However, do you want to pay money to your ISP so that Celine Dion can get money? (Well, she wont, but say for arguments sake that she did)
I wasn't arguing for or against compulsary licensing, but asked a question since I know a lot of other people have. I thought this was the whole point of compulsary licenses: everybody pays whether they use it or not, and the money is distrubuted according to some metric of who is downloaded the most.
I can pay money directly to the composer when I buy their CD - no need for compulsory license or other crap - and best of all - RIAA/The Enemy/trashy musicians wont get a single $ from me.
The RIAA is not the root of the problem. The laws necessary to support this model _require_ a perpetual war on free communication: if the RIAA were out of the picture then somebody else would be waging it.
'We are offended by the name given us and see it as ageist. Therefore we would like to be known as Senior Citizens'
'I am disgusted with the way old people are depicted on television. We are not all vibrant, fun-loving sex maniacs. Many of us are bitter, resentful individuals, who remember the gold old days when entertainment was bland and inoffensive.'
Certainly not Theorem - the definition of a theorem is that it can be proven to be true. And not Axiom either - an axiom is typically a statement that provides the base for a mathematical system (like "There exists and empty set"). Postulate is, AFAIK, just a synonym for axiom.
One could call it "Moore's conjecture", "Moore's oberservation", or "Moore's prediction" if one wants to be strict. The use of the term Law is not completely wrong however, there are other examples of the term being used for things that are just heuristically observed, like Zipf's Law for instance.
I Agree 100% that X clipboard copy-paste support is terrible
While I agree that the copy-paste support of most X application is terrible, I think it is important to state that it is the applications that are lacking, not X. As you write, the architecture is there for copy and paste, also for copying things other than text, it is just that most (all?) applications do not support it.
The reason is simple: if X lacked the support for this, then we would have a cache22 problem trying to get it implemented both in applications and X. However, since X does have the necessary infrastructure - even for "negotiating" when copying between applications so it can fall back on text - all that is needed is for the application developers to get their acts together.
If I was in charge of the Peren's "UserLinux" distribution, I would try to institute a rule that I wouldn't include any desktop application until it supported copy-paste decently and correctly...
The engineering calculations concluded that the crossover point in fuel consumption was at about 1500 km (1000 miles); at longer distance the suborbital flight would use less fuel than the supersonic flight.
Are you sure you didn't cut a zero off this? 1500 km is a very short flight - DC to Miami maybe. Going suborbital adds almost 20% of that just in vertical distance!
Comments like this, even drowning in mass of drivel about how paying the lowest price possible is "abusing capitalism" are what keep me coming back to this page.
Under today's version of GPL, they can release the code even if it only can be compiled with a proprietary tool (e.g. Microsoft's IDE). Then perhaps some hackers outside the company, can start cleaning up the code on their own initiative -- creating Makefiles, getting it to work with gcc, etc. Eventually, after some work is done, it becomes truly free software that you can compile and use on your Linux or Hurd box.
Under the future GPL that you propose, the software company would not be able to release the code under GPL, unless they took the expense to make it portable first. Unless they're bubbling over with excess resources and altruism, they won't do it, and I wouldn't blame them.
No, you are forgetting about how copyright law works (and so is the the grandparent when he talks about restrictions on the original author).
If the company owns the copyright on the code they release they can put it under any license they want, so putting it under "New GPL, with the added permission that it need not compile with free tools" is no problem to them. Until this freedom/restriction was removed, the software would not be under the plain GPL, and could not be combined with other GPLed software, but that does not make the license wrong.
This is similiar to the case with libraries today. If you own the copyrights on the code, then you can GPL the code even if it binds with proprietary licenses: you release it under a license of "GPL, with the extra permission that it may be linked against the XXX library". This was the case the KDE software before Qt was GPLed: it was OK to make GPLed KDE software, it just had to have the added permission that it could link to Qt (RMS even went so far as to accept that this permission was implied without being stated). The licensing issues with KDE was that some KDE programs combined their own code (which was GPL + may be linked to Qt) with vanilla GPLed code copyright to somebody else - which was not OK without the copyright holders permission.
