This has already happened. FriBiDi, the standard package for dealing with bidirectional text (used by Pango and others), is developd jointly by Iranians and Israelis (Behdad Esfahbod and Dov Grobgeld, to name two), with maintainership passing freely and borderlessly between them as personal interest and spare time requires.
Over the past year we have seen IBM officials make
many public statements announcing commitment to Linux,
its free software licensing, and its development model. I believe those statements were extremely beneficial in strengthening Linux's image and securing it in the public mind as a strong, legitimate platform. For that we are all grateful.
However, we have seen very little, if any, IBM statements
relating to the recent PR attacks by Microsoft.
Considering IBM's market position and mindshare,
I would say that such statements could play a very positive role
in countering the FUD and minimizing the damage
done to Linux and other free software products' image in
the eyes of of the uninformed public.
My question is: does IBM intend to make any such
supportive statements or clarifications? If not, why not?
The FSF have much experience dealing with GPL
violations. I don't know if they can assist if they
dont have the copyright on the software, but if
you transfer them the copyright even after the violation
has occured they are still legally able to file a suit, provided that the code was under the GPL at the time of the violation.
When I saw this Journal cover I thought "wonderful" (because of the fact that Dr. Dobbs are covering it) and "horrible" at the same time. After all of his explanations and propaganda, RMS has not managed to get people to say "GNU/Linux" rather than "Linux". It appears that most people believe that since RMS didn't write the OS's kernel, he doesn't get to name it.
But what do we see now, on what is probably the first major covering of the GNU kernel? Not "GNU Hurd", or even "Debian GNU/Hurd" as Debian insist calling the distro, but simply "Debian Hurd". I don't care much, myself -- I usually try to give credit where credit's due, but this is not a life or death issue to me.
I just find this horribly ironic.
What are your future plans for Emacs? Do you plan to extend it so that it cooperates well with modern infrastructure such as Gnome and Bonobo? I would sure like to be able to edit Bonobo-embedded texts with Emacs, or to see real-time rendering of an HTML file in an HTML widget.
I think GPL has been very successful in promoting Free Software because libraries covered by it cannot be used with proprietary software.
But what about linking GPL software together with software covered by other, incompatible, Free licenses such as the MPL or the QPL (as we've seen in Debian's KDE problem)?
I would think that the fact the GPL does not allow it might hinder development without actually doing any good. Was this done on purposs? How would you say this issue can be resolved, other than looking for and asking the author of the GPL library for an exception clause?
Especially in the last couple of years we're seeing big money involved in Free Software. I'm wondering whether, even if all the software is Free, could the corporations' interests cause incompatibility problems in the GNU/Linux world.
I'm mainly concerned about splitting standards, as we can begin to see between GNOME and KDE that are backed by competing companies, or between different distributions.
Would you say that all the software being Free would solve or prevent all these problems, or that it might not be enough?
I was starting to think about this problem when Transmeta announced their proprietary code-morphing firmware. Would you say that firmware should also be free? If so, is there any FSF project being planned to write free firmware?
Also: what do you think about attempts to create free CPU plans such as Freedom?
Would you say that with the increasing use of GNU and other Free Software over the last few years, there is also increasing awareness to why Free Software is the right thing? I see a lot of resources being put into propoganda by you and by the FSF. I sometimes wonder if this does not become less important, because people who get used to certain rights would also not accept being denied them.
Lately I've heared several people wishing for a standard theme language or format for all their window managers and toolkits, and I myself certainly wish to be able to download just a single theme for both GTK+ and Enlightenment. Do you think it is possible? Is there any work being done towards this?
Now that these two office suits are in making, I am wondering how well will they support one another's files, data, communications protocols etc. Is there any work done to ensure interoperability?
GOffice and KOffice are an example of how GNOME and KDE are expanding and adding more layers of applications on top of the core desktop environment. Would you say that the new layers add more, or less, interoperability between GNOME and KDE? I am not talking specifically about the Office suits; I'm interested in knowing in general what is done to ensure interoprability when planning the long-range roadmaps.
Currently, competing commerical companies support or sponsor GNOME and KDE. For example, Red Hat supports GNOME while Mandrake, its competitor, supports KDE.
My question is, to what extent does the commerical competition between the sponsors or corporate supporters affect the competition between the two desktop environments (directtly or indirectly)? Do you think that this is an issue, or that it might ever become one?
