It's a vaccine, not a virus. It protects a body of work from being destroyed by an embrace/extend infection on the works that spring from the original body.
It is proprietary software that eats away at the software that is available to the public, and more importantly, eats away at the building blocks that are available to users for creating bigger and better works.
The analogy of the so-called "GPL virus" imagines that a parasite is growing within a body- and the body in this analogy is the profit potential offered by monopoly preservation for companies like Microsoft. (Please understand that I am referring to legal intellectual property monopolies, not illegal market domination monopolies such as the one Microsoft was convicted of.) On the other hand, if the body is conceived of as the software available for use and building upon to the public at large, then it's clear that it is proprietary software that shrivels up the "body" in question.
If you have a lot of Microsoft stock options I guess I could see why you'd favor the first analogy, sort of. But if not, I'm puzzled.
That's the thing about Microsoft getting into the hardware market though - now EVERYONE is a competitor with Microsoft.
Someone pointed out to me yesterday that Sony's attempted buyout of Intertrust and its patent lawsuits were really just an attempt to get Microsoft to stay in the software yard and stay out of the hardware business.
This is very similar- Lindows just wants a fair chance to compete on commodity hardware- instead of having to fight monopoly rents on proprietary hardware. To sink to M$'s level he'd have to first establish a monopoly then start sinking his warchest into strongarming the hardware market first through consoles (phase 1) then eventually through a ubiquitous computing strategy (phase 2), resulting in phase 3 (profit)(world domination)(benevolent dictatorship)(pick any two).
Nothing cheap about it at all. Thank you Mr. Robertson. You may not know how to keep Walmart shoppers from being root all the time, but I'm 'root'ing for you:P
Should ink manufacturers get in too?
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Dow vs. Parody
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· Score: 2
Just think of all the middle men who are critical to you saying anything in print, but who are being left out of the veto chain.
Ink manufacturers, paper manufacturers, font foundries, phone companies, monitor manufacturers, disk manufacturers, etc.
I didn't click the EULA on the fscking first amendment, so I'd appreciate it if the government would stop writing laws that give corporations the right to decide whether my speech is reasonable or not. If it's a business they're running, they should stick to their business and stay out of mine.
Here's the short version of my reply: Software freedom is a practical concern because giving anyone ownerhsip of a critical piece of your software toolchain puts you at their mercy, and this is a completely separate question from whether the ip laws that allow people to own other people's ideas are legitimate.
They stand for "freedom except." And yet they persist in calling it "free." That's deceptive.
The whole notion of absolute freedom breaks down when you consider that every freedom exercised that involves more than one person constrains the actions of the other in some way. The FSF's notion of freedom tries to make some good choices about how to provide freedom for everyone most effectively in the tradition of J.S. Mill. That is, you are free to do anything you like but restrict the freedoms of others. It's the software equivalent of "your freedom to swing your fist ends at the tip of my nose."
You have called out the fact that Java is defined by a company instead of by a committee as being a sign that it is "non-free." That smacks of the "ideologically impure" thing I mentioned earlier.
It has nothing to do with "purity", it's the fact that they can take our right to use the platform away at any time they choose; they can "pull the rug out from under us" so to speak. It's not abstract ideology, it's practical management of licensing risk. But if your understanding of "purity" is anything like your understanding of "freedom"...
I didn't say a thing about software piracy.
You didn't have to. What you said was that the reason we won't use Sun's Java is that we don't agree with their view of IP. What this implies is that we are all IP thieves and that Sun is on the right side of the law. If you didn't mean it that way, I accept your clarification and withdraw my complaint. But if I may compliment you for just a moment, as much as I disagree with your claims and apparent motivations, you do not seem the sort to waste a phrase.
not unacceptable on technological or practical terms, but purely ideological ones--
No, it is unacceptable on practical terms. The platform can be broken or taken away, so it's impractical to use it.
at least have the courtesy to disagree with things that I actually say, if you please.
If you'd stop implying so much more than you say explicitly, this would be a very short conversation. But you're using words and phrases that imply more than they say, and I'm simply exposing those instances- taking issue with what you *actually said*, rather than what you claim you meant to express.
Which is precisely what I said. If you jumped from "radical fundamentalist" to "terrorist," then I submit that you may have been watching too much television, and that you might want to sit down calmly, take a stress pill, and think things over.
It becomes more and more clear to me that you have no interest in discussion. Your words were deliberate and hurtful, and the association is obvious.
I disagree most wholeheartedly with the FSF's most fundamental assumption, which is that proprietary software, and by extension all intellectual property, is a bad thing. Just so there's no confusion about where I stand on the issues, you see.
Here we are again. Distortion. The FSF needs an IP system to guarantee that people have the right to actually use the software that's produced. The FSF insists on the preservation of attribution in the GPL. It's important that credit go where it belongs. However, it is not important that we keep people from building on the ideas of others, and at a minimum, it is important that those who want to share their own work and ideas freely be allowed to without interference from those who do not want to share.
