Ok, I love you man, but thinking that you can make *a* movie out of the Silmarillion is just, well, I mean, I'm at a loss for words. The Silmarillion is over 3,000 years of history, with TONS of different stories. It's not a single, continuous work. It's a collection of different stories with different characters covering two separate ages. There is NO WAY you could take that and make it into a single movie and have it worth two shits. Each individual story would be so short as to eliminate the possilibty for meaningful plot or character development.
That's why I recommended a series that would take several years of your life to watch and enjoy! I, personally, would look forward to it.
I think the Silmarillion could be done as a movie or a couple movies if you focused mostly on the tale of Beren and Luthien.
I agree, and it could probably be done very well with Jackson at the helm. But, it wouldn't be the Silmarillion to me. It would be the tale of Beren and Luthien with the Silmarillion as backdrop. The mythology of the Silmarillion would lose so much that I would have to ask why bother? Remember, the Silmarillion is the epic struggle of the elves in Middle-Earth, and the whole of it revolves around the tragedies of their losses.
Anyway, I still think it'd be quite a challenge to make it palatable and understandable to a mainstream audience
Yes, but that was also one of the reasons I didn't think that LoTR could be done. Jackson proved me wrong.
Let's face it, as prominent as the Beren and Luthien are in the Silmarillion, the book is a patchwork of interconnected storylines (some not much more than outlines or summaries that are expanded in other books) that weave a history that really is worth telling in its entirety. To simply summarize Earendil's part in saving the world would be too abrupt. Why shorten such a magnificent work, when a whole telling would just bring in more money and please more people?
However, if forced to reduce the history down to a single tale, I agree with your version. It would be a sample that maybe other film-makers would be be tempted to expand into the other parts of the Silmarillion.
You can't be serious. LoTR was hard to adapt to the big screen because of its scope and complexity
To be honest, I didn't think it could be done with justice. Which, I'm afraid, may show my lack of imagination. Now that I've seen it done, I think Martin's work is approachable. The most difficult part would be putting various plot lines into sequences that flow naturally, and don't confuse the viewer. Think of the daily soap operas housewives watch and the dizzying plot lines from season to season as myriad characters live, die, and live again. People still watch those and keep up with them. Have a soap junky explain the current season's plot and you'll be confused in the first minute.
Yes, A Song of Ice and Fire can be very complex, but so are many masterpieces brought to film.
As for the length, don't forget that there are to be nine Star Wars films, and I've already lost count as to how many Star Treks there've been. Due to the high mortality rate within Martin's books, you could actually film three movies at a time (let's say two books are equivalent to three movies for argument's sake), and not worry too much about the faults that crept into the Star Wars franchise which were filmed across several years.
I've learned my lesson not to underestimate the vision of some people to bring what's in their heads out into the world so that other people can watch their dreams too. Don't you think Jackson could do it? It may rob him of his health, but I bet he could.
I think the mini-series idea would work well. It would be great to see adaptions from the Silmarillion and Lost Tales like the Fall of Numenor, Battle of Gondolin, Turin & the Great Worm, etc.
Too true. There's such a rich field to mine, that this could last several years. All the stories that you mentioned are worth telling in full, and to take any of them out would diminish the whole.
However, I can see it becoming an awful joke if the series wasn't treated with the proper respect. "Nazgul on Ice", anyone?
That's my biggest fear. I think Hallmark has done an admirable job in the past (winning an Emmy for their effort), and they may be the best suited to bring it to the small screen with help from Jackson's crew of course.
Ok, tell me what Bill Gates has been convicted of in criminal court. Now tell me what he has been convicted of in Civil court. Don't tell me suits brought against him. Tell me convictions, because I can bring a suit against Playboy for making me too horny, but that doesn't mean I am going to win, or that Playboy did anything wrong
We Americans have a terrible habit of equating riches (whether through inheritance or entrepreneurship) with righteousness. Cutting BillGatus, or any corporate criminal, slack for their outrageously illegal behavior, simply because they are able to hide from retribution from within their legally sanctified fortresses (the Corporation), is like the populous giving them implicit license to continue breaking laws.
Illegal behavior in business doesn't always land the violator into prison. The corporate body is there to take the brunt of the fallout from the illegal decisions made by the individuals in charge. That doesn't negate the illegality of the act. The reason we sue, is so that there is an outlet for frustration and an opportunity for addressing an illegal act with Justice. Without these methods of address, the alternative would be to bring back the terrible violence from the past. Lynching, assasination, blood feuds, and escalation to war for "honor's" sake.
I agree, Jackson has proven that's the best way to go. If there are any Hollywood producers/directors out there, you should take note of this success. Now you know how he did it, all you need is material to work with. The following is just musings of what I'd like to see happen.
I can't decide which book series should be brought to movies first. A recent contender is George R.R. Martin's sleep-depriving, emotional rollercoaster. Another possibility is Jack Vance's Lyonesse trilogy, a wonderous high-fantasy of the distant past. Or, his Dying Earth collection; a fantastic, humorous, haunting fantasy of the incredibly distant future. Many prefer each of Vance's fantasies over The Lord of The Rings. Or, if you want a sci-fi trilogy to compete with the Star Wars franchise, this is a great one from Vance. Or, Niven's and Pournelle's masterpiece of Hard Sci-Fi.
As for the Middle-Earth storyline, I think that The Silmarillion, not The Hobbit, should be made next. But, instead of a set of movie releases, it should be a set of separate mini-series spread across a half-dozen seasons. The material is rich and shouldn't be wasted. Or, if one long series is preferred, it could be a complete series story-arch with a pre-determined ending date. As an aside, I'd choose Hallmarkforproduction as they have a proven trackrecord in dealing with fanstasy/mythological mini-series on TV/cable. Hopefully, they'd invest a little more into the special effects than they have in the past.
On the other hand, some people may be impatient for The Hobbit to be made. I suppose The Hobbit could be made into two movies at the same time as the Silmarillion series. One advertising for the other from different markets.
Anyone else have a favorite book series they'd want to see on film?
...to control the locations where people can access information:
"H.R. 3261 goes to great lengths to create incentives for the development of new information products while making certain that libraries, archives and educational institutions are not adversely affected."
If I read this right, one of the bill's intent is to limit the locations where information can be accessed freely. This "centralization" of access, makes it much easier to monitor who accesses what and when. Libraries are no longer the main informational source they once were. This may bring them back into the spotlight, but laws passed in recent years have not favored the anonymity of patrons in libraries. If lawmakers or those who control them feel threatened by an informed public, this is certainly a clever way to monitor what the public accesses in order to inform itself. Those who control the flow of information, control those who need that information. In this case, that would be the public. This is not good.
It seems to be all about memory optimization. Do we have a built-in defragger (+garbage collector?) that is engaged by the act of sleeping? Well, I hear that if you wait too long between periods of running "mindkeeper", your "system" will run inefficiently and may be prone to random crashes or corrupted data. Hallucinations may just be data rearranged incorrectly to present non-existant information.
