Re:Selling but not demanding payment
on
GPL FAQ
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· Score: 1
the rights granted by the GPL are a strict superset of the rights granted by a normal closed-source source license.
This is not true, at least when it comes to libraries. The GPL, when applied to a library, is much, much worse than any other license I've seen.
Using the Evil Empire as an example, some libraries that come with development tools like Visual C++ are redistributable and have licenses which make no attempts to control how you license code you develop using them.
On the other hand, using a library licensed under the GPL requires that you apply the GPL to your own code (or so they claim - I personally find the distinction between fork/exec and shared address space dubious.)
Crimes with guns should be penalized severely. Use a gun in a robbery? Let's start with a life sentence. Threatened your wife with a gun? Life.
Why should the punishment for a crime with a gun be any different than the punishment for the same crime with a knife, baseball bat, or other weapon? You're more likely to be injured in a robbery with a knife or club, since the attacker has to get in close and might just give you a whack or two to keep you from fighting back.
I've been clubbed over the head with a baseball bat. I've had a gun pointed at me. The baseball bat hurt a hell of a lot more.
Funny how Americans now think they won in Vietnam just like the Russians won Afghanistan. LOL I guess history is something not taught in the USA anymore... And if you actually did take history, this is even scarier.
If you'd thought about it for a brief minute before making the standard, boring "Americans are stupid" comment, you'd have realized that the poster was being sarcastic. None of those conflicts was won by the countries named.
Microsoft has been doing this pen based/table evangelizing for many, many years. With Windows 3.1 they had all sorts of pen/table APIs written and they tried to push it. I remember PC magazine announcing the death of normal laptops and PCs...albeit a decade or so too early.
The way I remember it, Microsoft actually killed the early pen computing market about a decade ago. I think it went something like this: A small software company announces its pen computing operating system, to rave reviews and "death of normal laptops" articles you mentioned. Microsoft announces its competitor, Pen Windows. Pen computing fails to take off.
I never heard of pen computing again after that, until the web tablet, although to some limited degree it lived on in the PDA.
Of course I could be wrong, but it wouldn't be at all out of character for MS to try to destroy a new market they weren't ready to play in.
Eventually, about an hour after I first asked, and 3 channel visits later, one person (thank you Metrol) finally provided me with documentation that showed there was indeed such a limit.
FreeBSD Handbook Sections 10.3.1 and 10.5.1 both answer this question. It took me all of ten seconds to find this.
Who's got the bad attitude? People who refuse to read the basic documentation for a system are just wasting the time of people kind enough to make themselves available to people with actual problems, and don't deserve help.
Here's a hint for the newbie:
If you're using FreeBSD, read the handbook (the installer asked you if wanted to look at it, so you can't really pretend you didn't know about it).
If you're using OpenBSD, read the FAQ and man afterboot.
In either case, read the man pages (man disklabel also has the answer to your partition limit question - in fact, it's in so many places I can't understand how you could possibly have missed it).
[I know it's hard for you linux types to understand the idea of centralized documentation]
Yeah, MS may have used *BSD code for some of their TCP/IP utils, and great code it may be, but has *BSD gotten anything in return?
You mean besides the benefits of standard protocols?
[In case you fail to fail to miss the point, like most mindless GNU drones, answer this question: How many successful protocols have their reference implementations licensed under the GPL?]
Recently I read a manual document coming with Postgres, and according to it MySQL isn't worth any time spend in using or even developping it...
On the other hand, having documentation with such gems as the following puts MySQL on pretty shaky ground:
The only nice aspect of FOREIGN KEY is that it gives ODBC and some other client programs the ability to see how a table is connected and to
use this to show connection diagrams and to help in building applicatons [sic]
FSF actually is more than one person. Read the interview of Eben, a few articles down from this one on the Slashdot front page. He's the attorney who works on the GPL. There is also an executive director, Tim Ney...
Thanks for the info. I've always had trouble trusting any organization whose only identifiable figures are a monomaniac and a lawyer, but now I feel much better.
After reading about half of this exchange, I have become convinced that RMS is not a human being at all but a somewhat modified version of the old "artificial intelligence" program Eliza.
In the interests of both freedom and better software, I demand his source code.
There's a clause in the license of the Linux kernel. This apparently makes it all hunky-dorey.
