Is this guy supposed to be telling us something we don't already know?
We all know damn well that no company in any industry is concerned about their consumers/users and the public good first. Companies are only concerned with the bottom line; those that aren't go out of business. A companies first goal is to make money, and the public good, consumers, users, the environment, anything, is only secondary and considered in regard to how it affects the bottom line.
This isn't something companies should necessarily be chastized for. Their first obligation by the law is to maximize profit for their shareholders while obeying the law. But some companies use illegal, immoral, or unethical means.
What this means is that you can't trust anything a company tells you. A company's position on social issues is never consistent and will always vary, depending on what will benefit that company the most. In "The Future of Ideas," Lessig noted that AT&T's position on whether or not cable lines should be open changed when from "open access" to "no way" when it became a large owner of them.
That said, some industries have engaged in reprehensable behavior (biotech, software, etc), while others have no (referring here to non-technological industries, such as clothes industry).
In particular, the biotech industry has:
(1) Biopirated (stolen) treatments and cures for diseases from indigenous peoples around the world, patented those ideas, then turned around and charged indigenous peoples for the cures they themselves created.
(2) (In conjunction with the software industry) extended patent rights and duration beyond all reasonable grounds. Companies can patent things for which they do not even know what they do. They can also receive patents on very basic and primitive things which are no-where near leading to a drug, but which will be needed to be used in the research necessary to product a drug (upstream patents). Upstream patents should be retroactively eliminated (retroactive elimination is OK in this case because the gov't had no right to create them in the first place). Only downstream patents on a specific drug should be allowed; minor modifications to the drug should not result in a new patent. The standard for obtaining a patent needs to be dramatically raised. Every minor and trivial adaptation of an existing drug does not deserve a patent. Furthermore, patents on downstream drug products should not apply to basic research. Universities, governments, and companies should be able to obtain the drug in question for research purposes at the cost of production, without licensing hindrances.
(3) Denied people much-needed cures/treatments to further their bottom line. Companies have prevented patients from being treated so that they can get royalties on drugs. Lets save some scorn for the Universities too, which are recently becoming nothing more than corporations who also teach and train. My own University of Rochester was granted a patent to cox-2 inhibitors, which are used in Celebrex's anti-arthritis drug. The University received a patent recently (after Celebrex created the drug) and then filed lawsuite against Celebrex, potentially stopping those suffering from arthritis from getting the drug. While my respect is due to those at the UOR who researched cox-2, that research was done using public grants (which come out of the taxpayers pocket) and using the tuitions of students. It should be put in the public domain.
(4) Denying people in third world countries cures. Rather than allowing companies in third-world countries to make generic drugs and sell them cheaply (saving millions of people's lives), drug companies have tried to prevent such. Blinded by their greed, they have failed to realize that you can't squeeze water from a rock. Perhaps drug companies would be happy if people in the third world started selling them their body parts in exchange for drugs.
(5) Used propaganda to create the illusion that certain illnesses exist which in fact don't, boosting the sales of marginally useful drugs.
(6) Spent far far more money on lawyers, public relations, lobbying, and paying greedy executives than on actually doing research to find cures (not that any company is researching cures anyways).
I could go on and on.
The point is this patent non-sense has to stop. Its a problem everywhere, but most importantly in the biotech industry where its a problem that get people killed by preventing people from being treated, or preventing cures from being researched. As harmful as copyrights are given the fact that their scope is overly broad and their duration overly long, patents are an even bigger problem for the same excesses.
Initial innovation needs to be followed by subsequent innovation, sequential innovation; patents, in their current state, prevent this. I have a simple solution for this:
(1) Reduce the duration of patents. 10 years instead of 20.
(2) Force patent-owners to license patented drugs to those who wish to incorporate them into a product to be sold. A forced license of 50% of the profit from the venture going to the licenser is fine.
(3) Force patent-owners to license patent drugs to anyone for research purposes under a minimally restrictive license. The drug should be provided (for research purposes) at the cost of production, and the only limitation to the license to use it is that the drug itself cannot be sold.
(4) Prevent drug companies from strategic licensing. A company sitting on a patent while research is done based off of that patent and mentioning nothing, then when a product is made, suing for royalties, should be prohibited. (I'm referring here to the same thing happening in the drug industry [i.e., with cox-2] that happened with MP3's).
(5) Retain a much stricter patent-granting scheme. Patents should not be granted for things which aren't really innovative. Currently, patents are granted on every minor modification of an existing drug.
(6) Hold a strong stance on patent nullification of patents ill-gotten. Patents should not be granted for drugs obtained via the results of biopiracy. Those which are discovered to have been obtained from that should in invalidated. Similarly, patents should not be granted on things which were previously invented by others. Should such happen, the patent should be invalidated.
(7) Punish companies for inappropriate patent behavior. If a compoany inappropriately attempts to use its patents to halt, or obtain patents by biopiracy, etc, it should lose all of its patent rights.
(8) Prevent universities for filing for patents, or if they do, require them license the patents under a "patent-left" license. Universities obtain their money for research from the public -- from government grants, funded by the taxpayers, or from students tuitions (also basically the public). Thus, their discoveries and/or inventions should either be in the public domain or patent lefted; i.e., a license corresponding to that of the GPL -- any discoveries/inventions using this patent must either be put in the public domain or licensed under this license, which allows unabridged access.
It is ever-important that we put these kind of restrictions on drug companies (and any technology companies). They will not govern themselves and act morally; indeed, it would be double standard to expect them to do so, since our laws require that they use any and all legal means to maximize profit for their shareholders. Thus, we need to make laws which prevent this kind of nonsense.
(1) I maintain that a person has a reasonable expectation of pri vacy to any part of his/her body which clothing is covered.
(2) This was sexual harassment. Getting a camera and looking underneath someone's skirt is clearly sexual harassment. Its as bad as walking up to someone and lifing up their skrit to see what's underneath (which is what VP Rita Wilson did to her students).
You can't expect privacy in your own fucking underwear?
What a fucking moron this judge is. Probably the same kind of person who thinks Rita Wilson's "thong checks" were OK.
Aside from being a violation of privacy, this was also sexual harassment.
When people make a reasonable effort to cover their private areas -- namely, groinal areas -- yes, they do have a fucking expectation of privacy there.
This one's a no-brainer. All you have to do is show how easy it is to fake a To: field or spoof an IP address. Any information about the sender that can be gleamed from the IP address or To: field is so unreliable it won't hold up in any court of law.
As for what someone else mentioned, yes, any correespondence do belong to the original author. However, if you post them on-line verbatum, the worst that can be done if you post them online (assuming they have no commercial value, as is the case), is that a court may force you to take them down. Thus, you should post a verbatum copy of the correspondence to as well as a posting in your words of what they said. This strengthens your position in court, because you can say that you posted the copy verbatum to prove that you weren't lying. In any case, they can't force you to take down your posting in your own words.
Regarding that, you should always tell people that in corresponding with you, they give you the right to distribute and modify the correspondence, with modifications noted. Such a notification should be on your e-mails, on your web-pages, on your answering machine, on any letters you send; you should say it when you pick up the phone.
As a side-note, Alysabeth's Feminist Stripper site had such a disclaimer for her e-mail, as she'd get a lot of jerks e-maling her, and would want to post their e-mails online so her readers could get a laugh.
#1 An anti-advertising clause, as is (I believe) in the BSD-license: Neither the name of the nor the names of its contributors may be used to endorse or promote products derived from this software without specific prior written permission.
#2 Another anti-advertising clause, preventing the author of modifications from having in-software ads, as are used in Opera.
#3 Mutual Termination for Patent Action. This License shall terminate automatically and You may no longer exercise any of the rights granted to You by this License if You file a lawsuit in any court alleging that any OSI Certified open source software that is licensed under any license containing this "Mutual Termination for Patent Action" clause infringes any patent claims. Alternatively, if you retract the lawsuite, this termination is nullified.
[#4 Addition to Mutual Termination for Patent Action. Additionally, you will no longer have the right to use the software for your own personal use if You file a lawsuit in any court alleging that any OSI Certified open source software that is licensed under any license containing this "Addition to Mutual Termination for Patent Action" clause infringes any patent claims. Alternatively, if you retract the lawsuite, this termination is nullified.] Not sure about this one, as it requires that people accept the license whether or not they want to distribute modified code; one of the great things about the GPL is that you don't have to accept the license.
