I have heard several people mention "informing the customer" as part of the solution. However, with viral/worm e-mail messages masquerading as such notices, it becomes very difficult.
I have had to look over my mother-in-laws machine several times, because she had recieved fake alerts in e-mails, claiming that they were from the "mail server", and that she had a virus. She didn't, but I am sure that if she had clicked on any of the links in the message she would have been infected. (I at least trained her not to click on unexpected notices, etc.)
Burt is a diehard Mac fan, or at least he was the last time I spoke with him.
Admittedly, that was about 8 years ago so he could have changed in between. His "Boomerang" asymmetric twin had a bit of computer monitoring equipment. IIRC most of it was specialty computers (think industrial embedded type boards)but it was headed by a Mac.
{begin small product plug} If anyone is interested, at Burt Rutan's request, a business partner and I produced a set of CD-ROMs with the collection of plans and errata-newsletters for Burt's general avation aircraft. (all 5 designs; VariEZE, LongEZ, etc.) At the time he wanted a way for people to get back-copies/replacements of the information, without having to bug him for it.
Oops, I was going to say you were wrong. But then I looked up "pored" at M-W.com (merriam-webster online dictionary).
Main Entry: 1pore Pronunciation: 'pOr, 'por Function: intransitive verb Inflected Form(s): pored; poring Etymology: Middle English pouren 1 : to gaze intently 2 : to read studiously or attentively -- usually used with over 3 : to reflect or meditate steadily
So, I guess you are correct. Which is only sightly amazing here on slashdot, where it seems that half of the grammar corrections are themselves wrong.
Please remit payment for your use of Disney intellectual property; specifically your quotation from our "Small World" song and ride. Should your payment not be recieved within 30 days of this notice, your name will be turned over to our collections agency and legal dept. for further action.
Sincerely, M. Mouse IP Invoicing Dept. Disney Corp. Lake Buena Vista, FL
I can only speak for my own experience, but I was told by the bank rep. that it was a federal requirement. Perhaps this has changed in that last 10 years (I would be suprised), or perhaps I was lied to by the bank rep.
It wasn't much more than a check the box on the form sort of thing, but she said she was looking for "unusually large deposits or withdrawls," and implied that it was related to looking for drug dealers. (Similar to the prohibition on having over $10K cash.) Since I didn't have anything "unusual" no explaination was needed.
Just don't try to get a mortgage on a house. You will be asked to provide your last three months bank statements, and asked to explain any "large" monitary movements.
I think you need to go back and reread the GPL. (I will admit to not having read it in about a year, so I probably should too.... OK, done.)
As I understand it, the GPL regulates what you do when you distribute the program.
If you want to argue (RIAA style) that the end-user, in requesting another machine to send the program (ftp type transfer) is copying the program and therefore "distributing" the program, then perhaps you may have a point. (but I think that is getting a bit rediculous)
I believe the GPL assumes that, once recieved, the software user is allowed to use the software however the user sees fit; much like a person having recieved a book may read the book without additional licence. (or they may stand on it, burn it, whatever...)
The stanza you quote actually says,
5. You are not required to accept this License, since you have not signed it. However,
nothing else grants you permission to modify or distribute the Program or its derivative works. These actions are prohibited by law if you do not accept this License. Therefore, by modifying or distributing the Program (or any work based on the Program), you indicate your acceptance of this License to do so, and all its terms and conditions for copying, distributing or modifying the Program or works based on it.
Note that it says nothing about use, which is allowed by default.
If some goofball "publisher" were to reprint his work on paper without authorization, and didn't respond reasonably to complaints sent to the contact person listed at LoC (assuming one was), they'd be in exactly the same situation as AOL.
The difference is that a physical publisher is taking an active role in reprinting the work, whereas AOL, or any other ISP, is relatively passive; the data flows into and out of their servers without any specific action on the part of the ISP.
Furthermore, as applied to USENET, this is even more rediculous to sue any given ISP as, in most cases, the infringing data will remove itself in a day or two, probably before the ISP can respond to the e-mail.