So, to reiterate: as long as you own copyright for the entire program, you can do whatever you want. However, if you release it under the GPL with added terms, then it is not "just GPL" and cannot be combined with normal GPLed software.
I wrote a short review of The Scar for my blog. Here goes:
This is something as unusual as a fantasy book that I enjoyed reading. Except for Tolkien I postively loath fantasy - all that Eddings and Shananananana crap - which seems mostly to be stupid D&D induced masturbatory escapism recorded and published for God knows what reason. Interestingly, I read something by Mieville describing how much he hates Tolkien - I love it, especially The Silmarillion, but I can see why disliking Tolkien is probably a necessity for producing good fantasy.
This isn't about kings and dwarves and dragons, but rather set in a fantasy world with technological level fixed in early industrial, rather than medieval, times. Mieville uses this as a basis for a fastasy in the true sense of the word - not just picking off Tolkien and folk stories, but imagining a completely different world what I've read anywhere else. He has fun doing it, and so does the reader.
Still, there are things about the book that don't work out completely. Some things about it aren't really credible (most of the book is set in a floating city made up tethered ships - at times you are left wondering why one of the characters doesn't just light a match and say goodbye to the whole place. There is a reason fireships were feared in maritime combat when most hulls were wooden). The main character achieves very little, which is fine but ultimately she is completely forgetable, which is unforgivable. And while I don't mind that the book doesn't come to a text-book conclusion one is left wondering by the end of the six hundred pages why one didn't just stop reading two hundred pages earlier. It doesn't help that Mieville writes out the most compelling characters much earlier.
I think WAL*MART was about providing convenience early onbut when Sam Walton (founder and CEO) died it was taken over by a bunch of greedy-ass bastards that just want money!
I think they can still run the SCO stories, but could they not link to every damn article that Daniel Lyons writes. Like Dvorak before him, he has realized that bating Slashdot is a profitable business.
(This article is anti-SCO tilted, but only because he was pissed off that SCO used him as a mouthpiece yesterday and didn't tell him they had also sent subpoenas. He is lashing out to tell them: I'll be your mouthpiece, but then I want the scoops when I talk to you.)
If I say "Linux is ready for the desktop," that means something, and it means that most people would be happy with it.
So in terms of the grandparent poster, you have settled on saying that Linux is ready for the desktop when it is sufficient for the median user? The meaning of the term, of course, is mearly semantics. What matters is that people here use it as an argument that Linux doesn't belong on any desktop. So the argument goes something like:
"Linux is not ready for everybody's desktop, so 'Linux is not ready for the desktop', so Linux should not be deployed on anybody's desktop."
I doubt there is enough left of Aristotle to let him turn in his grave, but some half-fossilized bones are rattling somewhere every time this argument is used.
I don't know what it is about the Linux desktop that makes you "mearly tolerate it," but I'm certain you have your reasons. I'm very fond of my my window manager of choice, and I miss it every second that I am forced to use windows while away from my machines. Not to speak of how much I miss it every time I try to find some app for the windows computer that I could just have pulled up synaptic and installed in two seconds on Debian, and end up knee high in EULAs and spyware, and nagware, and crippleware. There are plenty of examples of people who are not Slashdotters whose experience of it are closer to mine than yours.
Why is universal, or even majority, admiration necessary for Linux to serve a useful purpose on the desktops of some people?
I don't agree. I don't know about the letter, but spirit of the DMCA should be to always rule for a market oppertunity at the expense of the consumers freedom. Consumer and user freedoms do not even enter into the spirit of the DMCA, where it appears so it is simply because a different industry (like the telecoms) had interests that intersected with users.
For the six millionth time, they will not cover the scouring of the shire. They have not filmed it. It won't appear in the cinema, not on the DVD. Not anywhere.
