Only if you insist on confusing the platform with the application, which in this case is the operating system vs. the application to download / play video.
The current iPlayer is proprietary, you have to download (free as in beer) and install it, and it works on only one version of Windows (XP). The complaint[*] is that it only works on XP, and the requirement is that it must be available "cross platform", which the BBC trust seem to have defined as (at least) Linux/Mac/Windows.
If they bring out a new iPlayer which can be freely downloaded and installed on Windows/Mac/Linux, then they will resolve that issue and meet their requirements. That applies whether the player application is proprietary or not, and it could be Flash or Fred, it doesn't matter.
[*]You may have a different compliant that the player application isn't open source. That hasn't been judged to be a requirement for the BBC's public value test, and they aren't required to do it. I doubt they would ever be required to either - AFAIK the test is availability not user-modifiability. It is fine for the back of our TVs to be welded shut - in fact it is probably mandatory these days (it is for the plug).
Also note that the BBC is far from averse to Open Source and in fact has a history of open source development - but it has to meet the test of being better value (for our licence money), so if proprietary is cheaper that is what happens.
Oh come on, everyone knows that SOP for redaction in government is to redact in Word by changing the text colour to white, or the background to black...
In all cases, yes you can, if that market is part of the WTO obligations and the country is signed up for it AND, the country allows its own domestic business to sell the same stuff.
Various forms of online gambling are legal in the US, but foreign operations are illegal. That is what brings the WTO in.
Card companies stored the card account data, retailers store the purchase data. An authentication code for the transaction can tie the two together for audit purposes - no need for retailers to store the card data.
In fact the only reason I can see for a retailer storing the card data is to make another transaction without having the card (or re-entering the data). As a customer that is precisely why I _don't_ want them storing card data. The only benefit to a customer is online, saving a few seconds typing the number in again - not worth the risk IMO.
Nope, but at least it means that you can check for malicious features if you want to.
What precisely stops you doing this with PGP ?
Their source is open to download and audit (just not Free for use/modification/etc.). They even state that their entire source control system is open for customers to audit:
"Customers can thus examine every check-in made to the sources by all its developers from 1997 to the present."
If you hang your clothes out to dry at night, or in a dark basement, they still get dry, don't they?
No, in a word.
Without heat/energy input they will only get as dry as the environment. Eventually. If the external environment is humid rain/mist, then the clothes will stay damp (and cold, and after a while probably go mouldy).
Additionally, in a dark basement, you may not have enough ventilation to shift the water vapour (it has to go somewhere). This means you end up with a damp room as well as damp clothes.
At that point, you may well find yourself having to get a dehumidifier to remove the watar vapour from the room to get rid of the damp problem. That uses power, and condenses the water (from the hanging clothes) out at which point you pour it down the drain.
Alternatively you could just use the power to get the water straight out of the clothes in a condenser dryer.
When I said "major Linux distribution", I was referring to general purpose distributions
The major distributions are soon going to be the embedded ones (if they aren't already). Some forecasts (see/. front page today) are suggesting 300m+ Linux units in five years - thats 60m per year. PCs (desktop) are about 300m / year with Linux usually reckoned to be about 2% of that - ie. about 6m. That would make just the cellphone (only one part of the embedded) Linux market 10 times the size of the desktop (and server market is similar - smaller market, but linux has a bigger share).
So in order of LOC we come out with something like GNU/Linux/Mozilla/Java/OpenOffice/Xorg/Mesa/Tetex/FreeCIV.
Except that was redhat in 2001, closer to the present day, Debian in 2005 (which has also been studied) is almost ten times the size overall, with only one of the largest packages being GNU:
OOO/Linux/NVU/Mozilla/GNU/XFS/XFree etc.
Yuck.
At the end of the day, language is fluid and people will call things by a name that is convenient and understood. [anything]-slash-Linux is annoying to say, so most people won't. "Linux" is a convenient shortening and covers the whole family of systems (GNU-using or otherwise) built on the Linux kernel, in comparison with eg. "Windows" as a term.