But most importantly, who the hell cares what the FSF's feelings about IP are? The point is that practically, using software that is not free to use, alter, and redistribute has *practical* implications in that the continued existence of any project built on a limited platform is at the mercy of the owner of that platform. And what you call "ideological purity" is actually the well justified fear that Sun's corporate interest may (will) one day conflict with the interests of developers and end users, and that this corporation, having gained a foothold into an otherwise free system will pull the plug on all the derivative free projects that didn't worry about the terms of their licensing.
Well, come on. You do bring it on yourselves, don't you?
No we most certainly do not.
All the high-minded talk of freedom and liberty just reeks of tall poppy syndrome. Even if your political goals weren't wrongheaded and your propaganda methods highly questionable, the "community" in general, and certain members of it in particular, think so much of themselves that being brought down a notch or two from time to time is good for them.
I don't get it, what is it about freedom you don't like? Again I hear slander without specifics. You're basically saying "quit whining about your freedom, you need to be put in your place," only less succinctly.
The platform is ubiquitous and unrestricted,
This is a lie, and it undermines what little non-insult argument you offer. The java platform is famously non-free, under the control of Sun rather than standards bodies.
no other reason than that the people who built the platform do not subscribe to your views on intellectual property and source code licensing.
Let's unpack this statement. First we have the insult:
do not subscribe to your views on intellectual property
Clearly, we don't care. Linus works for Transmeta and uses Bitkeeper, but the GPL keeps the Linux kernel free no matter what Linus's politics are. It's not Sun's views on IP we care about, it's the license under which the gift software is offered. What you are trying to do is smear the free software community (who concern themselves with providing free alternatives) with warez kiddiez who have no respect for laws they disagree with. If the free software community didn't respect those laws even as they disagreed with them, they'd just pirate all the software rather than build alternatives. You are trying to beat on a man very much made of straw here.
Second: and source code licensing.
That's true. We don't like the license so we won't use it. You are trying very hard to make this seem unreasonable, but it is not.
I don't think a reasonable person would conclude that Eclipse is "useless for the free software community" simply because it was built with and runs on Java. That is absolutely radical fundamentalism; it is based on the idea that anything that is not ideologically pure is "useless."
Of course not, you're clearly not reasonable and have no idea what a reasonable person would care about.
The idea that being concerned what license your software runs under makes you a 'radical fundamentalist' is pure slander. It's an attempt to make it sound like anyone who cares about what license their software uses sound like a terrorist. There is no other purpose to these terms, and they are not the terms reasonable people use to discuss their differences.
Now I didn't speak personally,
Ah, but now you have responded to my post personally, and accused me of 'radical fundamentalism' and an obsession with 'ideological purity', and I have taken it personally.
You are coming from the perspective that a little proprietary software is ok. I understand your perspective, and I can see why you might have it. But you seem to think that anyone who has a different perspective on the appropriateness of proprietary software is a raving lunatic, and for this I fault you and continue to demand an apology.
I know I'm not the only Slashdotter who senses the irony of a community of people who supposedly stand for freedom declaring an entire platform to be useless because they find it politically unacceptable.
Why must you slander us and belittle us?
"Politically unacceptable" is a poor substitute for "under a license that does not guarantee freedom from embracing and extending". It's not about politics, it's about learning a tool we can feel confident will continue to be around even if Microsoft buys Sun out in some dim future.
The platform is useless because the strings attached are too restrictive for those of us who think about the future of software development.
Radical fundamentalists would be the sort to smash the windows of Sun HQ or create cyber-havoc to achieve their political ends. You're smearing reasonable people who don't like Trojan gifts with a very broad brush, and I believe you owe us an apology.
If you want to use P2P as civil disobedience, you have to make sure the law knows who you are
You're right. In this respect sharing copyrighted files without express permission is more like disguised participation in the Boston Tea Party - deliberately making life difficult for those who would do you wrong, and violating the insane "right to profit" that seems to have popped up in this country.
We're much more like the American revolutionaries who refused unelected sovereignty than we are like Martin Luther King playing goodcop to sympathetic but tentative white people.
So I have to agree with both of you; it is not exactly the same as what people normally think of as civil disobedience, but it does constitute passive collective resistance in the tradition of the American revolutionaries.
The government has no interest in encouraging pornographic innovation. The first amendment may require that we tolerate pornography, but what does it say about us as a society when we actually *subsidize* the creation of pornography by handing out government monopolies for innovative pornographic techniques and content?
The framers were silent on this question, so I say it's time for action: Ban all pornovation! Eliminate all intellectual property protections for pornographic materials and watch what happens:
- The money will go away because you can't make a profit without ip monopolies
- when the money goes away production will cease
- when production drops, prices will rise intolerably and consumers will find pornography too expensive for their budgets
Simple economics proves that just like the software industry, intellectual property laws are the only thing keeping the hard-core porn industry afloat.
And BANG, just like that, overnight we'll eliminate the scourge of pornography. It's time to take action against pornovation!
Share it over gnutella and provide an md5 sum on your website. Linux folks like to share and want to help.
Just an idea. I don't use proprietary software when I can avoid it anyway, so nevermind, I'm sure linux folks will keep working on SDL/OpenAL/etc.
Re:Should there be a GNU-Google?
