"I don't mean to judge you here, but let's be clear: You sell stuff for money. With the GPL, I trade code for code."
As a proprietary developer, I sell stuff for money, and I don't sell access to the source except for a lot more money. Under BSD, I give code access away free. Under GPL, you give code access away subject to some restrictions. I see nothing morrally questionable about any of this. Contrary to the FSF, I believe that if you write the code, you can do whatever the heck you want with it. I do not see providing access to source code as a moral issue of any kind.
People expect the GPL to produce a surprising variety of effects, and in my opinion, it doesn't do a very good job at producing most of the effects those releasing it under hope for. Your mileage may vary.
Linux is a very different sort of project than a charting library. My arguments apply exclusively to projects on the scale of a nice charting library. At this scale, I argue BSD is superior if your goal is to get developers to use and contribute to your project; because this has been my experience. If your goal is something else, or you are writing something more like Linux, you may want a different license.
"And no, ocean views are not just a 'luxury' if you have grown up in a fishing village in Norway."
Of course they are.
" I currently live landlocked"
And are not dead. QED.
I too grew up by the sea. It's really great, but it's still really great with a windmill out on the horizon. Now I live in the mountains. Between heaps of mining slag and windmills... I'll take the windmills.
"So I can get your software for free? After all, paying you cash would be a "return", wouldn't it?"
The stuff I give away because I'm a nice guy you can have for free, and without a single string attached. The stuff I sell for money because I and my family like to eat is a different story. And yes, I know it is theoretically possible to make money on GPL software; it's not how I choose to go about it.
To be clear: I think it is a wonderful thing to give things away for free; I don't think it's a moral imperative. I think the GPL is a wonderful way to ensure the freedoms you grant to users of your software remain intact for all users of your software. (Though as a practical matter, it may mean your software has fewer users.)
I don't think the GPL is a bad thing or those who use it are bad people; quite the opposite. My critique is that I think it is ineffective. I don't think the "deal" it offers is likely to sway anyone who didn't agree with the moral argument already. I think those who will contribute to open source because it's a superior model for developing commodity code far outnumber those who will contribute because they think proprietary is evil, and hence that BSD code will tend to go farther faster than more restricted code. I think BSD is a better way to promote open source.
"You are starting to get the picture, though, right?" You, and many others, seem to assume my opinion of the GPL stems from a lack of understanding of it or it's goals. This is not the case. I do not believe my opinion on BSD vs. GPL has changed significantly since it first formed about 15 years ago.
If I think I've been wronged (via patent violation or otherwise) and I and a (for the sake of argument) honest competent lawyer think I've got perfectly valid case, should I be deterred from suing because I can't afford to take the risk that a judge will see it differently and I'll lose? There are currently penalties available if a judge thinks you didn't (or shouldn't have) really think you could win. It sounds like you would like the standards for declaring a lawsuit frivolous to be loosened, perhaps dramatically, but there are downsides to this also.
"Maybe an LGPL charting library, then, although I realize that the hardcore RMS/GNU philosophy is that LGPL is only for situations where competing libraries exist."
Competing libraries do exist; in the case of the charting lib, dozens of them, so it costs me nothing to insist on BSD. I've gone through this sort of search maybe a dozen times, and exactly once been tempted to go with an LGPL option (but actually didn't). A BSD-ish option is almost always out there, and in my completely anecdotal, entirely subjective experience, generally superior.
As far as I can tell, the hardcore RMS philosophy is that producers of proprietary software, like me, are evil bastards; and that losing our contributions is a small price to pay for causing us inconvenience. I don't let this bother me, as I don't agree, and don't feel particularly inconvenienced.
"I just rest easier if karma is inherent in the system."
Sorry, but MY hardcore philosophy says: No karma if you require a return; Only altruists need apply.:)
"I occasionally toy with writing fiction. I haven't gotten anything published yet, but if I did, I know I would prefer not to publish it under 'Feel free to read this, and if you like it, I'd love for you to send me some money!'"
I suggest you might get more money if you did it that way. You get nothing (per reader) if people borrow the book from a friend or the library. Give it to them as a free download, and more people might read your stuff and become the sort of fans who will want a nice hardcover for their bookshelf. Cory Doctorow is published, and seems to think putting all his stuff on line free increases his bookstore sales. No way to measure for sure of course.