"Do you run Linux or Windows" could refer to anything from your phone to your server farm, whereas to get more specific it is common to drop those terms and talk about "XP", "2003" (ie. server), "Redhat" or "Ubuntu" (maybe adding a version or service pack number to be precise).
As far as I can tell, only Linux uses glibc and GNU Coreutils [gnu.org] out of the box. FreeBSD has BSD libc [freebsd.org] and BSD Coreutils [freebsd.org].
glibc didn't arrive on Linux until glibc 2.x in the late 90s. Prior to that there were various Linux libcs based on forks of very early GNU libcs which appeared to be mostly repackaged BSD libc (including non-GPL compatible 4-clause BSD code IIRC) - so should it be "BSD/" also ?
My understanding is that glibc didn't merge in any of the old Linux libc source (probably due to licensing issues), so the glibc many Linux distributions use now was not around when Linux arrived (so it couldn't have been one of the pieces of the complete-except-for-the-kernel system).
Also, these days many (most?) distributions in the embedded space use uLibc or similar - glibc is too bloated.
#4 - RMS bases his argument on a different definition of "OS" to most of the rest of the world, and doesn't understand that language is fluid. There will certainly be those who agree with him that a text editor and compiler are fundamentally parts of the "operating system". There are also plenty of people who are adamant that "gay" does not mean "homosexual", that "quote" is not a noun, that "critique" is not a verb and nor is "google"... etc.
[this is not the same as #3 - I could agree with his definition of OS and still regard his argument as baseless because his definition is out of date]
#5 - Inconsistent: Other OS's relying on GNU are not subject to the claim.
#6 - Inconsistent: The GPL had previously been seen to allow the distributor to choose the name - ports & forks of actual FSF GNU packages had been renamed without any GNU credit requirement (moral or legal) being raised.
#7 - Hypocritical: this is the same RMS who refered to the BSD credit clause as "obnoxious", right ?
#8 - Nonsensical: the GNU system (historically) is expressly _NOT_ Unix. It was, from the start, supposed to be different - at system level - with a Unix compatibility/emulation layer. Linux is a straight Unix clone, and was infamously criticised (in direct comparison with GNU) for being so. GNU/Linux is an oxymoron.
[and a few more]
I think if you've only seen people take three positions on this then you haven't debated it with many people.
Linux was good enough, so there was no technical reason to get Hurd done.
Linux was considered at one stage and found to be _not_ good enough (apparently for technical reasons) for GNU - hence the reason they carried on with Hurd.
Also, prior to Linux, the GNU system was (and still is) successfully running on various proprietary Unixes, which means that there was no _technical_ reason to get Hurd done whether Linux existed or not.
He recognized the fact that Linux is running the toolchain.
Which would be why he also talks about GNU/BSD, (and GNU/NextStep, GNU/OS-X etc.)... except he doesn't. There are loads of system running the GNU toolchain, some as the only toolchain, some as the "commonly used by most sensible people" toolchain. Only Linux appears to be GNU/ though.
Richard Stallman has said that he doesn't believe copyright is *allowed* to place USAGE restrictions on software (as opposed to REDISTRIBUTION restrictions).
Unfortunately this doesn't help much unless you have an agreed definition of usage and redistribution restrictions.
Since there was a significant amount of debate during hte GPLv3 drafting process about "usage restrictions" in the draft, it would appear that not everyone understands that term in the same way as RMS.
It's quite probable that BSD folks would disagree with RMS on it, which means that a statement like that from RMS is worthless to them.
I don't know how much of the FSF's revenue it was, but it seemed to be their main focus. Linux (along with all PC stuff I think) was relegated to the "microcomputers" section - ie. "stuff we don't support" - along with other hardware / OSes not considered to be "proper computers" I guess.