I must say, I admire anyone who has managed not to hear this by now...
I've had a friend who has installed out of 13337-ness an ssh server on his home box.
What does that have to do with "l3337-ness?" Being able to remotely log into ones home machines is a life-saver (I've lost count of the number times I've needed to get some document, or just some data like an email address.)
I couldn't imagine not running sshd. And I'm not the slightest bit "13337."
If you want the flexibility to run a much wider range of applications -- for example, professional music, professional graphics for print, a whole range of niche applications, Linux doesn't cut it. Similarly, if you need to run very complex spreadsheets, or if you want a games machine with a choice of modern games, Linux wouldn't be a sensible choice.
"Linux isn't good if you need to run applications that don't run on Linux" is a tautology. It has nothing to do with whether "Linux cuts it" or not.
I do mathematical statistics. I demand a highly flexible that can run the niche applications within my field, things like s/r, matlab/octave, mathematica, latex, etc. These applications work at least as well - or better - on Linux then they do in Windows. Several of the latest CG movies have been done entirely on Linux, by people who obviously demanded that they could use their niche applications. Somebody else in this thread described a successful deployment in a legal office.
The faulty logic here (the mythical "Linux zealot" who supposedly dominates this place is a strawman: the predominant opinion in this type of thread is always negative) is that because the answer to "Should everybody switch everything to Linux right now?" isn't "yes", then Linux doesn't "cut it". That is stupid - nobody is debating whether we should press a button and replace windows.
While not every corporate desktop could run linux today, I would bet at least 30-40% could. How on earth is that not being ready for the desktop??
I thought this way as well at first, but I don't think it's true. Patches against the kernel are (AFAIK) considered derived works of the kernel. Thus taking a patch one has written and saying "this patch is under the public domain" is considered the same as taking a modified version of the kernel and saying "this version is under the public domain". Both are violations of the GPL of previous kernel contributors.
Just because an item has no copyright and is available for free doesn't mean its not profitable. I can get any number of public domain works from Project Gutenburg but I if I really want to read them I don't. Its those companies that print the public domain material that are getting the profit from it. Even if there are vouchers someone is still going to be selling CDs, books, music, etc. (at a much cheaper price of course)
Just because people are printing and selling books with a certain text on them, does not mean they are making money off the text. People also make and sell books with empty pages - are they making money off nothing?
The world is full of low margin markets for products that include absolutely no intellectual property. Somebody is making money off nails, paperclips, cottonballs, etc etc - things anybody could make if they just invested in them. People publishing public domain books are just like that - they make whatever unspectacular margins that natural competition establishes. To say that they are making money off the texts or authors is silly.
This idea is a silly, feel-good proposal that will not compensate artists in a reasonable way. Instead, people will assign their voucher to a friend, whether or not they'd ever pay for any of their music. Cash is a very effective way to compensate artists, and consumers choosing to use their own cash (not some free voucher that every taxpayer will subsidize) is the best way to allocate these scarce dollars.
Copyright makes more economic sense then any of these other proposals. Probably, copyright is ultimately more fair to all parties involved then any of these other proposals. Copyright is also probably more effective at stimulating creativity then any of these other proposals. I can agree with these things.
But, copyright is fundamentally at odds with the information society. The idea that people should be able to control when copies are made and transfered of certain information is an essential contradiction to having free communication in the age of high speed computers. The only sustainable information society that can support copyright is an information police-state. That is why we have Palladium and TCPA, that is why we have multi-million dollar suits against thousands of Internet users, and that is why it is only going to get worse.
I am a libertarian: the idea compulsary anything turns my stomach. The idea of supporting artists through taxation systems like the one proposed is contradictory to my position in every other issue. But loath it as I may: I would rather have these things than an Internet ransacked by the tyranny and insanity of attempting to treat bits and bytes as if they were physical things.
Without copyright Microsoft could take GPL'ed code, slap it in their software and sell it.
How can they sell it without any copyright?
