And isn't it wonderful how "the people's browser" is now bending them over the sofa and sticking it to them from behind without even a "How do you do?"
It's kind of funny. Ten years ago Netscape 4 started to incorporate features for the benefit of AOL and in the process ignored a mindset that focused on the user. As a result it turned into the worlds buggiest browser. Now here we have the descendant of Netscape incorporating features for the benefit of Google and curiously enough turning into the world's buggiest browser yet again. I wonder if people are going to be surprised when MS swallows the market whole.
Do you really think that Sun doesn't have conversations with the community about OOo? The fact that they don't accept every idea floated doesn't mean they aren't interacting. No more or less than Linus being a hard ass about schedulers.
And FYI the Mozilla Foundation has something like $40 Million USD a year in revenue via the Mozilla Corporation. Staffers receive paychecks. The fact that the Mozilla Foundation is a 503 and controlling the for-profit Mozilla Corporation surely demonstrates that they have interests beyond making a fancy browser.
Interesting opinion, but not relevant to the issue. Linus controls the kernel. Mozilla controls firefox. They will go where the controlling body determines. At absolutely no time is Linus or Mozilla at the whim of the community. The directions of the products will absolutely be to the needs of the respective controlling body. It's no different than Sun telling their developers to work in the directions Sun needs them to work. If you don't like their direction, fork.
You ever hear the phrase "beggars can't be choosers"? While it's totally legit for non-development participants to bitch and whine about a free product, it's even more legit for the people who are putting their time and money into creating that free product to ignore the cry babies.
The reason people say "there's the source, fix it yourself" is because they aren't your slaves. They don't have to work for you without getting paid. If you want to have some influence in the product's development take a substantial role in that development or provide some substantial financial incentives for the people who are doing the lifting to pay attention to you.
This sounds like more Sun bashing rather than any real issues. Consider Linux. Only a few people have commit privs. Any forked version is pretty much guaranteed to die by the wayside due to the momentum of the parent. And if you have good ideas there's a reasonable chance that they may be copied by a more established kernel dev and checked in under their name. Look at Firefox, only a few people can participate. Both are arguably less open than OOo and yet we don't see anybody pissing on them.
Because the shoes have to get from there to here. If the labor cost is the same then Nike won't go there because the shipping cost would make it more expensive to do the work in those countries. So now you're in the situation where there is no job at all. I guess the question is, would they rather get paid $0.50 or $0.00?
Not an expert on Nike or defending their actions, but come on, put a little thought into this will you?
The empty para between the BSD and GPL notices (with BSD one consisting of multiple paras) supports my interpretation of the GPL reference being a separate notice.
Don't forget the blank line between the copyright lines and the bsd license. Maybe this is not under the BSD or the GPL? I mean if there's a blank line between the names of the owners and the license it may not be related. Right? Or maybe we can look at the spaces between the words, those might separate each word into an individual notice. So to stay in compliance with the GPL the only thing that has to be kept is the three letters "GPL". So maybe this might be a valid interpretation of the license:
"This software is not free. You cannot distribute it under any license, particularly the GPL."
It's not hard to understand that the notice starts with "Copyright" and ends with "Foundation."
The wording of the GPL isn't "keep some reference to the GPL," it says "keep intact all the notices that refer to this License and to the absence of any warranty." The notice is the text at the top of the source file that identifies the copyright holder and what the license terms are or where to find the license terms. This is the notice:
* Copyright (c) 2004-2007 Reyk Floeter * Copyright (c) 2006-2007 Nick Kossifidis * Copyright (c) 2007 Jiri Slaby * All rights reserved. * * Redistribution and use in source and binary forms, with or without * modification, are permitted provided that the following conditions * are met: * 1. Redistributions of source code must retain the above copyright * notice, this list of conditions and the following disclaimer, * without modification. * 2. Redistributions in binary form must reproduce at minimum a disclaimer * similar to the "NO WARRANTY" disclaimer below ("Disclaimer") and any * redistribution must be conditioned upon including a substantially * similar Disclaimer requirement for further binary redistribution. * 3. Neither the names of the above-listed copyright holders nor the names * of any contributors may be used to endorse or promote products derived * from this software without specific prior written permission. * * Alternatively, this software may be distributed under the terms of the * GNU General Public License ("GPL") version 2 as published by the Free * Software Foundation. *
Replacing it with this:
* Copyright (c) 2004-2007 Reyk Floeter * Copyright (c) 2006-2007 Nick Kossifidis * Copyright (c) 2007 Jiri Slaby * All rights reserved. * * This file is released under GPLv2
You're missing that a distributor is not a licensor. I download gcc.tar.gz from prep.ai.mit.edu and burn it to a CD. I hand that to you. You don't get a license from me, you get a license from the FSF.
