I'm not a GPL expert, but it seems that, if you're doing some modifications on behalf of some company, and that code stays within the company, then there's no GPL violation. The problem would come if you kept ownership of those modifications, and tried to sell them to multiple companies.
Even in that instance, you're only obligated to release the modified source to the organizations that actually receive the software, not necessarily to the community at large. Of course, you wouldn't be able to stop your customers from redistributing the modifications. That's just the nature of the GPL.
The "ransom" system could work in several different ways, depending on the conditions of the pre-GPL terms and restrictions. You might still have access to the source code for the purpose of making compatible products, or they might ask for support solely on the strength of the finished product. So, in some cases at least, I doubt the coders would turn up their noses at good patches.
I remember during a telethon by a local radio station, they had a very successful bit called "Give Us Money or We Play the Carpenters." If I remember the exact rules, they had a certain number of Carpenters songs they intended to play (30-ish), and people could call in and buy up a song, keeping it from being played. It was working wonderfully until a small but vocal group of Carpenter fans started giving them money to play more songs.:)
Why not something along that line? You could implement a ransom system where the code is set to be released at a given date, but people could give money to shorten that date. Until the GPL does kick in, the goal is to make the code useful enough that people want to support it.
But I do see your point. If someone tries to do this, and then starts messing with the conditions of the agreement, or started getting money based on some feature he's promising to implement at some unspecified future date, the whole model would become suspect.
Interesting. If the CDs will still play in regular CD players, then the actual music is still on the CDs in an unencrypted format. Shouldn't CD-ROM manufacturers just be able to update the device drivers so that their drives don't choke on whatever copy protection is at the beginning of the CD?
I've also heard rumors that very old (1x and 2x) CD-ROMs just ignore the stuff that's supposed to trip them up, and play "protected CDs" just fine. Can anyone here confirm that?
If something breaks, and you're letting the kids try and fix it, you're asking for trouble no matter what operating system you're running. This goes double for some of the teachers.
From the article: "Same goes for Israel or Iran, according to a National Geographic study that finds there has been little to no improvement in students' knowledge of geography since 1988."
What a laughable article. I find it very difficult to believe that these children have been in school since 1988 and learned nothing. Who is this "National Geographic" group, and why are they gathering information about our children?
"It's a great idea, but out in the real world, people use commercial software."
Granted, but to the end user, there's not a whole lot of difference between the most used proprietary applications and their open source equivalents.
Web browsers? For 95% of what 95% of people do, there's no difference. Type the URL in the address bar, click on the links, and hit the Forward/Back buttons. Anyone who is kind of familiar with IE will understand Mozilla pretty well.
Word processors? OpenOffice behaves much like MS Office. There are quirks, of course. But to say that someone who has been using OO will be "unable to compete" with all those knowledgable Office users, or that an OO kid will fall on her face when presented with Office, is absolutely silly.
We can also claim to be effectively at parity regarding mail clients (Outlook/Evolution) and desktops, if you take it to mean that a person using one would have a pretty good idea what to do with the other.
You could argue that, when you get into the power user range, there's a lot of knowledge that just doesn't flow freely between the proprietary and open software worlds. So what? Teaching such skills to anyone prior to the 9th grade is a waste of time anyways.
"If kids aren't educated in how to use it, they won't be able to compete. "
My firm opinion is that teaching computer skills to youngsters (excluding strong typing skills and a few "this is what the mouse does" basics) is a horribly ineffective proposition. For example, for the cost of about twenty middle-of-the-line computers, you could fully fund a music program. The only difference is, half of the instruments will still be usable in five years.
I've also got strong reservations about most of what passes for "education software" these days. Aside from mostly being poorly conceived, poorly written, and badly matched to the end-user's skill level, when a kid is playing on it he's not getting the human interaction that should be a vital part of his education.
"I think introducing free software and its concepts into the education system is a good idea, but we shouldn't forsake the kids' futures for the sake of indoctrination."
