If you read the GPL carefully (it seriously sounds like you havent - I suggest when you have a bit of free time that you pop over to http://www.fsf.org/licensing/licenses/gpl.txt and read it through - its quite interesting, and may well clear up a lot of confusion you have) you will note that it applies only to taking the GPL'd source code, and adding it (or adding other code to it) to produce a new program. It specifically says it does *NOT* apply to the act of loading the program onto hardware (which would include to a harddrive, into a CPU, all steps of its execution including whatever microcode might be involved).
"Making copies to CD" would fall under 'distribution', not 'use'. And you are only restricted (by the GPL) if you distribute *modified* copies. The basic premise is, if you are distributing a binary/complied program, that anyone that you distribute it to, has the ability to compile the same binary themselves, and the ability to pass that ability on to anyone they choose to distribute it to. It is unimaginable to me that someone *choosing* to license and distribute code that they wrote (or have copyright of) under the GPL, would ever interpret the GPL in the way you are thinking. Also note that the terms that commercial companies might want to impose on the persons who buy their software has nothing to do with what the GPL imposes.
In the case of fonts, only if you took a GPL'd font, and modified it to make a new different font, would the GPL come into play. And even then, unless you distributed the new font (and again, merely using it to produce a document wouldnt count - I mean actually distributing the font itself, in such a manner that someone else would be able to use it to produce a document), it would require nothing. If you did sell (or give away) copies of the font, you would be required to give away the 'source code' (is there such a thing, as regards to fonts? If not, then the entire thing may be moot anyway) to your new font.
Using a font to write a document would *not* require that the document be distributed under the GPL, or that it be distributed at all. If you use a GPL'd math-formula program to write and print some formula (maybe even the one that is the answer to life, the universe, and everything), you arent suddenly required to license your formula under the GPL - you can keep it secret, put it in the public domain, or license it under any terms you choose. Lets say I was using a GPL's web browser to type this post - doing so wouldnt require that this post be GPL'd, or remove my copyright to this post (now the TOS of/. may say by posting I give unrestricted rights to them, but thats not related to the GPL or my browser).
The GPL doesn't even require you to distribute modified works. The *ONLY* thing it requires, is that if you *choose* to distribute either a modification of the program you received under the GPL, or another program, that incorporates source code from the program you received, that you also make available the source code of the new program.
You *probably) know this, but your wording seems unclear, so for the benefit of other readers, I shall clarify.
Actually the GPL has nothing to do with 'using' software (eg running an application, loading and booting an OS, etc). Default copyright doesnt place any restrictions on someone merely 'using' a program - only proprietary EULA's go there (and it is controversial as to wether those are/should be binding at all).
The GPL merely covers copying all or part of the source code of a GPL'ed program into another program, or modifying it and releasing compiled versions of the modified code. By default, copyright grants you no rights to do either of these. The GPL says 'ok, normally you can't do this, but as long as you comply with these terms, then you can'.
My further opinion is that rather than embracing GPL/Linux, most companies look for unencumbered code such as BSDL.
You miss the point. People who choose to license code that they wrote dont *WANT* companies to be able to steal their code to incorporate into their non-GPL programs. Free software (RMS' definition of free) is *NOT* about giving software companies more ability to profit by coping bits - its about there being more software, more people working on it, and more people contributing, to software that does what people want, and that cant be taken away by anyone.
As far as *BSD itself, I like that platform, and the license doesnt contain anything objectionable to me, as a user of FreeBSD. But if I was ever in the position of releasing code for an app that *I* wrote, then I would stick with the GPL.
RTFA - the prisoners arent running anything. Persons who are *not* prisoners, are running websites, on behalf of some prisoners (and maybe even making the website 'look' as if was run directly). What if a prisoner wrote a book, and mailed the manuscript to a publisher, and it was published, would you oppose the publishers right to accept material from a prisoner? I certainly dont think inmates should be getting satellite TV, gourmet dinners, have direct access to the net, or any ability to contact anyone (except by sending normal letter mail, or when someone chooses to visit them), but if they can find someone willing to publish information on their behalf (internet, newspaper, book, whatever), that is between them and the person helping them (who, being presumably not a convict, has every right to do so, within their means)
No, I mean that when the *author* (developer/vendor/company/etc) discovers a security problem it is not kept secret, and it is fixed promptly. Proprietary software co's often know about lots of security holes and bugs in their software, that no one knows about but the company (and probably the blackhats). Their ostensible reason for not publishing the info is to keep the blackhats from knowing about it, but as you seem to imply, usually its too late for that. The real reason is entirely about their 'image'.
