"Popular artists regularly spend tens of thousands Per Song!"
Spending money is never a problem; they could easily spend millions per song. The free market usually deals with that kind of waste of resources simply by having competitors offer their products cheaper. But in the monopoly rights markets, such spending isnt corrected, which is why we have the prices we do for something that should cost a few cents.
"This money should go directly to the artist. 10c per song for this would be a HUGE amount more than artists currently get paid for song sales, but is still cheap for us."
How about we actually go all the way and simply put a sales tax on any revenue derived from 'copyrighted' material and hand that money directly to the artists and composers? That would void the entire problem of RIAA exploitation contracts and we could actually account for the money spent in the economy to support production of copyrighted material and see if we're getting our taxpayers moneys worth.
If you were paying big $$$ for enterprise support, would you get a server with GRUB or LILO embedded on the motherboard?
Would you buy one with the kernel and initrds on flash installed on the motherboard?
Personally I wouldnt; Dell has no competence in those areas, and even should they try to build it, they'd end up constantly trailing the OS vendors, introducing random bugs and being far less integrated and standardized than what the mainline products are.
I see little difference in the hypervisor area; hardware vendors can just barely manage keeping BIOSes bugfree enough to get an OS running, expecting them to be able to manage and keep hypervisor software up to date isnt even on the horizon.
Most security applications implemented as system call wrappers would be vulnerable (basically anything where there's an opportunity to modify the checked system call post-check by tricking todays modern and eminently interruptable kernels into doing something else than getting on with executing the syscall for a few cycles), altho I suspect that anyone running sudo as primary security enforcement and logging application isnt exactly worried about this level of fairly arcane exploits (note that more lowlevel solutions like SELinux are not affected).
More interesting would be wether it means that commercial security software like CA's eTrust access control is also inherently ehm, untrustable. It certainly sounds like it would be.
"If you're already doing watercooling to have quiet high-performance graphics,"
True, if you already do have watercooling it might very well make sense. Altho I'd argue it's slightly different as the graphics will only need the cooling running while they're actively used.
I ran off NFS before switching to iSCSI, and I can tell you it's a vast improvement. The latency issues of NFS are gone, and the performance on both small and large files on par with local disks (it is, effectively, a SAN, so I expected the performance to end up around there, impacted a bit by cheapo shared gigabit infrastructure and improved by the utilization of the memory in the servers as cache).
The disadvantage compared to NFS is I cant easily duplicate a system through a simple copy. On the other hand, I'm using md to mirror the root disks across two iSCSI targets (iscsi enterprise target on two linux servers), so I can split off a mirror for archive or system-clone purposes.
If you're booting off NFS today, I'd definitely reccomend going to iSCSI. The mkinitrd support has been lacking so I had to hack my own initially (well, if you're running off NFS you know the drill), but now the CentOS 5 version works to create PXE bootable initrd's that mount iSCSI volumes.
Personally I've moved to using iSCSI on my desktops. Every single one is booted off PXE and mounts its disks over the network (with very close to native performance; gigabit copes well with iSCSI, and the memory in the iSCSI target machines works nicely as cache). Blessed silence ensues, with care for CPU and PSU fans, the desktops become close to inaudible.
The server cabinet is slightly more noisy, but with care taken to soundproofing and with sound-absorbing vent channels and the disks mounted on vibration reducing material, it doesnt sound more than modern fridge.
Adding yet another cooling bus to the desktop sounds like a supremely unpalatable idea. It's much easier and much more reliable to move data over the network than it is to move water around in a computer.
"by showing their leaders as so successful that they can sit out in the open, in a living room somewhere, and lead a normal life"
Heh. When was the last time you saw Bush out in the open, leading a normal life? Our own western leaders are cowering in their versions of hideouts and bunkers, sometimes not even from an external enemy, but from their own population. Some will end up without any ability to ever travel outside the borders of their own country, in fear of running afoul of foreign warcrimes legislation.
