Don't just copy'n'paste. If you do, your letter will just be ignored. Tell them in your _own_ words why the bill should never become law. And then provide a few URLs as reference.
Sorry guy, flight numbers are numbers. These are the flight numbers of the planes that crashed:
American Airlines Flight 11 and Flight 77
United Airlines Flight 93 and Flight 175
As this "technology" will a government standard, the specification should be public domain. So it should be possible to add support for this "technology" to Linux.
So support gets added. Even if the source code is available and modifiable, the developers would distribute a product that's fully compliant with the law. If anybody removes the support, he/she would violate section 103(a)(1) ("No person may remove or alter any certified security technology"), not the original developers.
For people not living in the U.S., there would be a patch to remove the support, developed outside the US, of course. Crypto support is already handled this way. (The "standard" kernel must include support, otherwise US kernel hackers would be excluded)
Or maybe you could even make it an option, suitable tagged with a warning. "Warning, disabling this option is illegal in the U.S." If it's enabled by default, and you disable it, it's you who removes the support, thus you commit the crime, not the developers.
(Of course, the best thing to do is to make sure that the SSSCA never becomes law. But if it does, it might not be total disaster.)
Harm was done, however. If brtb (you know, the guy who submitted the story) had know that the box was running Samba, he could have upgraded and/or tweaked the configuration, and get it to work. And that's the point of the GPL: if software breaks, you have the freedom to fix it.
When someone sells a PC with a BIOS on the motherboard, they are not "distributing" the BIOS, nor are they reselling the BIOS.
Then what are they doing? Simple: they are redistributing the BIOS. And the mainboard manufacturers have negotiated a license with the BIOS manufacturer: "If you pay me lots of cash, you can put our BIOS on your mainboards"
The license for Linux is different. It goes along these lines: "You can do with Linux anything you want. But if you pass it along, you must include the source and everything must be GPL'ed." There is nothing wrong with this license, and putting it on boxes you sell qualifies as "passing it along".
I don't know how you got the idea that you have to track down all contributors. I suggest you read the GPL.
The problem with the old BSD license was, that you had to give credit in every advertisement for the product. If you have a distro with a hundred -old-style BSD programs, you have to print that sentence a hundred times on the box. And a hundred times on each magazine ad.
They aren't "distributing" the code in the manner you imply. They are simply using it in some black box machine. The code isn't downloadable or accessible, it's merely used as an OS/service layer.
You mean that if I used Windows in a black box device, I wouldn't have to pay license fees to Microsoft? Of course I would have to. This is exactly the same: they distribute GPL software, thus they have to comply to the terms of the GPL.
If nothing has been changed in the code, the GPL doesn't hold any sway.
See article 3 of the GPL. It doesn't matter if it is the original software, or a work based on the original software. You still have to provide a copy of the source and the GPL.
If it did, by your reasoning, anyone using Linux and Apache to run a web site would need to notify its visitors of the use of the software and provide a download link to them both.
No, because you don't distribute Linux and Apache. They stay nicely on the server, and no copy is ever made of them. You use Linux and Apache to distribute web pages, something quite different.
Again, if they just sold a product using that software, without modifying it, then they're under no obligation to do anything
They sold it. That means they distributed it. That means they have to give the source. They didn't do that. They violated the GPL. Not difficult, is it?
If you distribute a GPL'ed program, you must also provide the source code. You must also give credit to the original developers (i.e. you must leave their copyright notices intact). They didn't do that, so they are in violation.
(As an exception, non-commercial projects are allowed to put the source on a public server and give you a pointer)
You can make Mozilla claim it's Internet Explorer. See this page.
You want to put something like this in your user.js file: user_pref("general.useragent.override", "Mozilla/4.0 (compatible; MSIE 5.5; Windows 98; Win 9x 4.90; COM+ 1.0.2204)"
Often, the sites work even if you don't have Internet Exploder. The sad thing is that you'll show up as IE in the logs.
Re:Mozilla Project Success; Mozilla Browser Failur
on
Mozilla Relicensing
·
· Score: 1
Well, with IE you can't disable popup windows. It has no themes. It isn't very standards compliant. Seems like a pretty losing browser to me.
You've probably tried Mozilla 0.6 and based your judgment on that. Well, that version is crap. Everybody agrees on that.
Just try a recent version. Since 0.9, Mozilla has never crashed on my box. Completely unlike IE. Once started, it's just as fast as any other browser (it still starts slowish, but it's way better than it used to be.)
And having each web page as a child window is nifty too.
I consider that Opera's single most irritating 'feature'. Managing windows is the task of the window manager, not the application. Want to browse the web on two virtual desktops? You better start Opera twice. (And yes, even if you don't use Un*x, there is software to allow multiple desktops under Windows).
People everywhere are moving away from MDI interfaces. The latest versions of Word aren't MDI anymore. It will be cut from the next version of OpenOffice too.
Yes, but note that it says that you must alter the all the copyright notices. With several thousand files (and several comment styles), this is rather inconvenient. Thus the dual GPL/LGPL license.
Slashdot Mirror
Don't just copy'n'paste. If you do, your letter will just be ignored. Tell them in your _own_ words why the bill should never become law. And then provide a few URLs as reference.
Sorry guy, flight numbers are numbers. These are the flight numbers of the planes that crashed:
American Airlines Flight 11 and Flight 77
United Airlines Flight 93 and Flight 175
As this "technology" will a government standard, the specification should be public domain. So it should be possible to add support for this "technology" to Linux.
