The author's confusion here seems to be regarding the differences between a blackhole and its singularity.
A black hole is just that -- a black hole. It is a region of space from which nothing can escape (approximately; black holes do very slowly radiate heat). In other words, the volume a black hole occupies is defined by the Schwartzchild radius: the point beyond which the escape velocity exceeds c.
A singularity is the "center" of a black hole; it is an infinitely dense point in space, of enormous mass.
Interestingly, black holes may have some useful properties for astronomers. Light heading towards a black hole will be refracted around it and bent; in essence, the black hole acts like a magnifying glass.
Yea, I've seen fluxbox...but the proble mwith it is that it wastes alot of space compared to pwm.
It'd be nice if we could convince the people who do WindowMaker to include a tabbed-windowing system like pwm has, at the option of the user...so we could maximize screen space efficiency while easily being able to switch between tasks.
I recommend pwm. Its a graphical WM with tabbed windows. Supports windowmaker dockapps.
Unfortunately, it does not support iconification of programs...I'm trying to convince the developer to include that as an alternative to window shading.
Imo, PWM's the best light window manager, providing a good combination of a clean graphical interface with minimalism.
For a more heavy-duty WM, I recommend WindowMaker over GNOME or KDE. WindowMaker is fairly light-weight, and has a much cleaner appearance and feel. Another nice feature about WindowMaker is that it has a lot of the nice Apps that you see in OSX, like the mail program and the column-file navigator. Better, its easy to port an OSX program to WindowMaker if you have the source, as its based on OpenStep.
The only real advantage listed here was hardware options and the affordability of the hardware which XP can run on compared to that which OSX can run on.
But all these features they listed are also in Mac OSX, and more. I'm a Debian GNU/Linux user myself, and all these features are in Debian GNU/Linux too; and it can run on much cheaper hardware with more functionality than WinXP.
Office, Internet Explorer, e-mail are all in OSX. You can also get them in Linux using cross-over office. There are also equivalents in Linux just as functional, as well as equivalents in OSX that are just as functional.
I'm someone who has used OSX, Debian GNU/Linux, and WinXP. I'll tell you right now that for every feature in XP, there's an equivalent feature in OSX. I can also tell you that all of these features were in OSX from the beginning, and were in previous versions of Apple's OS before MS ever had them. And these features have been in GNU/Linux since the beginning of GNU/Linux.
So where exactly is the software benefit of XP over OSX? There isn't one. Except in games, but XP isn't great for games; for a windows gaming system, stick with Win98 or WinME (Win98 better because supports real-mode DOS). I have a minimal install of WinME on my computer for Descent 1 - 3 and Tomb Raider 1-6.
And the hardware benefit. Yes, hardware for the PC is generally cheaper than Apple hardware, and it gives you the same functionality. But lets remember that GNU/Linux can make more of the same hardware than can any Windows OS. GNU/Linux distributions such as Debian and Slackware can still run on 486's; and they can run with acceptable performance with a WM (i.e., WindowMaker) on a much slower computer with less RAM than can XP.
I realize that this is advertising and that a company never says anything bad about their products. However, these are outright lies, and just silly nonsense. It would be like Ford claiming that their Mustang (a decent car) is faster than a McLaren LM (which can go from 0 - 100 - 0 in ~11s, and can achieve top speeds of around 220mph). Such a claim would in short be pure bullshit.
ISOC is largely made up of corporate interests, and will represent corporate interests, not the interests of the real internet community. You can expect corporations to be stealing domains from people alot easier now; AOL will easily be able to steal any domain name which someone paid for which contains "aol" in its name.
The problem with this decision is that it is completely illegitimate. Only 5 of the current ICANN members were elected; the rest were appointed by corporate interests. They have no legitimacy.
The only way ICANN can have legitimacy is if EVERY board member is elected by the internet community in a fair election. Until then, they're just a bunch of information-nazi's.
RMS isn't fighting to have a world made in his image; he isn't asking people to call GNU/Linux RMS/Linux.
RMS has been very consistent about supporting freedom, and about giving due credit, on both sides (for the FSF and for any other group).
Also, RMS does not think its immoral to make money off of software. You're obviously ignorant of the GNU GPL, because it includes no provisions which prevent you from making money off of your software. All that it essentially says is that you need to offer people the source to your software via physical delivery at the cost of shipping; and that any modifications of a GPL'ed program must also be GPL'ed.
Nothing there prevents you from making money off of software. Libranet and Lindows are basing viable business models off of GPL'ed software. How? They're selling the binaries and not offering them for free for download on the web. They actually sell CD's to people with their OS on it, and don't offer the ISO's for download online. Lindows also bases their business off of extra service features such as Click-N-Run. Both Libranet and Lindows are based off of Debian, a GNU/Linux OS which is very true to the FSF philosophy.
