Churlish; I am now picturing you taking a dump with your "word-a-day" booklet held out in front of you as you head down that road towards lucid speech, enjoying your fragrant droppings as you do so.
Spend less time digging around for references to establish your (non-existant) intellectual superiority, and more time actually thinking.
I refuse to address your questions. If you feel like you need feedback or would like to argue some more, re-read my posts and pretend like I'm responding, because I have nothing to say now which I haven't already said. Then feel free to reply to them again, if you wish.
A suggestion: rather than sitting around spending an hour crafting a response, digging around for unusual words to respond with, go sit out in the fresh air and use your noodle awhile to actually *think*.
Pulling out the "Latin for Dummies" book is a smooth move. I've already made my point clear, so I won't repea. If you can't find evidence that the GPL is viral, you need to put down the vodka and sober up because sourceforge has tens of thousands of examples.
Wrong again. The term "viral" both carries negative emotional baggage and is a poor analogy to the GPL. I've already explained this, but I'll go over it once more for you. Do pay attention this time.
I'm paying attention, but you're not convincing me.
What if the file server hosts a copy of its own source code?
Then it's like every living organism in the world carrying it's own DNA. No particular relation to virii.
By your standards we should look past the bad connotations and call it "viral" because it makes perfect copies of itself. Obviously that's wrong. Unlike a virus this is not self directing, someone has to initiate the copy. The same is true of the GPL. It doesn't sneak into code against he will of the author; someone has to deliberately and consciously put it there every time.
The GPL is not a living organism, therefore you can find LOTS of differences between it and a virus. That doesn't meant that the viral analogy isn't an appropriate one. I feel it's extremely appropriate.
Please pick up a dictionary and look up "parasitic". A parasite is not defined by being attached forever, but by doing harm to an unwilling host.
You need the dictionary; go check the definition of parasite. A parasite does not, by definition, do harm to a host, it merely lives off the host without contributing to the survival of the host.
And again, the GPL is not a living organism, so any analogies drawn between it and a living organism are tentatively contextual. You can easily find as many differences as I can similarities, so arguing that the GPL is not parasitic because you think (wrongly, I must add) the term parasitic means to inflict harm upon its host and the GPL causes no harm to the applications its attached itself to is UTTERLY RETARDED. Check yourself promptly into the nearest Sylvan Learning Center.
Exceptions to the parasitic rule of natural viruses are completely irrelevant, as are scientific attempts to turn them to useful purposes. The GPL is not a molecule and has no meaningful resemblance to those molecules we call viruses. But don't be dissuaded from attempting to change the subject since you obviously know precious little about the one at hand.
Just because you have a short attention span doesn't mean I was trying to change the subject. If you found yourself wandering brainlessly around the subject of bacteriophages, blame yourself, not me.
No shit it's not an actual organism, genius. It's an analogy to how the GPL attaches to projects and in so doing, creates an exact replica of itself.
I think virus describes that quite well.
Clearly you have an adgenda here that has nothing to do with the facts. Maybe you're angry because the GPL doesn't let you misappropriate the work of others, or maybe you're just jealous that some high profile GPL licensed project is more popular than your favorite. Whatever. I look forward to shredding your next round of specious rambling.
Do you even know what the word specious means without having to pull up a dictionary? Doubtful.
Yeah, I have an agenda. My agenda is to call a spade a spade. The GPL is viral. Even if RMS himself hates that term, I think he would be pretty upset if the GPL didn't spread itself around the way it was designed to: in a viral fashion.
Yes, I see your point about how the GPL may be applied or not applied in a given instance of a GPL violation, however, I think if you make the assumption that RMS and the FSF mean what they say, and take their words at face value and imagine the GPL will be applied as-written in accordance with how RMS/FSF say it will be applied, the reality is, if you use GPL code in your application, you either release your application as GPL or you're in trouble.
Like I said, people are worried about the negative emotional baggage with the term "viral" and ignoring its true fitness for describing the GPL.
Something that make perfect copies of something else is not viral, so no, a file server that copies files or anything else is not viral.
No, I'm not stretching the truth. Virii are parasitic, yes, just like the GPL. Once a project has been released as GPL, it is forever so and cannot be revoked; it is attached forever. However, they do NOT always take without giving. Baceriophage's are virii which do a good job of killing bacteria and are growing in use these days as an alternative to antibiotics. They can save a person's life where antibiotics fail to remove life-threatening bacterial infections.
