... because they pulled the number out of their you-know-what? The article makes the claim, but the article that it links to (http://idealab.talkingpointsmemo.com/2011/09/mit-launches-new-graphene-laboratory.php as its' source) doesn't make any such claims.
They want to produce rolls of the stuff. Sure, 1 square kilometer of material could be 1km * 1km, or 10km * 100m, or 100km * 10m, but it's more likely to be a strip 1,000km * 1m, or 10,000km * 10cm than 1km * 1km...
For stuff such as php or javascript that has to be distributed, it can be shown that the code is the same if necessary. For c/c++, and to a lesser extent java, it's more of a problem... but this is the same with any compiled code, whether RPL or GPL or prorietary licensed code where the licensee has broken the terms of the license.
Corporations (just like all coders) would have an incentive to do fixes and feature adds the proper way, since it eases their burden for maintenance, etc. It's not like they are giving away their "secret sauce" or anything, right? Their suggestions and extra eyeballs - financially incentivized eyeballs to actually get the code fixed by the original author so as to save them money in both the short and long term - is a good carrot to offer via the RPL.
As for derived works, no, you can't, same as you can't derive your own Harry Potter book. And there's no need to, as I point out in the Q & A. Why would you want to waste your time making and maintaining a "derived work" of some software that works perfectly fine for your use, and that you can include in any software you ship, and that if you ship a binary, you do not need to disclose any source, and that you can charge for?
I don't think the software license should ever become the primary consideration when laying down the architecture of a new project.
And yet it is a major consideration for any project, because it dictates not only what resources you have available, but also what limits you can do to finance the project. Selling software+services is more profitable than selling services alone.
You're also requiring a certain understanding of Comp.Sci/Software Eng. before you can effectively interact with the licence. That's going to raise the barrier to entry to the free software world, and in particular lock out a great many kids and hobbyists who might otherwise have become great coders. If you're really worried about Free Software losing talent, that should be a major concern.
Less understanding than with the GPL. For example, you can link RPL'd code with anything you want - the RPL doesn't impose any restrictions. If there are restrictions, they're from other licenses such as the GPL, which points out an area where copyleft licenses such as the GPL are less free.
Anyone who can't figure out how to call a function in another file, but needs to do a spaghetti-code-style copy-pasta of the function body, shouldn't be writing software anyway. Same as anyone who can't do inheritance should be learning the basics of OOP. If they can write
printf("Hello, world!");
they have enough knowledge to
include "gpc.php";
$sess_id = gpc_cookie("sess_id", "");
$new_fname=gpc_post("new_fname", "");
$uname=gpc_post("usr_name", "Insensitive Clod");
Or if they don't like using the prefixes, make a shim file with their own functions that call gpc_cookie, gpc_post, gpc_get, etc.
The RPL doesn't lock them out. Unlike closed-source software, they can see the actual code, so they don't have to guess what's going on inside some "black box". But like closed-source software, they don't have to reveal their source to anyone unless they want to, so there's less of a hassle with arguing about distribution.
Well, if people are going to lie, they're going to lie no matter what, right?
The "inability to make derived works" is dealt with in more detail here - in particular answers 7 and 8.
It's really not a roadblock in almost all cases. It ensures that the core code stays modular and more stable, and that people who want to add features either use inheritance or their own api to call the functions in the RPL-licensed code. This *should* help fight bloat and the "OMG THE NEW RELEASE FUBARS MY CODE!" we see all the time. Please check it out in more detail to see why it avoids the law of perverse consequences better in several ways.
The alternative, of course, is to bundle your code with code from a more permissive license instead of GPL code.
Which let's face it, doesn't make it any more likely that you are going to make any more money from it. You'll still be offering support contracts.
On the bright side though, you will have made it very easy for the likes of Microsoft and Apple to take the code, rebrand it, tweak it enough to break compatibility, release it under their closed licence, and then throw marketing at the issue until no-one even uses your original software, or even remembers that you wrote it.
The Respect the Programmer License addresses that issue. Anyone can use, for example, a library you wrote, but all modifications to the file have to be made by the original author. So, no breaking compatibility, and any suggestions or feedback they give benefit everyone.
