For most Open Source guys, it's not about getting rid of copyright. (And for those of us for whom that is what it's about, we usually say, "free software" instead of "open source.") In fact, an inordinate number of us use copyright to protect our desire to have our work be part of the open source (or free software) world. Richard Stallman, the guy who first verbalized the principles of free software, basically doesn't believe software should be copyrighted, but uses copyright law to protect his work from the evil he believes it would be part of if it were proprietary and copyrighted. Confusing, huh?:)
As for the issue at hand, if the copyright holder of the work (be that FT or Mosfet) has ever made it available under a free software and/or open source license, nobody can sue to have it taken down. Such licenses (by definition) are irrevocable, and grant unlimited redistribution rights to everyone.
So, even if FT owns the copyright (doubtful), they can't stop someone else from distributing what they gave them a license to distribute. Just another example, I guess, of a company that was firmly committed to Open Source, until the dot bomb revolution.
This is the first post I've ever made where I feel compelled to mention that I am not a lawyer. If you're trying to get legal advice from slashdot in general, and me in particular, you're sick and need help. Please don't sue me for legal malpractice or whatever it is you can do to poor saps who accidentally give legal advice (how is that possible for crying out loud) without uttering the magic legal disclaimer of IANAL.
What's flamebait? The article said, "New XOSL is an alternative bootloader." Did you read it as "New XOSL is an alternative bootloader; let's see Windows do that; Windows sucks!"?
Not every post and article is an argument; some of them are just informative.
Hear, hear! The "movement" is not a Linux movement, though some newcomers sometimes make that mistake. The movement is about free software (or Open Source, if you prefer). All free software is a contribution. Even if it doesn't work with Linux. Even if it's redundant. All of it is another step to the goal.
When I think of "world domination", I mean domination by free software. Stallman only picked UNIX because it was the standard of his day. Sometimes I wonder if the guys trying to fit Linux into embedded systems and PDAs might be missing the point. Where's OpenPalm?
Like I said, anything open/free is a contribution. Linux. GNU. Hurd. Net/Free/OpenBSD. AtheOS. Free software for Windows. Free software for Macintosh. It all helps. To all of you who are developing open source/free software, whether it runs on my machine or not, I give my thanks.
Thank you! I'm glad to find out I'm not the only one! I empathize with everything you just said, because I live it daily.
I have seen two speed limits change, and I think it's because people were so mad at me for going 30 when the limit should have been 35 or 45 when the limit should have been 60 that they actually called someone.
I used to drive reasonably, but then I got a ticket for going 33 in a residental area. Residential areas (here at least) are 30. Everyone goes 35. That particular street is, for no apparent reason, 20. I think it's so people's kids can play safely in the street unattended.
I didn't express myself well initially, but what I was trying to say was that students shouldn't confuse non-collaboration rules that schools put in place to enforce academic integrity with the assumption that schools are opposed to teaching teamwork. It just sounded to me like this guy was whining that he couldn't cheat.
I would say I value the team experiences I had from my university. (In fact, I convinced one of those guys to come work for my employer.)
A Christian mailing list I'm on is about ready to have me set up a real list on our own server instead of a Yahoo list specifically because of those ads. Lately Yahoo's been showing a lot of skin.
Patents cannot be issued for any technique which "would be obvious to any practitioner of the craft." Am I the only programmer who thinks he could whip together a system to do this in a couple of days?
How many of you ever had a job interviewer look at the college on your resume and say, "Oh, I don't think we want someone from your college; they don't teach you how to work in a team."? What makes us think a student knows more about what employers need than the employers?
Yes, but that's a firing offence, not a felony. Actually, it is a felony in that state, but it shouldn't be.
Employees laid off! There oughta be a law!
on
Morals and Layoffs
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· Score: 1
Or you could let the market decide what your company will do, while you grow up and take responsibility for yourself. For crying out loud: learn to save some money! If you'll try to keep two to six month's survival money on hand, you'll be in better shape when something like this happens. If you have no loyalty to your company and/or suspect that your company has no loyalty to you, quit spending money as if your company gave it out free. Most of the dot-com people were making enough money at least for awhile that they could've put some of it away instead of burning it.
