Look at Rammstein (sp?) with their hit 'Du Hast'. Rammstein would never have been as big in NA with a German-titled song without the power of MP3 piracy. Nobody knew who they were in the U.S. before their tracks started showing up on Scour, Napster, and Usenet.
It didn't hurt to be featured on the Matrix soundtrack either.
When they got to the Matrix soundtrack, they were already quite succesful around the world. I think the real credit for their introduction to the non-german-speaking people must go to David Lynch, who used their music in Lost Highway soundtrack.
Of course music sharing might have been a big help in spreading the word about them, but I don't think that any band can make it by just giving away their music. There must be some reason to make the band interesting to the listeners.
But it's not really a patent on a specific hardware implementation of the idea. It's a patent on the idea.
No, it is not a pantent on an idea. It's a patent of an implementation that is described in as broad terms as possible. (so that it covers as much as possible, but is not nullified by previous art).
I am not sure if stuff like this should be protected by patents, but there really is nothing extraordinarily stupid about this particular patent. The patent office is full of stuff like this. Perhaps the patent rules have gotten a bit out of date (here in 21st century people are generally more educated than ever before and information is flowing freely in the internet, large companies are collecting vast pantent libraries of pretty trivial stuff to use as leverage against competition, etc.), but under current rules that patent is perfectly valid.
Wouldn't the fair use provisions in copyright law allow people to circumvent the GPL license in many cases? Fair use allows copying the original for commentary and parody purposes, for example. Lots of visual art uses copyrighted materials and the use falls into fair use because of those provisions (think Andy Warhol, for example).
What I am trying to say, is that I could take your GNUArt and use it in my own work without agreeing to your license quite easilly. GNU license is quite toothless against artists.
Disclaimer: IANAL and I could be horribly mistaken.
Plus, come one, people. It has 98% the functionality of office 2000. That is good enough for at least 75% of people out there, because most people don't use the bloated features avaliable in office. Yes, you have to do things slightly differently. But generally, whatever you wanted to do in office, can be done in staroffice.
I use windows and I really tried to start using StarOffice on my home computer. I use MS Office at work daily, and while it certainly is not a perfect piece of software, after using it StarOffice just felt hopelessly slow and annoying to use. I tried to get used to StarOffice for several months (partly because I hadn't found any better free alternative for Windows), but in the end I decided that it doesn't justify it's huge harddisk footprint. The problem certainly was not lack of functionality, but the user interface and the performance. All the time I was noticing small things that didn't work the way I would like them to work.
I am now using 602Pro PC SUITE 2000 on my home computer, and while it only has a fraction of StarOffice's features, I like it a lot more.
One: A lot of people would like to make money doing a lot of things. That does not make it their god-given right to do so. More efficient means of production put people out of business all the time. The only way to support this position would be to, say, ask for government sponsored support. Who's the communist here?
You are confused. FSF is trying to take away people's right to even try to make money by writing proprietary software. If it turns out that it becomes impossible to make a living by writing software because of all the quality free software available, that's completely fine. But forcing people to realease all their work as free software (or not to release it at all) is not ok.
Cause you haven't gotten down off your high horse and written a better interface for them?
That's exactly the attitude which causes most open source applications to have a very poor user interface. In the open source world your opinion and ideas are important only if you can implement them yourself. It's no wonder that open source projects lack UI designers and graphics artists.
Even if you never look at the downloaded code, the electronic trail will look like you did -- which is perhaps the most insidious aspect of this version of sharing.
Isn't that pretty much the same reason why many companies completely outlaw GPL software. If this licensing scheme is insidous, so is GPL.
"Illustrator" can be confused with many things, killustrator included. It is a common English word, and has no place in an even remotely sane world as someone's private intellectual property.
The word "Illustrator" is not anyone's private property. However it IS Adobe's registered trademark for their vector drawing program, thus no one else can name their drawing program "Illustrator". While I am very critical of many IP laws, I fully support Adobe's right to trademark the word.
Could this be applied to the terms and services links that are common at the bottom of some websites? It seems that if you don't have to view them, they might not be valid. I understand the ruling here, but it could be applied to some other things which aren't necessarily good.
I just hope that all the websites that currently have terms of use hidden somewhere at the bottom of the page, don't now implement some click-though licensing scheme. I have always suspected, that the terms of use are not really binding, if the user is not forced to read and accept the terms.
All Adobe wanted to do was shut down the development of potentially competing software. They succeeded. They knew that they likely don't have a leg to stand on legally, for while Adobe Illustrator(r) is a registered trademark, the word Illustrator itself does not exist as one of their trademarked words (see http://www.adobe.com/misc/trademarks.html).
That page is not about Adobe's trademarks. It's about other parties' trademarks that are mentioned in the Adobe's webpages.
Slashdot Mirror
When they got to the Matrix soundtrack, they were already quite succesful around the world. I think the real credit for their introduction to the non-german-speaking people must go to David Lynch, who used their music in Lost Highway soundtrack.
Of course music sharing might have been a big help in spreading the word about them, but I don't think that any band can make it by just giving away their music. There must be some reason to make the band interesting to the listeners.
Halleluja!
Is there any problem that Extreme Programming doesn't solve?
Yes.
And I suspect that many
Because when you are playing console games, you usually don't have a desk in front of you.
Wouldn't the fair use provisions in copyright law allow people to circumvent the GPL license in many cases? Fair use allows copying the original for commentary and parody purposes, for example. Lots of visual art uses copyrighted materials and the use falls into fair use because of those provisions (think Andy Warhol, for example).
What I am trying to say, is that I could take your GNUArt and use it in my own work without agreeing to your license quite easilly. GNU license is quite toothless against artists.
Disclaimer: IANAL and I could be horribly mistaken.
Nice to see that the level of maturity in open source / free software movements hasn't changed.
I use windows and I really tried to start using StarOffice on my home computer. I use MS Office at work daily, and while it certainly is not a perfect piece of software, after using it StarOffice just felt hopelessly slow and annoying to use. I tried to get used to StarOffice for several months (partly because I hadn't found any better free alternative for Windows), but in the end I decided that it doesn't justify it's huge harddisk footprint. The problem certainly was not lack of functionality, but the user interface and the performance. All the time I was noticing small things that didn't work the way I would like them to work.
I am now using 602Pro PC SUITE 2000 on my home computer, and while it only has a fraction of StarOffice's features, I like it a lot more.
You are confused. FSF is trying to take away people's right to even try to make money by writing proprietary software. If it turns out that it becomes impossible to make a living by writing software because of all the quality free software available, that's completely fine. But forcing people to realease all their work as free software (or not to release it at all) is not ok.
That's exactly the attitude which causes most open source applications to have a very poor user interface. In the open source world your opinion and ideas are important only if you can implement them yourself. It's no wonder that open source projects lack UI designers and graphics artists.
Me, and obvoisly many others too.
Isn't that pretty much the same reason why many companies completely outlaw GPL software. If this licensing scheme is insidous, so is GPL.
The word "Illustrator" is not anyone's private property. However it IS Adobe's registered trademark for their vector drawing program, thus no one else can name their drawing program "Illustrator". While I am very critical of many IP laws, I fully support Adobe's right to trademark the word.
I just hope that all the websites that currently have terms of use hidden somewhere at the bottom of the page, don't now implement some click-though licensing scheme. I have always suspected, that the terms of use are not really binding, if the user is not forced to read and accept the terms.
I don't think it's the "K"-part of the name they are having problems with...
That page is not about Adobe's trademarks. It's about other parties' trademarks that are mentioned in the Adobe's webpages.