"If your code is a derivative of GPLed code, then the derivative is under the GPL, regardless of any other agreements.
OK, but any work he added isn't"
This makes no sense at all. The work he added IS inherently derivative of the GPL when he starts with GPL code. That's what derivative means.
The whole meaning of the GPL goes out the window if you can grab a bunch of GPL code, use it as a starting point for new code and then pull out the new code and claim it is not a derivative.
If you are extending, expanding on or improving GPL code by writing new code then everything you write is covered by the GPL.
I'm sure you're right. Our beloved Patent Office is granting patents that are broad beyond rational belief.
My guess is that I'm infringing somebody's patent when I open my browser, another when I load slashdot and a third when I post this reply.
I have no doubt that the Linux kernel infringes on dozens or hundreds of patents as granted. They may ultimately found invalid but the cost of litigation would be tens of millions of dollars.
Our patent system is constructed to benefit big corporations and patent lawyers so, in truth, Linux continues to exist only at the mercy of any big corporation that holds a portfolio of thousands of software patents.
Nope. The music industry is not just a supplier. They are a cartel that has a legal lock on an entire segment of our culture.
They will charge Walmart the same as the other download services because they just don't care. If they drive customers away from downloads and back to physical media it doesn't matter. They own that too.
No, the point he is trying to make is that most voters don't even bother to sniff them and figure out which smells the least bad. Instead they just watch the propaganda campaigns on TV and then vote with their "feelings".
If the american voter bothered to sniff and think I'd still have some hope for this country.
Most Americans are no longer able to distinguish a Presidential campaign from the latest episode of American Idol. Watch TV and vote for who you like: that's all there is to it.
forfeiture and destruction of infringing copies and all equipment used to manufacture infringing
Many of these laws were written to deal with large scale commercial counterfeiters. But now they are being used to hammer individuals.
In the same way conspiracy laws were written to deal with the mafia and organized mobsters. But now conspiracy charges are commonly added in to vast numbers of simple criminal cases.
As individual americans we no longer have any real access to the courts. Deep pocket corporations and zealous prosecutors can slam us with very onerous laws and we have little defense unless wealthy.
I disagree. I don't think it's reasonable for the BSA to lobby for certain laws. In fact, I don't think that groups like the BSA and the RIAA shoud ever exist.
They are monopolistic by nature. Capitalism is predicated on competition. If every major company in a given industry gets together and forms an organization like the BSA and then the that organization lobbies for all those companies it effectively creates a trade cartel.
This is another example of how we no longer have anything resembling an open capitalist economy. It's decayed into an oligarchic form of crony capatalism. All the chummy companies get together and form the chummy trade group which then lobbies the appropriately chummy committee of congress where someday the chummy congress scumbags hope to get rich in the chummy industry that they supposedly regulate.
Under this system if you aren't one of the chummy in-crowd (meaning all of us) you are screwed.
This was inevitable. In our society money brings power. And the forces opposed to file sharing have vast sums of money hence they have vast political and legal power.
Also the RIAA and MPAA are learning. They are focusing more widely. Bittorrent slipped threough the cracks for awhile. Next they are likely to go after the alt.binaries newsgroups.
Those of us who want to want to share entertainment and culture will continue to lose every battle until basic laws are rewritten. And I don't know what kind of societal meltdown will have to take place before power is redistributed and we see these laws rewritten.
The most frightening thing about all this is that almost all of the politicians who passed this law just got reelected.
Americans have surrendered their freedoms without so much as a whimper. Try explaining the realities of the "Patriot Act" to people. Only one in ten would be willing to listen for more than 2 minutes. And only about half or less of those would really care.
By the same logic the old men who rule China have a "right" to only allow their people a highly censored view of the outside world. Hey, they own the power so they can do what they want, right?
But I don't think that is how we want to view public media in this country. Businesses do not have complete freedom to censor and exclude simply because they own the media. We knew that Google manipulated their index in order to make money but it's a very different if they doing it to forward a certain political viewpoint.
For Google to censor something as important as this is truely abhorrent. If we can't trust that a Google search will be free of a political agenda then it's worthless.