Their search isnt their income-producing profit, their advertising is. And they surely have no lock on the advertising market, even the web advertising market. They also dont really have much power to abuse any perceived monopoly you think they do have, since if you dont like their search, you *are* always free to use another one, on a moments whim (yahoo/msn/whatever).
Someone else's choice of search engine hardly has any effect on your choice (unlike the case where someone sends you a document that your job depends on, and sends it in a proprietary format that the vendor of only one brand of software refuses to document, and even goes so far as to *patent* key technology that would have to be used in any competing software trying to read/interpret that data - which would definitely be an abuse of monopoly)
For the record, and this seems to a common misconception, or at least an implied one, giving X to charity, does NOT mean that you pay X less taxes. It means that you get to reduce your taxes by the amount of the tax applicable to X.
Eg, lets say your tax rate is 10%. If you donate $100 to something tax-deductible, it means you decduct $100 when figuring your 'taxable income', which equates to saving $10 in actual tax.
Try "When OSS software has security flaws".. they get made public, and they get fixed, usually very quickly.
When closed software has security flaws, for a few months only the blackhats know about them, and write worms and trojans and so forth to abuse them. Somewhere in there some corporate flunky somewhere might find out about it, some red tape later some programmers might get assigned to work on it. Then the rest of the world finds out about it when the closed vendor releases a huge binary 'patch' that fixes that bug, but creates a dozen others.
Re:Two SR-71s on the ground, outside the hangar
on
Satellite Easter Eggs
·
· Score: 1
Not really. Im sure when they park these birds they lock the rotors in place to keep them from spinning around in a stiff wind - and I suspect they locking pins/latches/etc are in the same place on the same model of aircraft.
1. This is old news. I downloaded this a few weeks ago
2. One very good thing:
The 'old' acroread supported the 'continuous' scroll where the top of the next page would scroll up from the bottom as the bottom of the previous was still visible, which was very nice. xpdf couldnt/didnt do that. The one major downside is that mouse/scroll wheel was not supported with it at all. xpdf supports scrollwheel, but wont do continuous scroll. Both of these were quite maddening, either having to pause while waiting for the next page to load with xpdf, or being unable to scroll conveniently - this newest version of acrobat continues to support continuous scroll, yet thankfully now finally supports mousewheel scrolling. I am happy.
My implied point is that it seems logical to me that someone writing a document and posting it on a web page for the public to read(I dont know why that needs a special term) should have the same concerns (and rights) as someone writing a document and printing it on paper and selling that to the public , or having it read aloud over a television network foe the public to watch would.
Heres a peice of advice - dont use resellers. Always register directly with an ICANN-accredited registrar. How to know? Either register a throwaway (.com) domain through them, or find some other (.com) domain that is regsitered through them, and then check its whois. Make sure that the whois server that the central.com whois redirects to corrosponds with the name of the company you are considering registering with. (Eg, if the company is 'jumpdomains', but the whois is 'opensrs' or 'enom', then theres your answer).
Also, if you find yourself in a case where you've already gone through a reseller, remember that you can always contact the actual ICANN-accredited entity that they 'resell' for, make it clear to them that their reseller is holding your domain hostage, and ask that they take action. They may contact their reseller on your behalf (and often they have the 'real' contact info for them, even if all you have is a voicemail number), and/or if they cant get a useful response out of them, then can intervene on your behalf (usually by moving it to a more responsive one of their resellers)
Anyone that makes a printer that is incapable of understanding postcript, or at least PCL, should be shot. Or at the very least, *document* the language that they do speak.
Tons of printers work fine. The only problems come with what I'll call 'Winprinters' which are specifically and intentionally designed to work *ONLY* with windows - the printer is missing vital functionality to be truly considered a 'printer', and the missing bits are provided by a proprietary software app that runs only on windows - and the mfr's refude to document the tech details of the communication between that proprietary bit and the printer itself.. You generally want to avoid these printers, even if you do run Windows - they are utter crap.
