Is it really that you need better tools, or is it that you're used to some existing tools and don't want to take the time to find and learn anything new and potentially different?
Open Source programmers definitely develop what they personally need first - if there were any blatant shortcomings in the development tools, that problem would have been fixed long before many other apps got written. I suggest you figure out how the many existing programmers are managing.
Have you learned to use Emacs? No? Then you don't get to say it's crap.
Seriously though, the tools are there - even full featured and fully-integrated IDEs - you just haven't looked, or if you have looked you've dismissed things like Eclipse out of hand for some arbitrary reason without trying them.
Could my grandmother (who is already "sort of" computer savvy) use this without calling me every five minutes?
Dunno. My Dad doesn't seem to have any problem with the Ubuntu machine I gave him, and he hadn't used a computer since Windows 95. I'm pretty sure he hasn't magically learned how to edit obscure config files or anything. It's not like he's not doing anything at all with it either - he had no problem setting up his printer, for example.
The software 3D support in X is actually damn good. On hardware that the manufacturer is willing to provide development information for (*cough* Intel *cough*), there is perfect 3D support. The lack of support on Nvidia / AMD cards is simply the fault of those companies.
Would you do the same for Windows? Would you lump Windows Vista, Windows Server 2003, Windows CE, Windows Cluster Edition, and Windows Mobile all together into one product?
There aren't really more significant Linux distros than that, and they aren't really much more redundant by purpose than that either. Sure, there are a lot of hobbyist distros and LiveCD distros, but those aren't duplicated effort - those are hobbyists playing around.
Your points #1 and #6 are hardware support issues. You chose your hardware - that makes them your problem, not someone else's problem.
You wouldn't buy a PS3 or a PowerPC Mac and expect it to run Windows. Computers with Windows pre-installed are no different - it's only guaranteed to run Windows. If you want to run some other OS, it's up to you to make sure that you buy hardware that lets you do that. That hardware isn't uncommon, hard to find, or more expensive - it's just the next box over on the shelf. Blaming other people because you wouldn't move your arm two feet and grab a different box is absurd.
In fact I'd spend a lot of the money on getting everyone (or as many projects as I could) to agree to a configuration file format that could easily be interpreted by an application. A one-size-fits-all library could be written to get the settings from file into memory and back again, then it would just be a matter of organising that data into a front-end that's meaningful for the user. The real joy is that with a standard file format, and library to support it, a rudimentary GUI for a new application could be created in minutes.
This idea keeps getting suggested, but I see no evidence that it would actually work (or even be a good idea) in practice. Can a single format really work efficiently and elegantly for every text-based config file on a Linux system? Everyone who's invented a new file format for their program thought they had a good reason to do so - do you really know more about their programs requirements than they did? Backwards compatibility is important, given that, would any distros be willing switch to your new format and break every package they upgraded? Would a generic config-editor GUI actually be any better, in practice, than a text editor is?
Does this issue even matter? Are there really any text based config files that desktop users need to edit?
As a data point: The only text-based config files I've had to edit on the Ubuntu machine I'm sitting at right now is my ~/.vimrc - and I think the world is fine without a GUI for that.
for every thing that I can do with the GUI, I want a way to access that with the command line and visa verse.
This is false. You don't actually want a way to do everything with the GUI that can be scripted. For exceptionally esoteric features that are only of interest to programmers, sysadmins, and CLI-aware power users it's perfectly reasonable to have them only be accessable though command line options or a non-GUI config file.
That's how most programs work. Even Windows with WSH and the Registry. Hell, even Windows video games have options that can only be accessed by editing some config.ini file somewhere. If you tried to fit all that stuff in the GUI, you'd never be able to find any of it.
The GPLv3 is slightly different, in that the copyright holder must explicitly notify the violator of the license termination no more than 60 days after the violation has ceased. That just adds a step for the copyright holder right before "sue for copyright infringement".
Apparently I'm wrong. The GPLv3 acts precisely the same as the GPLv2 - it just provides a way for violators who cease violation to have their licenses re-instated automatically *unless* they have been notified by the copyright holder.
The reason this case is thought of as a bad thing is it seems to imply that any copying of anything released under a free software license (the distinctions between the GPL and the Artistic License are unimportant for this point) is ipso facto not copyright infringement though it may be a violation of the license.
As far as I can tell, this is why the GPL has a termination clause - to turn license violations into copyright infringements. Since the Artistic License has no such clause, it would seem to me that this case implies nothing about a similar case with the GPL.
As I understand it, the way it's supposed to work with GPLv2 is like this:
Violator distributes Programmer's software in violation of the GPL.
Programmer sues him for copyright infringement.
