Okay, needs further clarification. Direct end-users (those that have no middle-man between the original writer) have exactly the same amount of freedom under BSD and GPL. Indirect end-users, getting their software through a middle-man, have more freedom under GPL than they have under BSD as the middle man can have changed whatever terms he wants. Hence GPL nets more freedom to end-users.
If you look at software distribution as a tree, with distributors as the nodes and end-users as the leafs, then the BSD license only gives freedom to the immediate children of the code writer. GNU software gives complete freedom to all leafs/end-users, and does this by restricting the behaviour of nodes/distributors. It has nothing to do with giving freedom to software, that's impossible. Both give freedom, only to different people. If you're a distributor, BSD rocks. If you're an end-user, GPL rulez.
Free software can be made proprietary through patents. Let's say your write a piece of BSD licensed software that, unbeknownst to you, uses a patented algorithm. Patent holders comes, sues, wins, and starts to distribute your code under his own license. You are now not allowed to distribute your code anymore, and the only copy is owned by the patent holder. Free software made proprietary.
I think the GPL and Apache license are immune to this kind of attack, but many other licenses are not.
If you make a distinction between end-users and distributors, it can be made more accurate:
The BSD license gives freedom to the direct recipient of the software, be it an end-user or a distributor. The distributor can lock up the software for their end-users.
the GNU license(s) give freedom to all the end-user of the software, no matter how many distributors are in between. It does this by restricting distribution.
Ah analogy time, and no car in sight! More accurate: Tivo made copies of a painting from a museum, puts a mustache on it, and is now selling the copies to unsuspecting users claiming its a faithful copy of the original, but disallowing them to remove the mustache. The museum is now reconsidering its copying policy.
Maybe he's explaining it improperly, as it actually is very simple. GNU is about freedom for end-users, the one at the bottom of the distribution chain. GNU attempts to be 100% free for these end-users throughout the distribution chain. If the distributor has the ability to change the code, so has the end-user, etc. BSD is a distributor-friendly license, and doesn't care about end-users. If the distributor can change code, he can prevent the end-user of doing that, hence restricting the freedom of the user.
So both licenses put freedom at different places. With GNU: freedom for users, restrictions for distributors. With BSD, freedom for distributors, including the freedom to add restrictions to their users.
BSD's restrictions are implicit, and therefore seem non-existant. However, end-users (non-distributors) have less freedom in the BSD model than they enjoy with the GPL.
The irony of it all that somehow, by preventing me from using GPL code in a manner RMS doesn't like, my freedoms are enhanced.
The real irony is that people, even here, don't have clue about what GPL is. GPL does not put any restrictions whatsoever on using GPL code. All it does is put restrictions on distribution. This to enable that all users are free from such restrictions. From this user-centric perspective, GPL is the most free license, as unlike BSD, no additional restrictions can be added in the distribution chain. BSD gives freedom to distributors, GPL to users.
What use is code if you can't run it? FSF/GNU has never been about just freedom of code, it's about the freedom of operating/changing devices that you bought. The freedom to tinker.
The existence of the general purpose computer quickly made code the most important part, as with code, you could do anything.
The original incident that triggered RMS to start GNU was the fact that he couldn't fix a broken printer driver because he lacked the code to do this, and the vendor wouldn't let him have it. Now we get Tivo, who does give the code, but makes sure you cannot run it on the device the code is made for. Exactly the same result.
Nothing strange with the FSF reaction here. Tivo found a loophole to disallow people to tinker with their product. This one is now closed.
It gets me everytime. Some US inhabitant is dissatified with the war and pushing the 3,000 US troop deaths as an argument that the war went haywire. This really pisses me off. There are 3,000 US deaths because of Bush's action, yet there are 300,000 - 600,000 Iraqi deaths through these same actions, and they are not worth mentioning? Get your priorities straight: these 3,000 soldiers are professionals, and have chosen to do this. The 300-600K Iraqis are civilians, without a choice. These are the victims, not the soldiers. The soldiers are expendable, the citizens are not. The are not to blame here.
The only way you could feel these 3,000 US deaths are more important than the 300-600K Iraqis is when you subscribe to the Ubermensch fallacy, in which the life of a US citizen is worth more than that of any other citizen. My big problem is that most of the US actually thinks that this is so. Guess what, you're as bad as the guy you are arguing with. Your nation is coming first in your mind, no matter the havoc it wreaks elsewhere. That's sick.
So, in short: you, and all you who have brought up the 3,000 US casualties as an argument without even considering the 300-600K of Iraqis, are effectively assholes. These 3,000 deaths are at the very most just a single percent of the casualties in the area. I purposefully Godwin myself in stating that you, who argue in terms of US casualties only, are a bunch of fascists, from left to right.
