GPL can be a little bit of a double-edged sword. It is very much about loss of control of the creator, this is exhilirating when things are going right and random people are contributing, but it is very sobering and unpleasant when your code is taken over by people you don't approve of, taken in directions you object to, and the blood that was sweated is forgotten.
However, it is explicit in the GPL, you release your stuff under it and on the one hand you can build on the work of all the others before you by incorporating any other GPL stuff, and on the other hand you really do lose control of your own code. That's the deal to get access to the growing body of great works that are available in the GPL already.
Your post is nothing more than a troll, and a lame one at that. May I point out to you that the GPL has nothing whatsoever to do with who "controls" your code?
I posted the following proposal to slashdot (it was rejected, probably because it was too controversial) and the gist was that SCO's share price (ticker symbol SCOX) has gone up 1400% on rumors and FUD. Now SCO may have a case, they may not have a case, but the least that should happen is an investigation by the SEC into the facts surrounding this incident.
Take a good look at *when* it started to go up: sveral weeks before the lawsuit was announced and filed. This cannot be explained by the timing of the quarterly report either.
"They went out and picketed with them. They posed for pictures. They came out and `shared laughs'."
it's called 'coopting' and it's right out of Microsoft's manual.
pretty interesting in all. it seems that SCO's got some rather competent handlers... that and the "steal free music" attempted reference in SCO's signs is a rather fascinating insight to how their PR folks are going to shape this battle in the press.
...and I, for one, will never again buy any game from Blizzard.
I.E., Blizzard does not own the word "craft", nor should they.
Actually, now that I think of it, the obvious name would be FreeWar. Just a little cynical-sounding as well, but whether that's inappropriate is an open question.
I believe nVidia's 'closed source'ism is due to the fact that their drivers for their video cards include code that is not theirs, and licensed from other companies, and thus not publishable...
That is the usual line of bullshit that I doubt even comes from NVidia, it comes from people like you. If there is in fact code they have to which they do not own the copyright or appropriate license (which I doubt, personally) then they can place that code, and only that code, in a binary module.
In many ways, it seems like a reasonable thing for Blizzard to do -- they're protecting their investments and working (in their eyes) to do what is best for their company, their employees, private investors, etc
They are trying to assert ownership of the word "craft", which is a detestable thing to do.
"theres plenty of open source game engines to use"
There are? I can think of CrystalSpace, and Quake II as the only decent open-source FPS engines (and none of them is that good, compared to the likes of DoomIII, HL2, Halo2, etc), and Freecraft was the only decent RTS engine. Is there some secret 31337 open-source engine repository I'm missing out on?
Yes, there is Neoengine. It's decent, check it out.
Even if you hate them personally, or they (or their parent company, more likely) do nasty things sometimes, admit it- Blizzard makes kickass games that LOTS of people love. Starcraft is 5 years old, and yet there's still around 10,000 people playing it on Battle.net at any given time.
While you may find this difficult to understand yourself, some of us are motivated, at least in part, by things beyond mere hedonism. You go ahead and do whatever you want, and I will do what my morals tell me to do: that is, I will not support a corporation that carries out its business in a cynical, greedy and petty way, not to mention acting like a typical schoolyard bully.
There are plenty of good games out there, I do not need to buy any from Blizzard.
Stuff paying $2000 for something that can be represnted by less than 30 lines of code.
Could you please post those 30 lines of code? Do you know who owns the copyright? We might as well get this into service immediately. Thirty lines that compresses well and isn't encumbered by a restrictive copyright license or patent...
What I am trying to say is that Justice does not equal Fairness. Ie It may not be Fair what SCO is trying to pull, but the legal courts are also concerned with what is Just and in this we are talking money and if the legal courts are about anything, they are about money. Making sure there are legal grounds to protect property (money).
Justice is supposed to be fair, but in the U.S., it is not. Sad to say, but the American legal system, once the best in the world, has become hopelessly corrupt. This is why I choose to live elsewhere.
Now, if you are an American, please note: when one has a serious problem such as alcoholism or corruption of one's legal system, the first step in curing it is to stop denying that, which is plainly obvious to everybody but oneself.
The latest twist in the lawsuit is revealed in a recent CNET interview of Darl McBride: "The System 5 source code, that is really the area that gives us incredible rights, because it includes the control rights on the derivative works that branch off from that trunk. " It is SCO's position that JFS and RCU are derivative of System V.
