Linus only holds coyright to those parts of the kernel that he wrote, I think he estimates that at something like 10% of it but I could be wrong there.
He can, of course, issue those parts under a new licence if he so pleases, he can't do the same with the parts that belong to other people.
The SMART move would be to say to all the in-fighting linux-vendor weenies is this: "You people can't agree, so instead we are going declare the linux compatibility mode BSD uses."
If you want to declare the BSD compatibility mode to be a "standard" then go ahead. I can't see that it makes much difference whether it's you or anone else that does it, declaring a standard in a marketplace is a pointless exercise unless you can get the people in the market to go along with it.
If we had 100,000 TLDs, and each cost $50, then only a huge company like McDonald's or Coke (who have a good case for exlusive Trademark protection across all industries) would even consider buying them all.
Okay, I give in, what is the "good case for exclusive Trademark protection across all industries" that you think "McDonald's" and "Coke" have?
If you're suggesting some sort of embargo on anyone with the name "McDonald" trading under their own name then I think you're getting into the absurd.
When you say all industries I take it the trademark on "Coke" would restrict that word in respect of drugs, soft drinks, and smokeless fuels? That's without even considering what it may mean in other languages.
I hope you had more in mind than just "a big company with lots of money should have more rights than other people".
Re:Where does one get these replication machines?
on
Pay Lars
·
· Score: 1
Well, you just borrow two from people who already have them, and use one to replicate the other...
If your friends won't lend you their replication machines or refuse to admit they have them then I guess they weren't such good friends after all:(
How is this insistence different from the "obnoxious advertising clause" that you so rightfully object to in the classic BSD license?
One is a licence condition with the weight of the law behind it and the other is a request that you can freely ignore if you choose (and likewise he can freely ignore reporters' requests for answers if he chooses, based on the terminology they use or anything else).
This doesn't mean anything. Companies always act through human agents, there's no other way for them to act. The person talking to the politician will always be an idividual and thus, even under your scheme, would be entitled to lobby.
I don't really see how you could ban voters from lobbying in their own financial interests, and of course if something has an impact on their employer then it has a potential impact on them.
Yeah, but this certainly widens the gap between the technological haves and havenots, a distinction that is already becoming very very important, and in the next few years will be *the* determining factor separating the rich from the poor.
HOW does it widen the gap?
The people of Tuvalu are technological have-nots. With the money they gain they can buy a little technology if that's what they want, not going to change the world but definitely not a widening of the gap, agreed?
The people of Tuvalu have lost NO technology in this deal. They are just as capable (or more commonly incapable) of accessing the internet as they were before. They are just as capable of getting domain names as they were before. Their domain names, assuming they want a cost effective solution, won't end in.tv. There is no reason I can imagine why they would care that their domain names don't end in.tv.
This does contribute to the increasing messiness of domain names, but it does not represent any sort of loss to the people of Tuvalu or any widening of the technological gap; how could it?
Unfortunately, at the same time as messing up the supposed tld structure even further, this sort of thing creates commercial interests to fight against any attempt to fix the mess in the future.
I dunno. If I were from Tuvalu, I think I'd be annoyed right now...
But why? Even ignoring the influx of money, and assuming that you were actually from Tuvalu and had internet access, why would you care whether your domain name ended in.tv ,.net,.uk,.us or anything else?
Many (small l) libertarians are anarchists, believing that no government whatsoever would be better than the force and violence perpetrated on humanity by current and historical governments. If you pooh-pooh that idea, consider the nearly 100 million people killed by governments in this 20th century, the bloodiest of all centuries so far.
The reason to "pooh-pooh that idea" is that without a government of some sort there's no one able to prevent a erm.. government emerging.
Getting rid of government, as opposed to trying to limit and control it, just means that whichever group can wield sufficient power locally is the new (local) government. That's what a government is, the group that are strong enough to enforce their will. The only way of creating counterbalances to ensure that nobody can get strong enough to enforce their will is to erm.. have a government enforcing those balances.
