... only if you use Apple software. Jobs realized that if iTunes had any chance of success they had to target MS operating systems, but they did so in typical Apple fashion: instead of creating a platform neutral interface to the shop they created their iTunes gated garden. This has nothing to do with hating Apple, this is a fact that shows the eternal mentality of this company.
Let them know that you are fed up with all this lock down and then buy something else in the future.
The iPods are great pieces of kit, that is why many of us were prepared to use them in spite of their shortcomings, but now that Apple is sending a message of "fuck off" in no uncertain terms, well , it is time to take heed and take our costume where it will be appreciated.
In spite of your company not providing support for us, Linux users, I have been an iPod user since you introduced the iPod Nano and got also an iPod shuffle, I have also recommended to friends iPod Video and given iPod machines as presents.
I did buy and recommend your players because you took an attitude of not bothering us if we could make work the player with unsupported software, which as far as I was concerned was fair enough.
But since the iPod nano 2nd generation, and it seems, with the newest iPod models, you have decided to take a hostile attitude towards people that do not wish to use the iTunes store and/or that wishes to use different software to organize their iPods by means of encrypting who knows what and why in order to lock everybody out of their iPods unless they use iTunes. Just last week I was in your store in Regent Street in London marveling at the new iPod nano's solid technology and design, but then stopping myself to buy it by the perennial question: will it work with Linux? After the experiences of new buyers attest, this does not seem to the case, and although I am sure the user community will come with solutions I am simply just tired of forking my money with no hope of ever been acknowledged as a user that deserves to be heard.
I became a client of yours fully knowing that you did not intend to make an effort for my custom, but now that you are clearly showing me you don't want to deal with me I take heed and vow never to buy another music player from you, which is after all what I think you want anyway.
The bundling of the device so closely with a shop makes it look very anticompetitive as well, a matter that I am sure many of us will bring to the attention of bodies like the European Comission and consumer advocates organizations.
If your software calls home it will not be in any company with professional Systems Administrators.
The moment I notice your product is calling home I would uninstall it and demand a refund.
Look, you can screw the little guy that can't use Google (how many of those are left?) but with companies that are serious about security, any unknown shenanigans going on in the background, no matter the reason, will be met with firm rejection and may mean you losing business.
In other words, as an IT person administering hundreds of computers: please, don't even try.
The developers have no birth right to freeloading.
If they are using some other people's software then they must abide by the terms of it. Period.
Developers that feel aggravated by this can write their own software to solve a given problem, they are perfectly free to reinvent the wheel as many times as they see fit.
Reading Stallman's rant, I'm surprised you could find 17 warm bodies that'd put up with his bullshit let alone 17 developers. No doubt Stallman's capable, his accomplishments put that question beyond much doubt but Jeez, the arrogance of the guy undermines him, and everything he believes in, at every turn. That is you unsubstantiated opinion. Facts say that the licensing scheme he started is more popular than ever. So if you can call that to be "undermined" then we are not speaking the same language.
In the article he says he launched the GNU OS in 1984 and seven years later a kid from Finland blows right past him. What was Stallman doing during those seven years? What's he been doing in the sixteen years since? He has been an advocate for free software ensuring there is a legal framework in which works released with the intention to remain free and open remain that way.
This has allowed others, like the Linux kernel developers, to keep coding in the knowledge that other people are looking at the legal aspects related to the software they are writing.
I know some techies have very narrow view fields, but it surprises me that things like this have, still, to be explained to some.
What's Torvalds got that Stallman doesn't? A Finish passport?
Maybe the ability to keep his damned mouth shut when he doesn't have anything worthwhile to say? Maybe the sneaking suspicion that he isn't necessarily the smartest person in every room he enters? Maybe an ability to rein in his ego to move a project along and the realization that every good idea and worthwhile insight doesn't necessarily flow from his mighty mind? You obviously have not read interviews with Linus, he can be as caustic and ironic as anybody else. As for lack of self belief, that is only left to people that do not want to affect any changes in society. If you want to change things you must believe that what you are proposing is the right thing to do and should have the clarity of mind and conviction to convince others that is the case. Modesty does not necessarily fit well with the role of a leader of opinion.