Novell is also claiming to be extremely confident about taking themselves Open Source in general. I wonder if they'll Open Source NDS, ZenWorks, or GroupWise?
Maybe in your experience. But, my experience with installations of HP/UX, AIX, SunOS/Solaris in the largest entertainment companies based in SoCal and at least one of the largest Japanese electronic companies with offices in SoCal use GNU utils. In addition, others appear to disagree with you: "Most Unix systems today include many tools from the GNU project simply by default, even though they are not necessarily GNU systems!"
At least the GNU utilities made a uniformly bad implementation available across all platforms...
Bad enough to be used in the Open Source BSD distributions.
First, they did anything but lock it away. As I pointed out, Sun opened up Unix
Really?: " Proprietary versions of Unix were becoming popular in the corporate arena, and quite often these versions lacked source code (making them nearly unusable). Sun even distributed versions without C compilers! The personal computer was taking off, championed by proprietary software vendors Microsoft and IBM. If not for GNU, some argue, this disturbing trend of proprietary operating systems might have become the standard."
And NFS was an open spec from day one, and always available for licensing even to competitors on commercailly attractive terms
Affordable by developers like myself? Ha! Really, the wonder of it all. It's easy to be flippant about the "attractive terms" a license would be on a corporate budget, but we're talking about how individuals changed the Unix world by creating their own Open Source tools rather than something an individual couldn't afford. And, even if an individual Open Source developer could afford it, he'd be in the minority amongst his peers.
Sun opened up Unix, and was single handedly reponsible for proving that it was a viable alternative to the IBM and VAX machines that ruled in those days.
Sun was part of the Unix Wars, and didn't single-handedly do anything but make its own version of BSD proprietary. Yes, they did add functionality into their proprietary version which made it a top contender in the Unix Wars. As for NFS, Sun just doesn't know what to do in order to ingratiate themselves with Open Source developers and still maintain strict control over how people use their "Open" spec. But, clearly the market is dragging their asses out of the closet.
Sure, there are lots of Linux fan-boys who claim this, but it's simply not true.
At least one Unix vendor disagrees with you: "as most Linux kernel testing efforts have only been conducted over short periods of time, this series of tests provides us first-hand data and results of longer runs. The series of tests also provides data for heavy-stress workloads on Linux kernel components, as well as TCP, NFS, and other test components. The tests demonstrate that the Linux system is reliable and stable over long durations and can provide a robust, enterprise-level environment." And, other researchers disagree with you as well:"FreeBSD has by far the best performance of the BSDs and it comes close to Linux 2.6". Naturally, you can continue to believe that it's not true by disregarding the facts, but then you're simply operating on faith, not reason.
Yes, it is when you are discussing the world of software.
No, it isn't if you don't apply it in a literal sense, such as if you disregard the entire concept of methaphor or simile. The loss of "potential revenue" by a company due to the activities of another company can be addressed in court, and repayment can ordered. That is a literal concept. If there is a way to represent the idea of "future losses" for the community that can be encapsulated in a single word, it is theft. A more accurate phrasing would be that when a person or company takes something from the community, without giving back to the community, that act is like theft. The word "like", makes this a simile. You may not consider it perfect for the role, but you haven't introduced a helpful substitute.
You're mincing words and trying to mislead people in the process.
Not my intention at all. You take things too literally. I'm trying to clarify as much as my poor abilities will allow. If you'd like to give it a shot, you're welcome to it.
First off, I can vouch for my grandparent poster's ability with the English laguage and I believe he knows what he is talking about and is right on the money.
I'm glad you have an opinion on the matter. It wouldn't be much of a discussion without one.
We do not discuss metaphoric losses in the world of software
Maybe you don't, but others do. The world isn't simply black and white as I'll show you later in the post. As an aside, people who believe that the world is black and white can be a danger to themselves and those around them as they take things too literally. The GPL clearly isn't for everyone, as the number of BSD supporting posts show in this article. However, I haven't read anything of evidence to indicate that the GPL would inhibit or hinder the growth of software, or take away code from the community as a whole. Hence, my position on it. I recognize that at a point in time, the BSD provided a useful mechanism for licensing Open Source software. That was until an improved license came along. The "improvement" is controversial to some, but an objective market will decide which is the better. My bet is that more people favor an implementation of the Golden Rule such as the GPL, than disapprove of it.
time is not something that is owned and can be robbed from someone.
The world isn't black and white, and someone stating such a broad assertion deserves instruction. To put it literally, you're absolutelywrong. On the other hand, my point regarding the BSD license and theft are not literal. It is merely illustrative of a subtle and important concept. Apparently, too subtle for some.
Figures of speech work well to denote ideas in the figurative sense
And, what is wrong with symbolic representation? It is our ability to symbolize that allows us to code.
but confusing them with literal ideas only serves to show that you don't know how to properly present the thought.
Or, that you don't understand that thoughts have meaning other than in the literal. That would indicate a lower level of self education, or someone who doesn't wish to understand past what he sees. Hence, taking things literally where literal thinking doesn't apply. I recommend a regimen of philosophical readings into abstract thought.
INFRINGEMENT which is what you are confusing for THEFT.
No. Infringement is simply some violation of an agreement, and can at times even be inappropriately used as a longer version of the same word, theft. What I'm stating is theft as a simile, not as a literal act. Theft as a simile is as real as a description of what something is like. Theft in a literal sense would not be tolerated and would become a legal
Re:Software=knowledge vs. Software=product
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BSD For Linux Users
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You do the work, write the peer-reviewed papers, pocket your grant-funded salary, talk about it in lecture and move on to the next project. Why worry about who uses it. It's knowledge! Spread it around! Share it! Endless supply!
This applies to most Open Source licenses, including the GPL. There's nothing specific to the GPL that forces the original author to be concerned over who uses the work. The original author may never even see any modifications made to the orginal work, as there is no stipulation in the GPL that forces the modifier of the work to ensure that the original author sees the modification. However, the difference from the BSD license is that the GPL ensures that if the modifier/devirator distributes the derived work, someone else is guaranteed to see code other than the derivator. Thus, ensuring that the code remains free from proprietorship and everyone continues to benefit from the "knowledge". The BSD license doesn't do anything of the sort to ensure that the evolution of "knowledge" (aka code) remains freely available to all to benefit from.
It contrast, GPL-folk tend to think of things in terms of products competing for mindshare.
BSD is not immune from this. Perhaps this can explain the situation better.
From this perspective the worst thing that can happen is competing against yourself.
No, that is the natural course of Open Source, and the GPL neither inhibits nor encourages that. Forking is good, as long as all forks have the freedom of choice and access to incorporate improvements that the other forks may have come up with, and vice versa. See Samba as an excellent example of this.