Following this process one step further, what happens to the ISP when, after receiving a takedown notice, another goofball reposts the offending document two weeks later? Again the data is on the ISPs server, but unless the ISP pays somebody with a very good memory to read every usenet post that flows through their server, the ISP will not know of its reappearance.
One final thing... Somebody please correct me if I am wrong, but I seem to recall that one can send a cancel message to the USENET to remove a message automatically. Mr. Harlin could/should have sent such a cancellation and achieved a more effective solution, quicker.
If you are a data center, this sounds like another good reason to have a mirror (RAID 0, or is it RAID 1). That way you can just unplug the mirror drive and give it to the FBI without disturbing the rest of your service.
Actually this makes the acronym RAID (Redundant Array of Inexpensive Devices) have dual meaning... RAID is what you want when you are raided!
A drake is a male duck. IIRC, Turbo Linux is already using a duck for their logo. This has the potential to really create a confusing market. Otherwise, I like the idea.
Customer: "I'd like Drake Linux." ClulessSalesDrone: "Ok, we have the duck linux. Here's your copy." Customer: "This isn't Drake Linux, this is Turbo Linux." ClulessSalesDrone: "What do you mean? It has a male duck on the box!" ...
Now days, playing pinball is another of the few reasons to go to an arcade, IMHO.
The reason is the same as has been mentioned for DDR, etc.... Speciality hardware that can't/isn't duplicated at home (affordably).
While there are video-game pinball simulations, they really aren't the same as playing on a physical machine. The video-game-pinball becomes closer to a twitch-game, where if you twitch at the right moment you get a predictable result. In contrast, the physical pinball can have spin and other effects that influence the ball behavior and make the game much more interesting.
When I go to a bar or other place with coin-op games, I almost always will stop and play pinball. I hardly even think of playing a video-game.
Isn't MDT the abbreviation for Mountain Daylight-savings Time? As it is currently the winter half of the year I think they probably meant MST (Mountain Standard Time).
12:00 MDT = 11:00 MST
Therefore, per Novell's letter, SCO has until 11:00 tomorrow.
You can turn "simple" mode off and things will (in general) revert to the way they worked in win2k. (including file permissions) BUT, there are a couple of things to trip you up.
For a while I couldn't browse into any of the folders unless you opened them up to everybody. What was happening was that when another windows box requested the share list from the IPC, it would be forced to use "guest" and this would set a credential for talking to that machine. When I would then try to go to the shared folder itself, windows wouldn't ask for the correct user/password, it would only try to use the "guest" credential, and get rejected.
The way to fix this is to disable the guest account, at which point the attaching machine will request the user/password before it can even get the browse list. Answer correctly and everything works after that.
My memory fails me, but it seems that there was another switch to set regarding "forcing user to guest" but ultimatly the thing that fixed it was to disable the guest account completely.
For those who don't know, there is an even worse "stealth tax" in the US that has been around for approx 70 years....
Its called Payroll Withholding.
If you look on your paycheck, you will see some of it, but what you don't know is that you are only looking at half of the withholding collected. Your employer "matches" the amount that is reported on you payroll slip, but just like the S&H this is really paid by you because it is money that your employer could be paying you!
Think of it this way. When you are hired, your employer's accountants figure that you cost $80/hr. You of course are only being paid $50/hr. You pay $15 in withholding from your $50 paycheck (netting $35), so your employer sees you like this:
$50 wage + $15 withholding(by employer) + $15 overhead= $80 cost of employee. (The $15 overhead is for insurance, pension, unemployment, etc.)
The employer is willing to hire you for that $80/hr, so if he weren't paying that $15 match, he would have been willing to pay you $65/hr.
This was done intentionally when the income tax was started, because FDR knew that people would get upset if they saw the true cost of the tax on their pay stubs. Now everybody is used to thinking in terms of the NET amount on their check, not even the Gross amount shown, so they certanly don't think about what they aren't shown.
