Yep. Sounds quite nice but... what do we do about movies, songs etc... ? I don't see much difference between software and movie - do you?
I've thought about this, and yes, it is a complication. But I think I can come up with two kinds of answer:
Programs, opposed to movies/songs, do useful work. What should compel society to make software free is not only that they can be reproduced at almost zero cost, but also that they do work. Since songs, videos, etc. don't do work (in the most literal sense, of course), society might not be compelled to make them free.
All our ideas about authorship of songs, video, works of literature, art, etc., are not by any informed criteria natural or exclusive: in fact, historically they began to appear in the late Medieval Ages/Rennaisance. Before that, people happily worked anonymously. Think of how many works of medieval art do we don't know the authors for. And people freely copied from one work of art into the other. Of course, it was hard, physical copying, and not copying like one can copy a recording now, so the example doesn't transfer to recordings.
The point is that art and artists can still exist in systems different from the one we have today. I haven't looked into your question very deeply, but I think there must be people out there who have.
Anyway, think of this: large record companies are parasitic behemoths that generally give musicians a minuscule portion of what they make. They frequently ignore very good musicians just because "their music is not marketable". When smaller labels start having hits with artists who play in a new style, they "embrace and extend" that style, pumping out dozens of mediocre soundalikes (witness "alternative" music in the early 90s). Frankly, I would be quite happy if those companines went to hell. I'd just look for the local talent.
But there are several issues to sort out here. And my BSD history knowledge is not so hot, so let's see if you can help some.
Was the BSD project at Berkely aimed at making a free Unix from the very start? While I doubt the correctness of the original poster's claim that GNU inspired the free BSDs, still it would be interesting to settle the issue of the who wanted to make a free OS and since when.
Also, IIRC, the initial BSD work was patches to AT&T Unix. If that is the case, RMS gets at least the credit for starting to write a free Unix from scratch.
Also, looking at the licenses on the software from both camps, I see a difference. GNU is clearly out to be "free for all of its users", by imposing restrictions on its distribution (the GPL). This is another thing in which, AFAIK, one must credit RMS.
2) RMS made it sound like the Unix compatable "GNU" operating system (we know it as linux) was his idea. [ Linus has yet to be mentioned. ] [note: HURD was not what he is talking about]
This is actually true. The GNU operating system is an idea of RMS that dates back to the early 80s. The GNU Manifesto carries a 1985 copyright date, and he clearly states his intent to write a free Unix-like OS called GNU.
RMS started the GNU/Hurd project, in response to Linux.
False. GNU was started in 1983/84. The Hurd sometime in the late 80s, I guess.
Then in 1998 when Linux started getting on CNN and RMS saw his own GNU/Hurd project failing, he blew a fuse and started the GNU/Linux naming business.
Wrong. This goes back before 1998. The FSF article by RMS on this is copyrighted 1997-98, but I think the issue is even older than that.
Actually, searching the Debian mailing list archives, one can see `GNU/Linux' used as far back as 08/96, about as far back as the archives go, so its use should go back even further...
Now it's gotten to where he's taking credit for initiating Linux first.
Care to give an actual RMS quote to support this? You're basing yourself on a poster's quick recap of what RMS said, which might or might not be accurate...
Who the fsck is RMS?
Founder of the GNU project, which provides many of the most important system utilities in Linux-based systems. Author of gcc, the compiler used to write the kernel. Author of Emacs, editor better than vi;-) (/me ducks for cover)
How many issues of Forbes magazine has RMS been on?
Ah, let me count... Zero. Oh well, I guess that if he's in that group, he should be in good company. Lots of fine people have never made it into Forbes.
Come to think of it, I think the Forbes article on `Open Source' mentioned him, probably even quoted him. Actually, go read the damn article. There's 9 paragraphs about RMS.
Not that I think it matters.
As a means of gaining popularity, if you can't milk Linux, rename it.
RMS is not renaming Linux. Linux is a kernel. What RMS wants to be called in a different manner is OS distributions. You might agree with him, or you might disagree with him. Any path you choose, you better get your facts right.
I thought one of the virtues of the GPL was fame, recognition, and the ancillary employment opportunities it opens up.
The GPL is not about anything you say above. The GPL is about keeping Free Software free for all of its users, and thus, about cooperation and sharing among programmers and computer users. You might be thinking of ESRs `The Cathedral and the Bazaar' or `Homesteading'.
f I GPL a program, spend $40,000 of my own money developing it, and it causes RMS to feel ignored, it's suddenly RMS's creation. In 1991 if RMS knew where Linux would be in 1999, Linus would still be in Finland teaching undergrads how to load floppies. Transmeta would have looked at his resume and said, "Oh, but that's GNU/Linux. RMS wrote that, not you."