Violator: Wait a second, I've got a license under the GPL.
Programmer: You accepted the GPL? If so, it immediately terminated due to violation X. So you're violating my copyright in any case.
At that point, the violator has three options:
Argue that he didn't violate the GPL, in which case the copyright holder would have to show that he did.
Argue that he has some other license to the copyrighted work.
Argue that the termination clause (or some other relevant clause) in the GPL doesn't work.
The GPLv3 is slightly different, in that the copyright holder must explicitly notify the violator of the license termination no more than 60 days after the violation has ceased. That just adds a step for the copyright holder right before "sue for copyright infringement".
Oh, just to clarify: I'm not a lawyer. Slashdot posts aren't legal advice.
the Artistic License is a nice middle ground between the GPL and the BSD
Is it? Does anyone even know what the actual results of the legal text are? As far as I can tell, it basically says "you can't modify unmodified copies" and "you can't sell this software, but you can charge money for it".
it certainly should be possible for authors to use it without being afraid that an ill-informed court will undercut their rights.
Licenses only do things that they actually say, not things that someone hopes they say. Licenses are one of the places where just trying isn't good enough - you have to get it right. The Artistic License got it wrong enough that even the Perl people aren't using it for anything new - they're using a revised version that's significantly more clear.
they hate the whole idea of open source, and this decision is a powerful tool for them.
It's only a powerful PR tool, not a powerful legal tool.
Judges and Laywers think that legal text is pretty important - they're not going to treat a ruling on the specific interpretation and enforcement of one license as applying to some other license. And that's what this ruling is - a ruling on the specifics of correcting a potential (very arguable) violation of clause #1 of the Artistic license.
I would also note that the GPLv3 has dropped all pretenses of being anything other than a contract. It doesn't state that it isn't a contract anymore, and certain clauses go well beyond copyright agreements (i.e. they give some people the right to manage terms of a copyright license independant of any copyrights of their own).
The GPLv3 is still structured as a license (or a set of licenses, with the patent clauses) rather than as a contract. It still only triggers on things that would violate copyright law (modification and distribution) rather than use. What, specifically, would make you think otherwise?
It's a matter of perception and how arguments are presented. If the Artistic License is successfully bundled in a category of licenses that include the GNU license in a legal argument, then it's possible this ruling could have an effect.
I don't think that's a terribly large risk. Unlike your average model train hobbyist or even programmer, lawyers and judges have quite a bit of legal training. You might be able to confuse them with technical details, but you're not going to get very far with "I know these two licenses have completely different terms, but they're really the same. These precedents from license A apply - you don't even need to read B.".
In this case, the reason for the ruling that the JRMI guys don't like is the lack of a termination clause in the Artistic license. They claim that this other guy violated the license terms (From Term 1: Copyright notices must be preserved), but even if that is true there still isn't a copyright violation - just a violation of a license term. If this were the GPL, any such violation would mean a license termination and therefore a copyright violation. With the Artistic License, all they get is a license dispute - which apparently doesn't get you immediate drastic court orders.
People have been complaining about the clarity of the Artistic License for years. I don't see this having any significant effect on any other Free Software licenses, especially not the GPL (since the GPL is explicitly designed as a copyright license rather than as a contract).
If you are going to be distributing *any* third party software, you're supposed to carefully read the licenses for all the software involved and understand what they mean in relation to your situation. If you are having trouble understanding the licenses, you probably need legal advice - that comes from a lawyer rather than a Slashdot post.
The specific case of GPLed RDBMS software is especially complicated. Is the interface library GPLed? Is your program linked to those libraries? If you're not sure, you probably want to contact the maintainer of the GPLed project and ask them how your usage interacts with their license.
You can. It requires that well-educated people have a comparatively large amount of social power while the economic / political establishment is somewhat in flux. It could take a long, long time - but unless we get into a global self-sustaining degenerate police state culture as described in 1984 or Brave New World we should eventually be able to get our freedom back. Hell, even the degenerate cases are escapable with a big enough natural disaster.
That doesn't mean that we should put less effort into fighting to keep the freedom that we have (and get the additional freedom that we should have), but I don't think it's quite as bleak as you make it out to be.
I guess that brings up the question of how much it's worth warping the economy to speed up our preparation for all-out war mobilization against China (since there is no other potential enemy that would require a full-scale mobilization like that). Personally, I think we'd have enough warning that would have time to ramp up supply lines and such in a war like that - and the military could easily increase their petrol stockpile to take up the slack during a ramp up period.