As such they want to be altruistic, but they don't want to be so altruistic that their work is placed at a disadvantage.
I'm not sure what that means. Are you suggesting that the community should allow itself to be placed at a disadvantage? Would that be considered rational behavior?
Horrors! Big Blue might steal my work!
Not likely at this time as Big Blue is currently wearing the hat of the GPL's biggest defender with the deepest pockets. However, what if someone did steal something of yours? Is that no longer considered wrong? If you were to take something from that person, where do they get the right to be upset, but you don't?
Television steals the hours from your life. Cigarettes steal days from your lifespan. Kisses can be stolen. You can steal a glance at another a person. These are all theft as metaphor or simile. Theft isn't just real as a literal legal term. It is also a way of describing future losses to the community by the intentionally selfish, who refuse to follow the Golden Rule/reciprocity as we all learned it in kindergarten.
That sentence means absolutely nothing in reguards to weather his clients and his clients alone would potentially be given access to the source.
Well, if he denies it, he can refute it. As of yet, he's quiet as a mouse, indicating I've correctly read his opinion in his original post.
There's a difference between letting folks who PAY for the code see the source, and letting the world see the source.
He never said anything about giving his clients the sourcecode. Seems to me you're the one with the reading comprehension problem.
There's a difference between profiting from the community and giving back to the community. He'd rather be a parasite rather than a symbiote. In the end he's made the choice to go with a dying business model where shelfishness is the way and the Golden Rule/reciprocity is to be avoided. May the future market be kind.
How do you know he doesn't or would never allow his clients to have access to the code?
Because I read his post: "I really wonder what great opportunities we're missing now simply because som much good code is rendered useless for commerce by the GPL." You should too before commenting so that you can understand what's being discussed. He considers the GPL, which exists for ensuring the sharing of code, as equivalent to rendering it useless. Although, when someone else shares their code with him, such as with a BSD license, everything's kosher. What a hypocrite.
Giving free access to it to his competitors makes it worthless as a competative advantage to the company.
Dying business model, on its way out with the rest of the dinosaurs.
I'd bow down to your obvious Nostradamus-like ability to see the future
As you haven't added anything to the discussion, you might as well.
Again, Free software is a non-rivalous resource of which unlimited copies can be made.
Again, rivalry can be found in Open Source as well as the proprietary software. There is no utopian ideal that prevents rivalry in software development. Code, unprotected as it is with the flacid BSD license, will find itself in rivalry for mindshare by derivative, proprietary, versions made by the Sun's, HP's and IBM's of the world. The GPL changed that dynamic. The GPL neither encourages nor prohibits rivalry. It exists in harmony with the concept that forking is good, when it can benefit the community as the source is guaranteed to be available to the community to unify if it chooses to. Forking is bad, when it takes from the community without reciprocity (violation of the Golden Rule).
Nonsense. Registration can be a formality filed just before the lawsuit
...by both parties.
and registration prior to publication is not necessary to prove a copyright claim in court. (Although it does help.)
BSD zealots have difficulty with the realities of the harsh world. Publication does not guarantee ownership. It only provides for the potential of a wider audience for the work. The real author may be completely oblivious of the publication and would have little legal recourse if he didn't copyright or failed to prove in court that the work was of his labor.
an inability to prove who did what when does not mean that the work falls into the public domain.
Actually, if its unproveable, I would think it is in the public domain. Ipso facto.
Because the natural state of copyright is ownership by the creator
Copyright, yes. Works, no. Unless effort has been made to copyright.
the court must sort out the mess and assign copyright.
Or, if as you've stated: "an inability to prove who did what when", the courts have the option of the public domain.
Actually, quite a bit of work done over the years has found that standards are assisted by placing the fewest restrictions on the standards.
As I've explained elsewhere, the GPL simply encourages the Golden Rule we all learned in kindergarten. I'm quite interested in learning how the GPL's "restrictions" would hinder rather than encourage, standards development. Please provide reference. I don't think you'll find any. Therefore, your doubts are unfounded.
Answer: other that access to the fruit of other people's labor. That is, a violation of the Golden Rule.
In business, there is the concept of loss of potential revenue due to illegal activities. The courts have upheld that this is real, and can require repayment from offending parties. You've equated software with ideas in the past, and that's a metaphor. Those who've embraced the concept of reciprocity, and understand revenue as growth, could use the loss of potential code as a simile for potential revenue (that which adds to the whole as growth).
In the end, BSD zealots may never understand that to take from the community, without giving back to the community, does not benefit the community. Not reciprocating only benefits the greedy few, not the community. You can be a parasite, or you can be a symbiote. BSD allows parasitism to occur, while the GPL encouragous symbiotic behavior. This really is the reason behind Linux's success, despite the fact that BSD is much older (since the 70's), has many more established variants, longer corporate backing, and a talented pool of Open Source developers. In the end, more people instinctively understood the need for the inherent fairness of the Golden Rule embodied by the GPL, and joined the penguin in good fellowship. Along with the countless Free Software and Open Source developers, many of those people are owners of Unix/BSD variants such Sun, IBM, HP, Novell...etc.
The "Unix Wars" wouldn't have happened for the very simple reason that there could have been no commercial versions of Unix - the GPL is inherently and immutably anti-commerce.
That's alot of nonsense as GPL software has been included with most commercial Unix variants as soon as Stallman could pump it out. Here's some info on that:"and thus quite often any machine running a commercial Unix variant would stock GNU versions of utilities to take advantage of these features and to have a standardized version of them.". In addition, Sun, RedHat, HP, IBM, Novell, MySQL, SAP and even SCO claim your wrong. GPL'd software is making money, and everyone wants to be in that market.
The BSD license (even the old, "bad" one) was the catalyst that ignited the entire Unix philosophy and mindset, initially in academia, but soon after throughour industry.
Your history is a little mixed up, as it was AT&T's code (not Berkeley's) that was initially circulating in academia. This is how Berkeley got a hold of it, and started tweaking it and eventually got into a lawsuit over it. Here's a timeline to help you out.
The BSD license allowed Sun to build the world's first computer deisgned to run an open OS, and Sun's competitors were all forced to follow suit, making the Unix "idea" the single most dominant way of thinking about computing throughout the world.
Sadly, I don't think I could convince you how bad it is to lock away innovation from the community as the private commercial Unix companies did. But, if you need proof as to the abusive result, take a trip to Redmond and ask them about the countless man hours lost to the Blue Screen of Death.
Damn straight that couldn't have happened under the GPL: all the incentive would be gone. Linux itself owes its very existence to BSD, for without it, that young Finnish hacker would never have heard of Unix and thus to want to do somethinng so daft as to get a copy of it running on a PC.
Umm, how old are you? Please refer to the links I give above for Unix history and how not all Unix variants descend from BSD.
I really wonder what great opportunities we're missing now simply because som much good code is rendered useless for commerce by the GPL.