This is also why when you are self-employed you have to pay "self-employment" taxes; they are really just the "employer match" half that you don't see as an employee.
Ok, as you (and others) have pointed out, my Star Trek example would be more of a trademark problem. But what would be a (non-programming) example of a 'derivative work' with respect to copyright?
Perhaps something in the art field? If I painted a park scene which incidently showed some piece of recent sculpture, would it's inclusion make my painting a derivate work. How about if it was a photograph instead?
I am no longer sure how to relate this back to copyright and derivative work in programming, but perhaps someone else can give better examples.
OK, perhaps I am missing something here but how would the lack of a broadcast flag screw up the home video? Wouldn't the lack of a flag just indicate that you can make as many copies of Uncle Milt tripping over fluffy as you want?
The only problem I see is when your son is shown on the local news winning the state chess match, you won't be able to make extra copies, as that might be broadcast with the bit on.
j3110 wrote "I think it's fair game to steal design from any unpatented source. Design is not concrete enough that copying it would make a working product." regarding the differences between copyright and patents.
IANAL and to a certain extent I agree with you but I think this may fall under the definition of "derivative works".
For example, if I wrote a piece of science-fiction involving characters named Kirk, Spock and McCoy, I probably could be considered to be creating a "derivative work" of the Star Trek series, even if I had General Kirk commanding a regament of Space Troopers instead of the Enterprise.
IMHO this is where things get a bit fuzzy, when is something similar enough that it might be a derivative work? What if I only had Leutenant Spock? Perhaps that is too unusual a name, so what about McCoy, which is probably a fairly common name in some areas....
Back on topic, the character names are a good example as they correlate fairly well to variable names in programs. Plot elements might equate to funtions, etc. How many items need to be similar before there is a genetic relationship that would invoke the "derivate work" clauses of any given licence or copyright law?
If you have a single line of code in a source file, you have to be hunted down and independently asked to license your software. With dozens or hundreds of people adding to the more popular projects, that's clearly impossible. Even on a small project, try figuring out what to do when a minor contributor is dead.
I think what the grandparent poster was saying is that even if you give your code to a GPL'd project, so that the project doesn't need to ever contact you for permission etc., even then you still have rights to your own code. You can still use it in another project.
This is similar reasoning to why/how a number of projects are released both under GPL and another licence (even a propritary licence). The original author retains the copyright and can release it in multiple places and multiple ways.
FredFnord's point (quoted) about possible requirements to contact contributors is valid however, and is why many GPL projects require that patches submitted back to them must be gifted to the project. Effectivly the maintainer is assigned the copyright in addition to the copyrights retained by the patch submitter. (This could and is better worded leagally in those projects, I am being too lazy to go look however.)
Before anyone complains that anyone is required to give their code/patches back to the project, that is not true; remember that you are only required to offer code if you redistribute the project. If you choose to send in patches, you are doing so out of loyalty to the community, so the patches might as well be a gift. As I mentioned above, you can still use your own code elsewhere.
Ok, a bunch of questions. I will paraphrase some of them to avoid repetition.
Why does one need a constitution, instead of just passing laws? Because the constitutuion defines how one goes about passing those laws. Without it you get into things like dictatorships, etc. where the laws are basically passed, "because I say so." (or perhaps, because I have a gun and I say so;-)
Why does a ~200 yr old document matter more than "what we want today?" What if we want to change the rules? The constitution provides for changes to itself, but it sets the bar for those changes higher than that for passing a law. Many changes have been made, such as the ability of the government to collect income tax, which was originally prohibited explicitly! (called a "capitation tax") It makes sense that the rules that control the process for making laws would be a bit harder to change than just passing a new law, otherwise why have them. (see previous answer)
Quoting you directly:
"Changes to law have to be made by the people's elected representatives, whether individuals agree or not. I see a constitution as merely a way of blocking progress. This may be its intention."
