This all happened for the same reason most evils in modern times happen. Powerful, rich people said "hay wouldn't it be nice if we could patent genes so that then we could make a bigger pile of money when someone wants to work with them?"
So they called their friends who set the rules and had them rule that you could patent any gene you wanted..
And they went to work patenting everything they could get their hands on. Cranking the shit out like it was 1999.
Somehow people managed to get their act together and raise a stink about this and the patent office tightened their rules. Now you have to show how you found the gene, what you think it might be useful for etc. But I'm positive these rules are bent around like bamboo sticks.
So now we have all of the squatters who did the original landgrab vs. the legitimate scientists wanting to do real research.
It's obvious what should happen. The landgrabbing squatters (funny applying this term to the already filthy rich corporatists) should be kicked out on their arses and research proper should begin.
Is it going to happen? probably not. Don't forget how this story started, the powerful pulling the strings.
well, a term like publish doesn't work too well either.
Remember when Lindows was giving away GPL'd binaries but refused to provide source code with their modifications because they claimed they hadn't 'officially published' them yet it was just a release candidate? even though anyone could dl it.
The patent system seems to work ok for mechanical inventions, but is terribly broken for software.
I would bet it's probably impossible to write *any* software which does not violate patents that have been given out and for every valid patent there's probably 1000 invalid ones.
These being the conditions, it's much better to ignore the broken system, that way *if* you ever get sued and *if* you loose, you won't have to pay tripple damages.
Not to mention that most of the world does not care about software patents. Only one country cares with 1/12th of the population on the planet. Worse, probably only 0.1% of that country would actually benefit or want software patents.
So, only about 1/12000 of the worlds population cares about software patents. They just happen to also be among the richest and most powerful and manage to buy ridiculous laws and "free trade agreements".
Don't be so puerile. You know *very* well as given in your post that the Open Source community is not a single entity.
For fuck sakes, the "community" can't even decide what "Open Source" really stands for. A lot of people who claim to be in this group don't even know the difference between 'Open Source' in general and 'Free Software' which is a much more well defined term.
Anyone who claims that the OS community is a "single entity" is obviously misrepresenting the truth.
You already know this.
Yet what's funny, is that here you are criticising the "OS community" as if it were a single entity.
Does that seem right to you?
LOL dude,
Since when does Freshmeat = the open source community?
They are a 'unix program website' with every type of license included like proprietary stuff.
If anything you should have tried sourceforge first right?
Don't be ridiculous.
First of all the performance benefit from compiling things as 686 as opposed to 386 is marginal at best.
Second, in the 386 debian distribution, packages which *may* have better performance if compiled for 686 are available as such. You can choose them instead of the 386 version.
Third, the performance benefits from compiling for amd64 as opposed to 386 are somewhere in the region of 15%, compounded, for average apps to astronomical for certain apps.
Fourth, without a huge change in the fundamental debian architecture ie. multiarch, it's not as simple as mixing and matching amd64 and 386 packages as it is between 686 and 386 packages.
You're not even in the right ballpark.
Now, coming back to the topic, is it necessary for me personally to have sarge include amd64? No, but it would be nice. Especially since the unnoficial amd64 distribution has just become the 2nd most popular arch of the debian archs.
This has the potential for being extremely annoying.
I'm sure I'm not the only one who's been in a movie theatre with the annoying jerk and the laser pointer.
Why would you be surprised? If you at all care about this issue I assume you have read the GPL?
And if you have I assume you read the parts about derrivative works..
You can't just use GPL'd code as part of your project and be like "oh I don't have to comply with the license because I'm only using it as a library" duh.
Why do you think the LGPL exists? I assume you've read the LGPL text as well if you have any interest at all in the subject.
As for why you could be concerned? GOD KNOWS. The GPL is a license which *grants* freedoms. Without it you wouldn't be able to distribute the code at all. Just like you're not allowed to distribute any kind of proprietary code in any way shape or form.
it's not a waste of time! It's a wonderful piece of work and reverse engineering is sometimes it's own reward. Not to mention they can now compare the original with the deduced map!
