The bylaws will also include an agreement that any security software produced by members of the group will be engineered in such a way that it can only be used for lawful purposes.
Yet again, we have a software usage agreement that restricts the types of things for which the software can be used.
No, it's not a usage agreement. If you engineer the software so it can't be used for unlawful purposes, there's no need to have that in your license agreement or whatever. E.g. a software that checks whether an exploitable security hole exists but doesn't make harmful use of the exploit would be legal to publish because there simply is no way to use it for unlawful purposes.
The more subtle point here is that this goes directly against Free Software, because you can make sure that people will not build malicious software based on the code only if they don't have the code in the first place.
I think (but please correct me if I'm wrong) Verilog is a hardware description language, not an interface description language. So this case is about the description of an implementation of the ARM machine code instruction set, not a description of the instruction set itself.
Readability has nothing to do with how complex a syntax is. I'd agree if you say that Perl has one of the most complex syntaxes, but I'd disagree if you say that makes it harder to read.
To give you an example, here's a small program written in Parrot assembler, which, being an assembly language, has a very simple syntax with few operators:
set I1, 0
set I2, 20
set I3, 1
set I4, 1
REDO:eqI1, I2, DONE, NEXT
NEXT:set I5, I4
add I4, I3, I4
set I3, I5
print I3
print "\n"
inc I1
branch REDO
DONE:end
Is this program easy to read? Did you find out what it does? Probably not -- it's characters might be more readable than Perl's, but it's not really readable since you don't easly understand it's meaning.
Readability is the combination of making it easy to understand what's going on in each single instruction, and making it easy to understand the algorithm. Understanding instructions is simple in Assembler (few, simple operators), but harder in Perl (what the hell does this operator do?). Understanding the algorithm is easier in Perl and harder in Assembler.
Somewhere between Assembler and human language is your personal preference and treshold for readability. For me, Perl is still readable while Assembler is often not. For others, Perl looks like a collection of junk characters.
That's ok, just don't judge the quality of a language by how it looks to you.
(BTW, the above parrot program prints the first 20 fibonacci numbers. I found it here.)
It doesn't matter that he is the original author. When he works for you, he is either acting as himself, in which case he owns the new code, or he is acting as FT, in which case FT may own the new code, but it is bound by the GPL/QPL to license the modifications in the same way.
Yes, but this does not mean FT must publish the modifications. If they own the code, they can keep it to themselves if they prefer. The GPL only requires that if you publish your work, you must license it under the GPL -- if you don't license your work to anyone, you're not forced to do anything.
Either way, he gets the right to publish the whole work when he reverts to acting as himself on the several hours a day that he didn't bill you for.
Only if FT granted him a license to use the code. Again, if FT decides to not license the code they own at all, it is not legal for anyone to use it.
I don't know what kind of contract was made in this particular case and whether or not Mosfet was allowed to license the code, so I won't comment on this case. But generally, you shouldn't assume you have a license to use code you develop for someone else just because it's GPL-based -- you do have a license for the original code, but for the modifications, you don't have one unless it was granted to you.
Disclaimer: I am not a lawyer, this is not legal advice, etc.
I can type 'tail myfile' alot faster than I can open a file in notepad and scroll to the bottom.
All the "power users" who think CLIs are more efficient because it seems like it takes less time would do well to try making some objective speed measurements with a stopwatch. It might come as a surprise that GUIs are actually faster, even though it seems like they are slower.
This may or may not be true. I don't have my speed measured with a stopwatch while I work. But the commandline has one huge advantage: on the commandline, you can give the exact command you want to execute, like "show me the end of this logfile." In a GUI, you usually have to split up that task into multiple actions: (1) "Find the file in the filemanager," (2) "Open the file" and (3) "Scroll to the end."
Splitting up a complex task into more simple fundamental actions is not necessarily a bad thing. In fact, I do the same on the CLI when I do things that I could write a script for, but do so rarely that it's not worth the effort. The nice thing about the CLI is that I get to decide what is fundamental enough for me to have it available as a single command. GUIs, in contrast, often have a rather poor scriptability.
