I get the sources (header files) to a bunch of libraries, and I do not do anything to them. I just use them as components in my own application. Is including a header file into your sources a derived work of those header files ?
I do not believe so. I am also not a lawyer.
I've also been involved in recoding ksh globbing code from scratch because even though we owned a license to the code, my manager insisted.
What if you then add some capability for Foo to interact with a GPL'd library?--for instance, adding Readline capability to an app that previously used the BSD Editline library.
I don't think that matters.
(Example from my own experience). Under my watch, Wnn support got integrated into XEmacs. There were two flavors at that time - Wnn4[1] (which was free software) and Wnn6 (which was only available for sale in Japan). Now let's say you built an XEmacs 2x binary with Wnn6 support (the Wnn6 library could only be statically linked) and Canna. Does that require the recipient to own an Wnn6 license if he is using Canna? No.
Wnn6 is certainly not usable with its associated server. I believe the same thing would apply in your case.
What if I write an application that makes calls to standard Unix commands and the user is using the GNU operating system? Should that make my application subject to the GPL?
There is no "GNU operating system" but I'll assume you mean a system with GNU fileutils, etc. installed on it. No. Standard Unix commands have had a stable interface since before many of you were born.
This may become important in the future. It depends on the API. As far as I know, no one is patenting APIs.
Can you copyright an API such that a black box implementation can not be made without violating the copyright? I don't know.
I would tend to agree. It's fairly well established that license does not extend across process boundaries - Clearcase interface code in emacs does not make emacs proprietary.
There's a lot of FUD at the library level. I think you're probably safe with dynamic linking/loading. Stallman hated me for introducing.so elisp modules in XEmacs, but it was on ideological grounds not legal grounds - it made it possible to distribute executable code in emacs sans source code.
I *would* recommend paying attention to discussion on lkml on the nuances between EXPORT_SYMBOL and EXPORT_SYMBOL_GPL. If your work is a derived work from a GPLed interface, then yes your work falls under the GPL.
One of the most significant events of 2009 in IT has been Microsoft releasing code under GPL. The intent of the GPL is that if I give you something under GPL and you modify it to do something interesting and distribute that, you have to share it back to the community. The tricky part is defining "modify". In US copyright law, that means creating a derived work. Is linking against a library a derived work? Sorry, that's above my pay grade.
I find it interesting that it is Microsoft that may validate the whole thing. They are certainly learning. Stallman's copyright assignment requirement for all GNU code, it gives the FSF total control over the work. That's more than Bill Gates managed to achieve. And dang it, I never received any of the $1 consideration payments I was supposed to receive when I signed FSF copyright assignment papers.
TL;DR Yes, I just likened FSF to Microsoft.
Disclaimer: I'm an ex-XEmacs maintainer, not a lawyer. Your mileage may vary. Offer void where prohibited. Contact your local dealership for more details.
No, while I haven't read the papers either, I can confirm that gravity will not be the force pulling objects apart, at least not directly, as it is an attractive force.
Maybe you should do some reading. Start with googling "roche limit". Tidal forces ripping an object apart are how the rings got formed in the first place.
If someone patents regular expressions would it be like an IP Perl Harbor?
There must have been a reason why Bell Labs didn't patent them. The setuid bit was patented. They documented it in the back of the Version 7 Green Book in the early 1980s.
Come to think of it, flying into Shattrath at peak server hours reminded me of commuting in Los Angeles at rush hour. At least it didn't crash then like it often crashes in Dalaran.
If they are handling network server performance/latency issues in this game like they have been doing with WoW, people are not going to be happy. Sigh.
Actually, if it made Twitter and all its ilk go away, I'd be kind of happy.
Why? Are you some kind of control freak who insists that everyone who doesn't like what you like or likes what you don't like are to be punished or banished to the nether regions?
Just asking.
I think people who use non-emacs editors are masochists, but I don't hold it against them, nor do I particularly wish to see the alternatives go away.
I'd have to see the date on the patent, but it is utterly preposterous that any enterprise level support system didn't incorporate all of that (it's certainly behind my own ball & chain, I mean pager). Or maybe that's the point.
you can be just as effective in a new character after a few months in the same ship as my 2003 character, just I have a lot more choices.
That proves the opposite of the point you are trying to make. New players in World of Warcraft have every bit as many options as longer term players have once they reach the level cap. Of course, people whine about that too...