#5 Mutual Termination for Other Action. This License shall terminate automatically and You may no longer exercise any of the rights granted to You by this License if You file any intellectual property lawsuit (i.e., trademark, copyright, patent, etc) in any court against any OSI Certified open source software that is licensed under any license containing this "Mutual Termination for Other Action" clause. Alternatively, if you retract the lawsuite, the termination is nullified.
#6 Global Termination for Other Action. This License shall terminate automatically for everyone in the world and they may no longer exercise any of the rights granted to them by this License (or even use the software at all) if You file any intellectual property lawsuit in any court against any OSI Certified open source software that is licensed under any license containing this "Mutual Termination for Other Action" clause and win that lawsuite. Alternatively, if you retract the lawsuite or retract the win, the termination is nullified.
This is basically, again, designed to protect OSS / FS projects and users.
Lets say that they say the GPL isn't legally binding, and don't enforce it. That means that EVERY EULA isn't legally binding. None of those obnoxious claims in MS' EULA can be legally binding. Redistribution is simply copyright infringement.
Also, if they rule its "just copyright infringement" and that the GPL'ed project can just sue for damages, then the damages that they'd sue for (and probably get) would be to obtain the source code and have it published. No amount of money is an adequate damage, as the GPL developer wants to get more source code available, not more money.
In the case of the GPL, the penalties should be having to open up your source code. Financial penalties don't make sense, as most people GPL'ing their code aren't trying to make money off of it.
In any case, even if the court doesn't force them to release their software code, anyone who got that code by any means would be able to publish it and the company wouldn't be able to restrict them from publishing it; of course, the person could be punished if they got the code by illegal means, like hacking into their computers. But they could (for example) get it by reverse engineering.
I think if you violate a viral licence like the GPL or this one, they can sue you to stop publishing the original code or the derivative work. They can ask for damages. But they can't command you -- other than in negotiation to drop the lawsuit -- to follow other terms.
Actually, under the GPL, yes, they can get a court to force you to reveal your source code. The whole idea of the GPL is that only people who have accepted the license will redistribute or make modifications and redistribute.
Even if they couldn't force the company to reveal the code, they could certainly use any means short something illegal to find out the code and publishing it. An employee who reveals the code would be doing nothing illegal, and wouldn't be able to be fired for that, as he'd be abiding by a legally binding contract. Similarly, they could reverse engineer for the code. Etc etc.
This new Open Source License is very aggressive, much more so than the GPL; but whereas the GPL is aggressive in terms of preserving users' freedom, the OSL is aggressive in terms of protecting OSI-certified software.
Basically, what they're doing is trying to prevent people from suing OSI-certified with this clause from patent-infringement lawsuits.
If a company uses OSL-licensed software, and they file a lawsuite against any OSI-certified license with that clause in it, then they automatically lose their license to use the OSL-licensed software. Rather clever. Basically, it creates an incentive for a company not to file a lawsuite against an OSI-certified license with that clause in it, if the software OSL'ed software they're using is important to them.
I propose one modification to this license, one which would allow it to protect any OSI-certified or OSS / FS license from patent-lawsuites; adjust the clause to say "if you file a patent lawsuite against software licensed under any OSI-certified, OSS, or FS (i.e., LGPL/GPL) license.
This is certainly not a Free Software license, and I'm sure that RMS will denounce it soon, even though it protect many OSS / FS projects from patent lawsuites.
Consider the implications of this. Lets say that by some act of God (or Satan), Stallman releases a new version of GCC under a modified GPL license with such a patent-lawsuite termination clause in it. Now lets say taht MS uses that new version of GCC as the core for its GUI-based compiler, which is "at a arms length" from the GCC program (i.e., calls it externally), and releases a product called MS GCC, for which they charge you for the MS GUI. Now lets say this was a major profit-maker for MS. And lets say they decide to sue an OSI / OSS / FS license for violating MS' patents. If they do that, they automatically lose the right to use that new GCC, so they can't sell their graphically MS GCC. In other words, it would create a pretty big motivation for them not to sue any OSI / OSS / FS software for patent-infringement.
I like that, because it offers some protection for us OSI / OSS / FS developers from patent-infringement law-suites. We can't afford to defend such things, and we certainly can't afford to be help them sue us with our own software (imagine a company suing us using OpenOffice to write up the legal documents; that'd be like when the English massacred the Chinese using Chinese-made Chinese-invented gunpowder).
On the other hand, this is exactly the same kind of thing which is outrageous about EULA's. MS could put the same kind of thing in any of their EULA's; i.e., if you sue MS, you're license to use MS Office terminates. Good luck suing them if you were only relying on their word processors to type up the legal documents!
However, that said, the same thing which is outrageous in a EULA is not so outrageous in an OSS / FS license, because we need to use whatever means we have to protect ourselves.
In short, we need to think about this kind of thing very carefully. By no means can you say that this type of clause is concerned with the user's freedom. Its concerned with protecting the developer from a lawsuite. So its a clear values choice: Ensuring Freedom (as the GPL does) versus protecting yourself and other OSI / OSS / FS developers. I'm not suggesting which one is best, but you should at least know that choosing this type of license over a freedom-ensuring license (like the GPL) necessarily reduces the amount of freedom.
In that regard, if the idea is to protect the developer (and OSI / OSS / FS developers in general) from a lawsuite, why not just say "by accepting this license, you agree not to file lawsuites against any OSI / OSS / FS software developer?
Government's position flawed
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Eldred vs. Ashcroft
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· Score: 5, Insightful
Another slashdot user posted a summary of the government's defense of the CTEA. Unfortunately, every one of the government's points is completely invalid.
1. By extending copyrights, congress is allowing large copyright holders to continue generating revenue from old works. The copyright holders then invest that revenue in new marginal and high risk works.
Please. How much profit can be generated from something 70 years ago? On the scale things today, its next to nothing, if anything at all. And there's no gaurantee that even if they do profit, they'll use that profit to invest in the creation of new works. If the government is to make a point like this, it should be the rule, not the exception. It is the rule that the vast majority of copyright holders will not make either trivial or no profits from this; and its heads or tails as to whether they'll use it to invest in new works.
2. Historical practice confirms that "Limited Times" does not mean a single, inalterable, limited time. Every single copyright extension has extended the copyright of existing works.
Historical practices also confirm that we should enslave African Americans and burn witches at the stake. The point? Simply because something was done in the past does not make it proper or constitutional. The USSC ruled that it was constitutional for our government to keep innocent Japanese citizens locked up in camps without due cause; that hardly made it constititutional. In short, this is an is-ought fallacy. This is the way things are/were, so this is the way they should be. Anyone that buys this argument shouldn't have passed law-school.
Lets just look at what it says and obviously means, "Limited Times". Meaning that eventually, the copyright will expire. If congress continues retroactively extending the lengths of copyrights, then copyrights will never expire and works will never enter the public domain, as has been the case for decades; works should be entering the public domain continuously. Also, I highly doubt the founding father's meant "Limited Times" to mean life + 75 years. A long copyright term is effectively indefinate from our perspective; Limited Times does not mean its constitutional for Congress to extend copyrights retroactively to last a millenium. For one thing, thats an infinite copyright term from the perspective of us mortals; for another, even shorter terms like 100 years may be effectively infinite, as we have no gaurantee the US will even exist in 100 years.
3. The CTEA's application to existing works increases incentives for copyright holders to restore and disseminate their works.
Firstly, this incentive is minimum since there is hardly no profit in it at all. From a profit perspective, author's time would be better spent creating new works, as opposed to restorign old one's. In fact, its undesireable that authors devote considerable time to restoring work; think of what Lucas could have done if he hadn't wasted his and our time making his miserable revised Star Wars IV, V, and VI?
Secondly, without the CTEA, many many other people would restore these works and publish them (the works being public domain). People would do it for free, as Project Gutenberg would have done. There is a stronger net motivation for all of us to restore an old work, because we care about artistic merit; than for the typical author, because (s)he's concerned with doing something profitable.
