This model only works if there is no competition in your tiny market niche. In a small enough market niche, there may be none, and you may continue to charge a premium for GPL software.
However, once the market is large enough, competitors will move in to do exactly what you are doing - charging for GPL software. The price competition will drive the price down to just a hair above the cost of efficient CD duplication and distribution (or on-line distribution if that's the route your competitors take).
You can't charge a premium for free software in a large market. Price competition will guarantee that.
If you can do that then you must have a pretty discerning palate. To be able to not only sense each ingredient but to determine the measurement of it would outdo the greatest of gourmands.
In fact, this is exactly how chefs copy or do variations on each-other's recipes. Once one knows the basics of cuisine, it is a fairly straightforward matter to taste a dish and be able to discern that "oh, yes, this is a gazpacho, but with yellow pear tomatoes, cucumber, light on the garlic, and lots of extra virgin olive oil..." etc., etc.
Reverse engineering has been going on for centuries. It wasn't invented by clean room programmers.
BTW, a gourmand is someone who like to eat. A gourmet is someone who is very knowledgeable about food and has very refined tastes. Great gourmets can indeed give a fair approximation of the actual recipe just by tasting the dish. The rest is worked out by trial and error in test kitchens.
But Sowell isn't asking you to sacrifice control of advanced features (did you read the article?). He is asking that one not be required to deal with advanced features in order to get basic functionality.
It should be possible for 90% of users, who do the one or two things that users do 90% of the time, to achieve this with one or two clicks, or by simply launching the program. This overwhelming majority of users and usages should not require dealing with the interface to more advanced and/or much more rarely used features.
Nice try, but Coca Cola Classic (as well as most sodas) are made with "sugar and/or corn sweeteners." This means that the manufacturers use a pretty common linear programming technique to determine what ratio of the two different sweeteners to use in production on any given day based on commodities futures markets (remember, these guys actually take delivery of the futures contracts they buy), and transport costs.
Just because corn sweeteners are cheaper today, doesn't mean that Coca Cola won't be able to buy a vast quantity of sugar at an even lower price due to commodities futures market fluctuations. They leave the door open by printing their labels with the "and/or" bit.
BTW, did you know that Hershey uses so much sugar and cocoa that they have their own commodities futures trading room in house that specializes in these contracts?
1. If I give you the right to use, modify, and redistribute my code, I do not thereby lose the right to use, modify, and redistribute my code. This is not true of ice cream, as you pointed out, one of the many ways in which ice cream is a really bad analogy for software.
2. Without applying any license whatsoever, any code I write is protected under the Berne Convention and local copyright laws (in my case, U.S.). These copyright laws give you no rights to copy, modify or redistribute my code, with the very narrow exception of fair use - you may quote very limited portions in a review, critique, or scholarly article.
3. The GPL gives, in addition, further rights, to copy, modify and redistribute my code (if I license it under the GPL). The GPL places some restrictions only on these further rights . The GPL does not place any restriction on any rights you already have under copyright law. For example, the GPL does not place any restrictions on your existing fair use rights. I defy you to find any restriction in the GPL on rights you already have under copyright law . Good luck; you won't find any.
4. Conclusion: You have a profound misunderstanding of what rights you have to the use of my copyrighted work . You don't have the right to copy it in whole. You may only copy very small portions, and then only for the purpose of review, critique, teaching, or scholarly debate. You do not have the right to use my copyrighted work without my express permission, usually for a fee, which I, not you, determine. You do not have the right to redistribute my work. The GPL grants you these additional rights, but places some restrictions on only these additional rights. The GPL places no restrictions whatsoever on any rights you already have under copyright law without the GPL.
sudo rm suffices to wipe *any* file or directory on Mac OS X. The root account does *not* need to be activated.
If you doubt this, just try this from a terminal launched from any admin account:
1. back up some file owned by root, for example:
sudo cp/etc/bashrc/etc/bash.rc
sudo rm/etc/bashrc
It works, and root's file is *gone*.
(restore bashrc by doing: sudo mv/etc/bash.rc/etc/bashrc)
Needless to say, the recursive version, with warnings disabled, executed from the root of the filesystem, would wipe the entire disk, and all mounted drives (with the exception of read only media, of course).
Once an admin user gives a trojan horse his/her admin password, that trojan can do anything it wants to the file system, regardless of permissions.
