It's actually not uncommon. My current employer has a "no open source allowed without explicit approval by the legal dept, which takes an eternity and is a royal pain, so don't do it unless there's absolutely no alternative" policy. I am not kidding.
One of my previous employers had the same policy. This is not at all uncommon.
A few years ago a company found some of my code on the web. The code was released under an apache-like license. They contacted me because they wanted to buy it, but with a couple of minor modifications and under a different license. Essentially very similar scenario as the situation the OP found himself in. I agreed, made the modifications, and sold the original product plus the mods to them under a different license. I think it was cheaper for them to get the modifications they wanted, and the license they liked than develop the same code themselves.
As for me, I felt that nobody besides that company would have probably wanted those modifications anyway. That's probably not entirely true, but I convinced myself of that so that way I did not feel like I was totally selling out:) The Open Source community probably did not miss much by me not releasing those mods. I treated the modifications as "work for hire", and since I never released them, I avoided most of the possible legal difficulties. The original product stayed under the same license, of course. That company is now one of the 5 largest software companies, so I presume the practice is not unusual.
There is no legal trick, no dirty tactic. Yes, EULAs are horrible, blah, blah, blah, I agree with all of that. But that is totally beside the point.
The point is that the software is Apple's. Period. They can do whatever they want with it. If they want to sell it, they can. If they want to open-source it, they can. If they want to attach a EULA, they can. If they want to _refuse_ to sell it to you, they can. If they want to bundle it with hardware, they can. If they want to add DRM, they can. Get it? It's theirs. They can do whatever they want.
Now, what can you do? You can: (1) Play by Apple's rules and do whatever their license allows you to do or (2) Feel free to create your own OS. When you create it, it's yours, and you can do whatever you want with it -- sell, refuse to sell, add DRM, not add DRM, etc.
Apple can do whatever they want. You (and psystar, and everyone else) can't do jack besides whatever is allowed by Apple's license. It's that simple. Tough luck.
No single entity controls the source of mysql either. It's GPL. If you want to fork it, fork it. You guys are missing the point.
The point is Widenius wants to start a new company, and wants to work off of what mysql, the company (and thousands of volunteers who have contributed to the project) have created over the past N years. He does not care if it goes to Oracle, Microsoft, some made-up nonprofit-ish foundation, or dies. He could really care less about that. He wants to build a company that will make a proprietary product and will make him money.
The thorn in his side, however, is the fact that he can't take the code that was once released as GPL and use it in his proprietary software. He either has to open up his software (which he does not want to do), or else not be able to benefit from all those years worth of effort by mysql AB and others who have contributed to the project.
If the license was just about anything but GPL (apache, BSD, whatever), he could do just that. But he can't.
What, you really think it's all about evil Oracle taking over mysql, and it's not really the license that's a thorn in Wideniuses side? Read a more in-depth analysis by someone who understands the issue a _whole lot better_ than I or just about any of you folks do. Here: http://www.groklaw.net/article.php?story=20091208104422384
which means that either you or the employer can terminate the relationship at any time with or without cause.
which also probably means they can fire you and not face the consequences. It just won't be a "for cause" firing, but rather letting you go for some bogus reason.
which, if you think about it, makes sense.
The real question is -- what's more important to your employer (or, more precisely, your immediate manager)? You or your cooperation with whatever they ask?
That is exactly what's going on. Non-GPL code can be easily embraced, extended, etc... you know the trick. GPL code is a much harder nut to crack. Many have tried to "get cute with the GPL" as PJ of Groklaw puts it, but none have succeeded. If you can marginalize the GPL, eliminating the non-GPL competition by embracing, extending, extinguishing is a much easier task. GPL is their only threat, really.
I've been threatened with a lawsuit by a previous employer. One of my ex-coworkers who quit the same day was sued, I believe. Right after he quit he went to work for Microsoft and announced it to the whole blogging world... With 20/20 hindsight that was not such a good idea. Microsoft, being huge and all, competes with just about everybody else in the industry, so our past employer decided to enforce the non-compete agreement on the guy. Never mind the fact that what he did at Microsoft did not even remotely resemble what he did for the other employer. That would be easy to prove in court, but it's the process of hiring a lawyer and going to court that we wanted to avoid.
Anybody can sue anybody else for any reason (or even without a reason). That's the reality. If you choose to defend yourself, and the lawsuit was completely without merit, you might be awarded your attorney's fees. And if the guy who sued you has the money to pay, you might even be able to collect it. Looking at it from the monetary standpoint, it's cheaper to just roll over and not fight. Of course, the @#$% employers expect exactly that, so not fighting them would be rewarding that behavior and encouraging them to keep on doing what they do. But in our country it's just too prohibitively expensive to have your day in court.
And as far as the 2 weeks notice goes... Well, you are not required to give it. It's a courtesy thing. I do that every time, even if it's inconvenient. It's a small world. Even if you don't care about courtesy, think about it from the "what goes around comes around" perspective. If the employer does not want you to stick around, they'll let you loose right away. If they do, sometimes you may end up finishing up some work for a few weeks to come (contract or otherwise). It does not hurt to give the employer the option - they really may suffer some unneeded damage if you don't. Be a little nice.