I enjoyed Frank Herberts idea from God Emperor of Dune, where the historical myth was that the emperor had to walk unprotected through an unchecked and unsearched crowd every year. If he survived he was a good ruler. Of course, that was faked and propaganda in the book as well, but the idea is alluring, although less useful in reality (as there unfortunately exist a whole bunch of other random reasons someone might off a person in power).
Unfortunately, we're all lead by cowardly stooges. But even in the cases where the members of warring organizations realize that, they're reluctant to do anything about it. Even US generals appear afraid of denouncing their leadership until they're retired, and they dont have more than a job on the line, so why would you expect someone likely to get executed for dissent to point out such flaws?
"What is important about this change is not the mis-use of the word "free", but the shifting of the burden to the purchaser, rather than to the tax payer."
As long as it has no other negative effects; take a look at "intellectual property", which is the ultimate privatized taxation scheme. The burden of paying for the system is shifted to the consumer, but the producer has no interest at all in providing the economy with the most efficient solution to the problem, but rather uses it to maximize revenue streams.
In this case the companies have no interest in minimizing environmental impact; their interest is still to maximize revenue, and smelting as much as possible of any hardware that could compete with their new sales is a priority. The cost to the economy as a whole with the loss of the wealth represented in the destruction of still working hardware becomes enormous, but as it isnt accounted for other than in some going without that hardware and others adding to the sales of new hardware, it's not immediately obvious in cold hard numbers of lost wealth.
"All that happens if you don't follow MS's tacked on terms and conditions is that you lose the promise not to sue unless they really really want to - which was pretty much worthless in the first place."
Of course, this ignores the most fundamental aspect of the issue; I donate my code freely so that it should be Free for any user. Microsoft has no right to attemt to extort the people to whom I've donated code. What's next, they gonna hold up African kids for their red cross food rations? Hey, maybe that's something Monsanto could think about a bit.
Which is why any code I write will definitely be upgraded to GPLv3. I have never intended for my code to make it easier for those who wish to enrich themselves by taking power over others. They can do it like every one else; provide value on a level playing field.
"It would still apply even if the company in question was run by a total sociopath."
Considering the extent to which pharmas withhold treatment from dying people, (backed by WTO threats, patent manipulation, WIPO lobbyists, etc) I'd say it's quite obvious they could be classified as total sociopaths.
And really, a vaccine, or a cure, for AIDS would be a short-lived media bonus; when was the last time you heard anything about whatever companies created various vaccines (apart from allegations of causing things like autism, or for needlessly encouraging tax-financed and uncessary vaccinations)?
The thing is, if you analyze it, the entire economy of patent incentives is based on the ability to _deny_ everyone the right to produce a certain substance. The worse the consequences, the higher the price can go. Patents dont generate a lot of money for curing or preventing disease; they generate the maximum level of revenue when they set the price so high that they _deny_ a certain subset of customers access, and deny that subset of customers the right to buy the medicine from anyone else. (And please, dont give me the 'but they need the money to research' crap; the money is largely wasted on marketing, administration and inefficient production; we'd get five times the research for what we're paying today if we outright just paid for it and scrapped medical patents).
The very foundation of the system is so ethically corrupt that it's no wonder the pharmas are the way they are.
Personally I dont doubt for a second that they'd simply bury any substance (reorganize, change strategic direction) that appeared to actually have a chance at curing something they were selling a symptom treater for.
"Well, it seems that keeping the laptop plugged in for long hours diminishes the battery life on them."
It's not the actual usage that kills the battery, but the temperature exposure. The lifetime of li-ion batteries is limited, and heat kills them even faster; 20% loss of capacity per year at 25 degrees C becomes 35% loss per year at 40 degrees C. As laptops can frequently achieve even higher temperatures than that while running, the useful lifespan of a laptop battery in a permanently-on laptop may very well around a year (of course, if you keep it plugged in permanently, the battery duration may not actually matter anyways).
But it's quite likely that it should. Lots of proprietary software has shown itself vulnerable to patent claims (in fact, much more than any OSS software has). If you've used Internet Explorer, Eolas could have gone after you. If you've used a Blackberry, NTP could have gone after you. Etc. Using Internet Explorer was just as illegal as using a patented codec under Linux; the difference is the Linux software authors are upfront about it.