Oh and the number one thing people whine about economically (mount money) is about to get nerfed when the 3.2 patch goes live.
The number two thing was the %s profession (latest previously scheduled one was Jewel Crafting) getting nerfed. Instead of nerfing JC, Blizzard has apparently decided to buff the other professions, also in the 3.2 patch.
As I see it, and I didn't start WoW until a month or so prior to TBC, I see a company doing its best trying to please as many of its customers as it can without destroying the game in the process. *That* is the true secret of WoW's success and something that SOE has apparently not learned. Explicit support for Macs and tacit support for Linux is just icing on the delicious chocolate cake http://thottbot.com/i33924
I get the impression that clothes dryers are mostly a U.S. institution.
The only place I've ever used them is in the US, but they've started to creep out.
They sure would have been convenient when I lived in Japan where there isn't much sunlight in the winter and even if you start drying at dawn (on that side of the building) your clothes won't get dry by sunset.
Washing machines are different. They are not a luxury, they are a necessity. IMO.
People are saying that it's because you know the TV actor is a paid actor, but the real reason is, those TV actors are actually made to represent to the company that they've tried the product and like it. They may lie, but the company has covered its ass!
I think a greater issue is how US society treats the roles of entertainers. A TV or movie actor is basically trained to make people believe that he is someone that he is not. Why should that make his (or her) opinion any more important?
Just as bad are the actors who play some role on TV or movie and then presume to be an expert on whatever expertise their role had. Nonsense.
Take Commodore 64. They hired William Shatner to hawk their PCs. They sent him one, and told him to try it out before agreeing to anything. He didn't. They pestered him so he took it out of the box, and couldn't figure out how to turn it on, so he just said he'd tried it out and it's fine. That's totally different than if they'd just run ads with fake names and fake testimonials.
An unusual example but O.K. As much respect as I have for the Shattner the actor (he was the best captain of the Enterprise in my opinion), rare for me because I normally despise entertainers, I cannot believe he has ever played World Of Warcraft, let alone has any great knowledge of computer games in general. "What's your game" is pretty cool as far as advertisements go though...
OK, they are lying. Everybody lies. All advertising is lying in one form or another. Do believe that went some celebrity appears on TV for a product that they really use it? Or know anything about it other than what the teleprompter is telling them to say?
Hmmm, someone more cynical than I am.
Advertising reducing prices for consumers has been proven experimentally. I was a participant in some experiements in college as a guinea pig.
I also am not afraid to tell people about products that I have had good experiences with.
One possible case where you might find my motives dubious occurred in the late 1980s when I was working for a defense contractor, my email address clearly identified that I working in the defense part of the company and part of my job description at the time was to be the first person to get his hands on new Ada compilers and put them through my not-so-loving tests. The technology of the time was fairly weak and the US DOD had not yet settled on specifying specific Ada compilers for projects.
The best of the sorry lot was Verdix Ada (VADS), that had deficiencies which, no matter how often we reported them to the vendor, fell on deaf ears. One evening, after a particularly rough day at work, I was browsing comp.lang.ada and responded to a request for information regarding Verdix with an absolutely scathing review that peeled paint off walls hundreds of miles away.
The next day, I received a call at work from a person within Verdix who made me an offer I couldn't refuse (after consultation with my management, of course). I would be given beta tester status with access to their latest & greatest prior to formal release. My part of the agreement was to post a retraction and a review on comp.lang.ada should circumstances merit it.
I tested and did the review and it was one of the easiest reviews I've ever had to write - their newer code was a vast improvement over what I had been working with. I went on to become a very strong Verdix advocate within the company, though it ended up not making much difference. Alsys Ada with its political connections (a founder by the lead designer of the winning Ada design context was too strong despite having a weaker overall system) became the official standard.
Did I sell out and shill? I don't think so. Verdix Ada could be an order of magnitude faster compiling code than Alsys. Did I become corrupted with my special back channel into the company? I don't know. I gave special treatment to Omron and Wnn6 as Mr. XEmacs when I was given an "illegal"[1] copy of that software too.
Afterwards: Verdix (and Alsys) have since gone the way of the dodo, but from the most recent look I've taken at GNAT, it appears to be very strong. Certainly strong enough that Ada cannot be considered a dead language.