Well, there's a subtle and important difference between saying: "we know that Saddam has been searching for WMD, and we assume he still is searching", and "we know that Saddam currently has WMD, and that's why we attack now". The first part of the former is provably true, and the assumption not necessarily incorrect. The latter is a blatant lie.
I also read the letters, but came away but a completely different impression. Microsoft made an error in shipping VS Express without explicitly stating that add-ins were forbidden and even without disabling the add-in mechanism. Then they start lying about illigality and are finally grasping at straws with the weak 'circumventing technical limitations' clause. There was no limitation, there was no hacking around. Microsoft simply dropped the ball and instead with living with the consequences, they send lawyers and pull his MVP status.
It would be an interesting world when your vendor/partner could suddenly start adding limitations to the thing they provide whenever they feel like it. Why do you think it is natural that VS Express doesn't support add-ins? Is there something with free versions of tools that makes add-ins are no-no?
Compare this with Tivo. Tivo found a way to circumvent the GPL by tying the code in such a way to the hardware that no modifications of that source could run. Then they abided the letter of the GPL and provided the (useless) source. There was an outcry, as it was a direct circumvention of the explicit intent of the GPL. Still, nobody lied to Tivo that what they did was illegal, and no lawsuit followed on flimsy grounds.
The FSF has simply been redrafting the GPL to close such loopholes.
Why can't MS simply do the same and give up on this particular fight for this particular version. They didn't intent that this was possible, they never expressed it, forgot to disable the feature, didn't put it in their license terms. The developer was blissfully unaware of this intent, and when MS started to complain, they started lying that it was illegal what he did. Throwing your considerable weight around in such a way is unethical and immoral, and exactly what you expect from Microsoft.
My guess is that if they would have come clean from the start and said that it was not the intention that add-ins should be provided for VS Express, and if Jamie would please remove it as later versions would expressly make this impossible, then I doubt that Jamie would have provided the option to new customers. Now they're in a fix, simply because they can't accept that errors cannot always be corrected with extortion and lies.
Hmm, after reading the email discussion, the 'trying to work with him for over a year', went something like this:
MS: You should remove the code for Express, as its illegal
TD: Okay, done. Please clarify what it was that was illegal
MS: Not telling you
TD: Please? I need to tell my customers why they can't have it
MS: Just tell them you did something illegal
TD: Sure I would, but can you tell me what it is that I did?
MS: Well, it's somewhere over there in section X in the EULA, but I'm not a lawyer, so I can't give any definite hints to
what you did. It's illegal, that's just the way it is
TD: Okay, I went with my lawyer over the EULA, and he says I didn't do anything illegal
MS: But you did. I'm not a lawyer, but I know it's illegal
TD: Come on guys, be reasonable, not even a vague hint?
MS: no
TD: pretty please?
MS: no
TD: Okay, that's it, I've had it. I'm re-enabling this feature
MS: You can't do that!
TD: Why the hell not?
MS: Because it's illigal!
TD: Where does it say that it is illegal?
MS: We've told you countless times exactly where you violate the license. Now be a nice puppy and remove the code
TD: No! Not unless you tell me where I violate the license!
MS: We'll get our lawyer's on it. Prepare to die
And instead we hear screams of the Microsofties about the perfidious actions of Testdriven.Net, using uncharacteristic words such as 'ethos' and 'intent', and probably a team of lawyers in the background amending the license terms as we speak.
And in hundreds of posts here, no one seems to be able to cite the part of the license that the guy is in violation of. You seem to be convinced, so you must have seen it. Why don't you post it here?
So with all this absence of any form of proof about the illegality, it seems MS screwed up here, and should simply live with the consequences instead of citing 'ethos'. Microsoft preaching ethos, bah. When the fox starts preaching, look to your hens.
Well, first Novell, than whoever bought it from Novell. So I get it from Novell under GPL v2, distribute it to someone else under GPL v3. The third party has a voucher. Game over.
One of the big problems with the debate is that it is so politicized that any statement on the GW front that will produce even the smallest amount of doubt or uncertainty will be picked up by the other side as an argument that results are inconclusive and we can comfortably remain on our asses and throw more Co2 in the atmosphere.
For instance, here in this thread, the IPCC expectation that in a century the earth would be between 1.5 and 4.5 degrees warmer was used by a careless poster to claim that with so much uncertainty, this is no more than a wild ass guess. What it actually means is that there's significant global warming, with effects ranging between very dangerous to potentially lethal for civilisation. People deal badly with uncertainty, hence the thrust to be overly precise in messages to the outside world. Not good, but given the stakes, maybe defensible.