"Don't think of it as a threat, think of it as a deal. Give me the source [and anything you link it with, if GPL instead of LGPL], and you get all this stuff for free!" Never going to happen, even if I wanted to. I don't own the source of everything I link to. ( And it's just a charting library, there's plenty more)
"The nice thing about the GPL here is, if there's something sufficiently attractive under the GPL, I've seen corporations decide it simply makes sense to release all their stuff GPL'd."
I guess. But I've never seen something sufficiently attractive under the GPL, nor do I expect to. I'm not in a sector where I'm building little additions on top of some big open source project. I've got the big main thing, and want various little things to add around the edges. Example: Our software does various sorts of complex market analysis, then we want to present the results in a nice report, and it would be great if we could do nice charts. So we go looking for a charting library. No GPL charting library will ever possibly be so amazing that we're going to be motivated to open-source all the market analysis stuff just to use it. So we use a BSD charting library, and we give back our enhancements to it, because, besides our being nice people, it's easier for us if our enhancements get merged in with everyone elses; we get a nicer charting library with less effort. And it doesn't hurt us a bit if anyone else has nice charts too, because we ain't selling charts, we're selling market analysis.
"And as a developer, I find myself much more likely to license something as GPLv3. I can always relicence it later, if I keep ownership of the code, but for now, it means no one gets a free ride."
I can see that, though in my world-view giving unknown strangers a free ride is a bonus; it's good for my karma or something. In any case, in my professional dealings with open-source I'm rarely starting from scratch and owning all the code. I'm deciding which of several projects that do similar things I'm going to use and thus possibly contribute to. BSD is a huge plus there. GPL is a deal-killer. LGPL is a possibility, but it still means I've got to pay attention to the license and keep that code isolated in its own library; the license will force decisions I might rather make on technical grounds.
"'People think of the GPL as ensuring they'll get compensated if others use their code. But that's not really its goal' What is its goal, then?"
Protecting certain freedoms for the end user, as best as I can understand and imperfectly summarize it. Certainly there are all sorts of ways others can benefit from your GPL code without giving you anything. They can simply use the program, unmodified. They can make modifications but not distribute them. They can make modifications, and distribute them along with source to users who agree not to share them with the general public. The end users freedoms are still protected in these situations, but you, the original developer, get nothing.
But fundamentally, my argument is this: You can say "Feel free to use this, and if you make improvements, I'd love to hear about them!", or you can say "Feel free to use this and if you make improvements, you must give me the source to them and any other software you link this with or I'll sue your ass!" I know which one will get a better response from me, and I know which one is the sort of message I'd like to be putting out into the world.
Your is the fourth post I've seen in this thread (plus TFA itself) that offers the simple, easy way to fix some aspect of the problem, then goes on to describe something that is already in place, and (apparently) does not solve the problem.
You can already get fined for filing frivolous lawsuits.
"I suppose I should have said 'Someone can ship your code in their product without compensating you in any way, even with their source code.'"
Of course, I really knew that's what you meant. I was being snide, because I think "stealing" is not a remotely good word for describing someone doing something I've specifically authorized them to do, and which doesn't harm me in any way.
What I've personally experienced several times is: Someone releases some code under a BSD-like license, and thus I can put it together with other code that may be under all sorts of other licenses, including proprietary code. Since I don't have to worry about how the license might limit my options in the future, I'm much more likely to use the code. Since I use the code, I wind up making enhancements and fixes. While I could keep these to myself, cackling evilly, there's no reason to since this code is obviously not the core of my business in any case. And their are hopefully obvious advantages to having my changes get merged back into the main code base. The company I work for has devoted developer time to enhancing BSD liscenced libraries, and submitted our changes to the project maintainer. We've paid maintainers BSD-licenced projects to make enhancements we needed. We've never paid a dime to enhance any thing GPL, simply because we can't use it.
People think of the GPL as ensuring they'll get compensated if others use their code. But that's not really its goal, and it doesn't do all that good a job at that. If the compensation you want is enhancements to the code, BSD may be a better choice, because more developers who might enhance it can use it.
"Is it still the case that every job offering in IT requires 'minimum 15 years AJAX experience' (or something equally stupid) as was the case when I graduated a few years ago?"
Maybe that's a test. If you actually get the job, clients and/or managers will regularly be handing you completely unreasonable requirements; Can you devine from these what they actually need, and provide something that gets done what someone needs even when the person who needs it is not capable of stating it coherently?
Yeah, it's probably just an HR person who doesn't know squat mis-translating "senior developer with AJAX experience", but still, do the reverse translation, and ignore the hard number.
Some words are used by people who intend them to mean specific technical things, as defined by some authority. That doesn't mean any particular listener or other user will go along though.