4. The CTEA's impact on international trade promotes progress in the United States.
That's so vague and unsubstantiated that responding to it is impossible. However, I doubt the CTEA will have any significant impact on international trade.
5. The CTEA is not part of a string of infinite expansions, but rather a means to harmonize copyright with the European Union. "In an era of multinational publishers and instantaneous electronic transmission, harmonization in this regard has obvious practical benefits"
Firstly, history shows this is part of a string of a series of infinite expansions; this is but the latest retroactive copyright extension. Why should we trust what congress says? In 70 more years, they'll pass another extension act to "harmonize" with Europe and again make the same absurd claims. In short, we can't take Congress at its word that this isn't one in a series of infinite expansions. Secondly, this harmonization stuff is bullshit. Simply because Europe does things backwards, so should we? If Europe extends copyrights to last a million years, we should do so as well for the sake of "harmonization"? This is obviously another fallacy -- ad-populum. Simply because something is popular (i.e., unreasonably long copyright terms) does not mean it should be adapted. This is like saying "we should steal and lie and cheat because everyone else is doing so and if we don't we'll be taken advantage of"; this is hardly a moral justification, but rather a rationalization. Its essentially saying two wrongs make a right. -1 + -1 somehow equals +1 according to the government; no, it equals -2.
6. If the CTEA is limited in regards to future works, it must necessarily be limited as it applies to existing works as well.
Considering the CTEA singly, yes. However, the CTEA must be considered together with all of the other copyright extensions; a work has not entered the public domain in decades. Clearly, Congress will continue extending copyrights retroactively forever, or until Disney stops lobbying them to (w/c is never).
7. Thomas Jefferson signed the 1808 and 1809 patent term extensions into law, and James Madison signed the 1815 patent term extension into law. Thus the nation's founders never meant "limited times" to mean "unalterable limited times".
Yes, but i doubt that those extensions were retroactive. Furthermore, they would be mortified at the latest trend of retroactive extension after retroactive extension. Jefferson and Madison never wanted there to be an entire decade where no works entered the public domain.
Again, this is another fallacy. I don't know what the name of this one is, but in effect its "I'm right by association". Because famous/admired/etc figure X agrees with me, I must be right.
Essentially, Congress is on a slippery slope to what is effectively infinite copyright terms, from our perspective. They have continually retroactively extended copyrights; the pattern is clear, and its safe to infer that in another 70 years, they'll pass another piece of legislation like the CTEA. Its true that a slippery slope is a fallacy if unsupported. However, in light of obvious trends and other evidence, its not. We see slippery slopes everywhere. Look at computer programming; code has steadily gotten sloppier and sloppier. Look at university tuitions, which have continually been increased year after year, the increases being far in excess of inflation; not so long ago, $10,000 got you into the most expensive colleges; now, its $30,000. Its safe to say that at some point in the future (probably soone than we imagine), it'll be $100,000. Similarly with congress and copyright exetensions. Congress has always found some pathetic faulty reason to retroactively extend copyrights; they will continue to do so unless stopped by the courts.
Aside from that, there is somthing fundamentally wrong and (I argue) unconstitutional about retroactive laws. In the case of criminal laws, its clearly a violation of people's rights; its obviously a violation of people's rights if congress illegalizes cigaratte smoking and then arrests all the people who've ever smoked a cigaratte in their life. In the case of copyright extensions, it is essentially the government renigging on an agreement with the people. Basically, copyright laws are an agreement between the people, the government, and copyright holders that "we the people will pay taxes to support your copyright rights, and will pay for those works according to market price while they're protected; in exchange, in X years, those works will fall into the public domain". What the government's doing is continually changing both the scope of copyright protection, and the duration, retroactively; it would be like me writing up a contract with you saying that you'll pay me $500 to do something, and then -- without your consent -- changing that figure to $1,000.
My argument is essentially that (1) In all cases, retroactive laws are unconstitutional; (2) Copyright protections of Life + 70 years are effectively unlimited from the public's point of view, as no one will life the life of an author plus 70 years.
Re:Good article, alot of Linux-bashing though
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Overview of the BSDs
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· Score: 2
I agree. "Linux" in the way that most people refer to it should generally be referred to as GNU/Linux, except in cases where the surrounding tools aren't predominantly GNU.
As for me choosing Debian over FreeBSD, there's other reasons other than driver support. One is I really like Debian's philosophy. Its a real "pure" GNU/Linux distribution. Though I think that both the BSD and GPL licenses are great, I tend to prefer the GPL license over the BSD license for one main reason -- because it gives OSS / FS developers an advantage over proprietary developers. Proprietary developers have money behind them, OSS / FS developers (for the most part) don't; the GPL gives them an advantage. There's other reasons too, like the fact that I want the latest applications to work fine, and most of the latest applications in the UNIX world are designed for Linux first; though many can be run on *BSD through Linux compatability mode. The other thing is that I get the impression that GNU/Linux performs slightly better than *BSD. Over time, if these two communities (the *BSD and GNU/Linux communities) keep on benefitting from one another, it might eventually come down to the license.
Btw, I'm still waiting for the FSF to get their GNU/Hurd OS into full gear, so I can get Debian GNU/Hurd, once it catches up to Debian GNU/Linux in terms of hardware support and software support. I don't understand why the GNU/Linux OS has developed into being usable so quickly, while GNU/Hurd proceeds at a snail's pace.
Yes, I agree that alot of the points I mentioned were irrelevant to the APSL, only relevant to EULA's. I'm sorry for not clarifying that.
As for your assertion that we should be able to enter into some contracts like an NDA which would require non-disclosure, voluntarily limiting what is otherwise a right of freedom of speech. I agree that in some cases, such is necessary. But these contracts are never-the-less signing away rights. Where do we draw the line between acceptable concessions in contracts, and contracts which would essentually make one person a slave to another? I, for example, think that corporate non-compete clauses (which state that an employee cannot work for another company in the same field for X years after leaving the company) should be illegal. There are many other examples. The point is we need to put tighter restrictions on what contracts can do; i.e., have a set of laws regulation contracts. One example that worries me is standard EULA's which give copyright holders more rights than they have under the law, and take away consumers rights; i.e., according to most EULA's, you don't have the right to reverse engineer a product, something which is granted you under copyright law.
I'll grant the the APSL isn't that bad. In fact, despite Stallman's harsh criticism and non-support, I think its a big step forward for a license granted by a company; not only a big step in terms of moving towards the OSS development model, but also towards the FSF ideal of freedom. Stallman thinks that all change should come at once, and will not commend steps in the right direction taken, but will rather only criticize for the steps still to be taken. I do, however, agree with Stallman's criticisms of the APSL; though one can criticize something where appropriate where still offering commendation where appropriate. In the case of the APSL, some constructive criticism is due, as is some praise.
Please, these are just a bunch of greedy bastards who want to be the one's deigning whether something is UNIX or not. BSD and Linux are UNIX standard. Period. Fuck OpenGroup.
You shouldn't have to pay money to be verified as being compliant with a certain standard, not anything beyond the cost of verification anyways; and don't tell me it would cost more to verify than BSD & Linux projects can affort.
Good article, alot of Linux-bashing though
on
Overview of the BSDs
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· Score: 4, Insightful
But what can we expect when we do plenty of BSD-bashing and run plenty of ridiculous "BSD is dying" articles?
This intense rivalry between the BSD and Linux communities is something that baffles me, since both basically want the same goals -- freedom for users, excellent software -- but go about doing it in different ways.
From my reasoning, people who GPL their programs are extremely worried about the possibility of the "public" project dying off, and a corporate project which doesn't care about freedom taking over; they also want to draw programs out into the open, hence the requirement that any modifications or programs based on a GPL'ed program be GPL'ed. People who use the BSD license just want to let others use their code for whatever purpose, so long as the original code is revealed; they obviously prefer the BSD license, and hope that others will be convinced to license their BSD-license-based software under teh BSD license, but do not force the issue, as does the GPL. The GPL is a slightly more aggressive approach.
