They continue to strategically bundle software into their OS.
Except that IE and to a certain extent parts of office arn't so much "bundled" as deliberatly intertwined into the system. With the intertwining not making much sense from an engineering point of view.
What really caught me off gaurd was the distance they were able to capture the data from. Apparently for some, they found they could capture data from "at least across the street".
Depends how much power is used. Remember that these indicators probably have a rather higher power output than your average IR remote control unit.
However, there is one thing they do have to be careful with and that's the 30% of the GPL'd code they haven't written but plan on using. If they obfuscate this code and then attempt to claim copyright of it, there could be some big consequences. This is clearly illegal and doesn't involve the GPL at all.
It involves the GPL in so much as the GPL is the only thing allowing them to distribute their resulting product in the first place.
I'm also not sure how the system would work if they obfuscated the original 30% GPL'd code but the attributed copyright to the original owner. I'd assume that they'd still get in trouble because the copyright owner of that code did not produce the obfuscated mess. Might be slander or defamation of character(or one of those goofy legal terms).
Copyright infringment (the obfuscated version is a "derived work") and fraud would appear to come into matters as well.
Re:Total obfuscation is not possible
on
Abusing the GPL?
·
· Score: 2
Pretty boring stuff, but the overall point is that once the end product is GPL'd, it won't take long for someone in the bazaar to figure out a meaning for "asdfgh", and do a s/asdfgh/meaningfulName/g through the whole thing. Or even figure a way to diff it with the original source.
If it's a mechanical process then they can probbably work out fairly easily what is going on even in the bits of the source which arn't derived from someone elses code. Effectivly it's cryptoanalysis where a substantial portion of the cleartext is known.
Re:Cut and dried Copyright violation
on
Abusing the GPL?
·
· Score: 2
Afraid not - the GPL gives you the right to change the code as long as you release the changes;
IIRC it also requires you to clearly indicate where you have made changes, which this would not appear to do. They can do this with the code which they actually wrote, (though there is nothing stopping anyone changing this back to more readable code) but not with someone elses they have taken and modified.
Re:Why did it take so many posts?
on
Abusing the GPL?
·
· Score: 5, Interesting
Just because something compiles does NOT mean that it is source according to the GPL. That you would not do development on the obfuscated gobbledegook clearly shows that the obfuscated version is NOT the preferred form for modification.
Also how is the obfuscated version going to be produced. Either feeding the source through some for of obfuscating preprocessor or decompiling the object code would simply be creating a derived work anyway. Effectivly you'd be trying to argue that you wern't infringing copyright because you scramble and/or encrypt before you distribute. You'd need a very good lawyer to convince any judge with this kind of argument.
Kazaa suffers less and less users as people run popular AdAware software on their computers. (Which removes kazaa spyware, which kazaa checks for on each load, otherwise disables itself.)
Unless people install the fake cydoor DLL file, since apparently it simply checks for the existance of a DLL. Rather than attempting to verify that DLL too.
They did not even contact the developers of Gnucleus before they ripped off their software.
The GPL does not require such notification. Simply that if you distribute derived work of a GPL program you must provide the source. AFAIK they are making the source to their program available.
With morpheus/kazaa etc, you can't change the IP you connect to first.
You probably could, just that it is harder than with a GNUtella client which explicitally has an option to do it.The defaults for KaZaa will be either in a registry key or in the executable somewhere...
But major publishing companies want it to mean control, hence we have DVD region codes, fuss about DRM, etc.
GPL is Copyrighted to the author, but freely distributable copyable (within the bounds of keeping the GPL)
Not quite GPL retains full copyright, it simply states the conditions for redistribution. In a great many cases these restrictions are not espcially "costly", in other situations such as someone wishing to use GPL code in a proprietary project they can be...
In that case it is clearly fair use, because a husband and wife have communal property.
So does a corporation. But the RIAA/MPAA would probably get very upset a corporate entity attempted to use one copy of one of their works for their entire organisation.
Wonder if this could be applied to getting hold of a copy of a broadcast programme you would not otherwise be able to see for some months even years... Effectivly a "time shift" in the opposite direction from the usual understanding. Or to otherwise subvert the attempts of broadcasting companies to partition up the market based on geography.
You completely misinterpret the "such as" wording of the law. According to 17 USC 101 [cornell.edu], "The terms 'including' and 'such as' are illustrative and not limitative" (emphasis by yerricde).