That is exactly the intention. The main idea is that "government recieves its power from the consent of the governed." The constitution is what defines that consent and is supposed to keep the government under control. Of course, if a large enough part of the people consent to change the way that control is set, then things can (and are) changed, but in general people still want that control to remain in place.
Why do the intentions of the founding fathers mean so much to Americans... Surely what the people want now is more important.
Because our constitution/system of government was supposed to be based on the principal of defending the individual against the "tyrrany of the majority." Therefore what "the people" want isn't supposed to destroy my individual decisions about how I run my life, business, etc. (within reason and the limits set in the constitution. QED)
The reason that the founding fathers intentions is important, is that they wrote, very simply, their intentions. When they wrote "congress shall pass no law" they meant NO LAW. But people today, and politicians in particular IMHO, have difficulty comprehending the concept of simple absolutes. Therefore, they try to say that what was written simply in one sentence doesn't mean what it says, but instead requires many pages of interpretations. So, it takes others of us to remind people that the intent of words like "no" is just "no", plain and simple.
But, to my knowledge, the FSF *does* persue GPL violations that infringe on code copyrighted by the FSF. (Epson comes to mind...)
Just because somebody happens to use the GPL doesn't give the FSF any copyright ownership, except for ownership of the text of the licence. So as long as you don't change the text of the licence you are OK to use it in conjunction with your product.
However, when somebody steals your code, *you* are responsible for the legal attack, not the FSF.
I don't feel that patents as such are evil, just that the patent office isn't doing a good job in certain fields.
Also, I have problems with the length of time a software patent lasts. In today's world, 20 years is a lot longer with repsect to technological change, than it was in the 1770s.
To be honest, I became the most disenchanted with the patent process when I went through it. As it turns out I got my patent, but I am disappointed in the way it happened.
While correct that you aren't patenting the "idea" itself, the claims can be written so broadly that they cover almost any embodyment of the idea. Thereby, effectively patenting the idea itself.
For example, with the aparent attitude of our current patent office Edison could have begun the light bulb patent with a claim like "1. An electric device where light is produced by the application of electric current, without the production of an electric arc." (The last bit to get around arc lamps, which I believe existed previous to Edison.) Claims 2 through N would then go on to describe evacuated glass bulbs, filaments, etc. and would all start like "2. a device as in claim 1 which..."
Note that the first claim would effectivly prohibit production of florescent lights, LEDs and any number of other light producing items. Those items could be patented themselves, but their inventors could not legally produce them without licencing Claim 1 from Edison. As such, the "idea" of the light bulb would have been effectivly patented, not just the incandescent filament embodyment.
It is up to the patent examiner to determine when a claim is too broad to be allowed. In the patent I hold, my original claim 1 was rejected for this reason. We just removed claim 1 and rewrote claim 2 slightly to be independant and *poof* the patent was approved.
If the examiner had allowed my first claim, someone could have just taken me to court to have the same effect of nullifying that claim. The problem is that Microsoft has the cash to make it very expensive for anyone to challenge their overly broad claims which have been allowed by USPTO.
(p.s. I know, LEDs etc. came more than 20 years after Edison. This is just an example)
Slashdot Mirror
I have heard several people mention "informing the customer" as part of the solution. However, with viral/worm e-mail messages masquerading as such notices, it becomes very difficult.
I have had to look over my mother-in-laws machine several times, because she had recieved fake alerts in e-mails, claiming that they were from the "mail server", and that she had a virus. She didn't, but I am sure that if she had clicked on any of the links in the message she would have been infected. (I at least trained her not to click on unexpected notices, etc.)
Burt is a diehard Mac fan, or at least he was the last time I spoke with him.
Admittedly, that was about 8 years ago so he could have changed in between. His "Boomerang" asymmetric twin had a bit of computer monitoring equipment. IIRC most of it was specialty computers (think industrial embedded type boards)but it was headed by a Mac.
{begin small product plug}
If anyone is interested, at Burt Rutan's request, a business partner and I produced a set of CD-ROMs with the collection of plans and errata-newsletters for Burt's general avation aircraft. (all 5 designs; VariEZE, LongEZ, etc.)
