Even if not explicitly stated, every piece of unique work has a natural copyright anyway.
That may be your religion, but I don't share it.
Copyright isn't natural, it's a legal concept. That aside, it is a fact that any original creative work is copyrighted automatically, that's not religion.
I realize that you're just nitpicking at the original wording by lawyers, but when I was younger, it actually used to be called "natural copyright" more. Now it's known more as a common law copyright or copyright by natural law. In fact, the wiki page says that it stems from the idea as a natural right. Gov site for other readers. I didn't mean to say that it's "natural." Only using the phrasing of my generation.
Eventually, the F/OSS version can't compete and keep up and eventually dies.
So why does F/OSS still exist at all? Reality seems to disagree with you. Because F/OSS doesn't need to compete it doesn't have to die, it just needs people who are interested in it, and we live in a big world. New fancy features may not always be developed as fast as with proprietary software because the motive to score big with a hype isn't so strong, but F/OSS software does tend to gradually improve.
You're right with most F/OSS software, but my sentence applies to the context in which I presented it. For instance, FLAC is on an equal level as other lossless audio compression files. (Apple's ALAC is also under the Apache license, so we're pretty well off as far as free audio compression.) However, imagine FLAC was under a different license. A company uses the code and improves it in house. In fact, the company gets lucky and improves it by 50%. Again, this is just a hypothetical scenario, but that's what these licenses are for anyway -- hypothetical scenarios (in fact, the reason a company makes their code closed source is so that a company with more money can't use it and in effect make the first company go under; for companies, closed source usually makes sense if your primary product is software; all dealing with hypotheticals). Now, a 50% improvement is quite a lot. If the company releases it as free to use but does not release the source code, how many average users would jump on that bandwagon? Probably quite a lot. Eventually, all music is distributed using this closed source compression. F/OSS has battled and continues to battle this, but with near-equal compression it's not too bad. With a margin such as 50% for lossless compression, well, that would be quite detrimental. And in fact, if F/OSS programmers work tirelessly to chop it down another 10%, now the big corporation can chop theirs to 60%. Eventually, I think that FLAC would turn into in inactive project, or be an active project with little-to-no support.
Luckily, this scenario is rare, and I don't have specific examples of free software under a non-copyleft going inactive due to corporations, but I believe that's due to my lack of research and knowledge to find them. They're obviously not kept very public. However, there are tons of inactive/dead free projects.
It's just a question of what you're willing to risk. Once you put it under a non-copyleft license and you quit the project, no one else can take it up and change the license. They would have to continue under the same license. It's completely up to the coder/person of course, and everyone is free to choose what license they want.
Your main points are about restrictions to companies. As a company, you should be concerned about any license and have a lawyer for it. Even if not explicitly stated, every piece of unique work has a natural copyright anyway. Copyleft wasn't made to help companies, but the people. If a person writes code for a new type of compression algorithm and releases it as BSD, then companies are free to improve upon it without ever giving the improvements back. That means company XYZ can substantially improve it and keep it closed source. They have tons of money and tons of coders underneath them working full-time. Company XYZ makes tons of money from this. Eventually, the F/OSS version can't compete and keep up and eventually dies. And if some coding genius could improve the code by 10 fold, then there's no way unless they work for the company. Any free software that wants to use Company XYZ's improved version have to pay fees. If Company XYZ goes under, then the code is never released. It only appears to advance technology temporarily.
Having said all of this, I'm fine with closed-source code. However, copyleft was made for coders, for guys like me. If you're not a coder, then you won't really understand. It wasn't made for companies, so of course, it restricts them. But, the companies can still use it and improve upon the code, so it only restricts them from using code in their closed-source code and from improving upon it without giving back to the original coders that made it. In fact, they could make a "in-house" version where they don't have to make it open source. It's only when you distribute the code publicly -- when you're profiting from the code -- that you have to release the source code. And if a company is profiting from the work of others, standing on giants' shoulders, shouldn't the guy that they're standing on get some benefit too? Asking for the improvements/fixes in the form of open source code isn't asking for much, seeing as how they wrote the thing in the first place.
Copyleft is for coders and the community of coders. Average Joes like me. It handicaps corporations/companies.