More is the pity, because Ada the language looks in horror at anything not statically typed and defined within the program. It's the perfect language for doing safe web development.
[1] They had the standard clause in Japanese software that prohibited sale outside of Japan.
The difference between a minor and major bug fix is somewhat subjective. If a coder spent hours tracking down a bug that's been in the source code for ten years and never reported by any customers, that would seem to me to be a good candidate for the title "minor bug".
Setting aside the distinction "never reported by any customer", this kind of bug fix becomes a candidate for a regression because there is probably someone depending on the buggy behavior.
If instead a coder spends 5 minutes changing a 1 to a 0 in a piece of code that has caused the program to crash for 50 customers (who have had technical support's phones ringing off the hook) since it was released yesterday, I'd call that a "major bug".
There's a difference between that and triggering previously undetected asymptotic behavior in a long-standing (other & buggy) piece of code. I wouldn't call that a major bug, though the results are equally catastrophic.
To whomever moderated that comment down, put down the crack pipe, raise your hands slowly in the air and back away from the keyboard.
k thx bye
That's what your version control revision is for. Some of us would like to be able to tell at a glance whether having 2.3.4 might cause problems when transferring data to a 3.4.5 installation. You try doing that with between version 36978 and 87498.
I agree with you in principle, but it's rarely enforced in the real world. Agreed that 2.3.4 and 3.4.5 are more descriptive than 36978 and 87498.
Slashdot Mirror
I get the sources (header files) to a bunch of libraries, and I do not do anything to them. I just use them as components in my own application. Is including a header file into your sources a derived work of those header files ?
I do not believe so. I am also not a lawyer.
I've also been involved in recoding ksh globbing code from scratch because even though we owned a license to the code, my manager insisted.
Tell my grandchildren when it's ready. kthxbye
What if you then add some capability for Foo to interact with a GPL'd library?--for instance, adding Readline capability to an app that previously used the BSD Editline library.
I don't think that matters.
(Example from my own experience). Under my watch, Wnn support got integrated into XEmacs. There were two flavors at that time - Wnn4[1] (which was free software) and Wnn6 (which was only available for sale in Japan). Now let's say you built an XEmacs 2x binary with Wnn6 support (the Wnn6 library could only be statically linked) and Canna. Does that require the recipient to own an Wnn6 license if he is using Canna? No.
Wnn6 is certainly not usable with its associated server. I believe the same thing would apply in your case.
[1] Wnn is pronounced "oon".
What if I write an application that makes calls to standard Unix commands and the user is using the GNU operating system? Should that make my application subject to the GPL?
There is no "GNU operating system" but I'll assume you mean a system with GNU fileutils, etc. installed on it. No. Standard Unix commands have had a stable interface since before many of you were born.
This may become important in the future. It depends on the API. As far as I know, no one is patenting APIs.
Can you copyright an API such that a black box implementation can not be made without violating the copyright? I don't know.
I would tend to agree. It's fairly well established that license does not extend across process boundaries - Clearcase interface code in emacs does not make emacs proprietary.
There's a lot of FUD at the library level. I think you're probably safe with dynamic linking/loading. Stallman hated me for introducing .so elisp modules in XEmacs, but it was on ideological grounds not legal grounds - it made it possible to distribute executable code in emacs sans source code.
I *would* recommend paying attention to discussion on lkml on the nuances between EXPORT_SYMBOL and EXPORT_SYMBOL_GPL. If your work is a derived work from a GPLed interface, then yes your work falls under the GPL.
One of the most significant events of 2009 in IT has been Microsoft releasing code under GPL. The intent of the GPL is that if I give you something under GPL and you modify it to do something interesting and distribute that, you have to share it back to the community. The tricky part is defining "modify". In US copyright law, that means creating a derived work. Is linking against a library a derived work? Sorry, that's above my pay grade.
I find it interesting that it is Microsoft that may validate the whole thing. They are certainly learning. Stallman's copyright assignment requirement for all GNU code, it gives the FSF total control over the work. That's more than Bill Gates managed to achieve. And dang it, I never received any of the $1 consideration payments I was supposed to receive when I signed FSF copyright assignment papers.
TL;DR Yes, I just likened FSF to Microsoft.
Disclaimer: I'm an ex-XEmacs maintainer, not a lawyer. Your mileage may vary. Offer void where prohibited. Contact your local dealership for more details.
