Ah, but the ecological diversity is a *good* thing. What is justifiably a "dead end" right now might be useful later in another context. The code stays available.
Hate playing the devil's advocate, but their license is Open, it just isn't Free. It meets the OSI requirements, which means OSI approval means less to me than once it did.
Open Source is a necessary, but not sufficent, condition. As it is, Solaris is closed tight. No cross-fertilization possible. They might run Gnome, and use the GNU toolchain, but what they "open" is only open to their customers. Its useless to the rest of the world.
OpenSolaris is useless to me. I don't care. I can't use it. It is good for people totally locked-in to Sun, who are happy with there vender lockin, and who don't ever plan on using anything else. But that isn't me. Oh well.
Agreed that design is fluid, but my point was that design is done before implementation begins. Thus, while design is fluid during the design process, it is over by the time programmers have started.
As soon as you embed the font, in any way, you are distributing software. The font is a program that details how to draw and achieve a typeface. The typeface isn't copyrightable, but the software description of how to achieve the result is. Thus, embedding the font is distribution.
So you are implying that after getting the design spec.s, coders go off on their own, and it is necessary to bring the spec.s down to the code rather than raise the code up to spec? Isn't that ass-backwards?
"As the project moves along and the design changes..." is a problem. Why not code to spec? Was there a reason the design was structured as it was? Why isn't it being followed? Who authorized the deviate code?
The code itself is the blueprint. No, you confuse the "thing" for the "map". The blueprint exists to make comprehending the "thing" easier.
The most important thing is that the design documents should develop along with the code and should be updated as the code is updated. Far too often the design document is completed before coding begins. The code ends up varying significantly from the design document and the design document becomes useless and even misleading. If the code contradicts the design then the code is *wrong*. Period. Being to lazy to code to design spec. shouldn't be tolerated. If you have issues with the design, get the training and experience to be an Analyst or Architect. It isn't the programmer's job to defy the design.
It has no cost, but it *is* non-free exactly because it is closed-source. The confusion is inherent in the minds of those who confuse "free", no cost shackles with "freedom".:-)
"the GPL isn't really free in a sense because it restricts you to" remaining free.
"I'd argue that this is certainly a type of restriction, making it less 'Free'. "
This is the difference between inalienable rights, and rights you can agree to give up.
It is like you are arguing that making slavery illegal makes us less free, because we no longer have the "right" to become slaves. Thus, in order to be free, we have to have slavery. Reduce the limitations on our freedoms! Bring back slavery! At least allow me the right to choose to become a slave!
The problem, Mike, is when you embed the font. This is the "tightly linking to the font" that you can't imagine a document doing. PDF files can do this, so that fonts you use on your computer will still show up on a computer that doesn't have the same fonts that you have.
If you had released under the GPL then your program is innoculated against propriatry closure. Code evolves. Your ideas are a seed that became a sapling, and then might go on to be a mighty tree. At the point in time that your code is grafted in to a proprietary piece of code, that evolutionary path of your idea is closed, forever (or life plus 70 years, to be extended). The further use of that now proprietary aspect of your (further evolved) idea is of no use to me, and even less than no use because the rest of the branch of the evolutionary chain is closed. If you had used the GPL, then eventually you or someone else would have explored that evolutionary niche and the result would have been available for cross-fertilization. It is exactly the blocking of this potential for closure that makes the "viral" nature of the GPL an innoculation rather than a virus.
If fact, that is if you distribte the application as binary only. If you distribute with sourcecode in the first place, you are already covered, and you don't have to deal with people who ask for the sourcecode.
Actually if you distribute sourcecode with binaries, then you only have to be concerned about the people you distributed to.
However, if you distribute binaries only, then you have to give "any third party" the source code when they ask. It doesn't matter that you never gave *me* any binaries, because you did distribute just binaries. And the only way you can be legal about your binary only distribution is to abide by the GPL.
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.)
Parens added: "distributing (a document with a GPL'd font internally within an organization) would NOT force you to distribute to anyone in the outside world", just because distributing internally isn't distributing. If you are a corp., then as an individual, you are "distributing" it to yourself. That form of internal distribution appears to not be distribution in the meaning of the word which would cause the GPL to come in to play.