Although it's pretty late in the game, I wish Stallman would come to appreciate that talking less and doing more will garner more respect then the opposite. Certainly open source software suffers from a perception, sometimes earned, of a lack of seriousness. As a major figure in open source, Stallman's antics don't help to change that perception. Sorry, that perception is yours only. Companies of all sizes all around the world got over that false perception *years ago*. Banking and fincnail services, oil industry, media, film making, commerce, and many less traditional businesses use GPLed software with abandon.
It is surprising that there are people out there still beating that very dead horse of lack of seriousness. It is a point that nobody in any serious IT department even countenances anymore.
You can write commercial software that is GPLed, your family does not need to starve.
You will not use the same business model based in frustrating and coercing your clients in using your software, and certainly would be open to competition from others, but at least you would be on a level playing field (your competitors, if they find your software useful, would have to release any changes they made to it).
So you would compete based on quality of your services and not in bullshitting your users.
That is a reflection of you, not of the thing you are trying to describe or criticize.
I call it well founded conviction, insight.
You talk about software like if it was a niche thing that nobody but the nerds should care about.
Society in developed countries just simply could not exist on its present form without computers and the software that makes them usable.
How that software is accessed, used, modified and shared is one of the most important questions this century in the technical, political and sociological terms, it involves issues of governance, transparency, accountability. All this is mightily important and people should be grateful that there are people out there thinking about these issues and offering solutions that benefit the little man on the street.
You consider comparisons with civil right movements silly because you are simply ignorant of the issues at hand. Now than more and more decisions are taken using software (profiling to find criminal suspects, tax burden calculations, voting, personal surveillance) the only guarantee we have that these tools are fair and sound is if we, the public, can conduct independent audits to ensure this. How can this be done if the software is not open in some form? Why should the tax payer reinvent the wheel if these tools could be developed using open models like the GPL?
You ignore software licensing and accessibility issues at your own peril, they will be used as little trojan horses by authoritarian types to undermine civil liberties and freedom, people like you just make the task of those people much easier.
You are willfully oversimplifying a complex issue.
One important point: the license restricts "your rights" (now show me, where in copyright law you are allowed to become a leech?) in the understanding that you are taking advantage of other people's work. You agree to waive your rights in the benefit of others because others have agreed to do so in your benefit.
Now tell us, in which way is that wrong?
And if you don't like it, then you can write everything yourself and forbid anybody else to copy it, the GPL does not stop you in any way to do that if so you wish, and there are even people foolish enough to release software in license where you can leech, so what is stopping you using that instead (hint: leeches are not social creatures).
The GPL gives you complete freedom to use software you did not write. No restriction. Pretty much zilch.
The GPL puts some restrictions in how you distribute software you did not write. Well, doh, so does any other kind of licensing scheme.
The GPL puts restrictions in how you distribute binaries that were mostly written by other people. And here, nobody forces you to use GPLed software. If you feel coerced by not been granted a free lunch, don't use GPLed software. Stallman is not pointing a gun at your head to force to use you GPLed software in your pet project.
But they don't pretend they can carge for anything you do with them afterwards.
Or if you want to improve on those blueprints you can hire somebody else to do so.
Look, keep bringing analogies from the real world, ti just makes the point that software "manufacturers" are completely out of whack with reality due to how unbalanced Copyright law is in favor of the person creating something.
And he is empowering users everywhere by asking them to write stuff and share and improve it amongst themselves.
This would have not been necessary if software companies did not introduce artificial restrictions to the source code they produced. Very often software companies actually cripple instead of enhancing a product in order to create differentiation. Why this should pay (a most unethical practice IMHO) is beyond me.
You are completely work about "hard work should not pay". The FSF is pretty clear about wanting people to make money with FOSS, but it is up to the businesses to find a profitable business model, but it should be one that is not based in denying the user the freedom to control his own IT infrastructure.
Please show us where in the GPL (any version mind you) use of GPLed software is restricted.
You can use GPLed software to your heart contents and have to give explanation to absolutely nobody.