I disagree. Here's what it says:
NOTE! This copyright does *not* cover user programs that use kernel services by normal system calls - this is merely considered normal use of the kernel, and does *not* fall under the heading of "derived work". Also note that the GPL below is copyrighted by the Free Software Foundation, but the instance of code that it refers to (the Linux kernel) is copyrighted by me and others who actually wrote it.
I don't read this as permitting the use of any part of the source code of the linux kernel in any other work. I consider this important because the inclusion of header files is used as an argument for the application of the GPL to any program which makes use of a GPL'd library via dynamic linking (absent this, all you have are two programs, one of which calls some of the functions of the other).
...it's OK to write LGPL wrappers to link to GPL software (which is how it's OK for GNOME software to use Mozilla.)
If you buy the FSF's claims concerning what are derivative works, the resulting wrapper would have to be GPL'd. I don't see anything in the GPL that says otherwise.
The problem isn't merely his attacks on various GPLed (and non-GPLed) projects, but his selectivity. He seems, at times, to only go after what he doesn't like (or doesn't support to begin with.)
I've been wondering why Linux-based systems as a whole are not in violation of the GPL. As I understand it, the GNU C Library for Linux includes Linux headers and should therefore be considered a derivative work of Linux under the GPL, and therefore GPL'd itself. Since the C library is used by everything else, everything else must be GPL as well, making the system as a whole a huge mess of license violations.
I don't see anything in Linus's "Linux's license ends at the system call interface" interpretation that provides for the inclusion of header files. Perhaps I missed something?
Note that there is a distinctive difference between proprietary and commercial software.
Boy, I hope I got this one right;-).
You didn't, but that's the price you pay for letting RMS do your thinking for you.
The GPL does not allow you to produce commercial software, it just doesn't prevent you from selling support services for GPL'd "free" software (and if you read RMS's definition of commercial software, this is what he's talking about). Selling support services for software is probably outside the realm of software licensing altogether.
You are also allowed to charge money for distribution of GPL software. I don't know about you, but I don't have enough money to run such a business.
I don't believe anything in the QPL prohibits either of these activities.
Here's a little food for thought, if any of you GNU drones are capable:
Proprietary software is software that is not free or semi-free. Its use, redistribution or modification is prohibited, or requires you to ask for permission, or is restricted so much that you effectively can't do it freely.
Hmm. Sounds like the GPL.
Re:How many wrong facts....
on
Is UNIX An OS?
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· Score: 1
For that matter, this is the first time I've ever heard it claimed that Unix was Unics, which stood for UNiplexed Information and Computing System. I'm wondering where he dug that tidbit up and if there is any truth to it.
AFAIK, not really, but it isn't all that much of a stretch for a Mac advocate. See the entries for multics and unix in the Jargon File:
Multics: MULTiplexed Information and Computing Service
Unix: In the authors' words, "A weak pun on Multics"; very early on it was `UNICS'
Re:I hate to say this.....
on
Is UNIX An OS?
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· Score: 2
UNIX, and specificly POSIX OSes certainly still provide the first of these, but perharps not the second. A useful abstraction of the graphics card must today offer more than POSIX does (ie text mode only). To some extent, the fact that UNIX does not have a standard, built in, GUI means that it is no longer an OS.:-(
I would guess that the number of applications which require access to disk storage (or benefit from a file abstraction, a la sockets, FIFOs, unix "special files", etc) outnumber those which require a pixel addressable display by several orders of magnitude.
However, just for the sake of argument, let's pretend a GUI is a necessary component of an OS. Does a window manager, four xterms, and netscape count? I don't really want to have to waste precious disk space, memory and CPU time on useless stuff like file managers, desktop icons, and 50 different confusingly named "control panel" doohickies none of which provide any more than the most basic of configuration options, but I don't know what I'll do if I find out that my computer isn't running an OS anymore.
[...and I'm already pulling my hair out over that previously very useful machine sitting in the corner with no keyboard or monitor attached. On the other hand, that it does all it does without the benefit of an OS is an absolute technological wonder.]
However far to often Public Domain code is turnned into a commertal product and the original PD author basicly gets screwed over...
Nothing prevents PD "theft".... Thats sad...
[Umm, how to phrase this as politely as possible?]
Are you really this STUPID? By placing code in the public domain, the original author has disclaimed all rights to it, probably completely by choice. If it happens this code is used by someone (anyone, even for the ungodly purpose of making money), that's probably exactly what the original author intended.
What's really sad is the victim culture that seems to be growing up around the GPL, where any trivial offense, real or imagined, is portrayed as evil business preying on the innocent. Quick, recruit Jon Katz.