I don't usually care much for the distributions fork, the BSD/Linux fork or other forks in the OSS world, but I think the GNOME/KDE one is different, it is extremely harmful. Different GNU/Linux distributions are based on the same code; BSD and Linux share the same design down to the details; but GNOME and KDE do not necesseraly even have the same paradigms. Interoperability and compatibility do not end in the toolkit level -- we see them now with the desktops' API, for example, and we will soon see them with Office suit file formats and protocols. Each day that passes adds more layers of incompatibility into the world, and the split is widening in spite of all the good efforts.
In a normal OSS world the two DE's would agree on a single design direction, or one of them would be willingly be merged into the other, but this is not pure OSS development: GNOME is funded heavily by Red Hat, and KDE by Mandrake/Corel, for example, and commercial interests are involved too. I don't mean by this that KDE/GNOME developers are more concerned with the interests of their sponsors than the community's; it's just that when your project is funded so heavily into developing all the cool stuff you always wanted, you'd be even less inclined than usual to abondon your project and help the other guy's work, for the sake of compatibility and interoperability.
Linux is pretty much finished now, so finding new things to do can be either hard or give you a feeling that you're not doing "real work". But what about GNU HURD? It's a work in progress right now, needs a lot of help, and is a microkernel, which is a much more modern design. How about contributing?
If you don't give everybody write-access to your code, (i.e. not allow distribution of modified versions of your code) it's not really open source by any standard definition. And as an example, Sun's license, which is similar to what you're apparently considering, was NOT generally accepted by the community.
However, as other posters said here, if the project has originated in your company and you continue to be involved you're likely to be the one deciding anyhow. So I'd say releasing it as a non-Open-Source license would sacrifice full community acceptance for benefits which are mostly imaginary.
Looks like lots of people have questions for RMS, at least I know for myself I have plenty of things I'd like to ask him:) Why won't CmdrTaco run an interview with him? It'll be a blast...
Not only it would make carrying two devices around unnecessary, but the integration could probably enable some pretty cool things... Imagine managing the call log and phone book through any Linux app you choose, and that even without mentioning direct telephony support.
...And I'm saying that at the risk of not sounding too PC. Don't get me wrong; nothing pisses me off more than blind head-in-the-wall Linux advocacy that disregards users' needs and GNU/Linux's weaker points. But the former article and this one are not much better either.
I won't talk too much about the carelessness and complete lack of reasonable research that accompanied the "experiment" in the first article (No mention of Wine; No mention of Linux ports of popular applications such as Netscape, WordPerfect and Quattro Pro; the fact that Red Hat was chosen rather than a more desktop-oriented distribution).
No, what annoyed me was that the former article contributed nothing. It didn't tell us anything we didn't know before. Thank you very much, but we know that none of the Linux-based distributions can currently be installed or configured by non-technical users. We know that the current GUIs are a lot harder to use than MS-Windows or MacOS. We know that less "productivity" applications are Linux-available at the moment. Hundres and perhaps thousands of people, and huge amounts of resources (both corporate and from the community) are invested into solving these problems. You said absolutely nothing new.
But even though the article wasn't one bit helpful at exposing our unknown weaknesses, it was written as a warning and as a rebuttle of the "myth" (which no-one claims to be true) that Linux-based distributions can currently compete on the desktop. Putting Red Hat 6.1 against MS-Windows or MacOS standards in terms of non-technical usability is not helpful or informative but simply teasing -- putting it as a feature on Slashdot is the equivalent of carrying a big sign in LinuxWorld saying "Na-na! You don't have desktop!"
I can't see how releasing a Quicktime player for linux will help the community. The specs are hidden, and so it will be closed-source. It may not run when libc changes, it won't change with the time, we won't know what it does when our back it turned, and we won't be able to adjust it or to write our own player. We don't need a player, we need the specs.
This is a very important and promising project. First of all, I think it is important to have more than a single alternative for a kernel to use on Open Source (well, mostly GNU) systems. Secondly, GNU HURD is a microkernel, which is a certified Way of the Future, will be much more extendable, flexible, and will scale better for SMP machines with lots of processes. And most importantly, the HURD, although UNIX-compatible, does not attempt to merely mimic UNIX but can potentially function in much different and diverse ways that the UNIX architecture cannot even dream of. Therefore: HURD.
