Who has the interest in making that happen and why
M$--Telnet/SMTP/HTTP are inherently commodity protocols. If they could get away with it, I'm sure they would much rather just dispense with them rather than have to put in a lot of work to ``de-commoditize'' existing protocols. Why? Why do you need to ask?
how would they get such a proposal approved through the massive objections?
What ``massive objections''? If there are going to be any, they'll have to come from the geek community--most lusers couldn't care less. I'll believe I need to explain to you how M$ could get this over our objections when I see us putting forward some realistic objections (realistic w.r.t. volume, not content!).
They need this information to violate the separation between church and state (no first ammendment, due to no constitution). Why they need to violate that escapes me at 4:18 AM, though.
Please show scientifically testable/repeatable proof.
Please show ``scientifically testable/repeatable proof'' of the Battle of Waterloo, and I'll show ``scientifically testable/repeatable proof'' of Christ's Resurrection.
Why does religion have to be a relevant part of one's curiousity?
Because one cares about one's future, and because one cares about whether that future is going to be spent in accordance with the doctrines of the various religions.
Or, you could just wait and find out. Just like someone living in, say, Florida, could wait and find out if his home is hurricane-proof by sitting in it as a hurricane roles through. You WILL die. You should think beyond that, even if only a little.
I'm not saying that's all you should care about, but it is important.
Do you want this tool to be proprietary, or free, or both? If you don't mind having a free/open source version, have you contacted ESR? I am sure he would find your collection useful.
OK. So, if I go out and buy a copy of Redhat Linux, burn copies of the CDs, and sell them to my buddies for $0.50 apiece, just to cover the costs of the burning, am I liable to pay royalties on that sale?
First, ``free beer'' and ``free speech'' are used to disambiguate the concept of Free Software. The GNU website explains this here.
``Open Source'' was coined to solve this ambiguity problem in a different way; so, ``free beer''/``free speech'' is really orthogonal to Open Source.
Second, ``free beer'' is actually an ``aspect'' of neither Free Software nor Open Source. Much Free/Open Source Software is ``free beer'', but that has nothing to do with Free Software or Open Source. Specifically, the FSF explicitly endorses commercial Free Software, such as Redhat Linux, and the OSI provides specific ideas for how to make money off of Open Source Software.
To answer your question, a copyright license complying with such a patent license would not qualify as either a Free Software license or an Open Source license. The Free Software Definition states ``Being free to do these things [including charging money for software] means (among other things) that you do not have to ask or pay for permission.''
My guess as to why this restriction is imposed is that it's to prevent a scenario such as the following: You go to the local computer store, buy a copy of the latest version of (say) Redhat Linux, and take it home and install it on several of your friends' computers. They later re-imburse you for their portion of the purchase price. Lo! You have now sold them copies of Redhat Linux, and are liable to pay royalties to the patent holders (if any).
The Open Source Definition likewise states, ``The license shall not restrict any party from selling or giving away the software as a component of an aggregate software distribution containing programs from several different sources. The license shall not require a royalty or other fee for such sale.'' So, such a license would not qualify as Open Source either.
I assume you mean large software corps pressuring them. What do the corps have as leverage though?
Well, M$ (for one) has 90% desktop market share. I don't think the W3C is going to go anywhere if 90% of desktops come pre-installed with clients for a patented non-W3C network. Given that possibility, the W3C probably prefers that those 90% of desktops come pre-installed with clients for a patented W3C network.
Do you just collect the extensions, or do you collect some way of telling which extension a file should have (ala the file command in Un*x)? If you do the latter, your collection may be of some assistance to ESR.
Ok, I'll bite. Here's an example from Chemistry: 2H2 + O2 -> 2H20. This reaction is spontaneous at room temperature. However, if you release a bottle of H2 into air (which contains a lot of 02), it won't burn. Know why? Activation energy. You have to have a match to jump over the Energy of Activation barrier.
Now, the same principle holds in the buisiness world. Spontaneous == Profitable; Energy of Activation == Initial Cost. If you can't cover the initial cost, the buisiness plan won't go into effect.
In Chemistry, we use Catalysts to jump over Energy of Activation barriers. In buisiness we use banks. So, what you're saying is, the airline industry will go heavily in debt to convert their airplanes. That'll only happen with a government mandate. Furthermore, if the government mandates that airlines convert to hydrogen fuel, exactly what makes you think banks are going to cover that mandate? (Remember, too, that saving has been negative for n quarters--the banks may not have the money, even if would loan it if they had it.)
Neither the airline industry nor the banking industry has unlimited pockets. If the initial costs are too high, it doesn't matter what the long-run profits are, it won't happen.