IIRC this kind of misunderstanding is the reason the people who wrote the US constitution deliberatly avoided enumerating examples...
Except for web based applications written to rely on the active desktop. Here at my company we have at least 3 that I know of. Business critical applications through which flow millions a day in orders.
These applications actually need the active desktop or were they simply written that way because the "code monkey" was copying an example which happened to use this? Is there any actual need, from a basic software engineering principle, to use active desktop (or even a Windowing system at all). You see quite a few applications which are actually running in a DOS box or an emulation of a dumb terminal... Typically the likes of stock control systems.
No, really - Corporate Personhood is one of the worst legal abuses of the 19th century. Corporations can own stock, lobby congress, and sue people, but they aren't as vulnerable as humans, they don't do jailtime, and they tend to have more money for lawyers.
Also even a rich person can be required to turn up to court in person, regardless of how many expensive lawyers they can hire. A corporation can get on with "business as usual" even whilst a court cases concerning it's very existance is ongoing.
Gee...I wonder how Daimler-Chrysler offers so many versions of the PT Cruiser? Four models, nine colors, manual or automatic transmission, three choices for "security group", side airbags or not, deep tint windows or not, three choices of exterior accents, six more options one can choose or not....let's see, that comes to 165,888 possible variations on the PT Cruiser (and I'm leaving out the "woody" and gold exteriors, I think...)
That dosn't even take into account things like possible different engine/fuel options, radios, air conditioning, etc. Some of which may only be available to the fleet buyer. The same company produces a wide range of types of car too. So even if someone just wanted to buy from this one manufacturer they have plenty of choice Though if you want a vehicle with lots of options you go to Airbus or Boeing...
Assuming Microsoft is market driven, what is the market for a browserless OS?
Emedded systems, single task systems, etc.
The general computer user will not be too thrilled to learn that they have to download, buy. etc. a browsers (which one???).
The vast majority of "general computer users" are using computers as part of their job if they are fiddling around trying to change settings they are typically not doing their job. In quite a few cases they may not have to worry about their job, though, because they will be fired...
Imagine going to buy a car and find out that you have to buy a radio if you want it, and you have your choice of 5+ radio's, all with different features, prices, etc.
Except that car radios are simply radios. You wouldn't find that part of the engine management system was in the radio or there are bits of radio receiver hung on the side of the engine...
The WinHelp system was far superior to HTMLHelp. It could do a lot of things (such as pop-up definitions) that HTMLHelp still can't do, and a lot of help developers and end-users miss it.
The only complaints I have ever heard about WinHelp were related to the content (or more likely lack of...) Something which simply changing the interface does not really address.
I think HTMLHelp is another solid example of Microsoft making HTML rendering pervasive in the OS, not because it's a better solution, but because it gives them stronger control of the market.
Another way to claim that IE is part of the OS... Especially since HTMLHelp uses non standard HTML in the first place..
Then why do corporations have the rights of persons, at least in America?
The have some of the rights of people (apparently a "cherry picked" set) but none of the responsibilities. There is simply no equivalent of a corporate jail, not even a remmand jail or any kind of bail system.
Now, if *I* were to commit perjury in a court of law *I'd* go to jail.
It depends on the specifics of what you do and exactly how and when you get court. With something like happened with Microsoft it would probably have made more sense for those involved to be jailed and/or fined for contempt of court. No need to separatly try for purjury.
Why should a change in the operating system change the DATABASE ENGINE for MS Access? This seems like the worst kind of spaghetti code.
In the case of the MS Jet Database Engine DLL it isn't just used by Access... This is part of the problem. In order to ensure that things are "intergrated" Microsoft appear to have deliberatly written spaghetti code. If they had written well structured code it would have been easier for things such as IE to simply be removed. But they don't want this to be too easy. IIRC some of the HTML rendering fuctions wound up in in obvious DLLs and the DLLs which mainly support HTML rendering also have some completly unrelated (but important) functions in.
Yup, let's remove binutils from your linux environments... We should probably remove libc, too... There's nothing worse than non-essential code floating around...
If you are writing an emdeded system you might well want to do exactly that. Or you can provide your own alternatives to these programs...
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They continue to strategically bundle software into their OS.
Except that IE and to a certain extent parts of office arn't so much "bundled" as deliberatly intertwined into the system. With the intertwining not making much sense from an engineering point of view.