Unlike XFree86 3.3.x where there are multiple X server binaries, each of which drive different hardware, XFree86 3.9.17 has a single X server binary (called XFree86). This binary can either have one or more video drivers linked in statically, or, more usually, dynamically load the video drivers and other modules that are needed.
and
The XFree86 X server has a built-in run-time loader, donated by Metro Link http://www.metrolink.com. This loader can load normal object files and libraries in most of the commonly used formats. Since the loader doesn't rely on an operating system's native dynamic loader support, it works on platforms that don't provide this feature, and makes it possible for the mod- ules to be operating system independent (although not, of course, independent of CPU architecture). This means that, for example, a module compiled on Linux/x86 can be loaded by an X server running on Solaris/x86, or FreeBSD, or even OS/2. One of the main benefits of this is that when modules are updated, they don't need to be recompiled for each different operating sys- tem.
This means the video drivers are standardized... Maybe this will encourage video card vendors to include an XFree86 driver along with the MS-Windows ones.
I agree completely that XFree86 should be forked, I've had this idea for some time. It's simply that such an important system as X has only ONE alternative! (As far as that free software world is concerned). Two competing alternatives would really give both systems an edge, I think. And see what a bazaar alternative did to GCC, this would definetely be a Good Thing.
But I disagree strongly that the forked system should be distributed under the GPL. I think starting projects is best done when licensed under the GPL, because it forces improvers to feed their improvements back into the community, and because it makes bigger step towards a free world. But I think once a project starts in a certain free license, it should stay there.
This is because although you can take BSD code, such as XFree86, and redistribute it as GPL, you CAN'T take GPLed code, even if it originated from BSD code, and redistribute it as BSD licensed code. This means that the XFree86 group will not be able to use the changes that the new project will apply to its own code.
I don't think that this is a nice thing to do -- the XFree86 have decided to allow this by choosing the BSD license (and I suppose they did either for ideological reasons or because they want their code to be used as widely as possible) but they HAVE contributed a lot of time and resources to create a free X implementation and we should not do anything to deny them of improvements based on their own code.
Secondly, if a GPLed fork would succeed, it would be able to use XFree86's code and ideas but not the other way round. Eventually it would pass the XFree86 and leave it unused. On the other hand, if the fork is under the BSD license both projects will be able to use one another's code and improvements and both will become much better as a result. Maybe one of them will become better than the other due to better design, and the other will be forgotten. Or maybe either will have its own advanteges and disadvanteges, and will be used depending on the user's specialized needs.
THIS is the kind of competition I would like to see, one that is more like the community I am a part of.
Scientific discoveries are important, but that's not the entire issue. I think we should look at a person's way of life and character before we decide. Given that, some of my top ten geeks for the millenium would be (at random order):
1. Leonardo de-Vinci. He was obsessed with technology and ideas, he just couldn't stop. 2. Thomas Edison. Same reasons. 3. Copernicus. Fighting the Catholic Church over what he just knew was true is alot like what we like seeing in geeks today. 4. An honoray second millenium geek: Archimede. Ok, so he's a bit older than that, but if he weren't I'd nominate him as the #1 geek in all of history. He was a scientist, mechanic, mathematician and much more - and once he started, he'd go into what is now known as "hack mode". This was also how he found his death: he was drawing geometry on the sand with his stick in Alexandria the Greek army invaded the city. He didn't stop what he was doing; he probably didn't even notice. A Greek soldier approached him and asked him who he was and what the hell he was doing. All Archimede said was "Please, I'm in the middle of something" and the soldier slayed him with his sword. Now THAT's a geek! Too bad we're in the wrong millenium. 5. RMS. Now we don't want to choose people too recent, but I think RMS really is unique. He founded a political and ideological movement based on geek values, a movement that grew in strength and became so much larger and stronger than he ever imagined. He deserves a place with the top ten.
1. The content was not decrypted in the ordinary sense, but it was assisted by the fact that one of the player makers forgot to encrypt their key. So it was partly negligence on the side of that maker, who did sign an NDA.
2. This is NOT like breaking into a bank's safe. The data is right there on a CD you have purchased with your money and which you now own. This is more like a safe company installing a safe in your house, and you opening it and fiddling with the lock in order to change the key, then publish the knowledghe which may or may not also be used to break into those safes. Point is, you didn't break into anyone's property, not in the physical nor in the "site cracker" sense. You broke into your own property.
I think the private safe analogy is a better one to be using when discussing the issue, and when explaining it to others.