Dude, wake up. No need to be digging up dirt. The more a person says in public, the more can be dug up and turned against him. Especialy your first link - the one that's a "condflict" with Rasmus. You have to work really, really hard to have a conflict with Rasmus. He is one of the most non-confrontational people I've ever heard of.
Jani has bud heads with plenty of people over the years. I have had disagreements with him and other PHP developers until I left the PHP project several years ago (nothing personal - just lack of time and diminishing interest made me leave). So what? Disagreements, especially on dev mailing lists are not at all unusual.
Please, don't real LKML, because if you do, you will be convinced beyond doubt that Linux is doomed, and will disintegrate any day because of developer friction, bad attitudes, lack of communication skills, and conflict all around. Linus will quit first.:)
I keep reading these negative responses, and all I can think of is "What's wrong with you, people???"
Maybe AOL is not approaching the problem quite right, but they are heading in the right direction. The right direction being removing the financial incentive to spam.
Why does spam work? Because it costs virtually nothing to produce, and you can make a lot of it. So, if AOL were to charge a fraction of a penny per message, what would happen to a spammer that needs to send out a million messages a day just to stay afloat (more to profit)? Ouch! I'd say they won't be able to afford to get onto the whitelist. If you price it just right, legitimate entities will not even notice the fee, while the spammers will hurt. So, in essense, you will acheive the goal - AOL whitelists will be more or less spam-free. Whether they will be of any value is a different question, and that's up to AOL to make sure that they have enough value for their users.
Of course, the ideal approach would be a combination of the two techniques. Good behavior should still get you on the whitelist for free. But it looks like AOL wants to see if it can meke some $$$ here. And - surprise! - it has the right to do so! I think the results may be a little disappointing for AOL, just because spammers will not want (and will not be able to afford, if the price is set just right) to pay up.
But the bottom line is this: AOL is totally within their right to do what they are doing, it is not a horribly unethical thing to do (they are not outright blocking "free" mail; instead their are tuning their whitelists, NOT blacklists). And they are heading somewhat in the right direction, albeit a bit awkwardly. Make spam cost, just a little bit, and a lot of it will go away.
huh? Did I hear something about the 4th ammendment?
I am sorry to disappoint you, but constitution, as well as its amendments apply only as long as there is no mass hysteria and utter indifference of the general population. When we go into the "we are under attack, so we need to kill all those terrorist bastards" mode, none of that applies anymore. When the great majority of the population is in panic mode, we are willing to sacrifice any freedoms and privacy for a (false) sense of security. After the panic subsides, however, we never revert back to how things were before panic hit. Sometimes we do a little, but not much. Consider the PATRIOT act in the US. First this draconian fact overwhelmingly gets passed. And then, even though we see that it does not real good except destroy any remaining hints of people's privacy, we extend most of its provisions indefinitely. Some may say "well, the new extended act is not as terrible as the original one, os you actually get more privacy than you did before!", but you have to remember that originally there was no PATRIOT act to start with!
What? you are saying that it is really all our fault because we voted those lawmakers and the executive power into office? Well, duh! First, only a particular type of a person will ever run for office. Most people that would probably try to implement policies that I would agree with would not even consider running for office, ever. When electing a president, for example, our choices are usually terniary - (1) a weak candidate that can't do a thing, good or bad, (2) a strong militaristic candidate that is just too scary to elect, or (3) you do the un-american, un-democratic and un-patriotic thing and do not vote at all because it's pointless to vote for the (slightly) lesser of the two evils.
Anyways, getting off my soapbox and back on to the original question. In the US we have PATRIOT act and a few others that came before it. Also, we blatantly disregard any protection offered to citizens by law if we can claim (no proof required) that it is a matter of national security and we are fighting terrorism.
In Russia there are laws requiring internet providers to keep logs and provide backdoors and connectivity at their own expense. They are not allowed to talk about that, and more often than not, they themselves do not know what the government is doing through the connections they are required to provide, "black box" style. They are also required to turn off cell phone encryption on their networks on demand, as became widely known after the terrorist acts in that theater in Moscow a few years ago. Similar to the US, a lot happens that is not covered by law. I guess, if you've got the gun, you've got the power...
Most of Eastern European countries are in the same boat. Some at least pretend to put some legal framework in place to justify destruction of what's left of privacy; others do not care and do not do even bother to pretend.
I've heard rumors that in China there's a great firewall of China. I imagine there's some law that mandates that, and also makes it an offence to try to bypass that, although I am not familiar with the laws of that country one bit.
I think you need to move to the Principality of Sealand if you want some real privacy. That, or just toss all technology and move into Alaskan/Canadian/Russian wilderness where nobody will even know you exist:)
well, that's exactly what the previous poster has suggested -- force the king to flip it. That is, put him in a situation that if he does not flip the chalice, it would be obvious to at least one of the prisoners that all of them have been to the room already.
If we can prove that the king could be forced to flip the chalice once, we can prove that the prisoners can go free. I believe the opposite is also true -- if the king cannot be forced to flip the chalice, the prisoners at best will spend life in prison. I think I am getting close to proving the latter, even though the original poster has suggested otherwise. Tome to go get some sleep though.
Properly stated, there's a third possible interpretation of a successful fork: the maintainers were doing a fine and dandy job and no one from the community had an itch to scratch, until the gravy train stopped.