Then, check for failed patches (files with a.rej extension):
# find . -name '*.rej'
If none appear, then the patch was successful. You can remove the original files that the patch saved (those with a.orig extension):
# find . -name '*.orig' -exec rm -f {} \;
Usually it's a lot easier, since scripts/patch-kernel (go and read it with less) under the kernel tree is a script that automatically applies a set of patches to a kernel tree. Sadly, the irregular numbering on the pre-2.2 series has broken this script (last time I checked)
The Open Source Definition, as far as I know english and the real world, applies to software, not data... I guess this you're offering is not freely redistributable source code compilable and runnable with the standard components of some OS, or binaries produced from such code.
I know there are books and such `released under GPL', but frankly, the only sense I can make of that is that you must distribute it with at least an offer machine readable `source code' for the book, that is, the files that will allow you to produce your own verbatim or modified copies of the book (like the LaTeX or SGML source).
So I guess you must mean that one whoever distributes this in say, printed form, must accompany it with a written offer to give an electronic version. Say I use some of this data, which I obtain under GPL, in an academic paper. Is this a derived work of such data? Must I accompany it with a written offer, valid for three years, to give any of the readers a machine readable version of that data for no more that the cost of making physical copies of it?
It all seems very murky to me...
But anyway it's nice of you to freely redistribute that data...
One of the main reasons RMS opposes software property rights is because of the difference between physical objects like audio gear and non-material, mathematical entities like a computer program. You can reproduce a program infinitely (well, maybe not infinitely) without a major expenditure of energy. You can't do the same with physical objects. If a program can help your fellow humans beings, since its reproduction will not cause you any real loss (and not `loss' in the proprietary-vendor interpretation), then by all means you should share it.
Anyway, in http://www.gnu.org/, under the `Philosophy' section, RMS explains it better that my hurried discussion up there...
Well, I don't think it was his intention. (And, while I'm still in a paranoid mood from the "MS to use Linux defense" thread, I didn't meant to imply you implied such an implication:-)
Anyway, if this is National Public Radio, I guess you can hear it without using proprietary technologies. Like AM or FM:-).
me: "My, oh my. Not only a forced (not with a gun, hehe) literal reading, but you drag Bill Gates into this as my victim. Poor little Billy, this commie jerk attacks him! (see next quote for the reason I mention communism)"
you: Well, that is the only way you are FORCED to buy something. Otherwise, it's YOUR decision.
Well, you continue to insist in twisting the meaning of words to suit your argument. Here are some of the aceptions of the verb force from Webster's:
2. To constrain or compel; to coerce. 3. To impose or cause by necessity.
Yes, some aceptions of the word force imply violence. But not the ones I'm using.
I would thus urge you to end this dumb word game. I assume, from your posts, that you are a competent english speaker; if I'm having to force you with dictionary evidence to accept a sense of the verb force every competent english speaker knows, you are obviously being dense on purpose.
There are many ways of coercing someone into buying some particular product, be them psychological, economic, or by force. One is to make the alternatives far less visible, by making it unprofitable for the distributors to offer. This is one of the things Microsoft has been accused of doing by their exclusive arrangements.
you: Simple. It's MY business I have the right to sell MY product MY way any way I want to, because it is MY PRODUCT. I have the right to HIRE who I want. I have the right to FIRE who I want. It's simple ownership of property. If I don't have these rights, then I don't own my business, and although it may not be full communism, it sure the hell isn't capitalism anymore, because I can't do what I want with my capital!
Your problem is with the government and the current state of law, then. The system the US has right now, instead of the unfettered capitalism you would like, is in place because the persons who constructed it believed such unfetterd capitalism was not good for the general welfare of their society. If you want to argue that they are wrong, and that either (a) the general welfare of society is not as important as having unfettered capitalism, or (b) that unfettered capitalism is better for the general welfare of society than the current system, and have good arguments for that, then I urge you to go ahead and put them in view. Because no one is going to accept your defense of Microsoft unless they share your political views.
For the record, I'm an anti-capitalist (and you'd better not call me a communist), and I don't believe you should have the rights you claim above.
you: No, what's REALLY lame is not taking responsibility for YOUR decisions. If you set up your system around Windows products, you must have had reasons behind it. If those reasons are no longer being met, then it's time to design a different system. The companies that have realized this have come MUCH further then the ones that have stuck with their old system.
You are assuming that the person that chooses the system is the one that ends up taking the responsibility. In the real world, people change jobs. Needs change. Someone installed some system a decade ago, and is no longer around. And, say, you suddenly have a need to use the information in those old systems with others of a different type, which are not under your control (say, a customer's).
This is a situation in which you never decided on the system in question. Yet you are being responsible for it. You cannot change over to a different system, because you need to be compatible with another system that tries its best to be compatible with no other. Therefore that incompatible, closed system you would like to avoid is the one that best meets your needs. But this is not because it is a superior system that gives customers what they would like; it is a system artificially designed to lock you into it, and make switching as difficult as possible. This is what Microsoft wants by decommoditizing standards.
you: If you say that you don't want to switch from Windows to Linux because it's too much trouble, then fine...that's YOUR decision. And no one is saying that you HAVE to upgrade from Windows 95 to Windows 98!