Both camps are also concerned with the excellence of their products, though that concern manifests itself in different ways. While OpenBSD and NetBSD tend to focus on security and portability, respectively (and both of them on stablity), Linux' tend to focus more on performance, features, and ease of use. Of course, you can't speak for all of the Linux' as one. Debian and Slackware have a pretty rounded effort regarding security, stability, performance, and features, despite being somewhat difficult in ease of use. Alternatively, distributions like Mandrake and Corel tend to focus hardly on ease of use, while RedHat and Suse focus on ease of use and stability.
There is no absolute right or wrong. Different things are better for different users, depending on their technical needs and their politics.
Ultimately, all OSS / FS communities benefit from one another, particularly Linux and BSD, which have benefitted greatly from eachother. Linux has gained much in terms of hard technical details from BSD; conversely, BSD has benefitted from Linux being in the spotlight, as there are more applications for Linux, which means more apps that may run under BSD.
For me, the GPL and Debian are my license and OS of choice. I choose Linux over BSD because I'm a personal user and I need driver support for things like graphics cards from Nvidia and ATI; Debian because, among the Linux', it does tend to be the most stable and steadfast, with excellent quality-control.
For other people, something else is best. For those that love having absolute control, Slackware is best. For those who just want something that's overall pretty well rounded, RedHat, Caldera, Suse, etc are the way to go. For those who want something that focuses most on ease of use, Mandrake or Corel are good options. Other people will want a BSD OS. For those for whom security is a big issue, OpenBSD is the one of choice; for the person who needs something portable, NetBSD; for the all-around power-user, FreeBSD. Of course, that's just my opinion.
Don't let the title fool you. This article was great. There was, however, one clearly uninformed statement. The GNU GPL does not prevent you from charging other people software based off of GPL'ed code; it mandates that the source code for any modified or improved versions be distributed either free or at no greater than the net cost of distribution.
Also, nice to know that the judges in our courts are complete morons, as they don't realize that among people in the computer world, UNIX is a generic term.
We think and speak of BSD, IRIX, AIX, Solaris, Linux etc, as being UNIX OPERATING SYSTEMS. Even some OS' which shouldn't be called UNIX are called UNIX (i.e., Plan9).
Someone on/. said earlier "trademarks exist to protect the consumer". Yea, my ass they do. Its time we stopped letting corporations divide the language between them.
You seem to be completely blind to the problems with the contractualization of law. Contract law must be superceded by real laws -- local, state, federal, and constitutional law.
In your world, I can write up a contract with someone that says I'm their slave (in the sense that black people were slaves before the civil war), and that's a valid contract.
Some contracts are simply void on their face. Loan arrangements made with loan sharks, for example; courts do not, for good reason, enforce "contracts" made between a loanee and a loan-shark.
If company Y writes up a contract with person X to kill person Z, that contract is invalid on its face. A court will not enforce that contract and require person X to carry out his end of the contract.
Rights were designed to protect us from eachother, just as much as from the government. Is it any lesser a violation of one's rights, when one is murdered by a private citizen, as opposed to the government? Of course not.
My point is, there are certain standards which contracts have to meet to be valid.
Firstly, the contract must be legal. A contract designed to carry out illegal purposes (i.e., a contract for murder) is invalid. For the same reasons, contracts which would require privacy-rigths violations should be invalid; simply because the right at stake is less critical (privacy as opposed to life) does not mean that the contract mandating the violation of it should be any more valid.
Secondly, all parties must be aware of what they're contracting into. If I make a contract with someone who is unaware of what that contract says (i.e., a mentally disabled person) that contract can be voided. For similar reasons, all EULA's should be voided on their face because buyers do not know what they are before buying the product, and after opening it up, stores will not accept a return for refund due to "I don't agree to the EULA".
Thirdly, regarding EULA's, one additional property makes them all (or almost all of them) invalid on their face. Within the agreement, they attempt to state that any changes may be made to the agreement at the desire of the company. In other words, they want to be able to change the stipulations of the deal after it has been made. Contracts must be static, or renegotiated between the two parties when one desires a change.
Fourthly, again regarding EULA's, they also attempt to state that the company may revoke the license at any time for any reason. Another invalid clause, as it would defaud the consumer out of what (s)he hs paid for.
Software should be sold as a piece of property changing ownership, like cars are. People should obtain the rights over that physical and ehteral software, and the rights to do with it as they please. This would not mean they could distribute it around the net for free or clone and sell it; not any more than my buying a Porsche 911 means I can use that as a template to start building 911's and selling them.
In short, I see a big problem with the contractualization of law (i.e., contracts superceding the law); the only problem on the same scale as the contractualization of the law is the codification of law in Lessig's sense (in that codified law [i.e., DRM] gives copyright holders or corporations more rights than granted under the law).
Really, what's the point of wasting your hard-drive like that?
Wow, he put all those versions of Windows on it and it didn't explode?
BeOS? Huh? What? Oh, that's the road kill MS ran over using their dark force monopoly powers.
Linx? Huh? What? Where? Hasn't MS that group of infidels yet?
MS to Richard Robbins: thank you very much for creating a list of all the enemies we need to crush!
US government to Richard Robbins: Your running QNX on your computer? That must make you a terrorist, since QNX can be used to control nuclear warheads or nuclear reactors!
BSA to Richard Robbins: What? You can't find the license for Windows 1.01? That'll be 500,000 dollars, and you'll have to remove all those non-windows OS' from your computer, and sign a deal with MS stating you'll only buy MS software in the future.
I believe I was talking about the themes people were offering. People created these aqua-like themes privately, and gave them away freely, not for commercial profit.
I realise that GPL'ed software may be commercialized, but the point is it tends to be non-commercialized.
Sending a cease and desist letter is just as bad as suing, since no individual could win a lawsuit against a corporation like Apple.
Your justification for this is that if we're allowed to put the little Apple logo in the themes we post on themes.org, that's going to confuse consumers? Please. Yes, trademarks exist for consumer protection -- so that we can easily identify and differentiate between brands. They exist *only* for consumer protection. When there's no risk of confusion, they should not be applied. Person X posting an Aqua-like theme for say WindowMaker and including the Apple symbol isn't confusing anyone. They're not doing it to try to make money off of Apple's trademark. They're simply trying to make people migrating from MacOS to Linux more comfortable.
As for "to promote the Progress of Science and useful Arts" and a "limited time". (1) The current duration of patents and copyrights would horrify the founding fathers. A limited time did not mean and NEVER meant that whenever copyrights are about to expire, hollywood nazi's can get a retroactive extension for another 99 years. (2) Also key to that statement is to promote the progress of science and hte useful arts. Where it does not promote such, it should not be respected.
I never said the end goal of the FSF is to eliminate or vastly reduce the duration and scope of copyright. I was speaking for myself. Though I suspect that RMS and any other reasonable person would agree that the scope and duration of intellectual property must be drastically cut back.
Yes, the NeXTStep dock was different and more advanced from that of twm. However, the point was that at least there was a kind of dock independent of NeXT.
I actually believe that some of the smartest most innovative people in the world make OSS / FS software. Alot of very innovative brilliant solutions were created and cultivated in our community. It was people in our community (and I refer to the OSS & FS as one community here). It was a very brilliant Valkonen who decided to make a WM for Linux where separate instances of an application would be grouped into a frame of tabs. I really wish that the people who work on WindowMaker would incorporate tabbed windowing. Its really so superior to other methods. I have some ideas of my own, which include cascade retention.
What I meant by that was ordinary language; not legalesie or British crap. No words like fornicate should be in laws, nor thou, thee, thy, shall, etc etc. My favorite is "prurient". Basically means inordinantly interested in sex; but few people know that, so its not appropriate to put it in a law.
At the very least, if the word required to clearly describe something is one that many won't know, it should be defined.
Such general statements as "violent games" good/bad for people are absurd.
It depends on the person.
Some people will use it as a stress reliever. Its good for those people.
Others will get too into it and become hyper-competitive; it'll make them stressed, and they'll get up tight. Probably bad for those people.
Point is, it depends on the person.
One person derives please from that which causes pain in another. For example, while some people may love cottage cheese and it brings them pleasure, it makes me sick.
"Unconstitutional". Let me explain. In Apple's license, there are many clauses which could only be enforced by unconstitutional means. One clause says that no one can make a modification of the code under the APSL without publishing that code.