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GNU wouldn't pay for the hardware, that's true. But no one is working on a software-libre search engine because google is adequate. I'm only talking about the software, obviously it's possible to subsidize searching in other ways. I'm just thinking, what if Google closed their doors tomorrow? I'd be less intelligent because without google, I'm considerably farther away from finding the answer to any question I have. Yes, I'm serious.
B. Subscription for what, searching? Why would they charge for that?
C. They already charge for ads. They're making a profit and doing just fine.
If C. stops being true, or if management has a change of heart or personnel and gets greedy, then yes, a subscription for searching.
I'm not talkinb about placement.
Not everything makes sense to be GNU-whatever. The only reason that there's Gnu-Linux is because there are a lot of college kids with too much time on their hands and no bills to pay.
I would attend Red Hat University if you weren't so obviously wrong.
You say Linux, I say Gnu-Linux, let's call the whole thing off ok?
I don't care what you call it, I'm not asking you to change. To me it's GNU-Linux.
Should there be a GNU-Google?
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I have depended quite a bit on google for a while. They have succeeded so far in not being evil for the most part.
But a good search engine is such a fundamental part of the infrastructure of the internet- is it really wise to continue to depend on a company that makes no promises that tomorrow they won't start charging $100/month subscription to their service and patent-attack any competitors who get too successful?
Clearly my example, although possible, is far fetched. But I feel good using Gnu-Linux because RMS, Linus and others have promised, via the GPL, not to take it away. Can/should google or one of its competitors make a similar promise?
Does your friend tip when he goes to a restaurant?
If there were a reasonable channel of distribution social pressure would guarantee that artists get paid. We're in the worst of all possible worlds right now because the content companies have a stranglehold on legal distribution and want to do everything they can to make sure the artists don't get any of the middleman's cut.
Your friend is being rude, no doubt. But who can blame him? It's tough to be conscientious when the record companies are screwing everybody in sight.
Support (O)penmusic- check out openmusicregistry.org. Share these files, provide another substantial, non-infringing use for the gnutella network.
For now, I'll support local and independent musicians, and those artists who do business with record companies will just have to suffer since I refuse to overpay the middle man.
You misunderstand. It's true I'm not forced to purchase or use it (except at work where I'm forced to use win2k).
But that's not the point. I am not free to make derivative works, I am not free to write similar works, to a significant extent in the case of copyright and completely in the case of software patents.
You're free to no copy or redistribute whatever you like, but you want to stop *me* from copying and redistributing.
They aren't the only ones - anyone who wants to can develop the 1.0 code, and release their work commercially or GPL'd or under any other license.
Not if someone patents an obvious extension or bugfix; or if someone abuses their monopoly power in the marketplace to hijack the standards and impose their will. Plus, if authors get rights to derivative works from their books, surely the public is entitled to derivative works from software they funded?
the thing that adds value is not patented intellectual property, it's the fact that someone spent time and money finding out what users wanted, building it, testing and debugging it, and documenting it.
I agree, so let's drop all the intellectual property protections and have fair competition based on ability to build test, debug, document and support.
redistribution of source means that anyone can get it without reimbursing the developers for their time.
Not if you don't distribute the source til you get paid. There's other ways around it too, and I guarantee if we drop this idea-ownership foolishness crafty programmers will find ways to get paid.
barring market distortions, a corporation can only profit by selling customers what they want at a price that they are willing to pay
1. That's not freedom, that's fair pricing. BIG difference, although they're both valuable.
2. Monopolies distort markets. Idea ownership is a legal but dangerous set of smaller monopolies; Microsoft's market position is an illegal and even more dangerous monopoly.
I'd be shocked but pleased if anyone besides us actually read this.
it means that A also see a tangible benefit to all the tax they pay.
They see a tangible benefit if it's GPL'd too- they get to use the code, and can even sell derived works. They just can't be the *only* ones who benefit.
That in no way restricts the right of the public at large to version 1.0 source code,
Sure it does- it restricts a particular derivative of that source code from being created. Sometimes these are trivial enhancements or bugfixes. Furthermore, you have to worry about patented enhancements being added, etc. so in practice you are obligated to check all the other derived works to make sure you haven't discovered the same obvious extension someone else has already bottled up in a patent. With GPL, you don't have to think about any of that which is a boon to innovation, and since everyone can use and modify the derived works you make if you distribute them, everyone gains.
This is freedom; restricting the right of A to benefit is not.
That's the craziest Orwellian newspeak I've ever heard. Copyrights and patents that restrict the use of derivatives of software restrict my action. Your theory is that the more a corporation can profit, the more freedom we have. Huh?!
GPL is anti-freedom
And... black is white, night is day, work is freedom, etc. etc. I've heard all this somewhere before.
Lovely homepage, by the way. It reminds me of work where I'm forced to use win2k. Thank goodness for Cygwin!
Ideas are not owned in an exclusive way the same way physical property is. GPL is a way of correcting a wrong-headed legal construct.
Regarding taxpayer money, why should industry get to close off avenues of inquiry that stem from it? Then only they benefit. The largest possible number of taxpayers should benefit from government software and from derivatives thereof. The best way to do that is GPL, since nobody can take away everyone's right to a particular improvement to the software.