So, gee, there are people making a living off of GPL'ed software, who use a viable business model (viable usually does not mean offering your entire product online for free download, nor does the GPL requirethat).
Another way to make money off of GPL'ed software is through for-hire work, in which groups which want a certain functionality covered under the GPL pay a programmer to write that program and put it under the GPL. This can happen when a consortium of people all have an interest in having a certain functionality available to them; i.e., movie studios need 3D rendering functionality.
Next time before you go around saying that RMS thinks its immoral for people to make a living off of software, try getting your facts straight.
Actually, you do have to accept the latest EULA. Most EULA's have clauses in them stating that the agreement can retroactively change at the discretion of the company. Look at MS EULA's as a case-study.
Btw, though commercial software venders are under pressure to release new products, they aren't usually under pressure to make better products; rather, they add screenshot-worthy features which aren't very useful (things to put on a bullet list of new features), rather than focusing on more important speed, stability, and basic UI issues. Office XP is no improvement over Office 98 for the vast vast vast majority of users.
And I happen to think that thinking of people of users is better than thinking of them as consumers. When you think of people as consumers, you passify them, whereas users are active. Refer to Lessig for further details.
Pro-life nutcakes are extremists. PETA-nutcakes are extremists.
RMS is not an extremist. He simply aspires towards freeom. Apsiring towards freedom is not an "extremist ideology", except in the eyes of information-nazi's.
The whole idea of having an belief system like RMS' and supporting it is to change the real world. Back before the civil war, the views of abolitionists were considered to be "extreme ideologies incompatable with the real world" just as you consider Stallman's ideals to be "incompatable with the real world".
Btw, I don't "blindly" follow RMS; I happen to agree with most of his ideology, though not all of it, and don't always agree with his implementations. No one agrees completely with any other person. But that's no reason to be uncivilized about it.
You can either make someone abide by the exact terms of the GPL you specify by saying "GPL ver X.x" or you can allow them to choose between any GPL version by saying "GPL" or allow them to use the version you specify or any later version "GPL version X.x or later" or can allow them to choose between various version of the GPL "GPL X.x, X.y, or X.z". However, it is inconsistent with the GPL to say "the latest version of the GPL". Though I suppose one could say that. But that isn't a part of the GPL license. The GPL license itself does NOT say you must abide by the "latest version of the GPL".
Please get your facts straight. The GPL is not like every other license. For one thing, its not a EULA. For another, you don't even have to accept it in the first place.
I agree that he should neither be a bove critique or questioning, but insults are innappropriate for a founding member of our community (different story if one's insulting information-nazi's like Valentini and Rosen, but that won't get you modded up either, or will it?)...anyways,/. has been increasingly ruder and more insulting and belittling of RMS. It is inappropriate and wrong.
Just in this thread, I've read comments where people have called RMS a "fruit-cake", "nutcase", "communist", etc.
While you're all busy insulting RMS, think about this...
Have you contributed more to the Free Software community in terms of software than RMS?
Have you contributed more to the spirit & philosophy of the OSS & FS software communities than RMS?
Are you smarter than RMS? Ok, this one here's subjective; but I doubt most of the people criticizing RMS have an IQ of 170.
Until you can answer affirmative to all of the following questions, I'd suggest you be more respectful to one of the founding fathers of our community.
Without RMS and the FSF, there would be no GNU/Linux...Linux-based OS' would be some obscurity with little or no useful tools on them.
As usual, RMS gets little or no respect around here, despite the fact that, as usual, he's right.
Those of you saying that the restrictions RMS mentions would be lifted if you bought the commercial version are missing the point. The point by RMS is that all of the licenses under which you can use BitKeeper are draconian, as they're EULA's. The problem with EULA's is that they can be changed at any time by the developer, thus creating an unfair situation; BitKeeper could just as easily include such restrictions on its paid-for version. The other problem is that accepting them is mandatory, thus creating another power imbalance.
That said, this is all the more reason for developers to switch from BitKeeper to alternatives. BitKeeper can impose any draconian restrictions on you they wish, and you'd best not wait until you're trapped into using BitKeeper and dependant on it to change.
I'd advise the rest of/. to listen more to RMS when he speaks and suppress your obvious desire to bash a man because he has a certain set of ideals.
Get a clue, man, licensing something under a Free Software license like the GPL does not mean giving it away for free.
Nothing in the GPL forces you to offer your binaries, source-code, or ISO's available for free download from the net. It only requires that you (at least) allow those who want the source to get it at the physical price of delivering it.
You can, for example, sell a CD with only the binaries and an installer on it, along with an offering to deliver the source code at the cost of shipment. Alternatively, you can include the source on the CD you sell.