Go on, probe me wrong.
What GPL restricts is how you *distribute* the software that is GPLed. In simple terms it tries to get rid of freeloaders.
The GPL3 is an attempt to exclude a particularly nasty kind of freeloader: the ones that want to use the software they did not make by means of hardware restrictions and patent restrictions.
Those people will not use GPL3 software. Well, good riddance. Knowing that even Solaris may be GPL3 should give anybody confidence that the people being unloaded from the FOSS movement are the freeloaders, not the people genuinely contributing with great projects.
MS is an unethical company. As shown recently they are prepared to bribe people to impose their "standards" or to brandish their patent portfolio without substantiating their claims (putting aside the many times they have broken the law).
MS Office formats are not open, you are putting access to your own data at risk by this (I have met people that went the closed way and had paid with big bucks for the privilege to access their own data again).
MS Office is too expensive compared to OpenOffice or StarOffice (Sun's version of OpenOffice).
To be "pragmatic" is always easier, you don't need to state the obvious. I use only OpenOffice at home and certainly has caused me some problems but it hasn't killed me. I am sure that many people and companies could do likewise, but "pragmatism" (which I would describe more as laziness and apathy) get the best of most people, people that use the word "pragmatism" when asked to rationalize what is from an objective point of view a bad choice in general terms.
Slashdot Mirror
.... pass the url of this discussion to some people working in Universal?
For goodness sakes, is anybody there remotely computing or technology literate?
.... is scary, stressful, gut wrenching, and costly, then I fail to see how you can say that not all lawyers are greedy scumbags.
I can't think of many fields in which such discription could be applied.
If the law is so complex that we need specialists just to interpret it for us, how are we supposed to obey it?
We have the right, no, the duty, to try to read and interpret laws that either affect us or interest us for whatever reason.
You don't have to select neither, that is non mandatory information.
... only if you use Apple software. Jobs realized that if iTunes had any chance of success they had to target MS operating systems, but they did so in typical Apple fashion: instead of creating a platform neutral interface to the shop they created their iTunes gated garden. This has nothing to do with hating Apple, this is a fact that shows the eternal mentality of this company.
Let them know that you are fed up with all this lock down and then buy something else in the future.
The iPods are great pieces of kit, that is why many of us were prepared to use them in spite of their shortcomings, but now that Apple is sending a message of "fuck off" in no uncertain terms, well , it is time to take heed and take our costume where it will be appreciated.
In spite of your company not providing support for us, Linux users, I have been an iPod user since you introduced the iPod Nano and got also an iPod shuffle, I have also recommended to friends iPod Video and given iPod machines as presents.
I did buy and recommend your players because you took an attitude of not bothering us if we could make work the player with unsupported software, which as far as I was concerned was fair enough.
But since the iPod nano 2nd generation, and it seems, with the newest iPod models, you have decided to take a hostile attitude towards people that do not wish to use the iTunes store and/or that wishes to use different software to organize their iPods by means of encrypting who knows what and why in order to lock everybody out of their iPods unless they use iTunes. Just last week I was in your store in Regent Street in London marveling at the new iPod nano's solid technology and design, but then stopping myself to buy it by the perennial question: will it work with Linux? After the experiences of new buyers attest, this does not seem to the case, and although I am sure the user community will come with solutions I am simply just tired of forking my money with no hope of ever been acknowledged as a user that deserves to be heard.
I became a client of yours fully knowing that you did not intend to make an effort for my custom, but now that you are clearly showing me you don't want to deal with me I take heed and vow never to buy another music player from you, which is after all what I think you want anyway.
The bundling of the device so closely with a shop makes it look very anticompetitive as well, a matter that I am sure many of us will bring to the attention of bodies like the European Comission and consumer advocates organizations.
If your software calls home it will not be in any company with professional Systems Administrators.
The moment I notice your product is calling home I would uninstall it and demand a refund.
Look, you can screw the little guy that can't use Google (how many of those are left?) but with companies that are serious about security, any unknown shenanigans going on in the background, no matter the reason, will be met with firm rejection and may mean you losing business.
