The concern with government vendor lock-in is that a commercial company controls government access to government data. What happens to all that data if the commerical company manages to revoke the licesnse? This is especially troublesome with patents, as you can't "code around" a patent. Your post refers to convienences, whereas the real fear is more of a leveraged timebomb.
For instance, what happens the next time the BSA gives a city government 30 days to provide proof of license, and the city's IT is shutdown in the scramble? What about a hospital? Or a nuclear power plant (or any utility, for that matter.) The fact is that vendor lock-in is just the tip of the ice-berg, and convience factors are just a small slice of the pie.
Wrong. If you distribute GPLed software in binary only form, you are required to make the source code available to any third party for no more than your cost of distributing it. You are obligated under copyright, via the GPL, to make the source available to Tom, Dick, and Harry, regardless of whether they were paying customers.
Actually the DMCA has nothing to do with copyright in terms of infringement. The DMCA has to do with access, whether you have a legal right to content or not. Thus non-infringing access is illegal under the DMCA.
You may copy and distribute verbatim copies of the Program's source code as you receive it, in any medium, provided that you conspicuously and appropriately publish on each copy an appropriate copyright notice and disclaimer of warranty; keep intact all the notices that refer to this License and to the absence of any warranty; and give any other recipients of the Program a copy of this License along with the Program.
So they are in violation, even though they "have not modified any of the software".
Oh wow! Is that a loophole? Is it distribution if I'm only renting copies, and not selling them? Am sure that if I made copies of MS Windows to lease, I'd be in trouble. But I can make copies without invoking the GPL. It is when I "distribute" that it matters. So again I ask the question, is it "distribution" to lease access? Wouldn't it matter if the software runs on *my* machine, and I allow people to come in and use it, as opposed to leasing them a CD they can install on their machine? What about the middle ground, where I put copies on *my* many machines, and then just lease those out? Is that distribution? And should it be?
I've never heard that "the source has to be available in the same manner that the binaries were available", just that it has to be distributed at no more charge than the cost of distribution. After rereading the GPL yet again, I can't find anything to even remotely support this suggestion. Please clarify.
Well, and perhaps if you choose to modify the source? If you download and use it as is, there is no need to accept the GPL. But I believe that as well as distribution, modifying the source calls the GPL into play. That is, you have no legal right to modify the source until you accept the GPL. Since you can modify the code and use it internally without having to distribute to those who ask for it, I'd say that "being under" the GPL at the time of modification doesn't seem to matter much, if at all, in terms of obligations.
Well, if they were doing this, wouldn't they be distributing? I mean, if I gave a copied CD of MS Windows with the computers I sell, I doubt I'd get very far saying, "but it wasn't on the computer." Seems like the FreeDOS illegality should/would extend to anyone distributing the illegal CDs.
Already corrected someone else, but it keeps showing up, so just let me point out that you *do* have to make the source code available to any third party who asks.
Accompany it with a written offer, valid for at least three years, to give any third party, for a charge no more than your cost of physically performing source distribution, a complete machine-readable copy of the corresponding source code, to be distributed under the terms of Sections 1 and 2 above on a medium customarily used for software interchange;
No, actually you have to provide the source code to any third party who asks. This is specificly stated in the GPL. You can charge them a reasonable fee to cover you costs, but possession of a binary doesn't matter.
Accompany it with a written offer, valid for at least three years, to give any third party, for a charge no more than your cost of physically performing source distribution, a complete machine-readable copy of the corresponding source code, to be distributed under the terms of Sections 1 and 2 above on a medium customarily used for software interchange;
Not at all. It is more along the lines of not being forced to pay what one is "not willing and able" to pay. Except for taxes on recording material, which can't be helped, as taxes are like death.
It becomes less Free in that those recieving it aren't made aware of the license underwhich it is distributed, and rights they have, thereby. Making sure that distribution occurs with a copy of the GPL is a method to insure it remains Free. Hard to make use of rights you have, that you don't know you have.
In terms of the Linux Kernel, the question would be does MS then GPL everthing that links with the Kernel?
These requirements apply to the modified work as a whole. If identifiable sections of that work are not derived from the Program, and can be reasonably considered independent and separate works in themselves, then this License, and its terms, do not apply to those sections when you distribute them as separate works. But when you distribute the same sections as part of a whole which is a work based on the Program, the distribution of the whole must be on the terms of this License, whose permissions for other licensees extend to the entire whole, and thus to each and every part regardless of who wrote it.
Seems like the first 6 definitions are in the Stallman sense, and only definition 7 is what you want to replace the first 6 with in order to pretend the problem is with those of us who speak correctly. If a word has an unobvious meaning, then using it in an unobvious way could be done in such a way that it is decietful. Using a word in its most likely and proper sense is hardly that.
Well distribute a copy of the GPL, and provide any third party who asks for it the source code. Those two, together, would be one way. Another would be to distribute the source (and a copy of the GPL) initially.