The important point from a business point of view is that you neither have to offer the source nor the binaries on the web for download; though, in most cases, offering the source for download will not hurt business (though offering the binaries for download probably will).
Most people who are your target customers do not want to compile something from scratch. They probably don't even know how to do it. So offering the source for distribution under the GPL has little if any effect on your business.
So in short, the point is that if you do things right, you can have a viable business model based around GPL'ed software. For the most part, this means NOT offering the binaries for download for free on the web. As for the source, that's largely a non-factor from a business standpoint; though it may be best to offer it for download on the web for public relations.
OSI-compliant and FSF-compliant software may not be an all-encompassing savior for businesses. But if implemented right, it can hardly hurt.
And once again, neither Open Sourced Software nor Free Software means you necessarily get something for free. Most things which are Open Sourced Software or Free Software *happen* to be free as in they can be downloaded for free; that does not mean that OSS or FS software *must* be free as in downloadable for free.
If your paper is due tomorrow and you're just doing research today, I have little sympathy.
Also, I believe you have some misconceptions about bandwidth. At most universities, equal access to bandwidth is given. If the university can offer say 100MB/s at any given time, then if ten users total are requesting bandwidth at the same time, they each get 10MB/s. If 100 students are requesting bandwidth, they each get 1MB/s. So file-sharers don't get any kind of preference over those just wanting to surf the net or do research. If more people access the ethernet, the amount of bandwidth allocated to the file-sharers is reduced.
And like I said, its not a "handful of students" sharing files. Its ALL the students. There even used to be an intra-university file-sharing service at our university, and people would readily share files with eachother from within the university; unfortunately, the information nazi's forced them to close it down.
Bullshit. I don't want to hear anything about how these poor colleges can't afford the bandwidth when they're charging the tuitions they're charging.
The bandwidth should be allocated evenly between all users requesting it at any given time; this way, all bandwidth is utilized, and all students get their fair share of bandwidth when they request it.
Oh please, its not a few students downloading MP3's hogging bandwidth from the rest who only use it to look up research articles.
It's EVERY STUDENT who's downloading MP3's. Thank god for that.
Fortunately, most college students are pro file-sharing. Since college students will shape the future, we can at least look forward to a less draconian future where everything isn't controlled by a few big paranoid information-nazi's like the MPAA and RIAA.
This is why I say that Jack Valentini and Hillary Rosen are on my list of people who society would be better off if they were dead; them and all those information-nazi's who think like them.
Hillary and Rosen get on that list for being information-nazi's.
Gary Wennig (President of Global Crossings) also has the honor of being on that list; he, however, earned his place by fucking millions of sharehoulders out of billions of dollars via illegal insider trading.
There's more people, including Sadaam Hussein and Osama Bin Laden, all child-molestors, rapists, and murderers, but I'm too tired to bother reciting them.
Just because something is the root of all evil does not make it evil in and of itself. People do evil things to get more money.
People also do evil things in the name of religion (refer to middle ages, the Isreal/Palistinian situation, and 9/11). Though I hate religion, that in itself doesn't make religion evil (I think there's plenty of other things which make religion evil; namely the fact that its all a big lie told to control people).
Anyways, the BSA does present serious problems to "non-infringers". Whether or not you infringe, the BSA costs you money. Maintaining comprehensive proof of owning a license to use every copy of software packages in your organization. If you happen not to have proof of a valid license for every copy of the software packages you use -- even if you have purchased them all -- then you have to settle for huge and outrageous prices.
And heaven forbid you actually have one unlicensed copy of a program in your organization, even if its just something an employee installed without authorization. Then you get to pay even larger multi-million dollar settlements to the greedy BSA along with obligational contracts which require you to buy MS-produced "intellectual property compliance" software.
The simple fact of the matter is that dealing with the BSA is in all cases more expensive than not having to deal with the BSA. With Free Software, you have to spend a whopping $0 dealing with greedy intellectual property owners.
I'm not, however, going to say that the TCO for Free Software is always lower than that for proprietary software. However, if we're at a point in our culture where freedom is sacrificed for a few dollars worth of savings or a little bit of convenience, that's pretty sad.
Let me respond to a few misconceptions I believe you have.
1. TCO, when the total cost of ownership is less for proprietary products than for Free Software.
Firstly, I think it is very rare that the TCO for a proprietary package is less than that for a Free Software package.
Secondly, off the bat, most Free Software is at an advantage over proprietary software in terms of TCO because most Free Software happens to be free as in beer; it is the nature of Free Software in an internet era, that Free Software will also tend to be economically free.