Ha. Try to buy a new computer with Windows 95 preinstalled. Or try to run a new software package that requires Win98 (actually, I don't know if there are any yet, but if there aren't, I'm sure there'll be Win2K exclusive programs) on your Win95 machine. You will be told "You have to upgrade to Win98 (or Win2K)." No one will `force' you (like, with a gun) to do so, but as people around you switch, more because of propaganda than reason, you will be more and more needy to do so.
you: There's a reason that I'm calling this thread "defeatism"..everyone is saying "This is too hard" "Microsoft should make it easy..." Of course, I bet you haven't TRIED to convert people to Linux or TRIED marketing your own product...you just ASSUME that it is impossible.
Please kindly point out where such a thing has been said. And I mean a textual quote which can unequivocably interpreted to mean that any of the participants in this thread has said that Microsoft should make it easy to switch, or switching to Linux is too hard.
For the record, what I claim is the following:
That the switch is not trivial (not that it's `too hard' or `impossible'), as I think you portray it;
That Microsoft shouldn't make the switch artificially difficult. This means making difficulty of switching to a competitor's product a primary factor in design decisions. In english now: They don't have to make the switch easier, but they shouldn't be plotting to make it harder.
gee..then I would make sure that *I* announce the product that I'm doing before Microsoft announces their product, wouldn't you think?
Yeah, right, go straight ahead. See if anyone notices.
If Microsoft releases a shoddy imitation of my product, then that gives me PERFECT advertizement material where I can point out how my product is better.
Sure? While MS uses its far superior advertising budget to point out "how their product is better"?
If my product is good enough, it will survive the FUD and any vaporware attempts that Microsoft makes.
Name ONE time that Bill Gates has pointed a gun at somebody and FORCED them to buy a computer with Windows 95 installed on it. That's the only way that customers would be FORCED to buy Windows 95. There are several ways to avoid buying Windows 95 while buying a computer.
My, oh my. Not only a forced (not with a gun, hehe) literal reading, but you drag Bill Gates into this as my victim. Poor little Billy, this commie jerk attacks him! (see next quote for the reason I mention communism)
[regrading anti-trust laws] Bullshit. They were written by government officials who wanted to gain power over the American people. There is no good reason to have anti-trust laws, they are just one step closer to communism...but anyways...
Now commie baiting, and bald assertion. Could you care to back this up?
WRONG...I.E. 4.0 or 5.0 is split into several parts, and several of those parts are used by OTHER APPLICATIONS (such as the layout engine and the html parser). Notepad is NOT re-used by other applications and therefore, you can remove it without trouble.
You're thinking of IE as program code. I'm thinking of it as a product, as a web browser. If MS wants to provide HTML parsing libraries with Windows they are welcome to do so. They are NOT welcome force a web browser application into customers, by artifically fitting it as a the file manager and claiming it's an unremovable essential system facility.
If you REALLY think that it is becoming a problem, then migrate your business over to Linux.
You make this sound trivial. Have _you_ ever tried to migrate a business to Linux? How much does it take: 5 minutes, a day maybe?
The "if you don't like it, don't use it" answer is REALLY lame. When people have put time and money into setting up a system to make their work easier and better, it's not practical, or easy, to easily switch over to a different system.
Microsoft has no right to exploit the fact that people can't easily switch to bury their competitors (and I don't mean Billy shoveling dirt, thank you) and force the acceptance of one product on the acceptance of other.
There are plenty of places where you can buy a system without Windows installed, just not from the big VARs. So what? No one forced these vendors to sign these contracts, and they certainly don't complain about the low price they get to buy Windows for in return for going with MS exclusively.
This is not about the vendors. This is about customer choice.
Anyway, let's put what you just said this way: Microsoft is making it unprofitable for most computer vendors not to give their customers choice on what OS to get on their machines.
Hey, what could be wrong with allowing vendors to sell any OS their customers want? Most of them will go with Windows, anyway. But no. Vendors are pressured into not giving their customers any choice.
Oh yeah, that's just horrible for the consumer. Here is a free browser. You can still use other browsers if you want to, but heres a free one. Yeah, that should be put a stop to.
Oh god. I hate repeating myself. Here goes: Bundling is not a problem. Microsoft may bundle all the products they like. What they can't do is force a product into a customer. And this is what they are doing with IE 4.0. They are forcing people to install and run it (it's the GUI desktop, for christ's sake). Large parts of it get pre-loaded at system bootup, so it takes advantage of the OS to load up faster, something competing browsers can't do. And if you run say, Netscape, then you have two browsers in memory, and only use one. That affects system performance.
So, what? Nobody forced IBM to install Windows on their Aptivas.
You are evading the point. The matter is not whether companies have been force or not to pre-install Windows; the problem is that customers are forced to buy it, whether or not they want it.
Oh, yeah, and nobody's forced to buy from Dell. Or from any other OEM who sells its computers with MS Office. People WANT these products. Is it illegal for MS to sell them what they want?
