"I have never seen a clause in a license agreement that grants the licensor the blanket right to terminate the license."
Then you should read the free BitKeeper license.
The way it works is like this: To use the free version of the BK license you have to use the latest available version of BitKeeper. That means that if BitMover updates the latest version you _have_ to upgrade or have your license terminated. The new version can contain a new license. If you upgrade you are subject to the new license.
And there we're done. The licensor has a blanket right to terminate or change the license at any time.
The patent system isnt 'fixed' until the patent office grants not more than 200 patents per year and no patents are allowed at all for software or buisness methods.
A system that passes several orders of magnitude more patents than reasonable is broken. It's an error rate far above 99%.
Indeed. That's why I want to see a system where the problem that the patent solves is posed to a group of engineers who get something like a week to generate as many possible solutions for the problem that they can. They should not know how the patent solves the problem.
That way, if it really is obvious, they will come up with one or several solutions similar to the patent and the application can be rejected (as well as any future patent application for anything similar).
Of course, that would make anything that someone in the field couldnt think of in a week patentable, which still may be a bit on the easy side, considering that for society as a whole to win on its part of the deal the patent shouldnt be something that someone else would think of within the duration of the patent.
Actually, neither Edison nor Swan patented the lightbulb tho. Woodward and Evans did. They couldnt finance the research even with the patent, however, and Edison bought it from them. De La Rue made the first actual lightbulb almost 60 years before Edison bought his patent... however, it used platinum rather than tungsten which made it not quite as useful. Wether the patent helped or not or should have been granted is sortof dubious I guess.
Penicillin wasnt actually patented at all. It only got developed for popular use once the second world war broke out.
Yeah, that's what the patent law says. Except, of course, something that is trivial to someone trained in the field doesnt appear to be very trivial for the patent examiners which is what's landed us all in the mess we're in with the patent system now.
Wether paralell instruction processing is new to Intel CPUs or not is irrelevant. There are a huge number of reasons why _not_ to implement paralell instruction computing, ranging from the silicon complexity to the compiler complexity all of which makes it unnecessary, pointless and likely to land you in bankrupcy _unless it's the only way to go forward_. That paralell instruction computing has been a really bad idea for many years and thus nobody has wasted time and money developing the idea (well, except Intergraph and a number of failed companies) doesnt mean the theory isnt trivial. It just means it wasnt a useful way to improve performance.
The theory of patents is that you would not be able to think of it by yourself. If you consider that, patents make sense, since by patenting something the patent holder gets exclusive right to the idea for a certain time in exchange for him disclosing the idea to the public. You both gain, you get access to an idea you otherwise wouldnt have access to, and he gets paid for telling the world rather than having to keep it secret and hope nobody figures out how he did it.
Of course it doesnt work in practice since the patent office grants patents for 'inventions' that a bunch of shaved monkeys with typewriters could create in hours.
If there is a likelyhood that someone else will independently invent the same thing within the lifetime of the patent it just shouldnt be granted.
Actually, what I'd like to see is a real technical review of patents. For each patent application the patent office should assign ten knowledgable people in the field in question the job of solving the problems adressed in the patent and they get a week to do it. Take the ten engineers solutions and compare it with the patent application. If any of the solutions are similar or the same as the patent, then the patent is obviously trivial and should not be granted. Then the patent office should file away the solution and any other solutions the engineers came up with and no patent can be granted on any of those solutions, since they are obviously trivial.
That way, crap like the solution to 'I want customers to be able to click once on a webpage to buy something, how do I do that?' wont ever get patented since it's trivial to solve, while 'how do I make a long lasting light powered by electricity' will be eligable for a patent since it isnt that trivial.
The question is, did Intel see it, like it and decide to copy it? Or did the patent cover a trivial and natural development that any engineer would create once faced with the problem? If it's trivial and someone else will quickly come up with the same solution, the patent should never have been granted in the first place.
That's great. I have the same situation (altho with a condo), and as long as it's possible to handle the mortgage payments even if worst comes to worst, I agree it's definitely worth it.
Yep, great deal indeed. Unless... the house market tanks, you lose your job, you default on your loan, the bank forecloses and sells the house to cover half the loan and you're stuck with a loan and no house to sell to cover it anymore.
