There are a number of countries outside the US (intentional tautology), and also a number of multi-national companies that originated outside of the US-- neither of these two groups is going to be too happy about having the hardware they wish to purchase effectively controlled by laws implemented to please a small number of people in Hollywood...
I imagine that this will have something of an impact on the US tech. trade with the rest of the world...
To follow up myself...
A lot of people seem to be mixing up the terminology for something rather than the invention of the thing itself, as well... Science fiction will sometimes provide a new term that gets picked up to describe a new technology e.g. robots, the 'net, etc. (any arguement about whether or not SF has influenced robotics has surely got to start with Mary Shelley's Frankenstein?)
I think there is a big mix up between cause and effect here.
(a). Inventions are the effect of the following causes: (i) a problem, (ii) a technology, (iii) the knowledge to take a technology and apply it to a problem to make a solution.
(b). (Good) Science fiction inventions are the effect of the following causes: (i) an imagined problem, (ii) an imagined technology, (iii) an imagined solution.
Where (a).(i-ii) and (b).(i-ii) have a relatively close match then (a).(iii) and (b).(iii) will inevitably be a close match (think about the shape of the shark and the dolphin), but establishing a causal link between (b) and (a) is going to be difficult as (a) is going to be much more heavily influenced by it's (i) and (ii) than by anything in (b)
When (a).(i-ii) and (b).(i-ii) are wildly different, then any relationship between the technologies produced is purely in the imagination of the of the person suggesting it.
Ergo... anyone suggesting that Science Fiction has influenced technology/inventions has been asked the wrong question (Science Fiction can anticipate inventions, but it's much better at extrapolating existing ones and predicting their impact on society).
Let me comment on your comments (if anyone is still paying attention to this thread)...
Let me comment on these:
services model
The biggest flaw I see with this model is there is no incentive to produce bug free (or as
close as you can get) code. By introducing subtle bugs, you can ensure yourself a job
forever.
I don't understand why everyone gets this one so wrong. In my experience, when you buy a software services contract (e.g. Maintenance, and my current comapany's maintenance budget runs into $millions each year BTW- and that's only covering software used by around 70 engineers) you don't pay on a per incident basis, but on an annual basis. It's in the software vendor's interest to produce bug free software, since they want to spend as little time and money maintaining the software as possible. Why does this seem so strange?
Nope
Hospitals keep the enslaved healthy so they can continue to toil for the despots, without informing them of the potential for freedom.
Libraries free the mind to consider the opportunities for a better life (and often include books on medicine and how to build hospitals).
Therefore I propose it is more important to defend the library (unless of course you're the bloke who has just suffered a heart attack).
Now what the hell were we talking about?
There are several models for generating revenue from Free Software.
The most frequently discussed one is the services model, i.e. you get payed for providing support for the software (bugfixing, user support, configuration/installation support, major version migration, etc.)
The second most frequently discussed one is the software customization model, i.e. you get payed for writing the code under contract from the user (as opposed to under contract from a software developer who then sells on proprietory closed source software). Typical examples of this would be modifications to thing like Spice circuit simulators (a silicon foundry has just spend $30billion building a new innovative fabrication process and wants customers to be able to simulate designs that will be implemented on that process, and then discovers that the current versions of Spice are not capable of accurately modelling the multijunction silicon on insulator devices that this new process provides. In this case the maximum benefit to society at large is gained by a Free software solution: maximum penetration of the potential market, the programmers get paid, and the code is not owned by a proprietory software house that can go belly up and dissappear leaving orphaned binaries that can never be maintained).