That's the thing with software patents; if you ever even use a computer you are quite likely violating hundreds or thousands of issued patents, most of which neither you nor your software provider, nor the developers will even be aware of. But which is still illegal.
Perhaps the free software disclaimers should be prepended with a dialog asking 'do you want to bury your head in the sand and get on with your task or do you want the horrific (but quite unenforcable) reality of defective patent systems?'
Of course, the proprietary software may very well be violating various patents as well, so technically they should pop up the same disclaimers. FLOSS just tends to be slightly more nitpicky about being excessively verbose and honest with these issues (not to mention that part of the intent is quite likely to make end users aware of the actual damage the patent system causes).
That said, I dont think I've even heard of any end-user of a product, ever, being successfully sued for any kind of patent infringement. With common licensing deals in the range of a few cents to a few percent per copy, lawsuits against end-users would be a massively unprofitable prospect.
"On top of that, the BSD userland can be adapted to the Linux kernel."
Did you know, the BSD userland actually has a BSD kernel too (a whole bunch of them, in fact)?
I think we can safely conclude that anyone who wanted the BSD userland and BSD licensed kernel would, in fact, already be using BSD. And looking at the history of the unix wars we can draw some further conclusions about how the anything-goes approach plays out. The only ones who'd be interested in a repeat of that would be Microsoft or some aspireing semi-proprietary vendors who arent familiar with the pile of proprietary unices that fell at the roadside.
The fact is, the bigger participants in that round have been staunch supporters of the FSF's approach on GPLv3; both Sun and IBM appear to have learned the lessons of fractured markets and IP warfare. It creates many more losers than winners, and it damages the market as a whole - better then to live with an enforced level playing field where you compete on being the best, as opposed to being the best backstabber, where you compete on being the quickest, not the quickest to lauch lawsuits.
In the end, even tho the ability to deny others freedom can lead to short term benefits for one or a few players, in the long term the enforced market freedom creates a bigger pie for all players.
"just like you should if you love or hate a screwdriver, a hammer or any other tool."
Mmm, when your purchasing department gets a nice lunch in exchange for exclusively buying screwdrivers and you're forced to use the screwdrivers to hammer in nails all day long, I wouldnt be surprised if you develop some excessively strong emotions towards both screwdrivers and the manufacturer of said screwdrivers.
Wether it's entirely rational or constructive is perhaps questionable, but as far as mental health goes it sure beats beating in the heads of the purchasing department personell with a fine selection of hammers. Such affect displacement is a common coping strategy and often quite healthy when the appropriate targets for the affect are even less suitable for various reasons.
Sounds like you need to study up on the concept of freedom.
"most people (including Stallman) doesn't know the difference..."
Oh, please. This is hardly a new distinction in the philosophical aspects of freedom. Consistently keeping to the minimum necessary ruleset to prevent the occurance or rise of coercive power of some over others isn't that much of a problem.
"The Free SOFTWARE Foundation has always been about Software, or at least pretented to be."
The FREE Software Foundation has always been about Freedom. If you've interpreted it otherwise you've missed most of the FSF philosophy. RMS and company havent been ardent about keeping the term 'Free Software' rather than open source because they enjoy the multi-use complications the term in itself creates (free as in speech, as opposed to beer).
"because you're thinking about the big picture"
The big picture is what the FSF has always been about. They dont particularly care about short term popularity contests; which is where the dislike for the 'open source' term comes from.
And the thing is, in my opinion they're right. The 'enforced freedom' and enforced plain playing field of the GPL and associated licenses has created much more both corporate and hobbyist involvement than the 'free to screw anyone' licenses have. The parasites dont like it, but then again, one can live without the parasites; they were never much into freedom anyway.
"There needs to be some method for civilians to control them"
Civilians? In such a case that they are used for inappropriate purposes, there will be no 'civilians'.