In which case you're gonna be paying interest for the rest of your life and have nothing to show for it.
Buying real estate isnt without risk, unless you have a 100% sure salary or no loans at all.
Well, OTP style encryption is useful if you have a good way to securely exchange keys at a certain point in time but not when you send the message. It's just not very useful when you have to solve the problem to securely exchange keys at any point in time, since you have to securely exchange a key the size of the message to be sent. Which means you might as well securely exchange the message instead of the key.
So it's sortof useful when you need extremely secure encryption that doesnt depend on theoretical problems that just havent been solved yet.
Not that many people need that level of crypto security, or have the ability to do the key exchanges securely and the ones that do are the ones least likely to trust any new idea.
Yeah, we agree pretty much. 6 months to a year is based on a future where bitkeeper use is the mainstream choice for kernel developers.
I also think the scenario where BK turns 'evil' over a day is unlikely; however I think it will more likely turn 'difficult' over a longer period of time. Since the 'excluded' people who cant use BitKeeper includes anyone people working for companies like IBM, Oracle, RedHat (unless they obtain specific permission) as well as anyone trying to write a versioned filesystem for linux (which, in turn, may taint people working on the IO subsystems if they work to accomodate such a filesystem) or contribute to any revisioning handling system, the list may eventually get so large that something else has to be used instead. Since the exclusion is explicity there to discourage work on competing products and it might actually work in that way, it may take longer for such alterantives to get developed, which will make the eventual transition more painful.
The advantages of BitKeeper over the previous umm... method... are indeed what makes it worth it. However, the advantages of BitKeeper over CVS or PRCS (with some stabilizing work) are not quite as large. The use of either of those for the kernel would also get more developers involved in them to adress the issues.
So, in my opinion, on one hand we have BitKeeper which is the best technical solution, but which excludes a whole bunch of developers from the advantage of revision controlled source and generates a whole lot of frustration and more or less pointless discussion, and which will have to be replaced eventually (either because it becomes too much of a license pain or because BitMover goes out of buisness (which apparently Larry McVoy thinks is likely, should anyone develop a free revision control system that solves the problems of the linux kernel)) and on the other we have CVS or PRCS which arent quite as good but which wont exclude anyone and which will evolve faster if used by such a large project.
The best long term choice IMO would be to go with the free solution.
"For the kernel, no. Assume the worst. What happens then? We revert back to the previously released kernel, and start from there. Actually, it's not even that bad, because there are several up to date trees that aren't held in BitKeeper."
As yet it would not be a major problem, since it's a fairly short time since the kernel source was BKized. However, revision control systems have a tendency to become a major part in how well projects work, and they tend to integrate into the workflow of a project (frankly, I cant imagine how Linus managed to keep track for as long as he did; I tend to find that managing projects without at least CVS becomes a pain even with just a few people involved in them. Heck, I even CVS'ize things I'm working on by myself if they go beyond one or two files and a few hundred lines). They also tend to get third party functionality built upon the existence of these tools, which might all have to be rewritten.
If we do assume the worst, exporting the sources would be the easy thing, even if all metadata was lost. Rearranging project workflow and starting to form a new one around another system would be the bad thing. Personally, I'd guess it'd cost about 6 months to a year before things got up to speed again.
"Oh, and BTW, you can't retroactively relicense a product. Even if MS did buy BitMover, existing licensees could keep using the product under the terms of their original license."
As the current BitKeeper Free license is only valid as long as the BitKeeper software "performs all licensing functions, such as Open Logging, identically to the current version of the Bit-Keeper Software as distributed by BitMover, Inc."..., well, you should re-read the license.
They dont have to "retroactively relicense" the product. Your license expires as soon as you dont conform anymore, BitMover controls wether you conform or not, and you have to upgrade to a new version when they decide, at which point they can change the license in whatever way they want.
Furthermore the license explicitly forbids interfacting to BitKeeper Packages by any other means than using bitkeeper, unless you comply with the license of the BitKeeper Package, which again means access to the source can be arbitrarily changed to disallow access by interfacing products.
