Or perhaps [...] you prize things like fade-away pull down menus and a colorful splash screen? If that's the case, by all means, Microsoft has everyone beat hands down!
Surely you mean "enlightenment"? Or maybe xscreensaver.
no matter how you look at it, [the GPL] still hinges upon a government granted monopoly. [...]If it is not [exploitative], then neither is any copyright Sun uses
That's like saying that the police are exploitative because they use violence to fight violence! If there were no violence, there'd be no need for the police. Similarly, if there were no government-granted monopoly, there'd be no need for a GPL!
The major difference between Sun licensing their own products their own way, and your pyramid scheme, as that your scheme hinges upon an act of fraud.
That's not true. Some pyramid schemes make it quite clear to buyers that they are a massive gamble. They're still illegal (at least in this country), because they cause a large-scale economic mess and not because anyone is being defrauded.
People are called zealots who call fraud freedom, but then turn around and call freedom exploitation.
The normal word for that would in fact be "hypocrisy". But it is at least debatable whether exercising an artificial, government-granted monopoly to control an idea is "freedom" rather than "exploitation". It depends upon how you view the situation.
Who, exactly, approves a license that, by it's very nature, is designed and executed by a community?!
The Debian Free Software Guidelines, which were drawn up by the community of Debian developers plus others, are the accepted yardstick - there doesn't seem to be much controversy about this.
They've spend lots of time and money on their stuff, and it is THEIR stuff. They can do what they want with it. Stop bitching about it.
I've spent lots of time and money setting up a pyramid scheme. Let me run it how I want.
Society doesn't let me do this because it has bad social consequences. (Suddenly millions of people lose all their money, causing a major economic crash).
Similarly, if a particular software license (or business practise) has disastrous social consequences, it makes sense to ban it.
Whether the software licenses around today are socially disastrous is a matter of opinion. But don't assume that anyone who thinks so is a "dumb fucking zealot" - they just have a different opinion to yourself.
can we honestly say that the other big companies out there are more nice?
No, and I think you've hit on a fundamental point. Public companies, unlike people, have no moral stance, only a financial one - a legal obligation to make as much money as possible. We should support/deride individual actions of companies which are good/bad for the community. But we should *never* make the mistake of believing a public company is for, or against, our community - indeed it would be illegal for them to take either stance in the face of profitability.
People often support the "bad" actions of a company because of their "good" actions somewhere else. This is the same kind of thinking that made people support Microsoft when they were the underdog challenging IBM's dominance.
So we should support Sun's use of the MPL in this case. We shouldn't believe it means they have any particular "position" as regards free software.
The average decision maker won't give much thought at a "publication" unless it's been "published", as in a book.
True, but free manuals can be published in print format, too. In fact, it's *more* likely that a good free manual will get printed even if the authors don't actively try to make this happen, because the (prospective) publisher can see how popular it is online, then fiddle with the texinfo file a bit, then sell it.
Of course, the author(s) *can* make an active effort to get the manual printed and sold, and get some royalties in return for the word "official" slapped on the cover.
I disagree with the idea that a work must allow print reproductions to be considered "open".
I think this is an important freedom for software docs. Most people prefer to sit at their computer with a printed manual "on their knee", so to speak. If no-one else can make printed versions, then other people's hard work updating the manual will be at the mercy of the original copyright holder. E.g. the copyright holder might refuse to update the manual for a while, because this would render lots of printed copies "obsolete". Or they might stop printing the manual for "business reasons" (say if Adobe pays them to take the book off the market). Without the freedom to print, everyone else's work would then be stuck in an unprintable file.
Technical documentation isn't like software, where you can make money off of support
I think it does actually work. If I am the author of the GIMP manual, you'd be more likely to pay me to do technical support than if I was just any old GIMP developer. I've proved that I have the communication skills that the job requires, *and* good knowledge of the GIMP.
poor people... are least likely to own a computer and to have internet access
This is true today. However it may not be true in a few years time. Today, fairly poor people (though not the very poorest) are more likely to have newer televisions and video players - because TV is a comparatively cheap form of entertainment. This may be true of Internet access tomorrow.