As for the topic at hand, the GPL and StarOffice deserve each other. Add it up: One huge, bloated, probably very ugly codebase. One license that discourages late-term involvement. Result: Another flood of "Failure of Open Source" articles.
Would you rather MICROS~1 took Red Hat and published it as "Microsoft Unix", charging $400 a copy, binary-only?
Maybe you'd be stupid enough to pay for it, I certainly wouldn't.
I don't understand why this fantasy keeps coming up in defense of the GPV. If MS was stupid enough to give up their enormous investment in the development and marketing of Windows NT in favor of linux, the GPV would provide no protection whatsover. All they would have to do is provide Office or completely functional Windows File/Print services or whatever, licensed only for use with Microsoft Linux, which is available free under the current licensing. None of their additions would necessarily fall under the GPV, but the availability of popular MS software would do a lot to divert interest away from the non-MS Linuxes.
Sharing a resource doesn't mean Communism, which is one-man rule...
Richard Stalin
...over a one-party withered-away State
FSF
that owns the means of ALL production...
Just because they haven't been successful, doesn't mean they haven't tried.
We don't even have a Gulag!
But we do have no end of vocal zealots doing their best to create bad publicity for any company that commits the most trivial of offenses against their holy writ.
There's even less in it for them if it's a BSD license, because then their commercial competitors can use it. If they only release it GPL, then they can still use it in their commercial products, but their competitors cannot (e.g. Alladin Ghostscript).
You missed my point entirely. I wasn't talking about a case where a company developed an entire product from scratch, but one in which they built one on currently existing code *written by someone else*. If this original codebase is under the BSD license, the company can build a product on it, sell it for a while, and then contribute back to the original project. I'm not saying this will necessarily happen, just that it can and does. If the original codebase was GPV-licensed there would be little incentive for the company to use it in the first place.
So if XFree86 puts features x and y into their newest version, XProprietary86 can put features x and y into *their* newest version too, *without working*, *PLUS* they get to put features z, q and r. Then XFree has to rush to implement z, q and r too, but they have to write them from scratch. Meanwhile, XProprietary86 is writing features s, t, u and v.
This is another example of the simplistic and fallacious thinking of the GPV apologist. A more likely scenario one in which, of features z,q,r,s,t,u and v, only q and t are truly worthwhile. While XF is implementing these, they are also implementing a,b,c. It may be that the authors of XP really want b, so they have to integrate it. As the two codebases become more divergent it becomes increasingly more difficult for XP to maintain their separate enhancements. The cost of this maintenance may actually cause XP to contribute back to XF (this has been known to happen in the real world).
Of course, hypothetically, it could be that XF is incapable of anything more than copying XP's enhancements (as is the case with much GPV'd software, which tends to stagnate when there's nothing left to copy), in which case they deserve to lose and might as well pack it in.
Question: if XFree have such a problem with their license, why do they prefer it to the extent of refusing to allow any GPV'd code into their distribution? And why do the free BSDs only grudgingly allow GPV'd code into their systems, and almost always only when there is no free alternative? And why aren't the BSDs far behind Linux in most respects, instead of a little bit ahead in many and far ahead in some?
The purpose of the GPL is to prevent that, and it still needs to be prevented.
I disagree. The real purpose of the GPV is to allow the original contributor to eternally profit, albeit in a warm and fuzzy nonmonetary sense, from the creativity and resourcefulness of others. This is the real reason companies don't contribute to GPV'd software unless first bludgeoned by RMS, Bruce Perens and their teeming minions; there's proportionately very little in it for them, a good idea often being worth more than an initial codebase. That good idea may only be salable for a year or two, but the company's inability to build it on GPV'd software renders "contributing back to the community" at a later date a moot point.
Someones property, made semi-proprietary through dependencies.
What's really interesting is that brainwashed GPV defenders can continue to live in a fantasy world where something can be property (something which is owned) while not at the same time be proprietary (have an owner), and can make this claim entirely without irony.
Unless you're saying that it's being made proprietary to someone else other than its rightful owner, in which case you're claiming theft, which of course you are not doing. How can one steal something that is free?
Slashdot Mirror
This is not true, at least when it comes to libraries. The GPL, when applied to a library, is much, much worse than any other license I've seen.
Using the Evil Empire as an example, some libraries that come with development tools like Visual C++ are redistributable and have licenses which make no attempts to control how you license code you develop using them.