Slashdot Mirror
This has already happened. FriBiDi, the standard package for dealing with bidirectional text (used by Pango and others), is developd jointly by Iranians and Israelis (Behdad Esfahbod and Dov Grobgeld, to name two), with maintainership passing freely and borderlessly between them as personal interest and spare time requires.
However, we have seen very little, if any, IBM statements relating to the recent PR attacks by Microsoft. Considering IBM's market position and mindshare, I would say that such statements could play a very positive role in countering the FUD and minimizing the damage done to Linux and other free software products' image in the eyes of of the uninformed public.
My question is: does IBM intend to make any such supportive statements or clarifications? If not, why not?
The FSF have much experience dealing with GPL
violations. I don't know if they can assist if they
dont have the copyright on the software, but if
you transfer them the copyright even after the violation
has occured they are still legally able to file a suit, provided that the code was under the GPL at the time of the violation.
DISCLAIMER: IANAL. In fact, I'm probably wrong.
When I saw this Journal cover I thought "wonderful" (because of the fact that Dr. Dobbs are covering it) and "horrible" at the same time. After all of his explanations and propaganda, RMS has not managed to get people to say "GNU/Linux" rather than "Linux". It appears that most people believe that since RMS didn't write the OS's kernel, he doesn't get to name it.
But what do we see now, on what is probably the first major covering of the GNU kernel? Not "GNU Hurd", or even "Debian GNU/Hurd" as Debian insist calling the distro, but simply "Debian Hurd". I don't care much, myself -- I usually try to give credit where credit's due, but this is not a life or death issue to me.
I just find this horribly ironic.
What are your future plans for Emacs? Do you plan to extend it so that it cooperates well with modern infrastructure such as Gnome and Bonobo? I would sure like to be able to edit Bonobo-embedded texts with Emacs, or to see real-time rendering of an HTML file in an HTML widget.
I think GPL has been very successful in promoting Free Software because libraries covered by it cannot be used with proprietary software.
But what about linking GPL software together with software covered by other, incompatible, Free licenses such as the MPL or the QPL (as we've seen in Debian's KDE problem)?
I would think that the fact the GPL does not allow it might hinder development without actually doing any good. Was this done on purposs? How would you say this issue can be resolved, other than looking for and asking the author of the GPL library for an exception clause?
Especially in the last couple of years we're seeing big money involved in Free Software. I'm wondering whether, even if all the software is Free, could the corporations' interests cause incompatibility problems in the GNU/Linux world.
I'm mainly concerned about splitting standards, as we can begin to see between GNOME and KDE that are backed by competing companies, or between different distributions.
Would you say that all the software being Free would solve or prevent all these problems, or that it might not be enough?
I was starting to think about this problem when Transmeta announced their proprietary code-morphing firmware. Would you say that firmware should also be free? If so, is there any FSF project being planned to write free firmware?
Also: what do you think about attempts to create free CPU plans such as Freedom?
Would you say that with the increasing use of GNU and other Free Software over the last few years, there is also increasing awareness to why Free Software is the right thing?
I see a lot of resources being put into propoganda by you and by the FSF. I sometimes wonder if this does not become less important, because people who get used to certain rights would also not accept being denied them.
Lately I've heared several people wishing for a standard theme language or format for all their window managers and toolkits, and I myself certainly wish to be able to download just a single theme for both GTK+ and Enlightenment. Do you think it is possible? Is there any work being done towards this?
Now that these two office suits are in making, I am wondering how well will they support one another's files, data, communications protocols etc. Is there any work done to ensure interoperability?
GOffice and KOffice are an example of how GNOME and KDE are expanding and adding more layers of applications on top of the core desktop environment. Would you say that the new layers add more, or less, interoperability between GNOME and KDE? I am not talking specifically about the Office suits; I'm interested in knowing in general what is done to ensure interoprability when planning the long-range roadmaps.
Currently, competing commerical companies support or sponsor GNOME and KDE. For example, Red Hat supports GNOME while Mandrake, its competitor, supports KDE.
My question is, to what extent does the commerical competition between the sponsors or corporate supporters affect the competition between the two desktop environments (directtly or indirectly)? Do you think that this is an issue, or that it might ever become one?
This worries me.
I don't usually care much for the distributions fork, the BSD/Linux fork or other forks in the OSS world, but I think the GNOME/KDE one is different, it is extremely harmful. Different GNU/Linux distributions are based on the same code; BSD and Linux share the same design down to the details; but GNOME and KDE do not necesseraly even have the same paradigms. Interoperability and compatibility do not end in the toolkit level -- we see them now with the desktops' API, for example, and we will soon see them with Office suit file formats and protocols. Each day that passes adds more layers of incompatibility into the world, and the split is widening in spite of all the good efforts.