Actually, you hit the nail on the head, so to speak... except... it was the propriatary vendors that were perfectly happy with how things were going until the gravy train stopped. Then they scrambled. But boy is it hard to do what nessus does -- namely come up with all the vulnerabilities, signatures, etc. in a timely and relatively comprehensive manner for all the new vilnerabilities that are coming out by the barrel!
Yes, they will (and are) scrambling. But not because they have little understanding of the underlying code. No, that's trivial. The real value is in all the updates, signatures, definitions of various vulnerabilities, etc. People come up with them all the time, and nessus always has the latest & greatest, and everyone else seems to be weeks, if not months behind. Unless, of course, they are building on top of nessus as the engine, in which case they are always up to speed.
I am have some firsthand familiarity with this. I know of a company that essentially built their whole business around nessus as the core of their product. They added tons of bells and whistles to it, packaged it nicely, made it user-friendly, and shipped it. For a lot of money. Sounds silly, but I think they had a good product -- it actually made network security manageable. Just knowing what is vulnerable on your network is not good enough. In fact, if the network is of any appreciable size, that's not good at all. You need to filter out tons of noise -- false positives, things that you know are vulnerable but you do not care about for one reason or another, need to do some basic triaging, and be able to monitor trends and tendencies over time. So, there's a great need for a good presentation layer on top of nessus, and several companies recognized that need and built their business models on that. And that was good, it was really, really needed.
Then, a couple of years ago it became harder to get nessus updates. Nessus started detecting scrapers that were getting latest nasl updates and banning them. Then they started licensing those updates differently, I think, so it was harder for closed-source companies to use them. So, that company started rewriting newer NASLs in a "clean room" environment to stay in the legal clean waters. While the practice was silly, it made sense -- it was either that, or GPL the whole thing, and they could not figure out how to build a viable business plan if they were to GPL their whole product. I must admit that this is a very challenging, and at times an impossible task. I must say that I applaud them for going through all that extra effort to stay clean and respect the GPL -- a lot of other people do not do so.
So, has nessus just droppped a bombshell on all those companies that were building their stuff on top of its enine? Not really. The change has been coming for quite some time. Recent NASLs haven't been available for a while under a liberal license. In fact, I think that new software features and bugfixes in version 3 are not even all that important or needed. Signatures and definitions for newer vulnarabilities are. So, all those companies had ample time to change, if they wanted to. The company I was referring to did a good job, as far as I know -- they added a bunch of features beyond what nessus provided -- various network discovery, some windows-specific stuff, etc. I do not know much about what they are doing now, but I know that they worked hard to shift from a nessus-wrapper to a product that could stand on its own. And, to the best of my knowledge, they succeeed. Some others did not see the writing on the wall. So, they wasted time and this change of license will be the latest nail in their coffins. Stuff happens. Don't feel sorry for them. Nessus departing from the GPL is a sad fact of life, but... it's understandable. They can do it. And freeloaders deserve little compassion.
Parent very nicely summarized the issue at stake. I'd write it a bit differently, but that'd be duplication of effort, so mod the parent up instead -- I posted here, so I can't mod myself.
They've haven't been very accurate in the past about who has stockpiles of weapons.
I thought that was exactly the reason why the whole "We have the right to nuke the adverse party if we believe they are going to use WMD on us" clause. We have just shown the whole world that we do not need one teeeny bit of evidence, or even a somewhat-reliable intelligence to declare that someone has WMD and is ready to use it against us. In essense, "WMD" is the keyword that can be applied to anybody (if you read the draft, that includes states and non-states alike), and that gives the president the power to just nuke the heck out of whoever he pleases.
So, what do we have here? 1, We have shown resolve to go to war even if the rest of the world vehemently opposes it, and do so, essentially, unilaterally (the forces in Iraq are multinational on paper only, just look at the numbers!). 2, We have shown that WMD is carte blanche of sort, and justifies any means. 3, We have labelled certain nations as supporters of terrorists, and labelled terrorists as wanting to use WMD on us. 4, We are putting the legal framework in place to avoid silly Congress from disagreeing with the president over going to war. 5, By using nukes we ensure that we'd be doing a "precision strike" and avoid the whole mess with a lengthy occupation, etc, making such a war very inexpensive indeed. Except for the international backlash, but we have shown by now that cullies cannot care less about international opinion.
Now, if you were a nation that was laballed as a supporter of terrorism, what's there to guarantee that you won't be nuked the day after such a draft becomes a law? I think this is a very deliberate message -- we have a big red button, and we have one person, the president, who can push it if he is in a bad mood, and he's pushed similar buttons before. Live in PHEAR!:)
Eveyone knows that we cannot afford to start another war. That's why both Iran and North Korea can happily ignore what we say and do as they please. This draft changes that. We can still threaten them very effectively, and can afford it as well. Very, very dirty move. On par with our friendly Unix vendor, SCO.
You are welcome to license your new versions or the same version under licenses other than the GPL, because the GPL is non-exclusive. You can re-license the original code to yourself, if you feel like getting that far into it, under any license you like. What you cannot do is revoke the GPL rights on copies already distributed.
True. However, mysql mas been doing something rather interesting lately. They dual-license mysq under their own license and a GPL-look-alike license. Why look-alike? Well, because it sure as heck not GPL. Let me elaborate.