On the other hand, using a library licensed under the GPL requires that you apply the GPL to your own code (or so they claim - I personally find the distinction between fork/exec and shared address space dubious.)
Why should the punishment for a crime with a gun be any different than the punishment for the same crime with a knife, baseball bat, or other weapon? You're more likely to be injured in a robbery with a knife or club, since the attacker has to get in close and might just give you a whack or two to keep you from fighting back.
I've been clubbed over the head with a baseball bat. I've had a gun pointed at me. The baseball bat hurt a hell of a lot more.
If you'd thought about it for a brief minute before making the standard, boring "Americans are stupid" comment, you'd have realized that the poster was being sarcastic. None of those conflicts was won by the countries named.
The way I remember it, Microsoft actually killed the early pen computing market about a decade ago. I think it went something like this: A small software company announces its pen computing operating system, to rave reviews and "death of normal laptops" articles you mentioned. Microsoft announces its competitor, Pen Windows. Pen computing fails to take off.
I never heard of pen computing again after that, until the web tablet, although to some limited degree it lived on in the PDA.
Of course I could be wrong, but it wouldn't be at all out of character for MS to try to destroy a new market they weren't ready to play in.
FreeBSD Handbook Sections 10.3.1 and 10.5.1 both answer this question. It took me all of ten seconds to find this.
Who's got the bad attitude? People who refuse to read the basic documentation for a system are just wasting the time of people kind enough to make themselves available to people with actual problems, and don't deserve help.
Here's a hint for the newbie:
If you're using FreeBSD, read the handbook (the installer asked you if wanted to look at it, so you can't really pretend you didn't know about it).
If you're using OpenBSD, read the FAQ and man afterboot.
In either case, read the man pages (man disklabel also has the answer to your partition limit question - in fact, it's in so many places I can't understand how you could possibly have missed it).
[I know it's hard for you linux types to understand the idea of centralized documentation]
You mean besides the benefits of standard protocols?
[In case you fail to fail to miss the point, like most mindless GNU drones, answer this question: How many successful protocols have their reference implementations licensed under the GPL?]
On the other hand, having documentation with such gems as the following puts MySQL on pretty shaky ground:
Thanks for the info. I've always had trouble trusting any organization whose only identifiable figures are a monomaniac and a lawyer, but now I feel much better.
[wtf is Tim Ney?]
In the interests of both freedom and better software, I demand his source code.
I disagree. Here's what it says:
I don't read this as permitting the use of any part of the source code of the linux kernel in any other work. I consider this important because the inclusion of header files is used as an argument for the application of the GPL to any program which makes use of a GPL'd library via dynamic linking (absent this, all you have are two programs, one of which calls some of the functions of the other).
If you buy the FSF's claims concerning what are derivative works, the resulting wrapper would have to be GPL'd. I don't see anything in the GPL that says otherwise.
I've been wondering why Linux-based systems as a whole are not in violation of the GPL. As I understand it, the GNU C Library for Linux includes Linux headers and should therefore be considered a derivative work of Linux under the GPL, and therefore GPL'd itself. Since the C library is used by everything else, everything else must be GPL as well, making the system as a whole a huge mess of license violations.
I don't see anything in Linus's "Linux's license ends at the system call interface" interpretation that provides for the inclusion of header files. Perhaps I missed something?
Why would it? RMS is the FSF (and vice versa). If there's anyone else, they sure don't say a helluva lot.
Then may I be surrounded by evil men.
You didn't, but that's the price you pay for letting RMS do your thinking for you.
The GPL does not allow you to produce commercial software, it just doesn't prevent you from selling support services for GPL'd "free" software (and if you read RMS's definition of commercial software, this is what he's talking about). Selling support services for software is probably outside the realm of software licensing altogether.
You are also allowed to charge money for distribution of GPL software. I don't know about you, but I don't have enough money to run such a business.
I don't believe anything in the QPL prohibits either of these activities.
Here's a little food for thought, if any of you GNU drones are capable:
Hmm. Sounds like the GPL.
AFAIK, not really, but it isn't all that much of a stretch for a Mac advocate. See the entries for multics and unix in the Jargon File:
Multics: MULTiplexed Information and Computing Service
Unix: In the authors' words, "A weak pun on Multics"; very early on it was `UNICS'
I would guess that the number of applications which require access to disk storage (or benefit from a file abstraction, a la sockets, FIFOs, unix "special files", etc) outnumber those which require a pixel addressable display by several orders of magnitude.