Here's another way of looking at it: The ability to add restrictions to derivative works is itself a restriction on the free use of the code. I can't build on non-GPL'd code the same way someone else has. The simplistic understanding of freedom that people push "no restrictions whatsoever!" can't account for cases where you're damned if you do and you're damned if you don't. The GPL is a recognition that we must choose one set of freedoms or another, and the choice it makes is for the greatest amount of freedom for the greatest number, rather than a tiny amount more "freedom" for a very small number of people.
Again, the only "freedom" that BSD type licenses preserve with respect to the GPL is the freedom to restrict the freedoms of others.
Sorry that people have the audacity to question your viewpoint
I can understand why RMS gets testy sometimes, it's frustrating to have to go over something so basic so often. It's like arguing over a restaurant check with post-modernists who don't believe in hierarchical arithmetic systems.
This is true, I explicitly dispute the myopic view of freedom that imagines there's only one person in the world.
definition of free which you'll also find in the dictionary
No, the dictionary does not ask the question "freedom for whom"? Freedom for one selfish closed-software maker or freedom for everyone? Everyone gets more freedom as defined by the dictionary under GPL because one person no longer has the 'right' to take everyone else's freedoms away.
The non-GPL license preserves exactly the same rights to derivative works as it preserves initially.
Erm, not positive what you're trying to say here, I think you're trying to say BSD license is the same as public domain regarding derivatives? Clearly it's not the same as GPL: GPL frees you to use/build on derivative works, and derivatives of those, and so on. BSD allows anyone to make closed derivatives, of which no further derivatives are allowed. And that's the ONLY freedom BSD gives you that GPL doesn't- the freedom to restrict the freedoms of others.
created and distributed
Well, if it's not distributed to you, you don't have it anyway.
The GPL relies on copyright
True, but in a trivial sense. In a world without copyright GPL would be redundant, you'd already have the rights to derivative works.
Countries that do not buy into your copyrights can just ignore the GPL.
This is a distinction without a difference: they can just ignore the BSD and proprietary licenses, too. Licenses are only good where legally enforced.
the software author must be willing and able to sue the infringer
Eben Moglen of the FSF has been publically boasting that he's looking for a good test case for the GPL. Picking on a free software project is like robbing an old lady, such a case would get deluged with legal aid.
Puh-lease! Capitalism cannot exist in the face of a monopoly, it is predicated on the idea that competition creates excellence.
Microsoft is a convicted monopolist, and they hold several legal monopolies (ownership of ideas through copyright/patent) that extinguish any hope of such competition.
Microsoft is the expert on avoiding competition, not succeeding at it.
Microsoft Employees feel more "valued" than many open source developers
This is because the normal competitive state of this economy is screwed up by monopolies. I'm sure management at Standard Oil felt more "valued" before their trust was busted than after. Duh.
The GPL license puts restrictions on what you can do.
Must we have this discussion again?
The GPL puts restrictions on adding restrictions. The restriction not to add restrictions is a restriction reducing measure. No wishing for more wishes, no freedom to restrict freedom.
Your oversimplified interpretation of the word "free" is laughable. If there are 1 billion people in the world, the GPL guarantees 1 billion people every freedom related to the software in question save one not only for the original work, but for every possible derivative work. A non-GPL license preserves no rights at all relating to derivative works. The only case in which the users end up with less freedom under the GPL is in a case where a piece of software is BSD/MIT licensed, and no one actually creates a closed derived work- in which case no one wanted to exercise that freedom anyway, and therefore no one would actually have been restricted from doing anything anyway. So among all possible users, the freedom granted by the GPL is provably greater than that granted by your precious MIT license.
My ideal world is one where there is a wide mix of software and sofware licenses in use. Some are free, like MIT. Some promote social goals, like GPL. Some are commercial. And some are facist.
Don't they teach you how to spell in troll-school? You can keep your "facist" licenses.
What have you done that gives you the right to complain about RMS's focus? What example have you set? Why don't YOU start the Free Engineering Foundation and Free Aviation Foundation. RMS seems to have his hands full already.
the time put in by people - is the least valued by RMS
No way. RMS wants to see the value of people's time set by the market, not by government imposed monopolies over ideas. It doesn't take any of your "time" to let someone download a copy of the software you've already written. The economy of software production needs to be restructured from a less monopolistic model to one that actually values a programmer's time according to what it is worth in the marketplace.
RMS is intolerant of perspectives that differ from his own.
I believe you're stretching the meaning of tolerance a little too far here. Tolerance is useful when we are describing the ability of individuals to get along without significantly interacting. It is a stepping stone from hatred to understanding; i.e., if you can't accept or sympathize with homosexuals, you should at least tolerate them since they don't do you any harm.
But RMS gets very angry at people who try to harm his ability to create software by closing off avenues of inquiry through abuse of the idea ownership system. They are harming him, and they are harming his ability to contribute to the software community.
If there were no relationship between what he gets angry about and his contributions to computing, you would be right that the issues are distinct. But they have everything to do with one another.
Slashdot Mirror
It's a vaccine, not a virus. It protects a body of work from being destroyed by an embrace/extend infection on the works that spring from the original body.