Among other things what GPL boils down to is that you are allowed to use the product in any way you want as long as you do not modify it. If you do, you need to release the cahnges under GPL. That's not all of it, but that's the part that mysql "extended". In essense, they say that not only are you not allowed to make changes without releasing the source, but ou are not allowed to USE their GPLed software in non-GPL-licensed software. Unless, of course, you buy their commercial license, which they will try to sell you at any cost.
There's a big difference between MODIFYING and USING. Consider PHP, for example. PHP is a released under license incompatible with GPL. Yet it needs mysql as much as mysql needs php to be successful. So, PHP folks have to keep getting license exceptions, thanks to Zak Greant. It gets worse if you product relies on mysql, not merely uses it. A quick google search brought me here. There is a lot more to that, but you'd have to google on your own - somehow I am not searching for the right terms I guess. In essense, what mysql did is they said "Our software is licensed under GPL" and then turned around and said "But you can't use it as you'd use any GPL software, because we put extra restrictions in addition to GPL." Unfortunately, most people just hear the first message, develop their software so it relies on mysql and then - BOOM! - they find that "clarification" from mysql ab. Once you bite the hook and cannot go back, they can force you to get their commercial license. Either that, or release the entire source code for your whole product that relies on mysql, even if no changes whatsoever were made to mysql itself. Fun, eh?
I am not going to argue on the merits of whether they can actually say that they are licensing a piece of software under GPL, and then add a "clarification" to that. I would be very surprised if such a thing would ever stand up in court, but I am most certainly not a lawyer, and neither do I have much faith in the judicial system. Even if it were to fail in court, the costs of acquiring a few commercial licenses are dwarfed by even the most modest court expenses, so for most people it's a no-brainer - just go and get the license. And for mysql it's the source of revenue through extortion.
You may believe that you can use mysql in a non-GPL product, and you are fine because you comply with the REAL GPL, not the mysql's version of GPL. Maybe you even have the money to fight that claim in court and prevail. That's fine. THe thing that matters most though is that even if you are not vilating the LETTER of the law, you are still violating the SPIRIT of the license, as mysql AB has stated so clearly in their "clarification". That fact alone makes me shiver and think again about what kind of company mysql ab is, and whether it would be prudent for me to recommend their software to my clients, whether they are interested in a commercial license, or intend to use mysql in a GPL-compliant way.
These are merely my opinions based on a fair amount of research I had to make on the subject. Not a legal advice by any means. Please, feel free to disagree with me and hire a lawyer if you need to.
you probably should! Or it might turn out that SCO doesn't really have the 6-digit revenue from their SCOSource division. That would make them mighty embarrassed, and you wouldn't really want that, would you?
6 digits! Did Microsft buy a few licences or something? I doubt the EV1 deal can bring 6 digits, and there isn't really anything else they can count as SCOSource revenue.
I must come to the poor guys rescue. Ever been shocked by a capacitor?
Not a good rescue... A capacitor in your camera is probably to the tune of several hundred volts, And what did I say? There isn't a single line that carries any appreciably high voltage to the PCI connectors. We are talking TTL-logic voltages. And maybe 12V here and there to drive the fans. You simply cannot get shocket with that.
I would later find myself taking apart disposable cameras to induce the capacitor shock to myself and my friends. Strange.. No, not strange. Sick. Though I have to admit I know of a few sicko's who had shocked themselves for fun. But then some people also mutilate themselves for fun too - you sure seem to be cathcing up with the crowd. THe sick crowd.
As you said, it is an extremely good solvent. Too good, in fact. Acetone will soften and dissolve many plastics. Try alcohol instead. Something like 90+% ethanol or rubbing alcohol is just as good at cleaning what you probably want to clean, leaves no residue, stinks less and is safe on almost any plastic, in fact on almost any computer part.
I use acetone sparingly and only in cases where alcohol won't do the job well, but acetone will. I also use it to make 'plastic goo' which you can later use as some sort of a plastic clay in some projects.
In a somewhat unrelated (and more painful) story, using my vast intellect I once attempted to replace a PCI card (of some sort) in a running computer and shocked the shit out of myself. Twice
You must disconnect the PCI killer before messing with your PCI slots;)
What, you didn't use PCI killer? Then how in the world did you manage to shock yourself? Did you plug your fingers into a power outlet at teh same time? There isn't a single line that carries any appreciably high voltage to the PCI connectors - if you touched something you're not supposed to, you wouldn't feel a thing.
I agree, that sounds like BD, but is not all that far from what some people manage to acheive for real.
Consider this:
#bin/bash..... rm -rf/$TMP_DIR.....
where TMP_DIR is an env. var and can be set to one of several values, depending on your user profile. The person who wrote the script never intended for root to run it. After using the script for ages without a problem, somebody in their infinite wisdom decided to run it as 'root'. Imagine what happened (hint: since 'root' was never supposed to run it, TMP_DIR wasn't set at all). Ouch!
Think about it - how much would it cost to ship roadkill kangaroos from australia?
Why australia? I think they pick something more local. For instance, I remember seeing a lot of stray cats on our street a couple of years back. Then the McDonalds came... Good for profit margins, good for community - a win-win situation!
Slashdot Mirror
The real explanation could be as simple as "Those 55 and older are the ones who can afford to buy the cars in question".