With such a politicized debate, it is hard to do proper science, let alone proper reporting of scientific results. This mainly because the antagonists (the self-proclaimed sceptics) do not produce science, but FUD. In that sense it is much like evolution against creationism/ID. The one side is trying to provide a scientifically accurate picture, the other side is trying to undermine the picture with the same old tired arguments. Some are easy to debunk, some others harder, but no matter what, they get repeated time and time again. Same with your post. You repeat myth #4 and #5. They are easily debunked, yet people like to re-iterate them, as if that hasn't been thought of before, nor scrutinized. Yes, we can say something about the climate with reasoned uncertainty. Yes we can say something about the weather with reasoned uncertainty. No, climate and weather predictions are not the same thing.
If the antagonist side had merit, independent studies would crop up with a different set of causes for measured phenomena. If these would be suppressed by the incumbents, independent journals would crop up. If the science behind it was good, Ph.D. students would flock to the different view on climatology as a new branch of inquiry, simply because contributing to an emerging field is the easiest way to get publications. Scientists are people, highly opportunistic and seeking for quick wins. None of this alternative climatology is happening however, that should say something. The other side of the 'debate' remains a bunch of fud-slingers, too numerous and loud to be ignored, too small-minded and ignorant to convince. And I'm not just talking about creationists.
However, it allows more industrialized nations to purchase "carbon credits" from less industrialized nations, which does little to "green up" technology, or stem our use of non-renewable resources.
On the contrary, 'carbon credits' are a first attempt to create an economy around emissions. Up till now, all we had was government regulation, which is hopeless in a global economy. With putting an actual price on emissions, and allowing trade in emissions, it becomes part of the market, and the one that pollutes least will have the economic advantage.
Yes, you're right, the article did skim over the McKitrick claim of red noise being able to reproduce the Mann curve. The article you cited is very interesting and McKitrick has some good points about IPCC politics, yet it turns out not to be too easy to reproduce their findings. With some simple red-noise (a first order autocorrelation model) I am unable to produce hockey-sticks after subtracting the mean of only the last 100 points out of a 1000. This even when I add a single series that has a huge hockey-stick in those last 100 points! Possibly I'm doing something wrong here, but I don't think so. I'll probably have to find an original paper by McKitrick to see what exact method he uses, as the term 'sophisticated ARFIMA12 routine' doesn't ring a bell here. It's not that clear-cut for me: all I see is a claim that red noise produces hockey-sticks if you use a wrong mean, but no good substance yet.
BTW, In the article (search Hans von Storch) there is the claim that even when the error (subtracting only a 20th century mean) is corrected, the hockey stick appears. If this were true, that would end the red-noise debate, as the hockey- stick then is in the data (even though it still might be an artifact of a single series). Plenty of stuff for debate, so not that clear-cut as you think it is.
Oh dear, if by 'ignored entirely', you mean "one click away", you're right. Listing something as unaddressed doesn't make it so, particularly when TFA directly links to it under the heading "the great hockeystick debate" , summarized as 'arcane statistical arguments'.
In itself that's correct, but what the article is concluding is that the argument that because the polar bear population is rising global warming is not occurring is wrong. The premise is inconclusive, therefore the conclusion is faulty, and hence cannot be used as an argument for or against global warming. TFA is debunking myths about climate change, not about polar bears.
Long ago, 99.99999% of the people living on the coast knew the earth was round. Every time they saw a ship approaching, the mast would be seen first and the hulk last. Only explainable by a round (curved) earth.
Then a couple of religious morons read in the bible that the earth was supported by four pillars and concluded with infallible logic that the earth was therefore flat and everyone believing otherwise was a heretic and should be killed. Then they proved that white was black and got killed on the next zebra crossing. Problem solved.
Ah, myth #3. Please read up on it. The 'random data' claim is the one that's been debunked ad nauseam. Please read up on it and try another one: I hear myth #12 is quite popular these days.
So, if someone gets cranky about you wanting to discuss alternative theories about men walking on the moon, you will join the ranks of those that are sceptic about this having occured? Your 4 points are the reasoning of cranks and kooks.
Slashdot Mirror
Simple: patents. Infringe a patent and the owner of your BSD code is the patent holder.
If you look at software distribution as a tree, with distributors as the nodes and end-users as the leafs, then the BSD license only gives freedom to the immediate children of the code writer. GNU software gives complete freedom to all leafs/end-users, and does this by restricting the behaviour of nodes/distributors. It has nothing to do with giving freedom to software, that's impossible. Both give freedom, only to different people. If you're a distributor, BSD rocks. If you're an end-user, GPL rulez.