You are, of course, entirely right. If you can be sure that the license you have is binding for both parties (ie, you 'bought' the software and it's yours according to the terms in the original license and provided that the file formats are open enough to allow you to migrate off the software in some reasonable way, should future revisions or change in circumstances merit such a migration) then you have an acceptable situation. Then you _can_ make an informed judgement as to the cost vs. benefit of the proprietary product.
BitKeeper, unfortunately, isnt such a product. As far as I can recall, the free BitKeeper license requires you to upgrade at any time a new test release is made, which also means the license terms can change at any time.
This tends to be the trend in proprietary software. This trend tends to make it less and less useful for me, since I make decisions on what software to use on a longer term perspective (I _hate_ having to do unecessary migrations or changes just because I cant use a certain product anymore).
"you simply don't get to use our product -- which we provide for free -- to put our company out of business."
Not quite. He's saying "You dont get to use our product -- which we provide for free -- for _anything_ if you also work on a product providing similar functionality to what we do (or work for a company that does)".
That not only hinders development of competing products, it also hinders development on entirely unrelated products by degrading access to the sources for anyone who also works on other revision handling products, or for a company that might also be developing such products (which means nobody working at, for example, RedHat, IBM, Oracle, Rational, etc can use BK to access the kernel source without legal exposure). Which means BK is an extremely bad choice for any major free software project.
While accessing patches may not be _harder_ now, nor is it easier. Choosing something other than BK would make it easier for everyone.
You're 'sure' he's 'reasonable'? How 'sure' are you? Sure enough to offer a warranty offering to pay for whatever license RedHat would have to buy to obtain the same level of functionality? Sure enough to pay for the development of an interoperable product if no licenses are obtainable at any price? Sure enough to pay for and migrate the entire Linux kernel to a new revision handling system, should BitMover get bought by MS ('at a price they cant refuse') who then proceeds to relicense BK so that it cannot be used for development of GPL software?
As you say, he's got a buisness to run and a staff to pay, and as long as you use licensed proprietary products whose licenses can change at anytime you're taking a serious risk.
So, are you sure enough to pick up the tab, or do you think the kernel should be using a free product for revision handling?
The problem with licensed proprietary software is that you can never make more than a snapshot judgement on it. You do not have the data necessary to make a judgement than will be valid for more than a few seconds.
I see nothing where Larry McVoy swears the license will never be changed to exclude anyone providing non-BK repositories. I havent seen a mail where he swears that people working for for-profit corporations wont be excluded. I havent seen him promise that BK wont exclude anyone with a beard either in the future.
How do you make a judgement then? How well does it do what it's supposed to do? How well does it do what you need it to do? Well, how much does that matter when _you may not be allowed to use it at all tomorrow_? What value does it have for you then?
Software freedom isnt necessarily the deciding factor if your choice matters the next five minutes. But when you make a choice that must be valid over a decade youd better have a crystal ball to see how whoever decides the license is going to act for the next ten years.
That's exactly why you should never ever use any mail client that encodes or archives mail in a nonstandard format, unless it can easily export it to mbox format or something.
I've been using email for more than a decade, and 5 or 6 mail readers during that time, not to mention various automation tools that need to access the mail.
I've never ever had to even think about 'converting' mail. My first recieved email ever is still in the same format as the one recieved ten minutes ago.
It's much easier to avoid pain if you dont set yourself up for it in the first place.
That is true; which is why I qualified it in my original comment with 'consumer' two-way networks. Buisness and infrastructure provider communications are a different matter; if they make money from the connection or save money by using it, they'll pay for it. It's just difficult getting the prices down to consumer level. It didnt work with Iridium for mobile phones, and it wont work for new such ideas either.
Many remote locations will get fibre anyway, despite the problems; if someone has already laid phone wires, they'll be able to lay fibre. Not necessarily today, but in a few years.
Indeed that's the reasoning for satellite coverage; the problem as I see it is that even in Alaska and Canada people tend to gravitate towards population centers. 2-3k people are more than enough to support ground based fibre connections; where I live we're even starting to get fibre to villages 50-200 people in size.
And when your only potential customers end up being the ones that live outside range of even such remote locations, the people who have pretty much rejected being 'part' of ordinary society, you dont have much of a customer base.
Global 'consumer' two-way satellite networks will never ever make it. It's simply an extremely bad idea.
