I don't believe that NS5 would save the day. Once IE became "good enough" there was no need for most people to search for alternatives.
Still netscape could have kept maybe a 10% of the market and a bigger developer mindshare, which would give a hell of a better start to mozilla.
I suppose that executives had already put all their eggs in the litigation basket...
> Are we really going to be given an inch and demand a mile?
No. That's the point. It's an inch. Nothing changed. People that thought that *now* they can use nokia's patents are mistaken. What i read from this is: what's done is done. From now on we'll be watching. Nokia is not giving anything away, most of their software patents up to now will not be considered valid in europe anyway... But they *are* trying to get EU to accept software patents -- something just doesn't feel right.
I don't think that the developers can use all of nokia patents from now on. As i read the statement, patents that are used today are ok, but for anything new in the kernel, they keep the right to sue. Even if the patent they claim is older than the statement.
A scary thought is that they (or their successors etc..) can go to the judge with the line "we gave them all those patents, but they want everything, not fair"
I believe they meant good, but they need to clarify it. A simple "we will never sue linux kernel developers or users over patent infrigment" will do.
The part about other parties asserting its patents against linux was fine though.
Yeah, but you need nine person months to build each of them. Add 3-4 months paid vacations and the profit margin, you realize it will never become commodity fleshware...
>I can not use GPL code with other code that is not >licensed under the GPL. The GPL is incompatible >with every other licence I've seen. Every other >licence I've seen is incompatible with precisely >one licence - The GPL.
Ok, i'll bite.. 1) If another license is less restrictive than GPL that means that you are allowed to change the license for that code (considering that this is basically the restriction GPL enforces). So you can GPL the code, and the license is compatible with GPL. 2) If the license is more restrictive than GPL, and you cannot change it, I agree that you have a problem. But it's a problem with the other license, (at least) as much as it's a problem with GPL, no?
Right, so if you use GPL'ed code you can't release yours ?!?!?!
You got it all wrong. Naturally you can release your code. You can do whatever you want as long as there is no GPL code in it. You can even release it if it contains GPL code, you just have to license it under GPL as well.
You have made it pretty clear that you don't like the GPL. However, you must understand that whoever releases his code under GPL does *NOT* want you to use it in any other way. Respect their wishes and go on with your programming.
P.S. If you need to use some GPL library: Contact the author, if he did release a library under GPL (Extremely rare, but it has happened) he propably made a mistake. Almost all of the libraries in the GPL world are licensed under LGPL, which allows you to link against them without making your code GPL.
>The GPL is inconvenient in that it appears to be >deliberately designed to be incompatible with other >licences. Many other vendors bar us from releasing >their code
See, it's not the GPL, it's the programmers that chose to license their work under the GPL. You whould think of it as "The programmers bar us from *not* releasing their code."
BTW, if you some vendors bar you from releasing *their* code, can you please explain what does "None of them make any requirements on derived works." mean?
>Those Germans can whip up a mean pickle I grant you >- but build a battleship?
Various german kingdoms formed a big european power since the fall of the Roman Empire: Germany was definetely a major power, although not a naval one. And Japan was big enough to challenge the US, remember?
>Korea has achieved it even faster and at the very >pinnacle of modern technologies
Let's have some perspective here: Any single company in any part of the world can start a car business or a mobile phone business. It's *not* rocket science. However getting to space *IS* rocket science. Too hard and too expensive.
China can do it, as i said. The rest of the countries mentioned in the parent post cannot.
Ok, i'll give you china, (although they are still decades behind US) but the rest is a joke, right? Do you realise that they cannot even build a modern airplane?
There were weapons of mass destruction *before* the Bomb you know. I remember reading somewhere a horrible story about WW1 where one side (not sure if it was allies or germans) started a chemical attack. However the wind changed and killed something like 50000(!!) of their own troops... Luckilly common sense prevailed and they didn't use such things in WW2.
I would expect the same behaviour for nukes. I mean, naturally someone would have invented them. But would anyone have used them? harldy.
Sites don't just become popular like that. There was much more than "A couple of mentions around the web" about groklaw. It is a very nice, very informative site about a lawsuit that interests a lot of people.