For some reason I'm finding myself extremely upset at companies refusing to release the specs to their harware and forcing linux users to use proprietary drivers. That's not what linux is about. There are a lot of us who actually care about using free software.
What's more it's really fucking inconvenient and I hate being forced to use lower-quality software because of greed.
I'm sure there are more than a few upset nforce users for example. The ones who aren't upset, wait till they find a bug or find their performance isn't up to par and take their problems to the lkml. They'll find out that since their platform is a black box they can't get any support and are stuck with what they're forced to use.
I was going to buy an nforce3 dual opteron motherboard but I can't stomach having to use a bunch of proprietary drivers.
I also used to think that it was ok if just the video card had a proprietary driver. It's just one driver afterall right? well apparently the slippery slope has slipped. From now on I will refuse to use any drivers which taint the kernel.
On top of all this, I have to really question the legality of all these proprietary drivers that are popping up. I know there were some threads on the lkml about this recently. Basically they came to the conclusion that if a driver was written for another OS and merely released for linux as an afterthought it was legal. However if it was written for linux it came under a derrivative work and was not legal.
Because I work at a company that is currently sending our SARS treatment to china. Our treatment is not a vaccine but rather a monoclonal antibody which would be administered post infection; and was indeed started with the sequence posted on the internet by these guys. More details of this vaccine would be nice though.
Sorry this just depends on too many factors. I agree with everyone saying for you to try knoppix. It's the best way to get a decent look at linux, on top of which you can use it to install debian.
I recommend debian to everyone since it's my favourite distro by a large margin. Try it out, if it's not to your liking there are other distros. Debian used to be a pain to install, now they have a fancy new installer and knoppix it's much much better. But it was never a hard distro to run. Just get familiar with the package management tools and documentation and you're golden, everything else is done for you. Oh yeah try the testing version of debian for best results. Unstable is ok too but breaks sometimes in a minor way.
Why not just write a quick python script to do the google search and return the hits to wget. Have wget download everything, pipe it to an email client that sends it directly to sco.
Just set it up, leave the chain running and forget about it.
The court case will be LONG over before they're done figuring out what was given to them.
Well, first off "GPL is not stronger than copyright"
Actually, the GPL is as strong as copyright because it relies on copyright; hence the term copyleft. It states that certain freedoms are to apply to the GPL'd work and all of it's derrivatives for eternity. If you don't abide by the license, nothing else gives you the right to distribute GPL'd work ie. copyright STOPS you from distributing the GPL'd work.
"IBM can a) stop the distribution and enforce the patent b) enforce the patent for the product not distributed by itself."
a) Yes I think section 7 of the GPL needs to be re-written to clarify this point to not allow someone to stop distributing the program and start charging for patent licenses. However IBM would have to stop distributing all GPL programs which fell under each patent they tried this with. This is unlikely to happen unless they pull out of the open source/free software buisness completely.
b) Yes IBM can choose to enforce patents on GPL'd software it didn't distribute, however my point was that they distribute a whole heck of a lot under the GPL and any of those patents cannot be used against those projects.
is this a very old comment?
because he says "I will probably do the initial development work for DOOM on linux... It is going to be quite some time before DOOM ships"
Cause if it is I'd like to hear what he's learned since then. For example 100% of the large sample group that I informally polled, bought the windows version because it came out a week or two before the linux version and they couldn't wait.
Maybe carmack could discuss how many linux binaries were downloaded?
you are kidding?
IBM distributes just about EVERY GPL Free Software application there is. They distribute full gnu/linux operating systems. That includes the kernel, the libraries, the applications etc. Most gnu/linux distros try to package every GPL software that's out there and IBM distributes more than one distro.
If IBM had any patents which could be applicable to ANY GPL software, that's now in the past.
Slashdot Mirror
How often do anual reports come round again you lazy bastard?!
Oh wait, you posted to: ask slashdot. Duuh.