No one blocking on dynamic addresses should be basing their blocking on anything other that the IP address of the machine that is actually contacting them. If someone is looking in the Received: headers and finding the dynamic IP and rejecting, they are idiots, as pretty much all mail is received from such addresses and then relayed on by an ISP mail server. This is one disadvantage of doing 'post-reciept' blocking (eg receiving the message and then checking) instead of 'at connection time' blocking. In fact I'm pretty universally opposed to spam 'blocking' after its been received. Filtration into a 'spam' folder, perhaps, if one wants to take the time to check that for fp's, but mail should either be rejected (with a 550, not a 'bounce'), or delivered - never just thrown away.
If you admin the mailservers yourself, you might wish to consider (assuming the MTA is able to be confired thusly), so that if you (on your dynamic) use SMTP auth to submit mail for delivery, that your server does *not* place your IP addy in the headers - instead perhaps have it put "from authenticated user" or something (but still put the IP in the logfile, of course) as a way around that. I've done that on my personal mailserver, primarily as a privacy concern (I dont need anyone I mail having access to the IP address of my home workstation)
Each recipient (or manager of recipient systems) gets to decide for themselves what importance they place on this. If you cant afford to block a single non-spam mail, even if it means accepting a certain amount of spam, that is your right. Others demand maximum spam blocking, even if it means not receiving some mail that they might not have considered spam. You have no business dicating what other people and other mailadmins have a right to accept or reject (based on blacklists, or any other criteria they might like)
At this point the spammers have become overwhelming. ISP's must be forced to accept that harboring spammers is a bad idea, and it does take listing their entire IP blocks in some cases. Basically, eventually there will be two Internets, the one that has zero-tolerance for spam, and the one that happily allows spam. You cant have access to both, as the non-spam one is slowing blocking off the spammy one. If you ISP is on the spammy one, expect to slowly lose access to the non-spam one.
For the record, the cause of the previous shuttle explosion was foam insulation which fell off during *take-off*, causing damage elsewhere that led to the problem on their way back. Just becuase the problem with the foam is on the jettison tank doesnt mean it couldnt shed foam on take off. That said, if the engineers responsible for the system, having seen the damage and (obviously) being fully aware of what happened 'last time', are willing to sign off on it being ok, I suspect they arent doing so lightly.
"But Schwartz said that some people he's spoken to dislike it because it precludes them from using open-source software as a foundation for proprietary projects."
Thats the whole *POINT*. People who license their work under GPL specifically intend for this, and if they refuse to permit their work to be used in a proprietary work, they have every right to make the restriction. Its called share and share alike.
Why should any corp have a right to take someone else work, that they obtained for free, and use it in their proprietary for-profit product, against that persons will? You dont have that right for code developed by anyone else thats *NOT* open source, you (usually) dont even get to *see* the source, let alone even get to consider including it in your own project. GPL isnt taking anything away, its granting lots of rights that you wouldnt otherwise have, but its specifically *not* granting the right to use GPL'd code in a project, and then not give the same rights to others that the GPL gave you. Its 100% fair, which I suppose I can understand how software corps dont like that - they like it when they can have an unfair advantage.
Im sure you were trying to be funny (and when it comes to the used car market, Id be 100% with you), but what 'breakdown' are you referring to? The whole point of the story is that even though the rovers were designed to last only three months, so far they have lasted almost 4 times that long, and are still going strong.
I am familiar with Zend, and I am aware of the 'Zend Encoder' (aka the 'I want to reap the benefits of a coding in a programming language and platform that is itself open source but I dont want my code to be open encryption system')
I have, however, never heard of 'Zend Studio', nor can I imagine having any use for such a thing, especially if it is not itself F/OSS.
Only if you do it in 'map' mode. Zoom all the way out, then switch to satellite view, and you can see the whole earth. They do only have fairly low-res shots in areas outside of North America, but thats probably what data was available. Im sure more will come eventually.
Slashdot Mirror
No.
/. may say by posting I give unrestricted rights to them, but thats not related to the GPL or my browser).
