That's not really the same. When you go to wal mart you are under no obligation to buy everything from them, in fact you almost surely will have to shop at other stores to get everything you need.
If you install Windows you are stuck running Windows software, and can't easily "shop somewhere else". You can dual boot or whatnot, but that's not something most people will do, and it's not all that easy. Everyone who shops at wal-mart can shop elsewhere, but very few MS users would know how to use MS+other OS.
That GPL relies on copyright law to determine when it applies, it does not rely on contract law the way an EULA does.
It does not apply until the person wishes to do something that would violate an All Rights Reserved copyright, at that point, they have the option to accept the GPL as a license from the copyright holder which would allow them to do things normally reserved for the owner of the work.
If they violate the GPL, it can't really be enforced as a contract, it would be enforced as a copyright violation.
I think the idea is to motivate people to bring these cases. These cases involve a heavy time investment, and potentially monetary investment (if they can't find some lawyer to take it pro-bono). People might be unlikely to bring such a case up if there weren't some potential payoff.
You can, because the FSF said you can (in the GPL FAQ). And also because there's effectively no way to enforce anything unless you distribute it.
But copyright law does give authors exclusive rights to "prepare derived works", which means to modify a work did violate an "All rights reserved" copyright, even if you don't distribute it. This precedent changes that somewhat though, giving an exception.
Just a slight correction; the GPL v2 does not kick in when you modify the code - you already have that right, as copyright law has little to nothing to say about modification
That just isn't the case. I had the same misconception until I was corrected, which caused me to read the copyright laws.
The owner of copyright under this title has the exclusive rights to do and to authorize any of the following:
(1) to reproduce the copyrighted work in copies or phonorecords;
(2) to prepare derivative works based upon the copyrighted work;
Note number 2. It doesn't say to distribute derivative works, it says to prepare them. That's why this precedent is even relevant, since it effectively guts that provision in some cases.
Why would it be a deterrant? This is a public school we are talking about here. They aren't going to go bankrupt. They have no profit motive. They just have more reason to whine to the state to get a bigger budget next year because their schools are falling apart.
This is tax money we are talking about here. Why should the residents of New Jersey, the students of that school district, and to a lesser extent, the entire nation (some federal money trickles down to school districts), pay for the oppressive actions of a few idiot administrators?
I'm in total agreement with you regarding free speech, but don't lose perspective here.
Surprised no one has picked up on the implication for the GPL.
Right now you don't need to agree to the GPL to compile/use/run GPL software, since those things don't trigger copyright protections.
But previous to this, if you modified it at all, copyright law kicks in and you must abide by the GPL, by modifying it, you stepped outside allowed use under "all rights reserved" and are thus you can only operate under the terms of the GPL.
Under this precedent, you can modify it even if it were released under "All Rights Reserved" and thus do not need to comply with the GPL.
This may have serious implications regarding possible GPL V3 clauses on internally modified GPLed software that is used as a network service. If you can modify the software within your rights under "All Rights Reserved" then you may not have to comply with any GPL V3 provision that says you must distribute source for internally modified GPL programs running as network services.
Well sure, but the kernel developers are under no obligation to keep the API the same. And they probably would change it at some point.
You still probably couldn't distribute a kernel with the binary driver attached to it (such as an embedded system) and not violate the GPL. Somewhat a gray area there, it's been tolerated in the past to some extent.
Linux is a 'free' unix like system, and they could give a rats ass about "Free"
Obviously the developers don't care much if those people use it or not. There are enough people that do care enough about being capital F Free. Even commercial users appreciate the Freedom of not being locked into a single vendor, generally more than they care about license cost.
Ultimately, "Free" software people want to push their ideoligy on others
Not really. If you want to use the Free software, you have to agree to the terms. The developers aren't forcing you to use their software, or even "pushing" you to use it.
If this "silent majority" you speak of really does think the way you say, then why are they still using Linux? They could use BSD, or a even pirate a commercial OS (which is what most people that only care about free-money do).
I've got some similar weirdness. We have an SGI Origin 2000 with IRIX, and randomly the "tr" command stops working. Not just the native tr either, gnu tr and irix tr.
Here's what it sometimes does: >echo usuck | tr [a-z] [A-Z] AsAck
It was coincedence we picked the string "usuck" to test it. I tell all new employees about the "you suck a sack" bug.