As the number of people who use the term "open source", and the number of people who hear it and think they understand it is undoubtably many times the number of people who have ever read the OSI definition, it is a bit presumtuous to declare them all wrong in any objective sense. "Open Source, as defined by the OSI" has a specific meaning not subject to change by anyone other than the OSI; but this definition is not the same as the definition of "open source" in common use.
In the US??? Please. In the US, a successful suit for libel requires showing that the defendant intentionally wrote something defamatory which they knew to be false, (or which a reasonable person ought to know to be false). "Typo" is a bulletproof defense.
Sorry, I must disagree. Pedantry is the very basis of this thread. If we're going to allow mere common parlance, then the Russians can indeed try to claim a large chunk of the North Pole. If the Pole must be a point, and not a region, then there is no such thing as "infinitely small", and all single points are the same size anyway.
"do you you really want to be a member of a community where the problem of cheating is such an issue that you need to surrender your freedom to cope with it?"
No, I don't, as I'm not much of a gamer in any case. But some people apparently do want to be part of such a community. Do "consumer" users get the freedom to make that decision, like businesses do, or does the FSF make that decision for them? Business and gaming are two communities where it's nice to be able to give people more reason to trust you than they would have inherently. There are many potential communities like this.
I emphasize I'm mostly playing devils-advocate here: I'm not sure what the right answer is, I'm just sure it's not cut-and-dried.
It's the creation of two different classes of users that strikes me as the red flag: why do businesses vs. consumers, who may well be the same people in different contexts, deserve different freedoms?
It would certainly be nice to have candidates who were aware what the different operating systems were, and who had some basic knowledge of the differences between them. But if they don't bother to know which one was chosen by the admin who works at the hosting company that was contracted by the IT guy that was hired by their campaign manager, that may just mean they have good ability to delegate; which is essential in any sort of executive.
"I challenge you to provide me with one example of a case where using the user's key to sign the code running on their box is inferior to the same box running the same software signed by a vendor key which the user does not have access to."
Not that I actually want to jump into this debate, but I love a challenge, so:
The user is a casino, the box is a slot machine. If someone accuses them of cheating (which will happen), it is great for them if they never had any ability to modify the code in the first place.
More boringly, I've worked on software that a company uses to help decide what franchises to open and, more significantly, close. They want to actively prevent their own people from influencing this process once it's designed, so that when they decide to close Bob's franchise, Bob can't claim they did it because someone doesn't like him rather than for legitimate business reasons. They don't go as far as tivoised hardware, just hard-coded random number seeds so their results are reproduceable. In any case, there are perfectly good reasons why a user might find it preferable that they cannot modify software, or particularly, that they can show others that they can't, and thus didn't.
The FSF gets this, and hence the business exception. But a console gamer might want to be able to show he's not cheating, and might prefer this ability to the ability to modify his software.
The correct answer would be: "I don't know or care. I hire competent people and I don't second-guess them in their areas of expertise." I'd guess this is most every candidates attitude toward sys-admins, the interesting question is whether it extends to positions like Science Adviser or Federal Prosecutor. (To pick a couple totally random examples)
"If the US customs officials on 9/11 checked for box cutters, suspicious behavior, and yes the no-fly list; 9/11 probably wouldn't have happened."
-The 9/11 hijackers did not pass through customs that day. -They obtained at least some of their box-cutters after going through security. -I can't imagine they behaved "suspiciously" in any way that thousands of innocent people don't also behave every day. -One of them was on a government watch list, but this list was not, and is not, provided to airport personel. The no-fly list is too widely distributed to include classified information like the names of active terrorist suspects. It does (today) include the names of several of the (dead) hijackers.
So, no, none of the things you mention would have prevented 9/11, even if the terrorists had for some bizarre reason used the same plan after we implemented "security" measures specifically directed at that plan, which obviously they would not have.
"No bio-metric tests needed with adequate common-sense security." Absolutely agree. But there is nothing you're going to do at the airport to screen hundreds of thousands of people a day that will successfully identify the handful per decade you need to catch.
Well, my comment is one of the first quoted in his "rebuttal", so I'll try to answer your question:
He didn't do anything to me. I had barely ever heard of the guy, and my comment wasn't even directed at him or his company. It was a response to another slashdot commenter which he pulled out of context in order to rebut a point I wasn't making.
Having now actually read what these guys are saying, this appears to be par for the course. They aggressively belittle the arguments of anyone who dares to question their own ludicrously optimistic declarations on the state of space elevator technology, or the economic case for building one.