I understand how a certain perspective can make the mistake, but I believe you meant "rendered useless" for theft.
I jsut made the call on an embedded OS for a proposed product at out new startup: it will be BSD-based rather than Linux based.
Thank you for ejecting yourself from the competition. Natural selection is best viewed in the marketplace.
Partly for BSD's greatly superior stability,
Clearly not up on reading the news. That old argument is no longer valid. Linux is often more stable in recent versions that some of the free BSDs, and as stable as the others. As time goes on, and Linux's maturity continuous and BSD begins to be simpy academic toys, you'll start hearing of how hobbyists wish their favorite BSD variant could support x-number of clients at x-number rate with x-percentage uptime. This is the natural course of things.
, but mostly so that we can freely modify the system and offer those improvements as a real benefit to our customers. That's simply not possible with the GPL...
I wouldn't be overly proud of hiding your sourcecode improvements from your clients. That doesn't engender much sympathy during a time when transparency is in vogue and clients begin demanding that they have access to the code. If you're still in the embedded business in a few years, you'll be using Linux in some form.
However copyleft requires that any contributions must be GPL (and place a number of burdens on the creator that may or may not be unreasonable depending on context.)
The alternative is to turn to other products without protections to rip-off. I'd say the GPL was ensuring 1) the community's welfare and 2) resistance against permanent forking (I've mentioned elsewhere that forking by nature is a good thing for software evolution and longevity, but permanent forking and subsequent closure of code is a bad thing for the community).
Whoah nelly! This is such a whopping misconception of the current state of copyright law. The natural state of any work in the United States is ownership by the creator for a limited time as established by congress. Copyright registration is a technical formality.
Without registration, copyright is not proveable. For all practical purposes the work belongs in the public domain as it is often near impossible to prove in court who did what and when (of course there's the old postal trick). Actually, what you may be referring to by "current state" are the recent copyright extensioning and strengthening laws. These are aberrations that fly against the intent and original laws as defined by the founding fathers. The key problem here is that the approaches taken to overturn these laws have failed due to incorrect tactics with the current Supreme Court makeup. These new unjust laws will eventually be limited, but this will take some time. Disney will not continue to benefit from the works of Grimm and Anderson while others are unable to benefit from the works of Disney.
the modified BSD license is considered to be a Free software license compatible with the GPL.
Yes, I point out that distinction here. And, I commend the correction of a flawed license. It leaves a more palatable choice for those who are adverse to the GPL, yet the work can now be considered compatible with the FSF's licenses. This doesn't negate the fact it leaves the work without protection from abuse, but some people aren't inclined towards the community in that manner.
Software should be free because it is ideas and ideas are non-rivalous resources.
Ah, I think I see where our differences are a little more clearly. I don't consider software ideas. I believe it is commonly held that software is the implementation of ideas. In addition, there is nothing that keeps ideas from being at odds or at rivalry with another except for the integral meaning of those ideas. Case in point would be our disagreement with this issue. But, I believe you meant that "software" (being ideas in your terms) are non-rivalous resources. That's not true.
But at the same time, software should be protected from "theft"
If that is a concern, BSD will not get you there. Use the GPL or LGPL.
and "splintering", something that just can't happen with a non-rivalous resource.
Splintering in itself isn't something to be avoided. Software, to maintain usefulness and creativity in the long run, may require forking. However, without a mechanism to ensure that growth and change be reincorporated back into the original community would bring about another round of the Unix Wars. Rivalry, breathes vitality into variety. Currently, the GPL is a popular mechanism to ensure that forking doesn't become true splintering that can be brought about by unchecked greed and selfishness. Forking is healthy, and allows exploration into newer ideas when older ideas become stale. It is derivation, and that's progress. Using a GPL'd product as the base of your derivation simply means that you acknowledge that your derivations aren't built on air, but on the collective back of the community. Your simply adding your brick to the house built by others. Future brick layers will in turn give back to you as well. No GPL'd product can remain permanently forked as long there is a single person willing to maintain unity. BSD invites permanent forks by rivalrous private corporations seeking vendor lock-in and other expensive surprises for consumers.
Perhaps I don't see the problems produced by Unix that you do, being an old unix hand myself.
That explains the difference of opinion. People have forgotten how Linux was ridiculed by Unix-purists. No self-respecting Unix guru would believe that this little GPL'd missing link (the rest of the GPL'd OS was already made, just missing the kernel) would amount to anything more than a toy. Perhaps with another license, that would have been true. The toy turned out to be a juggernaught under the protection of the GPL.
The common set of tools with a predictable interface meant that I could do work on any system, no matter if it was Linux, Sun, NeXT, IRIX or AIX.
Yes, you can thank GNU and GPL for that: "and thus quite often any machine running a commercial Unix variant would stock GNU versions of utilities to take advantage of these features and to have a standardized version of them."
But I think that you don't really know your history here. The Free BSDs developed about the same time as GNU/Linux in response to a primarily proprietary Unix market. If anyone is responsible for the rise of proprietary Unix, it was Bell Labs and AT&T during the 1970s! (See this history for more details.) Since the Open Source BSDs were stalled due to a lawsuit from 1992-1994 (the same period when
Which includes BSD-licensed software by definition.
An important distinction. BSD as a license in its original form is incompatible with the GPL and is recommended against usage. However, seeing the error in their ways, the BSD license has been modified and is now compatible with the GPL. Unfortunately, it is still weak and flacid, and I couldn't personally recommend using it in good conscience.
However, the problem is that GPL software is not truly "free." The GPL says, "I own this, and you can't use this except on MY terms."
Nonsense. What you have described is the purpose of any license, including the BSD.
By placing all of the reference works for HTML, and HTTP into the public domain (rather than under a GPL copyright) the web exploded and we have forums like Slashdot.
Please keep in mind that due to the wisdom of Slashdot's developers, you are enjoying the use of a product under the protection of the GPL.
Had Mr. Berners-Lee used the GPL, I have doubts as to whether we would have widespread adoption of the web.
There's no reason to assume that. Your doubts are unfounded.
Not much of a lesson, but I appreciate the effort. However, it does underscore your lack of understanding when it comes to Free Software. Somehow you've mistakenly equated GPL with proprietary patents. The entire philosophy behind the GPL is that patents are bad for the community. The GPL is a legal solution against proprietary patents/licenses within the context of laws that uphold proprietary patents and licenses.
Here's one for you:
"Richard Stallman is the prophet of the free software movement. He understood the dangers of software patents years ago. Now that this has become a crucial issue in the world, buy this book and read what he said."
- Tim Berners-Lee, inventor of the World-Wide Web.
It is interesting that GPL zealots have a far more limited view of what constitutes free software than either RMS or the FSF.
I don't think free software is an issue of concern with GPL zealots. However, Free Software certainly is. But, it may be too subtle a point for BSD zealots to understand.