The only way to enforce this clause would be to vilate peoples privacy, break into their houses, spy on them, etc etc.
A law, contract, or regulation which could only be enforced through unconstitutional means is thus itself unconstitutional. Perhaps it isn't right to speak of contracts as being "constitutional" or "unconstitutional"; more like "valid" or "invalid". A contract which would require unconstitional enforcement is invalid.
Slashdot Mirror
Is this guy supposed to be telling us something we don't already know?
We all know damn well that no company in any industry is concerned about their consumers/users and the public good first. Companies are only concerned with the bottom line; those that aren't go out of business. A companies first goal is to make money, and the public good, consumers, users, the environment, anything, is only secondary and considered in regard to how it affects the bottom line.
This isn't something companies should necessarily be chastized for. Their first obligation by the law is to maximize profit for their shareholders while obeying the law. But some companies use illegal, immoral, or unethical means.
What this means is that you can't trust anything a company tells you. A company's position on social issues is never consistent and will always vary, depending on what will benefit that company the most. In "The Future of Ideas," Lessig noted that AT&T's position on whether or not cable lines should be open changed when from "open access" to "no way" when it became a large owner of them.
That said, some industries have engaged in reprehensable behavior (biotech, software, etc), while others have no (referring here to non-technological industries, such as clothes industry).
In particular, the biotech industry has:
(1) Biopirated (stolen) treatments and cures for diseases from indigenous peoples around the world, patented those ideas, then turned around and charged indigenous peoples for the cures they themselves created.
(2) (In conjunction with the software industry) extended patent rights and duration beyond all reasonable grounds. Companies can patent things for which they do not even know what they do. They can also receive patents on very basic and primitive things which are no-where near leading to a drug, but which will be needed to be used in the research necessary to product a drug (upstream patents). Upstream patents should be retroactively eliminated (retroactive elimination is OK in this case because the gov't had no right to create them in the first place). Only downstream patents on a specific drug should be allowed; minor modifications to the drug should not result in a new patent. The standard for obtaining a patent needs to be dramatically raised. Every minor and trivial adaptation of an existing drug does not deserve a patent. Furthermore, patents on downstream drug products should not apply to basic research. Universities, governments, and companies should be able to obtain the drug in question for research purposes at the cost of production, without licensing hindrances.
(3) Denied people much-needed cures/treatments to further their bottom line. Companies have prevented patients from being treated so that they can get royalties on drugs. Lets save some scorn for the Universities too, which are recently becoming nothing more than corporations who also teach and train. My own University of Rochester was granted a patent to cox-2 inhibitors, which are used in Celebrex's anti-arthritis drug. The University received a patent recently (after Celebrex created the drug) and then filed lawsuite against Celebrex, potentially stopping those suffering from arthritis from getting the drug. While my respect is due to those at the UOR who researched cox-2, that research was done using public grants (which come out of the taxpayers pocket) and using the tuitions of students. It should be put in the public domain.
(4) Denying people in third world countries cures. Rather than allowing companies in third-world countries to make generic drugs and sell them cheaply (saving millions of people's lives), drug companies have tried to prevent such. Blinded by their greed, they have failed to realize that you can't squeeze water from a rock. Perhaps drug companies would be happy if people in the third world started selling them their body parts in exchange for drugs.
(5) Used propaganda to create the illusion that certain illnesses exist which in fact don't, boosting the sales of marginally useful drugs.
(6) Spent far far more money on lawyers, public relations, lobbying, and paying greedy executives than on actually doing research to find cures (not that any company is researching cures anyways).
I could go on and on.
The point is this patent non-sense has to stop. Its a problem everywhere, but most importantly in the biotech industry where its a problem that get people killed by preventing people from being treated, or preventing cures from being researched. As harmful as copyrights are given the fact that their scope is overly broad and their duration overly long, patents are an even bigger problem for the same excesses.
Initial innovation needs to be followed by subsequent innovation, sequential innovation; patents, in their current state, prevent this. I have a simple solution for this:
(1) Reduce the duration of patents. 10 years instead of 20.
(2) Force patent-owners to license patented drugs to those who wish to incorporate them into a product to be sold. A forced license of 50% of the profit from the venture going to the licenser is fine.
(3) Force patent-owners to license patent drugs to anyone for research purposes under a minimally restrictive license. The drug should be provided (for research purposes) at the cost of production, and the only limitation to the license to use it is that the drug itself cannot be sold.
(4) Prevent drug companies from strategic licensing. A company sitting on a patent while research is done based off of that patent and mentioning nothing, then when a product is made, suing for royalties, should be prohibited. (I'm referring here to the same thing happening in the drug industry [i.e., with cox-2] that happened with MP3's).
(5) Retain a much stricter patent-granting scheme. Patents should not be granted for things which aren't really innovative. Currently, patents are granted on every minor modification of an existing drug.
(6) Hold a strong stance on patent nullification of patents ill-gotten. Patents should not be granted for drugs obtained via the results of biopiracy. Those which are discovered to have been obtained from that should in invalidated. Similarly, patents should not be granted on things which were previously invented by others. Should such happen, the patent should be invalidated.
(7) Punish companies for inappropriate patent behavior. If a compoany inappropriately attempts to use its patents to halt, or obtain patents by biopiracy, etc, it should lose all of its patent rights.
(8) Prevent universities for filing for patents, or if they do, require them license the patents under a "patent-left" license. Universities obtain their money for research from the public -- from government grants, funded by the taxpayers, or from students tuitions (also basically the public). Thus, their discoveries and/or inventions should either be in the public domain or patent lefted; i.e., a license corresponding to that of the GPL -- any discoveries/inventions using this patent must either be put in the public domain or licensed under this license, which allows unabridged access.
It is ever-important that we put these kind of restrictions on drug companies (and any technology companies). They will not govern themselves and act morally; indeed, it would be double standard to expect them to do so, since our laws require that they use any and all legal means to maximize profit for their shareholders. Thus, we need to make laws which prevent this kind of nonsense.
How does a RIP-OFF of something Chris Rock said get labelled as "interesting" or "informative"?
(1) I maintain that a person has a reasonable expectation of pri vacy to any part of his/her body which clothing is covered.
(2) This was sexual harassment. Getting a camera and looking underneath someone's skirt is clearly sexual harassment. Its as bad as walking up to someone and lifing up their skrit to see what's underneath (which is what VP Rita Wilson did to her students).
Bullshit. You have the expectation of privacy in in your own underclothes, even in public.
Never-the-less, aside from being a violation of privacy, this is clearly sexual harassment / assault. Clearly, these men should be in jail.
Idiot. They weren't walking around naked. They had clothes -- i.e., skirts -- on which made a reasonable effort to protect their privacy.
You can't expect privacy in your own fucking underwear?
What a fucking moron this judge is. Probably the same kind of person who thinks Rita Wilson's "thong checks" were OK.
Aside from being a violation of privacy, this was also sexual harassment.
When people make a reasonable effort to cover their private areas -- namely, groinal areas -- yes, they do have a fucking expectation of privacy there.
This one's a no-brainer. All you have to do is show how easy it is to fake a To: field or spoof an IP address. Any information about the sender that can be gleamed from the IP address or To: field is so unreliable it won't hold up in any court of law.
As for what someone else mentioned, yes, any correespondence do belong to the original author. However, if you post them on-line verbatum, the worst that can be done if you post them online (assuming they have no commercial value, as is the case), is that a court may force you to take them down. Thus, you should post a verbatum copy of the correspondence to as well as a posting in your words of what they said. This strengthens your position in court, because you can say that you posted the copy verbatum to prove that you weren't lying. In any case, they can't force you to take down your posting in your own words.
Regarding that, you should always tell people that in corresponding with you, they give you the right to distribute and modify the correspondence, with modifications noted. Such a notification should be on your e-mails, on your web-pages, on your answering machine, on any letters you send; you should say it when you pick up the phone.
As a side-note, Alysabeth's Feminist Stripper site had such a disclaimer for her e-mail, as she'd get a lot of jerks e-maling her, and would want to post their e-mails online so her readers could get a laugh.