The GPL specifies clearly that the licensor is the original author not the distributor. The terms that you choose to distribute under do not have anything to do with which licenses are available to the next guy. The only person who can set those terms is the copyright holder (and anyone with that the copyright holder has granted those rights to, which is not a right given by GPL v2.)
It also specifies that you must include the notice that refers to the GPL intact. For example, if you receive a source file which says:
/* Copyright 2007 by Bob.
* I think Jimmy Carter is a boob.
* This software is licensed under the terms outlined in the file LICENSE.
*/
The notice is all of that. If you think JC is a cool guy you can't yank that out and just say "This is distributed under GPL v2." That would be a license violation.
By removing the BSD license notice (which does not apply to him since he chose to receive his copy under GPL), he cannot and does not revoke the BSD license for the original code.
He doesn't receive anything under the terms of the GPL. The GPL is about redistribution and redistribution only. However when choosing to redistribute under terms of the GPL he is bound by the GPL. One of those terms requires that you keep the notice referring to the GPL intact. Yanking out the BSD terms isn't keeping the notice intact.
Half a G will get you way further than Mars in a week. The greatest distance between Earth and Mars is 391 million Km. Assuming you're going to go constant acceleration half way and constant acceleration in the other direction the second half of the trip, 1/2 G acceleration will get you 897 million Km end to end in seven days.
If you don't mind going through the Sun, that 1/2 G will get you Earth to Jupiter, in the worst geometry possible, in seven days and one hour and thirty minutes.
It seems likely that it would be quite a small amount of thrust, it's photons that you are "pushing" against. Even on the big engine.
The important thing is that it'll accelerate all the way there. With continuous acceleration it doesn't take much to get going really fast.
According to the article Mars is 100 Million km away and a big version of this will travel that in a week. We'll assume that you want to stop when you get there so just figure half the trip in half the time (since the second half will be braking):
50,000,000 Km = a * (302400 sec) ^ 2
a =.0005467722 Km/s^2
Acceleration due to gravity is 9.81 m/s^2, or 0.00981 Km/s^2. So he's talking about 1/18th G acceleration. Speed at turnover will be:.0005467722 Km/s^2 * 302400 sec = 165 Km/s.
Whee!
Of course it's more complicated than that since that low of an acceleration won't get you off the ground. So you'll be starting your trip in orbit. Which means you've got to take some time to get to a high enough orbit that you can accelerate away from the earth without having to do lots of high thrust maneuvers. Still, you can probably plan on Mars in a month.
A) It's irrelevant what the GPL v3 has clarified because, B) the bold section describes what you are allowed to do to the notice, not the license. C) There is no GPL v2 copyright violation in that the GPL text was not modified.
Say you have a source file, source.c. And you have a license file, LICENSE. You have to tie them together with some text giving notice of where to find the terms of the license. Which is the notice referred to in the GPL v2. In the dual licensed files in this situation, the notice was several paragraphs long. The first couple of paragraphs listed one set of terms and the notice continued: "Alternately you may use the GPL v2."
Cutting out all that text and replacing it with "Distributed under GPL v2." would violate the GPL v2 license.
If I choose to distribute under the terms of the GPL, then nothing in those terms requires me to maintain anything but the GPL.
I think this does (from GPL v2):
1. You may copy and distribute verbatim copies of the Program's source code as you receive it, in any medium, provided that you conspicuously and appropriately publish on each copy an appropriate copyright notice and disclaimer of warranty; keep intact all the notices that refer to this License and to the absence of any warranty; and give any other recipients of the Program a copy of this License along with the Program.
Changing the text that says "This is distributed under the terms of the BSD license. Alternately you may distribute under the terms of GPL v2." to "This is distributed under GPL v2." doesn't keep the notice intact.
Your tone is very weasely. Here's the fact: 1) a linux developer violated the distribution license on some code and committed an act of copyright infringment. That's the end of the story.
In this case the code that was dual licensed specified "alternately". So one would assume that you don't have to abide by both when distributing. But at the same time you don't get to remove the license either.
I don't think courts recognize contracts/licenses that have conflicting terms in them.
So I cannot add my own code to a BSD-licensed source file and license my changes under the GPL?
If you get a source file with a BSD header and you decide to add a function to that file, you own that function. You can set whatever terms you want on that function. You can not however distribute the entire thing under Bob's License and prevent people from using the original parts of the file under the BSD license terms. Also Bob's License cannot supersede the BSD license, which is why the GPL and the original four clause BSD license were incompatible(*): the GPL specifies no other restrictions which conflicted with the BSD advertising clause.
* - i suspect that there are continuing incompatibilities between BSD and GPL licenses due to the BSD license requiring that the BSD copyright notice be included, which is a restriction not currently found in the GPL.