If you read the GPL carefully (it seriously sounds like you havent - I suggest when you have a bit of free time that you pop over to http://www.fsf.org/licensing/licenses/gpl.txt and read it through - its quite interesting, and may well clear up a lot of confusion you have) you will note that it applies only to taking the GPL'd source code, and adding it (or adding other code to it) to produce a new program. It specifically says it does *NOT* apply to the act of loading the program onto hardware (which would include to a harddrive, into a CPU, all steps of its execution including whatever microcode might be involved).
"Making copies to CD" would fall under 'distribution', not 'use'. And you are only restricted (by the GPL) if you distribute *modified* copies. The basic premise is, if you are distributing a binary/complied program, that anyone that you distribute it to, has the ability to compile the same binary themselves, and the ability to pass that ability on to anyone they choose to distribute it to. It is unimaginable to me that someone *choosing* to license and distribute code that they wrote (or have copyright of) under the GPL, would ever interpret the GPL in the way you are thinking. Also note that the terms that commercial companies might want to impose on the persons who buy their software has nothing to do with what the GPL imposes.
In the case of fonts, only if you took a GPL'd font, and modified it to make a new different font, would the GPL come into play. And even then, unless you distributed the new font (and again, merely using it to produce a document wouldnt count - I mean actually distributing the font itself, in such a manner that someone else would be able to use it to produce a document), it would require nothing. If you did sell (or give away) copies of the font, you would be required to give away the 'source code' (is there such a thing, as regards to fonts? If not, then the entire thing may be moot anyway) to your new font.
Using a font to write a document would *not* require that the document be distributed under the GPL, or that it be distributed at all. If you use a GPL'd math-formula program to write and print some formula (maybe even the one that is the answer to life, the universe, and everything), you arent suddenly required to license your formula under the GPL - you can keep it secret, put it in the public domain, or license it under any terms you choose. Lets say I was using a GPL's web browser to type this post - doing so wouldnt require that this post be GPL'd, or remove my copyright to this post (now the TOS of
The GPL doesn't even require you to distribute modified works. The *ONLY* thing it requires, is that if you *choose* to distribute either a modification of the program you received under the GPL, or another program, that incorporates source code from the program you received, that you also make available the source code of the new program.
"People who choose to GPL license code", that is..
You *probably) know this, but your wording seems unclear, so for the benefit of other readers, I shall clarify.
Actually the GPL has nothing to do with 'using' software (eg running an application, loading and booting an OS, etc). Default copyright doesnt place any restrictions on someone merely 'using' a program - only proprietary EULA's go there (and it is controversial as to wether those are/should be binding at all).
The GPL merely covers copying all or part of the source code of a GPL'ed program into another program, or modifying it and releasing compiled versions of the modified code. By default, copyright grants you no rights to do either of these. The GPL says 'ok, normally you can't do this, but as long as you comply with these terms, then you can'.
You miss the point. People who choose to license code that they wrote dont *WANT* companies to be able to steal their code to incorporate into their non-GPL programs. Free software (RMS' definition of free) is *NOT* about giving software companies more ability to profit by coping bits - its about there being more software, more people working on it, and more people contributing, to software that does what people want, and that cant be taken away by anyone.
As far as *BSD itself, I like that platform, and the license doesnt contain anything objectionable to me, as a user of FreeBSD. But if I was ever in the position of releasing code for an app that *I* wrote, then I would stick with the GPL.
RTFA - the prisoners arent running anything. Persons who are *not* prisoners, are running websites, on behalf of some prisoners (and maybe even making the website 'look' as if was run directly). What if a prisoner wrote a book, and mailed the manuscript to a publisher, and it was published, would you oppose the publishers right to accept material from a prisoner? I certainly dont think inmates should be getting satellite TV, gourmet dinners, have direct access to the net, or any ability to contact anyone (except by sending normal letter mail, or when someone chooses to visit them), but if they can find someone willing to publish information on their behalf (internet, newspaper, book, whatever), that is between them and the person helping them (who, being presumably not a convict, has every right to do so, within their means)
No, I mean that when the *author* (developer/vendor/company/etc) discovers a security problem it is not kept secret, and it is fixed promptly. Proprietary software co's often know about lots of security holes and bugs in their software, that no one knows about but the company (and probably the blackhats). Their ostensible reason for not publishing the info is to keep the blackhats from knowing about it, but as you seem to imply, usually its too late for that. The real reason is entirely about their 'image'.