... and since the code IS viewable, it's easier to make those suggestions ("there's a double free on line 42 of foo-2011-09-21.C")
Oh, I'm not saying the free software is going to die - quite the contrary, I think it has a bright future (I *HOPE* it has a bright future). It's just the "getting there" that's the hard part, because right now, the financial mechanisms are lacking; that has to be fixed, and that's partially a licensing issue.
We need solutions to that problem, because otherwise, we're always going to have quality issues (that, plus the constant forking going on).
Anyone who spends 500 Wii points ($5) for the Opera Wii browser can play pretty much any flash game on the net. The HTML5 stuff? You'll be lucky if it even loads.
HTML5 fixes a few problems, but it's NOT a gaming platform any more than a teaspoon is a shovel.
Thanks for replying on these specific points - they're the REAL issues nowadays.
The major problem I see in the future is that independent developers can't monetize their code if it uses GPL code as well.
There's a lot to talk about in that sentence.
Firstly, saying "can't" is too strong. There are lots of people making good money from offering support services. I know you'd like to see a better solution than software support, but that doesn't mean that no options currently exist.
"Oh, we can sell support services", as I pointed out, doesn't work for more than 99.9% of all projects.
The alternative, of course, is to bundle your code with code from a more permissive license instead of GPL code.
We're also seeing developers being paid to work on free software projects by organisations that use the software. Which not only keeps the devs working on the project, but also means they can work longer and harder. Swings and roundabouts, I feel.
You might want to ask Larry Wall about how that worked out with Perl. There are very few free projects that companies make a consistent commitment to funding. Very few. Most are done by devs in their free time.
I'm not aware of the support model drying up, particularly. MySQL were doing very nicely from it until Oracle bought them out. RedHat still are, so far as I can tell. It's not a guaranteed income stream, certainly. But then what is? Particularly in the realm of software?
MySQL was dual-licensing their code, remember? Near the end of their independent existence, they had the same model Oracle is moving back to - a free version, and a proprietary version with extra features. They could only do that because they owned all the code, unlike most projects.
Redhat is the exception. It didn't work for Mandrake/Mandriva/Mageia they are now, even though at the time they had one of the best distros around. Novell... well, they had to lay off devs as a cost-cutting measure because without Microsoft subsidizing the cost of SLED licenses to the tune of 75% to 100%, support services weren't viable. And now look where they are (disclosure - written on opensuse 11.4 on my DTR laptop). Ubuntu? Still not making a profit, despite hijacking revenue from independent devs (http://lwn.net/Articles/428196/). Slackware? Not many of us remember when it was *the* distro.
he fundamental problem here is that, as a business plan or a career path, deciding to write free software for a living is always going to suck . There's no getting around that. In the majority of cases you're going to be better off getting a paying job and doing the free software development as a hobby. Changing the licence is not going to fix that.
I think that it *might* be possible. Only time will tell.
So the alternatives that I see are BSD/MIT/RtPL and other licenses that let you use source that you can read, or licensing code.
So, just to be clear: by "source that you can read", you mean a licence that doesn't require you to release all the source, so that you can keep certain modules closed and proprietary? And by "licensing code" you mean re-licensing code, so you can take an existing project, modify it and sell it as closed, proprietary software?
If someone releases their code under the BSD/MIT/RtPL(RPL) licenses, they WANT the code re-used in both open and closed projects. They recognize that giving people $$$ incentives to use their code will result in them getting more code used, and better feedback... and that they too can monetize their own code by creating closed products out of that same code.
Remember all those ads that say "past performance is no guarantee of future performance?" In Stallman's case, we have the FSF anti-android FUD attack last month claiming that device manufacturers are at risk because the kernel is GPLv2, and now this latest "we're more open". The man seems to be grasping at anything to remain relevant. Fact is, almost nobody cares about his "copyrights are evil" agenda any more (and the obvious one - he loses everything if copyright becomes unenforceable, which means that copyrights are of utility even to him).
As for his personal issues, it's all collateral stuff that anyone who checks out his past behaviour in trying to understand why he's doing what he's doing is going to come across. And he comes across as a control freak with an anti-business agenda, dubious hygiene, and a misogynist. "Oh, it's not because he's intentionally that way, he just doesn't care about such things" is a poor excuse for trying to justify antisocial passive-aggressive behaviour, more often seen in the late teens/early 20s.