>SCO's problems are always reported as crippling >flaws, IBM's problems are "setbacks". It's a very >nice PR job
I'll give you the benefit of the doubt and believe that you are not just trolling:
You don't need public relations to make people hate SCO. Everybody hated SCO even before groklaw started. On the other hand, you need someone like MOG, to get a few people like you believe that SCO actually has something.
An example: Not a long time ago the Judge (after many,many requests from SCO, of course) ordered IBM to produce all "non-public contributions to linux" they made. See, there are no "non-public contributions to linux". It is not possible. What you are going to do, hack into kernel.org and plant the code when everybody is looking the other way?
Still MOG paints this as a major setback and a slap in the hand for IBM, while Groklaw obviously does not. Naturally in a few months SCO and MOG will be like "IBM STILL HASN'T PRODUCED THAT LINUXCODE THOSE BASTARDS". If she still has a job that is...
>where would gnu/linux be without AT&T UNIX to copy >their original concepts from
Where would *you* be without all those apes that you copied the thumbs from ?
>if you can just go around giving out free >software, that's going to destroy the >competition, isn't it?
Hey, remember the times, a few years ago when there was *no* competition in the operating system, office suit and web browsers market? It was not because of free software, it was because of proprietary software. There is competition in the market today *because* of free software.
And another point: As it is today MS has 80% profit from the sales of its' office suit. The profit from the office business alone is three times as much as their *whole* R&D budget. That means that they could give a 50% discount and still be ridicously profitable. And there would be little incentive to switch to openoffice if MS office was reasonably priced. But it isn't. And it's not just MS: The price of photoshop is getting more and more people interested in GIMP. Unix for i386 used to cost something like $10000 back in '90, and that alone was a good reason to develop linux.
The message is simple: There are many greedy and many giving people in this world.
This is just legal language, you are not bound by the GPL to distribute the code when you modify it. But if you do distribute it, you need to use the same license. The license talks about the freedom you must give to anyone that receives the code from you. And the permission you have to modify the code, provided that you will *not* take away the mentioned freedom.
the money go to the distribution companies that have the contract with the content creator.
As long as the content creator does not distribute the work himself - outside the "umbrella" of the industry - he should consider this loss of income when negociating the contract with the distribution company.
Although gnome has lost the point for some time now, it is hardly what you would call a "community" project. It is not even a project from devs for devs. It tries hard to be easy for non-techies.
It has been widely supported and influenced by *companies*: HP wants it to be their next standard desktop, ximian built a business around it, Redhat still offers it as the default environment (!?!?!).
Bottom line: gnome does not follow anymore the development practises of an open source project, the majority of which listen really *really* carefully to their users.
A counter-example (and an interesting business approach) is trolltech: They created the QT library, and they are giving it away under GPL. They make a profit from companies that need the library for non-GPL products.
So can you please leave the middle click issue alone? I mean i don't email microsoft asking them to go back to alt-c/alt-v now, do i?
>in the main I prefer the Windows way of doing it
However if you did use the X-windows way for a while , you would propably agree with me that it is the easiest and less painful way. X-applications also support ctrl-c ctrl-v, you can use that. Think of middle click as an (extremely useful) add-on.
Macs don't cost more than a comparable pc (anymore) and the hardware you get is definetely better.
Also, the design is wonderfull, even the hardware is easy to the eye.
That said, the kernel has a long way to go before it can really compete with linux, and it doesn't seem that apple can catch up. But they can always use linux at some point in the future;)
The companys choice of programming environment might seem silly, but you need to think about stuff like that when you are building your resume.
If he felt that his creativity/productivity would be lower, he did the right thing.
>Expressing a preference is one thing, making it >seem like a forgone conclusion is quite another
His point is that it would be a waste of time and money to use anything else.
Sure you can get all those in windows, but why bother, when any linux distro has everything installed by default?
Slashdot Mirror
I don't believe that NS5 would save the day. Once IE became "good enough" there was no need for most people to search for alternatives.
Still netscape could have kept maybe a 10% of the market and a bigger developer mindshare, which would give a hell of a better start to mozilla.
I suppose that executives had already put all their eggs in the litigation basket...
Out of curiosity, when did you switch back to mozilla?