What you'd get is a plethora of would-be governments acting on various levels, and more bloodshed as they fight it out amongst themselves or further enforce thier power within their own spheres of influence. Just like those current and historic governments you were talking about.
Unless you can explain how to prevent governments arising (well, I guess killing everyone on the planet would do it...) the idea deserves all the "pooh-poohing" it gets.
Wonderful argument, convince enough people and you'll be lucky enough to live in the only zone where access restrictions apply, while the rest of us opt out. Have fun.
Libel. Slander. I'm not sure what it is when you make unfair representations about other peoples products. But it is a crime
No, libel and slander are torts, not crimes. I do think it's rather amusing that in a post accusing Peacefire of not doing enough research before making accusations you don't bother to find out whether your claims that they've behaved criminally can be substantiated.
The work of checking hundreds (thousands? I've no idea how many you want) of web sites in detail would be rather more than all the effort of looking "slander" and "libel" up, which I take it was just too much effort for you.
In case this isn't staggeringly obvious, the reason that there are so many errors is because Mattel attempted to use an automated checking process precisely because vetting web sites on that scale is an enormous amount of effort. Peacefire can't just glance at a web site and say it looks okay, they have to read it in its entirety for any potential issues, otherwise they'd be as negligent as Mattel.
Why would people copying URLs made up by Mattel be guilty of copyright infrigement if Mattel aren't guilty of vopyright infringement for copying other people's URLs and including those to begin with? Surely URLs either are copyrightable or aren't.
"Buy our product becuase its list of sites to block is so much better than our competitors'. Well no, I can't tell you which sites we block, or which sites they block.. erm you'll just have to trust me"
Doesn't seem like much of a selling point to me, their competitors have no need to steal it because no consumers can tell whether it's any good anyway.
Okay, I posted too fast and you do go on to say that it may be derivative anyway. But seriously, the question of whether it is derivative is the important issue, and the inlusion of code from the original is just one indication that it is.
First.. Your patch can include less of the original code than is required for the copyright laws(etc.) to kick in to apply the patch in to the right place.
Which is how many? Sorry, but I think the idea that there is a particular number of lines of code that will trigger copyright laws is something you just imagined.
At the end of the day, whether something is derivative is a judgment to be made first by the people involved and if necessary by a court, either way taking into account all the facts of the case, it's not an exercise in mathematics.
I don't see that that makes much sense. Standard paper page sizes seem to have settled everywhere on being longer vertically than horizontally, I don't see any evidence that people find this less "natural" than the alternative.
Eyes are presumably suited for looking at a wide range of things of differing height/width ratios. for example, I don't find looking at other people unnatural just because people are generally taller than they are wide.
Frankly, I don't necessarily see that consumers have an absolute right to know what they are paying for.
Correct, and this was implicit in his comment about them using a decent enryption scheme if they want to stop people from finding out - if they want to stop consmers finding out how things work they can try to.
What consumers do, or should, have is the right to take apart the things they buy, to try to understand them, even just to smash them into little pieces for fun if they so desire. If I buy a car I have a right to dismantle it, if I buy a book I ahve a right to dismantle it, if I buy a television set I have a right to dismantle it, and if I buy a copy of a piece of software then I should have the right to dismantle that too.
Manufacturers of all those things have the potential for legal protection to stop me duplicating their work - copyrights and patents. None of them have, or should have, the right to stop me analysing the product any way I please.
that's like saying that killing someone isn't illegal until i am caught
No, that's the point. In both cases the court is being asked to make a decision about past events.
In the patent case, the court is being asked to decide whether the patent was valid and whether B&N infringed upon it.
In your hypothetical killing case, the court would be asked to decide whether or not you killed the person and whether or not your doing so was illegal.