No. What is illegal is to actively seek to force customers to buy their product, whether they want it or not.
You keep missing the point. Anti-trust laws were not written to defend smaller companies from big ones like Microsoft, but rather to protect the customers and general public from the effects of a privately-held monopoly.
For example, what if I'm willing to pay the high price for the bugfix-release Windows 98, but don't want IE 4.0? You might counter that IE is free. I don't care. It takes up space in my disk, and uses RAM on my machine even if I'm not using it, therefore making my machine go slower if I choose to use another product with the same functionality like Netscape.
Your answer would seem to be: `No one forces you to use Microsoft. Go get another OS.' But what if my business already depends on Windows-based software? What other OS can I get? Since I have no other choice than Windows, Microsoft gets to force me to install software I don't want. Therefore, they cut down my choice as a customer.
Besides, MS isn't the only company to ship multiple products in one package. Every linux distributor I know of ships a whole bunch of software with the Linux kernel. But, I'll stick with MS. Should Microsoft be harassed because they bundled freecell? That was, and certainly still is, not an integral part of the OS. The same is true with EDIT.COM or Notepad. Where do you draw the line?
There is nothing wrong with bundling software. As I have said before, the problem is imposing software on people.
I'm not forced to install most of the packages in Debian, for example. In fact, Debian even allows me to remove software essential for my system to function.
In the same vein, I don't have to install Freecell if I dont't want, and I can remove EDIT.COM or Notepad easily. Anyway, I consider a text editor to be an essential system facility (editing config files to make something work, reading READMEs, etc.), so they are full justified in pre-installing it.
The problem is that IE 5.0, being a Web Browser, is by no means an essential system facility, but rather a huge application program that pre-loads large parts of it at bootup, and you can't remove from your OS, no matter whether you have or not a use for a web browser.
And switching their help system over to HTML might justify including a browser, but not forcing it on people the way they do (replacing the file manager).
What you call Bastardized standards some call added functionality. "Embrace and extend" is a clever strategy to gain business. By making their version do more than the published standard (Java for one) they give their customers more for their money than if MS had limited themselves to the standard. When is it illegal to make your software better than the other guy's? When you're microsoft.
Strawman. No one has contested Microsoft's freedom to add features to anything. What was contested was their breach of contract with Sun. Microsoft licensed Java under certain terms, among which says that they must implement the whole Java specification, and that they may not make any changes to the core Java class library. They did not implement the whole thing, and modified the core classes, and thus engaged in illegal practices. They have always been free to add all the functionality they like, as long as they abide by the contract they signed by their own free will.
I know you mention this in your next paragraph. I don't understand why you raise this point (that Microsoft is being disallowed from adding features to Java), since you refute it yourself.
Now the exaggeration and FUD begins. Anytime Microsoft goes into a business venture, it's automatically an attempted takeover of the industry?
If they leverage their OS dominance, which is a basic infrastructure for all these business fields, to force their products on customers, or to make competitors products less profitable (for example, by API changes and such) it is. Note I'm not claiming anything about any case in particular; I'm just setting some criteria.
But I say that's what's happened with IE 4.0. MS forces people to install and run their browser (it is your GUI desktop, for God's sake). Explorer gets partially pre-loaded into RAM at bootup, meaning that it will load faster, and that it will take up RAM that another browser could use to run faster.
With that in mind, my real, basic question is this: Should an action be illegal because you don't like it? That seems to be the idea behind this posting.
I don't think so. I think BOredAtWOrk (Welcome back, dude! Long time no see!) raised valid points.
Windows and Office are a far cry from becoming the economic definition of a monopoly. Witness the revival of Apple and the booming growth of Linux to see that. Hmmm... Doesn't MS have a stake in Apple? And, show me a computer vendor that pre-installs GNU/Linux, and I'll show you dozens (hundreds? thousands?) that force you to buy Windows.
The problem with tons of errors reported in net connections is with an old ifconfig. The solution is to go up to net-tools 1.49. Anyway, this goes back to 2.1.9x, when something in/proc changed. I ran for months without upgrading my net-tools and everything always worked fine. Though, if anyone out there is running pppd 2.3.5 and wants to try the new kernel, upgrade first... (actually, RTFM and do ALL the required upgrades)
Argument from authority. And anyway, these were people living in the early post-revolutionary USA, who had, a bit more than a decade before, fought a war against one of the world's biggest superpowers.
People here in this thread are not going into some very important issues about guns. Reading this, it's like if guns were the product of some domestically grown plant or whatever. The truth is, guns are built by big companies for a profit. For a profit means they are willing to sell to almost anyone. For example, to third world dictatorial goverments that use them to arm death squads against peasants. In fact, the US government has been this whole century heavily involved in that (think El Salvador, Guatemala, Indonesia and others, armed by the US).