And no, replication is NOT beside the point. It *IS* the point, the only point, in calling the GPL viral. That's all anyone means by it. They don't mean "use the GPL and your project will get sick and die!" Or "use the GPL and it will infect your entire code base!" All they mean is, it attaches itself permanently to people's code and replicates itself perfectly.
While it's a good way to remind people of their passwords, most people would have to perform the task of reconstructing their password every time they needed it because the resulting password itself is too hard to remember.
What he's saying is, unless he's willing to change his license to the GPL, he cannot use the GPL code. The GPL would force him to do so. In this way, the GPL isn't very free or friendly; in fact, it's quite viral as it gives him only two options: don't use the code, or use it and be forced to release his product as GPL. The GPL attempts to attach itself to his product and then replicate a perfect copy of itself. His only real choice, unless he wants to be assimilated, is to avoid the GPL code entirely.
First off, go hit Google. "Viral" is a term used to describe the GPL long before Microsoft used it.
Second, it's an accurate term to use when describing the GPL. Virii attach and replicate perfect copies of themselves, which are the GPL's signature properties. The term "viral" has a negative emotional charge because humans get "sick" from virii, but the basic function of a virus is simply to attach and replicate, so the insinuations about contagiousness and illness which along with the term are simply emotional baggage. The GPL is viral; it attaches itself to a project and generates perfect copies of itself as it hops from project to project.
Not really; XHTML and CSS are both presentation. Content would be data, such as an RSS feed or other data source. You can change basic colors and fonts, etc., by separating out the styles, but you still have images, layout, etc. being coded in XHTML. They're both presentation. You really need to be coding on the back-end to merge content with presentation, if they are truly separated.
No matter how quick and dirty it is, you can always keep in mind where your code should separate so you can refactor them piecemeal later. The long, slow development process should allow for refactoring anyway, so Q&D should be the normal programming method while you are prototyping, and then you refactor your code into nice, clean, re-visitable, re-usable modules. It's the best of both worlds. Just don't refactor more than you need to; no code ever really lives forever. Make it clean enough to acheive your goals but don't go overboard.
But if the original author's intent is to earn a living selling licenses, why would they ever release it as GPL in the first place? The GPL is strictly for opening up a product to the entire world for free. While doing so might increase product recognition, you'd better hope and pray someone smart enough to fork into a competing product doesn't come along. You'll be putting yourself out of business using your own source code.
The GPL is strictly for certain types of projects. Most project principals have other jobs and code their projects on the side; others are companies who are running off of investment capital trying to sell support contracts (or perhaps doing well at that, but it's extremely rare). The little guy has a snowball's chance in hell of making money anywhere near a GPL project.
If the GPL becomes the standard; if too many companies come to demand GPL software because it's cheap, you're going to get the economy you are asking for: a very communal, low-cash-flow economy where only the rich get richer, and the poor just get poorer.
But how much money are you going to make if once you sell it, all of your work, every last line of code you wrote, is free for anyone to re-distribute at no cost or spin off a competing product? If you make just one sale, count yourself ahead.
I'm all for open source and even free software, but the GPL is just too much. Yeah, sure, we can all band together and take down Microsoft. Then what? What should Microsoft's ex-employees do? Live together as a cult in those of their houses which were actually paid off? Pool together and share their clothing?
You don't control it past your distribution. Once you've distributed it to even one person, that person gains full rights to distribute it under the terms of the GPL; you cannot prevent that distribution nor expect compensation for it.
So, yeah, the copyright holder retains full control, just so long as what that copyright holder wants is for the whole world to have free access to the source code of his or her work and is free to do whatever they wish with it. If you mean retain control in the sense that you wish to exercise your control by reliquishing all control, then yeah.
And yes, I'm very, very familiar with all of the terms of the GPL.
There are a lot of programmers in the world, technology changes fast, and young people tend to have more of a grasp on the new stuff. I'm 38 and I know it's just a fact. The alternative is to forgoe the wisdom of your years and constantly hop onto whatever new bandwagon comes along, get good at it quickly and market yourself cheaply for a job. That's what being young is all about; bringing in the fresh and new for dirt-cheap.