It's actually not uncommon. My current employer has a "no open source allowed without explicit approval by the legal dept, which takes an eternity and is a royal pain, so don't do it unless there's absolutely no alternative" policy. I am not kidding.
One of my previous employers had the same policy. This is not at all uncommon.
A few years ago a company found some of my code on the web. The code was released under an apache-like license. They contacted me because they wanted to buy it, but with a couple of minor modifications and under a different license. Essentially very similar scenario as the situation the OP found himself in. I agreed, made the modifications, and sold the original product plus the mods to them under a different license. I think it was cheaper for them to get the modifications they wanted, and the license they liked than develop the same code themselves.
As for me, I felt that nobody besides that company would have probably wanted those modifications anyway. That's probably not entirely true, but I convinced myself of that so that way I did not feel like I was totally selling out :) The Open Source community probably did not miss much by me not releasing those mods. I treated the modifications as "work for hire", and since I never released them, I avoided most of the possible legal difficulties. The original product stayed under the same license, of course. That company is now one of the 5 largest software companies, so I presume the practice is not unusual.
There is no legal trick, no dirty tactic. Yes, EULAs are horrible, blah, blah, blah, I agree with all of that. But that is totally beside the point.
The point is that the software is Apple's. Period. They can do whatever they want with it. If they want to sell it, they can. If they want to open-source it, they can. If they want to attach a EULA, they can. If they want to _refuse_ to sell it to you, they can. If they want to bundle it with hardware, they can. If they want to add DRM, they can. Get it? It's theirs. They can do whatever they want.
Now, what can you do? You can: (1) Play by Apple's rules and do whatever their license allows you to do or (2) Feel free to create your own OS. When you create it, it's yours, and you can do whatever you want with it -- sell, refuse to sell, add DRM, not add DRM, etc.
Apple can do whatever they want. You (and psystar, and everyone else) can't do jack besides whatever is allowed by Apple's license. It's that simple. Tough luck.
No single entity controls the source of mysql either. It's GPL. If you want to fork it, fork it. You guys are missing the point.
The point is Widenius wants to start a new company, and wants to work off of what mysql, the company (and thousands of volunteers who have contributed to the project) have created over the past N years. He does not care if it goes to Oracle, Microsoft, some made-up nonprofit-ish foundation, or dies. He could really care less about that. He wants to build a company that will make a proprietary product and will make him money.
The thorn in his side, however, is the fact that he can't take the code that was once released as GPL and use it in his proprietary software. He either has to open up his software (which he does not want to do), or else not be able to benefit from all those years worth of effort by mysql AB and others who have contributed to the project.
If the license was just about anything but GPL (apache, BSD, whatever), he could do just that. But he can't.
What, you really think it's all about evil Oracle taking over mysql, and it's not really the license that's a thorn in Wideniuses side? Read a more in-depth analysis by someone who understands the issue a _whole lot better_ than I or just about any of you folks do. Here: http://www.groklaw.net/article.php?story=20091208104422384
Haven't heard back from you for a while...
which means that either you or the employer can terminate the relationship at any time with or without cause.
which also probably means they can fire you and not face the consequences. It just won't be a "for cause" firing, but rather letting you go for some bogus reason.
which, if you think about it, makes sense.
The real question is -- what's more important to your employer (or, more precisely, your immediate manager)? You or your cooperation with whatever they ask?
That is exactly what's going on. Non-GPL code can be easily embraced, extended, etc... you know the trick. GPL code is a much harder nut to crack. Many have tried to "get cute with the GPL" as PJ of Groklaw puts it, but none have succeeded. If you can marginalize the GPL, eliminating the non-GPL competition by embracing, extending, extinguishing is a much easier task. GPL is their only threat, really.
I've been threatened with a lawsuit by a previous employer. One of my ex-coworkers who quit the same day was sued, I believe. Right after he quit he went to work for Microsoft and announced it to the whole blogging world... With 20/20 hindsight that was not such a good idea. Microsoft, being huge and all, competes with just about everybody else in the industry, so our past employer decided to enforce the non-compete agreement on the guy. Never mind the fact that what he did at Microsoft did not even remotely resemble what he did for the other employer. That would be easy to prove in court, but it's the process of hiring a lawyer and going to court that we wanted to avoid.
Anybody can sue anybody else for any reason (or even without a reason). That's the reality. If you choose to defend yourself, and the lawsuit was completely without merit, you might be awarded your attorney's fees. And if the guy who sued you has the money to pay, you might even be able to collect it. Looking at it from the monetary standpoint, it's cheaper to just roll over and not fight. Of course, the @#$% employers expect exactly that, so not fighting them would be rewarding that behavior and encouraging them to keep on doing what they do. But in our country it's just too prohibitively expensive to have your day in court.
And as far as the 2 weeks notice goes... Well, you are not required to give it. It's a courtesy thing. I do that every time, even if it's inconvenient. It's a small world. Even if you don't care about courtesy, think about it from the "what goes around comes around" perspective. If the employer does not want you to stick around, they'll let you loose right away. If they do, sometimes you may end up finishing up some work for a few weeks to come (contract or otherwise). It does not hurt to give the employer the option - they really may suffer some unneeded damage if you don't. Be a little nice.
I found these:... ...which hint at conflict.