They appear to actually believe it themselves, and aren't collecting all that much of other peoples money, so I don't criticize them on that account.
But anyone who suggests a space elevator may not be as feasible or desirable as they assert is immediately dubbed a small-minded nay-sayer. A quick suggestion is made that we would say the same thing to some past inventor who made some tiny incremental change to something, as if the space elevator were similarly close.
"Critique, debate and peer review on any matter are always warranted but shooting insults and slander from the hip... is frankly unwarranted, childish and should be moderated into oblivion."
A border patrol agent who wants to close one lane of a border crossing for lunch time does not need to be part of the legislative branch. He changes legal requirements (which lane you can legally use), but he does not make law (you must cross at places designated by the border patrol). I mentioned the fact that we would never get by without this distinction as an aside, not a justification.
Your interpretation appears to be that the border patrol agent closing a lane at lunch time must be the legislative branch. You said "under the legislative branch", but actually, the Congress only has power in the aggregate. A single congressperson couldn't make a law closing that lane, congress would have to pass a law closing it. And even then, if you used the wrong lane, could you be arrested? Would the cop have the authority to tell you to get in the back of his patrol car, or would congress need to pass a bill dictating that you must? At some point, it has to be possible to delegate the authority to carry out laws, and to require cooperation.
Luckily, your interpretation does not appear to be (or to have been) shared by anyone; most relevantly, it does not appear to have been shared by the people who wrote and signed the Constitution.
You seem to be upset by abuses of rule-making authority. It is perfectly reasonable to be upset by this. But your conclusion that the authority doesn't exist is not reasonable.
Oh, and on flag burning: "I at least respect that the people with such an idea realize that an Act of Congress just won't suffice." They realized that only after they passed the law and the Supreme Court struck it down, which makes it a bit too obvious to generate any respect from me.
Just like for the Moon landings; OK, that makes sense. But ISS still adds nothing to a construction effort. It is not, and never has been, a construction platform. The shuttle is the construction platform.
You want Congress to design every IRS form? To write every FBI procedure for cataloging evidence?
If the Congress specifies requirements for immigration, can the Border patrol designate the places one can cross the border? If a border crossing has two lanes open, and the Border patrol wants to close one while some guys take a lunch break, does it take an Act of Congress? That's rule-making. It was legal to cross the border in the left lane of the highway, and now it's not: rule-making backed by the force of law.
This is essential to ever get anything done. It doesn't mean the border patrol can suddenly make a rule that everyone entering the country must give the agent there all their money. They can make rules necessary to carry out those acts of congress they are charged with carrying out. The law authorizing them to make these rules also requires following the rules.
I'm confident your interpretation of the Constitution is incorrect, and not only because it must be to have a functioning government. Simply because most of the same people who wrote and signed it were elected to the first congress, where they immediately passed laws granting rule-making authority to executive branch agencies. practically every law grants such authorities.
Rule making is perfectly constitutional. It's still illegal to make rules that exceed the authority you've been granted, or which go against the will of congress as expressed in the laws granting that authority.
The Constitution, and legality in general, are sometimes ignored by government, and I entirely approve of outrage on such occasions. But the mere fact of Executive branch agencies having rule-making authority is not such an occasion.
Congress passes laws, and authorizes or establishes agencies of the executive branch to carry them out. These agencies are granted, by Congress, the authority to make rules and regulations which enforce the laws.
So, for example, Congress passes a law saying you can't dump toxic waste in the ocean, but the EPA makes rules spelling out the details of how you need to measure how toxic your stuff is, and how often you need to report the results or whatever. Obviously, these rules must have legal force, and they do, because the authority goes back to Congress, who granted EPA the authority to make such rules as would be necessary to carry out whatever the law was.
There must of course be safe-guards to prevent the agency in question just doing whatever they want. Ultimately, they can be sued if it seems clear their rules are not actually designed to carry out the law in question. Frequently they must propose new rules some amount of time before they take effect, and give the public a chance to comment, or to call their legislators, or for the legislators to pass a bill specifically forbidding the proposed rule, or whatever.
This is such an instance. So if you find the proposed rules outrageous, please don't just complain that the system doesn't work in a slashdot post. In this instance, the system is working fine so far, and the next step is for you to express your outrage to someone with some ability to do anything about it.
Slashdot Mirror
"I don't mean to judge you here, but let's be clear: You sell stuff for money. With the GPL, I trade code for code."