I think most USians have never seen armed official repression first hand. I for one, have luckily only had a really slight taste of it, which involved no shooting, just sharpshooters aiming rifles from helicopters at unarmed students for no good reason; just to make a show of force, film the whole thing, edit it, and make some propaganda about "students attacking our democratic ideals". Political persecution, that's it. (The pro-statehood party in Puerto Rico has a long history of political persecution against independentists. Kidnapping, murder, infilitration, and public massacres in my university included).
The point being, it's easy to defend the right of USians (and conveniently ignoring the rest of the world) to bear arms (and therefore defending the arms industry) while sitting comfortable in front of a computer, reading/., getting flown around first-class to give conferences, and, in general, close to the top of the food chain, claiming that you need to defend yourself from those in the bottom of said chain.
Just thinking about the immediate issue of 'self-defense' is failing to grasp the big picture, where a few privileged few who enjoy huge power, which the people did not appoint to, benefit from all this misery. Think Indonesia and Guatemala again: governmental death squads, armed by the US, massacre people to defend the interests of huge corporations.
I figure I'm just ranting by now. So I'll come to a close. The best reasons for opposing arms are, IMHO, antimilitarism and pacifism in general. This does not mean opposing the right to defend oneself against criminal aggression in the USA; it means opposing the purported right of a select, non-elected few to profit from widespread misery, all over the world.
Face it man. Guns ARE offensive weapons, encryption is not. The argument, which sadly no one in this thread has hit, is one of DESIGN, not of USE. Encryption is a kind of procedure _designed_ to make data unaccessible to those without the key; guns are a kind of machine designed to _kill and maim_ living things. Encryption algorithms, no matter if someone may creatively use them in an offensive manner, don't have anything offensive in their design, while guns are designed to serve for offense.
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I've thought about this, and yes, it is a complication. But I think I can come up with two kinds of answer:
The point is that art and artists can still exist in systems different from the one we have today. I haven't looked into your question very deeply, but I think there must be people out there who have.
Anyway, think of this: large record companies are parasitic behemoths that generally give musicians a minuscule portion of what they make. They frequently ignore very good musicians just because "their music is not marketable". When smaller labels start having hits with artists who play in a new style, they "embrace and extend" that style, pumping out dozens of mediocre soundalikes (witness "alternative" music in the early 90s). Frankly, I would be quite happy if those companines went to hell. I'd just look for the local talent.
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Was the BSD project at Berkely aimed at making a free Unix from the very start? While I doubt the correctness of the original poster's claim that GNU inspired the free BSDs, still it would be interesting to settle the issue of the who wanted to make a free OS and since when.
Also, IIRC, the initial BSD work was patches to AT&T Unix. If that is the case, RMS gets at least the credit for starting to write a free Unix from scratch.
Also, looking at the licenses on the software from both camps, I see a difference. GNU is clearly out to be "free for all of its users", by imposing restrictions on its distribution (the GPL). This is another thing in which, AFAIK, one must credit RMS.
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This is actually true. The GNU operating system is an idea of RMS that dates back to the early 80s. The GNU Manifesto carries a 1985 copyright date, and he clearly states his intent to write a free Unix-like OS called GNU.
See also this page.
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False. GNU was started in 1983/84. The Hurd sometime in the late 80s, I guess.
Then in 1998 when Linux started getting on CNN and RMS saw his own GNU/Hurd project failing, he blew a fuse and started the GNU/Linux naming business.
Wrong. This goes back before 1998. The FSF article by RMS on this is copyrighted 1997-98, but I think the issue is even older than that.
Actually, searching the Debian mailing list archives, one can see `GNU/Linux' used as far back as 08/96, about as far back as the archives go, so its use should go back even further...
Now it's gotten to where he's taking credit for initiating Linux first.
Care to give an actual RMS quote to support this? You're basing yourself on a poster's quick recap of what RMS said, which might or might not be accurate...
Who the fsck is RMS?
Founder of the GNU project, which provides many of the most important system utilities in Linux-based systems. Author of gcc, the compiler used to write the kernel. Author of Emacs, editor better than vi ;-) (/me ducks for cover)
How many issues of Forbes magazine has RMS been on?
Ah, let me count... Zero. Oh well, I guess that if he's in that group, he should be in good company. Lots of fine people have never made it into Forbes.
Come to think of it, I think the Forbes article on `Open Source' mentioned him, probably even quoted him. Actually, go read the damn article. There's 9 paragraphs about RMS.
Not that I think it matters.
As a means of gaining popularity, if you can't milk Linux, rename it.
RMS is not renaming Linux. Linux is a kernel. What RMS wants to be called in a different manner is OS distributions. You might agree with him, or you might disagree with him. Any path you choose, you better get your facts right.
I thought one of the virtues of the GPL was fame, recognition, and the ancillary employment opportunities it opens up.