" Except that they didn't change the code so they don't have to distribute anything."
Wrong. They distributed a binary, so they have to make source code available to any third party that asks for it. This is covered under 3.b:
3. You may copy and distribute the Program (or a work based on it, under Section 2) in object code or executable form under the terms of Sections 1 and 2 above provided that you also do one of the following:
a) Accompany it with the complete corresponding machine-readable source code, which must be distributed under the terms of Sections 1 and 2 above on a medium customarily used for software interchange; or,
b) Accompany it with a written offer, valid for at least three years, to give any third party, for a charge no more than your cost of physically performing source distribution, a complete machine-readable copy of the corresponding source code, to be distributed under the terms of Sections 1 and 2 above on a medium customarily used for software interchange; or,
c) Accompany it with the information you received as to the offer to distribute corresponding source code. (This alternative is allowed only for noncommercial distribution and only if you received the program in object code or executable form with such an offer, in accord with Subsection b above.)
"the fair use of a copyrighted work, including such use by reproduction in copies or phonorecords or by any other means specified by that section, for purposes such as criticism, comment, news reporting, teaching (including multiple copies for classroom use), scholarship, or research, is not an infringement of copyright."
Wow, if only google, Stanford University, Harvard University and the University of Michigan were into teaching, scholarship, or research.
Copyright is about an author giving away some of their rights for the general good in return for the protection of the government. Or at least it was....
Actually this is exactly what I was ranting about. It isn't as though author's have any natural rights, here. They don't give up rights in return for anything from the government. Rather, the government is giving up *our* rights, creating a legal fiction of (artifical) intellectual property, in return for increased production and an associated increase in the amount of material passing into the public domain. IP is not a natural right, like life or liberty.
"So what you're saying is that whenever an author refers to "my book", they're mistaken. You're saying that they really should be saying "the book I wrote", because they have no real claim to the ideas that they came up with and they transcribed. "
Nope. One can say "my climate is better than your climate", without owning the climate. So "my book" and "the book I wrote" seem interchangable.
"the creator has an exclusive "product" to which he has every right to control access. There is ownership, of a type, here. I don't see how that can be disputed."
Now this is exactly what is disputed. The purpose of artifical property was to provide incentives to increase the amount of useful material in the public domain. If this worked, then pretending you could "own" artifical property was in the public good. But it isn't a *right*, like owning real property is a right. It is an artifical legal construct designed to increase the amount of public domain materials, and should be judged as such. I don't have a problem with creative solutions based on legal fictions. What I have a problem with is when people forget these are legal fictions and start suggesting that they have the right to "life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness...and also anything I think up first belongs to me or my guild forever, because the King gave us Royal protection".
If the system seemed to work, no one would pay any attention to it. If trains ran on time, who'd notice? It is when things break that there is a backlash.
James Boyle, a legal scholar at Duke Law School in North Carolina, claims that the current increase in intellectual-property rights represents nothing less than a second "enclosure movement". In the first enclosures, in 18th- and 19th-century Britain, the commons--open fields used by many, belonging to all, owned by none--were fenced in, and nearly all land became private property. By analogy, the granting of property rights on ideas, to the extent it is happening today, is plundering the intellectual commons of our public domain.
Before the 18th century, innovations were mainly kept secret through trade guilds. Sometimes monarchs capriciously granted indefinite exclusive rights to someone they favoured. Intellectual-property law was meant to remedy this by requiring the invention to be vetted by experts, limiting the right to a set period and making knowledge more widely accessible through public disclosure. Its development was part of the drive towards democracy and capitalism and the abolition of royal privileges and monopolies.
Ah but a football is property. Copyright is about mere "intellecutal property" (which is a misnomer, because it isn't really property at all.) You are right that it is really about control, and in fact, it is about extending control.
Slashdot Mirror
No, rather, you just choose to do without those forms of entertainment (commercial CDs) that have priced themselves out of the market.
The concern with government vendor lock-in is that a commercial company controls government access to government data. What happens to all that data if the commerical company manages to revoke the licesnse? This is especially troublesome with patents, as you can't "code around" a patent. Your post refers to convienences, whereas the real fear is more of a leveraged timebomb.
For instance, what happens the next time the BSA gives a city government 30 days to provide proof of license, and the city's IT is shutdown in the scramble? What about a hospital? Or a nuclear power plant (or any utility, for that matter.) The fact is that vendor lock-in is just the tip of the ice-berg, and convience factors are just a small slice of the pie.
BIWIW ?= "But I Wish I Were"...?
Wrong. If you distribute GPLed software in binary only form, you are required to make the source code available to any third party for no more than your cost of distributing it. You are obligated under copyright, via the GPL, to make the source available to Tom, Dick, and Harry, regardless of whether they were paying customers.