As a proprietary developer, I sell stuff for money, and I don't sell access to the source except for a lot more money. Under BSD, I give code access away free. Under GPL, you give code access away subject to some restrictions. I see nothing morrally questionable about any of this. Contrary to the FSF, I believe that if you write the code, you can do whatever the heck you want with it. I do not see providing access to source code as a moral issue of any kind.
People expect the GPL to produce a surprising variety of effects, and in my opinion, it doesn't do a very good job at producing most of the effects those releasing it under hope for. Your mileage may vary.
Linux is a very different sort of project than a charting library. My arguments apply exclusively to projects on the scale of a nice charting library. At this scale, I argue BSD is superior if your goal is to get developers to use and contribute to your project; because this has been my experience. If your goal is something else, or you are writing something more like Linux, you may want a different license.
"And no, ocean views are not just a 'luxury' if you have grown up in a fishing village in Norway."
Of course they are.
" I currently live landlocked"
And are not dead. QED.
I too grew up by the sea. It's really great, but it's still really great with a windmill out on the horizon. Now I live in the mountains. Between heaps of mining slag and windmills... I'll take the windmills.
"So I can get your software for free? After all, paying you cash would be a "return", wouldn't it?"
The stuff I give away because I'm a nice guy you can have for free, and without a single string attached. The stuff I sell for money because I and my family like to eat is a different story. And yes, I know it is theoretically possible to make money on GPL software; it's not how I choose to go about it.
To be clear: I think it is a wonderful thing to give things away for free; I don't think it's a moral imperative. I think the GPL is a wonderful way to ensure the freedoms you grant to users of your software remain intact for all users of your software. (Though as a practical matter, it may mean your software has fewer users.)
I don't think the GPL is a bad thing or those who use it are bad people; quite the opposite. My critique is that I think it is ineffective. I don't think the "deal" it offers is likely to sway anyone who didn't agree with the moral argument already. I think those who will contribute to open source because it's a superior model for developing commodity code far outnumber those who will contribute because they think proprietary is evil, and hence that BSD code will tend to go farther faster than more restricted code. I think BSD is a better way to promote open source.
"You are starting to get the picture, though, right?"
You, and many others, seem to assume my opinion of the GPL stems from a lack of understanding of it or it's goals. This is not the case. I do not believe my opinion on BSD vs. GPL has changed significantly since it first formed about 15 years ago.
If I think I've been wronged (via patent violation or otherwise) and I and a (for the sake of argument) honest competent lawyer think I've got perfectly valid case, should I be deterred from suing because I can't afford to take the risk that a judge will see it differently and I'll lose? There are currently penalties available if a judge thinks you didn't (or shouldn't have) really think you could win. It sounds like you would like the standards for declaring a lawsuit frivolous to be loosened, perhaps dramatically, but there are downsides to this also.
"Maybe an LGPL charting library, then, although I realize that the hardcore RMS/GNU philosophy is that LGPL is only for situations where competing libraries exist."
:)
Competing libraries do exist; in the case of the charting lib, dozens of them, so it costs me nothing to insist on BSD. I've gone through this sort of search maybe a dozen times, and exactly once been tempted to go with an LGPL option (but actually didn't). A BSD-ish option is almost always out there, and in my completely anecdotal, entirely subjective experience, generally
superior.
As far as I can tell, the hardcore RMS philosophy is that producers of proprietary software, like me, are evil bastards; and that losing our contributions is a small price to pay for causing us inconvenience. I don't let this bother me, as I don't agree, and don't feel particularly inconvenienced.
"I just rest easier if karma is inherent in the system."
Sorry, but MY hardcore philosophy says: No karma if you require a return; Only altruists need apply.
"I occasionally toy with writing fiction. I haven't gotten anything published yet, but if I did, I know I would prefer not to publish it under 'Feel free to read this, and if you like it, I'd love for you to send me some money!'"
I suggest you might get more money if you did it that way. You get nothing (per reader) if people borrow the book from a friend or the library. Give it to them as a free download, and more people might read your stuff and become the sort of fans who will want a nice hardcover for their bookshelf. Cory Doctorow is published, and seems to think putting all his stuff on line free increases his bookstore sales. No way to measure for sure of course.
"Don't think of it as a threat, think of it as a deal. Give me the source [and anything you link it with, if GPL instead of LGPL], and you get all this stuff for free!"
Never going to happen, even if I wanted to. I don't own the source of everything I link to. ( And it's just a charting library, there's plenty more)
"The nice thing about the GPL here is, if there's something sufficiently attractive under the GPL, I've seen corporations decide it simply makes sense to release all their stuff GPL'd."
