regulations, shmregulations. Code is code. There are still the same liability problems (if they are real at all) with the binary code that Intel distributes as there are with the source code. Sure, it's a lot easier to hack source than binary, but it's still possible.
Right, so if someone gets into an accident while drunk, and crying about the situation to their AA buddy on a cell phone they should be under the same liability as the person they hit who was following all the rules? After all it's possible to get into an accident without breaking any laws so why bother with them at all?
The one legitimate reason Intel has (and it's a big one IMHO) is that their FCC cert probably depends on them making it difficult for end users to change things like the power output and frequency use. It looks like Centrino does a lot of the work in the driver (like a winmodem) and it might not be possible to satisfy the FCC and still provide full source. I wouldn't be surprised if a future version of the driver ends up split up into seperate binary and OSS bits.
Personally I'd rather have an OSS driver than their snazzy hyper-effecient algorithms. There are plenty of people in the community who can improve the alogrithms if necessary.
But you suffer from drawbacks, such as manufacturers not wanting to release anything in open-source drivers that cost them millions to develop.
The manufacturers don't normally charge for the drivers anyway so I don't really think that's a problem. In many cases just releasing the specs for the hardware would be enough and they wouldn't even need to develop the driver themselves. Another alternative would be to do what many OSS developers do and add support for their hardware to an existing driver.
If you just stick to GPL'd drivers, you can only get drivers for a small amount of hardware. Sad, but true.
Most people only HAVE a small amount of hardware so it's OK.
Part of future kernen maintenance should probably include comparisons against this code, just to be safe.
It seems unlikely to me that Windows code would fit in the Linux kernel without VERY heavy modifications (probably involving a sledge hammer). I guess if my Linux boxes start BSODing 5 minutes after I've gone home for the day we'll know I was wrong.
How do you prevent something like a particular piece of code being contributed without looking at that code? I feel this is probably a non-trivial problem.
Didn't Eric Raymond claim to have created a tool for this sort of thing?
Simply having a new/good idea should not be a lottery ticket nor should it be a license to impose a tax on others that come up with the same or similar idea independantly.
Why not just let thinkers reap their own reward by selling their idea?
Because they are trying to sell their idea to people who have already thought of it on their own (or customers of those people)?
The purpose of the patent system is to promote progress. If the system no longer does that than maybe it has outlived it's usefullness.
I am what most people would consider a highly trained technical professional. Unlike most people who spout off at this site, I have the certificates to prove this, and furthermore they're issued by the biggest software company in existence.
And with such an impressive resume the best you could do was to copy one of MS's marketing pages. Did you get your certs via copy/paste too?
I know how to tell facts from marketing fluff. Now, here are the facts as they're found by SEVERAL INDEPENDENT RESEARCH INSTITUTES:
Who were PAID BY MS for their work.
Who do you think we professionals trust more?
Probably not someone who pulls some marketing tripe off a MS web page and tries to present it as independant fact.
AFAIK there arn't even any hard drives in existance that can actually pull data off their platters that fast. Unless this was a RAID setup something is wrong with the test.
It gives further credibility to the perception that the "GPL is viral, contaminating everything it touches". Although this view is moot when one realizes that they shouldn't be copying and distributing other people's copyrighted works in the first place without permission (which in the case of the GPL is fairly easy to obtain), it's pretty much a given that SCO's own rendering of this code as GPL was inadvertent will be brought up as grounds for why the GPL should be considered legally invalid.
Actually a good portion of this article is about showing that SCO knew EXACTLY what they were doing when they distributed this code under the GPL.
The judge hasn't gone so far as ordering SCO to provide proof, just to specify in detail exactly what they are claiming to own (and some other things, but not proof yet).
So, if Gabucino is correct, Kiss Technology stole code from MPlayer. And if Peter Wilmar Christensen is correct, someone working for Kiss Technology leaked the information to the competition, possibly for money.
If Peter is correct then someone working for Kiss has a time machine.
What about users like me? I'm not a coder. For me the source might as well be written in Hebrew. I get no benefits from having the code available.
You still benefit from the labor of the thousands of people who can and do read/fix the code. Even if you're not a mechanic you still benefit from the fact that any mechanic can open the hood of your car and perform simple repairs. Can you imagine how much car maintence would cost if you had to take your car to the dealership for oil changes, new battery etc?.
In addition, one thing I've learned over the last 15 years or so is that more open and standardized computer products tend to have a much longer usefull life span than more closed products. More open products tend to be re-used even when their origional mission is long finished. More closed products tend to just end up in the trash because they don't work with a newer/different OS or doesn't mix well with newer hardware.
Microsoft's licensing terms here seem to be closest to the BSD License out of the major open source models.
