I wouldn't buy it. And those who did are ignorant and pitiful because they paid money and all they got for it was a name.
The thing about the BSD license that, it seems, most GPL advocates don't see is that BSD does guarantee that my code will remain truly free.
If someone else uses my code in their own product and sells the result, my code is still free. The end purchasers of the proprietary product are only paying for the difference between that product and my free code since they could always freely have my stuff. This is true even if there is no difference between that proprietary product and my free code.
In fact, the BSD license even grants you, dear developer, the freedom to change the license to GPL and redistribute the exact same code otherwise unchanged. Just don't send me GPL patches because I can't use them. This is not true the other way around. So, which license offers developers more freedom?
Apparently, some people spent their time at university attending sit-ins instead of attending classes where they might have learnt something of proper apologetics.
I shall not further respond in this thread, but rather bring the matter full circle by declaring:
I stand completely with Mr. Perens on this issue. His foreward-looking decision exemplifies restraint, dignity, and thoughtful consideration. It does not demonstrate any form of cowardice or greed.
Being hit with batons and risking jail time for your preferred causes doesn't necessarily make you a hero.
It's difficult to tell, not knowing what those causes are, and not knowing what you did to effect being beaten and possibly imprisoned. And that's assuming that your statement is even true.
you don't have to [pay for PBS/free software/etc.], but can you really call that moral?
Sure you can! And why not?
If I purchase a car for $5000 and later decide that it was really worth $10000, am I morally obligated to give back some of the difference to the seller? Of course not. Even if the seller is on the verge of going out of business? I don't see how that changes anything.
Put another way, if a local restaurant is giving away free soup hoping that patrons will buy bread to go with it, am I morally obligated to buy bread if I go there for soup? No. Even if the procedes feed the poor? Still no. Even if the procedes feed the poor AND the restaurant will go out of business if I don't buy bread? Perhaps I'm not being clear: No.
If a commercial entity cannot stand on its chosen business model then it needs to find a new model or else it deserves to go out of business. There's no morality involved here. That the fine folks at TurboLinux decided to center their business model around a product with a price point of $0 obligates me in no way, not even morally.
Do you also have the word "Bitch" torn out of the family dictionary?
Oh, come on! Context is everything. Just because my kids could look up the clinical definition of something vulgar or inappropriate in a dictionary does not mean that I think they should be intigrating it into their everyday language.
I have very very reliable inside information that makes me 100% confident that you did something to install gator.
You're assuming that the people who make Gator are the only one's in this loop. And those sites that stand to make money off of it don't do sneaky things to make sure it gets installed without the user knowing. Just a theory.
I know several people that work for Gator, and they all have made very sure that you are always prompted to install Gator.
I'll assume that this is true just because you said it. After all, those good folks who wrote Gator would never do anything dishonest or underhanded -- we know at least that they wrote Gator.
...I've accidently installed gator once...
I don't see how this is possible, considering how much work the programmers at Gator put into making sure it's obvious that you are installing their software when you do it.
You discredited yourself with that statement.
This coming from the guy who traded a Mercedes and a Toyota for a Chevy Cavalier -- and installed Gator accidentally once. I'm sorry, you were trying to say something?
I can guarantee you with any question of a doubt that you are always prompted with the Gator install screen.
And I can guarantee that you are wrong. As I was, on my Win2k machine at work, presented a "Thank you for installing Gator" dialog (or something like that, it was NOT a "click here to install Gator" dialog) when I'm quite certain that I never agreed to install Gator. I never agree to install anything on my work machine. If I need a particular plugin to view some site, I just move on because that's the machine I do development on and I don't want any freaky thing fooling with its performance or reliablility.
What's worse, removing Gator from that machine proved, well, challenging.
I'll reply. If I moderate that, I would just get my karma kicked in meta-moderation.
If indeed there is a free-speech right to modify the code of software, then isn't there a free-speech right to modify the license as well? And yet, with copyleft while the code is mutable the license is not. Not only can you not adopt a more restrictive license, but you can't adopt a more liberal license either.