If hopping on all the bandwagons appears unwise to you, you know what you do then? Go apply your more mature knowledge to your own software and peddle it yourself. That's one thing about programming that isn't true in a lot of job sectors; you can sell your own work almost as easily as you can find a job working for someone else. Take your pick: work for someone else in the technology and for the pay THEY want, or stick with what you know and work for yourself.
If you knew the context, perhaps. Futuremark was calling nVidia a cheater for reducing detail in order to preserve a high framerate, and I thought that was ironic since, truth be told, all most gamers care about is keeping that frame rate up when the shit hits the fan. Dropping detail in certain circumstances should be not just acceptable, but desirable. People were getting so much pleasure out of calling nVidia a cheater, they completely overlooked that what nVidia did was perhaps a Good Thing(tm).
So, no, not really funny...but you could perhaps get a chuckle out of the fact that it's a bit of a swipe at the idiots who would prefer that nVidia change things back and drop frame rates rather than detail.
I guess it depends on which side of the fence you sit.
Faster framerates is cheating, isn't it? I don't want faster framerates if it comes with a "cheater" label, no sir. Not me, no way. Give me slower framerates and pat me on the head, please.
I still bus tickets and crap going back to 1984, and Novell didn't have a COPY OF THE SIGNED CONTRACT AMENDMENT GRANTING COPYRIGHT OF UNIX TO SCO!?!?!?!?
I want to know the difference between brand-x's efficiency when running game-z compared to brand-y's efficiency. I don't care how the cards rate on Futuremark's standard if they don't allow optimized code. If game code in the real world is optimized, then I want to see tests that measure the cards against each other using optimized code. For all I know, brand-x and brand-y might run exactly the same on Futuremark's tests, but when playing game-z, brand-x could give me three-fold the framerate over brand-y.
Slashdot Mirror
I think I'm going to leave your bulleted paragraphs as a testament to how much effort you put into /. arguments. That's pretty pathetic.
Oh, and the GPL is viral.
See if you can spend more time responding to this post than my last one. I bet you can't. Chicken!
Churlish; I am now picturing you taking a dump with your "word-a-day" booklet held out in front of you as you head down that road towards lucid speech, enjoying your fragrant droppings as you do so.
Spend less time digging around for references to establish your (non-existant) intellectual superiority, and more time actually thinking.
I refuse to address your questions. If you feel like you need feedback or would like to argue some more, re-read my posts and pretend like I'm responding, because I have nothing to say now which I haven't already said. Then feel free to reply to them again, if you wish.
A suggestion: rather than sitting around spending an hour crafting a response, digging around for unusual words to respond with, go sit out in the fresh air and use your noodle awhile to actually *think*.
Pulling out the "Latin for Dummies" book is a smooth move. I've already made my point clear, so I won't repea. If you can't find evidence that the GPL is viral, you need to put down the vodka and sober up because sourceforge has tens of thousands of examples.
Wrong again. The term "viral" both carries negative emotional baggage and is a poor analogy to the GPL. I've already explained this, but I'll go over it once more for you. Do pay attention this time.
I'm paying attention, but you're not convincing me.
What if the file server hosts a copy of its own source code?
Then it's like every living organism in the world carrying it's own DNA. No particular relation to virii.
By your standards we should look past the bad connotations and call it "viral" because it makes perfect copies of itself. Obviously that's wrong. Unlike a virus this is not self directing, someone has to initiate the copy. The same is true of the GPL. It doesn't sneak into code against he will of the author; someone has to deliberately and consciously put it there every time.
The GPL is not a living organism, therefore you can find LOTS of differences between it and a virus. That doesn't meant that the viral analogy isn't an appropriate one. I feel it's extremely appropriate.
Please pick up a dictionary and look up "parasitic". A parasite is not defined by being attached forever, but by doing harm to an unwilling host.
You need the dictionary; go check the definition of parasite. A parasite does not, by definition, do harm to a host, it merely lives off the host without contributing to the survival of the host.
And again, the GPL is not a living organism, so any analogies drawn between it and a living organism are tentatively contextual. You can easily find as many differences as I can similarities, so arguing that the GPL is not parasitic because you think (wrongly, I must add) the term parasitic means to inflict harm upon its host and the GPL causes no harm to the applications its attached itself to is UTTERLY RETARDED. Check yourself promptly into the nearest Sylvan Learning Center.