The third model is to use Free software to sell hardware. Most workstation vendors make a hell of a lot more profit on their hardware than they do on the operating systems and application software that package with that hardware. AFAIK Sun's Solaris operations run at a loss; it's purely developed to drive hardware sales. Similarly Sun are Freeing Star Office in order to promote sales of their hardware. It is therefore in their best interest to fund Free software in order to reduce the overhead of developing these OSes and applications. This also gives these hardware vendors the capability to demonstrate the differentiation of their hardware offerings (and suitability for different market niches) without out having to rely the fickle whims of a "defacto industry standard" closed source proprietary software vendor, who can sink the chances of innovative hardware just by refusing to support it (not picking on any one software vendor BTW, there are several "defacto industry standard"s around, not just the obvious one)
For large companies that rely on certain applications, there is a strong motivation to ensure that someone else's interests (which could be at odds with the aforementioned company's) do not control key infrastructure elements upon which the companies depend; i.e. a motivation to pay someone to write software that will be GPL'ed and therefore will not be tied to a particular company that can dissappear, change it's licensing terms, take the software in a direction that is detrimental to the users requirements (not picking on any particular proprietory software vendor here, BTW).
This all adds up to a lot of cash in the pockets of programmers. On the other hand it gives a lot more rights to the people who are actually paying for the damn software in the first place, rights that are protected by consumer laws in most countries for things that are not software (i.e. I have the right to take my car to any garage to get it serviced, repaired or modified. If I find that a certain company's closed source proprietary application is broken or unsuitable to my needs, I have only one place where I can go to it fixed, and that's the original vendor. I would argue that since I, and other customers like myself, are actually paying for this code to be developed we should have the right to choose solutions over which we have some say in the development, and that we can take to alternative vendors for fixing/modification, if we don't like the the original vendors intentions or after sales care).
Apologies for the grammar and spelling, bit lacking in sleep right now.
That's not strictly true. There are a number of crimes that Britons overseas can be tried for in Britain (and a number of crimes which occur to Britons overseas which theoretically the criminals can be tried for in Britain, if they ever manage to get hold of them). Similarly, I understand from American friends (forgive me if I get this wrong, this is from a drunken pub discussion) that Americans living overseas can be tried for in America including, bizarrely enough, not paying your taxes. ?
I don't think that international pressure could change a damn thing that the US does. In all international bodies that count the US leads so exactly how is "all hell" going to break loose. You are pretty vague here I don't think that the copyright system will be taken down anytime soon especially becuase of international dissent.
It's nice to see that a wide understanding of world politics, standards and trade prevails here.
India has the one of fastest growing software tech industries in the world (possibly the fastest right now). There's a whole lotta people living in India, it doesn't take a large fraction of them to be technically competent, on the net, or have degrees in astrophysics before there's a lot of people who do all those things. And they have their own space program (which is more than can be said of my own country, despite the fact we have scads of space industry). We have to hire whole bunches of Indian HW and SW engineers, 'cos the Indian Unis are churning them out by the bucket load, and we can't afford the ones that are available in blighty.
It maybe not a troll, but the comments are also incorrect (I think we can assume that someone submitting a review might avoid stating the obvious).
The interesting style referred to may not be something that Ian M. Banks has just invented, but neither is it that common (or indeed something I have seen before).
The viewpoints alternate, by regular chapter between the two characters, in strict rotation, and _only_ those two viewpoints are used. They tell two almost unrelated stories. There are some common events (distant ones, that tend to have an impact on only one of the viewpoints) touched upon between the stories, so the reader can 'synchronise' their timelines, but even then (IIRC, it's been a while since I read the book), the two viewpoints do not completely overlap in time. This is a deliberate and obvious literary device used by the narrator of the story (see below, there is seperation of author and narrator).
Finally it turns out when you get to the end of the book you discover that both viewpoints are being related to you by a single character, who is trying to record a period of history through his/her's own viewpoint, and that of someone far away, whose story (s)he has had to research.
The major Inversion the reviewer refers to (that of a "Culture intervention" viewed from the perspective of those being intervened with), is something that is not strongly telegraphed: the narrator of the two histories is unaware of the intervention, (s)he just presents evidence that those who have read other culture books can make the inference from.
There are probably quite a few other tricks going on that I have either forgotten, or just not had the wit to observe.
Eh? Never heard of an OS optimised for a particular motherboard? What about Sun Solaris? HP-UX? DEC OpenUnix? DEC VMS? SG-thing (forgot what it was called)? Apollo Aegis? Acorn MOS? ZX81 ROM? I would go back further, but I feel it's cheating to mention stuff you haven't used... on hang on a minute I have missed MattSloth's "Fingers" running on Abacus (runs for about 5 minutes before you break a nail).