No. The BSD license considers that the community includes, for example, government organizations that have a mandate to release works into the public domain
The BSD license has an onerous stipulation and cannot be used as a license for works that are mandated by law to be placed in the public domain.
This is why there is something called the public domain which is already considered in the U.S. Constitution. In fact, you might say that the public domain is the natural condition of any work in the United States unless the author makes effort to claim copyright, temporarily taking the work away for a limited time before being returned to the public domain.
BSD cannot lay claim to being more of a community builder than the GPL. If anything, BSD has been responsible for the rise of various proprietary Unix systems, completely splintering the market, allowing other inferior proprietary systems to enter and dominate. A fork in GPL code could never be truly splintered as improvements are guaranteed to be made available for all to profit from.
..and you'd be surfing slashdot over IPX/SPX with routing extensions or possibly Vines rather than TCP/IP.
IPX/SPX is a proprietary protocol from Novell, the owner of Unix, and now a Linux (GPL'd product, not BSD) company. Novell may very well have ended up using the GPL'd Berkeley kernel rather than make their own. As it is, their Novell kernel will be going away and replaced by the GPL'd Linux kernel in the near future. Keep in mind, these guys still have access to Unix as well as BSD. As for IPX/SPX, we'd probably be using another protocol similar to TCP/IP and billions of productive man hours could've been saved from the Blue Screen of Death.
The need for Slashdot arose from reasons other than what surrounded the Unix Wars and the rise of Microsoft. There is little correlation between the two. There would still have been a demand for News for Nerds. Please note that it's called Slashdot, and not C-Prompt.
Slashdot Mirror
That's why I recommended a series that would take several years of your life to watch and enjoy! I, personally, would look forward to it.
= 9J =
I agree, and it could probably be done very well with Jackson at the helm. But, it wouldn't be the Silmarillion to me. It would be the tale of Beren and Luthien with the Silmarillion as backdrop. The mythology of the Silmarillion would lose so much that I would have to ask why bother? Remember, the Silmarillion is the epic struggle of the elves in Middle-Earth, and the whole of it revolves around the tragedies of their losses.
Anyway, I still think it'd be quite a challenge to make it palatable and understandable to a mainstream audience
Yes, but that was also one of the reasons I didn't think that LoTR could be done. Jackson proved me wrong.
Let's face it, as prominent as the Beren and Luthien are in the Silmarillion, the book is a patchwork of interconnected storylines (some not much more than outlines or summaries that are expanded in other books) that weave a history that really is worth telling in its entirety. To simply summarize Earendil's part in saving the world would be too abrupt. Why shorten such a magnificent work, when a whole telling would just bring in more money and please more people?
However, if forced to reduce the history down to a single tale, I agree with your version. It would be a sample that maybe other film-makers would be be tempted to expand into the other parts of the Silmarillion.
= 9J =
To be honest, I didn't think it could be done with justice. Which, I'm afraid, may show my lack of imagination. Now that I've seen it done, I think Martin's work is approachable. The most difficult part would be putting various plot lines into sequences that flow naturally, and don't confuse the viewer. Think of the daily soap operas housewives watch and the dizzying plot lines from season to season as myriad characters live, die, and live again. People still watch those and keep up with them. Have a soap junky explain the current season's plot and you'll be confused in the first minute.
Yes, A Song of Ice and Fire can be very complex, but so are many masterpieces brought to film.
As for the length, don't forget that there are to be nine Star Wars films, and I've already lost count as to how many Star Treks there've been. Due to the high mortality rate within Martin's books, you could actually film three movies at a time (let's say two books are equivalent to three movies for argument's sake), and not worry too much about the faults that crept into the Star Wars franchise which were filmed across several years.
I've learned my lesson not to underestimate the vision of some people to bring what's in their heads out into the world so that other people can watch their dreams too. Don't you think Jackson could do it? It may rob him of his health, but I bet he could.
= 9J =
Too true. There's such a rich field to mine, that this could last several years. All the stories that you mentioned are worth telling in full, and to take any of them out would diminish the whole.
However, I can see it becoming an awful joke if the series wasn't treated with the proper respect. "Nazgul on Ice", anyone?
That's my biggest fear. I think Hallmark has done an admirable job in the past (winning an Emmy for their effort), and they may be the best suited to bring it to the small screen with help from Jackson's crew of course.
= 9J =
We Americans have a terrible habit of equating riches (whether through inheritance or entrepreneurship) with righteousness. Cutting BillGatus, or any corporate criminal, slack for their outrageously illegal behavior, simply because they are able to hide from retribution from within their legally sanctified fortresses (the Corporation), is like the populous giving them implicit license to continue breaking laws.
Illegal behavior in business doesn't always land the violator into prison. The corporate body is there to take the brunt of the fallout from the illegal decisions made by the individuals in charge. That doesn't negate the illegality of the act. The reason we sue, is so that there is an outlet for frustration and an opportunity for addressing an illegal act with Justice. Without these methods of address, the alternative would be to bring back the terrible violence from the past. Lynching, assasination, blood feuds, and escalation to war for "honor's" sake.
= 9J =
I can't decide which book series should be brought to movies first. A recent contender is George R.R. Martin's sleep-depriving, emotional rollercoaster. Another possibility is Jack Vance's Lyonesse trilogy, a wonderous high-fantasy of the distant past. Or, his Dying Earth collection; a fantastic, humorous, haunting fantasy of the incredibly distant future. Many prefer each of Vance's fantasies over The Lord of The Rings. Or, if you want a sci-fi trilogy to compete with the Star Wars franchise, this is a great one from Vance. Or, Niven's and Pournelle's masterpiece of Hard Sci-Fi.
As for the Middle-Earth storyline, I think that The Silmarillion, not The Hobbit, should be made next. But, instead of a set of movie releases, it should be a set of separate mini-series spread across a half-dozen seasons. The material is rich and shouldn't be wasted. Or, if one long series is preferred, it could be a complete series story-arch with a pre-determined ending date. As an aside, I'd choose Hallmark for production as they have a proven track record in dealing with fanstasy/mythological mini-series on TV/cable. Hopefully, they'd invest a little more into the special effects than they have in the past.
On the other hand, some people may be impatient for The Hobbit to be made. I suppose The Hobbit could be made into two movies at the same time as the Silmarillion series. One advertising for the other from different markets.
Anyone else have a favorite book series they'd want to see on film?
= 9J =
"H.R. 3261 goes to great lengths to create incentives for the development of new information products while making certain that libraries, archives and educational institutions are not adversely affected."
If I read this right, one of the bill's intent is to limit the locations where information can be accessed freely. This "centralization" of access, makes it much easier to monitor who accesses what and when. Libraries are no longer the main informational source they once were. This may bring them back into the spotlight, but laws passed in recent years have not favored the anonymity of patrons in libraries. If lawmakers or those who control them feel threatened by an informed public, this is certainly a clever way to monitor what the public accesses in order to inform itself. Those who control the flow of information, control those who need that information. In this case, that would be the public. This is not good.
