First Post on Slashdot is a badge of honor among neophytes in their larval stage. Most of them grow out of it... Unfortunately Slashdot seems to attract Larva faster than they grow up.
It's a big presumtion that the written offer of source code was on the CD. But obviously, this is not something we can readily determine.
It depends. If he was just a random Debian fan you're right, it is unlikely. If he was an authorized Debian agent (or an authorized agent of someone who redistributes Debian) then I'd guess you're wrong. I'd be willing to give the people who make a business out of selling GPL software the benefit of the doubt and assume that they know what their obligations are.
Yes, it is... I think. You low-balled a whole bunch of things, and ignored a bunch more... Three years offsite backup is definately within the "cost of physically performing source distribution" mentioned in the GPL. Same with the costs of maintaining the duplication station, the sq footage of office space the dupe station takes, the printer for the labels, insurance on the vehicle which is driving the media to the PO,...
If you're a business and have unemployment insurance to pay be sure to factor that in.
The fact is that I wouldn't be surprised if Linux kernel sources paid for in this manner topped $2,000 or even more. That they're available for a no-cost download is awesome, but not something you need to straightjacket yourself into.
If you've got costs for distribution then bill them honestly, no one will think less of you for it. Or if they do, fuck 'em.
Hell, shipping full computers is certainly "...a medium customarily used for software interchange...." and I could easily point out a dozen companies who do so frequently. If you wanted to you could use that route and bill for the components, your time for buying the components, pricing the components, assembling them into a computer, installing an OS on the computer, copying the sources onto the computer, and then mailing the final box.
But if you're not a lawyer make sure you have a decent one if you go this kind of route. Make sure you're in full compliance with all of your licensing obligations. And then bill for the lawyer too.
At a show a debian guy handed me a copy of debian. He did *not* offer me source at that time. Is he in violation? Is debian breaking GPL by distributing their CD at shows without training their people to make offers of the source to everyone they meet?
Dunno. Depends, I guess. First question is about "a debian guy" -- are you talking about some officially sanctioned entity of the Debian Project? If that's the case then probably not. Debian is certainly equipped to fulfill the GPL 3(b) provision of responding to a request for sources. More likely the "debian guy" was some Debian fan, handing out Debian CDs. He may very well have been in violation -- 3(c) is not going to be applicable for stuff acquired directly from Debian to the best of my knowledge. But he might also have used media from a 3(b) re-distributor of Debian (or he might have BEEN a 3(b) re-distributor of Debian -- there are 30ish in the US alone), and as long as the offer for source was on the media then the 3(c) clause would say he's not in violation.
The angry user cannot legally sue you since they do not own the rights to the source code.
Are you sure about that? Aren't they granted the source under the GPL? Aren't you accepting those obligations when you distribute something that's GPLed? Given that I am in no way a lawyer I don't understand what you're saying... But it seems to me that someone you distributed to could certainly take you to court and very likely win a court order that you fulfill your obligations under the license. Am I wrong?
Re:Next you'll be telling kids to get off your law
on
Quake is 10
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· Score: 1
There are plenty of great new games, if you haven't found them it is because you are being willfully blind. Some are nothing more than updates of old games, but wonderful ones at that. Civilization 4 is a good example. As the name implies it's the 4th in the series. Each game is just the old one made anew. The fundimental premise of the game doesn't change. However each one is a worthy successor. The gameplay and mechanics take a huge step up, as well as graphics and sound.
Wow. I can't believe you called out Civ 4 as your example. You must be the one person who actually likes this game. MAJOR step backwards, the worst Civ ever -- and given how bad CTP was, that's saying something.
Civ4 introduces: a bland and uninteresting religion system, gamebreaking changes to settler production, gamebreaking changes to production rates, gamebreaking changes to the corruption system, a terrible rock-paper-scissors combat system, an unfortunate attempt to put an experience system on units, a culture system which should have failed the sniff test, and then to put a cherry on this shit sundae a gorgeous 3D view that makes the map more difficult to read than in any civ game before.
I was taught assembler in my second year of school. It's kinda like construction work -- with a toothpick for a tool. So when I made my senior year, I threw my code away, And learned the way to program that I still prefer today.
Now, some folks on the Internet put their faith in C++. They swear that it's so powerful, it's what God used for us. And maybe it lets mortals dredge their objects from the C. But I think that explains why only God can make a tree.