It's not so simple. At one time in this country we believed that everybody had the right to a fair trial when sued.
But a fair trial is impossible for the average joe when sued by a trade group representing huge corporations. The mere act of defending himself in court will cost tens or hundreds of thousands of dollars, lost wages and possible bankruptcy.
When corporations can easily sue individuals it's simply a form of coercion. The individual does not have the resources to defend himself.
I fear that our legal system has gradually morphed into an twisted perversion of what it once was. It exists in a form now that only serves the needs of the corporations, the lawyers and the rich.
Once again Sony blasts away at both feet with the MiniDisc. Only plays Atrac files and is larded up with all the painful DRM features that Sony The Big Media Company forces on Sony the Would Be Innovative Hardware Company.
The only way to get your MP3 files onto a MD is to play them in realtime and feed the output through a lossy conversion program. Great!
I was all ready to buy a MD after reading the hardware specs. But one look at all the software and DRM crap turned me off forever.
"but I've seen many a scientific article that have linked this more closely with nutrition being improved over the years"
What?!? Many a scientific article? Could you reference a couple please.
I thought it was pretty much accepted that early developement in girls is linked to estrogen mimics in the diet and the environment, not only hormones in food but things like PCBs breaking down.
Besides, in this day and age of fast food on every corner, kids are certainly not eating as much nutritious food as they did 20 or 30 years ago.
In the last couple of months I've seen four or five computers that were rendered completely useless by spyware. The owners literally could not open their browser and get on the web.
Many of the newer programs should not really be called "spyware". They are really a form of hijack-ware. They seize control of a users browser and send up an endless stream of ads.
And no, the average user will never be able to cope with this. Most people just want to buy a computer and use it. They are no more interested in learning how to maintain a computer than they are in learning auto maintenance. It's up to the computer industry to deliver usable products to the end user.
Yes, this guy gets it! Society is facing structural changes in the nature of work unlike any seen since the beginning of the industrial age.
Back in the 50's and 60's the popular press was filled with stories predicting a future when automation would mean we could all work 25 or 30 hour weeks and still live the good life. The accepted presumption was that the wealth of society would be shared.
But under our current system of unrestrained capitalism business has found it more profitable to fire a quarter of the workforce, move a quarter of the jobs overseas and crack the whip on the remaining few workers forcing them to work massive hours for stagnant pay.
Eventually something has to give. The trouble is that Joe Pickup and Mommy Minivan still buy into the illusion of upward mobility even as their finances crumble around them and decent work disappears.
Maybe when the 30 million Walmart and Fast Food jobs get turned over to Service Robots people will wake up and start to wonder how we are going to provide the chance at a decent life to all the members of our society.
"Buy a new Toyota [or other quality car], built by a robot. Drive it for 7-8 years, change the oil, change the tires once."
Agreed! And be SURE it's a made in Japan Toyota or Honda.
For example the Toyota Matrix is made exclusively here in the USA on an assembly line that also makes the Pontiac Vibe. Avoid this one.
Instead buy a made in Japan Rav4 or Highlander. Check with the dealer when you buy because some models are made in Japan as well as in other countries. But the Vehicle ID number (VIN) always indicates the country of origin.
This show us, once again, that Microsoft can and will buy whatever it wants. Sun now lives on the Redmond food chain. They toe the line or, in the end, they die.
There is only one way to survive against an entity that controls a bottomless pile of cash. That is to NOT be for sale. Any for-profit enterprise, like Sun, is for sale and the Gates machine can buy whatever it wants.
But Gates and his horde can't buy Linux; they can't buy Open Source, they can't buy Free Software. This scares them and, in that, lies our only hope.
Slashdot Mirror
Oh sure, and that's why Scalia loves to duck hunt with Dick Cheney but wouldn't be caught dead boating with John Kerry.
"If your code is a derivative of GPLed code, then the derivative is under the GPL, regardless of any other agreements.
OK, but any work he added isn't"
This makes no sense at all. The work he added IS inherently derivative of the GPL when he starts with GPL code. That's what derivative means.