I think the GPL and Apache license are immune to this kind of attack, but many other licenses are not.
The BSD license gives freedom to the direct recipient of the software, be it an end-user or a distributor. The distributor can lock up the software for their end-users.
the GNU license(s) give freedom to all the end-user of the software, no matter how many distributors are in between. It does this by restricting distribution.
Ah analogy time, and no car in sight! More accurate: Tivo made copies of a painting from a museum, puts a mustache on it, and is now selling the copies to unsuspecting users claiming its a faithful copy of the original, but disallowing them to remove the mustache. The museum is now reconsidering its copying policy.
So both licenses put freedom at different places. With GNU: freedom for users, restrictions for distributors. With BSD, freedom for distributors, including the freedom to add restrictions to their users.
BSD's restrictions are implicit, and therefore seem non-existant. However, end-users (non-distributors) have less freedom in the BSD model than they enjoy with the GPL.
The real irony is that people, even here, don't have clue about what GPL is. GPL does not put any restrictions whatsoever on using GPL code. All it does is put restrictions on distribution. This to enable that all users are free from such restrictions. From this user-centric perspective, GPL is the most free license, as unlike BSD, no additional restrictions can be added in the distribution chain. BSD gives freedom to distributors, GPL to users.
The original incident that triggered RMS to start GNU was the fact that he couldn't fix a broken printer driver because he lacked the code to do this, and the vendor wouldn't let him have it. Now we get Tivo, who does give the code, but makes sure you cannot run it on the device the code is made for. Exactly the same result.
Nothing strange with the FSF reaction here. Tivo found a loophole to disallow people to tinker with their product. This one is now closed.
The only way you could feel these 3,000 US deaths are more important than the 300-600K Iraqis is when you subscribe to the Ubermensch fallacy, in which the life of a US citizen is worth more than that of any other citizen. My big problem is that most of the US actually thinks that this is so. Guess what, you're as bad as the guy you are arguing with. Your nation is coming first in your mind, no matter the havoc it wreaks elsewhere. That's sick.
So, in short: you, and all you who have brought up the 3,000 US casualties as an argument without even considering the 300-600K of Iraqis, are effectively assholes. These 3,000 deaths are at the very most just a single percent of the casualties in the area. I purposefully Godwin myself in stating that you, who argue in terms of US casualties only, are a bunch of fascists, from left to right.
Well, there's a subtle and important difference between saying: "we know that Saddam has been searching for WMD, and we assume he still is searching", and "we know that Saddam currently has WMD, and that's why we attack now". The first part of the former is provably true, and the assumption not necessarily incorrect. The latter is a blatant lie.
It would be an interesting world when your vendor/partner could suddenly start adding limitations to the thing they provide whenever they feel like it. Why do you think it is natural that VS Express doesn't support add-ins? Is there something with free versions of tools that makes add-ins are no-no?
Compare this with Tivo. Tivo found a way to circumvent the GPL by tying the code in such a way to the hardware that no modifications of that source could run. Then they abided the letter of the GPL and provided the (useless) source. There was an outcry, as it was a direct circumvention of the explicit intent of the GPL. Still, nobody lied to Tivo that what they did was illegal, and no lawsuit followed on flimsy grounds. The FSF has simply been redrafting the GPL to close such loopholes.
Why can't MS simply do the same and give up on this particular fight for this particular version. They didn't intent that this was possible, they never expressed it, forgot to disable the feature, didn't put it in their license terms. The developer was blissfully unaware of this intent, and when MS started to complain, they started lying that it was illegal what he did. Throwing your considerable weight around in such a way is unethical and immoral, and exactly what you expect from Microsoft.
My guess is that if they would have come clean from the start and said that it was not the intention that add-ins should be provided for VS Express, and if Jamie would please remove it as later versions would expressly make this impossible, then I doubt that Jamie would have provided the option to new customers. Now they're in a fix, simply because they can't accept that errors cannot always be corrected with extortion and lies.
MS: You should remove the code for Express, as its illegal
TD: Okay, done. Please clarify what it was that was illegal
MS: Not telling you
TD: Please? I need to tell my customers why they can't have it
MS: Just tell them you did something illegal
TD: Sure I would, but can you tell me what it is that I did?