It is proprietary software that eats away at the software that is available to the public, and more importantly, eats away at the building blocks that are available to users for creating bigger and better works.
The analogy of the so-called "GPL virus" imagines that a parasite is growing within a body- and the body in this analogy is the profit potential offered by monopoly preservation for companies like Microsoft. (Please understand that I am referring to legal intellectual property monopolies, not illegal market domination monopolies such as the one Microsoft was convicted of.) On the other hand, if the body is conceived of as the software available for use and building upon to the public at large, then it's clear that it is proprietary software that shrivels up the "body" in question.
If you have a lot of Microsoft stock options I guess I could see why you'd favor the first analogy, sort of. But if not, I'm puzzled.
That's the thing about Microsoft getting into the hardware market though - now EVERYONE is a competitor with Microsoft.
:P
Someone pointed out to me yesterday that Sony's attempted buyout of Intertrust and its patent lawsuits were really just an attempt to get Microsoft to stay in the software yard and stay out of the hardware business.
This is very similar- Lindows just wants a fair chance to compete on commodity hardware- instead of having to fight monopoly rents on proprietary hardware. To sink to M$'s level he'd have to first establish a monopoly then start sinking his warchest into strongarming the hardware market first through consoles (phase 1) then eventually through a ubiquitous computing strategy (phase 2), resulting in phase 3 (profit)(world domination)(benevolent dictatorship)(pick any two).
Nothing cheap about it at all. Thank you Mr. Robertson. You may not know how to keep Walmart shoppers from being root all the time, but I'm 'root'ing for you
Just think of all the middle men who are critical to you saying anything in print, but who are being left out of the veto chain.
Ink manufacturers, paper manufacturers, font foundries, phone companies, monitor manufacturers, disk manufacturers, etc.
I didn't click the EULA on the fscking first amendment, so I'd appreciate it if the government would stop writing laws that give corporations the right to decide whether my speech is reasonable or not. If it's a business they're running, they should stick to their business and stay out of mine.
Here's the short version of my reply: Software freedom is a practical concern because giving anyone ownerhsip of a critical piece of your software toolchain puts you at their mercy, and this is a completely separate question from whether the ip laws that allow people to own other people's ideas are legitimate.
They stand for "freedom except." And yet they persist in calling it "free." That's deceptive.
The whole notion of absolute freedom breaks down when you consider that every freedom exercised that involves more than one person constrains the actions of the other in some way. The FSF's notion of freedom tries to make some good choices about how to provide freedom for everyone most effectively in the tradition of J.S. Mill. That is, you are free to do anything you like but restrict the freedoms of others. It's the software equivalent of "your freedom to swing your fist ends at the tip of my nose."
You have called out the fact that Java is defined by a company instead of by a committee as being a sign that it is "non-free." That smacks of the "ideologically impure" thing I mentioned earlier.
It has nothing to do with "purity", it's the fact that they can take our right to use the platform away at any time they choose; they can "pull the rug out from under us" so to speak. It's not abstract ideology, it's practical management of licensing risk. But if your understanding of "purity" is anything like your understanding of "freedom"...
I didn't say a thing about software piracy.
You didn't have to. What you said was that the reason we won't use Sun's Java is that we don't agree with their view of IP. What this implies is that we are all IP thieves and that Sun is on the right side of the law. If you didn't mean it that way, I accept your clarification and withdraw my complaint. But if I may compliment you for just a moment, as much as I disagree with your claims and apparent motivations, you do not seem the sort to waste a phrase.
not unacceptable on technological or practical terms, but purely ideological ones--
No, it is unacceptable on practical terms. The platform can be broken or taken away, so it's impractical to use it.
at least have the courtesy to disagree with things that I actually say, if you please.
If you'd stop implying so much more than you say explicitly, this would be a very short conversation. But you're using words and phrases that imply more than they say, and I'm simply exposing those instances- taking issue with what you *actually said*, rather than what you claim you meant to express.
Which is precisely what I said. If you jumped from "radical fundamentalist" to "terrorist," then I submit that you may have been watching too much television, and that you might want to sit down calmly, take a stress pill, and think things over.
It becomes more and more clear to me that you have no interest in discussion. Your words were deliberate and hurtful, and the association is obvious.
I disagree most wholeheartedly with the FSF's most fundamental assumption, which is that proprietary software, and by extension all intellectual property, is a bad thing. Just so there's no confusion about where I stand on the issues, you see.
Here we are again. Distortion. The FSF needs an IP system to guarantee that people have the right to actually use the software that's produced. The FSF insists on the preservation of attribution in the GPL. It's important that credit go where it belongs. However, it is not important that we keep people from building on the ideas of others, and at a minimum, it is important that those who want to share their own work and ideas freely be allowed to without interference from those who do not want to share.
But most importantly, who the hell cares what the FSF's feelings about IP are? The point is that practically, using software that is not free to use, alter, and redistribute has *practical* implications in that the continued existence of any project built on a limited platform is at the mercy of the owner of that platform. And what you call "ideological purity" is actually the well justified fear that Sun's corporate interest may (will) one day conflict with the interests of developers and end users, and that this corporation, having gained a foothold into an otherwise free system will pull the plug on all the derivative free projects that didn't worry about the terms of their licensing.