My ideal license =
GPL + several additional clauses:
#1 An anti-advertising clause, as is (I believe) in the BSD-license: Neither the name of the nor the names of its contributors may be used to endorse or promote products derived from this software without specific prior written permission.
#2 Another anti-advertising clause, preventing the author of modifications from having in-software ads, as are used in Opera.
#3 Mutual Termination for Patent Action. This License shall terminate automatically and You may no longer exercise any of the rights granted to You by this License if You file a lawsuit in any court alleging that any OSI Certified open source software that is licensed under any license containing this "Mutual Termination for Patent Action" clause infringes any patent claims. Alternatively, if you retract the lawsuite, this termination is nullified.
[#4 Addition to Mutual Termination for Patent Action. Additionally, you will no longer have the right to use the software for your own personal use if You file a lawsuit in any court alleging that any OSI Certified open source software that is licensed under any license containing this "Addition to Mutual Termination for Patent Action" clause infringes any patent claims. Alternatively, if you retract the lawsuite, this termination is nullified.] Not sure about this one, as it requires that people accept the license whether or not they want to distribute modified code; one of the great things about the GPL is that you don't have to accept the license.
#5 Mutual Termination for Other Action. This License shall terminate automatically and You may no longer exercise any of the rights granted to You by this License if You file any intellectual property lawsuit (i.e., trademark, copyright, patent, etc) in any court against any OSI Certified open source software that is licensed under any license containing this "Mutual Termination for Other Action" clause. Alternatively, if you retract the lawsuite, the termination is nullified.
#6 Global Termination for Other Action. This License shall terminate automatically for everyone in the world and they may no longer exercise any of the rights granted to them by this License (or even use the software at all) if You file any intellectual property lawsuit in any court against any OSI Certified open source software that is licensed under any license containing this "Mutual Termination for Other Action" clause and win that lawsuite. Alternatively, if you retract the lawsuite or retract the win, the termination is nullified.
This is basically, again, designed to protect OSS / FS projects and users.
Well, either way its good.
Lets say that they say the GPL isn't legally binding, and don't enforce it. That means that EVERY EULA isn't legally binding. None of those obnoxious claims in MS' EULA can be legally binding. Redistribution is simply copyright infringement.
Also, if they rule its "just copyright infringement" and that the GPL'ed project can just sue for damages, then the damages that they'd sue for (and probably get) would be to obtain the source code and have it published. No amount of money is an adequate damage, as the GPL developer wants to get more source code available, not more money.
In the case of the GPL, the penalties should be having to open up your source code. Financial penalties don't make sense, as most people GPL'ing their code aren't trying to make money off of it.
In any case, even if the court doesn't force them to release their software code, anyone who got that code by any means would be able to publish it and the company wouldn't be able to restrict them from publishing it; of course, the person could be punished if they got the code by illegal means, like hacking into their computers. But they could (for example) get it by reverse engineering.
Ah, I see. Very clever, and good point.
I think if you violate a viral licence like the GPL or this one, they can sue you to stop publishing the original code or the derivative work. They can ask for damages. But they can't command you -- other than in negotiation to drop the lawsuit -- to follow other terms.
Actually, under the GPL, yes, they can get a court to force you to reveal your source code. The whole idea of the GPL is that only people who have accepted the license will redistribute or make modifications and redistribute.
Even if they couldn't force the company to reveal the code, they could certainly use any means short something illegal to find out the code and publishing it. An employee who reveals the code would be doing nothing illegal, and wouldn't be able to be fired for that, as he'd be abiding by a legally binding contract. Similarly, they could reverse engineer for the code. Etc etc.
This new Open Source License is very aggressive, much more so than the GPL; but whereas the GPL is aggressive in terms of preserving users' freedom, the OSL is aggressive in terms of protecting OSI-certified software.
Basically, what they're doing is trying to prevent people from suing OSI-certified with this clause from patent-infringement lawsuits.
If a company uses OSL-licensed software, and they file a lawsuite against any OSI-certified license with that clause in it, then they automatically lose their license to use the OSL-licensed software. Rather clever. Basically, it creates an incentive for a company not to file a lawsuite against an OSI-certified license with that clause in it, if the software OSL'ed software they're using is important to them.
I propose one modification to this license, one which would allow it to protect any OSI-certified or OSS / FS license from patent-lawsuites; adjust the clause to say "if you file a patent lawsuite against software licensed under any OSI-certified, OSS, or FS (i.e., LGPL/GPL) license.
This is certainly not a Free Software license, and I'm sure that RMS will denounce it soon, even though it protect many OSS / FS projects from patent lawsuites.
Consider the implications of this. Lets say that by some act of God (or Satan), Stallman releases a new version of GCC under a modified GPL license with such a patent-lawsuite termination clause in it. Now lets say taht MS uses that new version of GCC as the core for its GUI-based compiler, which is "at a arms length" from the GCC program (i.e., calls it externally), and releases a product called MS GCC, for which they charge you for the MS GUI. Now lets say this was a major profit-maker for MS. And lets say they decide to sue an OSI / OSS / FS license for violating MS' patents. If they do that, they automatically lose the right to use that new GCC, so they can't sell their graphically MS GCC. In other words, it would create a pretty big motivation for them not to sue any OSI / OSS / FS software for patent-infringement.
I like that, because it offers some protection for us OSI / OSS / FS developers from patent-infringement law-suites. We can't afford to defend such things, and we certainly can't afford to be help them sue us with our own software (imagine a company suing us using OpenOffice to write up the legal documents; that'd be like when the English massacred the Chinese using Chinese-made Chinese-invented gunpowder).
On the other hand, this is exactly the same kind of thing which is outrageous about EULA's. MS could put the same kind of thing in any of their EULA's; i.e., if you sue MS, you're license to use MS Office terminates. Good luck suing them if you were only relying on their word processors to type up the legal documents!
However, that said, the same thing which is outrageous in a EULA is not so outrageous in an OSS / FS license, because we need to use whatever means we have to protect ourselves.
In short, we need to think about this kind of thing very carefully. By no means can you say that this type of clause is concerned with the user's freedom. Its concerned with protecting the developer from a lawsuite. So its a clear values choice: Ensuring Freedom (as the GPL does) versus protecting yourself and other OSI / OSS / FS developers. I'm not suggesting which one is best, but you should at least know that choosing this type of license over a freedom-ensuring license (like the GPL) necessarily reduces the amount of freedom.
In that regard, if the idea is to protect the developer (and OSI / OSS / FS developers in general) from a lawsuite, why not just say "by accepting this license, you agree not to file lawsuites against any OSI / OSS / FS software developer?
Please. How much profit can be generated from something 70 years ago? On the scale things today, its next to nothing, if anything at all. And there's no gaurantee that even if they do profit, they'll use that profit to invest in the creation of new works. If the government is to make a point like this, it should be the rule, not the exception. It is the rule that the vast majority of copyright holders will not make either trivial or no profits from this; and its heads or tails as to whether they'll use it to invest in new works.
Historical practices also confirm that we should enslave African Americans and burn witches at the stake. The point? Simply because something was done in the past does not make it proper or constitutional. The USSC ruled that it was constitutional for our government to keep innocent Japanese citizens locked up in camps without due cause; that hardly made it constititutional. In short, this is an is-ought fallacy. This is the way things are/were, so this is the way they should be. Anyone that buys this argument shouldn't have passed law-school.
Lets just look at what it says and obviously means, "Limited Times". Meaning that eventually, the copyright will expire. If congress continues retroactively extending the lengths of copyrights, then copyrights will never expire and works will never enter the public domain, as has been the case for decades; works should be entering the public domain continuously. Also, I highly doubt the founding father's meant "Limited Times" to mean life + 75 years. A long copyright term is effectively indefinate from our perspective; Limited Times does not mean its constitutional for Congress to extend copyrights retroactively to last a millenium. For one thing, thats an infinite copyright term from the perspective of us mortals; for another, even shorter terms like 100 years may be effectively infinite, as we have no gaurantee the US will even exist in 100 years.
Firstly, this incentive is minimum since there is hardly no profit in it at all. From a profit perspective, author's time would be better spent creating new works, as opposed to restorign old one's. In fact, its undesireable that authors devote considerable time to restoring work; think of what Lucas could have done if he hadn't wasted his and our time making his miserable revised Star Wars IV, V, and VI?