Agreed. Indoctrinating kids to any particular agenda is bad. But we do it all the time. If we provide a "Windows only" school, we're promoting a Microsoftian agenda. If Coca-Cola or Nike pays to place banners around the school, we're promoting their agenda. If we teach evolution in schools (or refuse to), we're promoting the agenda of one entity or another.
In the case of computer software, it shouldn't be about teaching "computer skills" which most adults could pick up in a one week crash course. At best, we should be looking at ways to use technology to aid learning about other subjects. We should also be open to the possibility that the technology is actually interfering with education. More below.
"Teach both, and let the kids decide what's best."
My response: Teach neither. Get technology out of the classroom.
The year I got to Junior High (1989) was the first year the "Channel One" fiasco started. Our already terminal attention spans were ratcheted down a couple more notches by all the fast, pretty pictures, vacuous (but good looking) "reporters," and manipulative commercials. Plus, thanks to the suddenly ubiquitous classroom televisions, it became much easier for teachers to integrate "multimedia" into the curriculum. Trust me, for every hour I spent in high school watching something intellectually mind-blowing, there were a good three or four hours of questionable videos.
Oh, and don't even start me on the number of hours I spent cooling my heels while the teacher tried to figure out what was wrong with the blasted equipment. I remember a geometry class (the hour before mine) where the teacher spent literally a third of her time fussing with cranky "telecourse" equipment. She didn't have the choice not to, because she was responsible for teaching a group of twelve kids located a hundred miles away.
In order for technology to be useful in the classroom, it has to be reliable and intuitive enough that it practically blends into the background. It also has to be cheap enough that we're not dipping into other, more important resources in order to obtain it. At the moment, many of the things people are trying to do in the education field are too intrusive and too expensive to be justified.
Okay, I'm probably being too harsh on many points. But thanks for letting me rant.
The solution? Slashdot-style moderation! frist t00nz! 1 r0xx04z!! Of course, some would try to artificially inflate their ranking by singing songs about how evil Microsoft is, but otherwise I think it would be a solid system.
It could also be done Amazon-style: People who bought Unholy Stilt's "Death to Everybody" also bought Family Values' "A 6-year old Sings 'It's a Small World'."
Finally, I've never been led astray by musical suggestions proffered over IRC.
I don't know. If they were to sell my driving habits to advertisers, so that billboards posted along my route to and from work were specifically tailored to products and services that I was interested in. ..
That's a very important question, and I think it's very irresponsible of the editors to post a story like this go through without including so much as a "We're all going to die from radiation poisoning" in the summary.
In fact, they should probably precede every story with a brief explanation of how the story will probably lead to our eventual extinction or enslavement by aliens. As in "Mozilla 1.2 has just been released. Unconfirmed rumors report that it has achieved sentience, and is trying to take control of America's nuclear arsenal."
Slashdot just hasn't been reactionary enough for my tastes lately.
"What can humans do, besides burrowing or mutating?"
Me, I plan on doing both. Mutate first, then burrow. Of course, then I'd end up being pressed into service of Microsoft's evil Mole-Man army, but hey, any port in an ion storm, right?
I think I speak for all Utahns when I say, "We don't want your shrimp and crawfish!" If we ever discover an enormous wave of Louisiana shrimp and crawfish marching towards our borders, me and my fellow Utahns will almost certainly rush out and whack them with baseball bats.
Yes, folks. There will be a display of Utahn solidarity and civic-mindedness not seen since the floods of '83, or the giant brine shrimp attack of '78. Back to the depths with ye foul creatures! Back, I say!
Hmm. . . as long as they've blasphemously decided to support the BLINK tag, they might to pretty it up a little. For example, having it slowly fade in and out.
Then again, since the entire purpose of the blink tag is to distract you away from everything else on the page, this would be castrating its "usefulness."