I guess. But I've never seen something sufficiently attractive under the GPL, nor do I expect to. I'm not in a sector where I'm building little additions on top of some big open source project. I've got the big main thing, and want various little things to add around the edges. Example: Our software does various sorts of complex market analysis, then we want to present the results in a nice report, and it would be great if we could do nice charts. So we go looking for a charting library. No GPL charting library will ever possibly be so amazing that we're going to be motivated to open-source all the market analysis stuff just to use it. So we use a BSD charting library, and we give back our enhancements to it, because, besides our being nice people, it's easier for us if our enhancements get merged in with everyone elses; we get a nicer charting library with less effort. And it doesn't hurt us a bit if anyone else has nice charts too, because we ain't selling charts, we're selling market analysis.
"And as a developer, I find myself much more likely to license something as GPLv3. I can always relicence it later, if I keep ownership of the code, but for now, it means no one gets a free ride."
I can see that, though in my world-view giving unknown strangers a free ride is a bonus; it's good for my karma or something. In any case, in my professional dealings with open-source I'm rarely starting from scratch and owning all the code. I'm deciding which of several projects that do similar things I'm going to use and thus possibly contribute to. BSD is a huge plus there. GPL is a deal-killer. LGPL is a possibility, but it still means I've got to pay attention to the license and keep that code isolated in its own library; the license will force decisions I might rather make on technical grounds.
"'People think of the GPL as ensuring they'll get compensated if others use their code. But that's not really its goal'
What is its goal, then?"
Protecting certain freedoms for the end user, as best as I can understand and imperfectly summarize it. Certainly there are all sorts of ways others can benefit from your GPL code without giving you anything. They can simply use the program, unmodified. They can make modifications but not distribute them. They can make modifications, and distribute them along with source to users who agree not to share them with the general public. The end users freedoms are still protected in these situations, but you, the original developer, get nothing.
But fundamentally, my argument is this: You can say "Feel free to use this, and if you make improvements, I'd love to hear about them!", or you can say "Feel free to use this and if you make improvements, you must give me the source to them and any other software you link this with or I'll sue your ass!" I know which one will get a better response from me, and I know which one is the sort of message I'd like to be putting out into the world.
Your is the fourth post I've seen in this thread (plus TFA itself) that offers the simple, easy way to fix some aspect of the problem, then goes on to describe something that is already in place, and (apparently) does not solve the problem.
You can already get fined for filing frivolous lawsuits.
"I suppose I should have said 'Someone can ship your code in their product without compensating you in any way, even with their source code.'"
Of course, I really knew that's what you meant. I was being snide, because I think "stealing" is not a remotely good word for describing someone doing something I've specifically authorized them to do, and which doesn't harm me in any way.
What I've personally experienced several times is: Someone releases some code under a BSD-like license, and thus I can put it together with other code that may be under all sorts of other licenses, including proprietary code. Since I don't have to worry about how the license might limit my options in the future, I'm much more likely to use the code. Since I use the code, I wind up making enhancements and fixes. While I could keep these to myself, cackling evilly, there's no reason to since this code is obviously not the core of my business in any case. And their are hopefully obvious advantages to having my changes get merged back into the main code base. The company I work for has devoted developer time to enhancing BSD liscenced libraries, and submitted our changes to the project maintainer. We've paid maintainers BSD-licenced projects to make enhancements we needed. We've never paid a dime to enhance any thing GPL, simply because we can't use it.
People think of the GPL as ensuring they'll get compensated if others use their code. But that's not really its goal, and it doesn't do all that good a job at that. If the compensation you want is enhancements to the code, BSD may be a better choice, because more developers who might enhance it can use it.
"BSD could be seen as pretty much absolutely free, but with a price -- someone can steal your code"
No, they cannot. I've got a copy of all the code I've released under BSD, and nothing someone else does with their copy will deprive me of it.
"Is it still the case that every job offering in IT requires 'minimum 15 years AJAX experience' (or something equally stupid) as was the case when I graduated a few years ago?"
Maybe that's a test. If you actually get the job, clients and/or managers will regularly be handing you completely unreasonable requirements; Can you devine from these what they actually need, and provide something that gets done what someone needs even when the person who needs it is not capable of stating it coherently?
Yeah, it's probably just an HR person who doesn't know squat mis-translating "senior developer with AJAX experience", but still, do the reverse translation, and ignore the hard number.
Some words are used by people who intend them to mean specific technical things, as defined by some authority. That doesn't mean any particular listener or other user will go along though.