However, just for the sake of argument, let's pretend a GUI is a necessary component of an OS. Does a window manager, four xterms, and netscape count? I don't really want to have to waste precious disk space, memory and CPU time on useless stuff like file managers, desktop icons, and 50 different confusingly named "control panel" doohickies none of which provide any more than the most basic of configuration options, but I don't know what I'll do if I find out that my computer isn't running an OS anymore.
[...and I'm already pulling my hair out over that previously very useful machine sitting in the corner with no keyboard or monitor attached. On the other hand, that it does all it does without the benefit of an OS is an absolute technological wonder.]
The answer to both questions is, as usual, the GPL.
[Umm, how to phrase this as politely as possible?]
Are you really this STUPID? By placing code in the public domain, the original author has disclaimed all rights to it, probably completely by choice. If it happens this code is used by someone (anyone, even for the ungodly purpose of making money), that's probably exactly what the original author intended.
What's really sad is the victim culture that seems to be growing up around the GPL, where any trivial offense, real or imagined, is portrayed as evil business preying on the innocent. Quick, recruit Jon Katz.
As for the topic at hand, the GPL and StarOffice deserve each other. Add it up: One huge, bloated, probably very ugly codebase. One license that discourages late-term involvement. Result: Another flood of "Failure of Open Source" articles.
Maybe you'd be stupid enough to pay for it, I certainly wouldn't.
I don't understand why this fantasy keeps coming up in defense of the GPV. If MS was stupid enough to give up their enormous investment in the development and marketing of Windows NT in favor of linux, the GPV would provide no protection whatsover. All they would have to do is provide Office or completely functional Windows File/Print services or whatever, licensed only for use with Microsoft Linux, which is available free under the current licensing. None of their additions would necessarily fall under the GPV, but the availability of popular MS software would do a lot to divert interest away from the non-MS Linuxes.
Richard Stalin
FSF
that owns the means of ALL production...
Just because they haven't been successful, doesn't mean they haven't tried.
We don't even have a Gulag!
But we do have no end of vocal zealots doing their best to create bad publicity for any company that commits the most trivial of offenses against their holy writ.
But was the license a disadvantage compared to the GPV? If so, then it most certainly is whether the BSDs are behind Linux.
You missed my point entirely. I wasn't talking about a case where a company developed an entire product from scratch, but one in which they built one on currently existing code *written by someone else*. If this original codebase is under the BSD license, the company can build a product on it, sell it for a while, and then contribute back to the original project. I'm not saying this will necessarily happen, just that it can and does. If the original codebase was GPV-licensed there would be little incentive for the company to use it in the first place.
This is another example of the simplistic and fallacious thinking of the GPV apologist. A more likely scenario one in which, of features z,q,r,s,t,u and v, only q and t are truly worthwhile. While XF is implementing these, they are also implementing a,b,c. It may be that the authors of XP really want b, so they have to integrate it. As the two codebases become more divergent it becomes increasingly more difficult for XP to maintain their separate enhancements. The cost of this maintenance may actually cause XP to contribute back to XF (this has been known to happen in the real world).
Of course, hypothetically, it could be that XF is incapable of anything more than copying XP's enhancements (as is the case with much GPV'd software, which tends to stagnate when there's nothing left to copy), in which case they deserve to lose and might as well pack it in.
Question: if XFree have such a problem with their license, why do they prefer it to the extent of refusing to allow any GPV'd code into their distribution? And why do the free BSDs only grudgingly allow GPV'd code into their systems, and almost always only when there is no free alternative? And why aren't the BSDs far behind Linux in most respects, instead of a little bit ahead in many and far ahead in some?
I disagree. The real purpose of the GPV is to allow the original contributor to eternally profit, albeit in a warm and fuzzy nonmonetary sense, from the creativity and resourcefulness of others. This is the real reason companies don't contribute to GPV'd software unless first bludgeoned by RMS, Bruce Perens and their teeming minions; there's proportionately very little in it for them, a good idea often being worth more than an initial codebase. That good idea may only be salable for a year or two, but the company's inability to build it on GPV'd software renders "contributing back to the community" at a later date a moot point.
What's really interesting is that brainwashed GPV defenders can continue to live in a fantasy world where something can be property (something which is owned) while not at the same time be proprietary (have an owner), and can make this claim entirely without irony.
Unless you're saying that it's being made proprietary to someone else other than its rightful owner, in which case you're claiming theft, which of course you are not doing. How can one steal something that is free?