Emphasis on the word "incredible", which in its literal sense means "not believable".
"...if SCO loses, it will send a strong message to the world: "Stay away from anything GPL, or you'll find your proprietary code taken away from you."
You're wrong about that. The message sent will be, "obey the law, don't abuse it".
International SCO Squishing Week
on
Settling SCOres
·
· Score: 1
And who would deserve it more? This particular abuse is a new low for the American legal system, at least in high tech. As for David Boise, I hope this action constitutes the end of his arginally-deserved reputation as a winner, and that it serves as a lesson in both morality and ethics for him.
Hmm, I wonder if he has the spine to offer a public apology.
Re:Do younger minds absorb quicker?
on
Ageism in IT?
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· Score: 1
Pianos haven't progressed to 2,000 1mm-wide keys, or introduced three-dimensional keyboards, or decided to have little-endian keyboards with the low notes beneath your right hand fingers, or added green keys above the white keys, or added a Dvorak mechanism placing the most commonly played notes beneath your fingers.
Composers haven't introduced new semi-tone notes, located between B and B-flat, or decided to portray their music to the pianist in XML format. They aren't asking pianists to play notes in 2400MHz tempo, or even to get those albums cranked out before they go home for the weekend.
Well I guess you're just displaying your ignorance of music history, since all of those things, or close analogs of them, have been done. For example, microtones, prepared pianos, keyboard stacks etc. Ever seen a big cathedral organ, let along a stage setup for a rock concert?
But when it comes down to it, keyboard players who need to improve their skills tend to keep going back to the good old classic piano with wooden action. I mean really improve, not just learn new patches.
Re:Do younger minds absorb quicker?
on
Ageism in IT?
·
· Score: 1
Andy Hertzfeld (of the original Macintosh development team) claimed that he used to be able to track and house far more complex contructs of thought, and more of them, in his mind when he was in his early 20's than he ever could at the time he was giving the interview (I would guess he was somewhere in his mid forties at that time). He called this ability "the gift of the young".
That may just be a personal perspective. I think it depends on whether you keep exercising your mind or not. I find that as time goes by I'm able to solve ever more complex computational problems in my head. I used to always work with the aid of diagrams on paper, and long lists of logical constructions, in order to keep track of complex relationships, and seldom bother with that now, while the problems I work on have gotten more difficult if anything.
As far as the piano playing analogy goes, that keeps getting better as well, so long as I practice.
One thing to keep in mind is, there's quite a difference between lots of energetic activity typical of the young, and the efficient, measured movements of the experienced professional. In terms of solid code development, the latter tends to be more useful.
And on the small point of typing speed - go to a Linux developers conference and watch the old guys type. That seems to just keep getting faster as well.
No, the original poster didn't fail to read the article; you failed to read his comment.
The original poster has a point, but it has little to do with the article. Please read the article again. This is a new claim. If substantiated, it basically constitutes a large torpedo headed in the direction of SCO.
the code in question is roughly 80 lines in length and contains matching comments...
You must have read a different report than I did. The one I saw said that one region has 80 matching lines, including some comments that match. The article did not say whether or not both Unix and Linux had borrowed those lines from, say, BSD, or whether, hrm, SCO borrowed them from Linux.
No duh. How many people have been saying this? AND how many people are ignoring the fact that SCO group themselves released the "offending" code under Caldera? Everyone but IBM it seems, since they think this lawsuit is frivolous.
The moderator who modded you "insightful" was on crack, because you completely failed to read the article. Timothy is suggesting that SCO may have copied (presumably GPLed) code from Linux into their proprietary Unix[tm]. If true, the repurcussions could be, erm, quite interesting.
As lore would have it, the original USL suit against BSD and Berkely University broke up on the rocks for a similar reason.
Windows has near-zero marginal cost. Even at only $50, Microsoft still makes a profit. $50 is a very good deal on Windows, so if that's your goal it's good advice. But buying Windows at $50 to 'screw da man' is silly. It's damn near impossible to sell Windows at a loss. According to this and other stories, windows could be sold at $28 and still not lose MS any money.
But it would cannibalize other sales and knock the stuffing out of the stock price.
Slashdot Mirror
GPL can be a little bit of a double-edged sword. It is very much about loss of control of the creator, this is exhilirating when things are going right and random people are contributing, but it is very sobering and unpleasant when your code is taken over by people you don't approve of, taken in directions you object to, and the blood that was sweated is forgotten.