Re:Aren't APPS the real issue?
on
Halloween VII
·
· Score: 1
Why should they be learning vi? Emacs is a far superior editor!:: ducks and runs like hell::
Ignore the flame-war starter; I agree with your point. Microsoft is pretty much everywhere. The alternatives are either to take advantage of all that Microsoft has taught people about what constitutes "intuitive operation" and duplicate it, or fight a futile battle trying to convince end users that "Ctrl-k Ctrl-y" is more intuitive than "Ctrl-x Ctrl-v". [*]
Sure, we can have a dozen different GUI/desktop managers, but if we don't have at least one which is slick, polished, and unabashedly Microsoftish, we lose the battle of networking effects.
* And for me, it's getting to the point where it is.
Student software isn't real software. Sure, it may suffice for most student uses. But the licensing restrictions mean that once you get out into the real world and want to compile a commercial product, you have to either A) buy the same software all over again.
Also, there are hidden costs. Your school probably paid Microsoft an appreciable amount of cash for the right to sell their software so cheap. Cash which they took from you in the form of tuition.
Yes, there are legal ways to get all that software without paying full retail, and it's great that you could fulfill your needs cheaply and legally. But don't pretend that "certain people are able to get MS software at a steep discount" == "it is stupid to claim MS software is expensive". The point stands.
In "Code and Other Laws of Cyberspace," Lessig talks about how the architecture of the 'Net used to enable the blind, deaf, ugly, and quadrapedal*. Everyone had to deal with the same narrow-band stream of text.
Now we've got things like videoconferencing, voice chat, the ability to swap pictures of--presumably--yourself, and it's making the Internet more like the regular world. Lessig, however, didn't make any strong value judgments about the change, simply using the fact to illustrate that changes in code can alter how the online world is experienced.
Then again, following the links you provided, you may just be a bit weird in the head. Not that there's anything wrong with that.
* [read: "On the Internet, nobody knows you're a dog.]
Its time for everyone to stop whinning and do their capitialistic duty.
Indeed. That's why I've closed my PayPal account. I just haven't found it useful enough to justify the risk.
By the way, to close out the account, log into PayPal, go to "My Account", then to "Profile", then click on "Close account." You'll be asked to confirm your credit card number, but other than that, there's no hassle.
Sigh. . . Slashdot says "Blender needs money!" So I open a PayPal account. Slashdot says, "PayPal is evil!" So I close my PayPal account. I guess I'll be tuning in again tomorrow for further marching orders.:)
"The GPL violates the Open Source Definition because it discriminates against a field of endeavor -- the creation of commercial software -- and against a class of individuals -- the people who write that software."
Regarding your first point, the OSD reads, "The license must not discriminate against any person or group of persons." Any person or company can make use of GPL'ed software according to the terms of the GPL. In that way, it's completely non-discriminatory. You're complaining that the GPL doesn't allow commercial software creators to use the code in any way they see fit, which is a misinterpretation of the real intent.
Now, if the license expressly stated, "Microsoft cannot use this code for any purpose," or "This code may only be used by the Church of Scientology," then such a license would fail to meet the OSD.
On the second point, the OSD reads, "The license must not restrict anyone from making use of the program in a specific field of endeavor. For example, it may not restrict the program from being used in a business, or from being used for genetic research." Again, you misinterpret the OSD. For one thing, the restriction is talking about "making use of a program," not redistributing a program. Which means that Adobe could run their development on CVS and GCC, but couldn't sell their own versions without complying with the GPL. For another thing, in order to bring the GPL into compliance with your interpretation of the OSD, they would have to be granted special exemptions.
IOW, proprietary software developers aren't being being discriminated against.
"What is up with OS projects being totally unwilling to actually go up in versions?"
To paraphrase ESR's observations: A commercial 1.0 release means, "Hey, we slapped something together and we'd like you to send us some money." With an open source project, a 1.0 means "We're staking our professional reputations on the quality of this software."
In the same way, proprietary software is more likely to ratchet up a release number for marketing reasons (as in, "We added a few new features and reorganized the drop-down menus, now give us more money.") An open source project might also iterate to drum up interest, but more likely it's for technical reasons such as API or file format changes, or major new features.
I noticed that I did get some burn-in on an older monitor from the SETI screensaver. It wasn't too noticeable; I had to load a pure white background before it was obvious.