In a normal OSS world the two DE's would agree on a single design direction, or one of them would be willingly be merged into the other, but this is not pure OSS development: GNOME is funded heavily by Red Hat, and KDE by Mandrake/Corel, for example, and commercial interests are involved too. I don't mean by this that KDE/GNOME developers are more concerned with the interests of their sponsors than the community's; it's just that when your project is funded so heavily into developing all the cool stuff you always wanted, you'd be even less inclined than usual to abondon your project and help the other guy's work, for the sake of compatibility and interoperability.
I really hope I'm wrong here.
Linux is pretty much finished now, so finding new things to do can be
either hard or give you a feeling that you're not doing "real
work". But what about GNU HURD? It's a work in progress right now,
needs a lot of help, and is a microkernel, which is a much more modern
design. How about contributing?
- Adi Stav
If you don't give everybody write-access to your code, (i.e. not allow distribution of modified versions of your code) it's not really open source by any standard definition. And as an example, Sun's license, which is similar to what you're apparently considering, was NOT generally accepted by the community.
However, as other posters said here, if the project has originated in your company and you continue to be involved you're likely to be the one deciding anyhow. So I'd say releasing it as a non-Open-Source license would sacrifice full community acceptance for benefits which are mostly imaginary.
Use the GPL.
Looks like lots of people have questions for RMS, at least I know for :) Why won't
myself I have plenty of things I'd like to ask him
CmdrTaco run an interview with him? It'll be a blast...
- Adi Stav
That's the thing I'm really looking forward to.
Not only it would make carrying two devices around unnecessary, but the integration could probably enable some pretty cool things... Imagine managing the call log and phone book through any Linux app you choose, and that even without mentioning direct telephony support.
I suspect the problem has to do with the number of posts increasing but the number of moderation points remaining fixed.
I suggest that the number of available moderation points should not be absolute but relative to the number of posts -- either globally or per story.
- Adi Stav
I won't talk too much about the carelessness and complete lack of reasonable research that accompanied the "experiment" in the first article (No mention of Wine; No mention of Linux ports of popular applications such as Netscape, WordPerfect and Quattro Pro; the fact that Red Hat was chosen rather than a more desktop-oriented distribution).
No, what annoyed me was that the former article contributed nothing. It didn't tell us anything we didn't know before. Thank you very much, but we know that none of the Linux-based distributions can currently be installed or configured by non-technical users. We know that the current GUIs are a lot harder to use than MS-Windows or MacOS. We know that less "productivity" applications are Linux-available at the moment. Hundres and perhaps thousands of people, and huge amounts of resources (both corporate and from the community) are invested into solving these problems. You said absolutely nothing new.
But even though the article wasn't one bit helpful at exposing our unknown weaknesses, it was written as a warning and as a rebuttle of the "myth" (which no-one claims to be true) that Linux-based distributions can currently compete on the desktop. Putting Red Hat 6.1 against MS-Windows or MacOS standards in terms of non-technical usability is not helpful or informative but simply teasing -- putting it as a feature on Slashdot is the equivalent of carrying a big sign in LinuxWorld saying "Na-na! You don't have desktop!"
So you got flamed. I'm not surprised.
- Adi Stav
I can't see how releasing a Quicktime player for linux will help the
community. The specs are hidden, and so it will be closed-source. It
may not run when libc changes, it won't change with the time, we won't
know what it does when our back it turned, and we won't be able to
adjust it or to write our own player. We don't need a player, we need
the specs.
This is a very important and promising project. First of all, I think
it is important to have more than a single alternative for a kernel to
use on Open Source (well, mostly GNU) systems. Secondly, GNU HURD is a
microkernel, which is a certified Way of the Future, will be much more
extendable, flexible, and will scale better for SMP machines with lots
of processes. And most importantly, the HURD, although
UNIX-compatible, does not attempt to merely mimic UNIX but can
potentially function in much different and diverse ways that the UNIX
architecture cannot even dream of. Therefore: HURD.