3) I choose to distribute the driver under GPL. Any other guy can now download the driver from me, modify it, and distribute it under the GPL, because that's the license under which it was licensed to him.
Neither the BSD license or the GPL license give you the right to grant licenses. The only person granting licenses on the code is the person who owns the code. Note this section of the GPL:
6. Each time you redistribute the Program (or any work based on the Program), the recipient automatically receives a license from the original licensor to copy, distribute or modify the Program subject to these terms and conditions. You may not impose any further restrictions on the recipients' exercise of the rights granted herein. You are not responsible for enforcing compliance by third parties to this License.
The recipient is receiving their license from the original licensor, not from you. When given an option you get to pick your distribution terms. But you don't get to establish new terms as you have no standing to do so. Saying the people who receive it from you can only use the GPL is imposing new terms. That's not a right you have.
The included license file says that the software may be distributed under either license at the users choice. The Linux developers chose to release it under the GPL, as they had every right to do.
Read that and keep reading it until you can see the problem there.
(Hint: the license says what terms you can use to distribute. It doesn't give you the right to set the terms for the people downstream from you.)
Slashdot Mirror
And isn't it wonderful how "the people's browser" is now bending them over the sofa and sticking it to them from behind without even a "How do you do?"
It's kind of funny. Ten years ago Netscape 4 started to incorporate features for the benefit of AOL and in the process ignored a mindset that focused on the user. As a result it turned into the worlds buggiest browser. Now here we have the descendant of Netscape incorporating features for the benefit of Google and curiously enough turning into the world's buggiest browser yet again. I wonder if people are going to be surprised when MS swallows the market whole.
You do know that DNS TLDs have nothing to do with routing? Routing is IP address dependant, not domain name dependent.
Do you really think that Sun doesn't have conversations with the community about OOo? The fact that they don't accept every idea floated doesn't mean they aren't interacting. No more or less than Linus being a hard ass about schedulers.
And FYI the Mozilla Foundation has something like $40 Million USD a year in revenue via the Mozilla Corporation. Staffers receive paychecks. The fact that the Mozilla Foundation is a 503 and controlling the for-profit Mozilla Corporation surely demonstrates that they have interests beyond making a fancy browser.
Interesting opinion, but not relevant to the issue. Linus controls the kernel. Mozilla controls firefox. They will go where the controlling body determines. At absolutely no time is Linus or Mozilla at the whim of the community. The directions of the products will absolutely be to the needs of the respective controlling body. It's no different than Sun telling their developers to work in the directions Sun needs them to work. If you don't like their direction, fork.
You ever hear the phrase "beggars can't be choosers"? While it's totally legit for non-development participants to bitch and whine about a free product, it's even more legit for the people who are putting their time and money into creating that free product to ignore the cry babies.
The reason people say "there's the source, fix it yourself" is because they aren't your slaves. They don't have to work for you without getting paid. If you want to have some influence in the product's development take a substantial role in that development or provide some substantial financial incentives for the people who are doing the lifting to pay attention to you.
This sounds like more Sun bashing rather than any real issues. Consider Linux. Only a few people have commit privs. Any forked version is pretty much guaranteed to die by the wayside due to the momentum of the parent. And if you have good ideas there's a reasonable chance that they may be copied by a more established kernel dev and checked in under their name. Look at Firefox, only a few people can participate. Both are arguably less open than OOo and yet we don't see anybody pissing on them.
You know GCC doesn't generate the best code in the world, right? I take it you use intel's compiler for everything on your linux system?
You do realize that GCC was a duplication of effort? If it wasn't for licensing obsessives you'd still be using PCC right now.
Because the shoes have to get from there to here. If the labor cost is the same then Nike won't go there because the shipping cost would make it more expensive to do the work in those countries. So now you're in the situation where there is no job at all. I guess the question is, would they rather get paid $0.50 or $0.00?
Not an expert on Nike or defending their actions, but come on, put a little thought into this will you?
Don't forget the blank line between the copyright lines and the bsd license. Maybe this is not under the BSD or the GPL? I mean if there's a blank line between the names of the owners and the license it may not be related. Right? Or maybe we can look at the spaces between the words, those might separate each word into an individual notice. So to stay in compliance with the GPL the only thing that has to be kept is the three letters "GPL". So maybe this might be a valid interpretation of the license:
"This software is not free. You cannot distribute it under any license, particularly the GPL."
It's not hard to understand that the notice starts with "Copyright" and ends with "Foundation."
Replacing it with this:
Does not keep the notice intact.