Okay guys, let's start the flame war. I honestly think the Microkernel is better.
1. Everything is more modular and separated. This just makes sense to me, and I think code would be easier to maintain with a diverse community of people.
2. If the X module dies, the OS can continue running like normal, as long as it's not the base module. For example, as humans, if you lose an arm, you can continue to live. It is losing your "brain module" that will kill you. With Microkernel, there is a lot less rebooting IMO because of a crash. How often have you had to restart your computer to fix an issue? Or remember the blue screen of death with MS?
3. Because of #2, you can "self-heal." If X module crashes, just restart it -- without having to restart the entire system. You can restart sound/etc. services, but sometimes it still doesn't fix it and you have to do a full restart. And if it's not a service but apart of the kernel code, how to restart it?
4. Upgrading and pushing out critical fixes can be faster and more easily done. In fact, if you could have two "brain modules", then you could kick the secondary brain off to upgrade the primary brain.
The main disadvantage I hear about Microkernels are speed and the complexity of message passing between the modules. I use Linux myself because let's face it... GNU/Hurd and Minix just aren't up to snuff. I also prefer the GPL over BSD/MIT/etc. So why do you guys love/hate the microkernel or the monolithic kernel?
Linux...but its restrictive license is an inherent handicap.
So it's a handicap because...
1. Any fixes/improvements/forks that people make have to be Open Source, thereby helping the original kernel.
2. Microsoft and Apple can't steal parts of the code and use it in their OSes legally.
These are handicaps to corporations, not to Linux or the users, so I'm fine with these "handicaps."
Looks like everyone is seeing this as the Glass is half-empty instead of half-full. Am I right guys? Eh? Eh?... Huh, just got an email from google, something about non-hip comments...
Another post... This is lacking in the F/OSS world. Wiki List. For lack of better words, Julius and Sphinx suck. They use acoustic models I believe. I'd like to see one using some of the latest Artificial Neural Network algorithms. Since you're in school, get them to pay for IEEE so that you can see all of the great articles and work already done. Then make it free and open source! Most importantly, make it easy for users and developers and integration into DEs.
I'd really like an auto-tagger and cover art finder that works in the terminal. Something like VortexBox that's not an OS, just a terminal command.
This is what I currently do (using long args for readability):
Then I open up MusicBrainz Picard and use this to get tags and cover art. Can this already be used in the terminal? There are tagging programs out there for the terminal, but they're either manual or don't auto-grab cover art, etc. It'd also be nice to specify a different source (musicbrainz for regular, something else for classical). Then I use SoundConverter to convert to OGG Vorbis or MP3, and it does a pretty good job of preserving tags. I just hate having to do so much GUI work. I'd rather just have one script file.
Why don't we just write a script to check emails. We email ourselves a specific time, e.g., "11:00". Allow SSH login attempts at 11:00 for 10 min. If no one logs in, then now drop SSH. Wait for next email. Here, hackers have to know your email (script only checks emails from yourself), your email's password, your SSH password, your time zone, and the format of how to send the time to your email. And theoretically during this window, they shouldn't be able to bruteforce in 10 min.
Yes, there are a lot of issues and flaws with it, but it's one option. Another would be to come up with a huge list of possible things that only the criminal would know based on the crimes and quiz them and their whereabouts at the time. Yes, you can lie, but it will be very difficult to come up with enough lies until there is a flaw. One twin may actually have a legitimate alibi (receipt) at the time of the sexual assault with verifiable proof (security cam or employee). If one is given enough time, I bet you can come up with quite a few ways to determine the culprit. You just need enough puzzle pieces to fit together that count as proof enough. If both are guilty, then good, else it's a horrible injustice to a free man. At least we now know that someone actually does have an "evil twin."
Neutral with the accelerator slammed down will destroy the transmission. At 128 MPH, I bet there would be a high chance of fire or maybe even an explosion. Overrevving.
Turning the engine off usually locks the steering wheel up. This would have been fine assuming that he was on a very long, straight road.
That's why you would need it to be robust and flexible. More of like a general model with easily switchable skins/properties. Again, it's just a pipe dream. Personally, I'm kind of sick of writing lines and lines of code for a view. I hate GUI tools that make GUIs, but I also hate millions of lines of code for simple views that have very little correlation between what the user sees and what the coder sees. I think GUI files are the middle ground, and you can have designers on your team easily change/understand it -- at least more easily than code. Have the design team do these files and have coders to do the logic.