"They do supply source, but you have to pay for access - the scheme he has set up is valid, does not violate the GPL"...but then you go on to describe a situation that is *not* valid under the GPL: "does tend to be a little bit of a cry baby when his subscribers sell out and publish anyway". He can charge a fee to recover the cost of distribution, but he can't be adding additional conditions. If he is distributing binaries, then I have the right to the source code as a memeber of "any third party". I then have full GPL redistribution rights. James is in violation, and his scheme is *not* valid.
Actually there are no restrictions on *use*, only on *distribution*. You can link all you want to and keep your stuff as secret as you want. You just can't distribute it linked.
Re:Mindshare and image bloodbath for BitKeeper
on
Linus Drops BitKeeper
·
· Score: 2, Insightful
Reverse engineering is doesn't have anything at all to do with "rip off all companies that write software". Reverse engineering is legal, acceptable, and morally OK. There is nothing wrong with reverse engineering. That *is* my point.
Re:Mindshare and image bloodbath for BitKeeper
on
Linus Drops BitKeeper
·
· Score: 5, Insightful
tired of people trying to reverse engineer their software
This is exactly the core issue, and exactly why BitKeeper isn't worth considering.
It is completely possible that "it isn't even free at all", even though it has no cost. Please, while it is easy to forgive such obvious ignorance, still you shouldn't be labeling people as zealots while making such blatently ignorant statements. The concepts are well documented. Please google for "free as in beer" and "free as in speech". Thanks again, and do keep trying, just try to research a little bit first.:-)
You can reinstall the OS in about two hours, sure. If you know you've been owned. So, then, do you reinstall every day? Every 12 hours? If you care about your documents, does it matter being owned? I think so.
Perhaps you'd start "your own separate internet" for the reason so many people actually do: to work on a LAN (Locan Area Network) in safety, behind a firewall. Still you might want to share bookmarks with others on your team, without letting the rest of the world see what it is your interested in. This "separate internet" is called an intranet.
Please note, not everyone who uses this code will use it for the purposes that del.icio.us is using it for. Thats the point. And that extensibility is *the* strength of Free software:-)
Slashdot Mirror
Ah, but the ecological diversity is a *good* thing. What is justifiably a "dead end" right now might be useful later in another context. The code stays available.
Hate playing the devil's advocate, but their license is Open, it just isn't Free. It meets the OSI requirements, which means OSI approval means less to me than once it did.
Open Source is a necessary, but not sufficent, condition. As it is, Solaris is closed tight. No cross-fertilization possible. They might run Gnome, and use the GNU toolchain, but what they "open" is only open to their customers. Its useless to the rest of the world.
OpenSolaris is useless to me. I don't care. I can't use it. It is good for people totally locked-in to Sun, who are happy with there vender lockin, and who don't ever plan on using anything else. But that isn't me. Oh well.
Agreed that design is fluid, but my point was that design is done before implementation begins. Thus, while design is fluid during the design process, it is over by the time programmers have started.
As soon as you embed the font, in any way, you are distributing software. The font is a program that details how to draw and achieve a typeface. The typeface isn't copyrightable, but the software description of how to achieve the result is. Thus, embedding the font is distribution.
So you are implying that after getting the design spec.s, coders go off on their own, and it is necessary to bring the spec.s down to the code rather than raise the code up to spec? Isn't that ass-backwards?
"As the project moves along and the design changes..." is a problem. Why not code to spec? Was there a reason the design was structured as it was? Why isn't it being followed? Who authorized the deviate code?
The code itself is the blueprint. No, you confuse the "thing" for the "map". The blueprint exists to make comprehending the "thing" easier.
The most important thing is that the design documents should develop along with the code and should be updated as the code is updated. Far too often the design document is completed before coding begins. The code ends up varying significantly from the design document and the design document becomes useless and even misleading. If the code contradicts the design then the code is *wrong*. Period. Being to lazy to code to design spec. shouldn't be tolerated. If you have issues with the design, get the training and experience to be an Analyst or Architect. It isn't the programmer's job to defy the design.