For God wrote in Lisp code When he filled the leaves with green. The fractal flowers and recursive roots: The most lovely hack I've seen. And when I ponder snowflakes, never finding two the same, I know God likes a language with its own four-letter name.
Now, I've used a SUN under Unix, so I've seen what C can hold. I've surfed for Perls, found what Fortran's for, Got that Java stuff down cold. Though the chance that I'd write COBOL code is a SNOBOL's chance in Hell. And I basically hate hieroglyphs, so I won't use APL.
Now, God must know all these languages, and a few I haven't named. But the Lord made sure, when each sparrow falls, that its flesh will be reclaimed. And the Lord could not count grains of sand with a 32-bit word. Who knows where we would go to if Lisp weren't what he preferred?
And God wrote in Lisp code Every creature great and small. Don't search the disk drive for man.c, When the listing's on the wall. And when I watch the lightning burn Unbelievers to a crisp, I know God had six days to work, So he wrote it all in Lisp.
Yes, God had a deadline. So he wrote it all in Lisp.
All credit to Julia Ecklar -- and (I believe) Heather Alexander who is singing the linked copy.
64 emails/day would be a high volume day for me, but not unheard of. Yesterday I had the day off -- I just checked and there were twelve work emails waiting for me, and if I'd been in office I probably would have replied to a significant fraction of them and the threads may have gone three or four emails apiece. I also would have been performing tasks in systems which would be sending out automated emails (fixing bugs, promoting documents in our colaboration system, etc) which would have kicked my count up higher. Another 7 emails went to my personal box yesterday.
And that doesn't count the 13 pieces of spam that made it into my personal spam folder. I have no clue how much spam was blocked from my work account. All told I think the numbers are pretty reasonable, especially given the amount of email we used to sling around at my last position.
If you want to build a ship, don't drum up the men to gather wood, divide the work and give orders. Instead, teach them to yearn for the vast and endless sea.
After school my first programming job I was writing procedural Perl and enjoyed it immensely -- then a job change had me doing OO Perl for a living and I more or less wandered around the office with a goofy grin on my face most of the time I was there...
Object Oriented Perl is oodles of fun in my opinion. And doing object-oriented work is more or less "free" once you know how to do what you're doing in Perl -- unlike the C to C++ transition I had at the university...
...sigh... Sadly I'm no longer working on Perl -- and the work I do seems a lot less like play than it did back then.
VB has all the functionality of an OOP powerhouse but the syntax is different.
The problem with VB.Net as a beginner language has less to do with the syntax being different in my estimation. It has more to do with the keywords which are used meaning wonky things in relation to their accepted use in OOP parlance. If you take the O'Reilly text on Windows Forms there's a lot of talk about how in C# it's a [foo] (but in VB say [bar])...
That's fine and dandy -- VB can have its own keywords as much as it wants to... Until the serious student reads a language-agnostic text on the fundamentals of OO Design, lets say, and suddenly he finds that [bar] actually means something different than the [bar] he's been using and that the "right" word to describe it was really [foo] and the only reason he thinks it is [bar] is because VB.Net syntax makes a tremendous number of compromises to make the syntax familiar to users of VB4.
VB.NET has imports which is mostly the same as C# using. It lets you short cut your code, but does not allow aliasing like C# using.
I'm fairly certain that anomalous cohort meant using(){} blocks and not the using statement. Ignoring the collision in the keywords using(){} is a wonderful piece of syntactic sugar. Inside the ()s of a using block you can declare and instantiate a set of objects -- and when the closing brace of the using() block the objects are automatically Dispose()ed.
It seems silly at first -- until you stop to think of it. A VB app is required to Dispose() of its own temporary objects. On trivial objects this doesn't mean a whole heck of a lot -- they can sit hogging whatever trivial resources they want until the garbage collector gets around to noticing they've gone out of scope and does a GC pass on them. On more substantial objects this can mean quite a lot -- I want my DB connections freed up ASAP, for instance...
"Well, the VB coders can just Dispose() of their objects, no problem...." -- Sure they can -- but if they Dispose() of the object and then accidentally use it again they now have a runtime error to debug. If a C# coder puts the closing brace of a using(){} block in the wrong spot and tries to use one of the objects he instantiated in the ()s of the using(){} block it forces the error into compile-time where it's a bazillion times easier to troubleshoot.
Straight up? A janitor needs to be able to empty the small trashcans into his big trashcan and then empty the big trashcan into the dumpster... Given the quality of the code which comes out of most development teams I'd say that a QA guy does the same thing.