It's certainly understandable why the politicans are authorizing this kind of weaponry; in the near future they wont actually _need_ a chain of command or pesky bleeding heart liberal generals. They'll be able to recruit and use neocon (s/authoritarian_of_the_day/g) zealots to man the weapons and do whatever they tell them to, conventions and constitutions be damned.
As a member of society and a writer of free software, I most certainly consider it my fight to protect the freedom of other members of this society.
To quote Benjamin Franklin, "We must all hang together, or assuredly we shall all hang separately.". The phone owners fight is mine, just as the Tivo owners, the Xbox owners or the future computer owners, or we will eventually find ourselves very alone with little equipment on which to exercise those freedoms we've fought so hard for.
"It's not about software authors, but license authors."
No it's not. I put my code specifically under the GPL with the exact intentions that the code remain free and to further promote the freedom of everyone to do what they wish with that code.
"What's next"
The FSF and GPL has always been about denying distributors the right to take power over others. This is a natural evolution of that.
If distributors of software want to screw their customers or other recipients of code, they can do that, but if they do, they can damn well keep their hands off mine. I'm not helping them. Nor is any code I write.
Because the user owns the phone and should have the right to run any software he wants to on his property? Because GPL software authors may not want to cooperate with vendors trying to take away that freedom from the user?
"I took from another GPLv2 project and I cannot change the license on those."
In your previous comment you said you were going to remove the 'or-later' clause on your software. You do realize that you cannot actually remove that clause if you took the code in question from a v2-or-later licensed project?
A bit nitpicky.:) As the topic in question was the virality of GPL code, the 'with' in question pertains to the derivative aspect of integrating two pieces of code, not mere aggregate distribution of two separate programs. Perhaps it requires clarification tho; confusing those issues is common enough.
I'd expect a rather extensive advancement in decompilation techniques.
In the end, the extra costs (code obfuscation, merge difficulties, non-standaradization, etc) carried by proprietary vendors attempting to de-commoditize the code would put them at a constant competetive disadvantage against the non-proprietary industry.
"If he doesn't like the GPL then why does he use it?"
Mainly random chance. Linux wasnt originally under the GPL, but Linus was talked into using it early on (in fact, ironically, the original license prohibited commercial redistribution). After that, mainly inertia, I'd say.
As such, I dont see much point in listening to him on license issues; his track record isnt exactly brilliant.
"But, (to me) if you do, well you could give your friend the software and not keep a copy, or let them know how they can get it."
If you had a piece of bread, and a machine that could duplicate bread, would you give your friend a copied piece of bread or let them know where they could buy their own bread?
"Breaking the agreement is not honorable since it was freely entered into."
The basis of the 'agreement' in itself is copyright law. Wether copyright law was freely entered into can be considered dubious from many points of view.
If there was a law to artificially limit the supply of bread, outlawing the copying of bread for your friend, would you consider that ethical? If the law was justified by claiming that the limitation on supply creates an investment in more kinds of bread by increasing the profit on bread production?
What it ultimately comes down to is the fact that copyright is an artificial restriction on the creation (through duplication) of more wealth in the economy (and for your friends and neighbours). Where you are normally allowed to be generous through making things for your friends, in this case you are denied the right to be generous.
When the free market provides ever cheaper and better ways of producing wealth, in this case it's so easy and cheap (that anyone can do it) that we cant allow a free market, but must forbid free duplication and support monopoly rights?
Free software has shown the incredible amounts of wealth that can be created and distributed through the free duplication of works, and has essentially disproved the whole foundational concept of copyright law. It's time to analyse that lesson and reconstruct the whole IP system for a modern economy, taking advantage of the ability to mass reproduce and distribute that computers and the internet provides, and instead seek, if necessary, alternate ways of exacting revenue from the economy to distribute as incentives for the production of new works. The delegated taxation form of monopoly grants has shown itself ineffective and damaging.
Slashdot Mirror
"Popular artists regularly spend tens of thousands Per Song!"
Spending money is never a problem; they could easily spend millions per song. The free market usually deals with that kind of waste of resources simply by having competitors offer their products cheaper. But in the monopoly rights markets, such spending isnt corrected, which is why we have the prices we do for something that should cost a few cents.