But seriously, how relevant is the GPLv3? Not much. How relevant is the AGPL? Even less so. The world is moving on, and we have bigger fish to fry.
Well, the GPL puts restrictions on freedoms #0, #1, #2 and #3.
If I want to run a distributed version of my program across a bunch of servers owned by other people, that links to GPL code, I am not free to unless I also offer to give them the code. So I am not free to run the code as I wish (some conditions do in fact apply #0, #1)
Ditto for #2, in that I can only distribute copies if I also offer to distribute the source, so again my freedom is being restricted.
Ditto for #3, for modified copies.
Whether this is good or bad is beside the point - the fact is that the restrictions do exist, and that in a distributed world (remember those "yay cloud" commercials?) where your code is sometimes going to be sitting on a server, and sometimes distributed on many people's computers while it runs your tasks in a shared, sandboxed environment, the GPL is a problem.
But whether it's a problem or not is irrelevant to my original point - Stallman is being hypocritical when he points fingers at other licenses and says his is "freer." It all depends on what hat you're wearing at the time:-)
Now as to my personal feelings, up until he started with the Andoid FUD last month, I had zero issues with him. It's only after he started that I did my "due diligence", and I am underwhelmed. The guy is simply well past his best before date, and the evidence is that the AGPL and GPL3 are going in the wrong direction.
The major problem I see in the future is that independent developers can't monetize their code if it uses GPL code as well. Eventually, this means a smaller pool of developers, or developers moving to where the money is (we're seeing the latter already - iApple development makes more $ for developers than Android, and it's going to stay that way. The "oh, we'll sell free apps and make $ of the ads we serve" will dry out same as the "oh we'll make money off support" did, when everyone is copying everyone else.
So the alternatives that I see are BSD/MIT/RtPL and other licenses that let you use source that you can read, or licensing code.
Whether the restrictions are onerous or not is simply not relevant. The fact is that, like most licenses, the GPL does contain restrictions, including restrictions on distributing modified source. So any claim that the GPL doesn't restrict people is false.
In this case, Stallman claiming that other people distribute software that isn't free is hypocritical, because his isn't free either. His practice of demanding copyright assignment shows how little he respects other programmers' freedom as well.
The problem with that is that we all know what end users are like. People should be able to install their own software, their own hardware, and their own OS... but those situations can be addressed by the person having the right to have their own keys in addition to any existing keys. This way, multiple users can be given different rights on the same machine, for example.
... and I had quoted the definition on the front page, said multiple times that was what I was quoting (""No - look at the definition on the front page of the FSF web site" (which you also quoted, btw), included the link to that page (which you also quoted), and quoted it word for word.
It was on that basis, said that both the FSF and Stallman are being misleading and hypocritical, and don't even meet their standard for what "free software" is.
That they bury a different definition elsewhere on their site that is not as comprehensive as the definition plastered in big letters on their front page is just another example of their misleading tactics. Trying to say "it's a marketing blurb" kind of makes my point for me, doesn't it?
After all, what is marketing, in this particular case, but bait-and-switch?
If it said "distribute" instead of "use" then I could maybe see your point.
Here are the freedoms on the front page (notice the bolded one - it means distribution):
You deserve to use software that is:-
1. free from restriction
2. free to share and copy
3. free to learn and adapt
4. free to work with others
you deserve free software.
See my point? In this case "share" software == "distribute" software.
My point is, again, that they are being hypocrites when they say people "deserve free software", and yet software under the GPL is not free, not for the developer, and not for the user.
It's okay to have licenses that contain restrictions such as the GPL, but to claim that they're "free as in free speech", and to blatantly market them as such is dishonest.
They should be split up and forced to compete on merits
Are you kidding. Then NOT being split up is great. It means that Steve Ballmer can continue to wreck EVERYTHING, rather than just one portion of the business.
Who can forget Ballmer's Greatest Hits, from the Monkey Dance to the KIN, and the Next of KIN, and everything in between...
Do you really want to lose that sort of entertainment? (though it would be fun to see the various broken-up Baby Ballmers suing each other).
He's added 2 more sentences to the article, trying to bury his assertion after all the negative reaction, but too many people saw the original and commented on it.