BTW, I also think that making something objectively faster while annoying everyone by making them feel like their work is slowed down is not a smart design decision.
I guess you've read Eric S. Raymond's The Cathedral and the Bazaar. You might be interested in also reading A Second Look at the Cathedral and the Bazaar. It's not directly open source criticism, and doesn't focus on business usage of free software, but it's a good read nonetheless.
According to this bill the TELNET protocol would be ILLIGAL to use, same with SMTP, any protocol which used plain text transfers would be ILLIGAL:...
Not even remotely true. First off, try the very second paragraph:
Subsection (a) does not apply to the offer for sale or provision of, or other trafficking in, any previously-owned interactive digital device, if such device was legally manufactured or imported, and sold, prior to the effective date of regulations adopted under section 104 and not subsequently modified in violation of (a) or 103(a).
Why people continue to use it when PostgeSQL is out there defies all logic IMHO.
One word: Windows.
MySQL is available for Windows with a simple, quick install. PostgreSQL can be compiled on Windows, but I think you need Cygwin to do so, and the installation routine is a readme, not an executable wizard.
Most small and mid-size ISPs offer MySQL on their servers, not PostgreSQL. Why? I'd guess it's because it's used more widely (yes, that's a catch-22), and because clients can easily install it on Windows to develop their applications.
For simple applications like a web site, you usually don't need the features of PostgreSQL, MySQL will do the job. If you need the features that PostgreSQL can offer, you usually develop with a database server which you can run Linux on anyway. But for applications devloped in small networks or even on a single computer, availability for Windows is a huge selling point because it's the number one desktop system.
Which is the better choice for a family with several children?
The better alternative would be an operating system that supports secure and easy to setup multiuser operation. This will also make sure your kids can't read any of the files you don't want them to see, etc. If the setup were simple enough, as an added bonus control of the computer would move back from the kids to the parents. Things like restricted use of games and restricted software installation don't have to be hard to use, they just happen to be.
Multiple e-mail adresses are not a serious problem, as there are so many freemail offers and anyway your local ISP might also want to offer "subaccounts," if it were easy enough for average users to setup so they won't call tech support all the time.
Is any such operating system available? Unfortunately not. Windows XP, from what I have seen so far, is simple to use and setup, but horribly insecure (e.g. non-password protected users with admin rights are created during setup) and tries to force you into using Passport, Digital Rights Management etc. Linux, on the other hand, is secure, but much harder to setup and maintain. There are also only very few games available. Mac OS X might be an option, but Macs are quite expensive for a family computer, and as with Linux, few games are available.
No, there's a significant difference: You can use a patent only to prevent someone from using something. You cannot use a patent to force someone to use it. For example, you can patent one-click shopping (unfortunately), but you can't use that patent to actually force consumers to shop with a single click.
The media industry can patent "digital rights management" technology, but the patent can't force anyone to implement or use that technology. A law can.
A business method or software patent also cannot prevent anyone from developing alternative business models or algorithms. This law would prevent such circumvention.
This law, if it passes, will make impossible any real innovation in software development or networking technology. This would harm not only OEMs and other computer companies, it would harm the complete industry.
I don't even think Microsoft will like it. Sure, it might be a temporary advantage for them, as their Media Player already includes usage control technology. But what about their long-term visions? I wonder how they'll implement things like seamless distribution or storage- and location-irrelevance while at the same time making sure that the data stays where the RIAA wants it.
What does IBM think about this bill? They invested a lot of money in Linux, what do they think about Linux becoming illegal?
Sun's vision -- "The network is the computer" -- will effectively be impossible to realize if you can't store data "on the network" but must control where exactly it is.
In fact, the SSSCA denies the idea of a networked computer in favor of computers which are reduced to media player devices. The idea of being attached to a network is no longer communication, it is to be able to receive and pay for content. The media industry's vision is to turn computers into televisions, and this law is another step in making that vision a reality. I can imagine the RIAA and MPAA love the idea, but I have no idea why anyone in the computer industry (or any other industry) can support it.