The GPL is not about anything you say above. The GPL is about keeping Free Software free for all of its users, and thus, about cooperation and sharing among programmers and computer users. You might be thinking of ESRs `The Cathedral and the Bazaar' or `Homesteading'.
f I GPL a program, spend $40,000 of my own money developing it, and it causes RMS to feel ignored, it's suddenly RMS's creation. In 1991 if RMS knew where Linux would be in 1999, Linus would still be in Finland teaching undergrads how to load floppies. Transmeta would have looked at his resume and said, "Oh, but that's GNU/Linux. RMS wrote that, not you."
I hope your little fantasy makes you happy.
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It does apply to the ac patches, AFAIK (haven't tried them).
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First, patch it.
# cd
# bunzip2 -c
Then, check for failed patches (files with a
# find . -name '*.rej'
If none appear, then the patch was successful. You can remove the original files that the patch saved (those with a
# find . -name '*.orig' -exec rm -f {} \;
Usually it's a lot easier, since scripts/patch-kernel (go and read it with less) under the kernel tree is a script that automatically applies a set of patches to a kernel tree. Sadly, the irregular numbering on the pre-2.2 series has broken this script (last time I checked)
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I know there are books and such `released under GPL', but frankly, the only sense I can make of that is that you must distribute it with at least an offer machine readable `source code' for the book, that is, the files that will allow you to produce your own verbatim or modified copies of the book (like the LaTeX or SGML source).
So I guess you must mean that one whoever distributes this in say, printed form, must accompany it with a written offer to give an electronic version. Say I use some of this data, which I obtain under GPL, in an academic paper. Is this a derived work of such data? Must I accompany it with a written offer, valid for three years, to give any of the readers a machine readable version of that data for no more that the cost of making physical copies of it?
It all seems very murky to me...
But anyway it's nice of you to freely redistribute that data...
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Anyway, in http://www.gnu.org/, under the `Philosophy' section, RMS explains it better that my hurried discussion up there...
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Anyway, if this is National Public Radio, I guess you can hear it without using proprietary technologies. Like AM or FM :-).
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me:
"My, oh my. Not only a forced (not with a gun, hehe) literal reading, but you drag Bill Gates into this as my victim. Poor little Billy, this commie jerk attacks him! (see next quote for the reason I mention communism)"
you:
Well, that is the only way you are FORCED to buy something. Otherwise, it's YOUR decision.
Well, you continue to insist in twisting the meaning of words to suit your argument. Here are some of the aceptions of the verb force from Webster's:
Yes, some aceptions of the word force imply violence. But not the ones I'm using.
I would thus urge you to end this dumb word game. I assume, from your posts, that you are a competent english speaker; if I'm having to force you with dictionary evidence to accept a sense of the verb force every competent english speaker knows, you are obviously being dense on purpose.
There are many ways of coercing someone into buying some particular product, be them psychological, economic, or by force. One is to make the alternatives far less visible, by making it unprofitable for the distributors to offer. This is one of the things Microsoft has been accused of doing by their exclusive arrangements.
you:
Simple. It's MY business I have the right to sell MY product MY way any way I want to, because it is MY PRODUCT. I have the right to HIRE who I want. I have the right to FIRE who I want. It's simple ownership of property. If I don't have these rights, then I don't own my business, and although it may not be full communism, it sure the hell isn't capitalism anymore, because I can't do what I want with my capital!
Your problem is with the government and the current state of law, then. The system the US has right now, instead of the unfettered capitalism you would like, is in place because the persons who constructed it believed such unfetterd capitalism was not good for the general welfare of their society. If you want to argue that they are wrong, and that either (a) the general welfare of society is not as important as having unfettered capitalism, or (b) that unfettered capitalism is better for the general welfare of society than the current system, and have good arguments for that, then I urge you to go ahead and put them in view. Because no one is going to accept your defense of Microsoft unless they share your political views.
For the record, I'm an anti-capitalist (and you'd better not call me a communist), and I don't believe you should have the rights you claim above.
you:
No, what's REALLY lame is not taking responsibility for YOUR decisions. If you set up your system around Windows products, you must have had reasons behind it. If those reasons are no longer being met, then it's time to design a different system. The companies that have realized this have come MUCH further then the ones that have stuck with their old system.
You are assuming that the person that chooses the system is the one that ends up taking the responsibility. In the real world, people change jobs. Needs change. Someone installed some system a decade ago, and is no longer around. And, say, you suddenly have a need to use the information in those old systems with others of a different type, which are not under your control (say, a customer's).
This is a situation in which you never decided on the system in question. Yet you are being responsible for it. You cannot change over to a different system, because you need to be compatible with another system that tries its best to be compatible with no other. Therefore that incompatible, closed system you would like to avoid is the one that best meets your needs. But this is not because it is a superior system that gives customers what they would like; it is a system artificially designed to lock you into it, and make switching as difficult as possible. This is what Microsoft wants by decommoditizing standards.
you:
If you say that you don't want to switch from Windows to Linux because it's too much trouble, then fine...that's YOUR decision. And no one is saying that you HAVE to upgrade from Windows 95 to Windows 98!