This is why you would allow XML and allow code implementations/manipulation. For most work, just do it in XML. If something is more advanced, then do it in code, or do it in XML and manipulate it in code.
I've always thought that having GUI files is the way to go instead of in code. I'm fine with XML (FXML in this case), but I'm sure some others have gripes and may prefer property files/etc. But how nice would it be to have an XML standard for all GUIs? Then all you have to do is load one XML file across GTK+, Qt, X11, Windows, Cocoa, and even OpenGL. Example:
For me, it's the best of Chrome (look, speed, good tabs, etc.) and Firefox (has about:config, intuitive, etc.). One thing that hasn't been copied from Opera yet that doesn't make any sense... Anytime you get a JavaScript alert box, Opera adds a little checkbox allowing you to stop executing scripts on the page. Ever accidentally land on a website that kept spewing off alerts without you being able to close the page except by killing it? Opera also did extensions right; they're super easy to make. Opera has always either been the first or the first to do it right. Hands down.
Progress bars do not make sequences of actions complete any faster. In fact, they make them slower.
Exactly, most people don't get this. This is why I use mv or rsync (without --progress) instead of a file manager at times, else it reads the whole thing in to determine size first. Some commands like tar allow you to see progress but without a total; this way you get pseudo-progress without the initial wasted read. It will output per file or per 1MB written, etc.
Slashdot Mirror
Even if not explicitly stated, every piece of unique work has a natural copyright anyway.
That may be your religion, but I don't share it.
Copyright isn't natural, it's a legal concept. That aside, it is a fact that any original creative work is copyrighted automatically, that's not religion.
I realize that you're just nitpicking at the original wording by lawyers, but when I was younger, it actually used to be called "natural copyright" more. Now it's known more as a common law copyright or copyright by natural law. In fact, the wiki page says that it stems from the idea as a natural right. Gov site for other readers. I didn't mean to say that it's "natural." Only using the phrasing of my generation.
Eventually, the F/OSS version can't compete and keep up and eventually dies.
So why does F/OSS still exist at all? Reality seems to disagree with you. Because F/OSS doesn't need to compete it doesn't have to die, it just needs people who are interested in it, and we live in a big world. New fancy features may not always be developed as fast as with proprietary software because the motive to score big with a hype isn't so strong, but F/OSS software does tend to gradually improve.
You're right with most F/OSS software, but my sentence applies to the context in which I presented it. For instance, FLAC is on an equal level as other lossless audio compression files. (Apple's ALAC is also under the Apache license, so we're pretty well off as far as free audio compression.) However, imagine FLAC was under a different license. A company uses the code and improves it in house. In fact, the company gets lucky and improves it by 50%. Again, this is just a hypothetical scenario, but that's what these licenses are for anyway -- hypothetical scenarios (in fact, the reason a company makes their code closed source is so that a company with more money can't use it and in effect make the first company go under; for companies, closed source usually makes sense if your primary product is software; all dealing with hypotheticals). Now, a 50% improvement is quite a lot. If the company releases it as free to use but does not release the source code, how many average users would jump on that bandwagon? Probably quite a lot. Eventually, all music is distributed using this closed source compression. F/OSS has battled and continues to battle this, but with near-equal compression it's not too bad. With a margin such as 50% for lossless compression, well, that would be quite detrimental. And in fact, if F/OSS programmers work tirelessly to chop it down another 10%, now the big corporation can chop theirs to 60%. Eventually, I think that FLAC would turn into in inactive project, or be an active project with little-to-no support.
Luckily, this scenario is rare, and I don't have specific examples of free software under a non-copyleft going inactive due to corporations, but I believe that's due to my lack of research and knowledge to find them. They're obviously not kept very public. However, there are tons of inactive/dead free projects.
It's just a question of what you're willing to risk. Once you put it under a non-copyleft license and you quit the project, no one else can take it up and change the license. They would have to continue under the same license. It's completely up to the coder/person of course, and everyone is free to choose what license they want.