> Are we really going to be given an inch and demand a mile?
No. That's the point. It's an inch. Nothing changed. People that thought that *now* they can use nokia's patents are mistaken.
What i read from this is: what's done is done. From now on we'll be watching.
Nokia is not giving anything away, most of their software patents up to now will not be considered valid in europe anyway...
But they *are* trying to get EU to accept software patents -- something just doesn't feel right.
I don't think that the developers can use all of nokia patents from now on. As i read the statement, patents that are used today are ok, but for anything new in the kernel, they keep the right to sue. Even if the patent they claim is older than the statement.
A scary thought is that they (or their successors etc..) can go to the judge with the line "we gave them all those patents, but they want everything, not fair"
I believe they meant good, but they need to clarify it. A simple "we will never sue linux kernel developers or users over patent infrigment" will do.
The part about other parties asserting its patents against linux was fine though.
Yeah, but you need nine person months to build each of them.
Add 3-4 months paid vacations and the profit margin, you realize it will never become commodity fleshware...
>I can not use GPL code with other code that is not
>licensed under the GPL. The GPL is incompatible
>with every other licence I've seen. Every other
>licence I've seen is incompatible with precisely
>one licence - The GPL.
Ok, i'll bite..
1) If another license is less restrictive than GPL that means that you are allowed to change the license for that code (considering that this is basically the restriction GPL enforces). So you can GPL the code, and the license is compatible with GPL.
2) If the license is more restrictive than GPL, and you cannot change it, I agree that you have a problem. But it's a problem with the other license, (at least) as much as it's a problem with GPL, no?
Right, so if you use GPL'ed code you can't release yours ?!?!?!
You got it all wrong. Naturally you can release your code. You can do whatever you want as long as there is no GPL code in it.
You can even release it if it contains GPL code, you just have to license it under GPL as well.
You have made it pretty clear that you don't like the GPL. However, you must understand that whoever releases his code under GPL does *NOT* want you to use it in any other way. Respect their wishes and go on with your programming.
P.S. If you need to use some GPL library:
Contact the author, if he did release a library under GPL (Extremely rare, but it has happened) he propably made a mistake. Almost all of the libraries in the GPL world are licensed under LGPL, which allows you to link against them without making your code GPL.
>The GPL is inconvenient in that it appears to be
>deliberately designed to be incompatible with other
>licences. Many other vendors bar us from releasing
>their code
See, it's not the GPL, it's the programmers that chose to license their work under the GPL.
You whould think of it as "The programmers bar us from *not* releasing their code."
BTW, if you some vendors bar you from releasing *their* code, can you please explain what does "None of them make any requirements on derived works." mean?
>Those Germans can whip up a mean pickle I grant you
>- but build a battleship?
Various german kingdoms formed a big european power since the fall of the Roman Empire: Germany was definetely a major power, although not a naval one.
And Japan was big enough to challenge the US, remember?
>Korea has achieved it even faster and at the very
>pinnacle of modern technologies
Let's have some perspective here: Any single company in any part of the world can start a car business or a mobile phone business. It's *not* rocket science.
However getting to space *IS* rocket science. Too hard and too expensive.
China can do it, as i said. The rest of the countries mentioned in the parent post cannot.
Ok, i'll give you china, (although they are still decades behind US) but the rest is a joke, right?
Do you realise that they cannot even build a modern airplane?
There were weapons of mass destruction *before* the Bomb you know.
I remember reading somewhere a horrible story about WW1 where one side (not sure if it was allies or germans) started a chemical attack. However the wind changed and killed something like 50000(!!) of their own troops...
Luckilly common sense prevailed and they didn't use such things in WW2.
I would expect the same behaviour for nukes. I mean, naturally someone would have invented them. But would anyone have used them? harldy.
Sites don't just become popular like that. There was much more than "A couple of mentions around the web" about groklaw. It is a very nice, very informative site about a lawsuit that interests a lot of people.
>SCO's problems are always reported as crippling
>flaws, IBM's problems are "setbacks". It's a very
>nice PR job
I'll give you the benefit of the doubt and believe that you are not just trolling:
You don't need public relations to make people hate SCO. Everybody hated SCO even before groklaw started.