"This money should go directly to the artist. 10c per song for this would be a HUGE amount more than artists currently get paid for song sales, but is still cheap for us."
How about we actually go all the way and simply put a sales tax on any revenue derived from 'copyrighted' material and hand that money directly to the artists and composers? That would void the entire problem of RIAA exploitation contracts and we could actually account for the money spent in the economy to support production of copyrighted material and see if we're getting our taxpayers moneys worth.
Take a look at the virtualization article at wikipedia. It covers most of the tech in a fairly good overview.
If you were paying big $$$ for enterprise support, would you get a server with GRUB or LILO embedded on the motherboard?
Would you buy one with the kernel and initrds on flash installed on the motherboard?
Personally I wouldnt; Dell has no competence in those areas, and even should they try to build it, they'd end up constantly trailing the OS vendors, introducing random bugs and being far less integrated and standardized than what the mainline products are.
I see little difference in the hypervisor area; hardware vendors can just barely manage keeping BIOSes bugfree enough to get an OS running, expecting them to be able to manage and keep hypervisor software up to date isnt even on the horizon.
Most security applications implemented as system call wrappers would be vulnerable (basically anything where there's an opportunity to modify the checked system call post-check by tricking todays modern and eminently interruptable kernels into doing something else than getting on with executing the syscall for a few cycles), altho I suspect that anyone running sudo as primary security enforcement and logging application isnt exactly worried about this level of fairly arcane exploits (note that more lowlevel solutions like SELinux are not affected).
More interesting would be wether it means that commercial security software like CA's eTrust access control is also inherently ehm, untrustable. It certainly sounds like it would be.
"If you're already doing watercooling to have quiet high-performance graphics,"
True, if you already do have watercooling it might very well make sense. Altho I'd argue it's slightly different as the graphics will only need the cooling running while they're actively used.
I ran off NFS before switching to iSCSI, and I can tell you it's a vast improvement. The latency issues of NFS are gone, and the performance on both small and large files on par with local disks (it is, effectively, a SAN, so I expected the performance to end up around there, impacted a bit by cheapo shared gigabit infrastructure and improved by the utilization of the memory in the servers as cache).
The disadvantage compared to NFS is I cant easily duplicate a system through a simple copy. On the other hand, I'm using md to mirror the root disks across two iSCSI targets (iscsi enterprise target on two linux servers), so I can split off a mirror for archive or system-clone purposes.
If you're booting off NFS today, I'd definitely reccomend going to iSCSI. The mkinitrd support has been lacking so I had to hack my own initially (well, if you're running off NFS you know the drill), but now the CentOS 5 version works to create PXE bootable initrd's that mount iSCSI volumes.
Personally I've moved to using iSCSI on my desktops. Every single one is booted off PXE and mounts its disks over the network (with very close to native performance; gigabit copes well with iSCSI, and the memory in the iSCSI target machines works nicely as cache). Blessed silence ensues, with care for CPU and PSU fans, the desktops become close to inaudible.
The server cabinet is slightly more noisy, but with care taken to soundproofing and with sound-absorbing vent channels and the disks mounted on vibration reducing material, it doesnt sound more than modern fridge.
Adding yet another cooling bus to the desktop sounds like a supremely unpalatable idea. It's much easier and much more reliable to move data over the network than it is to move water around in a computer.
"by showing their leaders as so successful that they can sit out in the open, in a living room somewhere, and lead a normal life"
Heh. When was the last time you saw Bush out in the open, leading a normal life? Our own western leaders are cowering in their versions of hideouts and bunkers, sometimes not even from an external enemy, but from their own population. Some will end up without any ability to ever travel outside the borders of their own country, in fear of running afoul of foreign warcrimes legislation.
I enjoyed Frank Herberts idea from God Emperor of Dune, where the historical myth was that the emperor had to walk unprotected through an unchecked and unsearched crowd every year. If he survived he was a good ruler. Of course, that was faked and propaganda in the book as well, but the idea is alluring, although less useful in reality (as there unfortunately exist a whole bunch of other random reasons someone might off a person in power).