At the time he wanted a way for people to get back-copies/replacements of the information, without having to bug him for it.
more information is available at www.terf.com
{end plug}
So, I guess you are correct. Which is only sightly amazing here on slashdot, where it seems that half of the grammar corrections are themselves wrong.
Dear Mr. Omega1045,
Please remit payment for your use of Disney intellectual property; specifically your quotation from our "Small World" song and ride. Should your payment not be recieved within 30 days of this notice, your name will be turned over to our collections agency and legal dept. for further action.
Sincerely,
M. Mouse
IP Invoicing Dept.
Disney Corp.
Lake Buena Vista, FL
I can only speak for my own experience, but I was told by the bank rep. that it was a federal requirement. Perhaps this has changed in that last 10 years (I would be suprised), or perhaps I was lied to by the bank rep.
It wasn't much more than a check the box on the form sort of thing, but she said she was looking for "unusually large deposits or withdrawls," and implied that it was related to looking for drug dealers. (Similar to the prohibition on having over $10K cash.) Since I didn't have anything "unusual" no explaination was needed.
Just don't try to get a mortgage on a house. You will be asked to provide your last three months bank statements, and asked to explain any "large" monitary movements.
If you want to argue (RIAA style) that the end-user, in requesting another machine to send the program (ftp type transfer) is copying the program and therefore "distributing" the program, then perhaps you may have a point. (but I think that is getting a bit rediculous)
I believe the GPL assumes that, once recieved, the software user is allowed to use the software however the user sees fit; much like a person having recieved a book may read the book without additional licence. (or they may stand on it, burn it, whatever...)
The stanza you quote actually says,
Note that it says nothing about use, which is allowed by default.
Furthermore, as applied to USENET, this is even more rediculous to sue any given ISP as, in most cases, the infringing data will remove itself in a day or two, probably before the ISP can respond to the e-mail.
Following this process one step further, what happens to the ISP when, after receiving a takedown notice, another goofball reposts the offending document two weeks later? Again the data is on the ISPs server, but unless the ISP pays somebody with a very good memory to read every usenet post that flows through their server, the ISP will not know of its reappearance.
One final thing... Somebody please correct me if I am wrong, but I seem to recall that one can send a cancel message to the USENET to remove a message automatically. Mr. Harlin could/should have sent such a cancellation and achieved a more effective solution, quicker.
If you are a data center, this sounds like another good reason to have a mirror (RAID 0, or is it RAID 1). That way you can just unplug the mirror drive and give it to the FBI without disturbing the rest of your service.
Actually this makes the acronym RAID (Redundant Array of Inexpensive Devices) have dual meaning... RAID is what you want when you are raided!
Customer: "I'd like Drake Linux."
...
ClulessSalesDrone: "Ok, we have the duck linux. Here's your copy."
Customer: "This isn't Drake Linux, this is Turbo Linux."
ClulessSalesDrone: "What do you mean? It has a male duck on the box!"
Now days, playing pinball is another of the few reasons to go to an arcade, IMHO.
The reason is the same as has been mentioned for DDR, etc.... Speciality hardware that can't/isn't duplicated at home (affordably).
While there are video-game pinball simulations, they really aren't the same as playing on a physical machine. The video-game-pinball becomes closer to a twitch-game, where if you twitch at the right moment you get a predictable result. In contrast, the physical pinball can have spin and other effects that influence the ball behavior and make the game much more interesting.
When I go to a bar or other place with coin-op games, I almost always will stop and play pinball. I hardly even think of playing a video-game.
Isn't MDT the abbreviation for Mountain Daylight-savings Time? As it is currently the winter half of the year I think they probably meant MST (Mountain Standard Time).
12:00 MDT = 11:00 MST
Therefore, per Novell's letter, SCO has until 11:00 tomorrow.
I know, I know... what does it really matter...
You can turn "simple" mode off and things will (in general) revert to the way they worked in win2k. (including file permissions) BUT, there are a couple of things to trip you up.