"There's a big reason why the United States should BE represented. Quite frankly its because so much of the activity and traffic on the 'net is located in North America. (I may be Canadian, but basically what's good for ol' U.S of A is good for us as well). If other nations are allowed a much more powerful say in certain topics which go against Corporate America®, then a lot of things can happen which may bring down ICANN itself as the regulator of addresses. Corporate America could start pressuring people (if you know what I mean)®, Some all-too-ambitious Senator may start tossing around a bill which starts to degrade access to servers located in the US, etc etc etc.. in other words it *could* get ugly. Or The ICANN could go the way of the 'League of Nations' with no American Support both political and coporate-wise." Q: So what happens when America shuts down the Internet? A: The rest of the world routes around the blockage and carries on much as before, marginalising the US. The US may be the worlds last Superpower (discounting china for the moment), and it may have the worlds largest economy, but the rest of the world put together is still several times larger than the US (The EU for instance, has comparable economic muscle on it's own)(and a comparable number of companies on the Internet/Web).
Just a couple of things... whilst I believe that Zack is correct, I would recommend talking to a license lawyer (if there is such a thing) (definately NOT an intellectual property lawyer!) if this something worries you. Also (assuming that my understanding is correct), the author can release v0.1 under any license he likes; releasing it under the GPL does not also prevent him from releasing it under an entirely proprietary license at the same time.
Theoretically you could release under the BSD and GPL licenses at the same time (although these would have to be seperate instances of the source code, each with their own license).
In fact each time the author gives his code to someone he can give it out under a different license.
Why anyone would want to do this is entirely beyond me, though...
P.S. I favour the GPL from the purely practical viewpoint that I believe it encourages greater code reuse and collaboration, and protects the rights of the author(s) better.
Under the UK data protection act...
on
ISP Sues Spammer
·
· Score: 1
I may be entirely wrong about this, but I think here in good old blighty, sending unsolicited commercial email would (or possibly should) leave you liable to prosecution under the Data Protection act; either under the bit about holding personal information about people without registering it with the Data Registrar, or under the other bit about abusing this personal information.
Personally, I think I should be allowed to charge a license fee for the use of my email address - after this is _my_ personal information.
Also, assuming my understanding of the GPL is correct, it is designed to:
a. protect your code from being sucked into proprietary software and then copyrighted (which, strictly speaking, software in the Public Domain is not protected from- you could end up in the ludicrous position of being sued over the right to code you wrote otherwise).
b. protect the users of your code from any change of mind that you might have. If you hold the copyright to the code, then you can make new releases under whatever license you like, but you can't remove the GPL from code that has already been distributed.
You have the right to use the roads, and you have the right to use GPL software- you even get to modify it (you're certainly not, as far as I am aware, given the right to alter the route of the Interstates to suit your convenience).
One thing you are not allowed to do is set up your own toll both on the federal highways and start charging people for their use. Does this analogy shed any light on the issue? Or have I _entirely_ missed the point of this discussion?
You don't have to give your code to anyone, you can keep it entirely to yourself.
However... when you come to distribute/sell on GPL code, you are not allowed to remove the rights of the original authors that they used (by applying the GPL) to ensure that other users would have access to the source code, and the right to change it (and distribute it) as they see fit.
If you are worried about not wanting to distribute source, then don't distribute under the GPL. This may mean that the derived work that you wanted to charge for can no longer be distributed, but that seems entirely fair to me (i.e. respect the original authors rights, or write your own code).
The only rights you have over the code are those that the original authors have given to you (which, I reiterate, is the right to do anything you want to the code, except restrict anyone elses right to do the same).
The only right you are losing is the dubious one of being able to profit from other peoples hard work (or the right to charge people for things that they have already payed for, if your assertion about U.S. government funding is correct), passing it off as your own. I don't get what you're complaining on about.
They're entirely free to do whatever they want with the software and the code (including charge for it) except to remove anybody elses rights to do the same.
