I don't think American export laws should be applicable to this. Why? Perhaps more than 10% of code was written in the United States. But is it 'American?' I would argue that under gnu, the US can't claim any sort of ownership: it's 'owned' just as much by Europeans just as much as by Americans. The U.S. government may disagree, but I think a distribution made in Germany like SuSE is ultimately outside of their jurisdiction. The problem, however, is that US (and other countries) have laws that treat software like physical property. It isn't, and eventually law will have to deal with this. Obviously, there isn't a clear precedent for this. The US and Iran may have different opinions on what the law should be, based on their concerns as nation-states, but linux itself is not national. It crosses national boundaries because it is information. Whatever the law may be, an Iranian can download linux distributions without penalty from the internet. The US government is powerless to stop this, whatever its laws may say. Ultimately, there will be some sort of conflict, a legal battle or something more, between the interests of capitalistic nation-states and the non-national, non-money based systems of information contained in phenomena like linux. The western world cannot, at present, deal with free software. There are a lot of good suggestions for your your problem here. I'm sure that you'll be able to find a solution, although I'm not sure that the US government will like what's going on, whatever you do.
Dammit. This is just what I'm talking about. Money and information. I find this disturbing. Look at the problems of the UO world, and look at how much money these things are worth to some people. The point that I take out of this is that someone isn't running a world well. The problems of UO don't have to be there. And people don't have to pay for this stuff...it would be simple to allow it to be copied. Virtual property is a choice. It's been created by people who want to subvert information to money. I think it's wrong. Information is what's valuable here, but if those who control information allow it, information will always have a price. I talked about this better in my comment under Should programmers be licensed? The point is, without eBay, money isn't real in the UO world, and UO property isn't real in this economy. This is a powerful connection. This sort of connection is exactly the sort of thing that can allow the economic interests of our system to exert their influence over information. We should be aware of this, and be ready to defend what we want to be truly free.
In my opinion, there are a lot of ways in which big businesses and our government is trying to exert control over what's going on in the realm of electronic communication. The reason they are doing this is that they cannot survive if they don't. They realize, on some level, that if there is an easily accessible forum for free communication, a lot of things in society won't work, at least not in the same way. They want to control the production of software. But they want to control the production of a lot of things. They need to protect the entire media. They need to maintain their hold on the methods of distributing information, so we'll keep on buying not only software, but cd's, movies, cars, houses, and everything else. If they don't have control over the media, of which digital media will soon enough be the most important form, they won't be able to tell us what to buy. What good are software companies when people are willing to write free code? But more than that, what good is the recording industry if we can all produce cd's on our computers(and there are plenty of musicians who are just as good as the ones they are forcing on us.) What if small groups of people can produce high-quality full-motion video, and publish it to the world via their websites? And they don't put ads in every ten minutes? We all know that this is the 'information age,' right? What this means is that what's most valuable is information. Look, ads are ways of turning media into money. That means that our system NEEDS media. BAD. And if the internet isn't exactly 'owned,' then things are going to change a lot. A lot of people don't want that. A lot of people do. I do want change. I don't know if you do. But there was a culture that believed that land could not be owned. I think that there is a culture which believes that the intellectual space which we have pieced together shouldn't be owned. This is why I switched away from a MS operating system. I don't want Bill Gates to define what MY intellectual space should be like. I like choices, and not between win95 and 98, either. I want to be able to run my archaic 386 if I want, and not be forced to upgrade to the newest thing just to run my OS. The abacus is still around. Ok, this has really turned into a rant, but the point is that licensing is a check on freedom of information, and I dislike that.
The Romans 'failed' many other reasons than 'having fun,' mostly the problems they had with successions in the empire, and the destabilization that came from the constant struggles for power. If we learn history, we won't have to repeat it. The US may have a similar fate to the romans, but we're a lot more like Republican Rome now. You should be on the lookout for a Caesar if you want to draw parallels...we're not quite to the downfall of the empire yet, in my opinion.
Has anyone recorded a demo with q3atest yet? Since that's the best way to test framerates, we should get some standard demos out there, if it's possible.
