the Internet was invented by scientists and engineers in the US
Yeah, but its killer app is undoubtedly the World Wide Web. The reason internet connections are so commonplace today is cos people want *web* access (and, also, email). Without such a hypertext system, there wouldn't be half as many domain names to manage.
Ok, I hear you say, but if it hadn't been for the www, other hypertext systems such as (the US-designed) Gopher would've prevailed. Quite right. But the same is true of the Internet. The point is, the way things are in *this* reality, all this Internet money is sloshing around because people want to use this European-designed system.
gcc [...] succeeded because most people who thought that Stallman was a crackpot also understood how important it is to avoid dividing a small community.
Ok, there were more people behind GCC than just RMS. But I'd say it was arguable that GCC couldn't have happened without RMS.
Without GCC, "free software" would be a lot less meaningful. Without a free compiler, many people could never even get started coding.
Re:Correlation between liking Motif and license?
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RMS On 'Open' Motif
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· Score: 2
To the part of the free software community that only uses free software, Open Motif is indeed free in all senses.
The Open Group don't think it's open-source software, according to the guy in the press release a few days ago. It's got auto-termination clauses in which make it un-free.
Re:Worst pollution to OSS is sourceless HW drivers
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RMS On 'Open' Motif
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· Score: 2
the BIOS in almost any motherboard... is NOT open source.
True, but it's not [normally] used by Linux after boot-up.
Nor is the firmware in the hard drive,..., the SCSI controller,...
This is more of a good point. But SCSI controllers are often used in very high-stress conditions so any problems would probably make them unsellable. Same with video cards, and most bits which reside inside the actual PC.
The problem with [random home scanner/printer driver] is it won't be used in stressed conditions so the manufacturer can get away with releasing a buggy driver. It'd be OK if merely the scanner was unstable cos it couldn't crash the computer so everyone could see where the blame laid. But a dodgy driver running as root could well crash the system.
Debian's core package consists only of packages that are under the GPL or have licenses which are compatible with the GPL.
Not quite; well actually you're probably right, depending on which meaning of the word "compatible" you're using. Debian-main only has stuff which is (a) free, and (b) they can legally distribute. You can't take source from any two arbitrary programs in debian-main and create a derivative work which you can legally redistribute; e.g. gnuplot and LaTeX. This is unfortunate, but neccessary if you're going to allow software which is free but happens to be legally uncombinable with something else.
The problem the Debian people see with KDE is it's just such a combination. GPLed code, linked to QPLed code. (Most, but not all, of the GPLed code was written by people who clearly intended it to be used with Qt but didn't write a "you may use this with Qt" clause).
If any chinese citizens have an AOL account he could be sent to china for them to press charges.
Many (most?) European countries have laws against extraditing people who would face the death penalty at home. (Although this doesn't always stop *innocent* refugees being handed over to Hannibal-Lector-ese governments).
However, death is too painless.
A lot of these people get tortured. Torture doesn't mean having their arms stretched in a rack like you read in children's books. It means things like being slowly flayed alive with a scalpel. (Ok this example is a technique of the Indonesian army but I imagine equally bad things happen in China).
Either you support civil disobedience, or you don't.
Nah, it's not that simple at all. I'd've supported Gandhi's peaceful non-cooperation. I'd've supported breaking US segregation laws in the 60s. That doesn't mean I support anyone who assassinates gays "on principle".
The whole point about a "basic human right" is that it's *unalienable*. It comes above anything else (except infringing another basic human right). Of course, you might not agree that such rights exist. But most people would consider the right not to be murdered to be such a right. I conjecture that few people would consider intellectual property "rights" to be this basic. (After all, they last for an arbitrary limited time and are legally intended as a means to an end: encouraging people to create valuable information).
Yes, in case it's not clear from my earlier posts, so do I. I think it would be worth it if only for the finest news service in the world. BTW their online news magazine is excellent.
[Minor point: the dosh doesn't pay for the world service, that's funded separately]
Trolltech kept on changing the license to satisfy the ever increasing demands of GPL zealots.
You obviously count the executives at Red Hat as GPL zealots, then. But you think it's fine for Troll to use whatever license they want for QT, so why do you object to Red Hat and Debian's right to not redistribute QT if they think it might land them in hot water?
could someone explain to me why conflict between the QPL and the GPL is a life and death issue, but copying and redistributing Metallica albums is an inalienable human right.