And finally, the steel industry. The US is entering a new trade war over steel import tariffs. Great, just what the car industry needed.
With the press suddenly forgetting that a sizable quanity of perfectly good steel has just been exported from the US...
What really caught me off gaurd was the distance they were able to capture the data from. Apparently for some, they found they could capture data from "at least across the street".
Depends how much power is used. Remember that these indicators probably have a rather higher power output than your average IR remote control unit.
It is not talking about 10Mbps communications. It is talking about lower data rate comms, like modems, serial lines, and the like.
Note that the latter could include terminal equiptment running at 1.5/2M or higher.
However, there is one thing they do have to be careful with and that's the 30% of the GPL'd code they haven't written but plan on using. If they obfuscate this code and then attempt to claim copyright of it, there could be some big consequences. This is clearly illegal and doesn't involve the GPL at all.
It involves the GPL in so much as the GPL is the only thing allowing them to distribute their resulting product in the first place.
I'm also not sure how the system would work if they obfuscated the original 30% GPL'd code but the attributed copyright to the original owner. I'd assume that they'd still get in trouble because the copyright owner of that code did not produce the obfuscated mess. Might be slander or defamation of character(or one of those goofy legal terms).
Copyright infringment (the obfuscated version is a "derived work") and fraud would appear to come into matters as well.
Pretty boring stuff, but the overall point is that once the end product is GPL'd, it won't take long for someone in the bazaar to figure out a meaning for "asdfgh", and do a s/asdfgh/meaningfulName/g through the whole thing. Or even figure a way to diff it with the original source.
If it's a mechanical process then they can probbably work out fairly easily what is going on even in the bits of the source which arn't derived from someone elses code. Effectivly it's cryptoanalysis where a substantial portion of the cleartext is known.
Afraid not - the GPL gives you the right to change the code as long as you release the changes;
IIRC it also requires you to clearly indicate where you have made changes, which this would not appear to do. They can do this with the code which they actually wrote, (though there is nothing stopping anyone changing this back to more readable code) but not with someone elses they have taken and modified.
Just because something compiles does NOT mean that it is source according to the GPL. That you would not do development on the obfuscated gobbledegook clearly shows that the obfuscated version is NOT the preferred form for modification.
Also how is the obfuscated version going to be produced. Either feeding the source through some for of obfuscating preprocessor or decompiling the object code would simply be creating a derived work anyway.
Effectivly you'd be trying to argue that you wern't infringing copyright because you scramble and/or encrypt before you distribute. You'd need a very good lawyer to convince any judge with this kind of argument.
Kazaa suffers less and less users as people run popular AdAware software on their computers. (Which removes kazaa spyware, which kazaa checks for on each load, otherwise disables itself.)
Unless people install the fake cydoor DLL file, since apparently it simply checks for the existance of a DLL. Rather than attempting to verify that DLL too.
They did not even contact the developers of Gnucleus before they ripped off their software.
The GPL does not require such notification. Simply that if you distribute derived work of a GPL program you must provide the source. AFAIK they are making the source to their program available.
With morpheus/kazaa etc, you can't change the IP you connect to first.
You probably could, just that it is harder than with a GNUtella client which explicitally has an option to do it.The defaults for KaZaa will be either in a registry key or in the executable somewhere...
But, copyright does not mean controlled ....
But major publishing companies want it to mean control, hence we have DVD region codes, fuss about DRM, etc.
GPL is Copyrighted to the author, but freely distributable copyable (within the bounds of keeping the GPL)
Not quite GPL retains full copyright, it simply states the conditions for redistribution. In a great many cases these restrictions are not espcially "costly", in other situations such as someone wishing to use GPL code in a proprietary project they can be...
In that case it is clearly fair use, because a husband and wife have communal property.
So does a corporation. But the RIAA/MPAA would probably get very upset a corporate entity attempted to use one copy of one of their works for their entire organisation.
Time-shifting television programs.
Wonder if this could be applied to getting hold of a copy of a broadcast programme you would not otherwise be able to see for some months even years... Effectivly a "time shift" in the opposite direction from the usual understanding.
Or to otherwise subvert the attempts of broadcasting companies to partition up the market based on geography.
You completely misinterpret the "such as" wording of the law. According to 17 USC 101 [cornell.edu], "The terms 'including' and 'such as' are illustrative and not limitative" (emphasis by yerricde).