= 9J =
= 9J =
= 9J =
Maybe in your experience. But, my experience with installations of HP/UX, AIX, SunOS/Solaris in the largest entertainment companies based in SoCal and at least one of the largest Japanese electronic companies with offices in SoCal use GNU utils. In addition, others appear to disagree with you: "Most Unix systems today include many tools from the GNU project simply by default, even though they are not necessarily GNU systems!"
At least the GNU utilities made a uniformly bad implementation available across all platforms...
Bad enough to be used in the Open Source BSD distributions.
First, they did anything but lock it away. As I pointed out, Sun opened up Unix
Really?: " Proprietary versions of Unix were becoming popular in the corporate arena, and quite often these versions lacked source code (making them nearly unusable). Sun even distributed versions without C compilers! The personal computer was taking off, championed by proprietary software vendors Microsoft and IBM. If not for GNU, some argue, this disturbing trend of proprietary operating systems might have become the standard."
And NFS was an open spec from day one, and always available for licensing even to competitors on commercailly attractive terms
Affordable by developers like myself? Ha! Really, the wonder of it all. It's easy to be flippant about the "attractive terms" a license would be on a corporate budget, but we're talking about how individuals changed the Unix world by creating their own Open Source tools rather than something an individual couldn't afford. And, even if an individual Open Source developer could afford it, he'd be in the minority amongst his peers.
Sun opened up Unix, and was single handedly reponsible for proving that it was a viable alternative to the IBM and VAX machines that ruled in those days.
Sun was part of the Unix Wars, and didn't single-handedly do anything but make its own version of BSD proprietary. Yes, they did add functionality into their proprietary version which made it a top contender in the Unix Wars. As for NFS, Sun just doesn't know what to do in order to ingratiate themselves with Open Source developers and still maintain strict control over how people use their "Open" spec. But, clearly the market is dragging their asses out of the closet.
Sure, there are lots of Linux fan-boys who claim this, but it's simply not true.
At least one Unix vendor disagrees with you: "as most Linux kernel testing efforts have only been conducted over short periods of time, this series of tests provides us first-hand data and results of longer runs. The series of tests also provides data for heavy-stress workloads on Linux kernel components, as well as TCP, NFS, and other test components. The tests demonstrate that the Linux system is reliable and stable over long durations and can provide a robust, enterprise-level environment." And, other researchers disagree with you as well:"FreeBSD has by far the best performance of the BSDs and it comes close to Linux 2.6". Naturally, you can continue to believe that it's not true by disregarding the facts, but then you're simply operating on faith, not reason.
BSD's advantages
No, it isn't if you don't apply it in a literal sense, such as if you disregard the entire concept of methaphor or simile. The loss of "potential revenue" by a company due to the activities of another company can be addressed in court, and repayment can ordered. That is a literal concept. If there is a way to represent the idea of "future losses" for the community that can be encapsulated in a single word, it is theft. A more accurate phrasing would be that when a person or company takes something from the community, without giving back to the community, that act is like theft. The word "like", makes this a simile. You may not consider it perfect for the role, but you haven't introduced a helpful substitute.
You're mincing words and trying to mislead people in the process.
Not my intention at all. You take things too literally. I'm trying to clarify as much as my poor abilities will allow. If you'd like to give it a shot, you're welcome to it.
First off, I can vouch for my grandparent poster's ability with the English laguage and I believe he knows what he is talking about and is right on the money.
I'm glad you have an opinion on the matter. It wouldn't be much of a discussion without one.
We do not discuss metaphoric losses in the world of software
Maybe you don't, but others do. The world isn't simply black and white as I'll show you later in the post. As an aside, people who believe that the world is black and white can be a danger to themselves and those around them as they take things too literally. The GPL clearly isn't for everyone, as the number of BSD supporting posts show in this article. However, I haven't read anything of evidence to indicate that the GPL would inhibit or hinder the growth of software, or take away code from the community as a whole. Hence, my position on it. I recognize that at a point in time, the BSD provided a useful mechanism for licensing Open Source software. That was until an improved license came along. The "improvement" is controversial to some, but an objective market will decide which is the better. My bet is that more people favor an implementation of the Golden Rule such as the GPL, than disapprove of it.
time is not something that is owned and can be robbed from someone.
The world isn't black and white, and someone stating such a broad assertion deserves instruction. To put it literally, you're absolutely wrong. On the other hand, my point regarding the BSD license and theft are not literal. It is merely illustrative of a subtle and important concept. Apparently, too subtle for some.
Figures of speech work well to denote ideas in the figurative sense
And, what is wrong with symbolic representation? It is our ability to symbolize that allows us to code.
but confusing them with literal ideas only serves to show that you don't know how to properly present the thought.
Or, that you don't understand that thoughts have meaning other than in the literal. That would indicate a lower level of self education, or someone who doesn't wish to understand past what he sees. Hence, taking things literally where literal thinking doesn't apply. I recommend a regimen of philosophical readings into abstract thought.
INFRINGEMENT which is what you are confusing for THEFT.
No. Infringement is simply some violation of an agreement, and can at times even be inappropriately used as a longer version of the same word, theft. What I'm stating is theft as a simile, not as a literal act. Theft as a simile is as real as a description of what something is like. Theft in a literal sense would not be tolerated and would become a legal
This applies to most Open Source licenses, including the GPL. There's nothing specific to the GPL that forces the original author to be concerned over who uses the work. The original author may never even see any modifications made to the orginal work, as there is no stipulation in the GPL that forces the modifier of the work to ensure that the original author sees the modification. However, the difference from the BSD license is that the GPL ensures that if the modifier/devirator distributes the derived work, someone else is guaranteed to see code other than the derivator. Thus, ensuring that the code remains free from proprietorship and everyone continues to benefit from the "knowledge". The BSD license doesn't do anything of the sort to ensure that the evolution of "knowledge" (aka code) remains freely available to all to benefit from.
It contrast, GPL-folk tend to think of things in terms of products competing for mindshare.
BSD is not immune from this. Perhaps this can explain the situation better.
From this perspective the worst thing that can happen is competing against yourself.
No, that is the natural course of Open Source, and the GPL neither inhibits nor encourages that. Forking is good, as long as all forks have the freedom of choice and access to incorporate improvements that the other forks may have come up with, and vice versa. See Samba as an excellent example of this.
As such they want to be altruistic, but they don't want to be so altruistic that their work is placed at a disadvantage.
I'm not sure what that means. Are you suggesting that the community should allow itself to be placed at a disadvantage? Would that be considered rational behavior?
Horrors! Big Blue might steal my work!
Not likely at this time as Big Blue is currently wearing the hat of the GPL's biggest defender with the deepest pockets. However, what if someone did steal something of yours? Is that no longer considered wrong? If you were to take something from that person, where do they get the right to be upset, but you don't?