Without copyright I, as a painter, could post images on a message board and some 15 year old could rip it off and win some art contest with it (ok, so this has happened anyways.)
Laws against plagiarism do not depend on copyright law, so this is statement is nonsense. (The kid cannot turn in work by Leonardo Da Vinci and claim to be the painter even though that work has no copyright.)
Vouchers? I'm not sure if I can use any adjectives to describe this without a lot of %&#@! To put it bluntly this idea is just dumb. If I want to be a n artist I shouldn't have to register with the government to get re-imbersed. "Sorry Mr. John Doe, but your song 'Fuck Bush' disqualify's you from recieving vouchers." Hell, forget censorship, perhaps the makers of GTA3 will just be ineligable for vouchers.
I tend to agree, but this proposal is not that bad compared to most "compensation via government" schemes. The choice on allocating the voucher would be individual - the governments roll is rather limited (the governments roll here is to put a gun to our heads and tell us we have to spend $100 on some artist).
$40k a year? Music, ok, but movies? With budgets in the hundreds of millions whose going to be getting all that capital? What a mess.
Eben Moglen made a very good analogy about this: pyramids. Multimillion dollar movies are pretty cool, but pyramids are much cooler. Yet we will not return to a society with human dieties and indentured mass servitude so that more pyramids can be built. Perhaps not having any more high budget movies isn't that great a price to pay for not getting stuck in an unsustainable and unfree society.
In fact, once he was recieving the money, Linus could probably not work on the Kernel at all. The AFV would compel his work to be the public domain, but any changes to the kernel have to licensed under the GPL.
Slashdot Mirror
However, do you want to pay money to your ISP so that Celine Dion can get money? (Well, she wont, but say for arguments sake that she did)
.
I wasn't arguing for or against compulsary licensing, but asked a question since I know a lot of other people have. I thought this was the whole point of compulsary licenses: everybody pays whether they use it or not, and the money is distrubuted according to some metric of who is downloaded the most.
I can pay money directly to the composer when I buy their CD - no need for compulsory license or other crap - and best of all - RIAA/The Enemy/trashy musicians wont get a single $ from me
The RIAA is not the root of the problem. The laws necessary to support this model _require_ a perpetual war on free communication: if the RIAA were out of the picture then somebody else would be waging it.
If you're gonna tax everyone, then you can't complain when they take what they paid for.
Isn't this exactly the compulsary licensing the that EFF and company have been asking for? I thought people liked that...
Are you claiming that the word virus has a different plural form depending on whether you are talking about biological viruses or computer viruses?
'We are offended by the name given us and see it as ageist. Therefore we would like to be known as Senior Citizens'
'I am disgusted with the way old people are depicted on television. We are not all vibrant, fun-loving sex maniacs. Many of us are bitter, resentful individuals, who remember the gold old days when entertainment was bland and inoffensive.'
Certainly not Theorem - the definition of a theorem is that it can be proven to be true. And not Axiom either - an axiom is typically a statement that provides the base for a mathematical system (like "There exists and empty set"). Postulate is, AFAIK, just a synonym for axiom.
One could call it "Moore's conjecture", "Moore's oberservation", or "Moore's prediction" if one wants to be strict. The use of the term Law is not completely wrong however, there are other examples of the term being used for things that are just heuristically observed, like Zipf's Law for instance.
I Agree 100% that X clipboard copy-paste support is terrible
While I agree that the copy-paste support of most X application is terrible, I think it is important to state that it is the applications that are lacking, not X. As you write, the architecture is there for copy and paste, also for copying things other than text, it is just that most (all?) applications do not support it.
The reason is simple: if X lacked the support for this, then we would have a cache22 problem trying to get it implemented both in applications and X. However, since X does have the necessary infrastructure - even for "negotiating" when copying between applications so it can fall back on text - all that is needed is for the application developers to get their acts together.