Thirdly, considering the proprietary licensing issues, I think that proprietary software is never on average a better TCO solution than Free Software. It costs alot of money to maintain compliance with proprietary licensing which would sastify the BSA. And if the BSA raids your corporation and you can't prove you have lgally purchased a license for every copy of a proprietary product you're using, then you have to settle for a huge and outrageous price. So, with the BSA, any possible TCO advantage of proprietary software is gone.
2. Free software comes with zero support -- this is an important fact lost on most people who can support themselves.
Dead wrong.
Firstly, Free Software comes with free support provided internet access in the form of thousands of helpful newsgroups, message boards, etc etc. Furthermore, most developers of products are happy to lend support.
Secondly, one can purchase support for Free Software at a price better than one would have to pay for support for a proprietary product. Proprietary support isn't free; you either have to pay extra for it, or its built into the cost of the software you buy. So in most cases, if you want dedicated support, you'll get a better deal with Free Software since there's competition among support companies, unlike in the proprietary world.
Thirdly, have you looked at technical support for proprietary products lately? Its total and complete CRAP. I have a copy of WinME on my system to play games on. On the few occasions I've had to call technical support, I've gotten idiots who didn't know half of what I know:
ME: "WinME isn't working"
IDIOT: "Well, what did you install last"
ME: "JamCam for my digital camera"
IDIOT: "Well, uninstall it"
ME: "Ok, I uninstalled it. WinME still isn't workin"
IDIOT: "Ok, reinstall Windows ME."
This is basically the kind of support I got for one problem I called in with. Hence, my point. Technical support people for proprietary products don't know what the fuck they're doing or talking about. They're reading out of a cookbook, and they aren't authorized to help you if you don't have a "standard system" and they can only follow certain exact steps.
But in terms of human rights organizations. They simply can't afford to be wasting time dealing with the BSA's bullshit. The only time that a proprietary product has a lower TCO than its Free Software equivalent is when you've conveniently discounted the cost of dealing with the BSA.
Try reading the article next time. He never claimed that not releasing software under a Free Software or OSI-compliant license was a violation of human rights.
He said that its criticial that human rights organizations use Free Software for their existence. Human rights oganizations are short on money and can't afford to pay the outrageous costs for proprietary packages, especially when they don't work as well or aren't as stable as Free packages.
Compiling the financial issue, human rights organizations have serious problems keeping up to date with the draconian licenses imposed by software companies. EULA's can change at the companies whim, which is a serious problem for a human rights organization. Human rights organizations can't afford million dollar settlements with the BSA because they couldn't find licenses for every copy of Windows they own.
To save costs and avoid these headaches, and to use a more stable solution, human rights organizations should use free software.
The other issue is transparency. A fundamental thing for human rights is that processes be transparent. The first step to take away human rights -- as ICANN has showed us -- is to make a process non-transparent. Once something isn't transparent, you can do anything you want and no-one will know any better.
Current events in software have shown us again and again that you can't trust corporations with non-transparent processes. Whenever a corporation stands to benefit from abusing its lack of transparency, it does. Look at Enron and Global Crossings, the executives of which made secret deals outside the sight of their investors eyes, selling all their stock and making billions off of insider trading while they're investors wen't broke. Look at some of MS' latest EULA terms, which (for example) prevent you from using MS products to write/publish documents critical of MS. Look at MS' auto-update 'features' which force more and more draconian DRM 'features' on you.
Proprietary software does not necessarily mean human rights violations. However, its an excellent tool to use to disenfranchise voters. Its a great starting place for human-rights violations. Its a great weapon against human rights organizations. In short, because of its closed nature and the possibility of draconian EULA "agreements" there is a great potential for proprietary software to violate human rights.
Furthermore, I think there is a very good argument that Free Software should be a fundamental human right. Human rights are an expanding concept, and there's no reason why they shouldn't be expanded into the metaphysical. We only have the rights which we can defend, and we can extend rights beyond previous boundaries. In a hundred years, Free Software might be considered as much a human right as Free Speech.
Since when is wanting more freedom communism or stalinism? According to you, apparently, it is. What people like myelf and Richard Stallman want is more freedom in regards to software. That isn't a communistic ideal. That's an ideal of aspiring to freedom. I'd call it Libertarian.
Slashdot Mirror
The author's confusion here seems to be regarding the differences between a blackhole and its singularity.
A black hole is just that -- a black hole. It is a region of space from which nothing can escape (approximately; black holes do very slowly radiate heat). In other words, the volume a black hole occupies is defined by the Schwartzchild radius: the point beyond which the escape velocity exceeds c.
A singularity is the "center" of a black hole; it is an infinitely dense point in space, of enormous mass.