Hopefully Kaspersky Lab (the owners of threatpost.com) will be able to extract some sort of apology, or at least a clarification that edits done after the post should be clearly marked as such.
If you don't want to use the feedback form, you can email nicole.lawler, greg.sabey, or alejandro.arango, all at kaspersky dot com.
Let's see... last week, I called Bruce Perens a liar because... he lied. His "new covenant license" is not new (it's from his failed kiloboot.com project from February 2008) and he won't answer why he wants copyright assignments, same as kiloboot, when Novell vs SCO proved they're not necessary to protect a commercial product, etc.
Last month, I called out the FSF for generating FUD about Android and Linux using the GPLv2 and trying to get people to put pressure on the Linux devs to "upgrade" to GPLv3, which would, if it were to happen, immediately cause Google to ship their BSD+Android alternative stack.
And lastly, I called out RMS for his own anti-Android/pro-GPLv3 attacks. Yes, that makes me really evil. I should instead be good and ignore the truth. Riiiight.....
The fact is that humans are dangerous, even when compared to a pack of dogs. It's one reason I trust my dogs a lot more than I trust most people - dogs have a much simpler (and better) concept of loyalty that I happen to prefer.
Linus has already said he has zero interest in migrating to the GPLv3 - and for a very good reason. It wouldn't be possible to use the kernel in devices that require that core services be secured properly. It would result in the immediate moving of projects like Android to the BSD kernel (and you can be that Google has such a project ready to do a drop-in swap-out).
Stallman and co have been unleashing a lot of verbal diarrhea because the GPLv3 simply isn't interesting to most devs - and that means that they're not able to push their social agenda.
However, the fact is that people want stuff that works more than they want stuff that's "free as in the restricted world or RMS"... it's sad, because even Vista is now more stable than KDE... KDE craps out on me several times a day, despite always updating. Openbox and LXDE? Updates killed them both a month ago. Gnome? Don't even ask.
I still use linux/KDE for more than 95% of my work, but the recent emphasis on quick release cycles, with the sacrifice of stability, coupled with the difficulty of devs to monetize their code under the GPL, means that we lose most of the supposed benefits of "many eyes." That's the problem with people who try to shove their agendas down your throat in a dishonest manner - the law of unintended consequences ends up biting back hard.
We need to:
find ways for coders to monetize their code and not just "sell services"
slow down the current release cycle madness - what good are features when it's not stable?
Just my 2 cents. (and thanks for the compliments, and for the discussion in general. I'm not trying to "blow you off" or anything).
But are those bugs being bred in the lab by researchers just to be led to the slaughter for a nice payday? Yes, yes they are. And that's a good thing.
There is ZERO evidence that the people writing the software cited in the article are intentionally introducing bugs. This guy should either produce a smidgen of evidence or FOADIAF.
There is a difference between a joke and making fun of someone. Which is what the OP was doing. I would think geeks would be sensitive to that.
All jokes ultimately make fun of somebody. It's the nature of the beast^human sense of humor.
You're either making fun of a 3rd party, or yourself, or the listener. We learn that at a really young age.
Q: Why did the chicken cross the road?
A: To get to the other side.
Gets bystanders to laugh at the kid who missed the "obvious" answer, or pokes fun at the sole listener because "gee, aren't you stupid!"
"Take my wife, please!"
Making fun of both his wife and himself.
Slapstick, the latest episode of Big Bang Theory or 2-1/2 Men, Hitler jokes... it's all the same.
It's an evolutionary adaptation to channel our aggression, because we really are the most dangerous animal on the planet - unlike pack animals in the wild, we don't generally know when to stop. Notice how we smile and bare our teeth when we laugh? Try doing that to a great ape.
Slashdot Mirror
They want to produce rolls of the stuff. Sure, 1 square kilometer of material could be 1km * 1km, or 10km * 100m, or 100km * 10m, but it's more likely to be a strip 1,000km * 1m, or 10,000km * 10cm than 1km * 1km ...
For stuff such as php or javascript that has to be distributed, it can be shown that the code is the same if necessary. For c/c++, and to a lesser extent java, it's more of a problem ... but this is the same with any compiled code, whether RPL or GPL or prorietary licensed code where the licensee has broken the terms of the license.