On the other hand, you need someone like MOG, to get a few people like you believe that SCO actually has something.
An example:
Not a long time ago the Judge (after many,many requests from SCO, of course) ordered IBM to produce all "non-public contributions to linux" they made.
See, there are no "non-public contributions to linux". It is not possible. What you are going to do, hack into kernel.org and plant the code when everybody is looking the other way?
Still MOG paints this as a major setback and a slap in the hand for IBM, while Groklaw obviously does not.
Naturally in a few months SCO and MOG will be like "IBM STILL HASN'T PRODUCED THAT LINUXCODE THOSE BASTARDS". If she still has a job that is...
The problem was the bundling with windows, not the price of IE.
>where would gnu/linux be without AT&T UNIX to copy
>their original concepts from
Where would *you* be without all those apes that you copied the thumbs from ?
>if you can just go around giving out free
>software, that's going to destroy the
>competition, isn't it?
Hey, remember the times, a few years ago when there was *no* competition in the operating system, office suit and web browsers market? It was not because of free software, it was because of proprietary software. There is competition in the market today *because* of free software.
And another point:
As it is today MS has 80% profit from the sales of its' office suit.
The profit from the office business alone is three times as much as their *whole* R&D budget.
That means that they could give a 50% discount and still be ridicously profitable. And there would be little incentive to switch to openoffice if MS office was reasonably priced.
But it isn't.
And it's not just MS: The price of photoshop is getting more and more people interested in GIMP. Unix for i386 used to cost something like $10000 back in '90, and that alone was a good reason to develop linux.
The message is simple: There are many greedy and many giving people in this world.
This is just legal language, you are not bound by the GPL to distribute the code when you modify it. But if you do distribute it, you need to use the same license.
The license talks about the freedom you must give to anyone that receives the code from you. And the permission you have to modify the code, provided that you will *not* take away the mentioned freedom.
It's ok to rent a dvd and copy it. I'm pretty sure that in order to get full refund on a dvd you purchase, the case has to remain sealed.
the money go to the distribution companies that have the contract with the content creator.
As long as the content creator does not distribute the work himself - outside the "umbrella" of the industry - he should consider this loss of income when negociating the contract with the distribution company.
Although gnome has lost the point for some time now, it is hardly what you would call a "community" project. It is not even a project from devs for devs. It tries hard to be easy for non-techies.
It has been widely supported and influenced by *companies*: HP wants it to be their next standard desktop, ximian built a business around it, Redhat still offers it as the default environment (!?!?!).
Bottom line: gnome does not follow anymore the development practises of an open source project, the majority of which listen really *really* carefully to their users.
>But for commercial purposes, the license becomes
:)
>more restrictive and demanding of money
Actually GPL is the "restrictive" license in this case - the license you get when you pay allows you to do things GPL does not
A counter-example (and an interesting business approach) is trolltech:
They created the QT library, and they are giving it away under GPL. They make a profit from companies that need the library for non-GPL products.
>(I hardly ever use Linux)
So can you please leave the middle click issue alone? I mean i don't email microsoft asking them to go back to alt-c/alt-v now, do i?
>in the main I prefer the Windows way of doing it
However if you did use the X-windows way for a while , you would propably agree with me that it is the easiest and less painful way. X-applications also support ctrl-c ctrl-v, you can use that.
Think of middle click as an (extremely useful) add-on.
Macs don't cost more than a comparable pc (anymore) and the hardware you get is definetely better.
;)
Also, the design is wonderfull, even the hardware is easy to the eye.
That said, the kernel has a long way to go before it can really compete with linux, and it doesn't seem that apple can catch up. But they can always use linux at some point in the future
The companys choice of programming environment might seem silly, but you need to think about stuff like that when you are building your resume.
If he felt that his creativity/productivity would be lower, he did the right thing.
>Expressing a preference is one thing, making it
>seem like a forgone conclusion is quite another
His point is that it would be a waste of time and money to use anything else.
Sure you can get all those in windows, but why bother, when any linux distro has everything installed by default?
>unless all users run a complete code audit
Actually, no. If only *one* user (or developer) gives it a look, people will know.