RMS and the FSF basically seemed to miss the rise of the PC and x86 along with Linux.
Worse than that, GPL has problems coexisting with itself - v3 is not compatible with v2, so GPLv3 Solaris code would be no more compatible with Linux (GPLv2) than CDDL Solaris code.
I pretty much always have some form of ID on me when travelling, but the GP said the requirement was "a state ID" which is a lot different to "an ID". I don't have a state ID from any US state and am unlikely ever to have one.
Yeah and he also went for a % of the gross. Which made it by far the best paying load of crap he ever did, and shows he believed (rightly) that it would do really well at box office, whether it was crap or not.
worms, for all intents and purposes they do not exist on any platform but Windows
*yawn*.
Someone needs to refresh their memory of the Morris Worm (or read up on it, if their career in computer security perhaps doesn't go back that far...).
Not only was it the first major worm (technically - some reports persisted in calling it a virus), but in terms of scale (relative to size of the net), nothing since has come anywhere close. Morris took down a significant percentage of the internet directly and probably a larger part indirectly from networks which literally pulled the plugs.
malware and viruses are simply a non-issue for any platform but Microsoft Windows running Internet Explorer and Outlook.
In 1988, none of those platforms _existed_. I seem to recall that we still managed to have a major issue.
Slashdot Mirror
Only if you insist on confusing the platform with the application, which in this case is the operating system vs. the application to download / play video.
The current iPlayer is proprietary, you have to download (free as in beer) and install it, and it works on only one version of Windows (XP). The complaint[*] is that it only works on XP, and the requirement is that it must be available "cross platform", which the BBC trust seem to have defined as (at least) Linux/Mac/Windows.
If they bring out a new iPlayer which can be freely downloaded and installed on Windows/Mac/Linux, then they will resolve that issue and meet their requirements. That applies whether the player application is proprietary or not, and it could be Flash or Fred, it doesn't matter.
[*]You may have a different compliant that the player application isn't open source. That hasn't been judged to be a requirement for the BBC's public value test, and they aren't required to do it. I doubt they would ever be required to either - AFAIK the test is availability not user-modifiability. It is fine for the back of our TVs to be welded shut - in fact it is probably mandatory these days (it is for the plug).
Also note that the BBC is far from averse to Open Source and in fact has a history of open source development - but it has to meet the test of being better value (for our licence money), so if proprietary is cheaper that is what happens.
The requirement on the BBC is to be cross-platform (platfrom neutral) not non-proprietary. This is a big step forward in meeting that requirement.
Oh come on, everyone knows that SOP for redaction in government is to redact in Word by changing the text colour to white, or the background to black...
In all cases, yes you can, if that market is part of the WTO obligations and the country is signed up for it AND, the country allows its own domestic business to sell the same stuff.
Various forms of online gambling are legal in the US, but foreign operations are illegal. That is what brings the WTO in.
Aside from all the other arguments, surely this is one Linux system that should _NOT_ be called GNU/Linux because it is not a GNU system.
A GNU system would not be based on proprietary software (which seems to be the accusation about this distribution).
"Not unless you had showed some sign of intent."
In the UK these days, "some sign of intent" (at least enough to get arrested for terrorism) involves:
a) Not looking at police officers:
"I went into the station without looking at the police officers at the entrance or by the gates" - from http://gizmonaut.net/bits/suspect.html)
or
b) Looking at police officers:
"On Michael's stop and search form they said they wanted to speak to him, under the Terrorism Act, because he had been looking at a police officer" - from http://www.bournemouthecho.co.uk/news/latestnews/display.var.1717690.0.seized_by_the_police.php
So that pretty much covers it...
Card companies stored the card account data, retailers store the purchase data. An authentication code for the transaction can tie the two together for audit purposes - no need for retailers to store the card data.