Interestingly, black holes may have some useful properties for astronomers. Light heading towards a black hole will be refracted around it and bent; in essence, the black hole acts like a magnifying glass.
Yea, I've seen fluxbox...but the proble mwith it is that it wastes alot of space compared to pwm.
It'd be nice if we could convince the people who do WindowMaker to include a tabbed-windowing system like pwm has, at the option of the user...so we could maximize screen space efficiency while easily being able to switch between tasks.
I recommend pwm. Its a graphical WM with tabbed windows. Supports windowmaker dockapps.
Unfortunately, it does not support iconification of programs...I'm trying to convince the developer to include that as an alternative to window shading.
Imo, PWM's the best light window manager, providing a good combination of a clean graphical interface with minimalism.
For a more heavy-duty WM, I recommend WindowMaker over GNOME or KDE. WindowMaker is fairly light-weight, and has a much cleaner appearance and feel. Another nice feature about WindowMaker is that it has a lot of the nice Apps that you see in OSX, like the mail program and the column-file navigator. Better, its easy to port an OSX program to WindowMaker if you have the source, as its based on OpenStep.
The only real advantage listed here was hardware options and the affordability of the hardware which XP can run on compared to that which OSX can run on.
But all these features they listed are also in Mac OSX, and more. I'm a Debian GNU/Linux user myself, and all these features are in Debian GNU/Linux too; and it can run on much cheaper hardware with more functionality than WinXP.
Office, Internet Explorer, e-mail are all in OSX. You can also get them in Linux using cross-over office. There are also equivalents in Linux just as functional, as well as equivalents in OSX that are just as functional.
I'm someone who has used OSX, Debian GNU/Linux, and WinXP. I'll tell you right now that for every feature in XP, there's an equivalent feature in OSX. I can also tell you that all of these features were in OSX from the beginning, and were in previous versions of Apple's OS before MS ever had them. And these features have been in GNU/Linux since the beginning of GNU/Linux.
So where exactly is the software benefit of XP over OSX? There isn't one. Except in games, but XP isn't great for games; for a windows gaming system, stick with Win98 or WinME (Win98 better because supports real-mode DOS). I have a minimal install of WinME on my computer for Descent 1 - 3 and Tomb Raider 1-6.
And the hardware benefit. Yes, hardware for the PC is generally cheaper than Apple hardware, and it gives you the same functionality. But lets remember that GNU/Linux can make more of the same hardware than can any Windows OS. GNU/Linux distributions such as Debian and Slackware can still run on 486's; and they can run with acceptable performance with a WM (i.e., WindowMaker) on a much slower computer with less RAM than can XP.
I realize that this is advertising and that a company never says anything bad about their products. However, these are outright lies, and just silly nonsense. It would be like Ford claiming that their Mustang (a decent car) is faster than a McLaren LM (which can go from 0 - 100 - 0 in ~11s, and can achieve top speeds of around 220mph). Such a claim would in short be pure bullshit.
The ISOC plan is an shameless all-out money-grab.
ISOC is largely made up of corporate interests, and will represent corporate interests, not the interests of the real internet community. You can expect corporations to be stealing domains from people alot easier now; AOL will easily be able to steal any domain name which someone paid for which contains "aol" in its name.
The problem with this decision is that it is completely illegitimate. Only 5 of the current ICANN members were elected; the rest were appointed by corporate interests. They have no legitimacy.
The only way ICANN can have legitimacy is if EVERY board member is elected by the internet community in a fair election. Until then, they're just a bunch of information-nazi's.
Bullshit.
RMS isn't fighting to have a world made in his image; he isn't asking people to call GNU/Linux RMS/Linux.
RMS has been very consistent about supporting freedom, and about giving due credit, on both sides (for the FSF and for any other group).
Also, RMS does not think its immoral to make money off of software. You're obviously ignorant of the GNU GPL, because it includes no provisions which prevent you from making money off of your software. All that it essentially says is that you need to offer people the source to your software via physical delivery at the cost of shipping; and that any modifications of a GPL'ed program must also be GPL'ed.
Nothing there prevents you from making money off of software. Libranet and Lindows are basing viable business models off of GPL'ed software. How? They're selling the binaries and not offering them for free for download on the web. They actually sell CD's to people with their OS on it, and don't offer the ISO's for download online. Lindows also bases their business off of extra service features such as Click-N-Run. Both Libranet and Lindows are based off of Debian, a GNU/Linux OS which is very true to the FSF philosophy.
So, gee, there are people making a living off of GPL'ed software, who use a viable business model (viable usually does not mean offering your entire product online for free download, nor does the GPL requirethat).
Another way to make money off of GPL'ed software is through for-hire work, in which groups which want a certain functionality covered under the GPL pay a programmer to write that program and put it under the GPL. This can happen when a consortium of people all have an interest in having a certain functionality available to them; i.e., movie studios need 3D rendering functionality.