Now I've switched over to the command line, and I'm doubleplus happy.
Note: info taken from a class I once took. Use at your own risk.
One of the obnoxious requirements placed on Superfund sites is that the pollution cannot simply be contained. The entire site has to be made as clean as it was prior to contamination. This is hideously expensive, and sometimes wasteful. But the upshot is that they wouldn't have started construction, the old pollution is probably gone.
You can get more information about the Superfund project, and possibly even the site you're interested in here.
Slashdot Mirror
I'm not a GPL expert, but it seems that, if you're doing some modifications on behalf of some company, and that code stays within the company, then there's no GPL violation. The problem would come if you kept ownership of those modifications, and tried to sell them to multiple companies.
Even in that instance, you're only obligated to release the modified source to the organizations that actually receive the software, not necessarily to the community at large. Of course, you wouldn't be able to stop your customers from redistributing the modifications. That's just the nature of the GPL.
The "ransom" system could work in several different ways, depending on the conditions of the pre-GPL terms and restrictions. You might still have access to the source code for the purpose of making compatible products, or they might ask for support solely on the strength of the finished product. So, in some cases at least, I doubt the coders would turn up their noses at good patches.
Not off-topic. Please bear with me.
:)
I remember during a telethon by a local radio station, they had a very successful bit called "Give Us Money or We Play the Carpenters." If I remember the exact rules, they had a certain number of Carpenters songs they intended to play (30-ish), and people could call in and buy up a song, keeping it from being played. It was working wonderfully until a small but vocal group of Carpenter fans started giving them money to play more songs.
Why not something along that line? You could implement a ransom system where the code is set to be released at a given date, but people could give money to shorten that date. Until the GPL does kick in, the goal is to make the code useful enough that people want to support it.
But I do see your point. If someone tries to do this, and then starts messing with the conditions of the agreement, or started getting money based on some feature he's promising to implement at some unspecified future date, the whole model would become suspect.
Interesting. If the CDs will still play in regular CD players, then the actual music is still on the CDs in an unencrypted format. Shouldn't CD-ROM manufacturers just be able to update the device drivers so that their drives don't choke on whatever copy protection is at the beginning of the CD?
I've also heard rumors that very old (1x and 2x) CD-ROMs just ignore the stuff that's supposed to trip them up, and play "protected CDs" just fine. Can anyone here confirm that?
If something breaks, and you're letting the kids try and fix it, you're asking for trouble no matter what operating system you're running. This goes double for some of the teachers.
From the article: "Same goes for Israel or Iran, according to a National Geographic study that finds there has been little to no improvement in students' knowledge of geography since 1988."
What a laughable article. I find it very difficult to believe that these children have been in school since 1988 and learned nothing. Who is this "National Geographic" group, and why are they gathering information about our children?
Web browsers? For 95% of what 95% of people do, there's no difference. Type the URL in the address bar, click on the links, and hit the Forward/Back buttons. Anyone who is kind of familiar with IE will understand Mozilla pretty well.
Word processors? OpenOffice behaves much like MS Office. There are quirks, of course. But to say that someone who has been using OO will be "unable to compete" with all those knowledgable Office users, or that an OO kid will fall on her face when presented with Office, is absolutely silly.
We can also claim to be effectively at parity regarding mail clients (Outlook/Evolution) and desktops, if you take it to mean that a person using one would have a pretty good idea what to do with the other.
You could argue that, when you get into the power user range, there's a lot of knowledge that just doesn't flow freely between the proprietary and open software worlds. So what? Teaching such skills to anyone prior to the 9th grade is a waste of time anyways.
My firm opinion is that teaching computer skills to youngsters (excluding strong typing skills and a few "this is what the mouse does" basics) is a horribly ineffective proposition. For example, for the cost of about twenty middle-of-the-line computers, you could fully fund a music program. The only difference is, half of the instruments will still be usable in five years.
I've also got strong reservations about most of what passes for "education software" these days. Aside from mostly being poorly conceived, poorly written, and badly matched to the end-user's skill level, when a kid is playing on it he's not getting the human interaction that should be a vital part of his education.