The reason it's an extremely bad idea is that the majority of people who have an interest in highspeed two-way communications live in urban areas with a sufficient population to support ground based technology. The groundbased technology will be cheaper and easier to install and upgrade, and it will have a lower latency, and it will have a far lower initial investment cost, laying the ground for more competition.
This means that the whole cost of the global satellite network will have to be covered by the customers who cannot obtain the ground based two-way communications; the people who live out of range from a >3K people population center. Not very many people. That in turn means the prices per in-the-woods-hermit-connection are going to be so prohibitively high that very few could afford it. Probably so high that you could pay for your own fibre connection for the yearly charges if you're living in a civilized country. Which in turn leaves the people living on antarctica, the middle of the jungles in south america, in tibet or in the middle of africa being the only ones who could get access via satellite cheaper than by buying their own fibre.
I dont think that the customer base of billionaires in the middle of african nowhere is going to be sufficient.
Well, if it had actually gotten off the ground, Mr. Gates would have completely wasted several billions of dollars and had nothing but an expensive heap of spacejunk to show for it. Visionary, indeed.
I'm a bit sad too. I'd been looking forward to laughing myself blue in the face at the debacle.
No, what I'm saying is "I dont use rm if I dont really want to delete things". I dont smash my disk with a sledgehammer either to delete files. Nor do I use shift-delete under Windows or use move-to-trash followed immediately by empty trash. rm is a sledgehammer and it's not what you should use unless you actually do want to really make sure the files are gone.
And when I write scripts I dont use rm. I use ls or mv until I'm very sure it does exactly what I want. And then I replace the ls or mv with an rm.
A Windows or Mac user expects 'delete' in the file manager to move to trash. And guess what; it does exactly that in Linux too. They shouldnt have to open a shell to delete a file, and in that case there is no problem.
No mention that I could see is made about how to kill the trivial patents. It's not enough that something is new, it also has to be non-trivial to invent; you should never be able to patent something which would take a few engineers an hour or two to come up with, if they are asked how they would solve a certain problem.
Killing the trivial patents is the most important reform the patent office has to make.
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"I have never seen a clause in a license agreement that grants the licensor the blanket right to terminate the license."
Then you should read the free BitKeeper license.
The way it works is like this: To use the free version of the BK license you have to use the latest available version of BitKeeper. That means that if BitMover updates the latest version you _have_ to upgrade or have your license terminated. The new version can contain a new license. If you upgrade you are subject to the new license.
And there we're done. The licensor has a blanket right to terminate or change the license at any time.
The patent system isnt 'fixed' until the patent office grants not more than 200 patents per year and no patents are allowed at all for software or buisness methods.
A system that passes several orders of magnitude more patents than reasonable is broken. It's an error rate far above 99%.
And that _is_ broken.
Indeed. That's why I want to see a system where the problem that the patent solves is posed to a group of engineers who get something like a week to generate as many possible solutions for the problem that they can. They should not know how the patent solves the problem.
That way, if it really is obvious, they will come up with one or several solutions similar to the patent and the application can be rejected (as well as any future patent application for anything similar).
Of course, that would make anything that someone in the field couldnt think of in a week patentable, which still may be a bit on the easy side, considering that for society as a whole to win on its part of the deal the patent shouldnt be something that someone else would think of within the duration of the patent.
But at least it would sift out the worst patents.
Actually, neither Edison nor Swan patented the lightbulb tho. Woodward and Evans did. They couldnt finance the research even with the patent, however, and Edison bought it from them. De La Rue made the first actual lightbulb almost 60 years before Edison bought his patent... however, it used platinum rather than tungsten which made it not quite as useful. Wether the patent helped or not or should have been granted is sortof dubious I guess.
Penicillin wasnt actually patented at all. It only got developed for popular use once the second world war broke out.
Yeah, that's what the patent law says. Except, of course, something that is trivial to someone trained in the field doesnt appear to be very trivial for the patent examiners which is what's landed us all in the mess we're in with the patent system now.
Wether paralell instruction processing is new to Intel CPUs or not is irrelevant. There are a huge number of reasons why _not_ to implement paralell instruction computing, ranging from the silicon complexity to the compiler complexity all of which makes it unnecessary, pointless and likely to land you in bankrupcy _unless it's the only way to go forward_. That paralell instruction computing has been a really bad idea for many years and thus nobody has wasted time and money developing the idea (well, except Intergraph and a number of failed companies) doesnt mean the theory isnt trivial. It just means it wasnt a useful way to improve performance.