Different people's opinions. But anyway, different contexts too. Many of the Debian people who think it is illegal to include KDE in fact *use* KDE personally. And anyway I'm sure you'd agree that they'd be insane to distribute Metallica albums illegally so there's no dichotomy.
you will support my right to kill you because I disagree with the laws on murder then, I assume.
You misunderstand. I *wasn't* supporting people's right to illegally protest in any way. I was merely saying that it might be *effective*. Wheras "IF you don't like it don't buy it" is a fairly ineffective philosophy in cases like this.
IF everyone decided they did not agree with the tax and thus did not buy a TV THEN the govt would lose all TV tax revenue
Well I live in a country where there is a $150/year tax on owning a TV. (It pays for the BBC) Support for this tax is well under 50% according to opinion polls. However most people pay it rather than go without a telly. The few who go without a telly in protest will find their voice doesn't count.
OTOH, in the 60s, a small minority of Welsh-speakers in Wales *refused* to pay the BBC tax because they objected to not getting bills in Welsh. Some went to prison. Enough public outrage ensued at this injustice that the TV license people caved in. If these people had just binned their tellies, that would never have happened.
Does "civil disobedience" only work when YOU favour it?
No. But the examples you cite infringe on *basic human rights* : the right to life and the right to own property. The right to "intellectual property" is not a basic human right (according to the US constitution or European convention on human rights or the UN or etc.)
If you don't like the fact that you have to pay so much for it [...] then protest by not buying it.
``The government is slapping a $1000 tax on all TV sales and resales. If you don't like paying the extra $1000 then protest by not having a TV.''
Is that a sensible argument? No. Most people really want a TV enough that they'll buy one anyway. It would be an ineffective protest.
"Copyright" is a tax on copying, which you may believe to be good or bad. Maybe I object to the amount of market power that ends up in the hands of a few huge corporations as a result of this tax. Simply abstaining from buying CDs would be an ineffective protest. If these corporations also fund politicians' election campaigns, I may not have much strength to fight it politically either.
However, a campaign of mass civil disobedience can work. If enough people support unauthorised copying it will be impossible to stop and the authorities might think about changing the law.
I'm not supporting such a protest here [or rejecting it]. I'm just saying that the view which says "boycott it if you don't like it" doesn't address the problem. If someone really believes that the law is unjust (and isn't just acting selfishly) then they may be justified in performing unauthorised copying.
Care to show us the non-capitalist country that has better environmental regulations than the US?
<bite>
Yep, US cars consume on average about twice as much petrol per mile as the average European's car. The US economy produces more tonnes of rubbish per tonne of stuff than any other developed economy. US multinationals are responsible for more deaths due to pollution than the rest of the world's. [This last one is because you have more multinationals, not cos they're lots worse; however that gives the US government more power to do something about the problem and it isn't.]
There is a reason, of course, and that's because the US is stinking rich and can afford to care about the environment.
Its domestic environment, maybe. Certainly not other people's localities or the global environment as a whole. Capitalism is way of balancing people's conflicting aims. Without some sense of things counting as other people's property, it doesn't work. There's no sense in which the US law regards the global environment as partly the property of foreigners, so things like CO2 emissions won't get cut.
The government should be regulating pollution causing industries with an ever increasingly strong grip, however, that has nothing to do with basic economics.
I completely disagree. An economic system which does not regulate pollution only makes sense if "clean environment" is an effectively limitless resource. For example if the world is very sparsely populated or doesn't have much polluting power. This was true 200 years ago. But now the world is more densely populated and we have a hugely increased ability to use up "clean environment" fast. So now "clean environment" should be regarded as a finite resource and people should pay for it and damaging bits of environment that you don't own should count as vandalising someone else's property.
Economically the argument is sound. Politically it's a dead loss cos the US is getting big short-term gains out of trashing the world's environment in an unregulated manner. (I say this not out of spite but because the average American's car is horrendously inefficient and polluting, but the damage it causes spreads across the globe so the US doesn't feel the full force of it).
Eliminates choice. The government is the worst monopoly of them all. [...] Allows for government control in the private sector [...] Kills private business
These are all valid concerns. However most of them can be avoided if the government does not actually run an ISP itself. If it just offers to pay up to a certain amount of your ISP bill, this doesn't destroy the ISP market or give the government particularly good opportunities for censorship.