Slashdot Mirror
There are a number of countries outside the US (intentional tautology), and also a number of multi-national companies that originated outside of the US-- neither of these two groups is going to be too happy about having the hardware they wish to purchase effectively controlled by laws implemented to please a small number of people in Hollywood...
I imagine that this will have something of an impact on the US tech. trade with the rest of the world...
You don't get free television.
You pay for it either through subscription, or the
price added to pay for advertising the goods that
you buy (well, you nearly always get the latter).
Unless you live in the UK of course, in which case
you get both of the above and a license fee to
prop up the BBC.
To follow up myself...
A lot of people seem to be mixing up the terminology for something rather than the invention of the thing itself, as well... Science fiction will sometimes provide a new term that gets picked up to describe a new technology e.g. robots, the 'net, etc. (any arguement about whether or not SF has influenced robotics has surely got to start with Mary Shelley's Frankenstein?)
I think there is a big mix up between cause and effect here. (a). Inventions are the effect of the following causes: (i) a problem, (ii) a technology, (iii) the knowledge to take a technology and apply it to a problem to make a solution. (b). (Good) Science fiction inventions are the effect of the following causes: (i) an imagined problem, (ii) an imagined technology, (iii) an imagined solution. Where (a).(i-ii) and (b).(i-ii) have a relatively close match then (a).(iii) and (b).(iii) will inevitably be a close match (think about the shape of the shark and the dolphin), but establishing a causal link between (b) and (a) is going to be difficult as (a) is going to be much more heavily influenced by it's (i) and (ii) than by anything in (b) When (a).(i-ii) and (b).(i-ii) are wildly different, then any relationship between the technologies produced is purely in the imagination of the of the person suggesting it. Ergo... anyone suggesting that Science Fiction has influenced technology/inventions has been asked the wrong question (Science Fiction can anticipate inventions, but it's much better at extrapolating existing ones and predicting their impact on society).
Let me comment on your comments (if anyone is still paying attention to this thread)... Let me comment on these: services model The biggest flaw I see with this model is there is no incentive to produce bug free (or as close as you can get) code. By introducing subtle bugs, you can ensure yourself a job forever. I don't understand why everyone gets this one so wrong. In my experience, when you buy a software services contract (e.g. Maintenance, and my current comapany's maintenance budget runs into $millions each year BTW- and that's only covering software used by around 70 engineers) you don't pay on a per incident basis, but on an annual basis. It's in the software vendor's interest to produce bug free software, since they want to spend as little time and money maintaining the software as possible. Why does this seem so strange?
Nope Hospitals keep the enslaved healthy so they can continue to toil for the despots, without informing them of the potential for freedom. Libraries free the mind to consider the opportunities for a better life (and often include books on medicine and how to build hospitals). Therefore I propose it is more important to defend the library (unless of course you're the bloke who has just suffered a heart attack). Now what the hell were we talking about?
There are several models for generating revenue from Free Software. The most frequently discussed one is the services model, i.e. you get payed for providing support for the software (bugfixing, user support, configuration/installation support, major version migration, etc.) The second most frequently discussed one is the software customization model, i.e. you get payed for writing the code under contract from the user (as opposed to under contract from a software developer who then sells on proprietory closed source software). Typical examples of this would be modifications to thing like Spice circuit simulators (a silicon foundry has just spend $30billion building a new innovative fabrication process and wants customers to be able to simulate designs that will be implemented on that process, and then discovers that the current versions of Spice are not capable of accurately modelling the multijunction silicon on insulator devices that this new process provides. In this case the maximum benefit to society at large is gained by a Free software solution: maximum penetration of the potential market, the programmers get paid, and the code is not owned by a proprietory software house that can go belly up and dissappear leaving orphaned binaries that can never be maintained). The third model is to use Free software to sell hardware. Most workstation vendors make a hell of a lot more profit on their hardware than they do on the operating systems and application software that package with that hardware. AFAIK Sun's Solaris operations run at a loss; it's purely developed to drive hardware sales. Similarly Sun are Freeing Star Office in order to promote sales of their hardware. It is therefore in their best interest to fund Free software in order to reduce the overhead of developing these OSes and applications. This also gives these hardware vendors the capability to demonstrate the differentiation of their hardware offerings (and