Ha. Try to buy a new computer with Windows 95 preinstalled. Or try to run a new software package that requires Win98 (actually, I don't know if there are any yet, but if there aren't, I'm sure there'll be Win2K exclusive programs) on your Win95 machine. You will be told "You have to upgrade to Win98 (or Win2K)." No one will `force' you (like, with a gun) to do so, but as people around you switch, more because of propaganda than reason, you will be more and more needy to do so.
you:
There's a reason that I'm calling this thread "defeatism"..everyone is saying "This is too hard" "Microsoft should make it easy..." Of course, I bet you haven't TRIED to convert people to Linux or TRIED marketing your own product...you just ASSUME that it is impossible.
Please kindly point out where such a thing has been said. And I mean a textual quote which can unequivocably interpreted to mean that any of the participants in this thread has said that Microsoft should make it easy to switch, or switching to Linux is too hard.
For the record, what I claim is the following:
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Yeah, right, go straight ahead. See if anyone notices.
If Microsoft releases a shoddy imitation of my product, then that gives me PERFECT advertizement material where I can point out how my product is better.
Sure? While MS uses its far superior advertising budget to point out "how their product is better"?
If my product is good enough, it will survive the FUD and any vaporware attempts that Microsoft makes.
Ha. Wouldn't we all wish. Remember OS/2?
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My, oh my. Not only a forced (not with a gun, hehe) literal reading, but you drag Bill Gates into this as my victim. Poor little Billy, this commie jerk attacks him! (see next quote for the reason I mention communism)
[regrading anti-trust laws] Bullshit. They were written by government officials who wanted to gain power over the American people. There is no good reason to have anti-trust laws, they are just one step closer to communism...but anyways...
Now commie baiting, and bald assertion. Could you care to back this up?
WRONG...I.E. 4.0 or 5.0 is split into several parts, and several of those parts are used by OTHER APPLICATIONS (such as the layout engine and the html parser). Notepad is NOT re-used by other applications and therefore, you can remove it without trouble.
You're thinking of IE as program code. I'm thinking of it as a product, as a web browser. If MS wants to provide HTML parsing libraries with Windows they are welcome to do so. They are NOT welcome force a web browser application into customers, by artifically fitting it as a the file manager and claiming it's an unremovable essential system facility.
If you REALLY think that it is becoming a problem, then migrate your business over to Linux.
You make this sound trivial. Have _you_ ever tried to migrate a business to Linux? How much does it take: 5 minutes, a day maybe?
The "if you don't like it, don't use it" answer is REALLY lame. When people have put time and money into setting up a system to make their work easier and better, it's not practical, or easy, to easily switch over to a different system.
Microsoft has no right to exploit the fact that people can't easily switch to bury their competitors (and I don't mean Billy shoveling dirt, thank you) and force the acceptance of one product on the acceptance of other.
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This is not about the vendors. This is about customer choice.
Anyway, let's put what you just said this way: Microsoft is making it unprofitable for most computer vendors not to give their customers choice on what OS to get on their machines.
Hey, what could be wrong with allowing vendors to sell any OS their customers want? Most of them will go with Windows, anyway. But no. Vendors are pressured into not giving their customers any choice.
Oh yeah, that's just horrible for the consumer. Here is a free browser. You can still use other browsers if you want to, but heres a free one. Yeah, that should be put a stop to.
Oh god. I hate repeating myself. Here goes: Bundling is not a problem. Microsoft may bundle all the products they like. What they can't do is force a product into a customer. And this is what they are doing with IE 4.0. They are forcing people to install and run it (it's the GUI desktop, for christ's sake). Large parts of it get pre-loaded at system bootup, so it takes advantage of the OS to load up faster, something competing browsers can't do. And if you run say, Netscape, then you have two browsers in memory, and only use one. That affects system performance.
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You are evading the point. The matter is not whether companies have been force or not to pre-install Windows; the problem is that customers are forced to buy it, whether or not they want it.
Oh, yeah, and nobody's forced to buy from Dell. Or from any other OEM who sells its computers with MS Office. People WANT these products. Is it illegal for MS to sell them what they want?
No. What is illegal is to actively seek to force customers to buy their product, whether they want it or not.
You keep missing the point. Anti-trust laws were not written to defend smaller companies from big ones like Microsoft, but rather to protect the customers and general public from the effects of a privately-held monopoly.
For example, what if I'm willing to pay the high price for the bugfix-release Windows 98, but don't want IE 4.0? You might counter that IE is free. I don't care. It takes up space in my disk, and uses RAM on my machine even if I'm not using it, therefore making my machine go slower if I choose to use another product with the same functionality like Netscape.
Your answer would seem to be: `No one forces you to use Microsoft. Go get another OS.' But what if my business already depends on Windows-based software? What other OS can I get? Since I have no other choice than Windows, Microsoft gets to force me to install software I don't want. Therefore, they cut down my choice as a customer.