Well, come on. You do bring it on yourselves, don't you?
No we most certainly do not.
All the high-minded talk of freedom and liberty just reeks of tall poppy syndrome. Even if your political goals weren't wrongheaded and your propaganda methods highly questionable, the "community" in general, and certain members of it in particular, think so much of themselves that being brought down a notch or two from time to time is good for them.
I don't get it, what is it about freedom you don't like? Again I hear slander without specifics. You're basically saying "quit whining about your freedom, you need to be put in your place," only less succinctly.
The platform is ubiquitous and unrestricted,
This is a lie, and it undermines what little non-insult argument you offer. The java platform is famously non-free, under the control of Sun rather than standards bodies.
no other reason than that the people who built the platform do not subscribe to your views on intellectual property and source code licensing.
Let's unpack this statement. First we have the insult:
do not subscribe to your views on intellectual property
Clearly, we don't care. Linus works for Transmeta and uses Bitkeeper, but the GPL keeps the Linux kernel free no matter what Linus's politics are. It's not Sun's views on IP we care about, it's the license under which the gift software is offered. What you are trying to do is smear the free software community (who concern themselves with providing free alternatives) with warez kiddiez who have no respect for laws they disagree with. If the free software community didn't respect those laws even as they disagreed with them, they'd just pirate all the software rather than build alternatives. You are trying to beat on a man very much made of straw here.
Second:
and source code licensing.
That's true. We don't like the license so we won't use it. You are trying very hard to make this seem unreasonable, but it is not.
I don't think a reasonable person would conclude that Eclipse is "useless for the free software community" simply because it was built with and runs on Java. That is absolutely radical fundamentalism; it is based on the idea that anything that is not ideologically pure is "useless."
Of course not, you're clearly not reasonable and have no idea what a reasonable person would care about.
The idea that being concerned what license your software runs under makes you a 'radical fundamentalist' is pure slander. It's an attempt to make it sound like anyone who cares about what license their software uses sound like a terrorist. There is no other purpose to these terms, and they are not the terms reasonable people use to discuss their differences.
Now I didn't speak personally,
Ah, but now you have responded to my post personally, and accused me of 'radical fundamentalism' and an obsession with 'ideological purity', and I have taken it personally.
You are coming from the perspective that a little proprietary software is ok. I understand your perspective, and I can see why you might have it. But you seem to think that anyone who has a different perspective on the appropriateness of proprietary software is a raving lunatic, and for this I fault you and continue to demand an apology.
I know I'm not the only Slashdotter who senses the irony of a community of people who supposedly stand for freedom declaring an entire platform to be useless because they find it politically unacceptable.
Why must you slander us and belittle us?
"Politically unacceptable" is a poor substitute for "under a license that does not guarantee freedom from embracing and extending". It's not about politics, it's about learning a tool we can feel confident will continue to be around even if Microsoft buys Sun out in some dim future.
The platform is useless because the strings attached are too restrictive for those of us who think about the future of software development.
Radical fundamentalists would be the sort to smash the windows of Sun HQ or create cyber-havoc to achieve their political ends. You're smearing reasonable people who don't like Trojan gifts with a very broad brush, and I believe you owe us an apology.
If you want to use P2P as civil disobedience, you have to make sure the law knows who you are
You're right. In this respect sharing copyrighted files without express permission is more like disguised participation in the Boston Tea Party - deliberately making life difficult for those who would do you wrong, and violating the insane "right to profit" that seems to have popped up in this country.
We're much more like the American revolutionaries who refused unelected sovereignty than we are like Martin Luther King playing goodcop to sympathetic but tentative white people.
So I have to agree with both of you; it is not exactly the same as what people normally think of as civil disobedience, but it does constitute passive collective resistance in the tradition of the American revolutionaries.
I'm serious.
The government has no interest in encouraging pornographic innovation. The first amendment may require that we tolerate pornography, but what does it say about us as a society when we actually *subsidize* the creation of pornography by handing out government monopolies for innovative pornographic techniques and content?
The framers were silent on this question, so I say it's time for action: Ban all pornovation! Eliminate all intellectual property protections for pornographic materials and watch what happens:
- The money will go away because you can't make a profit without ip monopolies
- when the money goes away production will cease
- when production drops, prices will rise intolerably and consumers will find pornography too expensive for their budgets
Simple economics proves that just like the software industry, intellectual property laws are the only thing keeping the hard-core porn industry afloat.
And BANG, just like that, overnight we'll eliminate the scourge of pornography. It's time to take action against pornovation!
Share it over gnutella and provide an md5 sum on your website. Linux folks like to share and want to help.
Just an idea. I don't use proprietary software when I can avoid it anyway, so nevermind, I'm sure linux folks will keep working on SDL/OpenAL/etc.
GNU wouldn't pay for the hardware, that's true. But no one is working on a software-libre search engine because google is adequate. I'm only talking about the software, obviously it's possible to subsidize searching in other ways. I'm just thinking, what if Google closed their doors tomorrow? I'd be less intelligent because without google, I'm considerably farther away from finding the answer to any question I have. Yes, I'm serious.