= 9J =
Television steals the hours from your life. Cigarettes steal days from your lifespan. Kisses can be stolen. You can steal a glance at another a person. These are all theft as metaphor or simile. Theft isn't just real as a literal legal term. It is also a way of describing future losses to the community by the intentionally selfish, who refuse to follow the Golden Rule/reciprocity as we all learned it in kindergarten.
= 9J =
Well, if he denies it, he can refute it. As of yet, he's quiet as a mouse, indicating I've correctly read his opinion in his original post.
There's a difference between letting folks who PAY for the code see the source, and letting the world see the source.
He never said anything about giving his clients the sourcecode. Seems to me you're the one with the reading comprehension problem.
There's a difference between profiting from the community and giving back to the community. He'd rather be a parasite rather than a symbiote. In the end he's made the choice to go with a dying business model where shelfishness is the way and the Golden Rule/reciprocity is to be avoided. May the future market be kind.
= 9J =
Because I read his post: "I really wonder what great opportunities we're missing now simply because som much good code is rendered useless for commerce by the GPL." You should too before commenting so that you can understand what's being discussed. He considers the GPL, which exists for ensuring the sharing of code, as equivalent to rendering it useless. Although, when someone else shares their code with him, such as with a BSD license, everything's kosher. What a hypocrite.
Giving free access to it to his competitors makes it worthless as a competative advantage to the company.
Dying business model, on its way out with the rest of the dinosaurs.
I'd bow down to your obvious Nostradamus-like ability to see the future
As you haven't added anything to the discussion, you might as well.
= 9J =
Again, rivalry can be found in Open Source as well as the proprietary software. There is no utopian ideal that prevents rivalry in software development. Code, unprotected as it is with the flacid BSD license, will find itself in rivalry for mindshare by derivative, proprietary, versions made by the Sun's, HP's and IBM's of the world. The GPL changed that dynamic. The GPL neither encourages nor prohibits rivalry. It exists in harmony with the concept that forking is good, when it can benefit the community as the source is guaranteed to be available to the community to unify if it chooses to. Forking is bad, when it takes from the community without reciprocity (violation of the Golden Rule).
Nonsense. Registration can be a formality filed just before the lawsuit
and registration prior to publication is not necessary to prove a copyright claim in court. (Although it does help.)
BSD zealots have difficulty with the realities of the harsh world. Publication does not guarantee ownership. It only provides for the potential of a wider audience for the work. The real author may be completely oblivious of the publication and would have little legal recourse if he didn't copyright or failed to prove in court that the work was of his labor.
an inability to prove who did what when does not mean that the work falls into the public domain.
Actually, if its unproveable, I would think it is in the public domain. Ipso facto.
Because the natural state of copyright is ownership by the creator
Copyright, yes. Works, no. Unless effort has been made to copyright.
the court must sort out the mess and assign copyright.
Or, if as you've stated: "an inability to prove who did what when", the courts have the option of the public domain.
= 9J =
As I've explained elsewhere, the GPL simply encourages the Golden Rule we all learned in kindergarten. I'm quite interested in learning how the GPL's "restrictions" would hinder rather than encourage, standards development. Please provide reference. I don't think you'll find any. Therefore, your doubts are unfounded.
= 9J =
Answer: other that access to the fruit of other people's labor. That is, a violation of the Golden Rule.
In business, there is the concept of loss of potential revenue due to illegal activities. The courts have upheld that this is real, and can require repayment from offending parties. You've equated software with ideas in the past, and that's a metaphor. Those who've embraced the concept of reciprocity, and understand revenue as growth, could use the loss of potential code as a simile for potential revenue (that which adds to the whole as growth).
In the end, BSD zealots may never understand that to take from the community, without giving back to the community, does not benefit the community. Not reciprocating only benefits the greedy few, not the community. You can be a parasite, or you can be a symbiote. BSD allows parasitism to occur, while the GPL encouragous symbiotic behavior. This really is the reason behind Linux's success, despite the fact that BSD is much older (since the 70's), has many more established variants, longer corporate backing, and a talented pool of Open Source developers. In the end, more people instinctively understood the need for the inherent fairness of the Golden Rule embodied by the GPL, and joined the penguin in good fellowship. Along with the countless Free Software and Open Source developers, many of those people are owners of Unix/BSD variants such Sun, IBM, HP, Novell...etc.
= 9J =
That's alot of nonsense as GPL software has been included with most commercial Unix variants as soon as Stallman could pump it out. Here's some info on that:"and thus quite often any machine running a commercial Unix variant would stock GNU versions of utilities to take advantage of these features and to have a standardized version of them.". In addition, Sun, RedHat, HP, IBM, Novell, MySQL, SAP and even SCO claim your wrong. GPL'd software is making money, and everyone wants to be in that market.
The BSD license (even the old, "bad" one) was the catalyst that ignited the entire Unix philosophy and mindset, initially in academia, but soon after throughour industry.
Your history is a little mixed up, as it was AT&T's code (not Berkeley's) that was initially circulating in academia. This is how Berkeley got a hold of it, and started tweaking it and eventually got into a lawsuit over it. Here's a timeline to help you out.
The BSD license allowed Sun to build the world's first computer deisgned to run an open OS, and Sun's competitors were all forced to follow suit, making the Unix "idea" the single most dominant way of thinking about computing throughout the world.
Sadly, I don't think I could convince you how bad it is to lock away innovation from the community as the private commercial Unix companies did. But, if you need proof as to the abusive result, take a trip to Redmond and ask them about the countless man hours lost to the Blue Screen of Death.
Damn straight that couldn't have happened under the GPL: all the incentive would be gone. Linux itself owes its very existence to BSD, for without it, that young Finnish hacker would never have heard of Unix and thus to want to do somethinng so daft as to get a copy of it running on a PC.
Umm, how old are you? Please refer to the links I give above for Unix history and how not all Unix variants descend from BSD.
I really wonder what great opportunities we're missing now simply because som much good code is rendered useless for commerce by the GPL.
I understand how a certain perspective can make the mistake, but I believe you meant "rendered useless" for theft.
I jsut made the call on an embedded OS for a proposed product at out new startup: it will be BSD-based rather than Linux based.
Thank you for ejecting yourself from the competition. Natural selection is best viewed in the marketplace.
Partly for BSD's greatly superior stability,
Clearly not up on reading the news. That old argument is no longer valid. Linux is often more stable in recent versions that some of the free BSDs, and as stable as the others. As time goes on, and Linux's maturity continuous and BSD begins to be simpy academic toys, you'll start hearing of how hobbyists wish their favorite BSD variant could support x-number of clients at x-number rate with x-percentage uptime. This is the natural course of things.
, but mostly so that we can freely modify the system and offer those improvements as a real benefit to our customers. That's simply not possible with the GPL...