My number one advice: don't waste money on a car. You're only going to have it ten years anyway. (Probably much less.) All you need it for is to get from the computers at home to the computers at work.:) Buy a five year old reliable junker for $3000. Drive it until it falls apart. Save a little extra for repairs. Remember, the value your car loses while you own it is money thrown away. Things like your home will lose a lot less value.
Good idea. Here's another case of a law written by people who whine that programming a VCR is too hard, but then, in a fit of "We've got to get tough on computer crime"-ism, seem to think they know more than the people who actually use computers.
In my opinion,
Yes. I have a different one I'm about to express.
he clearly broke the law
Yes, but so did everybody else in his state that used a telephone system.
and paid for it.
Boy, you better believe it!
The ruling was fair,
What are you talking about? Exorbitant sums of money and a permanent criminal record are fair punishment for telling your employer that some of his employees are violating the employer's security policy?
he learned his lesson,
Unfortunately, the lesson many of us got out of this was cynicism.
and he still manages to make many positive contributions to society.
Right you are! Randall's really a good human being, considering all he's been through. None of it was fair, but he still manages to make many positive contributions to society.
Well, yes, you might claim you haven't accepted the license. But if you haven't accepted the license, then you have no rights to the software at all. So claiming you never accepted the license won't allow you to have rights that the owners didn't intend to grant, because it's copyrighted. (Isn't that cute?:-) This is in the text of the GPL, BTW.
Learn from DeCSS: Keep it private yourself
on
A New Kind of War
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· Score: 1
With Jon Katz it always have to do with Your Rights Online [tm], doesn't it? If you're concerned about your online communications being monitored, use encryption, like
And if you're concerned that the government can break those, start supporting research for stronger encryption.
I think every packet that goes into the Internet should be monitored, and I know it can. If there's something I want private, I'll keep it private myself, and I expect everybody to do the same. Expecting the law to protect you when you use insecure technology is somewhat like those who expect the law to protect them when they use insecure encryption on DVDs. Pick up the slack yourself and quit asking the government to do it.
Don't have to rebut it; the media already did. They insisted on doing a hand count in Florida and finally finished sometime around inauguration, IIRC. Bush won.
Given that the human face recognition performed by the check-in agents did not keep the hijackers out, there is no reason to think that computer face recognition would help.
I'm sure I'll get flamed or worse either for disagreeing with RMS or for suggesting that "evil" face-recognition might be an effective deterrent, but the above statement is not true. Human face recognition performed by the check-in agents didn't work, but do you think it would've worked if the check-in agents were the CIA agents who'd been looking for two of the hijackers for a couple of weeks? Do you think the computer face recognition is more likely to be like the bored, underpaid check-in agents, or more like the highly trained CIA agents especially familiar with their targets?
I find Perl very open to new developers. I spent some time last year trying to get into the Perl 6 effort. I got some criticism that was mostly constructive, and all in all, I was encouraged to stick around. Time constraints prevented that, unfortunately.
Note that I've been using Perl for three years and watching the community for two. If you try to jump into something like that and throw out a bunch of frequently requested features that don't really belong in the project, you won't go far.
All in all, I think the Anonymous Coward who wrote this is smoking something. I've never met a free software developer who didn't appreciate help. I have met some who didn't appreciate ignoring their design, ignorance, personal attacks, committing to do things without finishing, etc.
I agree. Like I said, I don't believe in government conspiracies.
All the same, I think this is a good motivation to move to the freenet architecture. Freesites can't be slashdotted. (Or newsdotted, or whatever you would call what happened today.)
On the brighter side of the news, when CNN came back up, they'd stripped out a lot of the junk that makes their page take so long to load.:)
Slashdot Mirror
Fortunately they don't own the copyright on that, either. :)
For most Open Source guys, it's not about getting rid of copyright. (And for those of us for whom that is what it's about, we usually say, "free software" instead of "open source.") In fact, an inordinate number of us use copyright to protect our desire to have our work be part of the open source (or free software) world. Richard Stallman, the guy who first verbalized the principles of free software, basically doesn't believe software should be copyrighted, but uses copyright law to protect his work from the evil he believes it would be part of if it were proprietary and copyrighted. Confusing, huh? :)
As for the issue at hand, if the copyright holder of the work (be that FT or Mosfet) has ever made it available under a free software and/or open source license, nobody can sue to have it taken down. Such licenses (by definition) are irrevocable, and grant unlimited redistribution rights to everyone.