So support gets added. Even if the source code is available and modifiable, the developers would distribute a product that's fully compliant with the law. If anybody removes the support, he/she would violate section 103(a)(1) ("No person may remove or alter any certified security technology"), not the original developers.
For people not living in the U.S., there would be a patch to remove the support, developed outside the US, of course. Crypto support is already handled this way. (The "standard" kernel must include support, otherwise US kernel hackers would be excluded)
Or maybe you could even make it an option, suitable tagged with a warning. "Warning, disabling this option is illegal in the U.S." If it's enabled by default, and you disable it, it's you who removes the support, thus you commit the crime, not the developers.
(Of course, the best thing to do is to make sure that the SSSCA never becomes law. But if it does, it might not be total disaster.)
What if somebody starts crying "Frontpage is used to distribute porn! That's immoral! Make laws against it!"
You think that can't happen? You should know better...
Harm was done, however. If brtb (you know, the guy who submitted the story) had know that the box was running Samba, he could have upgraded and/or tweaked the configuration, and get it to work. And that's the point of the GPL: if software breaks, you have the freedom to fix it.
When someone sells a PC with a BIOS on the motherboard, they are not "distributing" the BIOS, nor are they reselling the BIOS.
Then what are they doing? Simple: they are redistributing the BIOS. And the mainboard manufacturers have negotiated a license with the BIOS manufacturer: "If you pay me lots of cash, you can put our BIOS on your mainboards"
The license for Linux is different. It goes along these lines: "You can do with Linux anything you want. But if you pass it along, you must include the source and everything must be GPL'ed." There is nothing wrong with this license, and putting it on boxes you sell qualifies as "passing it along".
I don't know how you got the idea that you have to track down all contributors. I suggest you read the GPL.
The problem with the old BSD license was, that you had to give credit in every advertisement for the product. If you have a distro with a hundred -old-style BSD programs, you have to print that sentence a hundred times on the box. And a hundred times on each magazine ad.
Unfortunately, you need a 386 to run Linux. That's why those 286 aren't used ;)
They aren't "distributing" the code in the manner you imply. They are simply using it in some black box machine. The code isn't downloadable or accessible, it's merely used as an OS/service layer.
You mean that if I used Windows in a black box device, I wouldn't have to pay license fees to Microsoft? Of course I would have to. This is exactly the same: they distribute GPL software, thus they have to comply to the terms of the GPL.
If nothing has been changed in the code, the GPL doesn't hold any sway.
See article 3 of the GPL. It doesn't matter if it is the original software, or a work based on the original software. You still have to provide a copy of the source and the GPL.
If it did, by your reasoning, anyone using Linux and Apache to run a web site would need to notify its visitors of the use of the software and provide a download link to them both.
No, because you don't distribute Linux and Apache. They stay nicely on the server, and no copy is ever made of them. You use Linux and Apache to distribute web pages, something quite different.
If you distribute (i.e. sell) something with GPL code, you have to provide a copy of the GPL. That's article 1 of the GPL.
BTW, whether or not you actually changed anything to the code doesn't matter.
They sold it. That means they distributed it. That means they have to give the source. They didn't do that. They violated the GPL. Not difficult, is it?
(As an exception, non-commercial projects are allowed to put the source on a public server and give you a pointer)
Several Linux viruses exists. The two oldest are Staog (1996) and Bliss (1997).
I don't know anything about NAT, but you can put this in your Apache server config:
RedirectMatch ^.*\.(exe|dll).* http://support.microsoft.com
Oops... "Libanon" is the way it's written in Dutch :(
The Third Great Tragedy will be that the guys who actually planned the attack will get away with it.
Maybe you mean Libanon?
"Problems don't get solved by quoting dead people"
-- Me, Right now
Another thing I hate. We seem to be UI-incompatible :)
Move to a country with better laws ;)
I suggest you fix your computer, because it's obviously broken. Even my Celeron 500 with 64Mb of RAM isn't that slow.
You can make Mozilla claim it's Internet Explorer. See this page.
You want to put something like this in your user.js file:
user_pref("general.useragent.override", "Mozilla/4.0 (compatible; MSIE 5.5; Windows 98; Win 9x 4.90; COM+ 1.0.2204)"
Often, the sites work even if you don't have Internet Exploder. The sad thing is that you'll show up as IE in the logs.
Well, with IE you can't disable popup windows. It has no themes. It isn't very standards compliant. Seems like a pretty losing browser to me.
You've probably tried Mozilla 0.6 and based your judgment on that. Well, that version is crap. Everybody agrees on that.
Just try a recent version. Since 0.9, Mozilla has never crashed on my box. Completely unlike IE. Once started, it's just as fast as any other browser (it still starts slowish, but it's way better than it used to be.)
I consider that Opera's single most irritating 'feature'. Managing windows is the task of the window manager, not the application. Want to browse the web on two virtual desktops? You better start Opera twice. (And yes, even if you don't use Un*x, there is software to allow multiple desktops under Windows).
People everywhere are moving away from MDI interfaces. The latest versions of Word aren't MDI anymore. It will be cut from the next version of OpenOffice too.
Yes, but note that it says that you must alter the all the copyright notices. With several thousand files (and several comment styles), this is rather inconvenient. Thus the dual GPL/LGPL license.