I jest, I jest.
I feel your pain brother. I too have had monsters in my bed because of ale and badly lit clubs.
So they called their friends who set the rules and had them rule that you could patent any gene you wanted..
And they went to work patenting everything they could get their hands on. Cranking the shit out like it was 1999.
Somehow people managed to get their act together and raise a stink about this and the patent office tightened their rules. Now you have to show how you found the gene, what you think it might be useful for etc. But I'm positive these rules are bent around like bamboo sticks.
So now we have all of the squatters who did the original landgrab vs. the legitimate scientists wanting to do real research.
It's obvious what should happen. The landgrabbing squatters (funny applying this term to the already filthy rich corporatists) should be kicked out on their arses and research proper should begin.
Is it going to happen? probably not. Don't forget how this story started, the powerful pulling the strings.
well, a term like publish doesn't work too well either.
Remember when Lindows was giving away GPL'd binaries but refused to provide source code with their modifications because they claimed they hadn't 'officially published' them yet it was just a release candidate? even though anyone could dl it.
The patent system seems to work ok for mechanical inventions, but is terribly broken for software.
I would bet it's probably impossible to write *any* software which does not violate patents that have been given out and for every valid patent there's probably 1000 invalid ones.
These being the conditions, it's much better to ignore the broken system, that way *if* you ever get sued and *if* you loose, you won't have to pay tripple damages.
Not to mention that most of the world does not care about software patents. Only one country cares with 1/12th of the population on the planet. Worse, probably only 0.1% of that country would actually benefit or want software patents.
So, only about 1/12000 of the worlds population cares about software patents. They just happen to also be among the richest and most powerful and manage to buy ridiculous laws and "free trade agreements".
The Patriot Act 'supposedly' came into existance to fight terrorism. This guy is not a terrorist by any stretch.
Don't be so puerile. You know *very* well as given in your post that the Open Source community is not a single entity.
For fuck sakes, the "community" can't even decide what "Open Source" really stands for. A lot of people who claim to be in this group don't even know the difference between 'Open Source' in general and 'Free Software' which is a much more well defined term.
Anyone who claims that the OS community is a "single entity" is obviously misrepresenting the truth.
You already know this.
Yet what's funny, is that here you are criticising the "OS community" as if it were a single entity.
Does that seem right to you?
what are you saying? that there are no clusters for the other arches?
Give me a break.
LOL dude,
Since when does Freshmeat = the open source community?
They are a 'unix program website' with every type of license included like proprietary stuff.
If anything you should have tried sourceforge first right?
First of all the performance benefit from compiling things as 686 as opposed to 386 is marginal at best.
Second, in the 386 debian distribution, packages which *may* have better performance if compiled for 686 are available as such. You can choose them instead of the 386 version.
Third, the performance benefits from compiling for amd64 as opposed to 386 are somewhere in the region of 15%, compounded, for average apps to astronomical for certain apps.
Fourth, without a huge change in the fundamental debian architecture ie. multiarch, it's not as simple as mixing and matching amd64 and 386 packages as it is between 686 and 386 packages.
You're not even in the right ballpark.
Now, coming back to the topic, is it necessary for me personally to have sarge include amd64? No, but it would be nice. Especially since the unnoficial amd64 distribution has just become the 2nd most popular arch of the debian archs.
yay! good to know since I'm about to get in on some athlon64 + debian pure64 goodness : )
This has the potential for being extremely annoying.
I'm sure I'm not the only one who's been in a movie theatre with the annoying jerk and the laser pointer.
Please daddy don't trade me for some extra FPS. Everyone knows the human eye can't tell the difference.
Shut up you little brat. I can tell and it ruins my game man!
And if you have I assume you read the parts about derrivative works..
You can't just use GPL'd code as part of your project and be like "oh I don't have to comply with the license because I'm only using it as a library" duh.
Why do you think the LGPL exists? I assume you've read the LGPL text as well if you have any interest at all in the subject.