Corporations (just like all coders) would have an incentive to do fixes and feature adds the proper way, since it eases their burden for maintenance, etc. It's not like they are giving away their "secret sauce" or anything, right? Their suggestions and extra eyeballs - financially incentivized eyeballs to actually get the code fixed by the original author so as to save them money in both the short and long term - is a good carrot to offer via the RPL.
As for derived works, no, you can't, same as you can't derive your own Harry Potter book. And there's no need to, as I point out in the Q & A. Why would you want to waste your time making and maintaining a "derived work" of some software that works perfectly fine for your use, and that you can include in any software you ship, and that if you ship a binary, you do not need to disclose any source, and that you can charge for?
And yet it is a major consideration for any project, because it dictates not only what resources you have available, but also what limits you can do to finance the project. Selling software+services is more profitable than selling services alone.
Less understanding than with the GPL. For example, you can link RPL'd code with anything you want - the RPL doesn't impose any restrictions. If there are restrictions, they're from other licenses such as the GPL, which points out an area where copyleft licenses such as the GPL are less free.
Anyone who can't figure out how to call a function in another file, but needs to do a spaghetti-code-style copy-pasta of the function body, shouldn't be writing software anyway. Same as anyone who can't do inheritance should be learning the basics of OOP. If they can write
printf("Hello, world!");
they have enough knowledge to
include "gpc.php";
$sess_id = gpc_cookie("sess_id", "");
$new_fname=gpc_post("new_fname", "");
$uname=gpc_post("usr_name", "Insensitive Clod");
Or if they don't like using the prefixes, make a shim file with their own functions that call gpc_cookie, gpc_post, gpc_get, etc.
The RPL doesn't lock them out. Unlike closed-source software, they can see the actual code, so they don't have to guess what's going on inside some "black box". But like closed-source software, they don't have to reveal their source to anyone unless they want to, so there's less of a hassle with arguing about distribution.
Well, if people are going to lie, they're going to lie no matter what, right?
The "inability to make derived works" is dealt with in more detail here - in particular answers 7 and 8.
It's really not a roadblock in almost all cases. It ensures that the core code stays modular and more stable, and that people who want to add features either use inheritance or their own api to call the functions in the RPL-licensed code. This *should* help fight bloat and the "OMG THE NEW RELEASE FUBARS MY CODE!" we see all the time. Please check it out in more detail to see why it avoids the law of perverse consequences better in several ways.
The Respect the Programmer License addresses that issue. Anyone can use, for example, a library you wrote, but all modifications to the file have to be made by the original author. So, no breaking compatibility, and any suggestions or feedback they give benefit everyone.
Oh, I'm not saying the free software is going to die - quite the contrary, I think it has a bright future (I *HOPE* it has a bright future). It's just the "getting there" that's the hard part, because right now, the financial mechanisms are lacking; that has to be fixed, and that's partially a licensing issue.
We need solutions to that problem, because otherwise, we're always going to have quality issues (that, plus the constant forking going on).
Since when is it "guilty until proven innocent?" Ah, right kompade Amepikan ...
Well, I paid for it with points, then they offered the rebate, but since I didn't log into the Shop Channel during that time, no rebate for me :-(
Still, it was $5 well spent (along with another $5 for super mario brothers).
HTML5 fixes a few problems, but it's NOT a gaming platform any more than a teaspoon is a shovel.
"Oh, we can sell support services", as I pointed out, doesn't work for more than 99.9% of all projects.
The alternative, of course, is to bundle your code with code from a more permissive license instead of GPL code.
You might want to ask Larry Wall about how that worked out with Perl. There are very few free projects that companies make a consistent commitment to funding. Very few. Most are done by devs in their free time.
MySQL was dual-licensing their code, remember? Near the end of their independent existence, they had the same model Oracle is moving back to - a free version, and a proprietary version with extra features. They could only do that because they owned all the code, unlike most projects.
Redhat is the exception. It didn't work for Mandrake/Mandriva/Mageia they are now, even though at the time they had one of the best distros around. Novell ... well, they had to lay off devs as a cost-cutting measure because without Microsoft subsidizing the cost of SLED licenses to the tune of 75% to 100%, support services weren't viable. And now look where they are (disclosure - written on opensuse 11.4 on my DTR laptop). Ubuntu? Still not making a profit, despite hijacking revenue from independent devs (http://lwn.net/Articles/428196/). Slackware? Not many of us remember when it was *the* distro.