The theory of patents is that you would not be able to think of it by yourself. If you consider that, patents make sense, since by patenting something the patent holder gets exclusive right to the idea for a certain time in exchange for him disclosing the idea to the public. You both gain, you get access to an idea you otherwise wouldnt have access to, and he gets paid for telling the world rather than having to keep it secret and hope nobody figures out how he did it.
Of course it doesnt work in practice since the patent office grants patents for 'inventions' that a bunch of shaved monkeys with typewriters could create in hours.
If there is a likelyhood that someone else will independently invent the same thing within the lifetime of the patent it just shouldnt be granted.
Actually, what I'd like to see is a real technical review of patents. For each patent application the patent office should assign ten knowledgable people in the field in question the job of solving the problems adressed in the patent and they get a week to do it. Take the ten engineers solutions and compare it with the patent application. If any of the solutions are similar or the same as the patent, then the patent is obviously trivial and should not be granted. Then the patent office should file away the solution and any other solutions the engineers came up with and no patent can be granted on any of those solutions, since they are obviously trivial.
That way, crap like the solution to 'I want customers to be able to click once on a webpage to buy something, how do I do that?' wont ever get patented since it's trivial to solve, while 'how do I make a long lasting light powered by electricity' will be eligable for a patent since it isnt that trivial.
The question is, did Intel see it, like it and decide to copy it? Or did the patent cover a trivial and natural development that any engineer would create once faced with the problem? If it's trivial and someone else will quickly come up with the same solution, the patent should never have been granted in the first place.
That's great. I have the same situation (altho with a condo), and as long as it's possible to handle the mortgage payments even if worst comes to worst, I agree it's definitely worth it.
Yep, great deal indeed. Unless... the house market tanks, you lose your job, you default on your loan, the bank forecloses and sells the house to cover half the loan and you're stuck with a loan and no house to sell to cover it anymore.
In which case you're gonna be paying interest for the rest of your life and have nothing to show for it.
Buying real estate isnt without risk, unless you have a 100% sure salary or no loans at all.
Well, OTP style encryption is useful if you have a good way to securely exchange keys at a certain point in time but not when you send the message. It's just not very useful when you have to solve the problem to securely exchange keys at any point in time, since you have to securely exchange a key the size of the message to be sent. Which means you might as well securely exchange the message instead of the key.
So it's sortof useful when you need extremely secure encryption that doesnt depend on theoretical problems that just havent been solved yet.
Not that many people need that level of crypto security, or have the ability to do the key exchanges securely and the ones that do are the ones least likely to trust any new idea.
Yeah, we agree pretty much. 6 months to a year is based on a future where bitkeeper use is the mainstream choice for kernel developers.
I also think the scenario where BK turns 'evil' over a day is unlikely; however I think it will more likely turn 'difficult' over a longer period of time. Since the 'excluded' people who cant use BitKeeper includes anyone people working for companies like IBM, Oracle, RedHat (unless they obtain specific permission) as well as anyone trying to write a versioned filesystem for linux (which, in turn, may taint people working on the IO subsystems if they work to accomodate such a filesystem) or contribute to any revisioning handling system, the list may eventually get so large that something else has to be used instead. Since the exclusion is explicity there to discourage work on competing products and it might actually work in that way, it may take longer for such alterantives to get developed, which will make the eventual transition more painful.
The advantages of BitKeeper over the previous umm... method... are indeed what makes it worth it. However, the advantages of BitKeeper over CVS or PRCS (with some stabilizing work) are not quite as large. The use of either of those for the kernel would also get more developers involved in them to adress the issues.
So, in my opinion, on one hand we have BitKeeper which is the best technical solution, but which excludes a whole bunch of developers from the advantage of revision controlled source and generates a whole lot of frustration and more or less pointless discussion, and which will have to be replaced eventually (either because it becomes too much of a license pain or because BitMover goes out of buisness (which apparently Larry McVoy thinks is likely, should anyone develop a free revision control system that solves the problems of the linux kernel)) and on the other we have CVS or PRCS which arent quite as good but which wont exclude anyone and which will evolve faster if used by such a large project.