Next time before you go around saying that RMS thinks its immoral for people to make a living off of software, try getting your facts straight.
Actually, you do have to accept the latest EULA. Most EULA's have clauses in them stating that the agreement can retroactively change at the discretion of the company. Look at MS EULA's as a case-study.
Btw, though commercial software venders are under pressure to release new products, they aren't usually under pressure to make better products; rather, they add screenshot-worthy features which aren't very useful (things to put on a bullet list of new features), rather than focusing on more important speed, stability, and basic UI issues. Office XP is no improvement over Office 98 for the vast vast vast majority of users.
And I happen to think that thinking of people of users is better than thinking of them as consumers. When you think of people as consumers, you passify them, whereas users are active. Refer to Lessig for further details.
His ideology isn't extreme.
Pro-life nutcakes are extremists. PETA-nutcakes are extremists.
RMS is not an extremist. He simply aspires towards freeom. Apsiring towards freedom is not an "extremist ideology", except in the eyes of information-nazi's.
The whole idea of having an belief system like RMS' and supporting it is to change the real world. Back before the civil war, the views of abolitionists were considered to be "extreme ideologies incompatable with the real world" just as you consider Stallman's ideals to be "incompatable with the real world".
Btw, I don't "blindly" follow RMS; I happen to agree with most of his ideology, though not all of it, and don't always agree with his implementations. No one agrees completely with any other person. But that's no reason to be uncivilized about it.
Yea, I'm sure everyone takes you seriously, considering all you've done for the community...which would be what exactly?
RMS is one of the great thinkingers in the Free Software and Open Sourced Software communities. He's also one of the great coders.
So in short, he deserves to be taken as seriously as anyone else who speaks in the field.
Actually, dead wrong.
You can either make someone abide by the exact terms of the GPL you specify by saying "GPL ver X.x" or you can allow them to choose between any GPL version by saying "GPL" or allow them to use the version you specify or any later version "GPL version X.x or later" or can allow them to choose between various version of the GPL "GPL X.x, X.y, or X.z". However, it is inconsistent with the GPL to say "the latest version of the GPL". Though I suppose one could say that. But that isn't a part of the GPL license. The GPL license itself does NOT say you must abide by the "latest version of the GPL".
Please get your facts straight. The GPL is not like every other license. For one thing, its not a EULA. For another, you don't even have to accept it in the first place.
I agree that he should neither be a bove critique or questioning, but insults are innappropriate for a founding member of our community (different story if one's insulting information-nazi's like Valentini and Rosen, but that won't get you modded up either, or will it?)...anyways, /. has been increasingly ruder and more insulting and belittling of RMS. It is inappropriate and wrong.
Just in this thread, I've read comments where people have called RMS a "fruit-cake", "nutcase", "communist", etc.
While you're all busy insulting RMS, think about this...
Have you contributed more to the Free Software community in terms of software than RMS?
Have you contributed more to the spirit & philosophy of the OSS & FS software communities than RMS?
Are you smarter than RMS? Ok, this one here's subjective; but I doubt most of the people criticizing RMS have an IQ of 170.
Until you can answer affirmative to all of the following questions, I'd suggest you be more respectful to one of the founding fathers of our community.
Without RMS and the FSF, there would be no GNU/Linux...Linux-based OS' would be some obscurity with little or no useful tools on them.
As usual, RMS gets little or no respect around here, despite the fact that, as usual, he's right.
/. to listen more to RMS when he speaks and suppress your obvious desire to bash a man because he has a certain set of ideals.
Those of you saying that the restrictions RMS mentions would be lifted if you bought the commercial version are missing the point. The point by RMS is that all of the licenses under which you can use BitKeeper are draconian, as they're EULA's. The problem with EULA's is that they can be changed at any time by the developer, thus creating an unfair situation; BitKeeper could just as easily include such restrictions on its paid-for version. The other problem is that accepting them is mandatory, thus creating another power imbalance.
That said, this is all the more reason for developers to switch from BitKeeper to alternatives. BitKeeper can impose any draconian restrictions on you they wish, and you'd best not wait until you're trapped into using BitKeeper and dependant on it to change.
I'd advise the rest of
So, according to you, as someone who defends them, it isn't expensive?
They have to hire you or some other lawyer; that in itself is expensive.
They have to try to gather all pertinent documentation; likewise expensive.
They have to try to maintain compliance for the future; again expensive.
How exactly isn't it expensive?
Get a clue, man, licensing something under a Free Software license like the GPL does not mean giving it away for free.