:)
Dude, wake up. No need to be digging up dirt. The more a person says in public, the more can be dug up and turned against him. Especialy your first link - the one that's a "condflict" with Rasmus. You have to work really, really hard to have a conflict with Rasmus. He is one of the most non-confrontational people I've ever heard of.
Jani has bud heads with plenty of people over the years. I have had disagreements with him and other PHP developers until I left the PHP project several years ago (nothing personal - just lack of time and diminishing interest made me leave). So what? Disagreements, especially on dev mailing lists are not at all unusual.
Please, don't real LKML, because if you do, you will be convinced beyond doubt that Linux is doomed, and will disintegrate any day because of developer friction, bad attitudes, lack of communication skills, and conflict all around. Linus will quit first.
I keep reading these negative responses, and all I can think of is "What's wrong with you, people???"
Maybe AOL is not approaching the problem quite right, but they are heading in the right direction. The right direction being removing the financial incentive to spam.
Why does spam work? Because it costs virtually nothing to produce, and you can make a lot of it. So, if AOL were to charge a fraction of a penny per message, what would happen to a spammer that needs to send out a million messages a day just to stay afloat (more to profit)? Ouch! I'd say they won't be able to afford to get onto the whitelist. If you price it just right, legitimate entities will not even notice the fee, while the spammers will hurt. So, in essense, you will acheive the goal - AOL whitelists will be more or less spam-free. Whether they will be of any value is a different question, and that's up to AOL to make sure that they have enough value for their users.
Of course, the ideal approach would be a combination of the two techniques. Good behavior should still get you on the whitelist for free. But it looks like AOL wants to see if it can meke some $$$ here. And - surprise! - it has the right to do so! I think the results may be a little disappointing for AOL, just because spammers will not want (and will not be able to afford, if the price is set just right) to pay up.
But the bottom line is this: AOL is totally within their right to do what they are doing, it is not a horribly unethical thing to do (they are not outright blocking "free" mail; instead their are tuning their whitelists, NOT blacklists). And they are heading somewhat in the right direction, albeit a bit awkwardly. Make spam cost, just a little bit, and a lot of it will go away.
huh? Did I hear something about the 4th ammendment?
:)
I am sorry to disappoint you, but constitution, as well as its amendments apply only as long as there is no mass hysteria and utter indifference of the general population. When we go into the "we are under attack, so we need to kill all those terrorist bastards" mode, none of that applies anymore. When the great majority of the population is in panic mode, we are willing to sacrifice any freedoms and privacy for a (false) sense of security. After the panic subsides, however, we never revert back to how things were before panic hit. Sometimes we do a little, but not much. Consider the PATRIOT act in the US. First this draconian fact overwhelmingly gets passed. And then, even though we see that it does not real good except destroy any remaining hints of people's privacy, we extend most of its provisions indefinitely. Some may say "well, the new extended act is not as terrible as the original one, os you actually get more privacy than you did before!", but you have to remember that originally there was no PATRIOT act to start with!
What? you are saying that it is really all our fault because we voted those lawmakers and the executive power into office? Well, duh! First, only a particular type of a person will ever run for office. Most people that would probably try to implement policies that I would agree with would not even consider running for office, ever. When electing a president, for example, our choices are usually terniary - (1) a weak candidate that can't do a thing, good or bad, (2) a strong militaristic candidate that is just too scary to elect, or (3) you do the un-american, un-democratic and un-patriotic thing and do not vote at all because it's pointless to vote for the (slightly) lesser of the two evils.
Anyways, getting off my soapbox and back on to the original question. In the US we have PATRIOT act and a few others that came before it. Also, we blatantly disregard any protection offered to citizens by law if we can claim (no proof required) that it is a matter of national security and we are fighting terrorism.
In Russia there are laws requiring internet providers to keep logs and provide backdoors and connectivity at their own expense. They are not allowed to talk about that, and more often than not, they themselves do not know what the government is doing through the connections they are required to provide, "black box" style. They are also required to turn off cell phone encryption on their networks on demand, as became widely known after the terrorist acts in that theater in Moscow a few years ago. Similar to the US, a lot happens that is not covered by law. I guess, if you've got the gun, you've got the power...
Most of Eastern European countries are in the same boat. Some at least pretend to put some legal framework in place to justify destruction of what's left of privacy; others do not care and do not do even bother to pretend.
I've heard rumors that in China there's a great firewall of China. I imagine there's some law that mandates that, and also makes it an offence to try to bypass that, although I am not familiar with the laws of that country one bit.
I think you need to move to the Principality of Sealand if you want some real privacy. That, or just toss all technology and move into Alaskan/Canadian/Russian wilderness where nobody will even know you exist
well, that's exactly what the previous poster has suggested -- force the king to flip it. That is, put him in a situation that if he does not flip the chalice, it would be obvious to at least one of the prisoners that all of them have been to the room already.
If we can prove that the king could be forced to flip the chalice once, we can prove that the prisoners can go free. I believe the opposite is also true -- if the king cannot be forced to flip the chalice, the prisoners at best will spend life in prison. I think I am getting close to proving the latter, even though the original poster has suggested otherwise. Tome to go get some sleep though.
Properly stated, there's a third possible interpretation of a successful fork: the maintainers were doing a fine and dandy job and no one from the community had an itch to scratch, until the gravy train stopped.