The article talks about OEMs, does anyone know what the other industries, and big computer corporations like the three mentioned above think about this bill?
I don't know, maybe you could ask them if they would send their credit card number on a postcard? They also don't "see" anyone reading that. But those people are probably the ones that don't want to understand.
Maybe you could also try and explain to them the structure of the internet, the fact that they cannot control which systems will transmit their information, that those systems might be the systems of their competitors. But then, those people probably also don't want to know about network architectures.
"Cryptography is a mathematical method used for the secure transmission of mails, financial transactions, credit card information, and confidential business documents. Securing the transmission makes sure that only the intended recipient will be able to read the information."
Note that the word cryptography is used only once, and the but-it's-a-terrorist-tool reaction is prevented by immediately explaining it's nothing but mathematics. Make sure not to scare people of off with technical terms. Explain to them why they need encryption, not how it works.
It isn't illegal to not display copyrighted content. Cracking IE or an ActiveX control is probably illegal anyway, as these are software products covered by copyright, but not requesting the content in the first place is certainly legal.
Copyright is about preventing the distribution of content, not about enforcing it.
The server can detect if your browser, after requesting an HTML page, also requests the contained images. I guess it works only if the pages are served from the sames server as the images.
Of course, you'll always see at least one web page, as the server doesn't know yet if you'll request the ads as well. If you don't, it can deny to handle further requests from your IP. They also cannot make sure (at least not by tracking requests) the ad is actually displayed, they can only make sure it's downloaded.
Still, I don't see a wide success for this technology. What about multiple people using the same IP -- the first one blocked ads, now the site is blocked for the other users as well? Even worse, dynamic IPs -- the guy who previously had my dial-up connection's IP blocked ads, now I cannot view the sites? Of course, they could require cookies, but those users that understand cookies will be really pissed off if they have to accept cookies they don't want to have to see ads they don't want to see.
I did a full text search for "Regensts of the University of California" in my winnt dir and subdirs, but found results only in.exe files. There's also no readme on my Windows partition root dir or on the install CD's root dir (there actually is one on the CD, but it doesn't contain the copyright notices). But I guess the file is somewhere, after all the license doesn't require the reproduction to be easy to find.
In fact, I have to admit that it didn't occur to me as of now that you could satisfy the license with something as simple as a readme file. So this requirement isn't as bad as I thought (but it also doesn't make much more sense).
From the BSD license:
Redistributions in binary form must reproduce the above copyright notice, this list of conditions and the following disclaimer in the documentation and/or other materials provided with the distribution.
I wonder where Microsoft (or anyone else distributing binary BSD-licensed software) does this. At least I didn't find it in Windows 2000's documentation (both online and offline). I have only the OEM version so my only manual is a quick start guide, but still the notice should be somewhere if Microsoft doesn't break the license.
BTW, I think this is one of the worst clauses of the BSD license. I don't see how it makes sense to expect licensees to fill up the last pages of their user manuals with things like "This software contains software licensed to [Company] under the following license agreement:..."
Requiring a notice such as "Parts of this software copyright..." would be ok, but requiring a reprint of the license agreement that allowed the use of that software is ridiculous. Or maybe I misinterprete the license?
Well, yes, but you have to open the envelope using brute force. The same is possible with PGP protected messages. It's not my fault if the goverment doesn't have enough force:-)
Here in Belgium, if you're named in a newspaper article and feel misrepresented, the newspaper is required by law to publish your reply.
We have a similar law in Germany, but the reply the newspaper is forced to publish is limited to a reply only to the statement that you felt was wrong. So making use of this law wouldn't be appropriate in this case -- Mr. Zimmermann couldn't write anything beyond "The statement made by the Washington Post is wrong. I am not feeling guilty." I guess this wouldn't make him appear as one of the good guys.