As for why you could be concerned? GOD KNOWS. The GPL is a license which *grants* freedoms. Without it you wouldn't be able to distribute the code at all. Just like you're not allowed to distribute any kind of proprietary code in any way shape or form.
it's not a waste of time! It's a wonderful piece of work and reverse engineering is sometimes it's own reward. Not to mention they can now compare the original with the deduced map!
What's more it's really fucking inconvenient and I hate being forced to use lower-quality software because of greed.
I'm sure there are more than a few upset nforce users for example. The ones who aren't upset, wait till they find a bug or find their performance isn't up to par and take their problems to the lkml. They'll find out that since their platform is a black box they can't get any support and are stuck with what they're forced to use.
I was going to buy an nforce3 dual opteron motherboard but I can't stomach having to use a bunch of proprietary drivers.
I also used to think that it was ok if just the video card had a proprietary driver. It's just one driver afterall right? well apparently the slippery slope has slipped. From now on I will refuse to use any drivers which taint the kernel.
On top of all this, I have to really question the legality of all these proprietary drivers that are popping up. I know there were some threads on the lkml about this recently.
Basically they came to the conclusion that if a driver was written for another OS and merely released for linux as an afterthought it was legal. However if it was written for linux it came under a derrivative work and was not legal.
Either way... PROPRIETARY DRIVERS SUCK
Come on then, name some because I doubt they exist.
Because I work at a company that is currently sending our SARS treatment to china. Our treatment is not a vaccine but rather a monoclonal antibody which would be administered post infection; and was indeed started with the sequence posted on the internet by these guys.
More details of this vaccine would be nice though.
bless you!
I recommend debian to everyone since it's my favourite distro by a large margin. Try it out, if it's not to your liking there are other distros. Debian used to be a pain to install, now they have a fancy new installer and knoppix it's much much better. But it was never a hard distro to run. Just get familiar with the package management tools and documentation and you're golden, everything else is done for you. Oh yeah try the testing version of debian for best results. Unstable is ok too but breaks sometimes in a minor way.
A very high percentage. It depends on how fast the hardware ships. Any application with a high memory demand will see the advantage of 64-bit.
Sure dude. Because the hardware hasn't already been shipping for friggin months and months...
Why not just write a quick python script to do the google search and return the hits to wget. Have wget download everything, pipe it to an email client that sends it directly to sco.
Just set it up, leave the chain running and forget about it.
The court case will be LONG over before they're done figuring out what was given to them.
"GPL is not stronger than copyright"
Actually, the GPL is as strong as copyright because it relies on copyright; hence the term copyleft. It states that certain freedoms are to apply to the GPL'd work and all of it's derrivatives for eternity. If you don't abide by the license, nothing else gives you the right to distribute GPL'd work ie. copyright STOPS you from distributing the GPL'd work.
"IBM can a) stop the distribution and enforce the patent b) enforce the patent for the product not distributed by itself."
a) Yes I think section 7 of the GPL needs to be re-written to clarify this point to not allow someone to stop distributing the program and start charging for patent licenses. However IBM would have to stop distributing all GPL programs which fell under each patent they tried this with. This is unlikely to happen unless they pull out of the open source/free software buisness completely.
b) Yes IBM can choose to enforce patents on GPL'd software it didn't distribute, however my point was that they distribute a whole heck of a lot under the GPL and any of those patents cannot be used against those projects.
because he says "I will probably do the initial development work for DOOM on linux... It is going to be quite some time before DOOM ships"
Cause if it is I'd like to hear what he's learned since then. For example 100% of the large sample group that I informally polled, bought the windows version because it came out a week or two before the linux version and they couldn't wait.
Maybe carmack could discuss how many linux binaries were downloaded?
IBM distributes just about EVERY GPL Free Software application there is. They distribute full gnu/linux operating systems. That includes the kernel, the libraries, the applications etc. Most gnu/linux distros try to package every GPL software that's out there and IBM distributes more than one distro.
If IBM had any patents which could be applicable to ANY GPL software, that's now in the past.