B. Subscription for what, searching? Why would they charge for that?
C. They already charge for ads. They're making a profit and doing just fine.
If C. stops being true, or if management has a change of heart or personnel and gets greedy, then yes, a subscription for searching.
I'm not talkinb about placement.
Not everything makes sense to be GNU-whatever. The only reason that there's Gnu-Linux is because there are a lot of college kids with too much time on their hands and no bills to pay.
I would attend Red Hat University if you weren't so obviously wrong.
You say Linux, I say Gnu-Linux, let's call the whole thing off ok?
I don't care what you call it, I'm not asking you to change. To me it's GNU-Linux.
I have depended quite a bit on google for a while. They have succeeded so far in not being evil for the most part.
But a good search engine is such a fundamental part of the infrastructure of the internet- is it really wise to continue to depend on a company that makes no promises that tomorrow they won't start charging $100/month subscription to their service and patent-attack any competitors who get too successful?
Clearly my example, although possible, is far fetched. But I feel good using Gnu-Linux because RMS, Linus and others have promised, via the GPL, not to take it away. Can/should google or one of its competitors make a similar promise?
Here's a sound engine.
Here's a movie player.
I want my client now, please!
Well, I'm thinking if two people compare their copies you could identify the differences.
Just a thought.
Does your friend tip when he goes to a restaurant?
If there were a reasonable channel of distribution social pressure would guarantee that artists get paid. We're in the worst of all possible worlds right now because the content companies have a stranglehold on legal distribution and want to do everything they can to make sure the artists don't get any of the middleman's cut.
Your friend is being rude, no doubt. But who can blame him? It's tough to be conscientious when the record companies are screwing everybody in sight.
Support (O)penmusic- check out openmusicregistry.org. Share these files, provide another substantial, non-infringing use for the gnutella network.
For now, I'll support local and independent musicians, and those artists who do business with record companies will just have to suffer since I refuse to overpay the middle man.
You misunderstand. It's true I'm not forced to purchase or use it (except at work where I'm forced to use win2k).
But that's not the point. I am not free to make derivative works, I am not free to write similar works, to a significant extent in the case of copyright and completely in the case of software patents.
You're free to no copy or redistribute whatever you like, but you want to stop *me* from copying and redistributing.
bah.
They aren't the only ones - anyone who wants to can develop the 1.0 code, and release their work commercially or GPL'd or under any other license.
Not if someone patents an obvious extension or bugfix; or if someone abuses their monopoly power in the marketplace to hijack the standards and impose their will. Plus, if authors get rights to derivative works from their books, surely the public is entitled to derivative works from software they funded?
the thing that adds value is not patented intellectual property, it's the fact that someone spent time and money finding out what users wanted, building it, testing and debugging it, and documenting it.
I agree, so let's drop all the intellectual property protections and have fair competition based on ability to build test, debug, document and support.
redistribution of source means that anyone can get it without reimbursing the developers for their time.
Not if you don't distribute the source til you get paid. There's other ways around it too, and I guarantee if we drop this idea-ownership foolishness crafty programmers will find ways to get paid.
barring market distortions, a corporation can only profit by selling customers what they want at a price that they are willing to pay
1. That's not freedom, that's fair pricing. BIG difference, although they're both valuable.
2. Monopolies distort markets. Idea ownership is a legal but dangerous set of smaller monopolies; Microsoft's market position is an illegal and even more dangerous monopoly.
I'd be shocked but pleased if anyone besides us actually read this.
it means that A also see a tangible benefit to all the tax they pay.
They see a tangible benefit if it's GPL'd too- they get to use the code, and can even sell derived works. They just can't be the *only* ones who benefit.
That in no way restricts the right of the public at large to version 1.0 source code,
Sure it does- it restricts a particular derivative of that source code from being created. Sometimes these are trivial enhancements or bugfixes. Furthermore, you have to worry about patented enhancements being added, etc. so in practice you are obligated to check all the other derived works to make sure you haven't discovered the same obvious extension someone else has already bottled up in a patent. With GPL, you don't have to think about any of that which is a boon to innovation, and since everyone can use and modify the derived works you make if you distribute them, everyone gains.
This is freedom; restricting the right of A to benefit is not.
That's the craziest Orwellian newspeak I've ever heard. Copyrights and patents that restrict the use of derivatives of software restrict my action. Your theory is that the more a corporation can profit, the more freedom we have. Huh?!
GPL is anti-freedom
And... black is white, night is day, work is freedom, etc. etc. I've heard all this somewhere before.
Lovely homepage, by the way. It reminds me of work where I'm forced to use win2k. Thank goodness for Cygwin!
Ideas are not owned in an exclusive way the same way physical property is. GPL is a way of correcting a wrong-headed legal construct.
Regarding taxpayer money, why should industry get to close off avenues of inquiry that stem from it? Then only they benefit. The largest possible number of taxpayers should benefit from government software and from derivatives thereof. The best way to do that is GPL, since nobody can take away everyone's right to a particular improvement to the software.