For a while I couldn't browse into any of the folders unless you opened them up to everybody. What was happening was that when another windows box requested the share list from the IPC, it would be forced to use "guest" and this would set a credential for talking to that machine. When I would then try to go to the shared folder itself, windows wouldn't ask for the correct user/password, it would only try to use the "guest" credential, and get rejected.
The way to fix this is to disable the guest account, at which point the attaching machine will request the user/password before it can even get the browse list. Answer correctly and everything works after that.
My memory fails me, but it seems that there was another switch to set regarding "forcing user to guest" but ultimatly the thing that fixed it was to disable the guest account completely.
Its called Payroll Withholding.
If you look on your paycheck, you will see some of it, but what you don't know is that you are only looking at half of the withholding collected. Your employer "matches" the amount that is reported on you payroll slip, but just like the S&H this is really paid by you because it is money that your employer could be paying you!
Think of it this way. When you are hired, your employer's accountants figure that you cost $80/hr. You of course are only being paid $50/hr. You pay $15 in withholding from your $50 paycheck (netting $35), so your employer sees you like this:
$50 wage + $15 withholding(by employer) + $15 overhead= $80 cost of employee.
(The $15 overhead is for insurance, pension, unemployment, etc.)
The employer is willing to hire you for that $80/hr, so if he weren't paying that $15 match, he would have been willing to pay you $65/hr.
This was done intentionally when the income tax was started, because FDR knew that people would get upset if they saw the true cost of the tax on their pay stubs. Now everybody is used to thinking in terms of the NET amount on their check, not even the Gross amount shown, so they certanly don't think about what they aren't shown.
This is also why when you are self-employed you have to pay "self-employment" taxes; they are really just the "employer match" half that you don't see as an employee.
When does this become self-incrimination?
Ok, as you (and others) have pointed out, my Star Trek example would be more of a trademark problem. But what would be a (non-programming) example of a 'derivative work' with respect to copyright?
Perhaps something in the art field? If I painted a park scene which incidently showed some piece of recent sculpture, would it's inclusion make my painting a derivate work. How about if it was a photograph instead?
I am no longer sure how to relate this back to copyright and derivative work in programming, but perhaps someone else can give better examples.
OK, perhaps I am missing something here but how would the lack of a broadcast flag screw up the home video? Wouldn't the lack of a flag just indicate that you can make as many copies of Uncle Milt tripping over fluffy as you want?
The only problem I see is when your son is shown on the local news winning the state chess match, you won't be able to make extra copies, as that might be broadcast with the bit on.
j3110 wrote "I think it's fair game to steal design from any unpatented source. Design is not concrete enough that copying it would make a working product." regarding the differences between copyright and patents.
IANAL and to a certain extent I agree with you but I think this may fall under the definition of "derivative works".
For example, if I wrote a piece of science-fiction involving characters named Kirk, Spock and McCoy, I probably could be considered to be creating a "derivative work" of the Star Trek series, even if I had General Kirk commanding a regament of Space Troopers instead of the Enterprise.
IMHO this is where things get a bit fuzzy, when is something similar enough that it might be a derivative work? What if I only had Leutenant Spock? Perhaps that is too unusual a name, so what about McCoy, which is probably a fairly common name in some areas....
Back on topic, the character names are a good example as they correlate fairly well to variable names in programs. Plot elements might equate to funtions, etc. How many items need to be similar before there is a genetic relationship that would invoke the "derivate work" clauses of any given licence or copyright law?
I think what the grandparent poster was saying is that even if you give your code to a GPL'd project, so that the project doesn't need to ever contact you for permission etc., even then you still have rights to your own code. You can still use it in another project.
This is similar reasoning to why/how a number of projects are released both under GPL and another licence (even a propritary licence). The original author retains the copyright and can release it in multiple places and multiple ways.