Exceptions to the parasitic rule of natural viruses are completely irrelevant, as are scientific attempts to turn them to useful purposes. The GPL is not a molecule and has no meaningful resemblance to those molecules we call viruses. But don't be dissuaded from attempting to change the subject since you obviously know precious little about the one at hand.
Just because you have a short attention span doesn't mean I was trying to change the subject. If you found yourself wandering brainlessly around the subject of bacteriophages, blame yourself, not me.
No shit it's not an actual organism, genius. It's an analogy to how the GPL attaches to projects and in so doing, creates an exact replica of itself.
I think virus describes that quite well.
Clearly you have an adgenda here that has nothing to do with the facts. Maybe you're angry because the GPL doesn't let you misappropriate the work of others, or maybe you're just jealous that some high profile GPL licensed project is more popular than your favorite. Whatever. I look forward to shredding your next round of specious rambling.
Do you even know what the word specious means without having to pull up a dictionary? Doubtful.
Yeah, I have an agenda. My agenda is to call a spade a spade. The GPL is viral. Even if RMS himself hates that term, I think he would be pretty upset if the GPL didn't spread itself around the way it was designed to: in a viral fashion.
Yes, I see your point about how the GPL may be applied or not applied in a given instance of a GPL violation, however, I think if you make the assumption that RMS and the FSF mean what they say, and take their words at face value and imagine the GPL will be applied as-written in accordance with how RMS/FSF say it will be applied, the reality is, if you use GPL code in your application, you either release your application as GPL or you're in trouble.
Like I said, people are worried about the negative emotional baggage with the term "viral" and ignoring its true fitness for describing the GPL.
Something that make perfect copies of something else is not viral, so no, a file server that copies files or anything else is not viral.
No, I'm not stretching the truth. Virii are parasitic, yes, just like the GPL. Once a project has been released as GPL, it is forever so and cannot be revoked; it is attached forever. However, they do NOT always take without giving. Baceriophage's are virii which do a good job of killing bacteria and are growing in use these days as an alternative to antibiotics. They can save a person's life where antibiotics fail to remove life-threatening bacterial infections.
And no, replication is NOT beside the point. It *IS* the point, the only point, in calling the GPL viral. That's all anyone means by it. They don't mean "use the GPL and your project will get sick and die!" Or "use the GPL and it will infect your entire code base!" All they mean is, it attaches itself permanently to people's code and replicates itself perfectly.
And for that, "viral" is an excellent term.
While it's a good way to remind people of their passwords, most people would have to perform the task of reconstructing their password every time they needed it because the resulting password itself is too hard to remember.
What he's saying is, unless he's willing to change his license to the GPL, he cannot use the GPL code. The GPL would force him to do so. In this way, the GPL isn't very free or friendly; in fact, it's quite viral as it gives him only two options: don't use the code, or use it and be forced to release his product as GPL. The GPL attempts to attach itself to his product and then replicate a perfect copy of itself. His only real choice, unless he wants to be assimilated, is to avoid the GPL code entirely.
First off, go hit Google. "Viral" is a term used to describe the GPL long before Microsoft used it.
Second, it's an accurate term to use when describing the GPL. Virii attach and replicate perfect copies of themselves, which are the GPL's signature properties. The term "viral" has a negative emotional charge because humans get "sick" from virii, but the basic function of a virus is simply to attach and replicate, so the insinuations about contagiousness and illness which along with the term are simply emotional baggage. The GPL is viral; it attaches itself to a project and generates perfect copies of itself as it hops from project to project.
Not really; XHTML and CSS are both presentation. Content would be data, such as an RSS feed or other data source. You can change basic colors and fonts, etc., by separating out the styles, but you still have images, layout, etc. being coded in XHTML. They're both presentation. You really need to be coding on the back-end to merge content with presentation, if they are truly separated.
No matter how quick and dirty it is, you can always keep in mind where your code should separate so you can refactor them piecemeal later. The long, slow development process should allow for refactoring anyway, so Q&D should be the normal programming method while you are prototyping, and then you refactor your code into nice, clean, re-visitable, re-usable modules. It's the best of both worlds. Just don't refactor more than you need to; no code ever really lives forever. Make it clean enough to acheive your goals but don't go overboard.