No, isolation would not mean no warfare. It is perfectly possible for inhabitants of an island nation to have wars among themselves. Look at Easter Island. It's pretty clear that internal strife marked the end of their high culture.
Yes, let's be careful not to offend the sensibilities of my AC parent and be sure to refer to copyright violation as "copyright violation" not "stealing music."
I, for one, faced with the alternatives: "piracy" "stealing music" "copyright violation" will continue to use "stealing music" in ordinary conversation and writing.
Get over yourself. If you commit copyright violation by taking another person's copyrighted music, copying it without authorization, and redistributing it, you are taking some sales away from them. Maybe not everyone who downloads the file would have paid for it, but certainly some would have. Sales are money, so you are depriving them of some income. How is this morally different from letting your friends in the back door of a club that has a cover charge? Yes, not all would have paid to get in otherwise, but some would have. In this case, (the club) it is "theft of services." In the case of music copying it is "copyright violation." They are both forms of "stealing."
Depriving a work's rightful owner of income generated by that work by giving away copies of that work without permission. Sure sounds like stealing to me, and to most honest people.
By that tinfoil-hat-wearing theory, MS should have stopped propping up Apple, since MS have been found to be a monopoly by Federal courts, a finding of law which has survived even US Supreme Court review.
No going back now. Under US law, MS _is_ a monopoly. Any "beard" utility of Apple is now gone. So explain to us again why MS would want to maintain a viable alternative OS/hardware-platform choice?
Be sure to don your protective headgear before replying.
Not quite. The reason this is more likely to spread is that the app launches iTunes and tells it to play something, so, to the naive user who hasn't checked Get Info on the file, will continue to think it that is a harmless.mp3.
In other words, it will go undetected while it does its writers malicious bidding, because it looks and _acts_ like an.mp3 file - it actually plays sound in iTunes.
It falls down because: 1. It doesn't play anything in the Finder's Preview Pane. 2. It shows up as type Application in both Get Info, and the Finder's Preview Pane.
You must not have tried very hard to solve your problem - there are, and were, many utilities to change file type and/or creator for Classic Mac OS files. A search under the Classic Mac OS section of versiontracker for "file type" yields 38 matches, 30 of which could be used to solve your problem. Even a decade ago, there were a number of utilities easily and freely available from BBSes, and MUGs to edit file type/creator codes for Mac OS 7 (and later, 8 and 9 of course). Every Mac geek worth anything had a copy of ResEdit, which could accomplish this repair, and much else besides.
The "underlying structure" is one where naive users can't accidentally screw themselves by simply renaming a file, and omitting the extension. The trojan this article is about exploits precisely this vulnerability of file systems without metadata.
Metadata is a good thing. It prevents precisely this sort of social engineering, because executables cannot masquerade as data files. Naive users are unable to break this file mapping, since merely renaming the file won't do the trick. Geeks are still free to modify the metadata when needed. I'm surprised that someone on slashdot would advertise his inability to use a simple GUI utility to modify the type/creator code metadata of a Mac file.
Their study specifically excluded email client and web browser vulnerabilities, the principal vectors of Windows viruses, worms and trojans. No wonder they found Windows to be "more secure" than Linux - their study left out most of the Windows security problems.
The firm doing the study are known bozos - they pretty much predicted armageddon on 1/1/2000, and still have much egg on their face from that. They also stretched the truth about their experience and expertise in the computer security field - they were doing something quite different for the first several years of the company's existence, but their press claims security expertise for the whole time.
An AC citing a "study" known to be flawed, designed to gain free press for the flawed company conducting it should not be trusted.
If it were put into the public domain, then third parties from other countries could use the technology without paying any licensing fees. If the US government holds the patent, they can, at their discretion, license it free of cost to US governments agencies, and US nationals, but charge others a licensing fee. Moreover, if it is a strategically sensitive technology, the US government can deny licenses to companies or nationals of certain unfriendly countries. This would not be possible if said patent were put into the public domain. Would denying a license stop illicit use? No, but it would make doing business in the open impossible.
This way, taxpayers benefit from patents created on our dime, but we don't give away the fruits of our tax dollars to those who did not pay for them (i.e., everyone who is not a US taxpayer), and those who are actively hostile towards the US.