Of course, even if the government *does* run an ISP, it may be good on balance, if significantly many people get internet access who wouldn't have been able to afford it otherwise. You trust the government to run schools for this reason [I presume] so why not ISPs?
But don't mention the fact that you can only stay on for 30 seconds.
30 seconds internet access per day is quite enough to make good use of email and usenet. Of course, that requires that you have a computer to use during the time that you're not online.
Slashdot Mirror
Yeah, but its killer app is undoubtedly the World Wide Web. The reason internet connections are so commonplace today is cos people want *web* access (and, also, email). Without such a hypertext system, there wouldn't be half as many domain names to manage.
Ok, I hear you say, but if it hadn't been for the www, other hypertext systems such as (the US-designed) Gopher would've prevailed. Quite right. But the same is true of the Internet. The point is, the way things are in *this* reality, all this Internet money is sloshing around because people want to use this European-designed system.
If I have a browser which renders DTD-compliant HTML correctly, it's virtually no use for general browsing ATM. Hardly any pages have compliant HTML.
Ok, yep - I should have said "it used not to be a part of Debian".
Ok, there were more people behind GCC than just RMS. But I'd say it was arguable that GCC couldn't have happened without RMS.
Without GCC, "free software" would be a lot less meaningful. Without a free compiler, many people could never even get started coding.
The Open Group don't think it's open-source software, according to the guy in the press release a few days ago. It's got auto-termination clauses in which make it un-free.
True, but it's not [normally] used by Linux after boot-up.
This is more of a good point. But SCSI controllers are often used in very high-stress conditions so any problems would probably make them unsellable. Same with video cards, and most bits which reside inside the actual PC.
The problem with [random home scanner/printer driver] is it won't be used in stressed conditions so the manufacturer can get away with releasing a buggy driver. It'd be OK if merely the scanner was unstable cos it couldn't crash the computer so everyone could see where the blame laid. But a dodgy driver running as root could well crash the system.
Is HURD any defence?
Not quite; well actually you're probably right, depending on which meaning of the word "compatible" you're using. Debian-main only has stuff which is (a) free, and (b) they can legally distribute. You can't take source from any two arbitrary programs in debian-main and create a derivative work which you can legally redistribute; e.g. gnuplot and LaTeX. This is unfortunate, but neccessary if you're going to allow software which is free but happens to be legally uncombinable with something else.
The problem the Debian people see with KDE is it's just such a combination. GPLed code, linked to QPLed code. (Most, but not all, of the GPLed code was written by people who clearly intended it to be used with Qt but didn't write a "you may use this with Qt" clause).
Many (most?) European countries have laws against extraditing people who would face the death penalty at home. (Although this doesn't always stop *innocent* refugees being handed over to Hannibal-Lector-ese governments).
A lot of these people get tortured. Torture doesn't mean having their arms stretched in a rack like you read in children's books. It means things like being slowly flayed alive with a scalpel. (Ok this example is a technique of the Indonesian army but I imagine equally bad things happen in China).
Nah, it's not that simple at all. I'd've supported Gandhi's peaceful non-cooperation. I'd've supported breaking US segregation laws in the 60s. That doesn't mean I support anyone who assassinates gays "on principle".
The whole point about a "basic human right" is that it's *unalienable*. It comes above anything else (except infringing another basic human right). Of course, you might not agree that such rights exist. But most people would consider the right not to be murdered to be such a right. I conjecture that few people would consider intellectual property "rights" to be this basic. (After all, they last for an arbitrary limited time and are legally intended as a means to an end: encouraging people to create valuable information).
Yshould've seen the messy way we used to do calculus, for no good reason except to spite Leibnitz.
Yes, sorry, I should have said KDE. (Although both refused to distribute Qt at one time)
Yes, in case it's not clear from my earlier posts, so do I. I think it would be worth it if only for the finest news service in the world. BTW their online news magazine is excellent.
[Minor point: the dosh doesn't pay for the world service, that's funded separately]
Not the UK or Ireland, but AFAIK everywhere else. (Of course, only for currency
You obviously count the executives at Red Hat as GPL zealots, then. But you think it's fine for Troll to use whatever license they want for QT, so why do you object to Red Hat and Debian's right to not redistribute QT if they think it might land them in hot water?