Secondly, without the CTEA, many many other people would restore these works and publish them (the works being public domain). People would do it for free, as Project Gutenberg would have done. There is a stronger net motivation for all of us to restore an old work, because we care about artistic merit; than for the typical author, because (s)he's concerned with doing something profitable.
That's so vague and unsubstantiated that responding to it is impossible. However, I doubt the CTEA will have any significant impact on international trade.
Firstly, history shows this is part of a string of a series of infinite expansions; this is but the latest retroactive copyright extension. Why should we trust what congress says? In 70 more years, they'll pass another extension act to "harmonize" with Europe and again make the same absurd claims. In short, we can't take Congress at its word that this isn't one in a series of infinite expansions. Secondly, this harmonization stuff is bullshit. Simply because Europe does things backwards, so should we? If Europe extends copyrights to last a million years, we should do so as well for the sake of "harmonization"? This is obviously another fallacy -- ad-populum. Simply because something is popular (i.e., unreasonably long copyright terms) does not mean it should be adapted. This is like saying "we should steal and lie and cheat because everyone else is doing so and if we don't we'll be taken advantage of"; this is hardly a moral justification, but rather a rationalization. Its essentially saying two wrongs make a right. -1 + -1 somehow equals +1 according to the government; no, it equals -2. Considering the CTEA singly, yes. However, the CTEA must be considered together with all of the other copyright extensions; a work has not entered the public domain in decades. Clearly, Congress will continue extending copyrights retroactively forever, or until Disney stops lobbying them to (w/c is never). Yes, but i doubt that those extensions were retroactive. Furthermore, they would be mortified at the latest trend of retroactive extension after retroactive extension. Jefferson and Madison never wanted there to be an entire decade where no works entered the public domain.
Again, this is another fallacy. I don't know what the name of this one is, but in effect its "I'm right by association". Because famous/admired/etc figure X agrees with me, I must be right.
Essentially, Congress is on a slippery slope to what is effectively infinite copyright terms, from our perspective. They have continually retroactively extended copyrights; the pattern is clear, and its safe to infer that in another 70 years, they'll pass another piece of legislation like the CTEA. Its true that a slippery slope is a fallacy if unsupported. However, in light of obvious trends and other evidence, its not. We see slippery slopes everywhere. Look at computer programming; code has steadily gotten sloppier and sloppier. Look at university tuitions, which have continually been increased year after year, the increases being far in excess of inflation; not so long ago, $10,000 got you into the most expensive colleges; now, its $30,000. Its safe to say that at some point in the future (probably soone than we imagine), it'll be $100,000. Similarly with congress and copyright exetensions. Congress has always found some pathetic faulty reason to retroactively extend copyrights; they will continue to do so unless stopped by the courts.
Aside from that, there is somthing fundamentally wrong and (I argue) unconstitutional about retroactive laws. In the case of criminal laws, its clearly a violation of people's rights; its obviously a violation of people's rights if congress illegalizes cigaratte smoking and then arrests all the people who've ever smoked a cigaratte in their life. In the case of copyright extensions, it is essentially the government renigging on an agreement with the people. Basically, copyright laws are an agreement between the people, the government, and copyright holders that "we the people will pay taxes to support your copyright rights, and will pay for those works according to market price while they're protected; in exchange, in X years, those works will fall into the public domain". What the government's doing is continually changing both the scope of copyright protection, and the duration, retroactively; it would be like me writing up a contract with you saying that you'll pay me $500 to do something, and then -- without your consent -- changing that figure to $1,000.
My argument is essentially that (1) In all cases, retroactive laws are unconstitutional; (2) Copyright protections of Life + 70 years are effectively unlimited from the public's point of view, as no one will life the life of an author plus 70 years.
I agree. "Linux" in the way that most people refer to it should generally be referred to as GNU/Linux, except in cases where the surrounding tools aren't predominantly GNU.
As for me choosing Debian over FreeBSD, there's other reasons other than driver support. One is I really like Debian's philosophy. Its a real "pure" GNU/Linux distribution. Though I think that both the BSD and GPL licenses are great, I tend to prefer the GPL license over the BSD license for one main reason -- because it gives OSS / FS developers an advantage over proprietary developers. Proprietary developers have money behind them, OSS / FS developers (for the most part) don't; the GPL gives them an advantage. There's other reasons too, like the fact that I want the latest applications to work fine, and most of the latest applications in the UNIX world are designed for Linux first; though many can be run on *BSD through Linux compatability mode. The other thing is that I get the impression that GNU/Linux performs slightly better than *BSD. Over time, if these two communities (the *BSD and GNU/Linux communities) keep on benefitting from one another, it might eventually come down to the license.
Btw, I'm still waiting for the FSF to get their GNU/Hurd OS into full gear, so I can get Debian GNU/Hurd, once it catches up to Debian GNU/Linux in terms of hardware support and software support. I don't understand why the GNU/Linux OS has developed into being usable so quickly, while GNU/Hurd proceeds at a snail's pace.
Yes, I agree that alot of the points I mentioned were irrelevant to the APSL, only relevant to EULA's. I'm sorry for not clarifying that.
As for your assertion that we should be able to enter into some contracts like an NDA which would require non-disclosure, voluntarily limiting what is otherwise a right of freedom of speech. I agree that in some cases, such is necessary. But these contracts are never-the-less signing away rights. Where do we draw the line between acceptable concessions in contracts, and contracts which would essentually make one person a slave to another? I, for example, think that corporate non-compete clauses (which state that an employee cannot work for another company in the same field for X years after leaving the company) should be illegal. There are many other examples. The point is we need to put tighter restrictions on what contracts can do; i.e., have a set of laws regulation contracts. One example that worries me is standard EULA's which give copyright holders more rights than they have under the law, and take away consumers rights; i.e., according to most EULA's, you don't have the right to reverse engineer a product, something which is granted you under copyright law.
I'll grant the the APSL isn't that bad. In fact, despite Stallman's harsh criticism and non-support, I think its a big step forward for a license granted by a company; not only a big step in terms of moving towards the OSS development model, but also towards the FSF ideal of freedom. Stallman thinks that all change should come at once, and will not commend steps in the right direction taken, but will rather only criticize for the steps still to be taken. I do, however, agree with Stallman's criticisms of the APSL; though one can criticize something where appropriate where still offering commendation where appropriate. In the case of the APSL, some constructive criticism is due, as is some praise.
Please, these are just a bunch of greedy bastards who want to be the one's deigning whether something is UNIX or not. BSD and Linux are UNIX standard. Period. Fuck OpenGroup.
You shouldn't have to pay money to be verified as being compliant with a certain standard, not anything beyond the cost of verification anyways; and don't tell me it would cost more to verify than BSD & Linux projects can affort.
But what can we expect when we do plenty of BSD-bashing and run plenty of ridiculous "BSD is dying" articles?
This intense rivalry between the BSD and Linux communities is something that baffles me, since both basically want the same goals -- freedom for users, excellent software -- but go about doing it in different ways.
From my reasoning, people who GPL their programs are extremely worried about the possibility of the "public" project dying off, and a corporate project which doesn't care about freedom taking over; they also want to draw programs out into the open, hence the requirement that any modifications or programs based on a GPL'ed program be GPL'ed. People who use the BSD license just want to let others use their code for whatever purpose, so long as the original code is revealed; they obviously prefer the BSD license, and hope that others will be convinced to license their BSD-license-based software under teh BSD license, but do not force the issue, as does the GPL. The GPL is a slightly more aggressive approach.
Both camps are also concerned with the excellence of their products, though that concern manifests itself in different ways. While OpenBSD and NetBSD tend to focus on security and portability, respectively (and both of them on stablity), Linux' tend to focus more on performance, features, and ease of use. Of course, you can't speak for all of the Linux' as one. Debian and Slackware have a pretty rounded effort regarding security, stability, performance, and features, despite being somewhat difficult in ease of use. Alternatively, distributions like Mandrake and Corel tend to focus hardly on ease of use, while RedHat and Suse focus on ease of use and stability.