suitability for different market niches) without out having to rely the fickle whims of a "defacto industry standard" closed source proprietary software vendor, who can sink the chances of innovative hardware just by refusing to support it (not picking on any one software vendor BTW, there are several "defacto industry standard"s around, not just the obvious one) For large companies that rely on certain applications, there is a strong motivation to ensure that someone else's interests (which could be at odds with the aforementioned company's) do not control key infrastructure elements upon which the companies depend; i.e. a motivation to pay someone to write software that will be GPL'ed and therefore will not be tied to a particular company that can dissappear, change it's licensing terms, take the software in a direction that is detrimental to the users requirements (not picking on any particular proprietory software vendor here, BTW). This all adds up to a lot of cash in the pockets of programmers. On the other hand it gives a lot more rights to the people who are actually paying for the damn software in the first place, rights that are protected by consumer laws in most countries for things that are not software (i.e. I have the right to take my car to any garage to get it serviced, repaired or modified. If I find that a certain company's closed source proprietary application is broken or unsuitable to my needs, I have only one place where I can go to it fixed, and that's the original vendor. I would argue that since I, and other customers like myself, are actually paying for this code to be developed we should have the right to choose solutions over which we have some say in the development, and that we can take to alternative vendors for fixing/modification, if we don't like the the original vendors intentions or after sales care). Apologies for the grammar and spelling, bit lacking in sleep right now.
That's not strictly true. There are a number of crimes that Britons overseas can be tried for in Britain (and a number of crimes which occur to Britons overseas which theoretically the criminals can be tried for in Britain, if they ever manage to get hold of them). Similarly, I understand from American friends (forgive me if I get this wrong, this is from a drunken pub discussion) that Americans living overseas can be tried for in America including, bizarrely enough, not paying your taxes. ?
I don't think that international pressure could change a damn thing that the US does. In all international bodies that count the US leads so exactly how is "all hell" going to break loose. You are pretty vague here I don't think that the copyright system will be taken down anytime soon especially becuase of international dissent.
It's nice to see that a wide understanding of world politics, standards and trade prevails here.
India has the one of fastest growing software tech industries in the world (possibly the fastest right now).
There's a whole lotta people living in India, it doesn't take a large fraction of them to be technically competent, on the net, or have degrees in astrophysics before there's a lot of people who do all those things. And they have their own space program (which is more than can be said of my own country, despite the fact we have scads of space industry).
We have to hire whole bunches of Indian HW and SW engineers, 'cos the Indian Unis are churning them out by the bucket load, and we can't afford the ones that are available in blighty.
It maybe not a troll, but the comments are also incorrect (I think we can assume that someone submitting a review might avoid stating the obvious).
The interesting style referred to may not be something that Ian M. Banks has just invented, but neither is it that common (or indeed something I have seen before).
The viewpoints alternate, by regular chapter between the two characters, in strict rotation, and _only_ those two viewpoints are used. They tell two almost unrelated stories. There are some common events (distant ones, that tend to have an impact on only one of the viewpoints) touched upon between the stories, so the reader can 'synchronise' their timelines, but even then (IIRC, it's been a while since I read the book), the two viewpoints do not completely overlap in time. This is a deliberate and obvious literary device used by the narrator of the story (see below, there is seperation of author and narrator).
Finally it turns out when you get to the end of the book you discover that both viewpoints are being related to you by a single character, who is trying to record a period of history through his/her's own viewpoint, and that of someone far away, whose story (s)he has had to research.
The major Inversion the reviewer refers to (that of a "Culture intervention" viewed from the perspective of those being intervened with), is something that is not strongly telegraphed: the narrator of the two histories is unaware of the intervention, (s)he just presents evidence that those who have read other culture books can make the inference from.
There are probably quite a few other tricks going on that I have either forgotten, or just not had the wit to observe.
Eh? Never heard of an OS optimised for a particular motherboard? What about Sun Solaris? HP-UX? DEC OpenUnix? DEC VMS? SG-thing (forgot what it was called)? Apollo Aegis? Acorn MOS? ZX81 ROM? I would go back further, but I feel it's cheating to mention stuff you haven't used... on hang on a minute I have missed MattSloth's "Fingers" running on Abacus (runs for about 5 minutes before you break a nail).