Actually the DMCA has nothing to do with copyright in terms of infringement. The DMCA has to do with access, whether you have a legal right to content or not. Thus non-infringing access is illegal under the DMCA.
The mistake being made in this analysis is that FreeDOS is derived from a GPLed OpenDOS, or indeed, has been derived from OpenDOS at all.
There is no OpenDOS in FreeDOS, which was originally PD-DOS: a brief history of FreeDOS. Here is the announcement.
Oh wow! Is that a loophole? Is it distribution if I'm only renting copies, and not selling them? Am sure that if I made copies of MS Windows to lease, I'd be in trouble. But I can make copies without invoking the GPL. It is when I "distribute" that it matters. So again I ask the question, is it "distribution" to lease access? Wouldn't it matter if the software runs on *my* machine, and I allow people to come in and use it, as opposed to leasing them a CD they can install on their machine? What about the middle ground, where I put copies on *my* many machines, and then just lease those out? Is that distribution? And should it be?
I've never heard that "the source has to be available in the same manner that the binaries were available", just that it has to be distributed at no more charge than the cost of distribution. After rereading the GPL yet again, I can't find anything to even remotely support this suggestion. Please clarify.
Actually the hacked GPL code that they distribute has to be made available to "any third party", not just anyone they sell the device to.
Actually you can't charge more than shipping costs to either set of people, those who have bought binaries, and "any third party" who asks for it.
Well, and perhaps if you choose to modify the source? If you download and use it as is, there is no need to accept the GPL. But I believe that as well as distribution, modifying the source calls the GPL into play. That is, you have no legal right to modify the source until you accept the GPL. Since you can modify the code and use it internally without having to distribute to those who ask for it, I'd say that "being under" the GPL at the time of modification doesn't seem to matter much, if at all, in terms of obligations.
Well, if they were doing this, wouldn't they be distributing? I mean, if I gave a copied CD of MS Windows with the computers I sell, I doubt I'd get very far saying, "but it wasn't on the computer." Seems like the FreeDOS illegality should/would extend to anyone distributing the illegal CDs.
Not at all. It is more along the lines of not being forced to pay what one is "not willing and able" to pay. Except for taxes on recording material, which can't be helped, as taxes are like death.
In terms of the Linux Kernel, the question would be does MS then GPL everthing that links with the Kernel?
insistence of Stallman and the FSF on redefining existing words for their own purposes and then insisting that everyone else is misusing them
Gotta call bullshit here.
free
Seems like the first 6 definitions are in the Stallman sense, and only definition 7 is what you want to replace the first 6 with in order to pretend the problem is with those of us who speak correctly. If a word has an unobvious meaning, then using it in an unobvious way could be done in such a way that it is decietful. Using a word in its most likely and proper sense is hardly that.
Well distribute a copy of the GPL, and provide any third party who asks for it the source code. Those two, together, would be one way. Another would be to distribute the source (and a copy of the GPL) initially.
Wrong. They distributed a binary, so they have to make source code available to any third party that asks for it. This is covered under 3.b:
"the fair use of a copyrighted work, including such use by reproduction in copies or phonorecords or by any other means specified by that section, for purposes such as criticism, comment, news reporting, teaching (including multiple copies for classroom use), scholarship, or research, is not an infringement of copyright."
Wow, if only google, Stanford University, Harvard University and the University of Michigan were into teaching, scholarship, or research.
Copyright is about an author giving away some of their rights for the general good in return for the protection of the government. Or at least it was....
Actually this is exactly what I was ranting about. It isn't as though author's have any natural rights, here. They don't give up rights in return for anything from the government. Rather, the government is giving up *our* rights, creating a legal fiction of (artifical) intellectual property, in return for increased production and an associated increase in the amount of material passing into the public domain. IP is not a natural right, like life or liberty.
Nope. One can say "my climate is better than your climate", without owning the climate. So "my book" and "the book I wrote" seem interchangable.
"the creator has an exclusive "product" to which he has every right to control access. There is ownership, of a type, here. I don't see how that can be disputed."
Now this is exactly what is disputed. The purpose of artifical property was to provide incentives to increase the amount of useful material in the public domain. If this worked, then pretending you could "own" artifical property was in the public good. But it isn't a *right*, like owning real property is a right. It is an artifical legal construct designed to increase the amount of public domain materials, and should be judged as such. I don't have a problem with creative solutions based on legal fictions. What I have a problem with is when people forget these are legal fictions and start suggesting that they have the right to "life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness...and also anything I think up first belongs to me or my guild forever, because the King gave us Royal protection".
If the system seemed to work, no one would pay any attention to it. If trains ran on time, who'd notice? It is when things break that there is a backlash.
Ah but a football is property. Copyright is about mere "intellecutal property" (which is a misnomer, because it isn't really property at all.) You are right that it is really about control, and in fact, it is about extending control.