IIRC this kind of misunderstanding is the reason the people who wrote the US constitution deliberatly avoided enumerating examples...
Except for web based applications written to rely on the active desktop. Here at my company we have at least 3 that I know of. Business critical applications through which flow millions a day in orders.
These applications actually need the active desktop or were they simply written that way because the "code monkey" was copying an example which happened to use this? Is there any actual need, from a basic software engineering principle, to use active desktop (or even a Windowing system at all). You see quite a few applications which are actually running in a DOS box or an emulation of a dumb terminal... Typically the likes of stock control systems.
No, really - Corporate Personhood is one of the worst legal abuses of the 19th century. Corporations can own stock, lobby congress, and sue people, but they aren't as vulnerable as humans, they don't do jailtime, and they tend to have more money for lawyers.
Also even a rich person can be required to turn up to court in person, regardless of how many expensive lawyers they can hire. A corporation can get on with "business as usual" even whilst a court cases concerning it's very existance is ongoing.
Gee...I wonder how Daimler-Chrysler offers so many versions of the PT Cruiser? Four models, nine colors, manual or automatic transmission, three choices for "security group", side airbags or not, deep tint windows or not, three choices of exterior accents, six more options one can choose or not....let's see, that comes to 165,888 possible variations on the PT Cruiser (and I'm leaving out the "woody" and gold exteriors, I think...)
That dosn't even take into account things like possible different engine/fuel options, radios, air conditioning, etc. Some of which may only be available to the fleet buyer. The same company produces a wide range of types of car too. So even if someone just wanted to buy from this one manufacturer they have plenty of choice
Though if you want a vehicle with lots of options you go to Airbus or Boeing...
Assuming Microsoft is market driven, what is the market for a browserless OS?
Emedded systems, single task systems, etc.
The general computer user will not be too thrilled to learn that they have to download, buy. etc. a browsers (which one???).
The vast majority of "general computer users" are using computers as part of their job if they are fiddling around trying to change settings they are typically not doing their job. In quite a few cases they may not have to worry about their job, though, because they will be fired...
Imagine going to buy a car and find out that you have to buy a radio if you want it, and you have your choice of 5+ radio's, all with different features, prices, etc.
Except that car radios are simply radios. You wouldn't find that part of the engine management system was in the radio or there are bits of radio receiver hung on the side of the engine...
The WinHelp system was far superior to HTMLHelp. It could do a lot of things (such as pop-up definitions) that HTMLHelp still can't do, and a lot of help developers and end-users miss it.
The only complaints I have ever heard about WinHelp were related to the content (or more likely lack of...) Something which simply changing the interface does not really address.
I think HTMLHelp is another solid example of Microsoft making HTML rendering pervasive in the OS, not because it's a better solution, but because it gives them stronger control of the market.
Another way to claim that IE is part of the OS... Especially since HTMLHelp uses non standard HTML in the first place..
Then why do corporations have the rights of persons, at least in America?
The have some of the rights of people (apparently a "cherry picked" set) but none of the responsibilities. There is simply no equivalent of a corporate jail, not even a remmand jail or any kind of bail system.
Now, if *I* were to commit perjury in a court of law *I'd* go to jail.
It depends on the specifics of what you do and exactly how and when you get court. With something like happened with Microsoft it would probably have made more sense for those involved to be jailed and/or fined for contempt of court. No need to separatly try for purjury.
Why should a change in the operating system change the DATABASE ENGINE for MS Access? This seems like the worst kind of spaghetti code.
In the case of the MS Jet Database Engine DLL it isn't just used by Access... This is part of the problem. In order to ensure that things are "intergrated" Microsoft appear to have deliberatly written spaghetti code. If they had written well structured code it would have been easier for things such as IE to simply be removed. But they don't want this to be too easy.
IIRC some of the HTML rendering fuctions wound up in in obvious DLLs and the DLLs which mainly support HTML rendering also have some completly unrelated (but important) functions in.
Devil's advocate here, but downloading and installing several dozen freeware programs with each Windows install would really, really suck.
So your supplier/IT department would do this. Exactly as they typically do now anyway.
Yup, let's remove binutils from your linux environments... We should probably remove libc, too... There's nothing worse than non-essential code floating around...
If you are writing an emdeded system you might well want to do exactly that. Or you can provide your own alternatives to these programs...