The patent is valid, or invalid all along. You are guilty, or not guilty, of murder all along. this status does not change when the court makes its decision. That's the point. The court will be determining whether the patent was ever legally valid, not saying it used to be but won't be from now on.
The open source community is pure communism, and one of the few examples of a real world community acctually working. "From each one according to ability, to each one according to need". Since supply is infinite, this works in the software world. (if i download a copy of something, i don't take anything away from you). The cost of production is low, the supply is infinite and the cost of market entry is low.
But nobody has to contribute according to their ability, if they don't want to contribute they don't have to or they can contribute less than their aximum. And nobody is limited to only taking what they need, if the code exists they can use it. It's more like "From each what they're prepared to give, to each that which they wish to use". This is no more communistic than capitalistic, neither addresses a situation in which satisfying the wants (or needs) of one person doesn't have to mean depriving someone else.
I think you're failing to understand what he's saying. RMS does'nt like software patents at all. Given that they exist, however, he can see why people would want to hold them as a defence against other people suing them for infringement of other patents. That's not to say that the existence of software patents is a necessary evil, just that for as long as they exits it makes sense to hold some as a defence against others (i.e. holding them toprotect yourself may be a necessary evil given that others ma be able to attck you with theirs). Abolish them all together and this defence is obviously no longer required.
It is now the court's job to decide if the patent is valid. Until the court decides otherwise, the patent is valid and infringement is illegal. Hence the injunction against B&N.
NO, absolutely not. It is up to the court to determine whether the patent is valid and thus whether breaching it is illegal. If the court finds that the patent is invalid then they will be establishing that what B&N did was not (at any point) illegal. If the court finds that the patent is valid then they will be establishing that what B&N did was (from the begining) illegal. It is NOT a matter of it being illegal until the court determines otherwise, one side or the other is right and the court is charged with determining which it is. B&N presumably believe that it is they that are right, I certainly do.
Slashdot Mirror
Linus only holds coyright to those parts of the kernel that he wrote, I think he estimates that at something like 10% of it but I could be wrong there.
He can, of course, issue those parts under a new licence if he so pleases, he can't do the same with the parts that belong to other people.
The SMART move would be to say to all the in-fighting linux-vendor weenies is this:
"You people can't agree, so instead we are going declare the linux compatibility mode BSD uses."
If you want to declare the BSD compatibility mode to be a "standard" then go ahead. I can't see that it makes much difference whether it's you or anone else that does it, declaring a standard in a marketplace is a pointless exercise unless you can get the people in the market to go along with it.
If we had 100,000 TLDs, and each cost $50, then only a huge company like McDonald's or Coke (who have a good case for exlusive Trademark protection across all industries) would even consider buying them all.
Okay, I give in, what is the "good case for exclusive Trademark protection across all industries" that you think "McDonald's" and "Coke" have?
If you're suggesting some sort of embargo on anyone with the name "McDonald" trading under their own name then I think you're getting into the absurd.
When you say all industries I take it the trademark on "Coke" would restrict that word in respect of drugs, soft drinks, and smokeless fuels? That's without even considering what it may mean in other languages.
I hope you had more in mind than just "a big company with lots of money should have more rights than other people".
Well, you just borrow two from people who already have them, and use one to replicate the other...
:(
If your friends won't lend you their replication machines or refuse to admit they have them then I guess they weren't such good friends after all
How is this insistence different from the "obnoxious advertising clause" that you so rightfully object to in the classic BSD license?
One is a licence condition with the weight of the law behind it and the other is a request that you can freely ignore if you choose (and likewise he can freely ignore reporters' requests for answers if he chooses, based on the terminology they use or anything else).
This doesn't mean anything. Companies always act through human agents, there's no other way for them to act. The person talking to the politician will always be an idividual and thus, even under your scheme, would be entitled to lobby.
I don't really see how you could ban voters from lobbying in their own financial interests, and of course if something has an impact on their employer then it has a potential impact on them.