Actually, you hit the nail on the head, so to speak... except... it was the propriatary vendors that were perfectly happy with how things were going until the gravy train stopped. Then they scrambled. But boy is it hard to do what nessus does -- namely come up with all the vulnerabilities, signatures, etc. in a timely and relatively comprehensive manner for all the new vilnerabilities that are coming out by the barrel!
Yes, they will (and are) scrambling. But not because they have little understanding of the underlying code. No, that's trivial. The real value is in all the updates, signatures, definitions of various vulnerabilities, etc. People come up with them all the time, and nessus always has the latest & greatest, and everyone else seems to be weeks, if not months behind. Unless, of course, they are building on top of nessus as the engine, in which case they are always up to speed.
I am have some firsthand familiarity with this. I know of a company that essentially built their whole business around nessus as the core of their product. They added tons of bells and whistles to it, packaged it nicely, made it user-friendly, and shipped it. For a lot of money. Sounds silly, but I think they had a good product -- it actually made network security manageable. Just knowing what is vulnerable on your network is not good enough. In fact, if the network is of any appreciable size, that's not good at all. You need to filter out tons of noise -- false positives, things that you know are vulnerable but you do not care about for one reason or another, need to do some basic triaging, and be able to monitor trends and tendencies over time. So, there's a great need for a good presentation layer on top of nessus, and several companies recognized that need and built their business models on that. And that was good, it was really, really needed.
Then, a couple of years ago it became harder to get nessus updates. Nessus started detecting scrapers that were getting latest nasl updates and banning them. Then they started licensing those updates differently, I think, so it was harder for closed-source companies to use them. So, that company started rewriting newer NASLs in a "clean room" environment to stay in the legal clean waters. While the practice was silly, it made sense -- it was either that, or GPL the whole thing, and they could not figure out how to build a viable business plan if they were to GPL their whole product. I must admit that this is a very challenging, and at times an impossible task. I must say that I applaud them for going through all that extra effort to stay clean and respect the GPL -- a lot of other people do not do so.
So, has nessus just droppped a bombshell on all those companies that were building their stuff on top of its enine? Not really. The change has been coming for quite some time. Recent NASLs haven't been available for a while under a liberal license. In fact, I think that new software features and bugfixes in version 3 are not even all that important or needed. Signatures and definitions for newer vulnarabilities are. So, all those companies had ample time to change, if they wanted to. The company I was referring to did a good job, as far as I know -- they added a bunch of features beyond what nessus provided -- various network discovery, some windows-specific stuff, etc. I do not know much about what they are doing now, but I know that they worked hard to shift from a nessus-wrapper to a product that could stand on its own. And, to the best of my knowledge, they succeeed. Some others did not see the writing on the wall. So, they wasted time and this change of license will be the latest nail in their coffins. Stuff happens. Don't feel sorry for them. Nessus departing from the GPL is a sad fact of life, but... it's understandable. They can do it. And freeloaders deserve little compassion.
just my 2c...
Parent very nicely summarized the issue at stake. I'd write it a bit differently, but that'd be duplication of effort, so mod the parent up instead -- I posted here, so I can't mod myself.
They've haven't been very accurate in the past about who has stockpiles of weapons.
:)
I thought that was exactly the reason why the whole "We have the right to nuke the adverse party if we believe they are going to use WMD on us" clause. We have just shown the whole world that we do not need one teeeny bit of evidence, or even a somewhat-reliable intelligence to declare that someone has WMD and is ready to use it against us. In essense, "WMD" is the keyword that can be applied to anybody (if you read the draft, that includes states and non-states alike), and that gives the president the power to just nuke the heck out of whoever he pleases.
So, what do we have here? 1, We have shown resolve to go to war even if the rest of the world vehemently opposes it, and do so, essentially, unilaterally (the forces in Iraq are multinational on paper only, just look at the numbers!). 2, We have shown that WMD is carte blanche of sort, and justifies any means. 3, We have labelled certain nations as supporters of terrorists, and labelled terrorists as wanting to use WMD on us. 4, We are putting the legal framework in place to avoid silly Congress from disagreeing with the president over going to war. 5, By using nukes we ensure that we'd be doing a "precision strike" and avoid the whole mess with a lengthy occupation, etc, making such a war very inexpensive indeed. Except for the international backlash, but we have shown by now that cullies cannot care less about international opinion.
Now, if you were a nation that was laballed as a supporter of terrorism, what's there to guarantee that you won't be nuked the day after such a draft becomes a law? I think this is a very deliberate message -- we have a big red button, and we have one person, the president, who can push it if he is in a bad mood, and he's pushed similar buttons before. Live in PHEAR!
Eveyone knows that we cannot afford to start another war. That's why both Iran and North Korea can happily ignore what we say and do as they please. This draft changes that. We can still threaten them very effectively, and can afford it as well. Very, very dirty move. On par with our friendly Unix vendor, SCO.
You are welcome to license your new versions or the same version under licenses other than the GPL, because the GPL is non-exclusive. You can re-license the original code to yourself, if you feel like getting that far into it, under any license you like. What you cannot do is revoke the GPL rights on copies already distributed.
True. However, mysql mas been doing something rather interesting lately. They dual-license mysq under their own license and a GPL-look-alike license. Why look-alike? Well, because it sure as heck not GPL. Let me elaborate.