FredFnord's point (quoted) about possible requirements to contact contributors is valid however, and is why many GPL projects require that patches submitted back to them must be gifted to the project. Effectivly the maintainer is assigned the copyright in addition to the copyrights retained by the patch submitter. (This could and is better worded leagally in those projects, I am being too lazy to go look however.)
Before anyone complains that anyone is required to give their code/patches back to the project, that is not true; remember that you are only required to offer code if you redistribute the project. If you choose to send in patches, you are doing so out of loyalty to the community, so the patches might as well be a gift. As I mentioned above, you can still use your own code elsewhere.
Why does one need a constitution, instead of just passing laws? Because the constitutuion defines how one goes about passing those laws. Without it you get into things like dictatorships, etc. where the laws are basically passed, "because I say so." (or perhaps, because I have a gun and I say so ;-)
Why does a ~200 yr old document matter more than "what we want today?" What if we want to change the rules? The constitution provides for changes to itself, but it sets the bar for those changes higher than that for passing a law. Many changes have been made, such as the ability of the government to collect income tax, which was originally prohibited explicitly! (called a "capitation tax") It makes sense that the rules that control the process for making laws would be a bit harder to change than just passing a new law, otherwise why have them. (see previous answer)
Quoting you directly:
That is exactly the intention. The main idea is that "government recieves its power from the consent of the governed." The constitution is what defines that consent and is supposed to keep the government under control. Of course, if a large enough part of the people consent to change the way that control is set, then things can (and are) changed, but in general people still want that control to remain in place.
Because our constitution/system of government was supposed to be based on the principal of defending the individual against the "tyrrany of the majority." Therefore what "the people" want isn't supposed to destroy my individual decisions about how I run my life, business, etc. (within reason and the limits set in the constitution. QED)
The reason that the founding fathers intentions is important, is that they wrote, very simply, their intentions. When they wrote "congress shall pass no law" they meant NO LAW. But people today, and politicians in particular IMHO, have difficulty comprehending the concept of simple absolutes. Therefore, they try to say that what was written simply in one sentence doesn't mean what it says, but instead requires many pages of interpretations. So, it takes others of us to remind people that the intent of words like "no" is just "no", plain and simple.
But, to my knowledge, the FSF *does* persue GPL violations that infringe on code copyrighted by the FSF. (Epson comes to mind...)
Just because somebody happens to use the GPL doesn't give the FSF any copyright ownership, except for ownership of the text of the licence. So as long as you don't change the text of the licence you are OK to use it in conjunction with your product.
However, when somebody steals your code, *you* are responsible for the legal attack, not the FSF.
Why should we, you didn't.
Also, I have problems with the length of time a software patent lasts. In today's world, 20 years is a lot longer with repsect to technological change, than it was in the 1770s.
To be honest, I became the most disenchanted with the patent process when I went through it. As it turns out I got my patent, but I am disappointed in the way it happened.
For example, with the aparent attitude of our current patent office Edison could have begun the light bulb patent with a claim like "1. An electric device where light is produced by the application of electric current, without the production of an electric arc." (The last bit to get around arc lamps, which I believe existed previous to Edison.) Claims 2 through N would then go on to describe evacuated glass bulbs, filaments, etc. and would all start like "2. a device as in claim 1 which..."
Note that the first claim would effectivly prohibit production of florescent lights, LEDs and any number of other light producing items. Those items could be patented themselves, but their inventors could not legally produce them without licencing Claim 1 from Edison. As such, the "idea" of the light bulb would have been effectivly patented, not just the incandescent filament embodyment.
It is up to the patent examiner to determine when a claim is too broad to be allowed. In the patent I hold, my original claim 1 was rejected for this reason. We just removed claim 1 and rewrote claim 2 slightly to be independant and *poof* the patent was approved.
If the examiner had allowed my first claim, someone could have just taken me to court to have the same effect of nullifying that claim. The problem is that Microsoft has the cash to make it very expensive for anyone to challenge their overly broad claims which have been allowed by USPTO. (p.s. I know, LEDs etc. came more than 20 years after Edison. This is just an example)