In other words, as an IT person administering hundreds of computers: please, don't even try.
You are a coder. Typical.
Today's data centres could not exist without the ideas that Sun promoted vigorously in the 90s (the network is the computer).
Binary compatibility across all their SPARC based offerings (the same binaries can run in a personal workstation or laptop or in a supercomputer).
Centralized naming services (NIS, NIS+), descentralized file services (NFS) included implementations sharing device drivers across networks (RFS, now sadly deprecated).
Modular, scalable, servers (predating Google's swappable computers by several years).
Solaris 10 (for anybody hat knows what it does, thsi should mean enough said really).
Release everything you write as closed source if you want.
Nobody is forcing you to do anything, but any software released as closed source should be described as less useful for the end user.
The developers have no birth right to freeloading.
If they are using some other people's software then they must abide by the terms of it. Period.
Developers that feel aggravated by this can write their own software to solve a given problem, they are perfectly free to reinvent the wheel as many times as they see fit.
If you are so monumentally stupid as to want to write your own license, you can go ahead and do it.
The FSF offers a ready made solution that has been trialed and tested for many years now with good results.
Reinventing the wheel is one of the biggest sins of a bad engineer or technician, this applies to licensing as well as far as I am concerned.
When did the FSF send their hitmen to force you to release under the GPL any software you wrote?
This has allowed others, like the Linux kernel developers, to keep coding in the knowledge that other people are looking at the legal aspects related to the software they are writing.
I know some techies have very narrow view fields, but it surprises me that things like this have, still, to be explained to some. What's Torvalds got that Stallman doesn't? A Finish passport? Maybe the ability to keep his damned mouth shut when he doesn't have anything worthwhile to say? Maybe the sneaking suspicion that he isn't necessarily the smartest person in every room he enters? Maybe an ability to rein in his ego to move a project along and the realization that every good idea and worthwhile insight doesn't necessarily flow from his mighty mind? You obviously have not read interviews with Linus, he can be as caustic and ironic as anybody else. As for lack of self belief, that is only left to people that do not want to affect any changes in society. If you want to change things you must believe that what you are proposing is the right thing to do and should have the clarity of mind and conviction to convince others that is the case. Modesty does not necessarily fit well with the role of a leader of opinion. Although it's pretty late in the game, I wish Stallman would come to appreciate that talking less and doing more will garner more respect then the opposite. Certainly open source software suffers from a perception, sometimes earned, of a lack of seriousness. As a major figure in open source, Stallman's antics don't help to change that perception. Sorry, that perception is yours only. Companies of all sizes all around the world got over that false perception *years ago*. Banking and fincnail services, oil industry, media, film making, commerce, and many less traditional businesses use GPLed software with abandon.
It is surprising that there are people out there still beating that very dead horse of lack of seriousness. It is a point that nobody in any serious IT department even countenances anymore.
You can write commercial software that is GPLed, your family does not need to starve.
You will not use the same business model based in frustrating and coercing your clients in using your software, and certainly would be open to competition from others, but at least you would be on a level playing field (your competitors, if they find your software useful, would have to release any changes they made to it).
So you would compete based on quality of your services and not in bullshitting your users.
What is wrong with that?
That is a reflection of you, not of the thing you are trying to describe or criticize.
I call it well founded conviction, insight.
You talk about software like if it was a niche thing that nobody but the nerds should care about.
Society in developed countries just simply could not exist on its present form without computers and the software that makes them usable.
How that software is accessed, used, modified and shared is one of the most important questions this century in the technical, political and sociological terms, it involves issues of governance, transparency, accountability. All this is mightily important and people should be grateful that there are people out there thinking about these issues and offering solutions that benefit the little man on the street.
You consider comparisons with civil right movements silly because you are simply ignorant of the issues at hand. Now than more and more decisions are taken using software (profiling to find criminal suspects, tax burden calculations, voting, personal surveillance) the only guarantee we have that these tools are fair and sound is if we, the public, can conduct independent audits to ensure this. How can this be done if the software is not open in some form? Why should the tax payer reinvent the wheel if these tools could be developed using open models like the GPL?