I wouldn't be overly proud of hiding your sourcecode improvements from your clients. That doesn't engender much sympathy during a time when transparency is in vogue and clients begin demanding that they have access to the code. If you're still in the embedded business in a few years, you'll be using Linux in some form.
= 9J =
The alternative is to turn to other products without protections to rip-off. I'd say the GPL was ensuring 1) the community's welfare and 2) resistance against permanent forking (I've mentioned elsewhere that forking by nature is a good thing for software evolution and longevity, but permanent forking and subsequent closure of code is a bad thing for the community).
Whoah nelly! This is such a whopping misconception of the current state of copyright law. The natural state of any work in the United States is ownership by the creator for a limited time as established by congress. Copyright registration is a technical formality.
Without registration, copyright is not proveable. For all practical purposes the work belongs in the public domain as it is often near impossible to prove in court who did what and when (of course there's the old postal trick). Actually, what you may be referring to by "current state" are the recent copyright extensioning and strengthening laws. These are aberrations that fly against the intent and original laws as defined by the founding fathers. The key problem here is that the approaches taken to overturn these laws have failed due to incorrect tactics with the current Supreme Court makeup. These new unjust laws will eventually be limited, but this will take some time. Disney will not continue to benefit from the works of Grimm and Anderson while others are unable to benefit from the works of Disney.
= 9J =
Yes, I point out that distinction here. And, I commend the correction of a flawed license. It leaves a more palatable choice for those who are adverse to the GPL, yet the work can now be considered compatible with the FSF's licenses. This doesn't negate the fact it leaves the work without protection from abuse, but some people aren't inclined towards the community in that manner.
Software should be free because it is ideas and ideas are non-rivalous resources.
Ah, I think I see where our differences are a little more clearly. I don't consider software ideas. I believe it is commonly held that software is the implementation of ideas. In addition, there is nothing that keeps ideas from being at odds or at rivalry with another except for the integral meaning of those ideas. Case in point would be our disagreement with this issue. But, I believe you meant that "software" (being ideas in your terms) are non-rivalous resources. That's not true.
But at the same time, software should be protected from "theft"
If that is a concern, BSD will not get you there. Use the GPL or LGPL.
and "splintering", something that just can't happen with a non-rivalous resource.
Splintering in itself isn't something to be avoided. Software, to maintain usefulness and creativity in the long run, may require forking. However, without a mechanism to ensure that growth and change be reincorporated back into the original community would bring about another round of the Unix Wars. Rivalry, breathes vitality into variety. Currently, the GPL is a popular mechanism to ensure that forking doesn't become true splintering that can be brought about by unchecked greed and selfishness. Forking is healthy, and allows exploration into newer ideas when older ideas become stale. It is derivation, and that's progress. Using a GPL'd product as the base of your derivation simply means that you acknowledge that your derivations aren't built on air, but on the collective back of the community. Your simply adding your brick to the house built by others. Future brick layers will in turn give back to you as well. No GPL'd product can remain permanently forked as long there is a single person willing to maintain unity. BSD invites permanent forks by rivalrous private corporations seeking vendor lock-in and other expensive surprises for consumers.
Perhaps I don't see the problems produced by Unix that you do, being an old unix hand myself.
That explains the difference of opinion. People have forgotten how Linux was ridiculed by Unix-purists. No self-respecting Unix guru would believe that this little GPL'd missing link (the rest of the GPL'd OS was already made, just missing the kernel) would amount to anything more than a toy. Perhaps with another license, that would have been true. The toy turned out to be a juggernaught under the protection of the GPL.
The common set of tools with a predictable interface meant that I could do work on any system, no matter if it was Linux, Sun, NeXT, IRIX or AIX.
Yes, you can thank GNU and GPL for that: "and thus quite often any machine running a commercial Unix variant would stock GNU versions of utilities to take advantage of these features and to have a standardized version of them."
But I think that you don't really know your history here. The Free BSDs developed about the same time as GNU/Linux in response to a primarily proprietary Unix market. If anyone is responsible for the rise of proprietary Unix, it was Bell Labs and AT&T during the 1970s! (See this history for more details.) Since the Open Source BSDs were stalled due to a lawsuit from 1992-1994 (the same period when
An important distinction. BSD as a license in its original form is incompatible with the GPL and is recommended against usage. However, seeing the error in their ways, the BSD license has been modified and is now compatible with the GPL. Unfortunately, it is still weak and flacid, and I couldn't personally recommend using it in good conscience.
However, the problem is that GPL software is not truly "free." The GPL says, "I own this, and you can't use this except on MY terms."
Nonsense. What you have described is the purpose of any license, including the BSD.
By placing all of the reference works for HTML, and HTTP into the public domain (rather than under a GPL copyright) the web exploded and we have forums like Slashdot.
Please keep in mind that due to the wisdom of Slashdot's developers, you are enjoying the use of a product under the protection of the GPL.
Had Mr. Berners-Lee used the GPL, I have doubts as to whether we would have widespread adoption of the web.
There's no reason to assume that. Your doubts are unfounded.
= 9J =
Here's one for you:
"Richard Stallman is the prophet of the free software movement. He understood the dangers of software patents years ago. Now that this has become a crucial issue in the world, buy this book and read what he said."
- Tim Berners-Lee, inventor of the World-Wide Web.
= 9J =
I don't think free software is an issue of concern with GPL zealots. However, Free Software certainly is. But, it may be too subtle a point for BSD zealots to understand.
No. The BSD license considers that the community includes, for example, government organizations that have a mandate to release works into the public domain
The BSD license has an onerous stipulation and cannot be used as a license for works that are mandated by law to be placed in the public domain. This is why there is something called the public domain which is already considered in the U.S. Constitution. In fact, you might say that the public domain is the natural condition of any work in the United States unless the author makes effort to claim copyright, temporarily taking the work away for a limited time before being returned to the public domain.
BSD cannot lay claim to being more of a community builder than the GPL. If anything, BSD has been responsible for the rise of various proprietary Unix systems, completely splintering the market, allowing other inferior proprietary systems to enter and dominate. A fork in GPL code could never be truly splintered as improvements are guaranteed to be made available for all to profit from.
= 9J =
IPX/SPX is a proprietary protocol from Novell, the owner of Unix, and now a Linux (GPL'd product, not BSD) company. Novell may very well have ended up using the GPL'd Berkeley kernel rather than make their own. As it is, their Novell kernel will be going away and replaced by the GPL'd Linux kernel in the near future. Keep in mind, these guys still have access to Unix as well as BSD. As for IPX/SPX, we'd probably be using another protocol similar to TCP/IP and billions of productive man hours could've been saved from the Blue Screen of Death.
The need for Slashdot arose from reasons other than what surrounded the Unix Wars and the rise of Microsoft. There is little correlation between the two. There would still have been a demand for News for Nerds. Please note that it's called Slashdot, and not C-Prompt.
= 9J =