Different people's opinions. But anyway, different contexts too. Many of the Debian people who think it is illegal to include KDE in fact *use* KDE personally. And anyway I'm sure you'd agree that they'd be insane to distribute Metallica albums illegally so there's no dichotomy.
You misunderstand. I *wasn't* supporting people's right to illegally protest in any way. I was merely saying that it might be *effective*. Wheras "IF you don't like it don't buy it" is a fairly ineffective philosophy in cases like this.
By that argument the original American settlers would have accepted the British consumption taxes on them and not revolted.
Well I live in a country where there is a $150/year tax on owning a TV. (It pays for the BBC) Support for this tax is well under 50% according to opinion polls. However most people pay it rather than go without a telly. The few who go without a telly in protest will find their voice doesn't count.
OTOH, in the 60s, a small minority of Welsh-speakers in Wales *refused* to pay the BBC tax because they objected to not getting bills in Welsh. Some went to prison. Enough public outrage ensued at this injustice that the TV license people caved in. If these people had just binned their tellies, that would never have happened.
No. But the examples you cite infringe on *basic human rights* : the right to life and the right to own property. The right to "intellectual property" is not a basic human right (according to the US constitution or European convention on human rights or the UN or etc.)
Leaded petrol is completely banned in the EU now (apart from for antique vehicles), and catalytic converters are mandatory, AFAIK.
``The government is slapping a $1000 tax on all TV sales and resales. If you don't like paying the extra $1000 then protest by not having a TV.''
Is that a sensible argument? No. Most people really want a TV enough that they'll buy one anyway. It would be an ineffective protest.
"Copyright" is a tax on copying, which you may believe to be good or bad. Maybe I object to the amount of market power that ends up in the hands of a few huge corporations as a result of this tax. Simply abstaining from buying CDs would be an ineffective protest. If these corporations also fund politicians' election campaigns, I may not have much strength to fight it politically either.
However, a campaign of mass civil disobedience can work. If enough people support unauthorised copying it will be impossible to stop and the authorities might think about changing the law.
I'm not supporting such a protest here [or rejecting it]. I'm just saying that the view which says "boycott it if you don't like it" doesn't address the problem. If someone really believes that the law is unjust (and isn't just acting selfishly) then they may be justified in performing unauthorised copying.
<bite>
Yep, US cars consume on average about twice as much petrol per mile as the average European's car. The US economy produces more tonnes of rubbish per tonne of stuff than any other developed economy. US multinationals are responsible for more deaths due to pollution than the rest of the world's. [This last one is because you have more multinationals, not cos they're lots worse; however that gives the US government more power to do something about the problem and it isn't.]
Its domestic environment, maybe. Certainly not other people's localities or the global environment as a whole. Capitalism is way of balancing people's conflicting aims. Without some sense of things counting as other people's property, it doesn't work. There's no sense in which the US law regards the global environment as partly the property of foreigners, so things like CO2 emissions won't get cut.
</bite>
I completely disagree. An economic system which does not regulate pollution only makes sense if "clean environment" is an effectively limitless resource. For example if the world is very sparsely populated or doesn't have much polluting power. This was true 200 years ago. But now the world is more densely populated and we have a hugely increased ability to use up "clean environment" fast. So now "clean environment" should be regarded as a finite resource and people should pay for it and damaging bits of environment that you don't own should count as vandalising someone else's property.
Economically the argument is sound. Politically it's a dead loss cos the US is getting big short-term gains out of trashing the world's environment in an unregulated manner. (I say this not out of spite but because the average
American's car is horrendously inefficient and polluting, but the damage it causes spreads across the globe so the US doesn't feel the full force of it).
These are all valid concerns. However most of them can be avoided if the government does not actually run an ISP itself. If it just offers to pay up to a certain amount of your ISP bill, this doesn't destroy the ISP market or give the government particularly good opportunities for censorship.
Of course, even if the government *does* run an ISP, it may be good on balance, if significantly many people get internet access who wouldn't have been able to afford it otherwise. You trust the government to run schools for this reason [I presume] so why not ISPs?
30 seconds internet access per day is quite enough to make good use of email and usenet. Of course, that requires that you have a computer to use during the time that you're not online.
Er