But that's even accepting the premise that it's potentially worth seriously warping the entire world energy market and causing untold economic damage everywhere just to marginally decrease the USA's preparation effort for a major war. That definitely doesn't seem like the sort of trade off a democratic society (or any society that made rational decisions to maximize its own wellbeing) would intentionally make.
Which really isn't a big deal since pretty much everyone runs their Windows users as Admin users (its the default).
That's not true for Vista. If it were, there would be way less annoying UAC pop-ups. And yes, breaking whole chunks of an OS security model just to install a video game is a big deal.
"Use" is when you, personally, use the program. "Redistribution" is when you give a copy to someone else. If you include a program in some sort of larger bundle, and give a copy of that bundle to someone else, that's till redistributing the program.
That's not a mobile phone, it's a tablet computer. Two indicators: A mobile phone can connect to a cellular phone network, and a mobile phone generally can be held to the side of your head for talking.
Being cavalier and saying he shouldn't worry about it till they shut him down is encouraging him to gamble with his freedom.
Gamble his freedom? If he can't talk to whoever he wants on the internet without fear of government agents kicking in his door while he sleeps, his freedom is already gone.
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Is it really that you need better tools, or is it that you're used to some existing tools and don't want to take the time to find and learn anything new and potentially different?
Open Source programmers definitely develop what they personally need first - if there were any blatant shortcomings in the development tools, that problem would have been fixed long before many other apps got written. I suggest you figure out how the many existing programmers are managing.
Have you even used a modern Ubuntu desktop? On recent and supported hardware?
There's a reason that Dell is selling Ubuntu desktops, and it's not just because there were 25 very vocal geeks on the internet or whatever.
Have you learned to use Emacs? No? Then you don't get to say it's crap.
Seriously though, the tools are there - even full featured and fully-integrated IDEs - you just haven't looked, or if you have looked you've dismissed things like Eclipse out of hand for some arbitrary reason without trying them.
Dunno. My Dad doesn't seem to have any problem with the Ubuntu machine I gave him, and he hadn't used a computer since Windows 95. I'm pretty sure he hasn't magically learned how to edit obscure config files or anything. It's not like he's not doing anything at all with it either - he had no problem setting up his printer, for example.
The software 3D support in X is actually damn good. On hardware that the manufacturer is willing to provide development information for (*cough* Intel *cough*), there is perfect 3D support. The lack of support on Nvidia / AMD cards is simply the fault of those companies.
Linux is available on kernel.org - the current version is 2.6.22.5
Would you do the same for Windows? Would you lump Windows Vista, Windows Server 2003, Windows CE, Windows Cluster Edition, and Windows Mobile all together into one product?
There aren't really more significant Linux distros than that, and they aren't really much more redundant by purpose than that either. Sure, there are a lot of hobbyist distros and LiveCD distros, but those aren't duplicated effort - those are hobbyists playing around.
Your points #1 and #6 are hardware support issues. You chose your hardware - that makes them your problem, not someone else's problem.
You wouldn't buy a PS3 or a PowerPC Mac and expect it to run Windows. Computers with Windows pre-installed are no different - it's only guaranteed to run Windows. If you want to run some other OS, it's up to you to make sure that you buy hardware that lets you do that. That hardware isn't uncommon, hard to find, or more expensive - it's just the next box over on the shelf. Blaming other people because you wouldn't move your arm two feet and grab a different box is absurd.
This idea keeps getting suggested, but I see no evidence that it would actually work (or even be a good idea) in practice. Can a single format really work efficiently and elegantly for every text-based config file on a Linux system? Everyone who's invented a new file format for their program thought they had a good reason to do so - do you really know more about their programs requirements than they did? Backwards compatibility is important, given that, would any distros be willing switch to your new format and break every package they upgraded? Would a generic config-editor GUI actually be any better, in practice, than a text editor is?
Does this issue even matter? Are there really any text based config files that desktop users need to edit?
As a data point: The only text-based config files I've had to edit on the Ubuntu machine I'm sitting at right now is my ~/.vimrc - and I think the world is fine without a GUI for that.
This is false. You don't actually want a way to do everything with the GUI that can be scripted. For exceptionally esoteric features that are only of interest to programmers, sysadmins, and CLI-aware power users it's perfectly reasonable to have them only be accessable though command line options or a non-GUI config file.
That's how most programs work. Even Windows with WSH and the Registry. Hell, even Windows video games have options that can only be accessed by editing some config.ini file somewhere. If you tried to fit all that stuff in the GUI, you'd never be able to find any of it.
Apparently I'm wrong. The GPLv3 acts precisely the same as the GPLv2 - it just provides a way for violators who cease violation to have their licenses re-instated automatically *unless* they have been notified by the copyright holder.