You don't need .NET to separate content from presentation; using Ruby with HTML templates do the job quite well.
But if the original author's intent is to earn a living selling licenses, why would they ever release it as GPL in the first place? The GPL is strictly for opening up a product to the entire world for free. While doing so might increase product recognition, you'd better hope and pray someone smart enough to fork into a competing product doesn't come along. You'll be putting yourself out of business using your own source code.
The GPL is strictly for certain types of projects. Most project principals have other jobs and code their projects on the side; others are companies who are running off of investment capital trying to sell support contracts (or perhaps doing well at that, but it's extremely rare). The little guy has a snowball's chance in hell of making money anywhere near a GPL project.
If the GPL becomes the standard; if too many companies come to demand GPL software because it's cheap, you're going to get the economy you are asking for: a very communal, low-cash-flow economy where only the rich get richer, and the poor just get poorer.
But how much money are you going to make if once you sell it, all of your work, every last line of code you wrote, is free for anyone to re-distribute at no cost or spin off a competing product? If you make just one sale, count yourself ahead.
I'm all for open source and even free software, but the GPL is just too much. Yeah, sure, we can all band together and take down Microsoft. Then what? What should Microsoft's ex-employees do? Live together as a cult in those of their houses which were actually paid off? Pool together and share their clothing?
Look up the word Communism, folks.
You don't control it past your distribution. Once you've distributed it to even one person, that person gains full rights to distribute it under the terms of the GPL; you cannot prevent that distribution nor expect compensation for it.
So, yeah, the copyright holder retains full control, just so long as what that copyright holder wants is for the whole world to have free access to the source code of his or her work and is free to do whatever they wish with it. If you mean retain control in the sense that you wish to exercise your control by reliquishing all control, then yeah.
And yes, I'm very, very familiar with all of the terms of the GPL.
Admit it. It's funniest when it hurts, and it hurt. I was funny as hell.
Ditto.
You bastards!
There are a lot of programmers in the world, technology changes fast, and young people tend to have more of a grasp on the new stuff. I'm 38 and I know it's just a fact. The alternative is to forgoe the wisdom of your years and constantly hop onto whatever new bandwagon comes along, get good at it quickly and market yourself cheaply for a job. That's what being young is all about; bringing in the fresh and new for dirt-cheap.
If hopping on all the bandwagons appears unwise to you, you know what you do then? Go apply your more mature knowledge to your own software and peddle it yourself. That's one thing about programming that isn't true in a lot of job sectors; you can sell your own work almost as easily as you can find a job working for someone else. Take your pick: work for someone else in the technology and for the pay THEY want, or stick with what you know and work for yourself.
Assuming you believe that's what nVidia is doing. The only thing that rings true to me is that they're dropping detail to maintain high framerates.
If you knew the context, perhaps. Futuremark was calling nVidia a cheater for reducing detail in order to preserve a high framerate, and I thought that was ironic since, truth be told, all most gamers care about is keeping that frame rate up when the shit hits the fan. Dropping detail in certain circumstances should be not just acceptable, but desirable. People were getting so much pleasure out of calling nVidia a cheater, they completely overlooked that what nVidia did was perhaps a Good Thing(tm).
So, no, not really funny...but you could perhaps get a chuckle out of the fact that it's a bit of a swipe at the idiots who would prefer that nVidia change things back and drop frame rates rather than detail.
I guess it depends on which side of the fence you sit.
Faster framerates is cheating, isn't it? I don't want faster framerates if it comes with a "cheater" label, no sir. Not me, no way. Give me slower framerates and pat me on the head, please.
I still bus tickets and crap going back to 1984, and Novell didn't have a COPY OF THE SIGNED CONTRACT AMENDMENT GRANTING COPYRIGHT OF UNIX TO SCO!?!?!?!?
What the...!?!?
Did the room have ANYTHING that is not something you can go out and buy for yourself right now? How is that "the future" there in that room!?
I want to know the difference between brand-x's efficiency when running game-z compared to brand-y's efficiency. I don't care how the cards rate on Futuremark's standard if they don't allow optimized code. If game code in the real world is optimized, then I want to see tests that measure the cards against each other using optimized code. For all I know, brand-x and brand-y might run exactly the same on Futuremark's tests, but when playing game-z, brand-x could give me three-fold the framerate over brand-y.