That is the most insightful comment about GPL doublethink that I've heard in a very long time! You're going on my Friends list.
Then go join the Amish and don't inconvenience the rest of us.
I think it's kind of funny that the user who said this styles himself 'jedidiah' and has a user number to indicate he didn't just make the login for the joke.
Re:There is nothing wrong with RPMs. Only packager
on
Is RPM Doomed?
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· Score: 2
.rpm archives depend on specific files, while.debs depend on specific packages.
You say that as if RPM can do dependency based on files only. This is not true. RPM can also do dependency based on "capabilities" which are provided by other packages. Observe the "-q --provides" option. The choice of depending on files or capabilities or both is up to the packager.
Re:Binary Distros Are Dead
on
Is RPM Doomed?
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· Score: 3, Insightful
rpm -qa | grep blah, rpm should include pattern matching.
Why, exactly. I think you've profoundly missed the point of the command line if you think that every utility that might benefit from pattern matching should reimplement it.
If you really do that a lot and despise the extra typing, try something like this:
Fundamentalists are the dogmatic ones who interpret the bible literally, who bash gays and lesbians and generally aren't very nice to anybody who isn't in their group or a potential convert.
Note, however that most fundies are not like what is described above.
I'm a little unclear on what you think a fundamentalist is. Are you saying that a fundamentalist is what most fundamentalists are not?
Another question: You seem to be drawing an irreconcilable distinction between "Conservative Christian" and "Fundamentalist." Don't you think it's possible that someone who considers the Scripture to be the final authority (a fundamentalist) might by means of that Scripture conclude that salvation is by faith in Christ alone (a conservative Christian)? Wouldn't that be a "Fundamentalist conservative Christian?"
people recognized the operating system known as DOS
But these same people had no solid idea what "operating system" referred to. As I recall some business type asking, "Does that run under Lotus?"
Re:You cannot deny GCC is the heart of free softwa
on
The Stallman Factor
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· Score: 2
You miss my point. What I was saying is that, while it might have been a robust and portable compiler, it was also crappy until egcs infused some competition. What Stallman created was a robust, portable, crappy compiler.
I can recall projects with completely bogus source files which were commented and left that way because gcc produced the desired output by them. When somebody finally wanted a compiler with correct output, they forked gcc, made a better compiler, and everybody I know stopped using gcc. Thus it was until egcs was rolled back into gcc.
Now we have a robust, portable, non-crappy compiler. But I wouldn't credit gcc alone on that.
Re:You cannot deny GCC is the heart of free softwa
on
The Stallman Factor
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· Score: 1
Without this robust and portable compiler there would be no free software movement today.
Because those very shareholders will then immediately move their waning interest in your company somewhere else where they might get some measure of respect from those that they've invested in.
I'm willing to PAY to hire developers to write code tp be be given back to the community...on a contract basis. This near infinite profit margin for the n+1 copy of software sold is not something I support.
Does anybody on this forum understand how much money is spent on R&D when making software? I write embedded firmware. The stuff I do is tiny compared to most of the stuff on the shelves at CompUSA. But my boss has spent probably $15,000 on a product that we are developing if we consider my salary alone. This project isn't finished yet.
Where does this "near infinite profit on n+1 copies sold" idea come from? After we've sold maybe 6000 units, our profit on the software portion of this project will be a few pennies per unit. 10,000 units (this will take several years) and our profit is a few more pennies per unit. I don't think we will be able to find one customer willing to cough up twenty grand for one unit, or two willing to part with ten grand apiece. No, in order to turn a profit, we need to drop the price to a point where thousands will be willing to pay. Otherwise, we won't make a profit at all.
Imagine that I wasn't writing a relatively small embedded system. If this were a reasonably sized game, an office suite, or large RDBMS, R&D costs are no longer measured in tens of thousands of dollars. Try hundreds of thousands or millions of dollars. Maybe tens of millions for really big projects. I don't think that a non-profit source code co-op is goung to be able to come up with the money to pay for this kind of development.