If I was in charge of the Peren's "UserLinux" distribution, I would try to institute a rule that I wouldn't include any desktop application until it supported copy-paste decently and correctly...
The engineering calculations concluded that the crossover point in fuel consumption was at about 1500 km (1000 miles); at longer distance the suborbital flight would use less fuel than the supersonic flight.
Are you sure you didn't cut a zero off this? 1500 km is a very short flight - DC to Miami maybe. Going suborbital adds almost 20% of that just in vertical distance!
Thank you.
Comments like this, even drowning in mass of drivel about how paying the lowest price possible is "abusing capitalism" are what keep me coming back to this page.
Under today's version of GPL, they can release the code even if it only can be compiled with a proprietary tool (e.g. Microsoft's IDE). Then perhaps some hackers outside the company, can start cleaning up the code on their own initiative -- creating Makefiles, getting it to work with gcc, etc. Eventually, after some work is done, it becomes truly free software that you can compile and use on your Linux or Hurd box.
Under the future GPL that you propose, the software company would not be able to release the code under GPL, unless they took the expense to make it portable first. Unless they're bubbling over with excess resources and altruism, they won't do it, and I wouldn't blame them.
No, you are forgetting about how copyright law works (and so is the the grandparent when he talks about restrictions on the original author).
If the company owns the copyright on the code they release they can put it under any license they want, so putting it under "New GPL, with the added permission that it need not compile with free tools" is no problem to them. Until this freedom/restriction was removed, the software would not be under the plain GPL, and could not be combined with other GPLed software, but that does not make the license wrong.
This is similiar to the case with libraries today. If you own the copyrights on the code, then you can GPL the code even if it binds with proprietary licenses: you release it under a license of "GPL, with the extra permission that it may be linked against the XXX library". This was the case the KDE software before Qt was GPLed: it was OK to make GPLed KDE software, it just had to have the added permission that it could link to Qt (RMS even went so far as to accept that this permission was implied without being stated). The licensing issues with KDE was that some KDE programs combined their own code (which was GPL + may be linked to Qt) with vanilla GPLed code copyright to somebody else - which was not OK without the copyright holders permission.
So, to reiterate: as long as you own copyright for the entire program, you can do whatever you want. However, if you release it under the GPL with added terms, then it is not "just GPL" and cannot be combined with normal GPLed software.
I wrote a short review of The Scar for my blog. Here goes:
This is something as unusual as a fantasy book that I enjoyed reading. Except for Tolkien I postively loath fantasy - all that Eddings and Shananananana crap - which seems mostly to be stupid D&D induced masturbatory escapism recorded and published for God knows what reason. Interestingly, I read something by Mieville describing how much he hates Tolkien - I love it, especially The Silmarillion, but I can see why disliking Tolkien is probably a necessity for producing good fantasy.
This isn't about kings and dwarves and dragons, but rather set in a fantasy world with technological level fixed in early industrial, rather than medieval, times. Mieville uses this as a basis for a fastasy in the true sense of the word - not just picking off Tolkien and folk stories, but imagining a completely different world what I've read anywhere else. He has fun doing it, and so does the reader.
Still, there are things about the book that don't work out completely. Some things about it aren't really credible (most of the book is set in a floating city made up tethered ships - at times you are left wondering why one of the characters doesn't just light a match and say goodbye to the whole place. There is a reason fireships were feared in maritime combat when most hulls were wooden). The main character achieves very little, which is fine but ultimately she is completely forgetable, which is unforgivable. And while I don't mind that the book doesn't come to a text-book conclusion one is left wondering by the end of the six hundred pages why one didn't just stop reading two hundred pages earlier. It doesn't help that Mieville writes out the most compelling characters much earlier.
I think WAL*MART was about providing convenience early onbut when Sam Walton (founder and CEO) died it was taken over by a bunch of greedy-ass bastards that just want money!
Read... Atlas... Shrugged... NOW!
I think they can still run the SCO stories, but could they not link to every damn article that Daniel Lyons writes. Like Dvorak before him, he has realized that bating Slashdot is a profitable business.