Unfortunately, we're all lead by cowardly stooges. But even in the cases where the members of warring organizations realize that, they're reluctant to do anything about it. Even US generals appear afraid of denouncing their leadership until they're retired, and they dont have more than a job on the line, so why would you expect someone likely to get executed for dissent to point out such flaws?
"What is important about this change is not the mis-use of the word "free", but the shifting of the burden to the purchaser, rather than to the tax payer."
As long as it has no other negative effects; take a look at "intellectual property", which is the ultimate privatized taxation scheme. The burden of paying for the system is shifted to the consumer, but the producer has no interest at all in providing the economy with the most efficient solution to the problem, but rather uses it to maximize revenue streams.
In this case the companies have no interest in minimizing environmental impact; their interest is still to maximize revenue, and smelting as much as possible of any hardware that could compete with their new sales is a priority. The cost to the economy as a whole with the loss of the wealth represented in the destruction of still working hardware becomes enormous, but as it isnt accounted for other than in some going without that hardware and others adding to the sales of new hardware, it's not immediately obvious in cold hard numbers of lost wealth.
"All that happens if you don't follow MS's tacked on terms and conditions is that you lose the promise not to sue unless they really really want to - which was pretty much worthless in the first place."
Of course, this ignores the most fundamental aspect of the issue; I donate my code freely so that it should be Free for any user. Microsoft has no right to attemt to extort the people to whom I've donated code. What's next, they gonna hold up African kids for their red cross food rations? Hey, maybe that's something Monsanto could think about a bit.
Which is why any code I write will definitely be upgraded to GPLv3. I have never intended for my code to make it easier for those who wish to enrich themselves by taking power over others. They can do it like every one else; provide value on a level playing field.
"It would still apply even if the company in question was run by a total sociopath."
Considering the extent to which pharmas withhold treatment from dying people, (backed by WTO threats, patent manipulation, WIPO lobbyists, etc) I'd say it's quite obvious they could be classified as total sociopaths.
And really, a vaccine, or a cure, for AIDS would be a short-lived media bonus; when was the last time you heard anything about whatever companies created various vaccines (apart from allegations of causing things like autism, or for needlessly encouraging tax-financed and uncessary vaccinations)?
The thing is, if you analyze it, the entire economy of patent incentives is based on the ability to _deny_ everyone the right to produce a certain substance. The worse the consequences, the higher the price can go. Patents dont generate a lot of money for curing or preventing disease; they generate the maximum level of revenue when they set the price so high that they _deny_ a certain subset of customers access, and deny that subset of customers the right to buy the medicine from anyone else. (And please, dont give me the 'but they need the money to research' crap; the money is largely wasted on marketing, administration and inefficient production; we'd get five times the research for what we're paying today if we outright just paid for it and scrapped medical patents).
The very foundation of the system is so ethically corrupt that it's no wonder the pharmas are the way they are.
Personally I dont doubt for a second that they'd simply bury any substance (reorganize, change strategic direction) that appeared to actually have a chance at curing something they were selling a symptom treater for.
"Well, it seems that keeping the laptop plugged in for long hours diminishes the battery life on them."
It's not the actual usage that kills the battery, but the temperature exposure. The lifetime of li-ion batteries is limited, and heat kills them even faster; 20% loss of capacity per year at 25 degrees C becomes 35% loss per year at 40 degrees C. As laptops can frequently achieve even higher temperatures than that while running, the useful lifespan of a laptop battery in a permanently-on laptop may very well around a year (of course, if you keep it plugged in permanently, the battery duration may not actually matter anyways).
"Most software doesn't say in the EULA"
But it's quite likely that it should. Lots of proprietary software has shown itself vulnerable to patent claims (in fact, much more than any OSS software has). If you've used Internet Explorer, Eolas could have gone after you. If you've used a Blackberry, NTP could have gone after you. Etc. Using Internet Explorer was just as illegal as using a patented codec under Linux; the difference is the Linux software authors are upfront about it.
That's the thing with software patents; if you ever even use a computer you are quite likely violating hundreds or thousands of issued patents, most of which neither you nor your software provider, nor the developers will even be aware of. But which is still illegal.