Here's how the current administration is relevant, for those who can't see politics at work. Since the scope of SCO's actions cross state lines, and even international boundaries, if anyone is going to crack down on them for fraud, it is going to have to be the DOJ.
Your parent's point is that the Bush/Ashcroft DOJ is not going to go after any corporation that attacks FOSS, because the current administration is ideologically opposed to organizations like the FSF. Given a choice between siding with the FSF and Linus Torvalds, or siding with a corporation with offices in Orin Hatch's home state, the DOJ is going to give SCO the benefit of the doubt, a benefit they do not deserve, given their outrageous claims. For a sanity check, realize that SCO have been enjoined from selling licences for *nix IP in Germany. German courts have no interest in proping up a dying Utah corporation, and see SCO's claims for the outright fraud that they are.
What your parent doesn't see, and what knee jerk right wing advocates also often miss, is that some of the biggest beneficiaries of FOSS are large corporations. It allows them to increase productivity and profits by cutting costs.
So, yes, your parent's analysis was simplistic, but don't put it past the current administration to do an equally simplistic analysis of the situation in determining its priorities for prosecuting fraud. The DOJ has not stepped in, and will not step in, because doing so would be siding with a smelly, bearded, leftist, communitarian (RMS), and against suit wearing, pro-capitalist, Utah businessmen (SCO). The fact that the businessmen are fraudsters, which should be the primary concern of the DOJ, is overridden by the politics.
Fortunately, the standards of scientific proof are somewhat more rigorous than "I would say...". The fact is that polygraphs are quite unreliable, and there exist no well controlled scientific experiments that prove their effectiveness. Mostly, the problem stems from the fact that you can't verify whether you've caught the liars in real world tests, where a career or prison time is on the line, because (no surprise) they aren't going to tell you when you've cleared them in error. This results in grossly underestimated rates of false negatives.
Moreover, the figures can't possibly include outright mistakes - people who really aren't lying, but whom later investigation fails to clear, for whatever reason (lack of evidence, etc.) This results in underestimated rates of false positives.
So when figures are thrown about, they only tell a story of some of the inaccuracies, the false positives that were detected - people who the polygrapher said were liars, but whom later investigation cleared. The accuracy figures quoted cannot possibly include the false negatives, people who really were lying, but who were cleared by the polygraphers, nor those false positives who were not cleared by later investigation. The obvious conclusion is that polygraph tests are even more unreliable than the already pathetic 83% quoted by the most optimistic authorities.
People, please realize that EZEZ is just shilling for SCO.
This is really interesting.
1. A newbie, EZEZ, comes from nowhere, posts an SCO press release and gets a +2 moderation. 2. Somebody points out that it's the 1st post ever by EZEZ and gets moderated down for pointing out the suspiciousness of EZEZ's posting history (none) and posting content (an SCO press release).
Nope. Try writing upside down for an extended period of time with an ordinary ball point or fountain pen, and see what hapens. (Spoiler: the ink will stop flowing after a time)
False parts: 1. The part about NASA spending millions of dollars to develop the Space Pen. NASA *didn't* develop it, a private company did.
2. The part about NASA wasting taxpayer dollars on the Space Pen. NASA didn't spend very much to acquire those that they did use from the manufacturer, so no waste of taxpayer dollars here.
3. The part about the Russians using pencils, but NASA only using an expensive Space Pen. NASA used pencils too, as well as inexpensive felt tip markers.
So, in short, pretty much all of the parts of the standard urban legend version of events are false.
There is a widespread misconception about the legal status and enforceability of the GPL. The *fact* of the matter is, that the GPL has been enforced *many* times, and the FSF has *always* won. The reason is quite simple.
In any copyright infringement case, the infringing party must either: a. Have a license, or, b. Not have a license, or, c. Not be infringing (i.e., the defendant's code is *not* copied from GPLed code, nor a derivative of GPLed code).
In the FSF's cases, the only possible license is the GPL. The defendant must either: a. Admit they were using GPL code without a license or, b. Admit that the license they used the code under is the GPL, or, c. Claim that their code is not copied from, nor derivative of, GPLed code.
The result of this enforcement strategy has been that the defendant *always* complies with the GPL. The alternative is to come into court and admit that you have been redistributing copyrighted material without a license! Courts frown on that mightily. So, *all* defendants have chosen compliance with the GPL.