In fact, for this public debate, I think that even "encryption" is a bad term to use. It sounds cryptical in the most literal sense, and the average user (or politician) doesn't understand it, so it must be something scary.
While I see a lot of people who discuss abolishing "secure email transmission" (i.e. encrypted mail), I have seen very few people who would demand backdors in "Secure Socket Layer" (i.e. encrypted HTTP) or "secure online banking" (i.e. encrypted financial transactions). The main difference between the three is that in the case of email transmission, people usually use the term "encrypted", while in the latter cases, the buzzword is "security."
If you want to talk with average people, talk about secure communication, not about encrypted communication. Politicians will have a much harder time abolishing security than abolishing encryption.
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No, it's not a usage agreement. If you engineer the software so it can't be used for unlawful purposes, there's no need to have that in your license agreement or whatever. E.g. a software that checks whether an exploitable security hole exists but doesn't make harmful use of the exploit would be legal to publish because there simply is no way to use it for unlawful purposes.
The more subtle point here is that this goes directly against Free Software, because you can make sure that people will not build malicious software based on the code only if they don't have the code in the first place.
I think (but please correct me if I'm wrong) Verilog is a hardware description language, not an interface description language. So this case is about the description of an implementation of the ARM machine code instruction set, not a description of the instruction set itself.
Readability has nothing to do with how complex a syntax is. I'd agree if you say that Perl has one of the most complex syntaxes, but I'd disagree if you say that makes it harder to read.
To give you an example, here's a small program written in Parrot assembler, which, being an assembly language, has a very simple syntax with few operators:
set I1, 0
set I2, 20
set I3, 1
set I4, 1
REDO:eqI1, I2, DONE, NEXT
NEXT:set I5, I4
add I4, I3, I4
set I3, I5
print I3
print "\n"
inc I1
branch REDO
DONE:end
Is this program easy to read? Did you find out what it does? Probably not -- it's characters might be more readable than Perl's, but it's not really readable since you don't easly understand it's meaning.
Readability is the combination of making it easy to understand what's going on in each single instruction, and making it easy to understand the algorithm. Understanding instructions is simple in Assembler (few, simple operators), but harder in Perl (what the hell does this operator do?). Understanding the algorithm is easier in Perl and harder in Assembler.
Somewhere between Assembler and human language is your personal preference and treshold for readability. For me, Perl is still readable while Assembler is often not. For others, Perl looks like a collection of junk characters.
That's ok, just don't judge the quality of a language by how it looks to you.
(BTW, the above parrot program prints the first 20 fibonacci numbers. I found it here.)
Yes, but this does not mean FT must publish the modifications. If they own the code, they can keep it to themselves if they prefer. The GPL only requires that if you publish your work, you must license it under the GPL -- if you don't license your work to anyone, you're not forced to do anything.
Only if FT granted him a license to use the code. Again, if FT decides to not license the code they own at all, it is not legal for anyone to use it.
I don't know what kind of contract was made in this particular case and whether or not Mosfet was allowed to license the code, so I won't comment on this case. But generally, you shouldn't assume you have a license to use code you develop for someone else just because it's GPL-based -- you do have a license for the original code, but for the modifications, you don't have one unless it was granted to you.
Disclaimer: I am not a lawyer, this is not legal advice, etc.
This may or may not be true. I don't have my speed measured with a stopwatch while I work. But the commandline has one huge advantage: on the commandline, you can give the exact command you want to execute, like "show me the end of this logfile." In a GUI, you usually have to split up that task into multiple actions: (1) "Find the file in the filemanager," (2) "Open the file" and (3) "Scroll to the end."
Splitting up a complex task into more simple fundamental actions is not necessarily a bad thing. In fact, I do the same on the CLI when I do things that I could write a script for, but do so rarely that it's not worth the effort. The nice thing about the CLI is that I get to decide what is fundamental enough for me to have it available as a single command. GUIs, in contrast, often have a rather poor scriptability.
BTW, I also think that making something objectively faster while annoying everyone by making them feel like their work is slowed down is not a smart design decision.