True. And if we actually do discover life on other plants with different languages, well, we're screwed. I guess we'll have to move to UTF-64.
For GPL, if you distribute the product (the binary executable) to the public, then you have to release the source code. You don't have to also sell it. http://www.gnu.org/licenses/gpl-faq.html#ModifiedJustBinary
Your main points are about restrictions to companies. As a company, you should be concerned about any license and have a lawyer for it. Even if not explicitly stated, every piece of unique work has a natural copyright anyway. Copyleft wasn't made to help companies, but the people. If a person writes code for a new type of compression algorithm and releases it as BSD, then companies are free to improve upon it without ever giving the improvements back. That means company XYZ can substantially improve it and keep it closed source. They have tons of money and tons of coders underneath them working full-time. Company XYZ makes tons of money from this. Eventually, the F/OSS version can't compete and keep up and eventually dies. And if some coding genius could improve the code by 10 fold, then there's no way unless they work for the company. Any free software that wants to use Company XYZ's improved version have to pay fees. If Company XYZ goes under, then the code is never released. It only appears to advance technology temporarily.
Having said all of this, I'm fine with closed-source code. However, copyleft was made for coders, for guys like me. If you're not a coder, then you won't really understand. It wasn't made for companies, so of course, it restricts them. But, the companies can still use it and improve upon the code, so it only restricts them from using code in their closed-source code and from improving upon it without giving back to the original coders that made it. In fact, they could make a "in-house" version where they don't have to make it open source. It's only when you distribute the code publicly -- when you're profiting from the code -- that you have to release the source code. And if a company is profiting from the work of others, standing on giants' shoulders, shouldn't the guy that they're standing on get some benefit too? Asking for the improvements/fixes in the form of open source code isn't asking for much, seeing as how they wrote the thing in the first place.
Copyleft is for coders and the community of coders. Average Joes like me. It handicaps corporations/companies.
Okay guys, let's start the flame war. I honestly think the Microkernel is better.
1. Everything is more modular and separated. This just makes sense to me, and I think code would be easier to maintain with a diverse community of people.
2. If the X module dies, the OS can continue running like normal, as long as it's not the base module. For example, as humans, if you lose an arm, you can continue to live. It is losing your "brain module" that will kill you. With Microkernel, there is a lot less rebooting IMO because of a crash. How often have you had to restart your computer to fix an issue? Or remember the blue screen of death with MS?
3. Because of #2, you can "self-heal." If X module crashes, just restart it -- without having to restart the entire system. You can restart sound/etc. services, but sometimes it still doesn't fix it and you have to do a full restart. And if it's not a service but apart of the kernel code, how to restart it?
4. Upgrading and pushing out critical fixes can be faster and more easily done. In fact, if you could have two "brain modules", then you could kick the secondary brain off to upgrade the primary brain.
The main disadvantage I hear about Microkernels are speed and the complexity of message passing between the modules. I use Linux myself because let's face it... GNU/Hurd and Minix just aren't up to snuff. I also prefer the GPL over BSD/MIT/etc. So why do you guys love/hate the microkernel or the monolithic kernel?
Linux...but its restrictive license is an inherent handicap.
So it's a handicap because...
1. Any fixes/improvements/forks that people make have to be Open Source, thereby helping the original kernel.
2. Microsoft and Apple can't steal parts of the code and use it in their OSes legally.
These are handicaps to corporations, not to Linux or the users, so I'm fine with these "handicaps."
Worst: what about when you use the restroom. Just don't look down in case someone is hacking your Glass!
Looks like everyone is seeing this as the Glass is half-empty instead of half-full. Am I right guys? Eh? Eh? ... Huh, just got an email from google, something about non-hip comments...
echo 'Awesome!' /usr/bin/destiny :w
man destiny
sudo chmod a+x
destiny
j h k l o kill stuff
Will it be?
Another post... This is lacking in the F/OSS world. Wiki List. For lack of better words, Julius and Sphinx suck. They use acoustic models I believe. I'd like to see one using some of the latest Artificial Neural Network algorithms. Since you're in school, get them to pay for IEEE so that you can see all of the great articles and work already done. Then make it free and open source! Most importantly, make it easy for users and developers and integration into DEs.