Ahhhh.... The beautiful world of "If I don't do it.... It must be easy..."
Strangely the same people who talk like this also tend to talk about how poor project management killed their baby... Hmmm... I wonder if, and wow but if this isn't a wild ass notion, maybe... Just maybe... There might really be some value to having a skilled producer / PM onboard for your project? Nah... Sorry... I was thinking outside of the slasdotsphere for a second... OMFG-PRODUCERS-WASTE-MONEY-AND-SO-DOES-MARKETING!! !LET-TEH-DEVS-RUN-TEH-COMPANY!!!11!!
I spent about a year doing something very similiar to this. I was one of three on the team -- the other two were very junior programmers -- and thankfully half a world away so I was never able to give into my frustration and punch them in the face. About a third of my 40 hours a week were spent on answering n00b questions and "code review". We called it a "code review" anyways -- mostly it was correcting the code and telling them to re-write it because it was wrong / hideous / whatever. From a pure coding standpoint it would have probably worked out to have taken me less time to write it all myself, but all three of us had some other non-programming responsibilities so it worked out well enough for us, I guess.
Slashdot Mirror
First Post on Slashdot is a badge of honor among neophytes in their larval stage. Most of them grow out of it... Unfortunately Slashdot seems to attract Larva faster than they grow up.
It depends. If he was just a random Debian fan you're right, it is unlikely. If he was an authorized Debian agent (or an authorized agent of someone who redistributes Debian) then I'd guess you're wrong. I'd be willing to give the people who make a business out of selling GPL software the benefit of the doubt and assume that they know what their obligations are.
Yes, it is... I think. You low-balled a whole bunch of things, and ignored a bunch more... Three years offsite backup is definately within the "cost of physically performing source distribution" mentioned in the GPL. Same with the costs of maintaining the duplication station, the sq footage of office space the dupe station takes, the printer for the labels, insurance on the vehicle which is driving the media to the PO, ...
If you're a business and have unemployment insurance to pay be sure to factor that in.
The fact is that I wouldn't be surprised if Linux kernel sources paid for in this manner topped $2,000 or even more. That they're available for a no-cost download is awesome, but not something you need to straightjacket yourself into.
If you've got costs for distribution then bill them honestly, no one will think less of you for it. Or if they do, fuck 'em.
Hell, shipping full computers is certainly "...a medium customarily used for software interchange...." and I could easily point out a dozen companies who do so frequently. If you wanted to you could use that route and bill for the components, your time for buying the components, pricing the components, assembling them into a computer, installing an OS on the computer, copying the sources onto the computer, and then mailing the final box.
But if you're not a lawyer make sure you have a decent one if you go this kind of route. Make sure you're in full compliance with all of your licensing obligations. And then bill for the lawyer too.
Dunno. Depends, I guess. First question is about "a debian guy" -- are you talking about some officially sanctioned entity of the Debian Project? If that's the case then probably not. Debian is certainly equipped to fulfill the GPL 3(b) provision of responding to a request for sources. More likely the "debian guy" was some Debian fan, handing out Debian CDs. He may very well have been in violation -- 3(c) is not going to be applicable for stuff acquired directly from Debian to the best of my knowledge. But he might also have used media from a 3(b) re-distributor of Debian (or he might have BEEN a 3(b) re-distributor of Debian -- there are 30ish in the US alone), and as long as the offer for source was on the media then the 3(c) clause would say he's not in violation.
Are you sure about that? Aren't they granted the source under the GPL? Aren't you accepting those obligations when you distribute something that's GPLed? Given that I am in no way a lawyer I don't understand what you're saying... But it seems to me that someone you distributed to could certainly take you to court and very likely win a court order that you fulfill your obligations under the license. Am I wrong?
Mod it overrated. Then come in with your other account and mod it insightful.
Pssst. Check this out.
I wouldn't trust his proofreading but I bet he can ask if you'd like fries with that.
That plan has my vote!
Wow. I can't believe you called out Civ 4 as your example. You must be the one person who actually likes this game. MAJOR step backwards, the worst Civ ever -- and given how bad CTP was, that's saying something.
Civ4 introduces: a bland and uninteresting religion system, gamebreaking changes to settler production, gamebreaking changes to production rates, gamebreaking changes to the corruption system, a terrible rock-paper-scissors combat system, an unfortunate attempt to put an experience system on units, a culture system which should have failed the sniff test, and then to put a cherry on this shit sundae a gorgeous 3D view that makes the map more difficult to read than in any civ game before.