I guess you've read Eric S. Raymond's The Cathedral and the Bazaar. You might be interested in also reading A Second Look at the Cathedral and the Bazaar. It's not directly open source criticism, and doesn't focus on business usage of free software, but it's a good read nonetheless.
You might want to read the Responses from Consumer Advocate Jamie Love, especially response 11.
What about upgrades?
One word: Windows.
MySQL is available for Windows with a simple, quick install. PostgreSQL can be compiled on Windows, but I think you need Cygwin to do so, and the installation routine is a readme, not an executable wizard.
Most small and mid-size ISPs offer MySQL on their servers, not PostgreSQL. Why? I'd guess it's because it's used more widely (yes, that's a catch-22), and because clients can easily install it on Windows to develop their applications.
For simple applications like a web site, you usually don't need the features of PostgreSQL, MySQL will do the job. If you need the features that PostgreSQL can offer, you usually develop with a database server which you can run Linux on anyway. But for applications devloped in small networks or even on a single computer, availability for Windows is a huge selling point because it's the number one desktop system.
The better alternative would be an operating system that supports secure and easy to setup multiuser operation. This will also make sure your kids can't read any of the files you don't want them to see, etc. If the setup were simple enough, as an added bonus control of the computer would move back from the kids to the parents. Things like restricted use of games and restricted software installation don't have to be hard to use, they just happen to be.
Multiple e-mail adresses are not a serious problem, as there are so many freemail offers and anyway your local ISP might also want to offer "subaccounts," if it were easy enough for average users to setup so they won't call tech support all the time.
Is any such operating system available? Unfortunately not. Windows XP, from what I have seen so far, is simple to use and setup, but horribly insecure (e.g. non-password protected users with admin rights are created during setup) and tries to force you into using Passport, Digital Rights Management etc. Linux, on the other hand, is secure, but much harder to setup and maintain. There are also only very few games available. Mac OS X might be an option, but Macs are quite expensive for a family computer, and as with Linux, few games are available.
No, there's a significant difference: You can use a patent only to prevent someone from using something. You cannot use a patent to force someone to use it. For example, you can patent one-click shopping (unfortunately), but you can't use that patent to actually force consumers to shop with a single click.
The media industry can patent "digital rights management" technology, but the patent can't force anyone to implement or use that technology. A law can.
A business method or software patent also cannot prevent anyone from developing alternative business models or algorithms. This law would prevent such circumvention.
Just about a decade ago, this was called "communism."
This law, if it passes, will make impossible any real innovation in software development or networking technology. This would harm not only OEMs and other computer companies, it would harm the complete industry.
I don't even think Microsoft will like it. Sure, it might be a temporary advantage for them, as their Media Player already includes usage control technology. But what about their long-term visions? I wonder how they'll implement things like seamless distribution or storage- and location-irrelevance while at the same time making sure that the data stays where the RIAA wants it.
What does IBM think about this bill? They invested a lot of money in Linux, what do they think about Linux becoming illegal?
Sun's vision -- "The network is the computer" -- will effectively be impossible to realize if you can't store data "on the network" but must control where exactly it is.
In fact, the SSSCA denies the idea of a networked computer in favor of computers which are reduced to media player devices. The idea of being attached to a network is no longer communication, it is to be able to receive and pay for content. The media industry's vision is to turn computers into televisions, and this law is another step in making that vision a reality. I can imagine the RIAA and MPAA love the idea, but I have no idea why anyone in the computer industry (or any other industry) can support it.
The article talks about OEMs, does anyone know what the other industries, and big computer corporations like the three mentioned above think about this bill?
I don't know, maybe you could ask them if they would send their credit card number on a postcard? They also don't "see" anyone reading that. But those people are probably the ones that don't want to understand.
Maybe you could also try and explain to them the structure of the internet, the fact that they cannot control which systems will transmit their information, that those systems might be the systems of their competitors. But then, those people probably also don't want to know about network architectures.