Agreed. Indoctrinating kids to any particular agenda is bad. But we do it all the time. If we provide a "Windows only" school, we're promoting a Microsoftian agenda. If Coca-Cola or Nike pays to place banners around the school, we're promoting their agenda. If we teach evolution in schools (or refuse to), we're promoting the agenda of one entity or another.
In the case of computer software, it shouldn't be about teaching "computer skills" which most adults could pick up in a one week crash course. At best, we should be looking at ways to use technology to aid learning about other subjects. We should also be open to the possibility that the technology is actually interfering with education. More below.
My response: Teach neither. Get technology out of the classroom.
The year I got to Junior High (1989) was the first year the "Channel One" fiasco started. Our already terminal attention spans were ratcheted down a couple more notches by all the fast, pretty pictures, vacuous (but good looking) "reporters," and manipulative commercials. Plus, thanks to the suddenly ubiquitous classroom televisions, it became much easier for teachers to integrate "multimedia" into the curriculum. Trust me, for every hour I spent in high school watching something intellectually mind-blowing, there were a good three or four hours of questionable videos.
Oh, and don't even start me on the number of hours I spent cooling my heels while the teacher tried to figure out what was wrong with the blasted equipment. I remember a geometry class (the hour before mine) where the teacher spent literally a third of her time fussing with cranky "telecourse" equipment. She didn't have the choice not to, because she was responsible for teaching a group of twelve kids located a hundred miles away.
In order for technology to be useful in the classroom, it has to be reliable and intuitive enough that it practically blends into the background. It also has to be cheap enough that we're not dipping into other, more important resources in order to obtain it. At the moment, many of the things people are trying to do in the education field are too intrusive and too expensive to be justified.
Okay, I'm probably being too harsh on many points. But thanks for letting me rant.
The solution? Slashdot-style moderation! frist t00nz! 1 r0xx04z!! Of course, some would try to artificially inflate their ranking by singing songs about how evil Microsoft is, but otherwise I think it would be a solid system.
It could also be done Amazon-style: People who bought Unholy Stilt's "Death to Everybody" also bought Family Values' "A 6-year old Sings 'It's a Small World'."
Finally, I've never been led astray by musical suggestions proffered over IRC.
I don't know. If they were to sell my driving habits to advertisers, so that billboards posted along my route to and from work were specifically tailored to products and services that I was interested in. . .
Somebody slap me? Please?
In fact, they should probably precede every story with a brief explanation of how the story will probably lead to our eventual extinction or enslavement by aliens. As in "Mozilla 1.2 has just been released. Unconfirmed rumors report that it has achieved sentience, and is trying to take control of America's nuclear arsenal."
Slashdot just hasn't been reactionary enough for my tastes lately.
http://www.despair.com/demotivators/incompetence.h tml
Note: I am not an employee of Despair.com, just another suicidal customer.
I think I speak for all Utahns when I say, "We don't want your shrimp and crawfish!" If we ever discover an enormous wave of Louisiana shrimp and crawfish marching towards our borders, me and my fellow Utahns will almost certainly rush out and whack them with baseball bats.
Yes, folks. There will be a display of Utahn solidarity and civic-mindedness not seen since the floods of '83, or the giant brine shrimp attack of '78. Back to the depths with ye foul creatures! Back, I say!
Hmm. . . as long as they've blasphemously decided to support the BLINK tag, they might to pretty it up a little. For example, having it slowly fade in and out.
Then again, since the entire purpose of the blink tag is to distract you away from everything else on the page, this would be castrating its "usefulness."
Why should they be learning vi? Emacs is a far superior editor! :: ducks and runs like hell ::
Ignore the flame-war starter; I agree with your point. Microsoft is pretty much everywhere. The alternatives are either to take advantage of all that Microsoft has taught people about what constitutes "intuitive operation" and duplicate it, or fight a futile battle trying to convince end users that "Ctrl-k Ctrl-y" is more intuitive than "Ctrl-x Ctrl-v". [*]
Sure, we can have a dozen different GUI/desktop managers, but if we don't have at least one which is slick, polished, and unabashedly Microsoftish, we lose the battle of networking effects.