In fact the only reason I can see for a retailer storing the card data is to make another transaction without having the card (or re-entering the data). As a customer that is precisely why I _don't_ want them storing card data. The only benefit to a customer is online, saving a few seconds typing the number in again - not worth the risk IMO.
What precisely stops you doing this with PGP ?
Their source is open to download and audit (just not Free for use/modification/etc.). They even state that their entire source control system is open for customers to audit:
"Customers can thus examine every check-in made to the sources by all its developers from 1997 to the present."
How could GPL make a difference to auditability ?
IIRC The law _was_ passed then - but with this provision deactivated. I think they have now decided to activate it.
I believe the home secretary at the time was sent communications similar to your example, by campaigners, to try and make the same point.
If you RTFM (m for marketing or manual) - Visio is part of office.
In fact the full name of the current version is "Microsoft Office Visio 2007", so you can't really miss it.
The user has installed a new part of Office and not activated it, therefore (logically) Office is _not_ activated.
If you hang your clothes out to dry at night, or in a dark basement, they still get dry, don't they?
No, in a word.
Without heat/energy input they will only get as dry as the environment. Eventually. If the external environment is humid rain/mist, then the clothes will stay damp (and cold, and after a while probably go mouldy).
Additionally, in a dark basement, you may not have enough ventilation to shift the water vapour (it has to go somewhere). This means you end up with a damp room as well as damp clothes.
At that point, you may well find yourself having to get a dehumidifier to remove the watar vapour from the room to get rid of the damp problem. That uses power, and condenses the water (from the hanging clothes) out at which point you pour it down the drain.
Alternatively you could just use the power to get the water straight out of the clothes in a condenser dryer.
The major distributions are soon going to be the embedded ones (if they aren't already). Some forecasts (see
Except that was redhat in 2001, closer to the present day, Debian in 2005 (which has also been studied) is almost ten times the size overall, with only one of the largest packages being GNU:
OOO/Linux/NVU/Mozilla/GNU/XFS/XFree etc.
Yuck.
At the end of the day, language is fluid and people will call things by a name that is convenient and understood. [anything]-slash-Linux is annoying to say, so most people won't. "Linux" is a convenient shortening and covers the whole family of systems (GNU-using or otherwise) built on the Linux kernel, in comparison with eg. "Windows" as a term.
"Do you run Linux or Windows" could refer to anything from your phone to your server farm, whereas to get more specific it is common to drop those terms and talk about "XP", "2003" (ie. server), "Redhat" or "Ubuntu" (maybe adding a version or service pack number to be precise).
glibc didn't arrive on Linux until glibc 2.x in the late 90s. Prior to that there were various Linux libcs based on forks of very early GNU libcs which appeared to be mostly repackaged BSD libc (including non-GPL compatible 4-clause BSD code IIRC) - so should it be "BSD/" also ?
My understanding is that glibc didn't merge in any of the old Linux libc source (probably due to licensing issues), so the glibc many Linux distributions use now was not around when Linux arrived (so it couldn't have been one of the pieces of the complete-except-for-the-kernel system).
Also, these days many (most?) distributions in the embedded space use uLibc or similar - glibc is too bloated.
#4 - RMS bases his argument on a different definition of "OS" to most of the rest of the world, and doesn't understand that language is fluid. There will certainly be those who agree with him that a text editor and compiler are fundamentally parts of the "operating system". There are also plenty of people who are adamant that "gay" does not mean "homosexual", that "quote" is not a noun, that "critique" is not a verb and nor is "google"... etc.
[this is not the same as #3 - I could agree with his definition of OS and still regard his argument as baseless because his definition is out of date]
#5 - Inconsistent: Other OS's relying on GNU are not subject to the claim.
#6 - Inconsistent: The GPL had previously been seen to allow the distributor to choose the name - ports & forks of actual FSF GNU packages had been renamed without any GNU credit requirement (moral or legal) being raised.
#7 - Hypocritical: this is the same RMS who refered to the BSD credit clause as "obnoxious", right ?