The weird thing is if you log in as another user, it's fine. If you then su to the problem user, it happens again. Recreating their account with all the same dotfiles... and the problem's gone, for a while.
Wachovia works great in firefox too. And when I write their webmaster about a rendering problem in firefox/opera, it gets fixed! Pretty amazing for such a large company.
If it transmits when off, it must only be tiny bursts spaced way out, because most phones I've seen can last months on one battery charge when powered off.
It couldn't be doing much transmitting and not sap the battery.
Software is math. You can't patent math, why can you patent software?
Note that even without software patents, it doesn't mean it's impossible to get patents relating to a software product, it only means you cannot patent the algorithms themselves.
You've fallen into the trap of believing that crap they call "deregulation" has any resemblance whatsoever to a free market. It doesn't.
Real deregulation creates free markets, it doesn't just create some rules about how the monopoly should let competitors use their wires, rules that are easily circumvented by the monopolies.
But no commodity ever "runs out" in the sense that it is impossible to get. Someone somewhere can always produce it for a price.
As that price approaches infinity, oil is no longer useful as a source of energy except for a few specialized uses.
There's great economic disruption if the price of a commodity we are heavily dependent on goes up in price quickly.
It can create a cascade effect, the same as when the recent blackout cascaded to the whole northeast. The price of oil shoots up too quickly, demand lessens for oil, but overall demand for energy is fairly inelastic. Substitute demand shoots up, and they too get to be very high price. We have a temporary situation where any form of energy is very expensive. This would be highly disuptive.
It would sort itself out in the end, as companies invest in alternative energy technology research, but predicting the time left until this happens, how sharp the increases will be, and how easily technology will provide economic substitutes is a very important issue that we should not ignore.
The invisible hand might just bitchslap us if we aren't careful.
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That's not really the same. When you go to wal mart you are under no obligation to buy everything from them, in fact you almost surely will have to shop at other stores to get everything you need.
If you install Windows you are stuck running Windows software, and can't easily "shop somewhere else". You can dual boot or whatnot, but that's not something most people will do, and it's not all that easy. Everyone who shops at wal-mart can shop elsewhere, but very few MS users would know how to use MS+other OS.
Interesting. My love/hate relationship with bash/sh continues. :)
I'll keep an eye out for missing quotes in the scripts if it happens again.
That GPL relies on copyright law to determine when it applies, it does not rely on contract law the way an EULA does.
It does not apply until the person wishes to do something that would violate an All Rights Reserved copyright, at that point, they have the option to accept the GPL as a license from the copyright holder which would allow them to do things normally reserved for the owner of the work.
If they violate the GPL, it can't really be enforced as a contract, it would be enforced as a copyright violation.
I think the idea is to motivate people to bring these cases. These cases involve a heavy time investment, and potentially monetary investment (if they can't find some lawyer to take it pro-bono). People might be unlikely to bring such a case up if there weren't some potential payoff.
You can, because the FSF said you can (in the GPL FAQ). And also because there's effectively no way to enforce anything unless you distribute it.
But copyright law does give authors exclusive rights to "prepare derived works", which means to modify a work did violate an "All rights reserved" copyright, even if you don't distribute it. This precedent changes that somewhat though, giving an exception.
Just a slight correction; the GPL v2 does not kick in when you modify the code - you already have that right, as copyright law has little to nothing to say about modification
That just isn't the case. I had the same misconception until I was corrected, which caused me to read the copyright laws.
The owner of copyright under this title has the exclusive rights to do and to authorize any of the following:
(1) to reproduce the copyrighted work in copies or phonorecords;
(2) to prepare derivative works based upon the copyrighted work;
Note number 2. It doesn't say to distribute derivative works, it says to prepare them. That's why this precedent is even relevant, since it effectively guts that provision in some cases.
The people in the school district may have voted them in, but most of the funding was probably state or federal, as in most school districts.
So your argument breaks down because of that.
Why would it be a deterrant? This is a public school we are talking about here. They aren't going to go bankrupt. They have no profit motive. They just have more reason to whine to the state to get a bigger budget next year because their schools are falling apart.
This is tax money we are talking about here. Why should the residents of New Jersey, the students of that school district, and to a lesser extent, the entire nation (some federal money trickles down to school districts), pay for the oppressive actions of a few idiot administrators?
I'm in total agreement with you regarding free speech, but don't lose perspective here.
Surprised no one has picked up on the implication for the GPL.