The best long term choice IMO would be to go with the free solution.
Ah, yeah, you're right on the first point.
"For the kernel, no. Assume the worst. What happens then? We revert back to the previously released kernel, and start from there. Actually, it's not even that bad, because there are several up to date trees that aren't held in BitKeeper."
As yet it would not be a major problem, since it's a fairly short time since the kernel source was BKized. However, revision control systems have a tendency to become a major part in how well projects work, and they tend to integrate into the workflow of a project (frankly, I cant imagine how Linus managed to keep track for as long as he did; I tend to find that managing projects without at least CVS becomes a pain even with just a few people involved in them. Heck, I even CVS'ize things I'm working on by myself if they go beyond one or two files and a few hundred lines). They also tend to get third party functionality built upon the existence of these tools, which might all have to be rewritten.
If we do assume the worst, exporting the sources would be the easy thing, even if all metadata was lost. Rearranging project workflow and starting to form a new one around another system would be the bad thing. Personally, I'd guess it'd cost about 6 months to a year before things got up to speed again.
"Oh, and BTW, you can't retroactively relicense a product. Even if MS did buy BitMover, existing licensees could keep using the product under the terms of their original license."
As the current BitKeeper Free license is only valid as long as the BitKeeper software "performs all licensing functions, such as Open Logging, identically to the current version of the Bit-Keeper Software as distributed by BitMover, Inc."..., well, you should re-read the license.
They dont have to "retroactively relicense" the product. Your license expires as soon as you dont conform anymore, BitMover controls wether you conform or not, and you have to upgrade to a new version when they decide, at which point they can change the license in whatever way they want.
Furthermore the license explicitly forbids interfacting to BitKeeper Packages by any other means than using bitkeeper, unless you comply with the license of the BitKeeper Package, which again means access to the source can be arbitrarily changed to disallow access by interfacing products.
Do you see the problem and the risk now?
You are, of course, entirely right. If you can be sure that the license you have is binding for both parties (ie, you 'bought' the software and it's yours according to the terms in the original license and provided that the file formats are open enough to allow you to migrate off the software in some reasonable way, should future revisions or change in circumstances merit such a migration) then you have an acceptable situation. Then you _can_ make an informed judgement as to the cost vs. benefit of the proprietary product.
:).
BitKeeper, unfortunately, isnt such a product. As far as I can recall, the free BitKeeper license requires you to upgrade at any time a new test release is made, which also means the license terms can change at any time.
This tends to be the trend in proprietary software. This trend tends to make it less and less useful for me, since I make decisions on what software to use on a longer term perspective (I _hate_ having to do unecessary migrations or changes just because I cant use a certain product anymore).
Oh, well, apparently we agree then
"you simply don't get to use our product -- which we provide for free -- to put our company out of business."
Not quite. He's saying "You dont get to use our product -- which we provide for free -- for _anything_ if you also work on a product providing similar functionality to what we do (or work for a company that does)".
That not only hinders development of competing products, it also hinders development on entirely unrelated products by degrading access to the sources for anyone who also works on other revision handling products, or for a company that might also be developing such products (which means nobody working at, for example, RedHat, IBM, Oracle, Rational, etc can use BK to access the kernel source without legal exposure). Which means BK is an extremely bad choice for any major free software project.
While accessing patches may not be _harder_ now, nor is it easier. Choosing something other than BK would make it easier for everyone.
You're 'sure' he's 'reasonable'? How 'sure' are you? Sure enough to offer a warranty offering to pay for whatever license RedHat would have to buy to obtain the same level of functionality? Sure enough to pay for the development of an interoperable product if no licenses are obtainable at any price? Sure enough to pay for and migrate the entire Linux kernel to a new revision handling system, should BitMover get bought by MS ('at a price they cant refuse') who then proceeds to relicense BK so that it cannot be used for development of GPL software?
As you say, he's got a buisness to run and a staff to pay, and as long as you use licensed proprietary products whose licenses can change at anytime you're taking a serious risk.
So, are you sure enough to pick up the tab, or do you think the kernel should be using a free product for revision handling?