* And for me, it's getting to the point where it is.
Student software isn't real software. Sure, it may suffice for most student uses. But the licensing restrictions mean that once you get out into the real world and want to compile a commercial product, you have to either A) buy the same software all over again.
Also, there are hidden costs. Your school probably paid Microsoft an appreciable amount of cash for the right to sell their software so cheap. Cash which they took from you in the form of tuition.
Yes, there are legal ways to get all that software without paying full retail, and it's great that you could fulfill your needs cheaply and legally. But don't pretend that "certain people are able to get MS software at a steep discount" == "it is stupid to claim MS software is expensive". The point stands.
Honestly, though. I've done the rebate thing six or seven times, for a grand total of one lousy $20 check. I can't be alone in this.
Obligatory Simpson's quote:
"AAAGH! My retirement grease!" --Groundskeeper Willie
In "Code and Other Laws of Cyberspace," Lessig talks about how the architecture of the 'Net used to enable the blind, deaf, ugly, and quadrapedal*. Everyone had to deal with the same narrow-band stream of text.
Now we've got things like videoconferencing, voice chat, the ability to swap pictures of--presumably--yourself, and it's making the Internet more like the regular world. Lessig, however, didn't make any strong value judgments about the change, simply using the fact to illustrate that changes in code can alter how the online world is experienced.
Then again, following the links you provided, you may just be a bit weird in the head. Not that there's anything wrong with that.
* [read: "On the Internet, nobody knows you're a dog.]
"Rent a couple of DVDs. .
By the way, to close out the account, log into PayPal, go to "My Account", then to "Profile", then click on "Close account." You'll be asked to confirm your credit card number, but other than that, there's no hassle.
Sigh. . . Slashdot says "Blender needs money!" So I open a PayPal account. Slashdot says, "PayPal is evil!" So I close my PayPal account. I guess I'll be tuning in again tomorrow for further marching orders.
Regarding your first point, the OSD reads, "The license must not discriminate against any person or group of persons." Any person or company can make use of GPL'ed software according to the terms of the GPL. In that way, it's completely non-discriminatory. You're complaining that the GPL doesn't allow commercial software creators to use the code in any way they see fit, which is a misinterpretation of the real intent.
Now, if the license expressly stated, "Microsoft cannot use this code for any purpose," or "This code may only be used by the Church of Scientology," then such a license would fail to meet the OSD.
On the second point, the OSD reads, "The license must not restrict anyone from making use of the program in a specific field of endeavor. For example, it may not restrict the program from being used in a business, or from being used for genetic research." Again, you misinterpret the OSD. For one thing, the restriction is talking about "making use of a program," not redistributing a program. Which means that Adobe could run their development on CVS and GCC, but couldn't sell their own versions without complying with the GPL. For another thing, in order to bring the GPL into compliance with your interpretation of the OSD, they would have to be granted special exemptions.
IOW, proprietary software developers aren't being being discriminated against.
In the same way, proprietary software is more likely to ratchet up a release number for marketing reasons (as in, "We added a few new features and reorganized the drop-down menus, now give us more money.") An open source project might also iterate to drum up interest, but more likely it's for technical reasons such as API or file format changes, or major new features.
I noticed that I did get some burn-in on an older monitor from the SETI screensaver. It wasn't too noticeable; I had to load a pure white background before it was obvious.
Now I've switched over to the command line, and I'm doubleplus happy.
I've heard that the book is a great deal better than the movie. Personally, I've yet to experience either, so YMMV.
Note: info taken from a class I once took. Use at your own risk.
One of the obnoxious requirements placed on Superfund sites is that the pollution cannot simply be contained. The entire site has to be made as clean as it was prior to contamination. This is hideously expensive, and sometimes wasteful. But the upshot is that they wouldn't have started construction, the old pollution is probably gone.
You can get more information about the Superfund project, and possibly even the site you're interested in here.