Right now you don't need to agree to the GPL to compile/use/run GPL software, since those things don't trigger copyright protections.
But previous to this, if you modified it at all, copyright law kicks in and you must abide by the GPL, by modifying it, you stepped outside allowed use under "all rights reserved" and are thus you can only operate under the terms of the GPL.
Under this precedent, you can modify it even if it were released under "All Rights Reserved" and thus do not need to comply with the GPL.
This may have serious implications regarding possible GPL V3 clauses on internally modified GPLed software that is used as a network service. If you can modify the software within your rights under "All Rights Reserved" then you may not have to comply with any GPL V3 provision that says you must distribute source for internally modified GPL programs running as network services.
Those three examples are things that linux already does support drivers outside the kernel for.
It's not too late, it's already done.
Well sure, but the kernel developers are under no obligation to keep the API the same. And they probably would change it at some point.
You still probably couldn't distribute a kernel with the binary driver attached to it (such as an embedded system) and not violate the GPL. Somewhat a gray area there, it's been tolerated in the past to some extent.
While I appreciate your work, if my hardware drivers worked as well as wine (i.e. rarely 100% correct), I'd probably stop using linux.
Linux is a 'free' unix like system, and they could give a rats ass about "Free"
Obviously the developers don't care much if those people use it or not. There are enough people that do care enough about being capital F Free. Even commercial users appreciate the Freedom of not being locked into a single vendor, generally more than they care about license cost.
Ultimately, "Free" software people want to push their ideoligy on others
Not really. If you want to use the Free software, you have to agree to the terms. The developers aren't forcing you to use their software, or even "pushing" you to use it.
If this "silent majority" you speak of really does think the way you say, then why are they still using Linux? They could use BSD, or a even pirate a commercial OS (which is what most people that only care about free-money do).
I don't think PHP is all that easy to learn. It may have seemed easier if you knew C/C++ syntax first, which a lot of us did.
I've got some similar weirdness. We have an SGI Origin 2000 with IRIX, and randomly the "tr" command stops working. Not just the native tr either, gnu tr and irix tr.
:)
Here's what it sometimes does:
>echo usuck | tr [a-z] [A-Z]
AsAck
It was coincedence we picked the string "usuck" to test it. I tell all new employees about the "you suck a sack" bug.
The weird thing is if you log in as another user, it's fine. If you then su to the problem user, it happens again. Recreating their account with all the same dotfiles... and the problem's gone, for a while.
I blame cosmic rays.
Wachovia works great in firefox too. And when I write their webmaster about a rendering problem in firefox/opera, it gets fixed! Pretty amazing for such a large company.
Wow, just wow.
You know electrical signals already travel at a good fraction of the speed of light, when carried on copper wires, right?
Utah, Colorado, New Mexico and Arizona
I met my wife on IRC too. Crazy eh?
Please don't call them libs. Us Libertarians don't want to be associated with socialists.
If it transmits when off, it must only be tiny bursts spaced way out, because most phones I've seen can last months on one battery charge when powered off.
It couldn't be doing much transmitting and not sap the battery.
Software is math. You can't patent math, why can you patent software?
Note that even without software patents, it doesn't mean it's impossible to get patents relating to a software product, it only means you cannot patent the algorithms themselves.
You've fallen into the trap of believing that crap they call "deregulation" has any resemblance whatsoever to a free market. It doesn't.
Real deregulation creates free markets, it doesn't just create some rules about how the monopoly should let competitors use their wires, rules that are easily circumvented by the monopolies.
Well, yes, of course.
But no commodity ever "runs out" in the sense that it is impossible to get. Someone somewhere can always produce it for a price.
As that price approaches infinity, oil is no longer useful as a source of energy except for a few specialized uses.
There's great economic disruption if the price of a commodity we are heavily dependent on goes up in price quickly.
It can create a cascade effect, the same as when the recent blackout cascaded to the whole northeast. The price of oil shoots up too quickly, demand lessens for oil, but overall demand for energy is fairly inelastic. Substitute demand shoots up, and they too get to be very high price. We have a temporary situation where any form of energy is very expensive. This would be highly disuptive.
It would sort itself out in the end, as companies invest in alternative energy technology research, but predicting the time left until this happens, how sharp the increases will be, and how easily technology will provide economic substitutes is a very important issue that we should not ignore.
The invisible hand might just bitchslap us if we aren't careful.