As the number of people who use the term "open source", and the number of people who hear it and think they understand it is undoubtably many times the number of people who have ever read the OSI definition, it is a bit presumtuous to declare them all wrong in any objective sense. "Open Source, as defined by the OSI" has a specific meaning not subject to change by anyone other than the OSI; but this definition is not the same as the definition of "open source" in common use.
"easily be grounds for a libel suit"
In the US??? Please. In the US, a successful suit for libel requires showing that the defendant intentionally wrote something defamatory which they knew to be false, (or which a reasonable person ought to know to be false). "Typo" is a bulletproof defense.
Um, yes, obviously. Which has nothing to do with whether the phrase "infinitely small" has any meaning, the admittedly inane topic of my posts.
Sorry, I must disagree. Pedantry is the very basis of this thread. If we're going to allow mere common parlance, then the Russians can indeed try to claim a large chunk of the North Pole. If the Pole must be a point, and not a region, then there is no such thing as "infinitely small", and all single points are the same size anyway.
You were wrong. It is a single point, but "infinitely small" is meaningless.
"do you you really want to be a member of a community where the problem of cheating is such an issue that you need to surrender your freedom to cope with it?"
No, I don't, as I'm not much of a gamer in any case. But some people apparently do want to be part of such a community. Do "consumer" users get the freedom to make that decision, like businesses do, or does the FSF make that decision for them? Business and gaming are two communities where it's nice to be able to give people more reason to trust you than they would have inherently. There are many potential communities like this.
I emphasize I'm mostly playing devils-advocate here: I'm not sure what the right answer is, I'm just sure it's not cut-and-dried.
It's the creation of two different classes of users that strikes me as the red flag: why do businesses vs. consumers, who may well be the same people in different contexts, deserve different freedoms?
It would certainly be nice to have candidates who were aware what the different operating systems were, and who had some basic knowledge of the differences between them. But if they don't bother to know which one was chosen by the admin who works at the hosting company that was contracted by the IT guy that was hired by their campaign manager, that may just mean they have good ability to delegate; which is essential in any sort of executive.
"I challenge you to provide me with one example of a case where using the user's key to sign the code running on their box is inferior to the same box running the same software signed by a vendor key which the user does not have access to."
Not that I actually want to jump into this debate, but I love a challenge, so:
The user is a casino, the box is a slot machine. If someone accuses them of cheating (which will happen), it is great for them if they never had any ability to modify the code in the first place.
More boringly, I've worked on software that a company uses to help decide what franchises to open and, more significantly, close. They want to actively prevent their own people from influencing this process once it's designed, so that when they decide to close Bob's franchise, Bob can't claim they did it because someone doesn't like him rather than for legitimate business reasons. They don't go as far as tivoised hardware, just hard-coded random number seeds so their results are reproduceable. In any case, there are perfectly good reasons why a user might find it preferable that they cannot modify software, or particularly, that they can show others that they can't, and thus didn't.
The FSF gets this, and hence the business exception. But a console gamer might want to be able to show he's not cheating, and might prefer this ability to the ability to modify his software.
The correct answer would be: "I don't know or care. I hire competent people and I don't second-guess them in their areas of expertise." I'd guess this is most every candidates attitude toward sys-admins, the interesting question is whether it extends to positions like Science Adviser or Federal Prosecutor. (To pick a couple totally random examples)
"If the US customs officials on 9/11 checked for box cutters, suspicious behavior, and yes the no-fly list; 9/11 probably wouldn't have happened."
-The 9/11 hijackers did not pass through customs that day.
-They obtained at least some of their box-cutters after going through security.
-I can't imagine they behaved "suspiciously" in any way that thousands of innocent people don't also behave every day.
-One of them was on a government watch list, but this list was not, and is not, provided to airport personel. The no-fly list is too widely distributed to include classified information like the names of active terrorist suspects. It does (today) include the names of several of the (dead) hijackers.
So, no, none of the things you mention would have prevented 9/11, even if the terrorists had for some bizarre reason used the same plan after we implemented "security" measures specifically directed at that plan, which obviously they would not have.
"No bio-metric tests needed with adequate common-sense security."
Absolutely agree. But there is nothing you're going to do at the airport to screen hundreds of thousands of people a day that will successfully identify the handful per decade you need to catch.
Well, my comment is one of the first quoted in his "rebuttal", so I'll try to answer your question:
He didn't do anything to me. I had barely ever heard of the guy, and my comment wasn't even directed at him or his company. It was a response to another slashdot commenter which he pulled out of context in order to rebut a point I wasn't making.
