Well, the only reason the GPL is enforceable is that exists within a capitalist system. Which is good, because the only reason it needs to exist is the capitalist system it's reacting against in the first place.:)
Sort of a moebius strip approach to software licensing, turning the principle of intellectual property against itself. I only wish similar practices were possible in the world of material objects; that is, the ability to share your posessions with others while mandating that they will find it difficult to take without giving.
(I approach property discussions from something of a Proudhon-ist position; i.e. libertarian socialism. "Property is theft" and all that.:)
(BTW, if you develop code based on someone else's GPL'd code you only have author's rights over the code you wrote (of course), so it is not quite a turnaround from consumer to producer, as the main code is still 'owned' by the author, at least for any purpose that would remove it from the GPL'd area -- i.e. they still decide what is copyright infringement (people copying the code and not obeying the GPL) and what is not (relicensing the code under another license to people who want a closed version so they won't be bound by the GPL.) But apart from that it's much closer to that model than proprietary code, and attempts to ensure more consumption and production in ways that BSD, public domain et. al don't.)
I've played around with an old mechanical one-armed bandit (with an open cashbox, so you could just feed the money straight through again)... and it seems to me that, assuming that the distribution was random and roughly even, seeing a 'near miss' would make me think that I was unlikely to get anywhere near a big win for a while. Of course, I've never been in that 'gambling haze' that those people seem to get into...
The GPL enforces socialism, to an extent, by people other than the author, but you are only obliged to deliver source code, or source code modifications, to those people you have distributed the binary to, not to society at large. Thus "society" is limited to the society of people using the code, and this can be kept small while obeying the terms of the license if all parties agree on this.
The author still owns the code, and the copyright on the code. (However, they can't "take back" any release under the GPL, but they can improve the code and choose to release it under a proprietary license.) Thus, the GPL is not explicitly communist, as it still permits ownsership of software by the author (in fact, it's about the only form of intellectual property it does recognise), and this ownership is necessary for the GPL to be effective, otherwise the license could not be enforced.
You are looking at the software from the perspective of use/consumption, while I am looking at it from the perspective of a content producer and programmer, which is how I make my living. I assure you, the distinctions I am making are important to me as an author of software.
No. Relinquishing copyright would be the same as releasing code into the public domain. As it is, the author of GPL'd code can sue to protect their moral rights if the code is being used in a way that does not comply with the GPL, because and *only* because they still hold copyright over the code.
Basically, the GPL is an elegant hack to use the idea of copyright against people making money from intellectual property, whether or not that IP was their own invention to begin with.
GPL is all but comunist, because it removes ownership from a single person.
Not necessarily. GPL depends on copyright to enforce the wishes of the author -- that's why use by those others than the author is 'licensed'. The author also has the freedom to re-license the code, or derivatives, under a different license if she so chooses.
Maybe we need a Socialist Public License, for people to release things like DeCSS under -- "Don't blame me, it's the fault of the populace at large!":)
I vary between being reasonable and paranoid on the Microsoft issue -- please ignore me if I get too paranoid, but every now and then reality starts to correlate with the paranoia (e.g. Palladium).
I'm no arguing that using COM components is a bad idea, just that it shouldn't be all that difficult to extend open source WPs in a similar and more cross-platform fashion, and thus his argument is somewhat weak. Certainly it would be easier than having changes made to Word's component interface if bugs were found or large-scale changes needed.
I complain about how my taxes are spent on "free" services
You pay for stuff with your taxes -- garbage collection, etc. isn't free. Neither is free-to-air TV (paid for by supermarket imposts). Thus you have a right to complain about that, to the extent of your contribution (minimal in both cases). Okay, so you may have paid for some free software through university funding, etc., but that doesn't cover a lot of it.
voting with my download
Your download *costs* the providers money. Whinge, whinge.
Sheeple
I feel like I can criticize it, sure, but I'm not about to diminsh the effort put in by people who aren't asking anything from me in return (except, occasionally, that if I add to it that those changes be made public as well).
Free software is not free of fault, but I'm arguing that its better to be positive about it, and work on correcting the errors, than to tell the authors of 9 out of 10 window managers that their efforts aren't wanted and they can go home now. If you don't like them, ignore them yourself and let the market of ideas decide. Build up the stuff you're interested in rather than pulling others down.