I think that it *might* be possible. Only time will tell.
If someone releases their code under the BSD/MIT/RtPL(RPL) licenses, they WANT the code re-used in both open and closed projects. They recognize that giving people $$$ incentives to use their code will result in them getting more code used, and better feedback ... and that they too can monetize their own code by creating closed products out of that same code.
It's one reason I wrote the Respect the Program
Remember all those ads that say "past performance is no guarantee of future performance?" In Stallman's case, we have the FSF anti-android FUD attack last month claiming that device manufacturers are at risk because the kernel is GPLv2, and now this latest "we're more open". The man seems to be grasping at anything to remain relevant. Fact is, almost nobody cares about his "copyrights are evil" agenda any more (and the obvious one - he loses everything if copyright becomes unenforceable, which means that copyrights are of utility even to him).
As for his personal issues, it's all collateral stuff that anyone who checks out his past behaviour in trying to understand why he's doing what he's doing is going to come across. And he comes across as a control freak with an anti-business agenda, dubious hygiene, and a misogynist. "Oh, it's not because he's intentionally that way, he just doesn't care about such things" is a poor excuse for trying to justify antisocial passive-aggressive behaviour, more often seen in the late teens/early 20s.
But seriously, how relevant is the GPLv3? Not much. How relevant is the AGPL? Even less so. The world is moving on, and we have bigger fish to fry.
If I want to run a distributed version of my program across a bunch of servers owned by other people, that links to GPL code, I am not free to unless I also offer to give them the code. So I am not free to run the code as I wish (some conditions do in fact apply #0, #1)
Ditto for #2, in that I can only distribute copies if I also offer to distribute the source, so again my freedom is being restricted.
Ditto for #3, for modified copies.
Whether this is good or bad is beside the point - the fact is that the restrictions do exist, and that in a distributed world (remember those "yay cloud" commercials?) where your code is sometimes going to be sitting on a server, and sometimes distributed on many people's computers while it runs your tasks in a shared, sandboxed environment, the GPL is a problem.
But whether it's a problem or not is irrelevant to my original point - Stallman is being hypocritical when he points fingers at other licenses and says his is "freer." It all depends on what hat you're wearing at the time :-)
Now as to my personal feelings, up until he started with the Andoid FUD last month, I had zero issues with him. It's only after he started that I did my "due diligence", and I am underwhelmed. The guy is simply well past his best before date, and the evidence is that the AGPL and GPL3 are going in the wrong direction.
So the alternatives that I see are BSD/MIT/RtPL and other licenses that let you use source that you can read, or licensing code.
Whether the restrictions are onerous or not is simply not relevant. The fact is that, like most licenses, the GPL does contain restrictions, including restrictions on distributing modified source. So any claim that the GPL doesn't restrict people is false.
In this case, Stallman claiming that other people distribute software that isn't free is hypocritical, because his isn't free either. His practice of demanding copyright assignment shows how little he respects other programmers' freedom as well.
I'd suggest a googlefight, but googlefight uses flash ...
(Actually, it's because googlefight.com is broken. It no longer returns an accurate summary of the total number of hits for each expression).
The problem with that is that we all know what end users are like. People should be able to install their own software, their own hardware, and their own OS ... but those situations can be addressed by the person having the right to have their own keys in addition to any existing keys. This way, multiple users can be given different rights on the same machine, for example.
... and I had quoted the definition on the front page, said multiple times that was what I was quoting (""No - look at the definition on the front page of the FSF web site" (which you also quoted, btw), included the link to that page (which you also quoted), and quoted it word for word.
It was on that basis, said that both the FSF and Stallman are being misleading and hypocritical, and don't even meet their standard for what "free software" is.
That they bury a different definition elsewhere on their site that is not as comprehensive as the definition plastered in big letters on their front page is just another example of their misleading tactics. Trying to say "it's a marketing blurb" kind of makes my point for me, doesn't it?
After all, what is marketing, in this particular case, but bait-and-switch?