The whole meaning of the GPL goes out the window if you can grab a bunch of GPL code, use it as a starting point for new code and then pull out the new code and claim it is not a derivative.
If you are extending, expanding on or improving GPL code by writing new code then everything you write is covered by the GPL.
I'm sure you're right. Our beloved Patent Office is granting patents that are broad beyond rational belief.
My guess is that I'm infringing somebody's patent when I open my browser, another when I load slashdot and a third when I post this reply.
I have no doubt that the Linux kernel infringes on dozens or hundreds of patents as granted. They may ultimately found invalid but the cost of litigation would be tens of millions of dollars.
Our patent system is constructed to benefit big corporations and patent lawyers so, in truth, Linux continues to exist only at the mercy of any big corporation that holds a portfolio of thousands of software patents.
Nope. The music industry is not just a supplier. They are a cartel that has a legal lock on an entire segment of our culture.
They will charge Walmart the same as the other download services because they just don't care. If they drive customers away from downloads and back to physical media it doesn't matter. They own that too.
This is America, fool. Nuttin in "definately" legal.
Something looks legal and you have the dough you can take it to court tomorrow or buy new laws.
No, the point he is trying to make is that most voters don't even bother to sniff them and figure out which smells the least bad. Instead they just watch the propaganda campaigns on TV and then vote with their "feelings".
If the american voter bothered to sniff and think I'd still have some hope for this country.
Most Americans are no longer able to distinguish a Presidential campaign from the latest episode of American Idol. Watch TV and vote for who you like: that's all there is to it.
...complete and absolute corporate control over a nation's legal framework.
If he rants in protest and the issue gets more play in the press he is hardly likely to be hired by any other big tech company.
forfeiture and destruction of infringing copies and all equipment used to manufacture infringing
Many of these laws were written to deal with large scale commercial counterfeiters. But now they are being used to hammer individuals.
In the same way conspiracy laws were written to deal with the mafia and organized mobsters. But now conspiracy charges are commonly added in to vast numbers of simple criminal cases.
As individual americans we no longer have any real access to the courts. Deep pocket corporations and zealous prosecutors can slam us with very onerous laws and we have little defense unless wealthy.
You would be guilty of Unlicensed Contributory Growth.
I disagree. I don't think it's reasonable for the BSA to lobby for certain laws. In fact, I don't think that groups like the BSA and the RIAA shoud ever exist.
They are monopolistic by nature. Capitalism is predicated on competition. If every major company in a given industry gets together and forms an organization like the BSA and then the that organization lobbies for all those companies it effectively creates a trade cartel.
This is another example of how we no longer have anything resembling an open capitalist economy. It's decayed into an oligarchic form of crony capatalism. All the chummy companies get together and form the chummy trade group which then lobbies the appropriately chummy committee of congress where someday the chummy congress scumbags hope to get rich in the chummy industry that they supposedly regulate.
Under this system if you aren't one of the chummy in-crowd (meaning all of us) you are screwed.
This was inevitable. In our society money brings power. And the forces opposed to file sharing have vast sums of money hence they have vast political and legal power.
Also the RIAA and MPAA are learning. They are focusing more widely. Bittorrent slipped threough the cracks for awhile. Next they are likely to go after the alt.binaries newsgroups.
Those of us who want to want to share entertainment and culture will continue to lose every battle until basic laws are rewritten. And I don't know what kind of societal meltdown will have to take place before power is redistributed and we see these laws rewritten.
So you think the random muttering of minimum wage sales dorks constitutes acceptable legal advice concerning the EULA?
The most frightening thing about all this is that almost all of the politicians who passed this law just got reelected.
Americans have surrendered their freedoms without so much as a whimper. Try explaining the realities of the "Patriot Act" to people. Only one in ten would be willing to listen for more than 2 minutes. And only about half or less of those would really care.
By the same logic the old men who rule China have a "right" to only allow their people a highly censored view of the outside world. Hey, they own the power so they can do what they want, right?
But I don't think that is how we want to view public media in this country. Businesses do not have complete freedom to censor and exclude simply because they own the media. We knew that Google manipulated their index in order to make money but it's a very different if they doing it to forward a certain political viewpoint.