Note that if the defendant claims c., that they are not infringing (i.e, they claim that their code does *not* contain any code licensed under the GPL, nor any derivative of code so licensed) then the GPL is *not* tested. This becomes a separate issue of fact (i.e., *is* the code in question actually copied from code licensed under the GPL, or is it not?), *not* a test of the GPL itself.
If KISS's code is copied from, or derivative of GPLed code, they are screwed, because they must either admit to redistributing someone else's copyrighted material without a license, or they must admit that the license they distributed the code under is the GPL. Ether way, they lose.
No. Here's why. If the reason ceases to exist, then the right goes away. The first amendment provides an absolute right of freedom of religion, speech, press, assembly, and right to petition congress.
The Second amendment can be read (and I believe, should be read) to provide a conditional right to keep and bear arms. That condition is, "A well regulated militia, being necessary to the security of a free state." If that condition ceases to exist, then the right is no longer relevant.
It can be argued that a "well regulated militia," far from being "necessary to the security of a free state" is at best irrelevant - no militia is going to have much to say in a real global throw down in this day and age. At worst, a militia is a threat to national security - as in militia members blowing up federal buildings, like Timothy McVeigh in Oklahoma City.
Apple does not "get it" WRT open source in anywhere near the same way that Red Hat and friends do.
Apple "gets it" much better than Red Hat and friends do. Apple "gets" that open source needs to be part of a profitable business plan if you are going to run a company based on it. Why do you think Red Hat is no longer maintaining a user distribution? Because you can't make any money by giving things away. You have to charge for something. Apple knows that they will only be able to charge for hardware if part of their software (the GUI parts and the iApps, etc.) is closed source. Otherwise, people would just download the source, compile it for x86, and Apple's hardware sales would go in the toilet.
Slashdot Mirror
This model only works if there is no competition in your tiny market niche. In a small enough market niche, there may be none, and you may continue to charge a premium for GPL software.
However, once the market is large enough, competitors will move in to do exactly what you are doing - charging for GPL software. The price competition will drive the price down to just a hair above the cost of efficient CD duplication and distribution (or on-line distribution if that's the route your competitors take).
You can't charge a premium for free software in a large market. Price competition will guarantee that.
If you can do that then you must have a pretty discerning palate. To be able to not only sense each ingredient but to determine the measurement of it would outdo the greatest of gourmands.
In fact, this is exactly how chefs copy or do variations on each-other's recipes. Once one knows the basics of cuisine, it is a fairly straightforward matter to taste a dish and be able to discern that "oh, yes, this is a gazpacho, but with yellow pear tomatoes, cucumber, light on the garlic, and lots of extra virgin olive oil..." etc., etc.
Reverse engineering has been going on for centuries. It wasn't invented by clean room programmers.
BTW, a gourmand is someone who like to eat. A gourmet is someone who is very knowledgeable about food and has very refined tastes. Great gourmets can indeed give a fair approximation of the actual recipe just by tasting the dish. The rest is worked out by trial and error in test kitchens.
But Sowell isn't asking you to sacrifice control of advanced features (did you read the article?). He is asking that one not be required to deal with advanced features in order to get basic functionality.
It should be possible for 90% of users, who do the one or two things that users do 90% of the time, to achieve this with one or two clicks, or by simply launching the program. This overwhelming majority of users and usages should not require dealing with the interface to more advanced and/or much more rarely used features.
Nice try, but Coca Cola Classic (as well as most sodas) are made with "sugar and/or corn sweeteners." This means that the manufacturers use a pretty common linear programming technique to determine what ratio of the two different sweeteners to use in production on any given day based on commodities futures markets (remember, these guys actually take delivery of the futures contracts they buy), and transport costs.
Just because corn sweeteners are cheaper today, doesn't mean that Coca Cola won't be able to buy a vast quantity of sugar at an even lower price due to commodities futures market fluctuations. They leave the door open by printing their labels with the "and/or" bit.
BTW, did you know that Hershey uses so much sugar and cocoa that they have their own commodities futures trading room in house that specializes in these contracts?
Software is not ice cream.
1. If I give you the right to use, modify, and redistribute my code, I do not thereby lose the right to use, modify, and redistribute my code. This is not true of ice cream, as you pointed out, one of the many ways in which ice cream is a really bad analogy for software.