Ouch. A corporation is legally a person, not an individual.
Yeah, but this certainly widens the gap between the technological haves and havenots, a distinction that is already becoming very very important, and in the next few years will be *the* determining factor separating the rich from the poor.
.tv. There is no reason I can imagine why they would care that their domain names don't end in .tv.
HOW does it widen the gap?
The people of Tuvalu are technological have-nots. With the money they gain they can buy a little technology if that's what they want, not going to change the world but definitely not a widening of the gap, agreed?
The people of Tuvalu have lost NO technology in this deal. They are just as capable (or more commonly incapable) of accessing the internet as they were before. They are just as capable of getting domain names as they were before. Their domain names, assuming they want a cost effective solution, won't end in
This does contribute to the increasing messiness of domain names, but it does not represent any sort of loss to the people of Tuvalu or any widening of the technological gap; how could it?
Unfortunately, at the same time as messing up the supposed tld structure even further, this sort of thing creates commercial interests to fight against any attempt to fix the mess in the future.
I dunno. If I were from Tuvalu, I think I'd be annoyed right now...
.tv , .net, .uk, .us or anything else?
But why? Even ignoring the influx of money, and assuming that you were actually from Tuvalu and had internet access, why would you care whether your domain name ended in
Many (small l) libertarians are anarchists, believing that no government whatsoever would be better than the force and violence perpetrated on humanity by current and historical governments. If you pooh-pooh that idea, consider the nearly 100 million people killed by governments in this 20th century, the bloodiest of all centuries so far.
The reason to "pooh-pooh that idea" is that without a government of some sort there's no one able to prevent a erm.. government emerging.
Getting rid of government, as opposed to trying to limit and control it, just means that whichever group can wield sufficient power locally is the new (local) government. That's what a government is, the group that are strong enough to enforce their will. The only way of creating counterbalances to ensure that nobody can get strong enough to enforce their will is to erm.. have a government enforcing those balances.
What you'd get is a plethora of would-be governments acting on various levels, and more bloodshed as they fight it out amongst themselves or further enforce thier power within their own spheres of influence. Just like those current and historic governments you were talking about.
Unless you can explain how to prevent governments arising (well, I guess killing everyone on the planet would do it...) the idea deserves all the "pooh-poohing" it gets.
Wonderful argument, convince enough people and you'll be lucky enough to live in the only zone where access restrictions apply, while the rest of us opt out. Have fun.
Libel. Slander. I'm not sure what it is when you make unfair representations about other peoples products. But it is a crime
No, libel and slander are torts, not crimes. I do think it's rather amusing that in a post accusing Peacefire of not doing enough research before making accusations you don't bother to find out whether your claims that they've behaved criminally can be substantiated.
The work of checking hundreds (thousands? I've no idea how many you want) of web sites in detail would be rather more than all the effort of looking "slander" and "libel" up, which I take it was just too much effort for you.
In case this isn't staggeringly obvious, the reason that there are so many errors is because Mattel attempted to use an automated checking process precisely because vetting web sites on that scale is an enormous amount of effort. Peacefire can't just glance at a web site and say it looks okay, they have to read it in its entirety for any potential issues, otherwise they'd be as negligent as Mattel.
Why would people copying URLs made up by Mattel be guilty of copyright infrigement if Mattel aren't guilty of vopyright infringement for copying other people's URLs and including those to begin with? Surely URLs either are copyrightable or aren't.
Is a secret list really that valuable?
"Buy our product becuase its list of sites to block is so much better than our competitors'. Well no, I can't tell you which sites we block, or which sites they block.. erm you'll just have to trust me"
Doesn't seem like much of a selling point to me, their competitors have no need to steal it because no consumers can tell whether it's any good anyway.
Okay, I posted too fast and you do go on to say that it may be derivative anyway. But seriously, the question of whether it is derivative is the important issue, and the inlusion of code from the original is just one indication that it is.