No, the antitrust exemption is part and parcel of the act. To explain, here's an outline of antitrust laws:
Government grants anticompetitive favors to company A.
Company obtains a <gasp> monopoly!
Popular outcry against the monopoly forces the government to pass an antitrust law, banning such monopolies (without repealing the above granted anticompetitive favor).
Government convienently ``forgets'' to enforce antitrust law.
So, antitrust laws are the government's pathetic attempt to undue the damage it does by granting anticompetetive favors to industries. Since the whole point of this act is to do said damage, antitrust laws are irrelevent here, so an exemption from said laws is granted.
In other words, this law is inherently contradictory to all antitrust laws, so it necessarily overrides them.
Problem--Amendment 14 is a restriction on State action, not Federal action. Since this is a Federal bill, I propose we go for a different ammendment, like Ammendment 4 (unreasonable search and seizure), for example.
Nope, the laws allows you to time-shift television broadcasts. So, they'll have to get a little more devious--just shift over to live performance on some website. Then, time-shifting will be illegal, when any reasonable person would assume it's no longer necessary. That's the problem with this law--it's an attempt to say, ``Fair use is for obsolete or soon-to-be-obsolete technologies. Strict copyright is for new ones.''
They'd abolish fair use for obsolete techs, too, but the courts won't let them. Hopefully the courts can see through this ruse, though.
As this is supposed to mandate a minimum level of security,
No, they just say ``security'' to get your sympathy. In reality, ``security'' means you have control over your computer at all times. (What an interesting concept--Life, Liberty, and Property, anyone?)
On the other hand, this bill allows the RIAA or the MPAA to take control of your computer all the time to make sure you don't violate their copyrights.
So, it's realy the ``Copyright Systems Standards Certification Act'', and, as long as M$ makes sure the average luser can't crack his own computer and ``steal'' his copies of publicly available songs, nobody cares if some cracker cracks somebody else's computer and (really) steals private information.
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Who has the interest in making that happen and why
M$--Telnet/SMTP/HTTP are inherently commodity protocols. If they could get away with it, I'm sure they would much rather just dispense with them rather than have to put in a lot of work to ``de-commoditize'' existing protocols. Why? Why do you need to ask?
how would they get such a proposal approved through the massive objections?
What ``massive objections''? If there are going to be any, they'll have to come from the geek community--most lusers couldn't care less. I'll believe I need to explain to you how M$ could get this over our objections when I see us putting forward some realistic objections (realistic w.r.t. volume, not content!).
They need this information to violate the separation between church and state (no first ammendment, due to no constitution). Why they need to violate that escapes me at 4:18 AM, though.
Please show scientifically testable/repeatable proof.
Please show ``scientifically testable/repeatable proof'' of the Battle of Waterloo, and I'll show ``scientifically testable/repeatable proof'' of Christ's Resurrection.
Why does religion have to be a relevant part of one's curiousity?
Because one cares about one's future, and because one cares about whether that future is going to be spent in accordance with the doctrines of the various religions.
Or, you could just wait and find out. Just like someone living in, say, Florida, could wait and find out if his home is hurricane-proof by sitting in it as a hurricane roles through. You WILL die. You should think beyond that, even if only a little.
I'm not saying that's all you should care about, but it is important.
What's the Church of Emacs?
Do you want this tool to be proprietary, or free, or both? If you don't mind having a free/open source version, have you contacted ESR? I am sure he would find your collection useful.
Fee/copy sold would work
OK. So, if I go out and buy a copy of Redhat Linux, burn copies of the CDs, and sell them to my buddies for $0.50 apiece, just to cover the costs of the burning, am I liable to pay royalties on that sale?
First, ``free beer'' and ``free speech'' are used to disambiguate the concept of Free Software. The GNU website explains this here.
``Open Source'' was coined to solve this ambiguity problem in a different way; so, ``free beer''/``free speech'' is really orthogonal to Open Source.
Second, ``free beer'' is actually an ``aspect'' of neither Free Software nor Open Source. Much Free/Open Source Software is ``free beer'', but that has nothing to do with Free Software or Open Source. Specifically, the FSF explicitly endorses commercial Free Software, such as Redhat Linux, and the OSI provides specific ideas for how to make money off of Open Source Software.
To answer your question, a copyright license complying with such a patent license would not qualify as either a Free Software license or an Open Source license. The Free Software Definition states ``Being free to do these things [including charging money for software] means (among other things) that you do not have to ask or pay for permission.''
My guess as to why this restriction is imposed is that it's to prevent a scenario such as the following: You go to the local computer store, buy a copy of the latest version of (say) Redhat Linux, and take it home and install it on several of your friends' computers. They later re-imburse you for their portion of the purchase price. Lo! You have now sold them copies of Redhat Linux, and are liable to pay royalties to the patent holders (if any).