Nothing in the GPL forces you to offer your binaries, source-code, or ISO's available for free download from the net. It only requires that you (at least) allow those who want the source to get it at the physical price of delivering it.
You can, for example, sell a CD with only the binaries and an installer on it, along with an offering to deliver the source code at the cost of shipment. Alternatively, you can include the source on the CD you sell.
The important point from a business point of view is that you neither have to offer the source nor the binaries on the web for download; though, in most cases, offering the source for download will not hurt business (though offering the binaries for download probably will).
Most people who are your target customers do not want to compile something from scratch. They probably don't even know how to do it. So offering the source for distribution under the GPL has little if any effect on your business.
So in short, the point is that if you do things right, you can have a viable business model based around GPL'ed software. For the most part, this means NOT offering the binaries for download for free on the web. As for the source, that's largely a non-factor from a business standpoint; though it may be best to offer it for download on the web for public relations.
OSI-compliant and FSF-compliant software may not be an all-encompassing savior for businesses. But if implemented right, it can hardly hurt.
And once again, neither Open Sourced Software nor Free Software means you necessarily get something for free. Most things which are Open Sourced Software or Free Software *happen* to be free as in they can be downloaded for free; that does not mean that OSS or FS software *must* be free as in downloadable for free.
If your paper is due tomorrow and you're just doing research today, I have little sympathy.
Also, I believe you have some misconceptions about bandwidth. At most universities, equal access to bandwidth is given. If the university can offer say 100MB/s at any given time, then if ten users total are requesting bandwidth at the same time, they each get 10MB/s. If 100 students are requesting bandwidth, they each get 1MB/s. So file-sharers don't get any kind of preference over those just wanting to surf the net or do research. If more people access the ethernet, the amount of bandwidth allocated to the file-sharers is reduced.
And like I said, its not a "handful of students" sharing files. Its ALL the students. There even used to be an intra-university file-sharing service at our university, and people would readily share files with eachother from within the university; unfortunately, the information nazi's forced them to close it down.
Bullshit. I don't want to hear anything about how these poor colleges can't afford the bandwidth when they're charging the tuitions they're charging.
The bandwidth should be allocated evenly between all users requesting it at any given time; this way, all bandwidth is utilized, and all students get their fair share of bandwidth when they request it.
Oh please, its not a few students downloading MP3's hogging bandwidth from the rest who only use it to look up research articles.
It's EVERY STUDENT who's downloading MP3's. Thank god for that.
Fortunately, most college students are pro file-sharing. Since college students will shape the future, we can at least look forward to a less draconian future where everything isn't controlled by a few big paranoid information-nazi's like the MPAA and RIAA.
This is why I say that Jack Valentini and Hillary Rosen are on my list of people who society would be better off if they were dead; them and all those information-nazi's who think like them.
Hillary and Rosen get on that list for being information-nazi's.
Gary Wennig (President of Global Crossings) also has the honor of being on that list; he, however, earned his place by fucking millions of sharehoulders out of billions of dollars via illegal insider trading.
There's more people, including Sadaam Hussein and Osama Bin Laden, all child-molestors, rapists, and murderers, but I'm too tired to bother reciting them.
Bandwidth which students deserve due to them paying absurdely ridiculous tuitions ranging from 15 - 30,000 dollars for a good university.
Just because something is the root of all evil does not make it evil in and of itself. People do evil things to get more money.
People also do evil things in the name of religion (refer to middle ages, the Isreal/Palistinian situation, and 9/11). Though I hate religion, that in itself doesn't make religion evil (I think there's plenty of other things which make religion evil; namely the fact that its all a big lie told to control people).
Defending the BSA? That right there's disturbing.
Anyways, the BSA does present serious problems to "non-infringers". Whether or not you infringe, the BSA costs you money. Maintaining comprehensive proof of owning a license to use every copy of software packages in your organization. If you happen not to have proof of a valid license for every copy of the software packages you use -- even if you have purchased them all -- then you have to settle for huge and outrageous prices.
And heaven forbid you actually have one unlicensed copy of a program in your organization, even if its just something an employee installed without authorization. Then you get to pay even larger multi-million dollar settlements to the greedy BSA along with obligational contracts which require you to buy MS-produced "intellectual property compliance" software.
The simple fact of the matter is that dealing with the BSA is in all cases more expensive than not having to deal with the BSA. With Free Software, you have to spend a whopping $0 dealing with greedy intellectual property owners.
I'm not, however, going to say that the TCO for Free Software is always lower than that for proprietary software. However, if we're at a point in our culture where freedom is sacrificed for a few dollars worth of savings or a little bit of convenience, that's pretty sad.
Well, Tomb Raider is one of the best and biggest selling series in the last decade.
And the Descent series is one of the best of all time.