First.. Your patch can include less of the original code than is required for the copyright laws(etc.) to kick in to apply the patch in to the right place.
Which is how many? Sorry, but I think the idea that there is a particular number of lines of code that will trigger copyright laws is something you just imagined.
At the end of the day, whether something is derivative is a judgment to be made first by the people involved and if necessary by a court, either way taking into account all the facts of the case, it's not an exercise in mathematics.
I don't see that that makes much sense. Standard paper page sizes seem to have settled everywhere on being longer vertically than horizontally, I don't see any evidence that people find this less "natural" than the alternative.
Eyes are presumably suited for looking at a wide range of things of differing height/width ratios. for example, I don't find looking at other people unnatural just because people are generally taller than they are wide.
Frankly, I don't necessarily see that consumers have an absolute right to know what they are paying for.
Correct, and this was implicit in his comment about them using a decent enryption scheme if they want to stop people from finding out - if they want to stop consmers finding out how things work they can try to.
What consumers do, or should, have is the right to take apart the things they buy, to try to understand them, even just to smash them into little pieces for fun if they so desire. If I buy a car I have a right to dismantle it, if I buy a book I ahve a right to dismantle it, if I buy a television set I have a right to dismantle it, and if I buy a copy of a piece of software then I should have the right to dismantle that too.
Manufacturers of all those things have the potential for legal protection to stop me duplicating their work - copyrights and patents. None of them have, or should have, the right to stop me analysing the product any way I please.
He may be referring to the typo in "sufficiently" in your signature. Not a spelling flame (by me at least), genuinely trying to help :)
that's like saying that killing someone isn't illegal until i am caught
No, that's the point. In both cases the court is being asked to make a decision about past events.
In the patent case, the court is being asked to decide whether the patent was valid and whether B&N infringed upon it.
In your hypothetical killing case, the court would be asked to decide whether or not you killed the person and whether or not your doing so was illegal.
The patent is valid, or invalid all along. You are guilty, or not guilty, of murder all along. this status does not change when the court makes its decision. That's the point. The court will be determining whether the patent was ever legally valid, not saying it used to be but won't be from now on.
The open source community is pure communism, and one of the few examples of a real world community acctually working. "From each one according to ability, to each one according to need". Since supply is infinite, this works in the software world. (if i download a copy of something, i don't take anything away from you). The cost of production is low, the supply is infinite and the cost of market entry is low.
But nobody has to contribute according to their ability, if they don't want to contribute they don't have to or they can contribute less than their aximum. And nobody is limited to only taking what they need, if the code exists they can use it. It's more like "From each what they're prepared to give, to each that which they wish to use". This is no more communistic than capitalistic, neither addresses a situation in which satisfying the wants (or needs) of one person doesn't have to mean depriving someone else.
How come I can only read a very little % of Comments?
:)
The appalling state of the education system?
Okay, not being very helpful, sorry
I think you're failing to understand what he's saying. RMS does'nt like software patents at all. Given that they exist, however, he can see why people would want to hold them as a defence against other people suing them for infringement of other patents. That's not to say that the existence of software patents is a necessary evil, just that for as long as they exits it makes sense to hold some as a defence against others (i.e. holding them toprotect yourself may be a necessary evil given that others ma be able to attck you with theirs). Abolish them all together and this defence is obviously no longer required.
It is now the court's job to decide if the patent is valid. Until the court decides otherwise, the patent is valid and infringement is illegal. Hence the injunction against B&N.
NO, absolutely not. It is up to the court to determine whether the patent is valid and thus whether breaching it is illegal. If the court finds that the patent is invalid then they will be establishing that what B&N did was not (at any point) illegal. If the court finds that the patent is valid then they will be establishing that what B&N did was (from the begining) illegal. It is NOT a matter of it being illegal until the court determines otherwise, one side or the other is right and the court is charged with determining which it is. B&N presumably believe that it is they that are right, I certainly do.