Here's how I would explain it:
"Cryptography is a mathematical method used for the secure transmission of mails, financial transactions, credit card information, and confidential business documents. Securing the transmission makes sure that only the intended recipient will be able to read the information."
Note that the word cryptography is used only once, and the but-it's-a-terrorist-tool reaction is prevented by immediately explaining it's nothing but mathematics. Make sure not to scare people of off with technical terms. Explain to them why they need encryption, not how it works.
It isn't illegal to not display copyrighted content. Cracking IE or an ActiveX control is probably illegal anyway, as these are software products covered by copyright, but not requesting the content in the first place is certainly legal.
Copyright is about preventing the distribution of content, not about enforcing it.
The server can detect if your browser, after requesting an HTML page, also requests the contained images. I guess it works only if the pages are served from the sames server as the images.
Of course, you'll always see at least one web page, as the server doesn't know yet if you'll request the ads as well. If you don't, it can deny to handle further requests from your IP. They also cannot make sure (at least not by tracking requests) the ad is actually displayed, they can only make sure it's downloaded.
Still, I don't see a wide success for this technology. What about multiple people using the same IP -- the first one blocked ads, now the site is blocked for the other users as well? Even worse, dynamic IPs -- the guy who previously had my dial-up connection's IP blocked ads, now I cannot view the sites? Of course, they could require cookies, but those users that understand cookies will be really pissed off if they have to accept cookies they don't want to have to see ads they don't want to see.
You'd better not tell Larry Wall.
The .exe files were commandline tools. No Help - About there.
Thanks for the info!
I did a full text search for "Regensts of the University of California" in my winnt dir and subdirs, but found results only in .exe files. There's also no readme on my Windows partition root dir or on the install CD's root dir (there actually is one on the CD, but it doesn't contain the copyright notices). But I guess the file is somewhere, after all the license doesn't require the reproduction to be easy to find.
In fact, I have to admit that it didn't occur to me as of now that you could satisfy the license with something as simple as a readme file. So this requirement isn't as bad as I thought (but it also doesn't make much more sense).
I wonder where Microsoft (or anyone else distributing binary BSD-licensed software) does this. At least I didn't find it in Windows 2000's documentation (both online and offline). I have only the OEM version so my only manual is a quick start guide, but still the notice should be somewhere if Microsoft doesn't break the license.
BTW, I think this is one of the worst clauses of the BSD license. I don't see how it makes sense to expect licensees to fill up the last pages of their user manuals with things like "This software contains software licensed to [Company] under the following license agreement: ..."
Requiring a notice such as "Parts of this software copyright ..." would be ok, but requiring a reprint of the license agreement that allowed the use of that software is ridiculous. Or maybe I misinterprete the license?
Well, yes, but you have to open the envelope using brute force. The same is possible with PGP protected messages. It's not my fault if the goverment doesn't have enough force :-)
We have a similar law in Germany, but the reply the newspaper is forced to publish is limited to a reply only to the statement that you felt was wrong. So making use of this law wouldn't be appropriate in this case -- Mr. Zimmermann couldn't write anything beyond "The statement made by the Washington Post is wrong. I am not feeling guilty." I guess this wouldn't make him appear as one of the good guys.
Maybe "Envelope" would be a better product name.
In fact, for this public debate, I think that even "encryption" is a bad term to use. It sounds cryptical in the most literal sense, and the average user (or politician) doesn't understand it, so it must be something scary.
While I see a lot of people who discuss abolishing "secure email transmission" (i.e. encrypted mail), I have seen very few people who would demand backdors in "Secure Socket Layer" (i.e. encrypted HTTP) or "secure online banking" (i.e. encrypted financial transactions). The main difference between the three is that in the case of email transmission, people usually use the term "encrypted", while in the latter cases, the buzzword is "security."
If you want to talk with average people, talk about secure communication, not about encrypted communication. Politicians will have a much harder time abolishing security than abolishing encryption.
Maybe AthlonRH might be a more realistic choice? At least AMD could claim it's not related to Red Hat but stands for Athlon Radiating Heat.