2. Without applying any license whatsoever, any code I write is protected under the Berne Convention and local copyright laws (in my case, U.S.). These copyright laws give you no rights to copy, modify or redistribute my code, with the very narrow exception of fair use - you may quote very limited portions in a review, critique, or scholarly article.
3. The GPL gives, in addition, further rights, to copy, modify and redistribute my code (if I license it under the GPL). The GPL places some restrictions only on these further rights . The GPL does not place any restriction on any rights you already have under copyright law. For example, the GPL does not place any restrictions on your existing fair use rights. I defy you to find any restriction in the GPL on rights you already have under copyright law . Good luck; you won't find any.
4. Conclusion: You have a profound misunderstanding of what rights you have to the use of my copyrighted work . You don't have the right to copy it in whole. You may only copy very small portions, and then only for the purpose of review, critique, teaching, or scholarly debate. You do not have the right to use my copyrighted work without my express permission, usually for a fee, which I, not you, determine. You do not have the right to redistribute my work. The GPL grants you these additional rights, but places some restrictions on only these additional rights. The GPL places no restrictions whatsoever on any rights you already have under copyright law without the GPL.
sudo rm suffices to wipe *any* file or directory on Mac OS X. The root account does *not* need to be activated.
/etc/bashrc /etc/bash.rc
/etc/bashrc
/etc/bash.rc /etc/bashrc)
If you doubt this, just try this from a terminal launched from any admin account:
1. back up some file owned by root, for example:
sudo cp
sudo rm
It works, and root's file is *gone*.
(restore bashrc by doing:
sudo mv
Needless to say, the recursive version, with warnings disabled, executed from the root of the filesystem, would wipe the entire disk, and all mounted drives (with the exception of read only media, of course).
Once an admin user gives a trojan horse his/her admin password, that trojan can do anything it wants to the file system, regardless of permissions.
No, isolation would not mean no warfare. It is perfectly possible for inhabitants of an island nation to have wars among themselves. Look at Easter Island. It's pretty clear that internal strife marked the end of their high culture.
Yes, let's be careful not to offend the sensibilities of my AC parent and be sure to refer to copyright violation as "copyright violation" not "stealing music."
I, for one, faced with the alternatives:
"piracy"
"stealing music"
"copyright violation"
will continue to use "stealing music" in ordinary conversation and writing.
Get over yourself. If you commit copyright violation by taking another person's copyrighted music, copying it without authorization, and redistributing it, you are taking some sales away from them. Maybe not everyone who downloads the file would have paid for it, but certainly some would have. Sales are money, so you are depriving them of some income. How is this morally different from letting your friends in the back door of a club that has a cover charge? Yes, not all would have paid to get in otherwise, but some would have. In this case, (the club) it is "theft of services." In the case of music copying it is "copyright violation." They are both forms of "stealing."
Depriving a work's rightful owner of income generated by that work by giving away copies of that work without permission. Sure sounds like stealing to me, and to most honest people.
By that tinfoil-hat-wearing theory, MS should have stopped propping up Apple, since MS have been found to be a monopoly by Federal courts, a finding of law which has survived even US Supreme Court review.
No going back now. Under US law, MS _is_ a monopoly. Any "beard" utility of Apple is now gone. So explain to us again why MS would want to maintain a viable alternative OS/hardware-platform choice?
Be sure to don your protective headgear before replying.
Not quite. The reason this is more likely to spread is that the app launches iTunes and tells it to play something, so, to the naive user who hasn't checked Get Info on the file, will continue to think it that is a harmless .mp3.
.mp3 file - it actually plays sound in iTunes.
In other words, it will go undetected while it does its writers malicious bidding, because it looks and _acts_ like an
It falls down because:
1. It doesn't play anything in the Finder's Preview Pane.
2. It shows up as type Application in both Get Info, and the Finder's Preview Pane.
You must not have tried very hard to solve your problem - there are, and were, many utilities to change file type and/or creator for Classic Mac OS files. A search under the Classic Mac OS section of versiontracker for "file type" yields 38 matches, 30 of which could be used to solve your problem. Even a decade ago, there were a number of utilities easily and freely available from BBSes, and MUGs to edit file type/creator codes for Mac OS 7 (and later, 8 and 9 of course). Every Mac geek worth anything had a copy of ResEdit, which could accomplish this repair, and much else besides.