(This article is anti-SCO tilted, but only because he was pissed off that SCO used him as a mouthpiece yesterday and didn't tell him they had also sent subpoenas. He is lashing out to tell them: I'll be your mouthpiece, but then I want the scoops when I talk to you.)
If I say "Linux is ready for the desktop," that means something, and it means that most people would be happy with it.
So in terms of the grandparent poster, you have settled on saying that Linux is ready for the desktop when it is sufficient for the median user? The meaning of the term, of course, is mearly semantics. What matters is that people here use it as an argument that Linux doesn't belong on any desktop. So the argument goes something like:
"Linux is not ready for everybody's desktop, so 'Linux is not ready for the desktop', so Linux should not be deployed on anybody's desktop."
I doubt there is enough left of Aristotle to let him turn in his grave, but some half-fossilized bones are rattling somewhere every time this argument is used.
I don't know what it is about the Linux desktop that makes you "mearly tolerate it," but I'm certain you have your reasons. I'm very fond of my my window manager of choice, and I miss it every second that I am forced to use windows while away from my machines. Not to speak of how much I miss it every time I try to find some app for the windows computer that I could just have pulled up synaptic and installed in two seconds on Debian, and end up knee high in EULAs and spyware, and nagware, and crippleware. There are plenty of examples of people who are not Slashdotters whose experience of it are closer to mine than yours.
Why is universal, or even majority, admiration necessary for Linux to serve a useful purpose on the desktops of some people?
I don't agree. I don't know about the letter, but spirit of the DMCA should be to always rule for a market oppertunity at the expense of the consumers freedom. Consumer and user freedoms do not even enter into the spirit of the DMCA, where it appears so it is simply because a different industry (like the telecoms) had interests that intersected with users.
For the six millionth time, they will not cover the scouring of the shire. They have not filmed it. It won't appear in the cinema, not on the DVD. Not anywhere.
I must say, I admire anyone who has managed not to hear this by now...
"They asked for just a simple ruling from the judge, and he interpreted the DMCA correctly."
I guess that depends on what you mean by correctly...
Doesn't the ruling that Lexmark could not use the DMCA to protect against RE-ing the cartridge protect you as well?
Offtopic, but last time I checked changing your sig actually changed it in old messages as well.
Actually, that is on topic. Slashdot has a memory hole for old sigs!
I've had a friend who has installed out of 13337-ness an ssh server on his home box.
What does that have to do with "l3337-ness?" Being able to remotely log into ones home machines is a life-saver (I've lost count of the number times I've needed to get some document, or just some data like an email address.)
I couldn't imagine not running sshd. And I'm not the slightest bit "13337."
If you want the flexibility to run a much wider range of applications -- for example, professional music, professional graphics for print, a whole range of niche applications, Linux doesn't cut it. Similarly, if you need to run very complex spreadsheets, or if you want a games machine with a choice of modern games, Linux wouldn't be a sensible choice.
"Linux isn't good if you need to run applications that don't run on Linux" is a tautology. It has nothing to do with whether "Linux cuts it" or not.
I do mathematical statistics. I demand a highly flexible that can run the niche applications within my field, things like s/r, matlab/octave, mathematica, latex, etc. These applications work at least as well - or better - on Linux then they do in Windows. Several of the latest CG movies have been done entirely on Linux, by people who obviously demanded that they could use their niche applications. Somebody else in this thread described a successful deployment in a legal office.
The faulty logic here (the mythical "Linux zealot" who supposedly dominates this place is a strawman: the predominant opinion in this type of thread is always negative) is that because the answer to "Should everybody switch everything to Linux right now?" isn't "yes", then Linux doesn't "cut it". That is stupid - nobody is debating whether we should press a button and replace windows.
While not every corporate desktop could run linux today, I would bet at least 30-40% could. How on earth is that not being ready for the desktop??