MS: Well, it's somewhere over there in section X in the EULA, but I'm not a lawyer, so I can't give any definite hints to what you did. It's illegal, that's just the way it is
TD: Okay, I went with my lawyer over the EULA, and he says I didn't do anything illegal
MS: But you did. I'm not a lawyer, but I know it's illegal
TD: Come on guys, be reasonable, not even a vague hint?
MS: no
TD: pretty please?
MS: no
TD: Okay, that's it, I've had it. I'm re-enabling this feature
MS: You can't do that!
TD: Why the hell not?
MS: Because it's illigal!
TD: Where does it say that it is illegal?
MS: We've told you countless times exactly where you violate the license. Now be a nice puppy and remove the code
TD: No! Not unless you tell me where I violate the license!
MS: We'll get our lawyer's on it. Prepare to die
A fine example of microsoft cooperation.
This time, we get to gloat.
So with all this absence of any form of proof about the illegality, it seems MS screwed up here, and should simply live with the consequences instead of citing 'ethos'. Microsoft preaching ethos, bah. When the fox starts preaching, look to your hens.
Well, first Novell, than whoever bought it from Novell. So I get it from Novell under GPL v2, distribute it to someone else under GPL v3. The third party has a voucher. Game over.
For instance, here in this thread, the IPCC expectation that in a century the earth would be between 1.5 and 4.5 degrees warmer was used by a careless poster to claim that with so much uncertainty, this is no more than a wild ass guess. What it actually means is that there's significant global warming, with effects ranging between very dangerous to potentially lethal for civilisation. People deal badly with uncertainty, hence the thrust to be overly precise in messages to the outside world. Not good, but given the stakes, maybe defensible.
With such a politicized debate, it is hard to do proper science, let alone proper reporting of scientific results. This mainly because the antagonists (the self-proclaimed sceptics) do not produce science, but FUD. In that sense it is much like evolution against creationism/ID. The one side is trying to provide a scientifically accurate picture, the other side is trying to undermine the picture with the same old tired arguments. Some are easy to debunk, some others harder, but no matter what, they get repeated time and time again. Same with your post. You repeat myth #4 and #5. They are easily debunked, yet people like to re-iterate them, as if that hasn't been thought of before, nor scrutinized. Yes, we can say something about the climate with reasoned uncertainty. Yes we can say something about the weather with reasoned uncertainty. No, climate and weather predictions are not the same thing.
If the antagonist side had merit, independent studies would crop up with a different set of causes for measured phenomena. If these would be suppressed by the incumbents, independent journals would crop up. If the science behind it was good, Ph.D. students would flock to the different view on climatology as a new branch of inquiry, simply because contributing to an emerging field is the easiest way to get publications. Scientists are people, highly opportunistic and seeking for quick wins. None of this alternative climatology is happening however, that should say something. The other side of the 'debate' remains a bunch of fud-slingers, too numerous and loud to be ignored, too small-minded and ignorant to convince. And I'm not just talking about creationists.
On the contrary, 'carbon credits' are a first attempt to create an economy around emissions. Up till now, all we had was government regulation, which is hopeless in a global economy. With putting an actual price on emissions, and allowing trade in emissions, it becomes part of the market, and the one that pollutes least will have the economic advantage.
BTW, In the article (search Hans von Storch) there is the claim that even when the error (subtracting only a 20th century mean) is corrected, the hockey stick appears. If this were true, that would end the red-noise debate, as the hockey- stick then is in the data (even though it still might be an artifact of a single series). Plenty of stuff for debate, so not that clear-cut as you think it is.
Oh dear, if by 'ignored entirely', you mean "one click away", you're right. Listing something as unaddressed doesn't make it so, particularly when TFA directly links to it under the heading "the great hockeystick debate" , summarized as 'arcane statistical arguments'.
In itself that's correct, but what the article is concluding is that the argument that because the polar bear population is rising global warming is not occurring is wrong. The premise is inconclusive, therefore the conclusion is faulty, and hence cannot be used as an argument for or against global warming. TFA is debunking myths about climate change, not about polar bears.
Then a couple of religious morons read in the bible that the earth was supported by four pillars and concluded with infallible logic that the earth was therefore flat and everyone believing otherwise was a heretic and should be killed. Then they proved that white was black and got killed on the next zebra crossing. Problem solved.
Ah, myth #3. Please read up on it. The 'random data' claim is the one that's been debunked ad nauseam. Please read up on it and try another one: I hear myth #12 is quite popular these days.
So, if someone gets cranky about you wanting to discuss alternative theories about men walking on the moon, you will join the ranks of those that are sceptic about this having occured? Your 4 points are the reasoning of cranks and kooks.
With your feet in the fridge and your head in the oven, on average, your body is doing a-okay.