Google hardly has a monopoly.
Their search isnt their income-producing profit, their advertising is. And they surely have no lock on the advertising market, even the web advertising market. They also dont really have much power to abuse any perceived monopoly you think they do have, since if you dont like their search, you *are* always free to use another one, on a moments whim (yahoo/msn/whatever).
Someone else's choice of search engine hardly has any effect on your choice (unlike the case where someone sends you a document that your job depends on, and sends it in a proprietary format that the vendor of only one brand of software refuses to document, and even goes so far as to *patent* key technology that would have to be used in any competing software trying to read/interpret that data - which would definitely be an abuse of monopoly)
For the record, and this seems to a common misconception, or at least an implied one, giving X to charity, does NOT mean that you pay X less taxes. It means that you get to reduce your taxes by the amount of the tax applicable to X.
Eg, lets say your tax rate is 10%. If you donate $100 to something tax-deductible, it means you decduct $100 when figuring your 'taxable income', which equates to saving $10 in actual tax.
Try "When OSS software has security flaws" .. they get made public, and they get fixed, usually very quickly.
When closed software has security flaws, for a few months only the blackhats know about them, and write worms and trojans and so forth to abuse them. Somewhere in there some corporate flunky somewhere might find out about it, some red tape later some programmers might get assigned to work on it. Then the rest of the world finds out about it when the closed vendor releases a huge binary 'patch' that fixes that bug, but creates a dozen others.
Not really. Im sure when they park these birds they lock the rotors in place to keep them from spinning around in a stiff wind - and I suspect they locking pins/latches/etc are in the same place on the same model of aircraft.
1. This is old news. I downloaded this a few weeks ago
2. One very good thing:
The 'old' acroread supported the 'continuous' scroll where the top of the next page would scroll up from the bottom as the bottom of the previous was still visible, which was very nice. xpdf couldnt/didnt do that. The one major downside is that mouse/scroll wheel was not supported with it at all. xpdf supports scrollwheel, but wont do continuous scroll. Both of these were quite maddening, either having to pause while waiting for the next page to load with xpdf, or being unable to scroll conveniently - this newest version of acrobat continues to support continuous scroll, yet thankfully now finally supports mousewheel scrolling. I am happy.
My implied point is that it seems logical to me that someone writing a document and posting it on a web page for the public to read(I dont know why that needs a special term) should have the same concerns (and rights) as someone writing a document and printing it on paper and selling that to the public , or having it read aloud over a television network foe the public to watch would.
Are traditional media 'allowed' to publish citizen's addresses or other private information?
(and presume an implied 'without the individuals express consent', since I would assume that no one would have a problem in that case).
Heres a peice of advice - dont use resellers. Always register directly with an ICANN-accredited registrar. How to know? Either register a throwaway (.com) domain through them, or find some other (.com) domain that is regsitered through them, and then check its whois. Make sure that the whois server that the central .com whois redirects to corrosponds with the name of the company you are considering registering with. (Eg, if the company is 'jumpdomains', but the whois is 'opensrs' or 'enom', then theres your answer).
Also, if you find yourself in a case where you've already gone through a reseller, remember that you can always contact the actual ICANN-accredited entity that they 'resell' for, make it clear to them that their reseller is holding your domain hostage, and ask that they take action. They may contact their reseller on your behalf (and often they have the 'real' contact info for them, even if all you have is a voicemail number), and/or if they cant get a useful response out of them, then can intervene on your behalf (usually by moving it to a more responsive one of their resellers)
Anyone that makes a printer that is incapable of understanding postcript, or at least PCL, should be shot. Or at the very least, *document* the language that they do speak.
Tons of printers work fine. The only problems come with what I'll call 'Winprinters' which are specifically and intentionally designed to work *ONLY* with windows - the printer is missing vital functionality to be truly considered a 'printer', and the missing bits are provided by a proprietary software app that runs only on windows - and the mfr's refude to document the tech details of the communication between that proprietary bit and the printer itself.. You generally want to avoid these printers, even if you do run Windows - they are utter crap.