Given the depression in the market, Open Source coders skilled in the area could probably be had very cheaply:) Not that I'm advocating it if it doesn't fit your particular case, of course, but the advantage of being able to change it is there... maybe others would find your proposed changes useful as well. If, say, 10 companies could get an extra million dollars of business each by adding certain functionality to an open source app... it'd definitely be worth them each putting in $30,000, or something like that (again, in a more general case).
Besides, it wouldn't involve a complete rewrite unless the person extending it was "incredibly fucking stupid". It's all about different ways of presenting the same functionality, and if you can't adapt one API to another without stripping it down to "Hello, World" then you should hand in your compiler immediately.
Thanks for the vote of confidence, and the elegant formation of your response. Maybe "Because then they wouldn't have to redo the work when Microsoft made it too legally difficult to extend their applications, because they want that slice of the market" would be a better suggestion.
Wasted effort? You're very enthusiastic about determining what other people should be doing with their time -- how would you feel if someone told you what to do with yours, and you didn't have a choice?
This effort is not wasted if the people expending the effort don't feel that it is. 'Wasted' is a value judgement that you're making, not an objective statement of fact.
You're getting stuff for free, and you have the balls to say "Oh, no, I'd rather have more of this and less of that?" Write your own damn code, or pay for the software you want to be written, but stop trying to stop others doing what they enjoy.
I work fo a vendor who sells a very expensive piece of vertical market software.
If it's that expensive, why not spend some money on hiring a developer to bring Abiword, or something similar, up to scratch in that respect?
(Of course, if your product costs more than, say, 10x more than Office, people may well not care about the extra fee for the WP... but if that's not the case, surely having a free program available would remove the requirement for customers to buy Office as well, and possibly increase sales.)
I realise this may not be possible unless the program in question has a reasonably clean and extensible infrastructure, but then you'd want to check that before starting work I guess.:)
Here in Australia, I continued to be charged phone rental, at $2.50 a month, despite numerous complaints that I had actually bought my own phone when I moved into the apartment, as the phone already there had been taken by the previous tenant. The only way I got out of that one was to move... bloody phone company, bloody monopoly, bloody bloody bloody....
But what about Sony? Don't they own members of the RIAA *and* MPAA? And they make a cool games console, that runs Linux... but then they sue modchippers? Oh, I'm so confused!?!:)
Besides, the new Apple mice aren't bad. Damn sight better than the iMac hockey pucks.
(Sorry about the delayed reply -- I keep being bitten by a Slashcode bug which stops me posting for hours. Mails to/. have gone unanswered:/)
***
Thanks -- I think the original message seemed to me to be saying that financial value was the only value that mattered, and I think that's one of the things that attracted me to Free Software... that it's somewhat agnostic when it comes to cooperating with the economic view. That's probably why I reacted so strongly.:/
ESR's various pieces address this better than I can, even if he's pushing the business-friendly Open Source concept in some of them.
And yes, no-one's required to pitch in... but if no-one does, free software will wither and die. It's still a 'free market' in the traditional economic sense, but not wholly a monetary one. And, if healthy, it can probably sustain a certain amount of freeloaders in the same way that MS survived despite widespread piracy -- mindshare, and controlling accepted 'standards' for document exchange etc., can be useful commoditites to ensure continued survival.
there are other people out there that use, and love Linux, but they are still cheapasses
I use Debian. I've donated money to Debian, but not every time I upgrade the system, which happens incrementally anyway. I'm happy that it's free, and I'm happy that it's Free.
If you don't want to buy it... Don't use it.
Why should I support companies commercialising the work of other people, especially when they don't produce distros suited to my needs? And where do you get off on turning Free Software into an economic imperative?
so you somehow know all reality shows suck without watching them...
Not hard when they're being flogged every second ad break and popping up in newspapers, magazines and random conversations. The sheeple think what they're told to think, and the wolves grin quietly in the darkness.
Slashdot Mirror
There are children out there with employees? And here I am, self-employed and contracting at 28, no-one working under me. Some days I just feel old...
Well, the only reason the GPL is enforceable is that exists within a capitalist system. Which is good, because the only reason it needs to exist is the capitalist system it's reacting against in the first place. :)
:)
Sort of a moebius strip approach to software licensing, turning the principle of intellectual property against itself. I only wish similar practices were possible in the world of material objects; that is, the ability to share your posessions with others while mandating that they will find it difficult to take without giving.