Besides, MS isn't the only company to ship multiple products in one package. Every linux distributor I know of ships a whole bunch of software with the Linux kernel. But, I'll stick with MS. Should Microsoft be harassed because they bundled freecell? That was, and certainly still is, not an integral part of the OS. The same is true with EDIT.COM or Notepad. Where do you draw the line?
There is nothing wrong with bundling software. As I have said before, the problem is imposing software on people.
I'm not forced to install most of the packages in Debian, for example. In fact, Debian even allows me to remove software essential for my system to function.
In the same vein, I don't have to install Freecell if I dont't want, and I can remove EDIT.COM or Notepad easily. Anyway, I consider a text editor to be an essential system facility (editing config files to make something work, reading READMEs, etc.), so they are full justified in pre-installing it.
The problem is that IE 5.0, being a Web Browser, is by no means an essential system facility, but rather a huge application program that pre-loads large parts of it at bootup, and you can't remove from your OS, no matter whether you have or not a use for a web browser.
And switching their help system over to HTML might justify including a browser, but not forcing it on people the way they do (replacing the file manager).
What you call Bastardized standards some call added functionality. "Embrace and extend" is a clever strategy to gain business. By making their version do more than the published standard (Java for one) they give their customers more for their money than if MS had limited themselves to the standard. When is it illegal to make your software better than the other guy's? When you're microsoft.
Strawman. No one has contested Microsoft's freedom to add features to anything. What was contested was their breach of contract with Sun. Microsoft licensed Java under certain terms, among which says that they must implement the whole Java specification, and that they may not make any changes to the core Java class library. They did not implement the whole thing, and modified the core classes, and thus engaged in illegal practices. They have always been free to add all the functionality they like, as long as they abide by the contract they signed by their own free will.
I know you mention this in your next paragraph. I don't understand why you raise this point (that Microsoft is being disallowed from adding features to Java), since you refute it yourself.
Now the exaggeration and FUD begins. Anytime Microsoft goes into a business venture, it's automatically an attempted takeover of the industry?
If they leverage their OS dominance, which is a basic infrastructure for all these business fields, to force their products on customers, or to make competitors products less profitable (for example, by API changes and such) it is. Note I'm not claiming anything about any case in particular; I'm just setting some criteria.
But I say that's what's happened with IE 4.0. MS forces people to install and run their browser (it is your GUI desktop, for God's sake). Explorer gets partially pre-loaded into RAM at bootup, meaning that it will load faster, and that it will take up RAM that another browser could use to run faster.
With that in mind, my real, basic question is this: Should an action be illegal because you don't like it? That seems to be the idea behind this posting.
I don't think so. I think BOredAtWOrk (Welcome back, dude! Long time no see!) raised valid points.
Windows and Office are a far cry from becoming the economic definition of a monopoly. Witness the revival of Apple and the booming growth of Linux to see that. Hmmm... Doesn't MS have a stake in Apple? And, show me a computer vendor that pre-installs GNU/Linux, and I'll show you dozens (hundreds? thousands?) that force you to buy Windows.
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Anyway, this goes back to 2.1.9x, when something in
Though, if anyone out there is running pppd 2.3.5 and wants to try the new kernel, upgrade first... (actually, RTFM and do ALL the required upgrades)
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People here in this thread are not going into some very important issues about guns. Reading this, it's like if guns were the product of some domestically grown plant or whatever. The truth is, guns are built by big companies for a profit. For a profit means they are willing to sell to almost anyone. For example, to third world dictatorial goverments that use them to arm death squads against peasants. In fact, the US government has been this whole century heavily involved in that (think El Salvador, Guatemala, Indonesia and others, armed by the US).
I think most USians have never seen armed official repression first hand. I for one, have luckily only had a really slight taste of it, which involved no shooting, just sharpshooters aiming rifles from helicopters at unarmed students for no good reason; just to make a show of force, film the whole thing, edit it, and make some propaganda about "students attacking our democratic ideals". Political persecution, that's it. (The pro-statehood party in Puerto Rico has a long history of political persecution against independentists. Kidnapping, murder, infilitration, and public massacres in my university included).
The point being, it's easy to defend the right of USians (and conveniently ignoring the rest of the world) to bear arms (and therefore defending the arms industry) while sitting comfortable in front of a computer, reading /., getting flown around first-class to give conferences, and, in general, close to the top of the food chain, claiming that you need to defend yourself from those in the bottom of said chain.
Just thinking about the immediate issue of 'self-defense' is failing to grasp the big picture, where a few privileged few who enjoy huge power, which the people did not appoint to, benefit from all this misery. Think Indonesia and Guatemala again: governmental death squads, armed by the US, massacre people to defend the interests of huge corporations.
I figure I'm just ranting by now. So I'll come to a close. The best reasons for opposing arms are, IMHO, antimilitarism and pacifism in general. This does not mean opposing the right to defend oneself against criminal aggression in the USA; it means opposing the purported right of a select, non-elected few to profit from widespread misery, all over the world.
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