Perhaps the free software disclaimers should be prepended with a dialog asking 'do you want to bury your head in the sand and get on with your task or do you want the horrific (but quite unenforcable) reality of defective patent systems?'
"shouldn't people really embrace AAC precisely because it lacks MP3's player royalties?"
Eh, no. Precisely because it doesnt lack them. AAC and H264 are just as encumbered as MP3.
If unencumbered is what you want, ogg/flac/theora etc are pretty much the least painful available choices.
Of course, you may live in a sane jurisdiction, in which case the patents may not be enforcable.
Of course, the proprietary software may very well be violating various patents as well, so technically they should pop up the same disclaimers. FLOSS just tends to be slightly more nitpicky about being excessively verbose and honest with these issues (not to mention that part of the intent is quite likely to make end users aware of the actual damage the patent system causes).
That said, I dont think I've even heard of any end-user of a product, ever, being successfully sued for any kind of patent infringement. With common licensing deals in the range of a few cents to a few percent per copy, lawsuits against end-users would be a massively unprofitable prospect.
"On top of that, the BSD userland can be adapted to the Linux kernel."
Did you know, the BSD userland actually has a BSD kernel too (a whole bunch of them, in fact)?
I think we can safely conclude that anyone who wanted the BSD userland and BSD licensed kernel would, in fact, already be using BSD. And looking at the history of the unix wars we can draw some further conclusions about how the anything-goes approach plays out. The only ones who'd be interested in a repeat of that would be Microsoft or some aspireing semi-proprietary vendors who arent familiar with the pile of proprietary unices that fell at the roadside.
The fact is, the bigger participants in that round have been staunch supporters of the FSF's approach on GPLv3; both Sun and IBM appear to have learned the lessons of fractured markets and IP warfare. It creates many more losers than winners, and it damages the market as a whole - better then to live with an enforced level playing field where you compete on being the best, as opposed to being the best backstabber, where you compete on being the quickest, not the quickest to lauch lawsuits.
In the end, even tho the ability to deny others freedom can lead to short term benefits for one or a few players, in the long term the enforced market freedom creates a bigger pie for all players.
"just like you should if you love or hate a screwdriver, a hammer or any other tool."
Mmm, when your purchasing department gets a nice lunch in exchange for exclusively buying screwdrivers and you're forced to use the screwdrivers to hammer in nails all day long, I wouldnt be surprised if you develop some excessively strong emotions towards both screwdrivers and the manufacturer of said screwdrivers.
Wether it's entirely rational or constructive is perhaps questionable, but as far as mental health goes it sure beats beating in the heads of the purchasing department personell with a fine selection of hammers. Such affect displacement is a common coping strategy and often quite healthy when the appropriate targets for the affect are even less suitable for various reasons.
"The freedom of every member of this society?"
Sounds like you need to study up on the concept of freedom.
"most people (including Stallman) doesn't know the difference..."
Oh, please. This is hardly a new distinction in the philosophical aspects of freedom. Consistently keeping to the minimum necessary ruleset to prevent the occurance or rise of coercive power of some over others isn't that much of a problem.
"The Free SOFTWARE Foundation has always been about Software, or at least pretented to be."
The FREE Software Foundation has always been about Freedom. If you've interpreted it otherwise you've missed most of the FSF philosophy. RMS and company havent been ardent about keeping the term 'Free Software' rather than open source because they enjoy the multi-use complications the term in itself creates (free as in speech, as opposed to beer).
"because you're thinking about the big picture"
The big picture is what the FSF has always been about. They dont particularly care about short term popularity contests; which is where the dislike for the 'open source' term comes from.
And the thing is, in my opinion they're right. The 'enforced freedom' and enforced plain playing field of the GPL and associated licenses has created much more both corporate and hobbyist involvement than the 'free to screw anyone' licenses have. The parasites dont like it, but then again, one can live without the parasites; they were never much into freedom anyway.
"There needs to be some method for civilians to control them"
Civilians? In such a case that they are used for inappropriate purposes, there will be no 'civilians'.