(I approach property discussions from something of a Proudhon-ist position; i.e. libertarian socialism. "Property is theft" and all that.
(BTW, if you develop code based on someone else's GPL'd code you only have author's rights over the code you wrote (of course), so it is not quite a turnaround from consumer to producer, as the main code is still 'owned' by the author, at least for any purpose that would remove it from the GPL'd area -- i.e. they still decide what is copyright infringement (people copying the code and not obeying the GPL) and what is not (relicensing the code under another license to people who want a closed version so they won't be bound by the GPL.) But apart from that it's much closer to that model than proprietary code, and attempts to ensure more consumption and production in ways that BSD, public domain et. al don't.)
I've played around with an old mechanical one-armed bandit (with an open cashbox, so you could just feed the money straight through again)... and it seems to me that, assuming that the distribution was random and roughly even, seeing a 'near miss' would make me think that I was unlikely to get anywhere near a big win for a while. Of course, I've never been in that 'gambling haze' that those people seem to get into...
endure some author's made-up stories in which he gets to exercise his prejudices.
Not all non-fiction is free of an author's prejudices, of course... in fact I'd say that very little of it is.
The GPL enforces socialism, to an extent, by people other than the author, but you are only obliged to deliver source code, or source code modifications, to those people you have distributed the binary to, not to society at large. Thus "society" is limited to the society of people using the code, and this can be kept small while obeying the terms of the license if all parties agree on this.
The author still owns the code, and the copyright on the code. (However, they can't "take back" any release under the GPL, but they can improve the code and choose to release it under a proprietary license.) Thus, the GPL is not explicitly communist, as it still permits ownsership of software by the author (in fact, it's about the only form of intellectual property it does recognise), and this ownership is necessary for the GPL to be effective, otherwise the license could not be enforced.
You are looking at the software from the perspective of use/consumption, while I am looking at it from the perspective of a content producer and programmer, which is how I make my living. I assure you, the distinctions I am making are important to me as an author of software.
No. Relinquishing copyright would be the same as releasing code into the public domain. As it is, the author of GPL'd code can sue to protect their moral rights if the code is being used in a way that does not comply with the GPL, because and *only* because they still hold copyright over the code.
Basically, the GPL is an elegant hack to use the idea of copyright against people making money from intellectual property, whether or not that IP was their own invention to begin with.
GPL is all but comunist, because it removes ownership from a single person.
:)
Not necessarily. GPL depends on copyright to enforce the wishes of the author -- that's why use by those others than the author is 'licensed'. The author also has the freedom to re-license the code, or derivatives, under a different license if she so chooses.
Maybe we need a Socialist Public License, for people to release things like DeCSS under -- "Don't blame me, it's the fault of the populace at large!"
How many grains of sand on this beach? How many angels can dance on the head of a pin? :)
Hello, my immediate /. user-id predecessor! :)
Anyway, on with the comment...
I wish everyone would start moving their projects off sourceforge.
Right then, if you say so. Have to move everything elsewhere to make life better for StarHeart.
You can't buy advertising like that.
:)
Yes you can, and I can introduce you to the right journalists... for a fee.
I vary between being reasonable and paranoid on the Microsoft issue -- please ignore me if I get too paranoid, but every now and then reality starts to correlate with the paranoia (e.g. Palladium).
I'm no arguing that using COM components is a bad idea, just that it shouldn't be all that difficult to extend open source WPs in a similar and more cross-platform fashion, and thus his argument is somewhat weak. Certainly it would be easier than having changes made to Word's component interface if bugs were found or large-scale changes needed.
I complain about how my taxes are spent on "free" services
You pay for stuff with your taxes -- garbage collection, etc. isn't free. Neither is free-to-air TV (paid for by supermarket imposts). Thus you have a right to complain about that, to the extent of your contribution (minimal in both cases). Okay, so you may have paid for some free software through university funding, etc., but that doesn't cover a lot of it.
voting with my download
Your download *costs* the providers money. Whinge, whinge.
Sheeple
I feel like I can criticize it, sure, but I'm not about to diminsh the effort put in by people who aren't asking anything from me in return (except, occasionally, that if I add to it that those changes be made public as well).