Very few software houses sell so many copies that their profit per copy is "near infinite" or even "really, really high." For most, selling enough to remain solvent another fiscal year is where it's at. The whole "near-infinite profit per copy" thing is a fantasy. The Open Source community needs to come up with a better argument. Or at least come up with less obvious hyperbole.
I will PAY to fund source code development....
With what, exactly, are you going to PAY to fund OS development? The profits from the first sale of the product resulting from that development? I'm pretty certain you can't afford my time.
Slashdot Mirror
You can even check Google's statistics, but I'm afraid your assertion doesn't hold true in that case! Hmmmm...
The thing about the BSD license that, it seems, most GPL advocates don't see is that BSD does guarantee that my code will remain truly free.
If someone else uses my code in their own product and sells the result, my code is still free. The end purchasers of the proprietary product are only paying for the difference between that product and my free code since they could always freely have my stuff. This is true even if there is no difference between that proprietary product and my free code.
In fact, the BSD license even grants you, dear developer, the freedom to change the license to GPL and redistribute the exact same code otherwise unchanged. Just don't send me GPL patches because I can't use them. This is not true the other way around. So, which license offers developers more freedom?
It's GNUspeak. "Free" doesn't refer to price.
Sorry. It's getting late...
And it does. PNG does alpha. Unless you can name the RGBA image format supported by Internet Explorer. For an example, go here.
I shall not further respond in this thread, but rather bring the matter full circle by declaring:
I stand completely with Mr. Perens on this issue. His foreward-looking decision exemplifies restraint, dignity, and thoughtful consideration. It does not demonstrate any form of cowardice or greed.
It's difficult to tell, not knowing what those causes are, and not knowing what you did to effect being beaten and possibly imprisoned. And that's assuming that your statement is even true.
Sure you can! And why not?
If I purchase a car for $5000 and later decide that it was really worth $10000, am I morally obligated to give back some of the difference to the seller? Of course not. Even if the seller is on the verge of going out of business? I don't see how that changes anything.
Put another way, if a local restaurant is giving away free soup hoping that patrons will buy bread to go with it, am I morally obligated to buy bread if I go there for soup? No. Even if the procedes feed the poor? Still no. Even if the procedes feed the poor AND the restaurant will go out of business if I don't buy bread? Perhaps I'm not being clear: No.
If a commercial entity cannot stand on its chosen business model then it needs to find a new model or else it deserves to go out of business. There's no morality involved here. That the fine folks at TurboLinux decided to center their business model around a product with a price point of $0 obligates me in no way, not even morally.
Oh, come on! Context is everything. Just because my kids could look up the clinical definition of something vulgar or inappropriate in a dictionary does not mean that I think they should be intigrating it into their everyday language.
That's it. Nobody from the UK is allowed to criticize how Americans butcher the English language ever again!
You're assuming that the people who make Gator are the only one's in this loop. And those sites that stand to make money off of it don't do sneaky things to make sure it gets installed without the user knowing. Just a theory.
I know several people that work for Gator, and they all have made very sure that you are always prompted to install Gator.
I'll assume that this is true just because you said it. After all, those good folks who wrote Gator would never do anything dishonest or underhanded -- we know at least that they wrote Gator.
I don't see how this is possible, considering how much work the programmers at Gator put into making sure it's obvious that you are installing their software when you do it.
You discredited yourself with that statement.
This coming from the guy who traded a Mercedes and a Toyota for a Chevy Cavalier -- and installed Gator accidentally once. I'm sorry, you were trying to say something?
Nothing like hyperbole to make your point, is there?
And I can guarantee that you are wrong. As I was, on my Win2k machine at work, presented a "Thank you for installing Gator" dialog (or something like that, it was NOT a "click here to install Gator" dialog) when I'm quite certain that I never agreed to install Gator. I never agree to install anything on my work machine. If I need a particular plugin to view some site, I just move on because that's the machine I do development on and I don't want any freaky thing fooling with its performance or reliablility.