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I don't think American export laws should be applicable to this. Why? Perhaps more than 10% of code was written in the United States. But is it 'American?' I would argue that under gnu, the US can't claim any sort of ownership: it's 'owned' just as much by Europeans just as much as by Americans. The U.S. government may disagree, but I think a distribution made in Germany like SuSE is ultimately outside of their jurisdiction.
The problem, however, is that US (and other countries) have laws that treat software like physical property. It isn't, and eventually law will have to deal with this. Obviously, there isn't a clear precedent for this. The US and Iran may have different opinions on what the law should be, based on their concerns as nation-states, but linux itself is not national. It crosses national boundaries because it is information. Whatever the law may be, an Iranian can download linux distributions without penalty from the internet. The US government is powerless to stop this, whatever its laws may say.
Ultimately, there will be some sort of conflict, a legal battle or something more, between the interests of capitalistic nation-states and the non-national, non-money based systems of information contained in phenomena like linux. The western world cannot, at present, deal with free software.
There are a lot of good suggestions for your your problem here. I'm sure that you'll be able to find a solution, although I'm not sure that the US government will like what's going on, whatever you do.
Dammit. This is just what I'm talking about. Money and information. I find this disturbing. Look at the problems of the UO world, and look at how much money these things are worth to some people. The point that I take out of this is that someone isn't running a world well. The problems of UO don't have to be there. And people don't have to pay for this stuff...it would be simple to allow it to be copied. Virtual property is a choice. It's been created by people who want to subvert information to money. I think it's wrong. Information is what's valuable here, but if those who control information allow it, information will always have a price. I talked about this better in my comment under Should programmers be licensed?
The point is, without eBay, money isn't real in the UO world, and UO property isn't real in this economy. This is a powerful connection. This sort of connection is exactly the sort of thing that can allow the economic interests of our system to exert their influence over information. We should be aware of this, and be ready to defend what we want to be truly free.
In my opinion, there are a lot of ways in which big businesses and our government is trying to exert control over what's going on in the realm of electronic communication. The reason they are doing this is that they cannot survive if they don't. They realize, on some level, that if there is an easily accessible forum for free communication, a lot of things in society won't work, at least not in the same way. They want to control the production of software. But they want to control the production of a lot of things. They need to protect the entire media. They need to maintain their hold on the methods of distributing information, so we'll keep on buying not only software, but cd's, movies, cars, houses, and everything else. If they don't have control over the media, of which digital media will soon enough be the most important form, they won't be able to tell us what to buy. What good are software companies when people are willing to write free code? But more than that, what good is the recording industry if we can all produce cd's on our computers(and there are plenty of musicians who are just as good as the ones they are forcing on us.) What if small groups of people can produce high-quality full-motion video, and publish it to the world via their websites? And they don't put ads in every ten minutes? We all know that this is the 'information age,' right? What this means is that what's most valuable is information. Look, ads are ways of turning media into money. That means that our system NEEDS media. BAD. And if the internet isn't exactly 'owned,' then things are going to change a lot. A lot of people don't want that. A lot of people do. I do want change. I don't know if you do. But there was a culture that believed that land could not be owned. I think that there is a culture which believes that the intellectual space which we have pieced together shouldn't be owned. This is why I switched away from a MS operating system. I don't want Bill Gates to define what MY intellectual space should be like. I like choices, and not between win95 and 98, either. I want to be able to run my archaic 386 if I want, and not be forced to upgrade to the newest thing just to run my OS. The abacus is still around. Ok, this has really turned into a rant, but the point is that licensing is a check on freedom of information, and I dislike that.
The Romans 'failed' many other reasons than 'having fun,' mostly the problems they had with successions in the empire, and the destabilization that came from the constant struggles for power. If we learn history, we won't have to repeat it. The US may have a similar fate to the romans, but we're a lot more like Republican Rome now. You should be on the lookout for a Caesar if you want to draw parallels...we're not quite to the downfall of the empire yet, in my opinion.
Has anyone recorded a demo with q3atest yet? Since that's the best way to test framerates, we should get some standard demos out there, if it's possible.