I thought this way as well at first, but I don't think it's true. Patches against the kernel are (AFAIK) considered derived works of the kernel. Thus taking a patch one has written and saying "this patch is under the public domain" is considered the same as taking a modified version of the kernel and saying "this version is under the public domain". Both are violations of the GPL of previous kernel contributors.
Just because an item has no copyright and is available for free doesn't mean its not profitable. I can get any number of public domain works from Project Gutenburg but I if I really want to read them I don't. Its those companies that print the public domain material that are getting the profit from it. Even if there are vouchers someone is still going to be selling CDs, books, music, etc. (at a much cheaper price of course)
Just because people are printing and selling books with a certain text on them, does not mean they are making money off the text. People also make and sell books with empty pages - are they making money off nothing?
The world is full of low margin markets for products that include absolutely no intellectual property. Somebody is making money off nails, paperclips, cottonballs, etc etc - things anybody could make if they just invested in them. People publishing public domain books are just like that - they make whatever unspectacular margins that natural competition establishes. To say that they are making money off the texts or authors is silly.
This idea is a silly, feel-good proposal that will not compensate artists in a reasonable way. Instead, people will assign their voucher to a friend, whether or not they'd ever pay for any of their music. Cash is a very effective way to compensate artists, and consumers choosing to use their own cash (not some free voucher that every taxpayer will subsidize) is the best way to allocate these scarce dollars.
Copyright makes more economic sense then any of these other proposals. Probably, copyright is ultimately more fair to all parties involved then any of these other proposals. Copyright is also probably more effective at stimulating creativity then any of these other proposals. I can agree with these things.
But, copyright is fundamentally at odds with the information society. The idea that people should be able to control when copies are made and transfered of certain information is an essential contradiction to having free communication in the age of high speed computers. The only sustainable information society that can support copyright is an information police-state. That is why we have Palladium and TCPA, that is why we have multi-million dollar suits against thousands of Internet users, and that is why it is only going to get worse.
I am a libertarian: the idea compulsary anything turns my stomach. The idea of supporting artists through taxation systems like the one proposed is contradictory to my position in every other issue. But loath it as I may: I would rather have these things than an Internet ransacked by the tyranny and insanity of attempting to treat bits and bytes as if they were physical things.
Just about anything is better than copyright.
Without copyright Microsoft could take GPL'ed code, slap it in their software and sell it.
How can they sell it without any copyright?
Without copyright I, as a painter, could post images on a message board and some 15 year old could rip it off and win some art contest with it (ok, so this has happened anyways.)
Laws against plagiarism do not depend on copyright law, so this is statement is nonsense. (The kid cannot turn in work by Leonardo Da Vinci and claim to be the painter even though that work has no copyright.)
Vouchers? I'm not sure if I can use any adjectives to describe this without a lot of %&#@! To put it bluntly this idea is just dumb. If I want to be a n artist I shouldn't have to register with the government to get re-imbersed. "Sorry Mr. John Doe, but your song 'Fuck Bush' disqualify's you from recieving vouchers." Hell, forget censorship, perhaps the makers of GTA3 will just be ineligable for vouchers.
I tend to agree, but this proposal is not that bad compared to most "compensation via government" schemes. The choice on allocating the voucher would be individual - the governments roll is rather limited (the governments roll here is to put a gun to our heads and tell us we have to spend $100 on some artist).
$40k a year? Music, ok, but movies? With budgets in the hundreds of millions whose going to be getting all that capital? What a mess.
Eben Moglen made a very good analogy about this: pyramids. Multimillion dollar movies are pretty cool, but pyramids are much cooler. Yet we will not return to a society with human dieties and indentured mass servitude so that more pyramids can be built. Perhaps not having any more high budget movies isn't that great a price to pay for not getting stuck in an unsustainable and unfree society.
In fact, once he was recieving the money, Linus could probably not work on the Kernel at all. The AFV would compel his work to be the public domain, but any changes to the kernel have to licensed under the GPL.