What's worse, removing Gator from that machine proved, well, challenging.
Heh. I know where that came from!
I'll reply. If I moderate that, I would just get my karma kicked in meta-moderation.
If indeed there is a free-speech right to modify the code of software, then isn't there a free-speech right to modify the license as well? And yet, with copyleft while the code is mutable the license is not. Not only can you not adopt a more restrictive license, but you can't adopt a more liberal license either.
That is the most insightful comment about GPL doublethink that I've heard in a very long time! You're going on my Friends list.
I think it's kind of funny that the user who said this styles himself 'jedidiah' and has a user number to indicate he didn't just make the login for the joke.
You say that as if RPM can do dependency based on files only. This is not true. RPM can also do dependency based on "capabilities" which are provided by other packages. Observe the "-q --provides" option. The choice of depending on files or capabilities or both is up to the packager.
Why, exactly. I think you've profoundly missed the point of the command line if you think that every utility that might benefit from pattern matching should reimplement it.
If you really do that a lot and despise the extra typing, try something like this:
alias findrpm="rpm -qa | grep -i"
Note, however that most fundies are not like what is described above.
I'm a little unclear on what you think a fundamentalist is. Are you saying that a fundamentalist is what most fundamentalists are not?
Another question: You seem to be drawing an irreconcilable distinction between "Conservative Christian" and "Fundamentalist." Don't you think it's possible that someone who considers the Scripture to be the final authority (a fundamentalist) might by means of that Scripture conclude that salvation is by faith in Christ alone (a conservative Christian)? Wouldn't that be a "Fundamentalist conservative Christian?"
If Jesus was, in fact, the eternal God then there is no such thing as "new evidence" from His perspective.
But these same people had no solid idea what "operating system" referred to. As I recall some business type asking, "Does that run under Lotus?"
I can recall projects with completely bogus source files which were commented and left that way because gcc produced the desired output by them. When somebody finally wanted a compiler with correct output, they forked gcc, made a better compiler, and everybody I know stopped using gcc. Thus it was until egcs was rolled back into gcc.
Now we have a robust, portable, non-crappy compiler. But I wouldn't credit gcc alone on that.
And without egcs, gcc would still be crappy.
Because those very shareholders will then immediately move their waning interest in your company somewhere else where they might get some measure of respect from those that they've invested in.
I'm sorry.
Does anybody on this forum understand how much money is spent on R&D when making software? I write embedded firmware. The stuff I do is tiny compared to most of the stuff on the shelves at CompUSA. But my boss has spent probably $15,000 on a product that we are developing if we consider my salary alone. This project isn't finished yet.
Where does this "near infinite profit on n+1 copies sold" idea come from? After we've sold maybe 6000 units, our profit on the software portion of this project will be a few pennies per unit. 10,000 units (this will take several years) and our profit is a few more pennies per unit. I don't think we will be able to find one customer willing to cough up twenty grand for one unit, or two willing to part with ten grand apiece. No, in order to turn a profit, we need to drop the price to a point where thousands will be willing to pay. Otherwise, we won't make a profit at all.
Imagine that I wasn't writing a relatively small embedded system. If this were a reasonably sized game, an office suite, or large RDBMS, R&D costs are no longer measured in tens of thousands of dollars. Try hundreds of thousands or millions of dollars. Maybe tens of millions for really big projects. I don't think that a non-profit source code co-op is goung to be able to come up with the money to pay for this kind of development.
Very few software houses sell so many copies that their profit per copy is "near infinite" or even "really, really high." For most, selling enough to remain solvent another fiscal year is where it's at. The whole "near-infinite profit per copy" thing is a fantasy. The Open Source community needs to come up with a better argument. Or at least come up with less obvious hyperbole.
I will PAY to fund source code development....
With what, exactly, are you going to PAY to fund OS development? The profits from the first sale of the product resulting from that development? I'm pretty certain you can't afford my time.