"There's a big reason why the United States should BE represented. Quite frankly its because so much of the activity and traffic on the 'net is located in North America. (I may be Canadian, but basically what's good for ol' U.S of A is good for us as well). If other nations are allowed a much more powerful say in certain topics which go against Corporate America®, then a lot of things can happen which may bring down ICANN itself as the regulator of addresses. Corporate America could start pressuring people (if you know what I mean)®, Some all-too-ambitious Senator may start tossing around a bill which starts to degrade access to servers located in the US, etc etc etc .. in other words it *could* get ugly. Or The ICANN could go the way of the 'League of Nations' with no American Support both political and coporate-wise." Q: So what happens when America shuts down the Internet? A: The rest of the world routes around the blockage and carries on much as before, marginalising the US. The US may be the worlds last Superpower (discounting china for the moment), and it may have the worlds largest economy, but the rest of the world put together is still several times larger than the US (The EU for instance, has comparable economic muscle on it's own)(and a comparable number of companies on the Internet/Web).
Just a couple of things... whilst I believe that Zack is correct, I would recommend talking to a license lawyer (if there is such a thing) (definately NOT an intellectual property lawyer!) if this something worries you. Also (assuming that my understanding is correct), the author can release v0.1 under any license he likes; releasing it under the GPL does not also prevent him from releasing it under an entirely proprietary license at the same time.
Theoretically you could release under the BSD and GPL licenses at the same time (although these would have to be seperate instances of the source code, each with their own license).
In fact each time the author gives his code to someone he can give it out under a different license.
Why anyone would want to do this is entirely beyond me, though...
P.S. I favour the GPL from the purely practical viewpoint that I believe it encourages greater code reuse and collaboration, and protects the rights of the author(s) better.
I may be entirely wrong about this, but I think here in good old blighty, sending unsolicited commercial email would (or possibly should) leave you liable to prosecution under the Data Protection act; either under the bit about holding personal information about people without registering it with the Data Registrar, or under the other bit about abusing this personal information.
Personally, I think I should be allowed to charge a license fee for the use of my email address - after this is _my_ personal information.
Also, assuming my understanding of the GPL is correct, it is designed to:
a. protect your code from being sucked into proprietary software and then copyrighted (which, strictly speaking, software in the Public Domain is not protected from- you could end up in the ludicrous position of being sued over the right to code you wrote otherwise).
b. protect the users of your code from any change of mind that you might have. If you hold the copyright to the code, then you can make new releases under whatever license you like, but you can't remove the GPL from code that has already been distributed.
????
You have the right to use the roads, and you have the right to use GPL software- you even get to modify it (you're certainly not, as far as I am aware, given the right to alter the route of the Interstates to suit your convenience).
One thing you are not allowed to do is set up your own toll both on the federal highways and start charging people for their use. Does this analogy shed any light on the issue? Or have I _entirely_ missed the point of this discussion?
Utter bollocks.
You don't have to give your code to anyone, you can keep it entirely to yourself.
However... when you come to distribute/sell on GPL code, you are not allowed to remove the rights of the original authors that they used (by applying the GPL) to ensure that other users would have access to the source code, and the right to change it (and distribute it) as they see fit.
If you are worried about not wanting to distribute source, then don't distribute under the GPL. This may mean that the derived work that you wanted to charge for can no longer be distributed, but that seems entirely fair to me (i.e. respect the original authors rights, or write your own code).
The only rights you have over the code are those that the original authors have given to you (which, I reiterate, is the right to do anything you want to the code, except restrict anyone elses right to do the same).
The only right you are losing is the dubious one of being able to profit from other peoples hard work (or the right to charge people for things that they have already payed for, if your assertion about U.S. government funding is correct), passing it off as your own. I don't get what you're complaining on about.
It might just be that the GNU stuff is so ubiquitous that it needs no introduction... ?
Eh?
They're entirely free to do whatever they want with the software and the code (including charge for it) except to remove anybody elses rights to do the same.