For more info see http://linuxprinting.org/
"Windows is expensive, and the support for it is even more expensive"
No one blocking on dynamic addresses should be basing their blocking on anything other that the IP address of the machine that is actually contacting them. If someone is looking in the Received: headers and finding the dynamic IP and rejecting, they are idiots, as pretty much all mail is received from such addresses and then relayed on by an ISP mail server. This is one disadvantage of doing 'post-reciept' blocking (eg receiving the message and then checking) instead of 'at connection time' blocking. In fact I'm pretty universally opposed to spam 'blocking' after its been received. Filtration into a 'spam' folder, perhaps, if one wants to take the time to check that for fp's, but mail should either be rejected (with a 550, not a 'bounce'), or delivered - never just thrown away.
If you admin the mailservers yourself, you might wish to consider (assuming the MTA is able to be confired thusly), so that if you (on your dynamic) use SMTP auth to submit mail for delivery, that your server does *not* place your IP addy in the headers - instead perhaps have it put "from authenticated user" or something (but still put the IP in the logfile, of course) as a way around that. I've done that on my personal mailserver, primarily as a privacy concern (I dont need anyone I mail having access to the IP address of my home workstation)
Each recipient (or manager of recipient systems) gets to decide for themselves what importance they place on this. If you cant afford to block a single non-spam mail, even if it means accepting a certain amount of spam, that is your right. Others demand maximum spam blocking, even if it means not receiving some mail that they might not have considered spam. You have no business dicating what other people and other mailadmins have a right to accept or reject (based on blacklists, or any other criteria they might like)
At this point the spammers have become overwhelming. ISP's must be forced to accept that harboring spammers is a bad idea, and it does take listing their entire IP blocks in some cases. Basically, eventually there will be two Internets, the one that has zero-tolerance for spam, and the one that happily allows spam. You cant have access to both, as the non-spam one is slowing blocking off the spammy one. If you ISP is on the spammy one, expect to slowly lose access to the non-spam one.
For the record, the cause of the previous shuttle explosion was foam insulation which fell off during *take-off*, causing damage elsewhere that led to the problem on their way back. Just becuase the problem with the foam is on the jettison tank doesnt mean it couldnt shed foam on take off. That said, if the engineers responsible for the system, having seen the damage and (obviously) being fully aware of what happened 'last time', are willing to sign off on it being ok, I suspect they arent doing so lightly.
"But Schwartz said that some people he's spoken to dislike it because it precludes them from using open-source software as a foundation for proprietary projects."
Thats the whole *POINT*. People who license their work under GPL specifically intend for this, and if they refuse to permit their work to be used in a proprietary work, they have every right to make the restriction. Its called share and share alike.
Why should any corp have a right to take someone else work, that they obtained for free, and use it in their proprietary for-profit product, against that persons will? You dont have that right for code developed by anyone else thats *NOT* open source, you (usually) dont even get to *see* the source, let alone even get to consider including it in your own project. GPL isnt taking anything away, its granting lots of rights that you wouldnt otherwise have, but its specifically *not* granting the right to use GPL'd code in a project, and then not give the same rights to others that the GPL gave you. Its 100% fair, which I suppose I can understand how software corps dont like that - they like it when they can have an unfair advantage.
Im sure you were trying to be funny (and when it comes to the used car market, Id be 100% with you), but what 'breakdown' are you referring to? The whole point of the story is that even though the rovers were designed to last only three months, so far they have lasted almost 4 times that long, and are still going strong.
I am familiar with Zend, and I am aware of the 'Zend Encoder' (aka the 'I want to reap the benefits of a coding in a programming language and platform that is itself open source but I dont want my code to be open encryption system')
I have, however, never heard of 'Zend Studio', nor can I imagine having any use for such a thing, especially if it is not itself F/OSS.
Only if you do it in 'map' mode. Zoom all the way out, then switch to satellite view, and you can see the whole earth. They do only have fairly low-res shots in areas outside of North America, but thats probably what data was available. Im sure more will come eventually.
Google maps doesnt require downloading anything, nor does it force use of a specific brand of OS/platform. Therefore it is better. QED.
Nope, never heard of it. But if its non-FOSS, that may be why. I pretty much categorically ignore anything thats non-FOSS.