You ignore software licensing and accessibility issues at your own peril, they will be used as little trojan horses by authoritarian types to undermine civil liberties and freedom, people like you just make the task of those people much easier.
You are willfully oversimplifying a complex issue.
One important point: the license restricts "your rights" (now show me, where in copyright law you are allowed to become a leech?) in the understanding that you are taking advantage of other people's work. You agree to waive your rights in the benefit of others because others have agreed to do so in your benefit.
Now tell us, in which way is that wrong?
And if you don't like it, then you can write everything yourself and forbid anybody else to copy it, the GPL does not stop you in any way to do that if so you wish, and there are even people foolish enough to release software in license where you can leech, so what is stopping you using that instead (hint: leeches are not social creatures).
Really. So exactly freedom to do what you need?
The GPL gives you complete freedom to use software you did not write. No restriction. Pretty much zilch.
The GPL puts some restrictions in how you distribute software you did not write. Well, doh, so does any other kind of licensing scheme.
The GPL puts restrictions in how you distribute binaries that were mostly written by other people. And here, nobody forces you to use GPLed software. If you feel coerced by not been granted a free lunch, don't use GPLed software. Stallman is not pointing a gun at your head to force to use you GPLed software in your pet project.
In other words, coercive freedom my ass.
But they don't pretend they can carge for anything you do with them afterwards.
Or if you want to improve on those blueprints you can hire somebody else to do so.
Look, keep bringing analogies from the real world, ti just makes the point that software "manufacturers" are completely out of whack with reality due to how unbalanced Copyright law is in favor of the person creating something.
And he is empowering users everywhere by asking them to write stuff and share and improve it amongst themselves.
This would have not been necessary if software companies did not introduce artificial restrictions to the source code they produced. Very often software companies actually cripple instead of enhancing a product in order to create differentiation. Why this should pay (a most unethical practice IMHO) is beyond me.
You are completely work about "hard work should not pay". The FSF is pretty clear about wanting people to make money with FOSS, but it is up to the businesses to find a profitable business model, but it should be one that is not based in denying the user the freedom to control his own IT infrastructure.
Please tell us who do you have in mind? Which poor sods will be impeded to distribute GPL3 software?
That will tell us if we should be happy or worried.
I think you are talking based in fundamental ignorance of the issues at hand.
Please show us where in the GPL (any version mind you) use of GPLed software is restricted.
You can use GPLed software to your heart contents and have to give explanation to absolutely nobody.
Go on, probe me wrong.
What GPL restricts is how you *distribute* the software that is GPLed. In simple terms it tries to get rid of freeloaders.
The GPL3 is an attempt to exclude a particularly nasty kind of freeloader: the ones that want to use the software they did not make by means of hardware restrictions and patent restrictions.
Those people will not use GPL3 software. Well, good riddance. Knowing that even Solaris may be GPL3 should give anybody confidence that the people being unloaded from the FOSS movement are the freeloaders, not the people genuinely contributing with great projects.
Guilt by association.
The critical tool of the scoundrel.
MS is an unethical company. As shown recently they are prepared to bribe people to impose their "standards" or to brandish their patent portfolio without substantiating their claims (putting aside the many times they have broken the law).
MS Office formats are not open, you are putting access to your own data at risk by this (I have met people that went the closed way and had paid with big bucks for the privilege to access their own data again).
MS Office is too expensive compared to OpenOffice or StarOffice (Sun's version of OpenOffice).
To be "pragmatic" is always easier, you don't need to state the obvious. I use only OpenOffice at home and certainly has caused me some problems but it hasn't killed me. I am sure that many people and companies could do likewise, but "pragmatism" (which I would describe more as laziness and apathy) get the best of most people, people that use the word "pragmatism" when asked to rationalize what is from an objective point of view a bad choice in general terms.
Gandhi was a Hindu fundamentalist.
Mandela was a communist.
So now pray tell us, why does the issue of Stallman's appearance keeps making the rounds around here?
I listen to the message, I don't disqualify a message if I don't like the messenger.