So, even if FT owns the copyright (doubtful), they can't stop someone else from distributing what they gave them a license to distribute. Just another example, I guess, of a company that was firmly committed to Open Source, until the dot bomb revolution.
This is the first post I've ever made where I feel compelled to mention that I am not a lawyer. If you're trying to get legal advice from slashdot in general, and me in particular, you're sick and need help. Please don't sue me for legal malpractice or whatever it is you can do to poor saps who accidentally give legal advice (how is that possible for crying out loud) without uttering the magic legal disclaimer of IANAL.
What's flamebait? The article said, "New XOSL is an alternative bootloader." Did you read it as "New XOSL is an alternative bootloader; let's see Windows do that; Windows sucks!"?
Not every post and article is an argument; some of them are just informative.
Your post is pretty informative, by the way.
Cygwin installs perfectly even if you don't have admin rights. You can even
run secure shell under it!
There are also several Exception and Error classes you might be interested in.
Of course, you knew you could do Design by contract in Perl, right?
Hear, hear! The "movement" is not a Linux movement, though some newcomers sometimes make that mistake. The movement is about free software (or Open Source, if you prefer). All free software is a contribution. Even if it doesn't work with Linux. Even if it's redundant. All of it is another step to the goal.
When I think of "world domination", I mean domination by free software. Stallman only picked UNIX because it was the standard of his day. Sometimes I wonder if the guys trying to fit Linux into embedded systems and PDAs might be missing the point. Where's OpenPalm?
Like I said, anything open/free is a contribution. Linux. GNU. Hurd. Net/Free/OpenBSD. AtheOS. Free software for Windows. Free software for Macintosh. It all helps. To all of you who are developing open source/free software, whether it runs on my machine or not, I give my thanks.
Thank you! I'm glad to find out I'm not the only one! I empathize with everything you just said, because I live it daily.
I have seen two speed limits change, and I think it's because people were so mad at me for going 30 when the limit should have been 35 or 45 when the limit should have been 60 that they actually called someone.
I used to drive reasonably, but then I got a ticket for going 33 in a residental area. Residential areas (here at least) are 30. Everyone goes 35. That particular street is, for no apparent reason, 20. I think it's so people's kids can play safely in the street unattended.
I've watched two speed limits change in this way.
Call me crazy, but I think I would've stopped when "SEIG HEIL" started. Maybe that's only because I don't fit into groups well or something.
You mean you really started yelling, "Seig heil"?
"One world, one program," etc. :)
This is mean.
Yes, but since you just recently learned to value teamwork, I suggest there's a possibility that maybe you are overvaluing the role the college plays in teaching this.
I didn't express myself well initially, but what I was trying to say was that students shouldn't confuse non-collaboration rules that schools put in place to enforce academic integrity with the assumption that schools are opposed to teaching teamwork. It just sounded to me like this guy was whining that he couldn't cheat.
I would say I value the team experiences I had from my university. (In fact, I convinced one of those guys to come work for my employer.)
A Christian mailing list I'm on is about ready to have me set up a real list on our own server instead of a Yahoo list specifically because of those ads. Lately Yahoo's been showing a lot of skin.
Patents cannot be issued for any technique which "would be obvious to any practitioner of the craft." Am I the only programmer who thinks he could whip together a system to do this in a couple of days?
How many of you ever had a job interviewer look at the college on your resume and say, "Oh, I don't think we want someone from your college; they don't teach you how to work in a team."? What makes us think a student knows more about what employers need than the employers?
Yes, but that's a firing offence, not a felony. Actually, it is a felony in that state, but it shouldn't be.