There is no absolute right or wrong. Different things are better for different users, depending on their technical needs and their politics.
Ultimately, all OSS / FS communities benefit from one another, particularly Linux and BSD, which have benefitted greatly from eachother. Linux has gained much in terms of hard technical details from BSD; conversely, BSD has benefitted from Linux being in the spotlight, as there are more applications for Linux, which means more apps that may run under BSD.
For me, the GPL and Debian are my license and OS of choice. I choose Linux over BSD because I'm a personal user and I need driver support for things like graphics cards from Nvidia and ATI; Debian because, among the Linux', it does tend to be the most stable and steadfast, with excellent quality-control.
For other people, something else is best. For those that love having absolute control, Slackware is best. For those who just want something that's overall pretty well rounded, RedHat, Caldera, Suse, etc are the way to go. For those who want something that focuses most on ease of use, Mandrake or Corel are good options. Other people will want a BSD OS. For those for whom security is a big issue, OpenBSD is the one of choice; for the person who needs something portable, NetBSD; for the all-around power-user, FreeBSD. Of course, that's just my opinion.
Don't let the title fool you. This article was great. There was, however, one clearly uninformed statement. The GNU GPL does not prevent you from charging other people software based off of GPL'ed code; it mandates that the source code for any modified or improved versions be distributed either free or at no greater than the net cost of distribution.
/. said earlier "trademarks exist to protect the consumer". Yea, my ass they do. Its time we stopped letting corporations divide the language between them.
Also, nice to know that the judges in our courts are complete morons, as they don't realize that among people in the computer world, UNIX is a generic term.
We think and speak of BSD, IRIX, AIX, Solaris, Linux etc, as being UNIX OPERATING SYSTEMS. Even some OS' which shouldn't be called UNIX are called UNIX (i.e., Plan9).
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You seem to be completely blind to the problems with the contractualization of law. Contract law must be superceded by real laws -- local, state, federal, and constitutional law.
In your world, I can write up a contract with someone that says I'm their slave (in the sense that black people were slaves before the civil war), and that's a valid contract.
Some contracts are simply void on their face. Loan arrangements made with loan sharks, for example; courts do not, for good reason, enforce "contracts" made between a loanee and a loan-shark.
If company Y writes up a contract with person X to kill person Z, that contract is invalid on its face. A court will not enforce that contract and require person X to carry out his end of the contract.
Rights were designed to protect us from eachother, just as much as from the government. Is it any lesser a violation of one's rights, when one is murdered by a private citizen, as opposed to the government? Of course not.
My point is, there are certain standards which contracts have to meet to be valid.
Firstly, the contract must be legal. A contract designed to carry out illegal purposes (i.e., a contract for murder) is invalid. For the same reasons, contracts which would require privacy-rigths violations should be invalid; simply because the right at stake is less critical (privacy as opposed to life) does not mean that the contract mandating the violation of it should be any more valid.
Secondly, all parties must be aware of what they're contracting into. If I make a contract with someone who is unaware of what that contract says (i.e., a mentally disabled person) that contract can be voided. For similar reasons, all EULA's should be voided on their face because buyers do not know what they are before buying the product, and after opening it up, stores will not accept a return for refund due to "I don't agree to the EULA".
Thirdly, regarding EULA's, one additional property makes them all (or almost all of them) invalid on their face. Within the agreement, they attempt to state that any changes may be made to the agreement at the desire of the company. In other words, they want to be able to change the stipulations of the deal after it has been made. Contracts must be static, or renegotiated between the two parties when one desires a change.
Fourthly, again regarding EULA's, they also attempt to state that the company may revoke the license at any time for any reason. Another invalid clause, as it would defaud the consumer out of what (s)he hs paid for.
Software should be sold as a piece of property changing ownership, like cars are. People should obtain the rights over that physical and ehteral software, and the rights to do with it as they please. This would not mean they could distribute it around the net for free or clone and sell it; not any more than my buying a Porsche 911 means I can use that as a template to start building 911's and selling them.
In short, I see a big problem with the contractualization of law (i.e., contracts superceding the law); the only problem on the same scale as the contractualization of the law is the codification of law in Lessig's sense (in that codified law [i.e., DRM] gives copyright holders or corporations more rights than granted under the law).
Really, what's the point of wasting your hard-drive like that?
Wow, he put all those versions of Windows on it and it didn't explode?
BeOS? Huh? What? Oh, that's the road kill MS ran over using their dark force monopoly powers.
Linx? Huh? What? Where? Hasn't MS that group of infidels yet?
MS to Richard Robbins: thank you very much for creating a list of all the enemies we need to crush!
US government to Richard Robbins: Your running QNX on your computer? That must make you a terrorist, since QNX can be used to control nuclear warheads or nuclear reactors!
BSA to Richard Robbins: What? You can't find the license for Windows 1.01? That'll be 500,000 dollars, and you'll have to remove all those non-windows OS' from your computer, and sign a deal with MS stating you'll only buy MS software in the future.
I believe I was talking about the themes people were offering. People created these aqua-like themes privately, and gave them away freely, not for commercial profit.
I realise that GPL'ed software may be commercialized, but the point is it tends to be non-commercialized.
Sending a cease and desist letter is just as bad as suing, since no individual could win a lawsuit against a corporation like Apple.
Your justification for this is that if we're allowed to put the little Apple logo in the themes we post on themes.org, that's going to confuse consumers? Please. Yes, trademarks exist for consumer protection -- so that we can easily identify and differentiate between brands. They exist *only* for consumer protection. When there's no risk of confusion, they should not be applied. Person X posting an Aqua-like theme for say WindowMaker and including the Apple symbol isn't confusing anyone. They're not doing it to try to make money off of Apple's trademark. They're simply trying to make people migrating from MacOS to Linux more comfortable.
As for "to promote the Progress of Science and useful Arts" and a "limited time". (1) The current duration of patents and copyrights would horrify the founding fathers. A limited time did not mean and NEVER meant that whenever copyrights are about to expire, hollywood nazi's can get a retroactive extension for another 99 years. (2) Also key to that statement is to promote the progress of science and hte useful arts. Where it does not promote such, it should not be respected.
I never said the end goal of the FSF is to eliminate or vastly reduce the duration and scope of copyright. I was speaking for myself. Though I suspect that RMS and any other reasonable person would agree that the scope and duration of intellectual property must be drastically cut back.
Yes, the NeXTStep dock was different and more advanced from that of twm. However, the point was that at least there was a kind of dock independent of NeXT.
I actually believe that some of the smartest most innovative people in the world make OSS / FS software. Alot of very innovative brilliant solutions were created and cultivated in our community. It was people in our community (and I refer to the OSS & FS as one community here). It was a very brilliant Valkonen who decided to make a WM for Linux where separate instances of an application would be grouped into a frame of tabs. I really wish that the people who work on WindowMaker would incorporate tabbed windowing. Its really so superior to other methods. I have some ideas of my own, which include cascade retention.
What I meant by that was ordinary language; not legalesie or British crap. No words like fornicate should be in laws, nor thou, thee, thy, shall, etc etc. My favorite is "prurient". Basically means inordinantly interested in sex; but few people know that, so its not appropriate to put it in a law.
At the very least, if the word required to clearly describe something is one that many won't know, it should be defined.
Such general statements as "violent games" good/bad for people are absurd.
It depends on the person.
Some people will use it as a stress reliever. Its good for those people.
Others will get too into it and become hyper-competitive; it'll make them stressed, and they'll get up tight. Probably bad for those people.
Point is, it depends on the person.
One person derives please from that which causes pain in another. For example, while some people may love cottage cheese and it brings them pleasure, it makes me sick.
"Unconstitutional". Let me explain. In Apple's license, there are many clauses which could only be enforced by unconstitutional means. One clause says that no one can make a modification of the code under the APSL without publishing that code.
The only way to enforce this clause would be to vilate peoples privacy, break into their houses, spy on them, etc etc.
A law, contract, or regulation which could only be enforced through unconstitutional means is thus itself unconstitutional. Perhaps it isn't right to speak of contracts as being "constitutional" or "unconstitutional"; more like "valid" or "invalid". A contract which would require unconstitional enforcement is invalid.