Having now actually read what these guys are saying, this appears to be par for the course. They aggressively belittle the arguments of anyone who dares to question their own ludicrously optimistic declarations on the state of space elevator technology, or the economic case for building one.
They appear to actually believe it themselves, and aren't collecting all that much of other peoples money, so I don't criticize them on that account.
But anyone who suggests a space elevator may not be as feasible or desirable as they assert is immediately dubbed a small-minded nay-sayer. A quick suggestion is made that we would say the same thing to some past inventor who made some tiny incremental change to something, as if the space elevator were similarly close.
"Critique, debate and peer review on any matter are always warranted but shooting insults and slander from the hip
Yes, that sums up my problem with them nicely.
A border patrol agent who wants to close one lane of a border crossing for lunch time does not need to be part of the legislative branch. He changes legal requirements (which lane you can legally use), but he does not make law (you must cross at places designated by the border patrol). I mentioned the fact that we would never get by without this distinction as an aside, not a justification.
Your interpretation appears to be that the border patrol agent closing a lane at lunch time must be the legislative branch. You said "under the legislative branch", but actually, the Congress only has power in the aggregate. A single congressperson couldn't make a law closing that lane, congress would have to pass a law closing it. And even then, if you used the wrong lane, could you be arrested? Would the cop have the authority to tell you to get in the back of his patrol car, or would congress need to pass a bill dictating that you must? At some point, it has to be possible to delegate the authority to carry out laws, and to require cooperation.
Luckily, your interpretation does not appear to be (or to have been) shared by anyone; most relevantly, it does not appear to have been shared by the people who wrote and signed the Constitution.
You seem to be upset by abuses of rule-making authority. It is perfectly reasonable to be upset by this. But your conclusion that the authority doesn't exist is not reasonable.
Oh, and on flag burning:
"I at least respect that the people with such an idea realize that an Act of Congress just won't suffice."
They realized that only after they passed the law and the Supreme Court struck it down, which makes it a bit too obvious to generate any respect from me.
Just like for the Moon landings; OK, that makes sense. But ISS still adds nothing to a construction effort. It is not, and never has been, a construction platform. The shuttle is the construction platform.
You want Congress to design every IRS form? To write every FBI procedure for cataloging evidence?
If the Congress specifies requirements for immigration, can the Border patrol designate the places one can cross the border? If a border crossing has two lanes open, and the Border patrol wants to close one while some guys take a lunch break, does it take an Act of Congress? That's rule-making. It was legal to cross the border in the left lane of the highway, and now it's not: rule-making backed by the force of law.
This is essential to ever get anything done. It doesn't mean the border patrol can suddenly make a rule that everyone entering the country must give the agent there all their money. They can make rules necessary to carry out those acts of congress they are charged with carrying out. The law authorizing them to make these rules also requires following the rules.
I'm confident your interpretation of the Constitution is incorrect, and not only because it must be to have a functioning government. Simply because most of the same people who wrote and signed it were elected to the first congress, where they immediately passed laws granting rule-making authority to executive branch agencies. practically every law grants such authorities.
Rule making is perfectly constitutional. It's still illegal to make rules that exceed the authority you've been granted, or which go against the will of congress as expressed in the laws granting that authority.
The Constitution, and legality in general, are sometimes ignored by government, and I entirely approve of outrage on such occasions. But the mere fact of Executive branch agencies having rule-making authority is not such an occasion.
Congress passes laws, and authorizes or establishes agencies of the executive branch to carry them out. These agencies are granted, by Congress, the authority to make rules and regulations which enforce the laws.
So, for example, Congress passes a law saying you can't dump toxic waste in the ocean, but the EPA makes rules spelling out the details of how you need to measure how toxic your stuff is, and how often you need to report the results or whatever. Obviously, these rules must have legal force, and they do, because the authority goes back to Congress, who granted EPA the authority to make such rules as would be necessary to carry out whatever the law was.
There must of course be safe-guards to prevent the agency in question just doing whatever they want. Ultimately, they can be sued if it seems clear their rules are not actually designed to carry out the law in question. Frequently they must propose new rules some amount of time before they take effect, and give the public a chance to comment, or to call their legislators, or for the legislators to pass a bill specifically forbidding the proposed rule, or whatever.
This is such an instance. So if you find the proposed rules outrageous, please don't just complain that the system doesn't work in a slashdot post. In this instance, the system is working fine so far, and the next step is for you to express your outrage to someone with some ability to do anything about it.