Among other things what GPL boils down to is that you are allowed to use the product in any way you want as long as you do not modify it. If you do, you need to release the cahnges under GPL. That's not all of it, but that's the part that mysql "extended". In essense, they say that not only are you not allowed to make changes without releasing the source, but ou are not allowed to USE their GPLed software in non-GPL-licensed software. Unless, of course, you buy their commercial license, which they will try to sell you at any cost.
There's a big difference between MODIFYING and USING. Consider PHP, for example. PHP is a released under license incompatible with GPL. Yet it needs mysql as much as mysql needs php to be successful. So, PHP folks have to keep getting license exceptions, thanks to Zak Greant. It gets worse if you product relies on mysql, not merely uses it. A quick google search brought me here. There is a lot more to that, but you'd have to google on your own - somehow I am not searching for the right terms I guess. In essense, what mysql did is they said "Our software is licensed under GPL" and then turned around and said "But you can't use it as you'd use any GPL software, because we put extra restrictions in addition to GPL." Unfortunately, most people just hear the first message, develop their software so it relies on mysql and then - BOOM! - they find that "clarification" from mysql ab. Once you bite the hook and cannot go back, they can force you to get their commercial license. Either that, or release the entire source code for your whole product that relies on mysql, even if no changes whatsoever were made to mysql itself. Fun, eh?
I am not going to argue on the merits of whether they can actually say that they are licensing a piece of software under GPL, and then add a "clarification" to that. I would be very surprised if such a thing would ever stand up in court, but I am most certainly not a lawyer, and neither do I have much faith in the judicial system. Even if it were to fail in court, the costs of acquiring a few commercial licenses are dwarfed by even the most modest court expenses, so for most people it's a no-brainer - just go and get the license. And for mysql it's the source of revenue through extortion.
You may believe that you can use mysql in a non-GPL product, and you are fine because you comply with the REAL GPL, not the mysql's version of GPL. Maybe you even have the money to fight that claim in court and prevail. That's fine. THe thing that matters most though is that even if you are not vilating the LETTER of the law, you are still violating the SPIRIT of the license, as mysql AB has stated so clearly in their "clarification". That fact alone makes me shiver and think again about what kind of company mysql ab is, and whether it would be prudent for me to recommend their software to my clients, whether they are interested in a commercial license, or intend to use mysql in a GPL-compliant way.
These are merely my opinions based on a fair amount of research I had to make on the subject. Not a legal advice by any means. Please, feel free to disagree with me and hire a lawyer if you need to.
you probably should! Or it might turn out that SCO doesn't really have the 6-digit revenue from their SCOSource division. That would make them mighty embarrassed, and you wouldn't really want that, would you?
6 digits! Did Microsft buy a few licences or something? I doubt the EV1 deal can bring 6 digits, and there isn't really anything else they can count as SCOSource revenue.
I must come to the poor guys rescue. Ever been shocked by a capacitor?
Not a good rescue... A capacitor in your camera is probably to the tune of several hundred volts, And what did I say? There isn't a single line that carries any appreciably high voltage to the PCI connectors. We are talking TTL-logic voltages. And maybe 12V here and there to drive the fans. You simply cannot get shocket with that.
I would later find myself taking apart disposable cameras to induce the capacitor shock to myself and my friends. Strange.. No, not strange. Sick. Though I have to admit I know of a few sicko's who had shocked themselves for fun. But then some people also mutilate themselves for fun too - you sure seem to be cathcing up with the crowd. THe sick crowd.
9. Sitting on a brand new Pentium 4 accidentally, bending all the pins
Pins up? That's gotta hurt! Talk about massively parallel acupuncture!
As you said, it is an extremely good solvent. Too good, in fact. Acetone will soften and dissolve many plastics. Try alcohol instead. Something like 90+% ethanol or rubbing alcohol is just as good at cleaning what you probably want to clean, leaves no residue, stinks less and is safe on almost any plastic, in fact on almost any computer part.
I use acetone sparingly and only in cases where alcohol won't do the job well, but acetone will. I also use it to make 'plastic goo' which you can later use as some sort of a plastic clay in some projects.
In a somewhat unrelated (and more painful) story, using my vast intellect I once attempted to replace a PCI card (of some sort) in a running computer and shocked the shit out of myself. Twice
;)
You must disconnect the PCI killer before messing with your PCI slots
What, you didn't use PCI killer? Then how in the world did you manage to shock yourself? Did you plug your fingers into a power outlet at teh same time? There isn't a single line that carries any appreciably high voltage to the PCI connectors - if you touched something you're not supposed to, you wouldn't feel a thing.
I agree, that sounds like BD, but is not all that far from what some people manage to acheive for real.
..... /$TMP_DIR .....
Consider this:
#bin/bash
rm -rf
where TMP_DIR is an env. var and can be set to one of several values, depending on your user profile. The person who wrote the script never intended for root to run it. After using the script for ages without a problem, somebody in their infinite wisdom decided to run it as 'root'. Imagine what happened (hint: since 'root' was never supposed to run it, TMP_DIR wasn't set at all). Ouch!
this. Much better than the garbage I get to listen to otherwise.
Think about it - how much would it cost to ship roadkill kangaroos from australia?
Why australia? I think they pick something more local. For instance, I remember seeing a lot of stray cats on our street a couple of years back. Then the McDonalds came... Good for profit margins, good for community - a win-win situation!