From the Release Notes:
Unlike XFree86 3.3.x where there are multiple X server binaries, each of
which drive different hardware, XFree86 3.9.17 has a single X server binary
(called XFree86). This binary can either have one or more video drivers
linked in statically, or, more usually, dynamically load the video drivers
and other modules that are needed.
and
The XFree86 X server has a built-in run-time loader, donated by Metro Link
http://www.metrolink.com. This loader can load normal object files and
libraries in most of the commonly used formats. Since the loader doesn't
rely on an operating system's native dynamic loader support, it works on
platforms that don't provide this feature, and makes it possible for the mod-
ules to be operating system independent (although not, of course, independent
of CPU architecture). This means that, for example, a module compiled on
Linux/x86 can be loaded by an X server running on Solaris/x86, or FreeBSD, or
even OS/2. One of the main benefits of this is that when modules are
updated, they don't need to be recompiled for each different operating sys-
tem.
This means the video drivers are standardized... Maybe this will encourage video card vendors to include an XFree86 driver along with the MS-Windows ones.
- Adi Stav
I agree completely that XFree86 should be forked, I've had this idea for some time. It's simply that such an important system as X has only ONE alternative! (As far as that free software world is concerned). Two competing alternatives would really give both systems an edge, I think. And see what a bazaar alternative did to GCC, this would definetely be a Good Thing.
But I disagree strongly that the forked system should be distributed under the GPL. I think starting projects is best done when licensed under the GPL, because it forces improvers to feed their improvements back into the community, and because it makes bigger step towards a free world. But I think once a project starts in a certain free license, it should stay there.
This is because although you can take BSD code, such as XFree86, and redistribute it as GPL, you CAN'T take GPLed code, even if it originated from BSD code, and redistribute it as BSD licensed code. This means that the XFree86 group will not be able to use the changes that the new project will apply to its own code.
I don't think that this is a nice thing to do -- the XFree86 have decided to allow this by choosing the BSD license (and I suppose they did either for ideological reasons or because they want their code to be used as widely as possible) but they HAVE contributed a lot of time and resources to create a free X implementation and we should not do anything to deny them of improvements based on their own code.
Secondly, if a GPLed fork would succeed, it would be able to use XFree86's code and ideas but not the other way round. Eventually it would pass the XFree86 and leave it unused. On the other hand, if the fork is under the BSD license both projects will be able to use one another's code and improvements and both will become much better as a result. Maybe one of them will become better than the other due to better design, and the other will be forgotten. Or maybe either will have its own advanteges and disadvanteges, and will be used depending on the user's specialized needs.
THIS is the kind of competition I would like to see, one that is more like the community I am a part of.
- Adi Stav
Scientific discoveries are important, but that's not the entire issue. I think we should look at a person's way of life and character before we decide. Given that, some of my top ten geeks for the millenium would be (at random order):
1. Leonardo de-Vinci. He was obsessed with technology and ideas, he just couldn't stop.
2. Thomas Edison. Same reasons.
3. Copernicus. Fighting the Catholic Church over what he just knew was true is alot like what we like seeing in geeks today.
4. An honoray second millenium geek: Archimede. Ok, so he's a bit older than that, but if he weren't I'd nominate him as the #1 geek in all of history. He was a scientist, mechanic, mathematician and much more - and once he started, he'd go into what is now known as "hack mode". This was also how he found his death: he was drawing geometry on the sand with his stick in Alexandria the Greek army invaded the city. He didn't stop what he was doing; he probably didn't even notice. A Greek soldier approached him and asked him who he was and what the hell he was doing. All Archimede said was "Please, I'm in the middle of something" and the soldier slayed him with his sword. Now THAT's a geek! Too bad we're in the wrong millenium.
5. RMS. Now we don't want to choose people too recent, but I think RMS really is unique. He founded a political and ideological movement based on geek values, a movement that grew in strength and became so much larger and stronger than he ever imagined. He deserves a place with the top ten.
- Adi Stav
You may be in the wrong here on two points:
1. The content was not decrypted in the ordinary sense, but it was assisted by the fact that one of the player makers forgot to encrypt their key. So it was partly negligence on the side of that maker, who did sign an NDA.
2. This is NOT like breaking into a bank's safe. The data is right there on a CD you have purchased with your money and which you now own. This is more like a safe company installing a safe in your house, and you opening it and fiddling with the lock in order to change the key, then publish the knowledghe which may or may not also be used to break into those safes. Point is, you didn't break into anyone's property, not in the physical nor in the "site cracker" sense. You broke into your own property.
I think the private safe analogy is a better one to be using when discussing the issue, and when explaining it to others.