How so? It says that " You are not licensed to sublicense or transfer your rights." How can a license that includes that phrase be called "Open Source" much less "BSD like". Also, they make you include a link to another MS license that is currently 404ed so what happens when they actually put some text there or later change that text?
The key word here is "rightfully". You cannot play DVDs "rightfully" without the appropriate licenses.
Except that's not true. When you buy/rent a dvd/cd/book etc you DO have a right to view/listen/read it without any additional license. You essentially recieved a limited licence the moment you handed over your money. Copyright law spells out these rights and some limitations (no commercial use etc) in a reasonably ballanced way. The DMCA basically throws that ballance away and gives all rights to the publisher. IMHO that's just plain wrong.
Its like complaining that somebody stole from you because you can't go into a movie theater without a ticket.
No it's more like selling you a ticket and then informing you that you'll have to view the feature while standing on your head and no there are no refunds but we'll happily exchange your ticket for another showing where you'll also have to stand on your head.
Mmm, yes, and thereby restrict their pool of volunteers to the Unix-savvy?
Have you actually USED a modern Linux Distro? It's not any harder (or really even much different) than Windows for the sorts of things these folks normally do. That's especially true for non profits where they hardly ever even have two machines with the same flavor of Windows on them.
Open office is all well and good, but it lacks key features of MS Office and StarOffice, such as Windows metrically-equivalent fonts.
Someone who wants the best of both worlds is probably best off with Sun's Mad Hatter package.
Ok, now I KNOW you've never actually tried any of the stuff you're talking about. If anything Mad Hatter is a step BACK in terms of usability IMHO.
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regulations, shmregulations. Code is code. There are still the same liability problems (if they are real at all) with the binary code that Intel distributes as there are with the source code. Sure, it's a lot easier to hack source than binary, but it's still possible.
Right, so if someone gets into an accident while drunk, and crying about the situation to their AA buddy on a cell phone they should be under the same liability as the person they hit who was following all the rules? After all it's possible to get into an accident without breaking any laws so why bother with them at all?
The one legitimate reason Intel has (and it's a big one IMHO) is that their FCC cert probably depends on them making it difficult for end users to change things like the power output and frequency use. It looks like Centrino does a lot of the work in the driver (like a winmodem) and it might not be possible to satisfy the FCC and still provide full source. I wouldn't be surprised if a future version of the driver ends up split up into seperate binary and OSS bits.
Personally I'd rather have an OSS driver than their snazzy hyper-effecient algorithms. There are plenty of people in the community who can improve the alogrithms if necessary.
But you suffer from drawbacks, such as manufacturers not wanting to release anything in open-source drivers that cost them millions to develop.
The manufacturers don't normally charge for the drivers anyway so I don't really think that's a problem. In many cases just releasing the specs for the hardware would be enough and they wouldn't even need to develop the driver themselves. Another alternative would be to do what many OSS developers do and add support for their hardware to an existing driver.
If you just stick to GPL'd drivers, you can only get drivers for a small amount of hardware. Sad, but true.
Most people only HAVE a small amount of hardware so it's OK.
Part of future kernen maintenance should probably include comparisons against this code, just to be safe.
It seems unlikely to me that Windows code would fit in the Linux kernel without VERY heavy modifications (probably involving a sledge hammer). I guess if my Linux boxes start BSODing 5 minutes after I've gone home for the day we'll know I was wrong.
How do you prevent something like a particular piece of code being contributed without looking at that code? I feel this is probably a non-trivial problem.
Didn't Eric Raymond claim to have created a tool for this sort of thing?
Maybe, but new/good ideas should be rewarded.
Simply having a new/good idea should not be a lottery ticket nor should it be a license to impose a tax on others that come up with the same or similar idea independantly.
Why not just let thinkers reap their own reward by selling their idea?
Because they are trying to sell their idea to people who have already thought of it on their own (or customers of those people)?
The purpose of the patent system is to promote progress. If the system no longer does that than maybe it has outlived it's usefullness.
I am what most people would consider a highly trained technical professional. Unlike most people who spout off at this site, I have the certificates to prove this, and furthermore they're issued by the biggest software company in existence.
And with such an impressive resume the best you could do was to copy one of MS's marketing pages. Did you get your certs via copy/paste too?
I know how to tell facts from marketing fluff. Now, here are the facts as they're found by SEVERAL INDEPENDENT RESEARCH INSTITUTES:
Who were PAID BY MS for their work.
Who do you think we professionals trust more?
Probably not someone who pulls some marketing tripe off a MS web page and tries to present it as independant fact.