The problem with licensed proprietary software is that you can never make more than a snapshot judgement on it. You do not have the data necessary to make a judgement than will be valid for more than a few seconds.
I see nothing where Larry McVoy swears the license will never be changed to exclude anyone providing non-BK repositories. I havent seen a mail where he swears that people working for for-profit corporations wont be excluded. I havent seen him promise that BK wont exclude anyone with a beard either in the future.
How do you make a judgement then? How well does it do what it's supposed to do? How well does it do what you need it to do? Well, how much does that matter when _you may not be allowed to use it at all tomorrow_? What value does it have for you then?
Software freedom isnt necessarily the deciding factor if your choice matters the next five minutes. But when you make a choice that must be valid over a decade youd better have a crystal ball to see how whoever decides the license is going to act for the next ten years.
That's exactly why you should never ever use any mail client that encodes or archives mail in a nonstandard format, unless it can easily export it to mbox format or something.
I've been using email for more than a decade, and 5 or 6 mail readers during that time, not to mention various automation tools that need to access the mail.
I've never ever had to even think about 'converting' mail. My first recieved email ever is still in the same format as the one recieved ten minutes ago.
It's much easier to avoid pain if you dont set yourself up for it in the first place.
That is true; which is why I qualified it in my original comment with 'consumer' two-way networks. Buisness and infrastructure provider communications are a different matter; if they make money from the connection or save money by using it, they'll pay for it. It's just difficult getting the prices down to consumer level. It didnt work with Iridium for mobile phones, and it wont work for new such ideas either.
Many remote locations will get fibre anyway, despite the problems; if someone has already laid phone wires, they'll be able to lay fibre. Not necessarily today, but in a few years.
Indeed that's the reasoning for satellite coverage; the problem as I see it is that even in Alaska and Canada people tend to gravitate towards population centers. 2-3k people are more than enough to support ground based fibre connections; where I live we're even starting to get fibre to villages 50-200 people in size.
And when your only potential customers end up being the ones that live outside range of even such remote locations, the people who have pretty much rejected being 'part' of ordinary society, you dont have much of a customer base.
Global 'consumer' two-way satellite networks will never ever make it. It's simply an extremely bad idea.
The reason it's an extremely bad idea is that the majority of people who have an interest in highspeed two-way communications live in urban areas with a sufficient population to support ground based technology. The groundbased technology will be cheaper and easier to install and upgrade, and it will have a lower latency, and it will have a far lower initial investment cost, laying the ground for more competition.
This means that the whole cost of the global satellite network will have to be covered by the customers who cannot obtain the ground based two-way communications; the people who live out of range from a >3K people population center. Not very many people. That in turn means the prices per in-the-woods-hermit-connection are going to be so prohibitively high that very few could afford it. Probably so high that you could pay for your own fibre connection for the yearly charges if you're living in a civilized country. Which in turn leaves the people living on antarctica, the middle of the jungles in south america, in tibet or in the middle of africa being the only ones who could get access via satellite cheaper than by buying their own fibre.
I dont think that the customer base of billionaires in the middle of african nowhere is going to be sufficient.
Well, if it had actually gotten off the ground, Mr. Gates would have completely wasted several billions of dollars and had nothing but an expensive heap of spacejunk to show for it. Visionary, indeed.
I'm a bit sad too. I'd been looking forward to laughing myself blue in the face at the debacle.
No, what I'm saying is "I dont use rm if I dont really want to delete things". I dont smash my disk with a sledgehammer either to delete files. Nor do I use shift-delete under Windows or use move-to-trash followed immediately by empty trash. rm is a sledgehammer and it's not what you should use unless you actually do want to really make sure the files are gone.
And when I write scripts I dont use rm. I use ls or mv until I'm very sure it does exactly what I want. And then I replace the ls or mv with an rm.
A Windows or Mac user expects 'delete' in the file manager to move to trash. And guess what; it does exactly that in Linux too. They shouldnt have to open a shell to delete a file, and in that case there is no problem.
No mention that I could see is made about how to kill the trivial patents. It's not enough that something is new, it also has to be non-trivial to invent; you should never be able to patent something which would take a few engineers an hour or two to come up with, if they are asked how they would solve a certain problem.
Killing the trivial patents is the most important reform the patent office has to make.