The "underlying structure" is one where naive users can't accidentally screw themselves by simply renaming a file, and omitting the extension. The trojan this article is about exploits precisely this vulnerability of file systems without metadata.
Metadata is a good thing. It prevents precisely this sort of social engineering, because executables cannot masquerade as data files. Naive users are unable to break this file mapping, since merely renaming the file won't do the trick. Geeks are still free to modify the metadata when needed. I'm surprised that someone on slashdot would advertise his inability to use a simple GUI utility to modify the type/creator code metadata of a Mac file.
Their study specifically excluded email client and web browser vulnerabilities, the principal vectors of Windows viruses, worms and trojans. No wonder they found Windows to be "more secure" than Linux - their study left out most of the Windows security problems.
The firm doing the study are known bozos - they pretty much predicted armageddon on 1/1/2000, and still have much egg on their face from that. They also stretched the truth about their experience and expertise in the computer security field - they were doing something quite different for the first several years of the company's existence, but their press claims security expertise for the whole time.
An AC citing a "study" known to be flawed, designed to gain free press for the flawed company conducting it should not be trusted.
If it were put into the public domain, then third parties from other countries could use the technology without paying any licensing fees. If the US government holds the patent, they can, at their discretion, license it free of cost to US governments agencies, and US nationals, but charge others a licensing fee. Moreover, if it is a strategically sensitive technology, the US government can deny licenses to companies or nationals of certain unfriendly countries. This would not be possible if said patent were put into the public domain. Would denying a license stop illicit use? No, but it would make doing business in the open impossible.
This way, taxpayers benefit from patents created on our dime, but we don't give away the fruits of our tax dollars to those who did not pay for them (i.e., everyone who is not a US taxpayer), and those who are actively hostile towards the US.
That would be vacuum space, not "airspace." There is no air between the atoms of a metal solid.
Here's how the current administration is relevant, for those who can't see politics at work. Since the scope of SCO's actions cross state lines, and even international boundaries, if anyone is going to crack down on them for fraud, it is going to have to be the DOJ.
Your parent's point is that the Bush/Ashcroft DOJ is not going to go after any corporation that attacks FOSS, because the current administration is ideologically opposed to organizations like the FSF. Given a choice between siding with the FSF and Linus Torvalds, or siding with a corporation with offices in Orin Hatch's home state, the DOJ is going to give SCO the benefit of the doubt, a benefit they do not deserve, given their outrageous claims. For a sanity check, realize that SCO have been enjoined from selling licences for *nix IP in Germany. German courts have no interest in proping up a dying Utah corporation, and see SCO's claims for the outright fraud that they are.
What your parent doesn't see, and what knee jerk right wing advocates also often miss, is that some of the biggest beneficiaries of FOSS are large corporations. It allows them to increase productivity and profits by cutting costs.
So, yes, your parent's analysis was simplistic, but don't put it past the current administration to do an equally simplistic analysis of the situation in determining its priorities for prosecuting fraud. The DOJ has not stepped in, and will not step in, because doing so would be siding with a smelly, bearded, leftist, communitarian (RMS), and against suit wearing, pro-capitalist, Utah businessmen (SCO). The fact that the businessmen are fraudsters, which should be the primary concern of the DOJ, is overridden by the politics.
Fortunately, the standards of scientific proof are somewhat more rigorous than "I would say...". The fact is that polygraphs are quite unreliable, and there exist no well controlled scientific experiments that prove their effectiveness. Mostly, the problem stems from the fact that you can't verify whether you've caught the liars in real world tests, where a career or prison time is on the line, because (no surprise) they aren't going to tell you when you've cleared them in error. This results in grossly underestimated rates of false negatives.
Moreover, the figures can't possibly include outright mistakes - people who really aren't lying, but whom later investigation fails to clear, for whatever reason (lack of evidence, etc.) This results in underestimated rates of false positives.
So when figures are thrown about, they only tell a story of some of the inaccuracies, the false positives that were detected - people who the polygrapher said were liars, but whom later investigation cleared. The accuracy figures quoted cannot possibly include the false negatives, people who really were lying, but who were cleared by the polygraphers, nor those false positives who were not cleared by later investigation. The obvious conclusion is that polygraph tests are even more unreliable than the already pathetic 83% quoted by the most optimistic authorities.