Ever heard of Castle Wolfenstein, Doom or Quake?
You're responding to a post discussing the tie-ins between games and Hollywood. Where's the movie tie-in on the three games you mentioned?
No, while I haven't read the papers either, I can confirm that gravity will not be the force pulling objects apart, at least not directly, as it is an attractive force.
Maybe you should do some reading. Start with googling "roche limit". Tidal forces ripping an object apart are how the rings got formed in the first place.
The Fithp are coming! The Fithp are coming! Run for the hills!
I just love it when every Linux hardware problem is Linux's fault whereas with windows it's always "not a windows problem, update your driver"
Has been like that since early days of windows.
Indeed and this comment has been unfairly moderated as flamebait.
If I change the braces in C to the Pi symbol, does that mean I get to patent my brand new language?
Only if it doesn't involve trigraphs.
If someone patents regular expressions would it be like an IP Perl Harbor?
There must have been a reason why Bell Labs didn't patent them. The setuid bit was patented. They documented it in the back of the Version 7 Green Book in the early 1980s.
laaaaaaaaaaaaag
Yah. Folks are calling it Dalalag now.
Come to think of it, flying into Shattrath at peak server hours reminded me of commuting in Los Angeles at rush hour. At least it didn't crash then like it often crashes in Dalaran.
If they are handling network server performance/latency issues in this game like they have been doing with WoW, people are not going to be happy. Sigh.
Actually, if it made Twitter and all its ilk go away, I'd be kind of happy.
Why? Are you some kind of control freak who insists that everyone who doesn't like what you like or likes what you don't like are to be punished or banished to the nether regions?
Just asking.
I think people who use non-emacs editors are masochists, but I don't hold it against them, nor do I particularly wish to see the alternatives go away.
I'd have to see the date on the patent, but it is utterly preposterous that any enterprise level support system didn't incorporate all of that (it's certainly behind my own ball & chain, I mean pager). Or maybe that's the point.
WoW: Pick your own gender. As aforementioned, the horde has 2 native American-esque, one white/asian, one afro-Caribbean, and one white-ish race.
And gay Blood Elf males.
Now where do the Draenei with blue skin and all the accessories fit in?
A couple per DAY?
That's a bit less than what I see in gmail.
you can be just as effective in a new character after a few months in the same ship as my 2003 character, just I have a lot more choices.
That proves the opposite of the point you are trying to make. New players in World of Warcraft have every bit as many options as longer term players have once they reach the level cap. Of course, people whine about that too ...
Oh and the number one thing people whine about economically (mount money) is about to get nerfed when the 3.2 patch goes live.
The number two thing was the %s profession (latest previously scheduled one was Jewel Crafting) getting nerfed. Instead of nerfing JC, Blizzard has apparently decided to buff the other professions, also in the 3.2 patch.
As I see it, and I didn't start WoW until a month or so prior to TBC, I see a company doing its best trying to please as many of its customers as it can without destroying the game in the process. *That* is the true secret of WoW's success and something that SOE has apparently not learned. Explicit support for Macs and tacit support for Linux is just icing on the delicious chocolate cake http://thottbot.com/i33924
I get the impression that clothes dryers are mostly a U.S. institution.
The only place I've ever used them is in the US, but they've started to creep out.
They sure would have been convenient when I lived in Japan where there isn't much sunlight in the winter and even if you start drying at dawn (on that side of the building) your clothes won't get dry by sunset.
Washing machines are different. They are not a luxury, they are a necessity. IMO.
An insightful article coming from kdawson? The world is about end! RUN FOR THE HILLS!!!
People are saying that it's because you know the TV actor is a paid actor, but the real reason is, those TV actors are actually made to represent to the company that they've tried the product and like it. They may lie, but the company has covered its ass!
I think a greater issue is how US society treats the roles of entertainers. A TV or movie actor is basically trained to make people believe that he is someone that he is not. Why should that make his (or her) opinion any more important?
Just as bad are the actors who play some role on TV or movie and then presume to be an expert on whatever expertise their role had. Nonsense.
Take Commodore 64. They hired William Shatner to hawk their PCs. They sent him one, and told him to try it out before agreeing to anything. He didn't. They pestered him so he took it out of the box, and couldn't figure out how to turn it on, so he just said he'd tried it out and it's fine. That's totally different than if they'd just run ads with fake names and fake testimonials.