AFAIK there arn't even any hard drives in existance that can actually pull data off their platters that fast. Unless this was a RAID setup something is wrong with the test.
It gives further credibility to the perception that the "GPL is viral, contaminating everything it touches". Although this view is moot when one realizes that they shouldn't be copying and distributing other people's copyrighted works in the first place without permission (which in the case of the GPL is fairly easy to obtain), it's pretty much a given that SCO's own rendering of this code as GPL was inadvertent will be brought up as grounds for why the GPL should be considered legally invalid.
Actually a good portion of this article is about showing that SCO knew EXACTLY what they were doing when they distributed this code under the GPL.
The judge hasn't gone so far as ordering SCO to provide proof, just to specify in detail exactly what they are claiming to own (and some other things, but not proof yet).
The voyager probes didn't have to land.
So, if Gabucino is correct, Kiss Technology stole code from MPlayer. And if Peter Wilmar Christensen is correct, someone working for Kiss Technology leaked the information to the competition, possibly for money.
If Peter is correct then someone working for Kiss has a time machine.
Canada is much bigger than the states, but with far less people. The cost of having towers running is a nobrainer.
On the other hand, Canada's population is more concentrated in cities so they may not need towers at all in many rural areas.
In addition, this assumes that these were illegal copies. It's not illegal to sell CDs.
Does the RIAA confirm that these are their people, not some nuts with the letters RIAA on their jackets?
And the difference would be......:)
If you can shoot the guy stealing your car, you can shoot out your tire, rendering the car undrivable.
And watch them sue you because you caused them to run into a tree.
You don't need to be a programmer to contribute to OSS. You can:
* Send $, pizza vouchers, Safari sub. etc to the developer of your choice.
* Send $ to Debian or FSF (may even be tax deductable)
* Donate hardware (something YOU really want supported) to a developer working in that area.
* Test software and send back well documented bug reports.
* Write documentation for your favorite app/utility
* Write a Howto or mini-howto on something that has given you trouble.
* Help others in your favorite mail list/newsgroup/forum.
Agreed but you forgot:
* Turn your product into a giant advertisement for overpriced/under-featured services. Otherwise known as "pulling an Intuit".
What about users like me? I'm not a coder. For me the source might as well be written in Hebrew. I get no benefits from having the code available.
You still benefit from the labor of the thousands of people who can and do read/fix the code. Even if you're not a mechanic you still benefit from the fact that any mechanic can open the hood of your car and perform simple repairs. Can you imagine how much car maintence would cost if you had to take your car to the dealership for oil changes, new battery etc?.
In addition, one thing I've learned over the last 15 years or so is that more open and standardized computer products tend to have a much longer usefull life span than more closed products. More open products tend to be re-used even when their origional mission is long finished. More closed products tend to just end up in the trash because they don't work with a newer/different OS or doesn't mix well with newer hardware.
Microsoft's licensing terms here seem to be closest to the BSD License out of the major open source models.
How so? It says that " You are not licensed to sublicense or transfer your rights." How can a license that includes that phrase be called "Open Source" much less "BSD like". Also, they make you include a link to another MS license that is currently 404ed so what happens when they actually put some text there or later change that text?
Wow, these kinds of nuggets are the best thing about Slashdot!
The key word here is "rightfully". You cannot play DVDs "rightfully" without the appropriate licenses.
Except that's not true. When you buy/rent a dvd/cd/book etc you DO have a right to view/listen/read it without any additional license. You essentially recieved a limited licence the moment you handed over your money. Copyright law spells out these rights and some limitations (no commercial use etc) in a reasonably ballanced way. The DMCA basically throws that ballance away and gives all rights to the publisher. IMHO that's just plain wrong.
Its like complaining that somebody stole from you because you can't go into a movie theater without a ticket.
No it's more like selling you a ticket and then informing you that you'll have to view the feature while standing on your head and no there are no refunds but we'll happily exchange your ticket for another showing where you'll also have to stand on your head.
Mmm, yes, and thereby restrict their pool of volunteers to the Unix-savvy?
Have you actually USED a modern Linux Distro? It's not any harder (or really even much different) than Windows for the sorts of things these folks normally do. That's especially true for non profits where they hardly ever even have two machines with the same flavor of Windows on them.
Open office is all well and good, but it lacks key features of MS Office and StarOffice, such as Windows metrically-equivalent fonts.
Someone who wants the best of both worlds is probably best off with Sun's Mad Hatter package.
Ok, now I KNOW you've never actually tried any of the stuff you're talking about. If anything Mad Hatter is a step BACK in terms of usability IMHO.
Trying to guess keywords for each set of 5 pages, frankly, sounds like a lot of work.
Unless of course Amazon includes the page number in the search results.