Here's another way of looking at it: The ability to add restrictions to derivative works is itself a restriction on the free use of the code. I can't build on non-GPL'd code the same way someone else has. The simplistic understanding of freedom that people push "no restrictions whatsoever!" can't account for cases where you're damned if you do and you're damned if you don't. The GPL is a recognition that we must choose one set of freedoms or another, and the choice it makes is for the greatest amount of freedom for the greatest number, rather than a tiny amount more "freedom" for a very small number of people.
Again, the only "freedom" that BSD type licenses preserve with respect to the GPL is the freedom to restrict the freedoms of others.
Sorry that people have the audacity to question your viewpoint
I can understand why RMS gets testy sometimes, it's frustrating to have to go over something so basic so often. It's like arguing over a restaurant check with post-modernists who don't believe in hierarchical arithmetic systems.
You are arguing different definitions
This is true, I explicitly dispute the myopic view of freedom that imagines there's only one person in the world.
definition of free which you'll also find in the dictionary
No, the dictionary does not ask the question "freedom for whom"? Freedom for one selfish closed-software maker or freedom for everyone? Everyone gets more freedom as defined by the dictionary under GPL because one person no longer has the 'right' to take everyone else's freedoms away.
The non-GPL license preserves exactly the same rights to derivative works as it preserves initially.
Erm, not positive what you're trying to say here, I think you're trying to say BSD license is the same as public domain regarding derivatives? Clearly it's not the same as GPL: GPL frees you to use/build on derivative works, and derivatives of those, and so on. BSD allows anyone to make closed derivatives, of which no further derivatives are allowed. And that's the ONLY freedom BSD gives you that GPL doesn't- the freedom to restrict the freedoms of others.
created and distributed
Well, if it's not distributed to you, you don't have it anyway.
The GPL relies on copyright
True, but in a trivial sense. In a world without copyright GPL would be redundant, you'd already have the rights to derivative works.
Countries that do not buy into your copyrights can just ignore the GPL.
This is a distinction without a difference: they can just ignore the BSD and proprietary licenses, too. Licenses are only good where legally enforced.
the software author must be willing and able to sue the infringer
Eben Moglen of the FSF has been publically boasting that he's looking for a good test case for the GPL. Picking on a free software project is like robbing an old lady, such a case would get deluged with legal aid.
Microsoft is the expert on Capitalism. Not RMS.
Puh-lease! Capitalism cannot exist in the face of a monopoly, it is predicated on the idea that competition creates excellence.
Microsoft is a convicted monopolist, and they hold several legal monopolies (ownership of ideas through copyright/patent) that extinguish any hope of such competition.
Microsoft is the expert on avoiding competition, not succeeding at it.
Microsoft Employees feel more "valued" than many open source developers
This is because the normal competitive state of this economy is screwed up by monopolies. I'm sure management at Standard Oil felt more "valued" before their trust was busted than after. Duh.
The GPL license puts restrictions on what you can do.
Must we have this discussion again?
The GPL puts restrictions on adding restrictions. The restriction not to add restrictions is a restriction reducing measure. No wishing for more wishes, no freedom to restrict freedom.
Your oversimplified interpretation of the word "free" is laughable. If there are 1 billion people in the world, the GPL guarantees 1 billion people every freedom related to the software in question save one not only for the original work, but for every possible derivative work. A non-GPL license preserves no rights at all relating to derivative works. The only case in which the users end up with less freedom under the GPL is in a case where a piece of software is BSD/MIT licensed, and no one actually creates a closed derived work- in which case no one wanted to exercise that freedom anyway, and therefore no one would actually have been restricted from doing anything anyway. So among all possible users, the freedom granted by the GPL is provably greater than that granted by your precious MIT license.
My ideal world is one where there is a wide mix of software and sofware licenses in use. Some are free, like MIT. Some promote social goals, like GPL. Some are commercial. And some are facist.
Don't they teach you how to spell in troll-school? You can keep your "facist" licenses.
Why can't he broaden his focus
What have you done that gives you the right to complain about RMS's focus? What example have you set? Why don't YOU start the Free Engineering Foundation and Free Aviation Foundation. RMS seems to have his hands full already.
the time put in by people - is the least valued by RMS
No way. RMS wants to see the value of people's time set by the market, not by government imposed monopolies over ideas. It doesn't take any of your "time" to let someone download a copy of the software you've already written. The economy of software production needs to be restructured from a less monopolistic model to one that actually values a programmer's time according to what it is worth in the marketplace.
Some people call this "capitalism".
RMS is intolerant of perspectives that differ from his own.
I believe you're stretching the meaning of tolerance a little too far here. Tolerance is useful when we are describing the ability of individuals to get along without significantly interacting. It is a stepping stone from hatred to understanding; i.e., if you can't accept or sympathize with homosexuals, you should at least tolerate them since they don't do you any harm.
But RMS gets very angry at people who try to harm his ability to create software by closing off avenues of inquiry through abuse of the idea ownership system. They are harming him, and they are harming his ability to contribute to the software community.
If there were no relationship between what he gets angry about and his contributions to computing, you would be right that the issues are distinct. But they have everything to do with one another.