It's certainly understandable why the politicans are authorizing this kind of weaponry; in the near future they wont actually _need_ a chain of command or pesky bleeding heart liberal generals. They'll be able to recruit and use neocon (s/authoritarian_of_the_day/g) zealots to man the weapons and do whatever they tell them to, conventions and constitutions be damned.
"That's the phone owner's fight, not mine."
As a member of society and a writer of free software, I most certainly consider it my fight to protect the freedom of other members of this society.
To quote Benjamin Franklin, "We must all hang together, or assuredly we shall all hang separately.". The phone owners fight is mine, just as the Tivo owners, the Xbox owners or the future computer owners, or we will eventually find ourselves very alone with little equipment on which to exercise those freedoms we've fought so hard for.
"It's not about software authors, but license authors."
No it's not. I put my code specifically under the GPL with the exact intentions that the code remain free and to further promote the freedom of everyone to do what they wish with that code.
"What's next"
The FSF and GPL has always been about denying distributors the right to take power over others. This is a natural evolution of that.
If distributors of software want to screw their customers or other recipients of code, they can do that, but if they do, they can damn well keep their hands off mine. I'm not helping them. Nor is any code I write.
"Why shouldn't they be able to do that?"
Because the user owns the phone and should have the right to run any software he wants to on his property? Because GPL software authors may not want to cooperate with vendors trying to take away that freedom from the user?
"I took from another GPLv2 project and I cannot change the license on those."
In your previous comment you said you were going to remove the 'or-later' clause on your software. You do realize that you cannot actually remove that clause if you took the code in question from a v2-or-later licensed project?
A bit nitpicky. :) As the topic in question was the virality of GPL code, the 'with' in question pertains to the derivative aspect of integrating two pieces of code, not mere aggregate distribution of two separate programs. Perhaps it requires clarification tho; confusing those issues is common enough.
I'd expect a rather extensive advancement in decompilation techniques.
In the end, the extra costs (code obfuscation, merge difficulties, non-standaradization, etc) carried by proprietary vendors attempting to de-commoditize the code would put them at a constant competetive disadvantage against the non-proprietary industry.
As a first step, it would certainly go quite far.
"If he doesn't like the GPL then why does he use it?"
Mainly random chance. Linux wasnt originally under the GPL, but Linus was talked into using it early on (in fact, ironically, the original license prohibited commercial redistribution). After that, mainly inertia, I'd say.
As such, I dont see much point in listening to him on license issues; his track record isnt exactly brilliant.
"But, (to me) if you do, well you could give your friend the software and not keep a copy, or let them know how they can get it."
If you had a piece of bread, and a machine that could duplicate bread, would you give your friend a copied piece of bread or let them know where they could buy their own bread?
"Breaking the agreement is not honorable since it was freely entered into."
The basis of the 'agreement' in itself is copyright law. Wether copyright law was freely entered into can be considered dubious from many points of view.
If there was a law to artificially limit the supply of bread, outlawing the copying of bread for your friend, would you consider that ethical? If the law was justified by claiming that the limitation on supply creates an investment in more kinds of bread by increasing the profit on bread production?
What it ultimately comes down to is the fact that copyright is an artificial restriction on the creation (through duplication) of more wealth in the economy (and for your friends and neighbours). Where you are normally allowed to be generous through making things for your friends, in this case you are denied the right to be generous.
When the free market provides ever cheaper and better ways of producing wealth, in this case it's so easy and cheap (that anyone can do it) that we cant allow a free market, but must forbid free duplication and support monopoly rights?
Free software has shown the incredible amounts of wealth that can be created and distributed through the free duplication of works, and has essentially disproved the whole foundational concept of copyright law. It's time to analyse that lesson and reconstruct the whole IP system for a modern economy, taking advantage of the ability to mass reproduce and distribute that computers and the internet provides, and instead seek, if necessary, alternate ways of exacting revenue from the economy to distribute as incentives for the production of new works. The delegated taxation form of monopoly grants has shown itself ineffective and damaging.