However, it is explicit in the GPL, you release your stuff under it and on the one hand you can build on the work of all the others before you by incorporating any other GPL stuff, and on the other hand you really do lose control of your own code. That's the deal to get access to the growing body of great works that are available in the GPL already.
Your post is nothing more than a troll, and a lame one at that. May I point out to you that the GPL has nothing whatsoever to do with who "controls" your code?
I posted the following proposal to slashdot (it was rejected, probably because it was too controversial) and the gist was that SCO's share price (ticker symbol SCOX) has gone up 1400% on rumors and FUD. Now SCO may have a case, they may not have a case, but the least that should happen is an investigation by the SEC into the facts surrounding this incident.
Take a good look at *when* it started to go up: sveral weeks before the lawsuit was announced and filed. This cannot be explained by the timing of the quarterly report either.
"They went out and picketed with them. They posed for pictures. They came out and `shared laughs'."
it's called 'coopting' and it's right out of Microsoft's manual.
pretty interesting in all. it seems that SCO's got some rather competent handlers... that and the "steal free music" attempted reference in SCO's signs is a rather fascinating insight to how their PR folks are going to shape this battle in the press.
I smell a Hatch...
Smells like gates to me.
...and I, for one, will never again buy any game from Blizzard.
I.E., Blizzard does not own the word "craft", nor should they.
Actually, now that I think of it, the obvious name would be FreeWar. Just a little cynical-sounding as well, but whether that's inappropriate is an open question.
I believe nVidia's 'closed source'ism is due to the fact that their drivers for their video cards include code that is not theirs, and licensed from other companies, and thus not publishable...
That is the usual line of bullshit that I doubt even comes from NVidia, it comes from people like you. If there is in fact code they have to which they do not own the copyright or appropriate license (which I doubt, personally) then they can place that code, and only that code, in a binary module.
In many ways, it seems like a reasonable thing for Blizzard to do -- they're protecting their investments and working (in their eyes) to do what is best for their company, their employees, private investors, etc
They are trying to assert ownership of the word "craft", which is a detestable thing to do.
"theres plenty of open source game engines to use"
There are? I can think of CrystalSpace, and Quake II as the only decent open-source FPS engines (and none of them is that good, compared to the likes of DoomIII, HL2, Halo2, etc), and Freecraft was the only decent RTS engine. Is there some secret 31337 open-source engine repository I'm missing out on?
Yes, there is Neoengine. It's decent, check it out.
Even if you hate them personally, or they (or their parent company, more likely) do nasty things sometimes, admit it- Blizzard makes kickass games that LOTS of people love. Starcraft is 5 years old, and yet there's still around 10,000 people playing it on Battle.net at any given time.
While you may find this difficult to understand yourself, some of us are motivated, at least in part, by things beyond mere hedonism. You go ahead and do whatever you want, and I will do what my morals tell me to do: that is, I will not support a corporation that carries out its business in a cynical, greedy and petty way, not to mention acting like a typical schoolyard bully.
There are plenty of good games out there, I do not need to buy any from Blizzard.
...and I, for one, will never again buy any game from Blizzard.
I.E., Blizzard does not own the word "craft", nor should they.
...in a science fiction story more than 20 years ago. Unfortunately, I forget the author - anybody else remember that one?
Stuff paying $2000 for something that can be represnted by less than 30 lines of code.
Could you please post those 30 lines of code? Do you know who owns the copyright? We might as well get this into service immediately. Thirty lines that compresses well and isn't encumbered by a restrictive copyright license or patent...
I'm wondering if the text on gnu.org protesting the patent will disappear
It should properly be replaced by a post-mortem, summarizing the harm that was done by this patent.
...is the bad name that Unisys has earned for themselves.
What I am trying to say is that
Justice does not equal Fairness.
Ie It may not be Fair what SCO is trying to pull, but the legal courts are also concerned with what is Just and in this we are talking money and if the legal courts are about anything, they are about money. Making sure there are legal grounds to protect property (money).
Justice is supposed to be fair, but in the U.S., it is not. Sad to say, but the American legal system, once the best in the world, has become hopelessly corrupt. This is why I choose to live elsewhere.
Now, if you are an American, please note: when one has a serious problem such as alcoholism or corruption of one's legal system, the first step in curing it is to stop denying that, which is plainly obvious to everybody but oneself.