For Google to censor something as important as this is truely abhorrent. If we can't trust that a Google search will be free of a political agenda then it's worthless.
It's not so simple. At one time in this country we believed that everybody had the right to a fair trial when sued.
But a fair trial is impossible for the average joe when sued by a trade group representing huge corporations. The mere act of defending himself in court will cost tens or hundreds of thousands of dollars, lost wages and possible bankruptcy.
When corporations can easily sue individuals it's simply a form of coercion. The individual does not have the resources to defend himself.
I fear that our legal system has gradually morphed into an twisted perversion of what it once was. It exists in a form now that only serves the needs of the corporations, the lawyers and the rich.
Once again Sony blasts away at both feet with the MiniDisc. Only plays Atrac files and is larded up with all the painful DRM features that Sony The Big Media Company forces on Sony the Would Be Innovative Hardware Company.
The only way to get your MP3 files onto a MD is to play them in realtime and feed the output through a lossy conversion program. Great!
I was all ready to buy a MD after reading the hardware specs. But one look at all the software and DRM crap turned me off forever.
"but I've seen many a scientific article that have linked this more closely with nutrition being improved over the years"
What?!? Many a scientific article? Could you reference a couple please.
I thought it was pretty much accepted that early developement in girls is linked to estrogen mimics in the diet and the environment, not only hormones in food but things like PCBs breaking down.
Besides, in this day and age of fast food on every corner, kids are certainly not eating as much nutritious food as they did 20 or 30 years ago.
In the last couple of months I've seen four or five computers that were rendered completely useless by spyware. The owners literally could not open their browser and get on the web.
Many of the newer programs should not really be called "spyware". They are really a form of hijack-ware. They seize control of a users browser and send up an endless stream of ads.
And no, the average user will never be able to cope with this. Most people just want to buy a computer and use it. They are no more interested in learning how to maintain a computer than they are in learning auto maintenance. It's up to the computer industry to deliver usable products to the end user.
Yes, this guy gets it! Society is facing structural changes in the nature of work unlike any seen since the beginning of the industrial age.
Back in the 50's and 60's the popular press was filled with stories predicting a future when automation would mean we could all work 25 or 30 hour weeks and still live the good life. The accepted presumption was that the wealth of society would be shared.
But under our current system of unrestrained capitalism business has found it more profitable to fire a quarter of the workforce, move a quarter of the jobs overseas and crack the whip on the remaining few workers forcing them to work massive hours for stagnant pay.
Eventually something has to give. The trouble is that Joe Pickup and Mommy Minivan still buy into the illusion of upward mobility even as their finances crumble around them and decent work disappears.
Maybe when the 30 million Walmart and Fast Food jobs get turned over to Service Robots people will wake up and start to wonder how we are going to provide the chance at a decent life to all the members of our society.
"Buy a new Toyota [or other quality car], built by a robot. Drive it for 7-8 years, change the oil, change the tires once."
Agreed! And be SURE it's a made in Japan Toyota or Honda.
For example the Toyota Matrix is made exclusively here in the USA on an assembly line that also makes the Pontiac Vibe. Avoid this one.
Instead buy a made in Japan Rav4 or Highlander. Check with the dealer when you buy because some models are made in Japan as well as in other countries. But the Vehicle ID number (VIN) always indicates the country of origin.
"4. IBM will win."
Oh sure, just like they won with OS2!
If sun focuses on .Net what incentive do they have to open source java?
.net and start charging hefty license fees for any use of java.
Even if they no longer care about java they gain nothing by releasing it. This is especially true now that they eat ms brand puppy-chow.
Perhaps sun will decide it make the best business sense to focus on
This show us, once again, that Microsoft can and will buy whatever it wants. Sun now lives on the Redmond food chain. They toe the line or, in the end, they die.
There is only one way to survive against an entity that controls a bottomless pile of cash. That is to NOT be for sale. Any for-profit enterprise, like Sun, is for sale and the Gates machine can buy whatever it wants.
But Gates and his horde can't buy Linux; they can't buy Open Source, they can't buy Free Software. This scares them and, in that, lies our only hope.