I'll stick to Alpha Centauri or Civ3.
Please don't go. The Drones need you. They look up to you.
What, did Dvorak say "You shouldn't let your dog drink anti-freeze" ?
Slow-mo moneyshot ftw!
Not a single downside! Sign me up!
And that doesn't count the 13 pieces of spam that made it into my personal spam folder. I have no clue how much spam was blocked from my work account. All told I think the numbers are pretty reasonable, especially given the amount of email we used to sling around at my last position.
If you want to build a ship, don't drum up the men to gather wood, divide the work and give orders. Instead, teach them to yearn for the vast and endless sea.
After school my first programming job I was writing procedural Perl and enjoyed it immensely -- then a job change had me doing OO Perl for a living and I more or less wandered around the office with a goofy grin on my face most of the time I was there...
Object Oriented Perl is oodles of fun in my opinion. And doing object-oriented work is more or less "free" once you know how to do what you're doing in Perl -- unlike the C to C++ transition I had at the university...
...sigh... Sadly I'm no longer working on Perl -- and the work I do seems a lot less like play than it did back then.
The problem with VB.Net as a beginner language has less to do with the syntax being different in my estimation. It has more to do with the keywords which are used meaning wonky things in relation to their accepted use in OOP parlance. If you take the O'Reilly text on Windows Forms there's a lot of talk about how in C# it's a [foo] (but in VB say [bar])...
That's fine and dandy -- VB can have its own keywords as much as it wants to... Until the serious student reads a language-agnostic text on the fundamentals of OO Design, lets say, and suddenly he finds that [bar] actually means something different than the [bar] he's been using and that the "right" word to describe it was really [foo] and the only reason he thinks it is [bar] is because VB.Net syntax makes a tremendous number of compromises to make the syntax familiar to users of VB4.
I'm fairly certain that anomalous cohort meant using(){} blocks and not the using statement. Ignoring the collision in the keywords using(){} is a wonderful piece of syntactic sugar. Inside the ()s of a using block you can declare and instantiate a set of objects -- and when the closing brace of the using() block the objects are automatically Dispose()ed.
It seems silly at first -- until you stop to think of it. A VB app is required to Dispose() of its own temporary objects. On trivial objects this doesn't mean a whole heck of a lot -- they can sit hogging whatever trivial resources they want until the garbage collector gets around to noticing they've gone out of scope and does a GC pass on them. On more substantial objects this can mean quite a lot -- I want my DB connections freed up ASAP, for instance...
"Well, the VB coders can just Dispose() of their objects, no problem...." -- Sure they can -- but if they Dispose() of the object and then accidentally use it again they now have a runtime error to debug. If a C# coder puts the closing brace of a using(){} block in the wrong spot and tries to use one of the objects he instantiated in the ()s of the using(){} block it forces the error into compile-time where it's a bazillion times easier to troubleshoot.
Straight up? A janitor needs to be able to empty the small trashcans into his big trashcan and then empty the big trashcan into the dumpster... Given the quality of the code which comes out of most development teams I'd say that a QA guy does the same thing.
Strangely the same people who talk like this also tend to talk about how poor project management killed their baby... Hmmm... I wonder if, and wow but if this isn't a wild ass notion, maybe... Just maybe... There might really be some value to having a skilled producer / PM onboard for your project? Nah... Sorry... I was thinking outside of the slasdotsphere for a second... OMFG-PRODUCERS-WASTE-MONEY-AND-SO-DOES-MARKETING!! !LET-TEH-DEVS-RUN-TEH-COMPANY!!!11!!
Are they going to balance and playtest this one? I played Morrowind and... Well... *sigh* And it had so much potential too.
I spent about a year doing something very similiar to this. I was one of three on the team -- the other two were very junior programmers -- and thankfully half a world away so I was never able to give into my frustration and punch them in the face. About a third of my 40 hours a week were spent on answering n00b questions and "code review". We called it a "code review" anyways -- mostly it was correcting the code and telling them to re-write it because it was wrong / hideous / whatever. From a pure coding standpoint it would have probably worked out to have taken me less time to write it all myself, but all three of us had some other non-programming responsibilities so it worked out well enough for us, I guess.
...additionally the Windows client, at least, leaves a backdoor on your system.