anyone that does. We always tend to question what RMS says, because we want to find what the Right Thing is. Most of the time, RMS is right, but there are times when he's not, and we work together to find the Right Thing.
Well, I don't care about if Microsoft uses code from BSD. They are free to do so. What I do care about is that even though the BSD code is free software, I don't have the freedom to change the TCP-stack in Windows if I find it buggy. And this is why BSD code is free for some people, but it isn't always free.
I try to be conscious about such issues too, yes. It's not practically possible for me to be as conscious about them as I am about software, but I try. If you wish to discuss this more, feel free to email me (Slashdot is rather inconvenient for long-term discussions).
Well, BSD (OpenBSD, NetBSD, FreeBSD) is free software, so it's fine to use it. We've used NetBSD extensively in the GNU Project, and still do for some critical servers.
Ah! I understand what you're getting at. But you seem to make the assumption that freedom is an software issue. Part of it is, yes, but there's a greater social issue involved in it too.
Do you know that they do not care, or do you assume that they do not care? If they really don't care, that's fine. Unfortunate, but there's nothing we can or will do about it. I wouldn't mind if you told me about your interests. If you told me about your religion, for example, I might not agree with it, but at least I would be free to make that judgement myself and not have someone else stand in front of me telling people what I would like to know and what I don't like to know.
I'm pretty sure that they would take the time to ask you what "free software" was, because you probably know more about computers than they know. So take the time and explain it to them, don't just assume that they wouldn't want non-free software. Maybe they will still prefer non-free software, but that would then be their choice, and at least they would then be enlightened about the issues of freedom.
Well, I don't think I'd ever call it "silly" to educate the public about the importance of freedom. Chances are that if they don't care, they've already lost large parts of it, which makes our job even more important!
No, that's not what some people want. Some people, like me, would rather have lower quality tools that was free software, than high quality tools that were non-free. Fortunately, it has turned out that free tools generally become much better than non-free tools, so I don't have to make that trade-off, but I'd be willing to do that if I had to. And I don't have anything against commercial vendors, or people making money from free software. In fact, I encourage them to go out and sell free software, or free software support, or free documentation. You can have both working software, freedom AND make a nice profit.
And that's what we MUST try to change! The fundamental issues of freedom is what our community is all about, all other issues of price, stability et al, are secondary.
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I've never gotten an award, so I should definitely get it ;-) Well, seriously though, maybe this one should go to Bruce Perens. He certainly deserves an award of sorts.
Sure, but we should also hack all our C, Python, Basic, whatever programs since some of them suffer from the same problem. It's not a Perl feature :-)
12:16 in Sweden and all is OK. :-) Except for a hell of a lot of snow that is.
Blah! The world didn't end. It would have been convenient ;)
Well, Yeltsin has reigned for 9 years now I think, and he did some pretty amazing things in the early years, but those have more or less been clouded by more recent events. So it's not bad at all that Russia gets a new leader. It's definitely time for some new blood to lead Russia in the next few years.
Well, he couldn't have done it at any better time. People in Russia apparently combine christmas and new years celebrations to one big festivity on new years. I wouldn't be surprised if this resignation will be on everyones lips tonight. Putin is also at the peak of his popularity now, so unless something happens, chances are pretty big that Putin will be able to reign even after the forthcoming election.
This reminds me of the situation with the LISP-machines in the early 70'th, and later the proprietary Lucid Emacs (AKA XEmacs).
I remember seing something about this posted at the AI labs I think. Glad to see they make progress.
For FSF-copyrighted code, they will stand up and go to court against whoever violated the GPL. There has been incidents in the past, but they have always been solved out-of-court though. The FSF lawyers tells us that this is why we should recommend that GNU software is copyrighted by the FSF (and the reason I assign my copyrights to the FSF); I don't honestly know how it will be handled otherwise (a class-action suit by all developers?), someone with more knowledge about US law can probably enlighten.
In general, the FSF tries to be the highest price seller of the things they sell. So it's interesting to know where you got the idea that RMS thinks that maximizing profit is a bad thing.
Neither of those are true.
I hope that people in GNU doesn't do this, and indeed, I can't think of anyone that does. We always tend to question what RMS says, because we want to find what the Right Thing is. Most of the time, RMS is right, but there are times when he's not, and we work together to find the Right Thing.
Well, I don't care about if Microsoft uses code from BSD. They are free to do so. What I do care about is that even though the BSD code is free software, I don't have the freedom to change the TCP-stack in Windows if I find it buggy. And this is why BSD code is free for some people, but it isn't always free.
I try to be conscious about such issues too, yes. It's not practically possible for me to be as conscious about them as I am about software, but I try. If you wish to discuss this more, feel free to email me (Slashdot is rather inconvenient for long-term discussions).
Well, BSD (OpenBSD, NetBSD, FreeBSD) is free software, so it's fine to use it. We've used NetBSD extensively in the GNU Project, and still do for some critical servers.
Ah! I understand what you're getting at. But you seem to make the assumption that freedom is an software issue. Part of it is, yes, but there's a greater social issue involved in it too.
Do you know that they do not care, or do you assume that they do not care? If they really don't care, that's fine. Unfortunate, but there's nothing we can or will do about it. I wouldn't mind if you told me about your interests. If you told me about your religion, for example, I might not agree with it, but at least I would be free to make that judgement myself and not have someone else stand in front of me telling people what I would like to know and what I don't like to know.
I'm pretty sure that they would take the time to ask you what "free software" was, because you probably know more about computers than they know. So take the time and explain it to them, don't just assume that they wouldn't want non-free software. Maybe they will still prefer non-free software, but that would then be their choice, and at least they would then be enlightened about the issues of freedom.
Well, I don't think I'd ever call it "silly" to educate the public about the importance of freedom. Chances are that if they don't care, they've already lost large parts of it, which makes our job even more important!
Well, don't use it then. Or improve upon it so it can boot on your machine.
No, that's not what some people want. Some people, like me, would rather have lower quality tools that was free software, than high quality tools that were non-free. Fortunately, it has turned out that free tools generally become much better than non-free tools, so I don't have to make that trade-off, but I'd be willing to do that if I had to. And I don't have anything against commercial vendors, or people making money from free software. In fact, I encourage them to go out and sell free software, or free software support, or free documentation. You can have both working software, freedom AND make a nice profit.
It's here.
And that's what we MUST try to change! The fundamental issues of freedom is what our community is all about, all other issues of price, stability et al, are secondary.
I was at the labs this last weekend and some time before that. Who are you? :-)
Interesting! Thank you for enlightening me.