Just as note. I keep a directory of FLACs and OGGs. One to preserve originals and other for portable devices.
I'd really like an auto-tagger and cover art finder that works in the terminal. Something like VortexBox that's not an OS, just a terminal command.
This is what I currently do (using long args for readability):
cdparanoia --verbose --batch --never-skip
flac --verify --best *.wav
rm *.wav
Then I open up MusicBrainz Picard and use this to get tags and cover art. Can this already be used in the terminal? There are tagging programs out there for the terminal, but they're either manual or don't auto-grab cover art, etc. It'd also be nice to specify a different source (musicbrainz for regular, something else for classical). Then I use SoundConverter to convert to OGG Vorbis or MP3, and it does a pretty good job of preserving tags. I just hate having to do so much GUI work. I'd rather just have one script file.
Or bamboo!
Why don't we just write a script to check emails. We email ourselves a specific time, e.g., "11:00". Allow SSH login attempts at 11:00 for 10 min. If no one logs in, then now drop SSH. Wait for next email. Here, hackers have to know your email (script only checks emails from yourself), your email's password, your SSH password, your time zone, and the format of how to send the time to your email. And theoretically during this window, they shouldn't be able to bruteforce in 10 min.
Mind equals blown not? Yoda language?
Yes, there are a lot of issues and flaws with it, but it's one option. Another would be to come up with a huge list of possible things that only the criminal would know based on the crimes and quiz them and their whereabouts at the time. Yes, you can lie, but it will be very difficult to come up with enough lies until there is a flaw. One twin may actually have a legitimate alibi (receipt) at the time of the sexual assault with verifiable proof (security cam or employee). If one is given enough time, I bet you can come up with quite a few ways to determine the culprit. You just need enough puzzle pieces to fit together that count as proof enough. If both are guilty, then good, else it's a horrible injustice to a free man. At least we now know that someone actually does have an "evil twin."
Neutral with the accelerator slammed down will destroy the transmission. At 128 MPH, I bet there would be a high chance of fire or maybe even an explosion. Overrevving.
Turning the engine off usually locks the steering wheel up. This would have been fine assuming that he was on a very long, straight road.
Is there homodox?
That's why you would need it to be robust and flexible. More of like a general model with easily switchable skins/properties. Again, it's just a pipe dream. Personally, I'm kind of sick of writing lines and lines of code for a view. I hate GUI tools that make GUIs, but I also hate millions of lines of code for simple views that have very little correlation between what the user sees and what the coder sees. I think GUI files are the middle ground, and you can have designers on your team easily change/understand it -- at least more easily than code. Have the design team do these files and have coders to do the logic.
This is why you would allow XML and allow code implementations/manipulation. For most work, just do it in XML. If something is more advanced, then do it in code, or do it in XML and manipulate it in code.
Good point. It was just an example though. It could be changed to use "center" and "em" values.
I've always thought that having GUI files is the way to go instead of in code. I'm fine with XML (FXML in this case), but I'm sure some others have gripes and may prefer property files/etc. But how nice would it be to have an XML standard for all GUIs? Then all you have to do is load one XML file across GTK+, Qt, X11, Windows, Cocoa, and even OpenGL. Example:
/> />
<window width="300" height="300">
<edit width="100" height="20" value="Type name."
<button width="50" height="50" value="Submit"
</window>
Then do the logic in whatever language you want. I know it's a pipe dream with several problems, but damn it would be nice.
For me, it's the best of Chrome (look, speed, good tabs, etc.) and Firefox (has about:config, intuitive, etc.). One thing that hasn't been copied from Opera yet that doesn't make any sense... Anytime you get a JavaScript alert box, Opera adds a little checkbox allowing you to stop executing scripts on the page. Ever accidentally land on a website that kept spewing off alerts without you being able to close the page except by killing it? Opera also did extensions right; they're super easy to make. Opera has always either been the first or the first to do it right. Hands down.
Progress bars do not make sequences of actions complete any faster. In fact, they make them slower.
Exactly, most people don't get this. This is why I use mv or rsync (without --progress) instead of a file manager at times, else it reads the whole thing in to determine size first. Some commands like tar allow you to see progress but without a total; this way you get pseudo-progress without the initial wasted read. It will output per file or per 1MB written, etc.