The latest twist in the lawsuit is revealed in a recent CNET interview of Darl McBride: "The System 5 source code, that is really the area that gives us incredible rights, because it includes the control rights on the derivative works that branch off from that trunk. " It is SCO's position that JFS and RCU are derivative of System V.
Emphasis on the word "incredible", which in its literal sense means "not believable".
"...if SCO loses, it will send a strong message to the world: "Stay away from anything GPL, or you'll find your proprietary code taken away from you."
You're wrong about that. The message sent will be, "obey the law, don't abuse it".
And who would deserve it more? This particular abuse is a new low for the American legal system, at least in high tech. As for David Boise, I hope this action constitutes the end of his arginally-deserved reputation as a winner, and that it serves as a lesson in both morality and ethics for him.
Hmm, I wonder if he has the spine to offer a public apology.
Pianos haven't progressed to 2,000 1mm-wide keys, or introduced three-dimensional keyboards, or decided to have little-endian keyboards with the low notes beneath your right hand fingers, or added green keys above the white keys, or added a Dvorak mechanism placing the most commonly played notes beneath your fingers.
Composers haven't introduced new semi-tone notes, located between B and B-flat, or decided to portray their music to the pianist in XML format. They aren't asking pianists to play notes in 2400MHz tempo, or even to get those albums cranked out before they go home for the weekend.
Well I guess you're just displaying your ignorance of music history, since all of those things, or close analogs of them, have been done. For example, microtones, prepared pianos, keyboard stacks etc. Ever seen a big cathedral organ, let along a stage setup for a rock concert?
But when it comes down to it, keyboard players who need to improve their skills tend to keep going back to the good old classic piano with wooden action. I mean really improve, not just learn new patches.
Andy Hertzfeld (of the original Macintosh development team) claimed that he used to be able to track and house far more complex contructs of thought, and more of them, in his mind when he was in his early 20's than he ever could at the time he was giving the interview (I would guess he was somewhere in his mid forties at that time). He called this ability "the gift of the young".
That may just be a personal perspective. I think it depends on whether you keep exercising your mind or not. I find that as time goes by I'm able to solve ever more complex computational problems in my head. I used to always work with the aid of diagrams on paper, and long lists of logical constructions, in order to keep track of complex relationships, and seldom bother with that now, while the problems I work on have gotten more difficult if anything.
As far as the piano playing analogy goes, that keeps getting better as well, so long as I practice.
One thing to keep in mind is, there's quite a difference between lots of energetic activity typical of the young, and the efficient, measured movements of the experienced professional. In terms of solid code development, the latter tends to be more useful.
And on the small point of typing speed - go to a Linux developers conference and watch the old guys type. That seems to just keep getting faster as well.
No, the original poster didn't fail to read the article; you failed to read his comment.
The original poster has a point, but it has little to do with the article. Please read the article again. This is a new claim. If substantiated, it basically constitutes a large torpedo headed in the direction of SCO.
more correctly at slashdot it's:
Microsoft
SCO
RIAA/MPAA
You forgot Adobe and Unisys.
the code in question is roughly 80 lines in length and contains matching comments...
You must have read a different report than I did. The one I saw said that one region has 80 matching lines, including some comments that match. The article did not say whether or not both Unix and Linux had borrowed those lines from, say, BSD, or whether, hrm, SCO borrowed them from Linux.
Except you're wrong. SCO has evidence. This is a rumor.
To be precise, SCO is spreading rumours that they have evidence.
No duh. How many people have been saying this? AND how many people are ignoring the fact that SCO group themselves released the "offending" code under Caldera? Everyone but IBM it seems, since they think this lawsuit is frivolous.
The moderator who modded you "insightful" was on crack, because you completely failed to read the article. Timothy is suggesting that SCO may have copied (presumably GPLed) code from Linux into their proprietary Unix[tm]. If true, the repurcussions could be, erm, quite interesting.
As lore would have it, the original USL suit against BSD and Berkely University broke up on the rocks for a similar reason.
Windows has near-zero marginal cost. Even at only $50, Microsoft still makes a profit. $50 is a very good deal on Windows, so if that's your goal it's good advice. But buying Windows at $50 to 'screw da man' is silly. It's damn near impossible to sell Windows at a loss. According to this and other stories, windows could be sold at $28 and still not lose MS any money.
But it would cannibalize other sales and knock the stuffing out of the stock price.