That's not quite correct; MusixTeX and Lilypond both depend on TeX, but neither depends on the other. (Old versions of Lilypond used MusixTeX). Note for anyone who's bothered by such things: MusixTeX is non-DFSG-free.
the last 1% I need to do is an effective MIDI system that includes [...] notation software (outputting the midi tracks to sheet music)
It's not possible to automate midi-to-sheetmusic perfectly. This is because midi files usually don't contain the information you need - e.g. they contain how long a note *sounds for*, not how long it should be written, so a staccato crotchet (quarter note) might appear to be a semiquaver (sixteenth note). On the other hand, GNU Lilypond has a midi2ly utility which tries to do this. (Normally to use Lilypond you type the music in a LaTeX-like format). If you're happy with what automated midi typesetting can manage, then give this a try. To see some Lilypond output, look at the Mutopia project (a sort of musical Gutenberg project).
Note that someone can create their own non-free work, label it all "invariant", place it under the FDL and then combine it with your work to get a non-free derivative work. Anything directly derived from your sections remains free in the derivative work though. I suppose this is something like how the Lesser GPL works.
Also note that untested licenses are at least as dangerous as untested software! You probably want to wait a while before actually *using* this license. Remember it is only version 1.0 and be careful.
What a novel license.. Kudos to RMS and the rest of the GNU crew!
Wow, very good you can read. Now go back and carry on where you left off, you've missed most of the license, like the bit that modified versions must be distributed under the same license as the original, which is presumably the whole point.
I think this new license can only be a good thing. There is not much awareness in the community of the FSF's position on free documentation. The existence of this license will hopefully cause people to consider the issue, and decide for themselves what they believe, rather than just being unaware of the issue.
3432562195 = 204*2^24 + 152*2^16 + 190*2^8 + 19 = 204.152.190.19 - i.e. if you think of the numbers between the dots as being "digits" in base 2^8, then just typing in the actual number also works.
It's probably easier to see in hex. If your IP address is 192.168.1.1 then in hex that is C0.A8.01.01 and the full number you type in is the decimal version of the number C0A80101.
When modifications to the Software are released under this license, a non-exclusive royalty-free right is granted to the initial developer of the Software to distribute your modification in future versions of the Software provided such versions remain available under these terms
in addition to any other license(s) of the initial developer. (emphasis mine)
This means the initial developer is allowed to make a non-free version of your modification, provided he makes it available under the QPL as well.
But say you've got a QPLed window manager, and you modify it, using some code from QT. To legally distribute this, you'd have to give the initial developer of the window manager the right to make a non-free version of your modification. But you can't do that because the QT part of the modification belongs to Troll Tech, and only they have the right to make non-free versions of this bit. So you can't distribute your modification at all.
In other words, the QPL is incompatible with itself.
Did I make more sense that time? Or am I still rambling in 5AM mode?
What is a class template but a declaration of an unboundedly large family of objects all at once? Ok so you might say there's a difference between "object-enabled" and "object-oriented". BTW I was posing this as a question - can this be done in the latest VB?
Slashdot Mirror
True, but the article was specifically about x86 Unices.
Yes. You can prove this easily using similar triangles. <cough, cough>
... give or take a bit.
Surely you mean "enlightenment"? Or maybe xscreensaver.
That comment was posted with the aid of glibc, perl, php, bind and possibly a full GNU system, depending on what you have at your end.
That's like saying that the police are exploitative because they use violence to fight violence! If there were no violence, there'd be no need for the police. Similarly, if there were no government-granted monopoly, there'd be no need for a GPL!
That's not true. Some pyramid schemes make it quite clear to buyers that they are a massive gamble. They're still illegal (at least in this country), because they cause a large-scale economic mess and not because anyone is being defrauded.
The normal word for that would in fact be "hypocrisy". But it is at least debatable whether exercising an artificial, government-granted monopoly to control an idea is "freedom" rather than "exploitation". It depends upon how you view the situation.
The Debian Free Software Guidelines, which were drawn up by the community of Debian developers plus others, are the accepted yardstick - there doesn't seem to be much controversy about this.
Hmmm I seem to have the numbering wrong there. Anyway, there were earlier non-free versions but the current one is free.
What would the conditions be?
The Netscape Public License version 1.0 wasn't DFSG, and I think this applied to the MPL 1.0.
However, the latest version of the MPL is DFSG-free.
I've spent lots of time and money setting up a pyramid scheme. Let me run it how I want.
Society doesn't let me do this because it has bad social consequences. (Suddenly millions of people lose all their money, causing a major economic crash).