Why not these ones?
Let me respond to a few misconceptions I believe you have.
1. TCO, when the total cost of ownership is less for proprietary products than for Free Software.
Firstly, I think it is very rare that the TCO for a proprietary package is less than that for a Free Software package.
Secondly, off the bat, most Free Software is at an advantage over proprietary software in terms of TCO because most Free Software happens to be free as in beer; it is the nature of Free Software in an internet era, that Free Software will also tend to be economically free.
Thirdly, considering the proprietary licensing issues, I think that proprietary software is never on average a better TCO solution than Free Software. It costs alot of money to maintain compliance with proprietary licensing which would sastify the BSA. And if the BSA raids your corporation and you can't prove you have lgally purchased a license for every copy of a proprietary product you're using, then you have to settle for a huge and outrageous price. So, with the BSA, any possible TCO advantage of proprietary software is gone.
2. Free software comes with zero support -- this is an important fact lost on most people who can support themselves.
Dead wrong.
Firstly, Free Software comes with free support provided internet access in the form of thousands of helpful newsgroups, message boards, etc etc. Furthermore, most developers of products are happy to lend support.
Secondly, one can purchase support for Free Software at a price better than one would have to pay for support for a proprietary product. Proprietary support isn't free; you either have to pay extra for it, or its built into the cost of the software you buy. So in most cases, if you want dedicated support, you'll get a better deal with Free Software since there's competition among support companies, unlike in the proprietary world.
Thirdly, have you looked at technical support for proprietary products lately? Its total and complete CRAP. I have a copy of WinME on my system to play games on. On the few occasions I've had to call technical support, I've gotten idiots who didn't know half of what I know:
ME: "WinME isn't working"
IDIOT: "Well, what did you install last"
ME: "JamCam for my digital camera"
IDIOT: "Well, uninstall it"
ME: "Ok, I uninstalled it. WinME still isn't workin"
IDIOT: "Ok, reinstall Windows ME."
This is basically the kind of support I got for one problem I called in with. Hence, my point. Technical support people for proprietary products don't know what the fuck they're doing or talking about. They're reading out of a cookbook, and they aren't authorized to help you if you don't have a "standard system" and they can only follow certain exact steps.
But in terms of human rights organizations. They simply can't afford to be wasting time dealing with the BSA's bullshit. The only time that a proprietary product has a lower TCO than its Free Software equivalent is when you've conveniently discounted the cost of dealing with the BSA.
Try reading the article next time. He never claimed that not releasing software under a Free Software or OSI-compliant license was a violation of human rights.
He said that its criticial that human rights organizations use Free Software for their existence. Human rights oganizations are short on money and can't afford to pay the outrageous costs for proprietary packages, especially when they don't work as well or aren't as stable as Free packages.
Compiling the financial issue, human rights organizations have serious problems keeping up to date with the draconian licenses imposed by software companies. EULA's can change at the companies whim, which is a serious problem for a human rights organization. Human rights organizations can't afford million dollar settlements with the BSA because they couldn't find licenses for every copy of Windows they own.
To save costs and avoid these headaches, and to use a more stable solution, human rights organizations should use free software.
The other issue is transparency. A fundamental thing for human rights is that processes be transparent. The first step to take away human rights -- as ICANN has showed us -- is to make a process non-transparent. Once something isn't transparent, you can do anything you want and no-one will know any better.
Current events in software have shown us again and again that you can't trust corporations with non-transparent processes. Whenever a corporation stands to benefit from abusing its lack of transparency, it does. Look at Enron and Global Crossings, the executives of which made secret deals outside the sight of their investors eyes, selling all their stock and making billions off of insider trading while they're investors wen't broke. Look at some of MS' latest EULA terms, which (for example) prevent you from using MS products to write/publish documents critical of MS. Look at MS' auto-update 'features' which force more and more draconian DRM 'features' on you.
Proprietary software does not necessarily mean human rights violations. However, its an excellent tool to use to disenfranchise voters. Its a great starting place for human-rights violations. Its a great weapon against human rights organizations. In short, because of its closed nature and the possibility of draconian EULA "agreements" there is a great potential for proprietary software to violate human rights.
Furthermore, I think there is a very good argument that Free Software should be a fundamental human right. Human rights are an expanding concept, and there's no reason why they shouldn't be expanded into the metaphysical. We only have the rights which we can defend, and we can extend rights beyond previous boundaries. In a hundred years, Free Software might be considered as much a human right as Free Speech.
Since when is wanting more freedom communism or stalinism? According to you, apparently, it is. What people like myelf and Richard Stallman want is more freedom in regards to software. That isn't a communistic ideal. That's an ideal of aspiring to freedom. I'd call it Libertarian.