Here are the freedoms on the front page (notice the bolded one - it means distribution):
You deserve to use software that is:-
1. free from restriction
2. free to share and copy
3. free to learn and adapt
4. free to work with others
you deserve free software.
See my point? In this case "share" software == "distribute" software.
My point is, again, that they are being hypocrites when they say people "deserve free software", and yet software under the GPL is not free, not for the developer, and not for the user.
It's okay to have licenses that contain restrictions such as the GPL, but to claim that they're "free as in free speech", and to blatantly market them as such is dishonest.
Are you kidding. Then NOT being split up is great. It means that Steve Ballmer can continue to wreck EVERYTHING, rather than just one portion of the business.
Who can forget Ballmer's Greatest Hits, from the Monkey Dance to the KIN, and the Next of KIN, and everything in between ...
Do you really want to lose that sort of entertainment? (though it would be fun to see the various broken-up Baby Ballmers suing each other).
Hopefully Kaspersky Lab (the owners of threatpost.com) will be able to extract some sort of apology, or at least a clarification that edits done after the post should be clearly marked as such.
If you don't want to use the feedback form, you can email nicole.lawler, greg.sabey, or alejandro.arango, all at kaspersky dot com.
Last month, I called out the FSF for generating FUD about Android and Linux using the GPLv2 and trying to get people to put pressure on the Linux devs to "upgrade" to GPLv3, which would, if it were to happen, immediately cause Google to ship their BSD+Android alternative stack.
And lastly, I called out RMS for his own anti-Android/pro-GPLv3 attacks. Yes, that makes me really evil. I should instead be good and ignore the truth. Riiiight .....
The fact is that humans are dangerous, even when compared to a pack of dogs. It's one reason I trust my dogs a lot more than I trust most people - dogs have a much simpler (and better) concept of loyalty that I happen to prefer.
Linus has already said he has zero interest in migrating to the GPLv3 - and for a very good reason. It wouldn't be possible to use the kernel in devices that require that core services be secured properly. It would result in the immediate moving of projects like Android to the BSD kernel (and you can be that Google has such a project ready to do a drop-in swap-out).
Stallman and co have been unleashing a lot of verbal diarrhea because the GPLv3 simply isn't interesting to most devs - and that means that they're not able to push their social agenda.
However, the fact is that people want stuff that works more than they want stuff that's "free as in the restricted world or RMS" ... it's sad, because even Vista is now more stable than KDE ... KDE craps out on me several times a day, despite always updating. Openbox and LXDE? Updates killed them both a month ago. Gnome? Don't even ask.
I still use linux/KDE for more than 95% of my work, but the recent emphasis on quick release cycles, with the sacrifice of stability, coupled with the difficulty of devs to monetize their code under the GPL, means that we lose most of the supposed benefits of "many eyes." That's the problem with people who try to shove their agendas down your throat in a dishonest manner - the law of unintended consequences ends up biting back hard.
We need to:
Just my 2 cents. (and thanks for the compliments, and for the discussion in general. I'm not trying to "blow you off" or anything).
The definition you refer to is NOT on the front page of the fsf.org website.
Here's the definition on the front page : http://www.fsf.org/static/nosvn/working/w/deserve.png
They put it in a png so that it won't be indexed (another example of misleading marketing by Stallman et. al.).
There is ZERO evidence that the people writing the software cited in the article are intentionally introducing bugs. This guy should either produce a smidgen of evidence or FOADIAF.
Very handy.
All jokes ultimately make fun of somebody. It's the nature of the beast^human sense of humor.
You're either making fun of a 3rd party, or yourself, or the listener. We learn that at a really young age.
Q: Why did the chicken cross the road?
A: To get to the other side.
Gets bystanders to laugh at the kid who missed the "obvious" answer, or pokes fun at the sole listener because "gee, aren't you stupid!"
"Take my wife, please!"
Making fun of both his wife and himself.
Slapstick, the latest episode of Big Bang Theory or 2-1/2 Men, Hitler jokes ... it's all the same.
It's an evolutionary adaptation to channel our aggression, because we really are the most dangerous animal on the planet - unlike pack animals in the wild, we don't generally know when to stop. Notice how we smile and bare our teeth when we laugh? Try doing that to a great ape.