Similarly, if a particular software license (or business practise) has disastrous social consequences, it makes sense to ban it.
Whether the software licenses around today are socially disastrous is a matter of opinion. But don't assume that anyone who thinks so is a "dumb fucking zealot" - they just have a different opinion to yourself.
People often support the "bad" actions of a company because of their "good" actions somewhere else. This is the same kind of thinking that made people support Microsoft when they were the underdog challenging IBM's dominance.
So we should support Sun's use of the MPL in this case. We shouldn't believe it means they have any particular "position" as regards free software.
True, but free manuals can be published in print format, too. In fact, it's *more* likely that a good free manual will get printed even if the authors don't actively try to make this happen, because the (prospective) publisher can see how popular it is online, then fiddle with the texinfo file a bit, then sell it.
Of course, the author(s) *can* make an active effort to get the manual printed and sold, and get some royalties in return for the word "official" slapped on the cover.
I think this is an important freedom for software docs. Most people prefer to sit at their computer with a printed manual "on their knee", so to speak. If no-one else can make printed versions, then other people's hard work updating the manual will be at the mercy of the original copyright holder. E.g. the copyright holder might refuse to update the manual for a while, because this would render lots of printed copies "obsolete". Or they might stop printing the manual for "business reasons" (say if Adobe pays them to take the book off the market). Without the freedom to print, everyone else's work would then be stuck in an unprintable file.
I think it does actually work. If I am the author of the GIMP manual, you'd be more likely to pay me to do technical support than if I was just any old GIMP developer. I've proved that I have the communication skills that the job requires, *and* good knowledge of the GIMP.
This is true today. However it may not be true in a few years time. Today, fairly poor people (though not the very poorest) are more likely to have newer televisions and video players - because TV is a comparatively cheap form of entertainment. This may be true of Internet access tomorrow.
That's not quite correct; MusixTeX and Lilypond both depend on TeX, but neither depends on the other. (Old versions of Lilypond used MusixTeX). Note for anyone who's bothered by such things: MusixTeX is non-DFSG-free.
On the other hand, GNU Lilypond has a midi2ly utility which tries to do this. (Normally to use Lilypond you type the music in a LaTeX-like format). If you're happy with what automated midi typesetting can manage, then give this a try.
To see some Lilypond output, look at the Mutopia project (a sort of musical Gutenberg project).
Note that someone can create their own non-free work, label it all "invariant", place it under the FDL and then combine it with your work to get a non-free derivative work. Anything directly derived from your sections remains free in the derivative work though. I suppose this is something like how the Lesser GPL works.
Also note that untested licenses are at least as dangerous as untested software! You probably want to wait a while before actually *using* this license. Remember it is only version 1.0 and be careful.
Ok so I can't write, I meant "like the bit that said modified versions must be distributed under the same license".
Wow, very good you can read. Now go back and carry on where you left off, you've missed most of the license, like the bit that modified versions must be distributed under the same license as the original, which is presumably the whole point.
I think this new license can only be a good thing. There is not much awareness in the community of the FSF's position on free documentation. The existence of this license will hopefully cause people to consider the issue, and decide for themselves what they believe, rather than just being unaware of the issue.
3432562195 = 204*2^24 + 152*2^16 + 190*2^8 + 19
= 204.152.190.19 - i.e. if you think of the numbers between the dots as being "digits" in base 2^8, then just typing in the actual number also works.
It's probably easier to see in hex. If your IP address is 192.168.1.1 then in hex that is C0.A8.01.01 and the full number you type in is the decimal version of the number C0A80101.
The QPL contains the following clause:
This means the initial developer is allowed to make a non-free version of your modification, provided he makes it available under the QPL as well.
But say you've got a QPLed window manager, and you modify it, using some code from QT. To legally distribute this, you'd have to give the initial developer of the window manager the right to make a non-free version of your modification. But you can't do that because the QT part of the modification belongs to Troll Tech, and only they have the right to make non-free versions of this bit. So you can't distribute your modification at all.
In other words, the QPL is incompatible with itself.
Did I make more sense that time? Or am I still rambling in 5AM mode?
What is a class template but a declaration of an unboundedly large family of objects all at once? Ok so you might say there's a difference between "object-enabled" and "object-oriented". BTW I was posing this as a question - can this be done in the latest VB?