As far as I can tell, this is why the GPL has a termination clause - to turn license violations into copyright infringements. Since the Artistic License has no such clause, it would seem to me that this case implies nothing about a similar case with the GPL.
As I understand it, the way it's supposed to work with GPLv2 is like this:
At that point, the violator has three options:
The GPLv3 is slightly different, in that the copyright holder must explicitly notify the violator of the license termination no more than 60 days after the violation has ceased. That just adds a step for the copyright holder right before "sue for copyright infringement".
Oh, just to clarify: I'm not a lawyer. Slashdot posts aren't legal advice.
Is it? Does anyone even know what the actual results of the legal text are? As far as I can tell, it basically says "you can't modify unmodified copies" and "you can't sell this software, but you can charge money for it".
Licenses only do things that they actually say, not things that someone hopes they say. Licenses are one of the places where just trying isn't good enough - you have to get it right. The Artistic License got it wrong enough that even the Perl people aren't using it for anything new - they're using a revised version that's significantly more clear.
It's only a powerful PR tool, not a powerful legal tool.
Judges and Laywers think that legal text is pretty important - they're not going to treat a ruling on the specific interpretation and enforcement of one license as applying to some other license. And that's what this ruling is - a ruling on the specifics of correcting a potential (very arguable) violation of clause #1 of the Artistic license.
The GPLv3 is still structured as a license (or a set of licenses, with the patent clauses) rather than as a contract. It still only triggers on things that would violate copyright law (modification and distribution) rather than use. What, specifically, would make you think otherwise?
I don't think that's a terribly large risk. Unlike your average model train hobbyist or even programmer, lawyers and judges have quite a bit of legal training. You might be able to confuse them with technical details, but you're not going to get very far with "I know these two licenses have completely different terms, but they're really the same. These precedents from license A apply - you don't even need to read B.".
In this case, the reason for the ruling that the JRMI guys don't like is the lack of a termination clause in the Artistic license. They claim that this other guy violated the license terms (From Term 1: Copyright notices must be preserved), but even if that is true there still isn't a copyright violation - just a violation of a license term. If this were the GPL, any such violation would mean a license termination and therefore a copyright violation. With the Artistic License, all they get is a license dispute - which apparently doesn't get you immediate drastic court orders.
People have been complaining about the clarity of the Artistic License for years. I don't see this having any significant effect on any other Free Software licenses, especially not the GPL (since the GPL is explicitly designed as a copyright license rather than as a contract).
If you are going to be distributing *any* third party software, you're supposed to carefully read the licenses for all the software involved and understand what they mean in relation to your situation. If you are having trouble understanding the licenses, you probably need legal advice - that comes from a lawyer rather than a Slashdot post.
The specific case of GPLed RDBMS software is especially complicated. Is the interface library GPLed? Is your program linked to those libraries? If you're not sure, you probably want to contact the maintainer of the GPLed project and ask them how your usage interacts with their license.
You can. It requires that well-educated people have a comparatively large amount of social power while the economic / political establishment is somewhat in flux. It could take a long, long time - but unless we get into a global self-sustaining degenerate police state culture as described in 1984 or Brave New World we should eventually be able to get our freedom back. Hell, even the degenerate cases are escapable with a big enough natural disaster.
That doesn't mean that we should put less effort into fighting to keep the freedom that we have (and get the additional freedom that we should have), but I don't think it's quite as bleak as you make it out to be.
I guess that brings up the question of how much it's worth warping the economy to speed up our preparation for all-out war mobilization against China (since there is no other potential enemy that would require a full-scale mobilization like that). Personally, I think we'd have enough warning that would have time to ramp up supply lines and such in a war like that - and the military could easily increase their petrol stockpile to take up the slack during a ramp up period.
But that's even accepting the premise that it's potentially worth seriously warping the entire world energy market and causing untold economic damage everywhere just to marginally decrease the USA's preparation effort for a major war. That definitely doesn't seem like the sort of trade off a democratic society (or any society that made rational decisions to maximize its own wellbeing) would intentionally make.
That's not true for Vista. If it were, there would be way less annoying UAC pop-ups. And yes, breaking whole chunks of an OS security model just to install a video game is a big deal.
"Use" is when you, personally, use the program. "Redistribution" is when you give a copy to someone else. If you include a program in some sort of larger bundle, and give a copy of that bundle to someone else, that's till redistributing the program.
That's not a mobile phone, it's a tablet computer. Two indicators: A mobile phone can connect to a cellular phone network, and a mobile phone generally can be held to the side of your head for talking.
Gamble his freedom? If he can't talk to whoever he wants on the internet without fear of government agents kicking in his door while he sleeps, his freedom is already gone.