The Open Source Definition likewise states, ``The license shall not restrict any party from selling or giving away the software as a component of an aggregate software distribution containing programs from several different sources. The license shall not require a royalty or other fee for such sale.'' So, such a license would not qualify as Open Source either.
So the big guys come to cross-licensing arrangements where none of them end up paying much, and the small guys are totally stuffed.
Would the W3C buy that as `non-discriminatory', though?
I assume you mean large software corps pressuring them. What do the corps have as leverage though?
Well, M$ (for one) has 90% desktop market share. I don't think the W3C is going to go anywhere if 90% of desktops come pre-installed with clients for a patented non-W3C network. Given that possibility, the W3C probably prefers that those 90% of desktops come pre-installed with clients for a patented W3C network.
Sorry---I should have known better than to get into a *BSD/Linux flamewar.
Do you just collect the extensions, or do you collect some way of telling which extension a file should have (ala the file command in Un*x)? If you do the latter, your collection may be of some assistance to ESR.
p.s. You have a Linuxism in your post. Can you find it?
/. who thinks user friendliness is part of technical superiority?
Let me guess---is it his assumption that these much-vaunted *BSDs don't have package managers such as rpm, deb, etc., to handle dependencies?
Am I the only person on
Ok, I'll bite. Here's an example from Chemistry: 2H2 + O2 -> 2H20. This reaction is spontaneous at room temperature. However, if you release a bottle of H2 into air (which contains a lot of 02), it won't burn. Know why? Activation energy. You have to have a match to jump over the Energy of Activation barrier.
Now, the same principle holds in the buisiness world. Spontaneous == Profitable; Energy of Activation == Initial Cost. If you can't cover the initial cost, the buisiness plan won't go into effect.
In Chemistry, we use Catalysts to jump over Energy of Activation barriers. In buisiness we use banks. So, what you're saying is, the airline industry will go heavily in debt to convert their airplanes. That'll only happen with a government mandate. Furthermore, if the government mandates that airlines convert to hydrogen fuel, exactly what makes you think banks are going to cover that mandate? (Remember, too, that saving has been negative for n quarters--the banks may not have the money, even if would loan it if they had it.)
Neither the airline industry nor the banking industry has unlimited pockets. If the initial costs are too high, it doesn't matter what the long-run profits are, it won't happen.
Go for it! :)
Good point. The larger question, of course, is how long it'll take Congress to start finding principles (rather than loopholes) in court decisions.
:)
My bet: not before the revolution.
My bet on when the revolution will happen: about two years after the heat death of the Universe
So, antitrust laws are the government's pathetic attempt to undue the damage it does by granting anticompetetive favors to industries. Since the whole point of this act is to do said damage, antitrust laws are irrelevent here, so an exemption from said laws is granted.
In other words, this law is inherently contradictory to all antitrust laws, so it necessarily overrides them.
Problem--Amendment 14 is a restriction on State action, not Federal action. Since this is a Federal bill, I propose we go for a different ammendment, like Ammendment 4 (unreasonable search and seizure), for example.
Nope, the laws allows you to time-shift television broadcasts. So, they'll have to get a little more devious--just shift over to live performance on some website. Then, time-shifting will be illegal, when any reasonable person would assume it's no longer necessary. That's the problem with this law--it's an attempt to say, ``Fair use is for obsolete or soon-to-be-obsolete technologies. Strict copyright is for new ones.''
They'd abolish fair use for obsolete techs, too, but the courts won't let them. Hopefully the courts can see through this ruse, though.
That should be enough to get on with.
I say do both--write your congressman and, if the law passes, break it. The good thing is, if this law passes, there'll be no way to enforce it.
As this is supposed to mandate a minimum level of security,
No, they just say ``security'' to get your sympathy. In reality, ``security'' means you have control over your computer at all times. (What an interesting concept--Life, Liberty, and Property, anyone?)
On the other hand, this bill allows the RIAA or the MPAA to take control of your computer all the time to make sure you don't violate their copyrights.
So, it's realy the ``Copyright Systems Standards Certification Act'', and, as long as M$ makes sure the average luser can't crack his own computer and ``steal'' his copies of publicly available songs, nobody cares if some cracker cracks somebody else's computer and (really) steals private information.
Welcome to the United Corporations of America.
Unless of course you live in a free country.
Got any suggestions?
Since when was I a citizen of Microsoft?!
That's the scary part--M$ is claiming ``rights'' that most governments have, historically, monopolized on.
Linux users hate Windows, FreeBSD user love UNIX.
And GNU users think documentation should be useful.
Sorry, had to say it.