Not posting AC, so this may actually get read:
People, please realize that EZEZ is just shilling for SCO.
This is really interesting.
1. A newbie, EZEZ, comes from nowhere, posts an SCO press release and gets a +2 moderation.
2. Somebody points out that it's the 1st post ever by EZEZ and gets moderated down for pointing out the suspiciousness of EZEZ's posting history (none) and posting content (an SCO press release).
Nope. Try writing upside down for an extended period of time with an ordinary ball point or fountain pen, and see what hapens. (Spoiler: the ink will stop flowing after a time)
False parts:
1. The part about NASA spending millions of dollars to develop the Space Pen. NASA *didn't* develop it, a private company did.
2. The part about NASA wasting taxpayer dollars on the Space Pen. NASA didn't spend very much to acquire those that they did use from the manufacturer, so no waste of taxpayer dollars here.
3. The part about the Russians using pencils, but NASA only using an expensive Space Pen. NASA used pencils too, as well as inexpensive felt tip markers.
So, in short, pretty much all of the parts of the standard urban legend version of events are false.
There is a widespread misconception about the legal status and enforceability of the GPL. The *fact* of the matter is, that the GPL has been enforced *many* times, and the FSF has *always* won. The reason is quite simple.
In any copyright infringement case, the infringing party must either:
a. Have a license, or,
b. Not have a license, or,
c. Not be infringing (i.e., the defendant's code is *not* copied from GPLed code, nor a derivative of GPLed code).
In the FSF's cases, the only possible license is the GPL. The defendant must either:
a. Admit they were using GPL code without a license or,
b. Admit that the license they used the code under is the GPL, or,
c. Claim that their code is not copied from, nor derivative of, GPLed code.
The result of this enforcement strategy has been that the defendant *always* complies with the GPL. The alternative is to come into court and admit that you have been redistributing copyrighted material without a license! Courts frown on that mightily. So, *all* defendants have chosen compliance with the GPL.
Note that if the defendant claims c., that they are not infringing (i.e, they claim that their code does *not* contain any code licensed under the GPL, nor any derivative of code so licensed) then the GPL is *not* tested. This becomes a separate issue of fact (i.e., *is* the code in question actually copied from code licensed under the GPL, or is it not?), *not* a test of the GPL itself.
If KISS's code is copied from, or derivative of GPLed code, they are screwed, because they must either admit to redistributing someone else's copyrighted material without a license, or they must admit that the license they distributed the code under is the GPL. Ether way, they lose.
See Eben Moglen's keynote address to the University of Maine Law School's Fourth Annual Technology and Law Conference for the FSF's counsel's description of how he's done this enforcement, all by his lonesome, while teaching full time at Columbia Law School, for years.
...advanced computer puts you in pocket!
There are, of course, cables that go from 6-pin to 4-pin (that's how you connect DV cameras to a Mac, for example) so the two are compatible.
No. Here's why. If the reason ceases to exist, then the right goes away. The first amendment provides an absolute right of freedom of religion, speech, press, assembly, and right to petition congress.
The Second amendment can be read (and I believe, should be read) to provide a conditional right to keep and bear arms. That condition is, "A well regulated militia, being necessary to the security of a free state." If that condition ceases to exist, then the right is no longer relevant.
It can be argued that a "well regulated militia," far from being "necessary to the security of a free state" is at best irrelevant - no militia is going to have much to say in a real global throw down in this day and age. At worst, a militia is a threat to national security - as in militia members blowing up federal buildings, like Timothy McVeigh in Oklahoma City.
Read up on the difference between:
terminus ante quem, and
terminus post quem.
This site even uses coins as an example.
Apple does not "get it" WRT open source in anywhere near the same way that Red Hat and friends do.
Apple "gets it" much better than Red Hat and friends do. Apple "gets" that open source needs to be part of a profitable business plan if you are going to run a company based on it. Why do you think Red Hat is no longer maintaining a user distribution? Because you can't make any money by giving things away. You have to charge for something. Apple knows that they will only be able to charge for hardware if part of their software (the GUI parts and the iApps, etc.) is closed source. Otherwise, people would just download the source, compile it for x86, and Apple's hardware sales would go in the toilet.