An unusual example but O.K. As much respect as I have for the Shattner the actor (he was the best captain of the Enterprise in my opinion), rare for me because I normally despise entertainers, I cannot believe he has ever played World Of Warcraft, let alone has any great knowledge of computer games in general. "What's your game" is pretty cool as far as advertisements go though ...
OK, they are lying. Everybody lies. All advertising is lying in one form or another. Do believe that went some celebrity appears on TV for a product that they really use it? Or know anything about it other than what the teleprompter is telling them to say?
Hmmm, someone more cynical than I am.
Advertising reducing prices for consumers has been proven experimentally. I was a participant in some experiements in college as a guinea pig.
I also am not afraid to tell people about products that I have had good experiences with.
One possible case where you might find my motives dubious occurred in the late 1980s when I was working for a defense contractor, my email address clearly identified that I working in the defense part of the company and part of my job description at the time was to be the first person to get his hands on new Ada compilers and put them through my not-so-loving tests. The technology of the time was fairly weak and the US DOD had not yet settled on specifying specific Ada compilers for projects.
The best of the sorry lot was Verdix Ada (VADS), that had deficiencies which, no matter how often we reported them to the vendor, fell on deaf ears. One evening, after a particularly rough day at work, I was browsing comp.lang.ada and responded to a request for information regarding Verdix with an absolutely scathing review that peeled paint off walls hundreds of miles away.
The next day, I received a call at work from a person within Verdix who made me an offer I couldn't refuse (after consultation with my management, of course). I would be given beta tester status with access to their latest & greatest prior to formal release. My part of the agreement was to post a retraction and a review on comp.lang.ada should circumstances merit it.
I tested and did the review and it was one of the easiest reviews I've ever had to write - their newer code was a vast improvement over what I had been working with. I went on to become a very strong Verdix advocate within the company, though it ended up not making much difference. Alsys Ada with its political connections (a founder by the lead designer of the winning Ada design context was too strong despite having a weaker overall system) became the official standard.
Did I sell out and shill? I don't think so. Verdix Ada could be an order of magnitude faster compiling code than Alsys. Did I become corrupted with my special back channel into the company? I don't know. I gave special treatment to Omron and Wnn6 as Mr. XEmacs when I was given an "illegal"[1] copy of that software too.
Afterwards:
Verdix (and Alsys) have since gone the way of the dodo, but from the most recent look I've taken at GNAT, it appears to be very strong. Certainly strong enough that Ada cannot be considered a dead language.
More is the pity, because Ada the language looks in horror at anything not statically typed and defined within the program. It's the perfect language for doing safe web development.
[1] They had the standard clause in Japanese software that prohibited sale outside of Japan.
This usage became mainstream with "dot Net"
What is this ".Net" you speak of? That was mainstream pronunciation for Usenet newsgroup names in the early 1980s.
Now, get off my lawn!
(Note the slash in there, like GNU/Linux or GNU/HURD.)
<pedantic>XEmacs is technically GNU/Emacs too and for more reasons than can be claimed for "GNU/Linux".</pedantic>
The difference between a minor and major bug fix is somewhat subjective. If a coder spent hours tracking down a bug that's been in the source code for ten years and never reported by any customers, that would seem to me to be a good candidate for the title "minor bug".
Setting aside the distinction "never reported by any customer", this kind of bug fix becomes a candidate for a regression because there is probably someone depending on the buggy behavior.
If instead a coder spends 5 minutes changing a 1 to a 0 in a piece of code that has caused the program to crash for 50 customers (who have had technical support's phones ringing off the hook) since it was released yesterday, I'd call that a "major bug".
There's a difference between that and triggering previously undetected asymptotic behavior in a long-standing (other & buggy) piece of code. I wouldn't call that a major bug, though the results are equally catastrophic.
To whomever moderated that comment down, put down the crack pipe, raise your hands slowly in the air and back away from the keyboard.
k thx bye
That's what your version control revision is for. Some of us would like to be able to tell at a glance whether having 2.3.4 might cause problems when transferring data to a 3.4.5 installation. You try doing that with between version 36978 and 87498.
I agree with you in principle, but it's rarely enforced in the real world. Agreed that 2.3.4 and 3.4.5 are more descriptive than 36978 and 87498.