Free software is not free of fault, but I'm arguing that its better to be positive about it, and work on correcting the errors, than to tell the authors of 9 out of 10 window managers that their efforts aren't wanted and they can go home now. If you don't like them, ignore them yourself and let the market of ideas decide. Build up the stuff you're interested in rather than pulling others down.
Given the depression in the market, Open Source coders skilled in the area could probably be had very cheaply :) Not that I'm advocating it if it doesn't fit your particular case, of course, but the advantage of being able to change it is there... maybe others would find your proposed changes useful as well. If, say, 10 companies could get an extra million dollars of business each by adding certain functionality to an open source app... it'd definitely be worth them each putting in $30,000, or something like that (again, in a more general case).
Besides, it wouldn't involve a complete rewrite unless the person extending it was "incredibly fucking stupid". It's all about different ways of presenting the same functionality, and if you can't adapt one API to another without stripping it down to "Hello, World" then you should hand in your compiler immediately.
Thanks for the vote of confidence, and the elegant formation of your response. Maybe "Because then they wouldn't have to redo the work when Microsoft made it too legally difficult to extend their applications, because they want that slice of the market" would be a better suggestion.
Fuckwit.
Wasted effort? You're very enthusiastic about determining what other people should be doing with their time -- how would you feel if someone told you what to do with yours, and you didn't have a choice?
This effort is not wasted if the people expending the effort don't feel that it is. 'Wasted' is a value judgement that you're making, not an objective statement of fact.
You're getting stuff for free, and you have the balls to say "Oh, no, I'd rather have more of this and less of that?" Write your own damn code, or pay for the software you want to be written, but stop trying to stop others doing what they enjoy.
I work fo a vendor who sells a very expensive piece of vertical market software.
:)
If it's that expensive, why not spend some money on hiring a developer to bring Abiword, or something similar, up to scratch in that respect?
(Of course, if your product costs more than, say, 10x more than Office, people may well not care about the extra fee for the WP... but if that's not the case, surely having a free program available would remove the requirement for customers to buy Office as well, and possibly increase sales.)
I realise this may not be possible unless the program in question has a reasonably clean and extensible infrastructure, but then you'd want to check that before starting work I guess.
Here in Australia, I continued to be charged phone rental, at $2.50 a month, despite numerous complaints that I had actually bought my own phone when I moved into the apartment, as the phone already there had been taken by the previous tenant. The only way I got out of that one was to move... bloody phone company, bloody monopoly, bloody bloody bloody....
But what about Sony? Don't they own members of the RIAA *and* MPAA? And they make a cool games console, that runs Linux... but then they sue modchippers? Oh, I'm so confused!?! :)
Besides, the new Apple mice aren't bad. Damn sight better than the iMac hockey pucks.
(Sorry about the delayed reply -- I keep being bitten by a Slashcode bug which stops me posting for hours. Mails to /. have gone unanswered :/)
:/
***
Thanks -- I think the original message seemed to me to be saying that financial value was the only value that mattered, and I think that's one of the things that attracted me to Free Software... that it's somewhat agnostic when it comes to cooperating with the economic view. That's probably why I reacted so strongly.
ESR's various pieces address this better than I can, even if he's pushing the business-friendly Open Source concept in some of them.
And yes, no-one's required to pitch in... but if no-one does, free software will wither and die. It's still a 'free market' in the traditional economic sense, but not wholly a monetary one. And, if healthy, it can probably sustain a certain amount of freeloaders in the same way that MS survived despite widespread piracy -- mindshare, and controlling accepted 'standards' for document exchange etc., can be useful commoditites to ensure continued survival.
there are other people out there that use, and love Linux, but they are still cheapasses
I use Debian. I've donated money to Debian, but not every time I upgrade the system, which happens incrementally anyway. I'm happy that it's free, and I'm happy that it's Free.
If you don't want to buy it... Don't use it.
Why should I support companies commercialising the work of other people, especially when they don't produce distros suited to my needs? And where do you get off on turning Free Software into an economic imperative?
Highest rate of beer consumption in the world -- and proud of it, mate! :)
... and, knowing the way germans use words, it's probably a compound word about 60 letters long. :)
I don't know, I'd put administrators and managers on the same level as critics myself. :)
so you somehow know all reality shows suck without watching them...
Not hard when they're being flogged every second ad break and popping up in newspapers, magazines and random conversations. The sheeple think what they're told to think, and the wolves grin quietly in the darkness.