The GPL specifies clearly that the licensor is the original author not the distributor. The terms that you choose to distribute under do not have anything to do with which licenses are available to the next guy. The only person who can set those terms is the copyright holder (and anyone with that the copyright holder has granted those rights to, which is not a right given by GPL v2.)
It also specifies that you must include the notice that refers to the GPL intact. For example, if you receive a source file which says:
The notice is all of that. If you think JC is a cool guy you can't yank that out and just say "This is distributed under GPL v2." That would be a license violation.
He doesn't receive anything under the terms of the GPL. The GPL is about redistribution and redistribution only. However when choosing to redistribute under terms of the GPL he is bound by the GPL. One of those terms requires that you keep the notice referring to the GPL intact. Yanking out the BSD terms isn't keeping the notice intact.
Nevermind. I think I'd better go see the doctors about early onset dementia. I've been leaving the 1/2 factor off all my math in this thread. :(
1 G is 9.81 m/s^2, not 4.9 m/s^s. You included the 1/2 factor twice.
3.5 * 24 * 60 is the number of minutes in 3.5 days, not the number of seconds.
Half a G will get you way further than Mars in a week. The greatest distance between Earth and Mars is 391 million Km. Assuming you're going to go constant acceleration half way and constant acceleration in the other direction the second half of the trip, 1/2 G acceleration will get you 897 million Km end to end in seven days.
If you don't mind going through the Sun, that 1/2 G will get you Earth to Jupiter, in the worst geometry possible, in seven days and one hour and thirty minutes.
It seems likely that it would be quite a small amount of thrust, it's photons that you are "pushing" against. Even on the big engine.
.0005467722 Km/s^2
.0005467722 Km/s^2 * 302400 sec = 165 Km/s.
The important thing is that it'll accelerate all the way there. With continuous acceleration it doesn't take much to get going really fast.
According to the article Mars is 100 Million km away and a big version of this will travel that in a week. We'll assume that you want to stop when you get there so just figure half the trip in half the time (since the second half will be braking):
50,000,000 Km = a * (302400 sec) ^ 2
a =
Acceleration due to gravity is 9.81 m/s^2, or 0.00981 Km/s^2. So he's talking about 1/18th G acceleration. Speed at turnover will be:
Whee!
Of course it's more complicated than that since that low of an acceleration won't get you off the ground. So you'll be starting your trip in orbit. Which means you've got to take some time to get to a high enough orbit that you can accelerate away from the earth without having to do lots of high thrust maneuvers. Still, you can probably plan on Mars in a month.
A) It's irrelevant what the GPL v3 has clarified because, B) the bold section describes what you are allowed to do to the notice, not the license. C) There is no GPL v2 copyright violation in that the GPL text was not modified.
Say you have a source file, source.c. And you have a license file, LICENSE. You have to tie them together with some text giving notice of where to find the terms of the license. Which is the notice referred to in the GPL v2. In the dual licensed files in this situation, the notice was several paragraphs long. The first couple of paragraphs listed one set of terms and the notice continued: "Alternately you may use the GPL v2."
Cutting out all that text and replacing it with "Distributed under GPL v2." would violate the GPL v2 license.
I think this does (from GPL v2):
Changing the text that says "This is distributed under the terms of the BSD license. Alternately you may distribute under the terms of GPL v2." to "This is distributed under GPL v2." doesn't keep the notice intact.
Your tone is very weasely. Here's the fact: 1) a linux developer violated the distribution license on some code and committed an act of copyright infringment. That's the end of the story.
In this case the code that was dual licensed specified "alternately". So one would assume that you don't have to abide by both when distributing. But at the same time you don't get to remove the license either.
I don't think courts recognize contracts/licenses that have conflicting terms in them.
If you get a source file with a BSD header and you decide to add a function to that file, you own that function. You can set whatever terms you want on that function. You can not however distribute the entire thing under Bob's License and prevent people from using the original parts of the file under the BSD license terms. Also Bob's License cannot supersede the BSD license, which is why the GPL and the original four clause BSD license were incompatible(*): the GPL specifies no other restrictions which conflicted with the BSD advertising clause.
* - i suspect that there are continuing incompatibilities between BSD and GPL licenses due to the BSD license requiring that the BSD copyright notice be included, which is a restriction not currently found in the GPL.
Neither the BSD license or the GPL license give you the right to grant licenses. The only person granting licenses on the code is the person who owns the code. Note this section of the GPL:
The recipient is receiving their license from the original licensor, not from you. When given an option you get to pick your distribution terms. But you don't get to establish new terms as you have no standing to do so. Saying the people who receive it from you can only use the GPL is imposing new terms. That's not a right you have.
Read that and keep reading it until you can see the problem there.
(Hint: the license says what terms you can use to distribute. It doesn't give you the right to set the terms for the people downstream from you.)