It has no cost, but it *is* non-free exactly because it is closed-source. The confusion is inherent in the minds of those who confuse "free", no cost shackles with "freedom". :-)
"the GPL isn't really free in a sense because it restricts you to" remaining free.
"I'd argue that this is certainly a type of restriction, making it less 'Free'. "
This is the difference between inalienable rights, and rights you can agree to give up.
It is like you are arguing that making slavery illegal makes us less free, because we no longer have the "right" to become slaves. Thus, in order to be free, we have to have slavery. Reduce the limitations on our freedoms! Bring back slavery! At least allow me the right to choose to become a slave!
The problem, Mike, is when you embed the font. This is the "tightly linking to the font" that you can't imagine a document doing. PDF files can do this, so that fonts you use on your computer will still show up on a computer that doesn't have the same fonts that you have.
If you had released under the GPL then your program is innoculated against propriatry closure. Code evolves. Your ideas are a seed that became a sapling, and then might go on to be a mighty tree. At the point in time that your code is grafted in to a proprietary piece of code, that evolutionary path of your idea is closed, forever (or life plus 70 years, to be extended). The further use of that now proprietary aspect of your (further evolved) idea is of no use to me, and even less than no use because the rest of the branch of the evolutionary chain is closed. If you had used the GPL, then eventually you or someone else would have explored that evolutionary niche and the result would have been available for cross-fertilization. It is exactly the blocking of this potential for closure that makes the "viral" nature of the GPL an innoculation rather than a virus.
If fact, that is if you distribte the application as binary only. If you distribute with sourcecode in the first place, you are already covered, and you don't have to deal with people who ask for the sourcecode.
However, if you distribute binaries only, then you have to give "any third party" the source code when they ask. It doesn't matter that you never gave *me* any binaries, because you did distribute just binaries. And the only way you can be legal about your binary only distribution is to abide by the GPL.
Parens added: "distributing (a document with a GPL'd font internally within an organization) would NOT force you to distribute to anyone in the outside world", just because distributing internally isn't distributing. If you are a corp., then as an individual, you are "distributing" it to yourself. That form of internal distribution appears to not be distribution in the meaning of the word which would cause the GPL to come in to play.
"They do supply source, but you have to pay for access - the scheme he has set up is valid, does not violate the GPL"...but then you go on to describe a situation that is *not* valid under the GPL: "does tend to be a little bit of a cry baby when his subscribers sell out and publish anyway". He can charge a fee to recover the cost of distribution, but he can't be adding additional conditions. If he is distributing binaries, then I have the right to the source code as a memeber of "any third party". I then have full GPL redistribution rights. James is in violation, and his scheme is *not* valid.
Actually there are no restrictions on *use*, only on *distribution*. You can link all you want to and keep your stuff as secret as you want. You just can't distribute it linked.
Isn't that Bourne Again SHell?
Reverse engineering is doesn't have anything at all to do with "rip off all companies that write software". Reverse engineering is legal, acceptable, and morally OK. There is nothing wrong with reverse engineering. That *is* my point.
tired of people trying to reverse engineer their software
This is exactly the core issue, and exactly why BitKeeper isn't worth considering.
Sounds like the best arguement I've heard for new startups to use Linux from the get go.
It is completely possible that "it isn't even free at all", even though it has no cost. Please, while it is easy to forgive such obvious ignorance, still you shouldn't be labeling people as zealots while making such blatently ignorant statements. The concepts are well documented. Please google for "free as in beer" and "free as in speech". Thanks again, and do keep trying, just try to research a little bit first. :-)
You can reinstall the OS in about two hours, sure. If you know you've been owned. So, then, do you reinstall every day? Every 12 hours? If you care about your documents, does it matter being owned? I think so.
Perhaps you'd start "your own separate internet" for the reason so many people actually do: to work on a LAN (Locan Area Network) in safety, behind a firewall. Still you might want to share bookmarks with others on your team, without letting the rest of the world see what it is your interested in. This "separate internet" is called an intranet.
:-)
Please note, not everyone who uses this code will use it for the purposes that del.icio.us is using it for. Thats the point. And that extensibility is *the* strength of Free software