Or you could let the market decide what your company will do, while you grow up and take responsibility for yourself. For crying out loud: learn to save some money! If you'll try to keep two to six month's survival money on hand, you'll be in better shape when something like this happens. If you have no loyalty to your company and/or suspect that your company has no loyalty to you, quit spending money as if your company gave it out free. Most of the dot-com people were making enough money at least for awhile that they could've put some of it away instead of burning it.
My number one advice: don't waste money on a car. You're only going to have it ten years anyway. (Probably much less.) All you need it for is to get from the computers at home to the computers at work. :) Buy a five year old reliable junker for $3000. Drive it until it falls apart. Save a little extra for repairs. Remember, the value your car loses while you own it is money thrown away. Things like your home will lose a lot less value.
It isn't that simple.
Things rarely aren't.
Consider the case of Randall Schwartz.
Good idea. Here's another case of a law written by people who whine that programming a VCR is too hard, but then, in a fit of "We've got to get tough on computer crime"-ism, seem to think they know more than the people who actually use computers.
In my opinion,
Yes. I have a different one I'm about to express.
he clearly broke the law
Yes, but so did everybody else in his state that used a telephone system.
and paid for it.
Boy, you better believe it!
The ruling was fair,
What are you talking about? Exorbitant sums of money and a permanent criminal record are fair punishment for telling your employer that some of his employees are violating the employer's security policy?
he learned his lesson,
Unfortunately, the lesson many of us got out of this was cynicism.
and he still manages to make many positive contributions to society.
Right you are! Randall's really a good human being, considering all he's been through. None of it was fair, but he still manages to make many positive contributions to society.
Thanks, Mr. Kuhn. Please tell Mr. Moglen I appreciated the article.
Well, yes, you might claim you haven't accepted the license. But if you haven't accepted the license, then you have no rights to the software at all. So claiming you never accepted the license won't allow you to have rights that the owners didn't intend to grant, because it's copyrighted. (Isn't that cute? :-) This is in the text of the GPL, BTW.
With Jon Katz it always have to do with Your Rights Online [tm], doesn't it? If you're concerned about your online communications being monitored, use encryption, like
And if you're concerned that the government can break those, start supporting research for stronger encryption.
I think every packet that goes into the Internet should be monitored, and I know it can. If there's something I want private, I'll keep it private myself, and I expect everybody to do the same. Expecting the law to protect you when you use insecure technology is somewhat like those who expect the law to protect them when they use insecure encryption on DVDs. Pick up the slack yourself and quit asking the government to do it.
Don't have to rebut it; the media already did. They insisted on doing a hand count in Florida and finally finished sometime around inauguration, IIRC. Bush won.
Given that the human face recognition performed by the check-in agents did not keep the hijackers out, there is no reason to think that computer face recognition would help.
I'm sure I'll get flamed or worse either for disagreeing with RMS or for suggesting that "evil" face-recognition might be an effective deterrent, but the above statement is not true. Human face recognition performed by the check-in agents didn't work, but do you think it would've worked if the check-in agents were the CIA agents who'd been looking for two of the hijackers for a couple of weeks? Do you think the computer face recognition is more likely to be like the bored, underpaid check-in agents, or more like the highly trained CIA agents especially familiar with their targets?
I find Perl very open to new developers. I spent some time last year trying to get into the Perl 6 effort. I got some criticism that was mostly constructive, and all in all, I was encouraged to stick around. Time constraints prevented that, unfortunately.
Note that I've been using Perl for three years and watching the community for two. If you try to jump into something like that and throw out a bunch of frequently requested features that don't really belong in the project, you won't go far.
All in all, I think the Anonymous Coward who wrote this is smoking something. I've never met a free software developer who didn't appreciate help. I have met some who didn't appreciate ignoring their design, ignorance, personal attacks, committing to do things without finishing, etc.
I agree. Like I said, I don't believe in government conspiracies.
All the same, I think this is a good motivation to move to the freenet architecture. Freesites can't be slashdotted. (Or newsdotted, or whatever you would call what happened today.)
On the brighter side of the news, when CNN came back up, they'd stripped out a lot of the junk that makes their page take so long to load. :)
no talk policy
So of course I jumped up and posted it on slashdot!