#8 - Nonsensical: the GNU system (historically) is expressly _NOT_ Unix. It was, from the start, supposed to be different - at system level - with a Unix compatibility/emulation layer. Linux is a straight Unix clone, and was infamously criticised (in direct comparison with GNU) for being so. GNU/Linux is an oxymoron.
[and a few more]
I think if you've only seen people take three positions on this then you haven't debated it with many people.
Well for a start I don't think you'll find Emacs in any major embedded Linux distribution, and many (most?) don't use glibc.
Further, the list quoted is acutally largely non-gnu (both by package count and total sloc) - at least if you define largely as "more than half".
Linux was good enough, so there was no technical reason to get Hurd done.
Linux was considered at one stage and found to be _not_ good enough (apparently for technical reasons) for GNU - hence the reason they carried on with Hurd.
Also, prior to Linux, the GNU system was (and still is) successfully running on various proprietary Unixes, which means that there was no _technical_ reason to get Hurd done whether Linux existed or not.
He recognized the fact that Linux is running the toolchain.
... except he doesn't. There are loads of system running the GNU toolchain, some as the only toolchain, some as the "commonly used by most sensible people" toolchain. Only Linux appears to be GNU/ though.
Which would be why he also talks about GNU/BSD, (and GNU/NextStep, GNU/OS-X etc.)
Richard Stallman has said that he doesn't believe copyright is *allowed* to place USAGE restrictions on software (as opposed to REDISTRIBUTION restrictions).
Unfortunately this doesn't help much unless you have an agreed definition of usage and redistribution restrictions.
Since there was a significant amount of debate during hte GPLv3 drafting process about "usage restrictions" in the draft, it would appear that not everyone understands that term in the same way as RMS.
It's quite probable that BSD folks would disagree with RMS on it, which means that a statement like that from RMS is worthless to them.
About $100-$200 per tape (in the old days) IIRC.
I don't know how much of the FSF's revenue it was, but it seemed to be their main focus. Linux (along with all PC stuff I think) was relegated to the "microcomputers" section - ie. "stuff we don't support" - along with other hardware / OSes not considered to be "proper computers" I guess.
RMS and the FSF basically seemed to miss the rise of the PC and x86 along with Linux.
Worse than that, GPL has problems coexisting with itself - v3 is not compatible with v2, so GPLv3 Solaris code would be no more compatible with Linux (GPLv2) than CDDL Solaris code.
not to have an ID.
I pretty much always have some form of ID on me when travelling, but the GP said the requirement was "a state ID" which is a lot different to "an ID". I don't have a state ID from any US state and am unlikely ever to have one.
And yes, even though you don't drive, you MUST have a state ID with you at all times
I don't have an ID from your state (or any US state). Does that mean I'm committing an offence the minute I enter it ?
How do tourists / visitors survive - or do you just not allow them ?
Yeah and he also went for a % of the gross. Which made it by far the best paying load of crap he ever did, and shows he believed (rightly) that it would do really well at box office, whether it was crap or not.
worms, for all intents and purposes they do not exist on any platform but Windows
*yawn*.
Someone needs to refresh their memory of the Morris Worm (or read up on it, if their career in computer security perhaps doesn't go back that far...).
Not only was it the first major worm (technically - some reports persisted in calling it a virus), but in terms of scale (relative to size of the net), nothing since has come anywhere close. Morris took down a significant percentage of the internet directly and probably a larger part indirectly from networks which literally pulled the plugs.
malware and viruses are simply a non-issue for any platform but Microsoft Windows running Internet Explorer and Outlook.
In 1988, none of those platforms _existed_. I seem to recall that we still managed to have a major issue.
Do you know why that restriction is there
No - you'd need to ask someone close to the history of the standards process.
There are / have been proposal(s) to remove this limitation. The standards process grinds along pretty slowly - but it may happen, one day.