That's another GPL misconception. The GPL does not prevent anyone from selling GPL'd work
Where people get confused (either accidentally or intentionally) is this wording in section 3b):
Accompany it with a written offer, valid for at least three years, to give any third party, for a charge no more than your cost of physically performing source distribution, a complete machine-readable copy of the corresponding source code, to be distributed under the terms of Sections 1 and 2 above on a medium customarily used for software interchange
This only speaks about the source code, and only in the case where the source did not accompany the product. In other words, you can charge a million USD for the privilege of pre-compiling the software for people, providing support, upgrades, etc, but you cannot turn around and charge another million USD for the privilege of seeing the source code. This is why Red Hat can charge 200+ USD for their Enterprise Edition, but they must either include the source code of the GPLed pieces in the distribution (which they do), or allow you to download it for free or be mailed the source code and recover only the cost of shipping and media.
That's what people mean when they use the term "viral."
I don't buy this argument. The term "viral" to me perhaps has some connotations that are different than your thinking. In my thinking, the term "viral" conjures up something that happens against your will. For instance, I didn't ask to get the flu last winter, but because the flu is viral, I got it and probably passed it on to someone else before I realized what I had.
Likewise when I hear someone say the GPL is "viral", I conjure up an image of this evil GPL code somehow leaping into their application without their knowledge and infecting their codebase.
This is why people object to the term "viral". Using this word to describe how the GPL works is propaganda and FUD. It was purposely chosen by those who either are against the GPL or grossly misunderstood it to give more force to their arguments.
I've only been programming for about 15 years, so maybe it's just my lack of experience talking here, but... never have I had it happen where a library simply links itself into my program of its own volition.
Most companies that have half a clue will not "accidentally" link to or compile in code that they cannot obtain proper rights and/or licenses to. Most companies have people that specifically look out for this sort of thing.
In fact, I remember my first job where a development group had to yank compression code from their module when during a routine audit, legal told them that their implementation was way too close to compression algorithm that Unisys owns the rights to (the one used in GIFs that caused such a stir).
In other words, if a company releases code that "accidentally" has code they do not have rights to or with a license incompatible with theirs, it's their own damn fault.
What if you put an application together using Open Source tools. Let's say your application uses Linux as the OS, and PostgreSQL as the database.
You don't need to go any further. The answer is no, the software you develop by merely using the tools does not make your software GPL. Mere use of the GPL'ed program does not make your software GPL.
For example, if I decide to develop, say, a game to run under Linux, using gcc to compile it, XFree libraries to render graphics, and the GIMP to create the graphical images, I can still choose to release that game under any license I choose.
Now, would the database schema/design now be GPL or would it be proprietary? It isn't compiled or linked to any 'librarys'. It is just instantiated into a physical instance. So, it should not be GPL'ed should it? What about a bunch of PHP scripts you run on Apache...those aren't GPL'ed are they?
In all of these cases, you are simply using the program or library in question. That does not make it a derivative work. In my example above, there are several libraries that I may link to that are GPL. Linking does not constitute a derivative work, it constitutes merely using the library. Now, if I purposely built an extension to that library, actually recompiled the library with my new code, then in that case, yes, my code would have to be GPL as well.
One of the things that people need to keep in mind when speaking of "music piracy" is that there are two forms of piracy out there, both of which are as different as night and day, but he RIAA would prefer that people blur the line between them.
The type of piracy that people think about when the RIAA spews its propaganda is file-sharing "piracy". They whine about this and then point to their multi-million dollar losses.
But this is NOT the piracy that's causing them to lose money.
What has the potential to suck them dry is the second type of piracy. This is the kind sometimes run by organized crime. Big warehouses with CD duplicating machinery churning out fake copies of copyrighted music. This is very common overseas, usually in Asia. This type of piracy is very real and indistputably illegal AND immoral because it robs not just the RIAA of profit, but the artist as well.
But the RIAA purposely blurs the line between these for the purpose, I believe, of maintaining their strangehold on the distribution of music. The internet scares them because it opens up the possibility of increased competition. Thus they use the mass CD-duplication piracy problem (which IS a real problem) and use it as a convenient vehicle by which to forward their political agenda.
The moment that a major label Gets It and strikes out on its own to change its business model is the day that the RIAA will cease to be a cohesive political entity.
He makes it clear that SCO is attacking everyone, but he opposes DOS'ing them saying that "the open source community must use the truth, not criminal methods, as its weapons." Nicely done
I normally have a great deal of respect for ESR, but in this particular case, I think he misstepped. His statement about the hacker being "one of us" was totally wrong. No one who stoops to this sort of action is "one of us". What he should have done was distanced himself and the community from this hacker.
For the third time this year, the SCO Group's Web site came under attack, apparently by hackers unhappy with the company's legal threats against users of the Linux operating system.
Where in the article did it say this? I certainly can't find it.
Slashdot editors might want to RTFA before approving a post. The submitter of this one got a wee bit overzealous.
This is not ture at all.. you should travel a little.. What if you try to show something as dangerous as a picture of a woman's chest in the US.. or even worst.. an actually woman's chest!! You might get thrown in jail..
Given the choice between having my ability to speak about a woman's breasts restricted and my ability to speak out against my government restricted, I'll choose the former. At least in that case, I can get the other restriction lifted if I'm vocal enough.
Finally there are a few EU countries (France) that really like the idea as well. They want to protect their innocent youngsters from "American Culture which is so pervasive on the Internet". The gentleman from ICANN wasn't a native French speaker, he definitely shouldn't be allowed to participate.
Didn't France try to sue Ebay in the US courts because they refused to block Nazi paraphrenalia from being sold? Ebay had already, I believe, pulled the items from ebay.fr, but France insisted Ebay find a way to block them from French citizens on ebay.com as well. The US courts, if I recall correctly, threw the case out because Ebay was based in the US and protected by the first amendment.
Let the UN do whatever the fuck they want. You'll just see more of this happening. Oh, China wants us to censor some American-based websites peddling these obscene ideas of democracy or Taiwanese independence? Tough shit. First amendment rules, baby.
Doesn't this pretty much describe just about every IT department known to man? PHBs and suits making uneducated decisions on how things will run based on buzzwords, corporate kickbacks, and their own job security while those who DO know what they're doing get ignored or brushed aside.
Oh, good! In most IT departments I worked in, the IT people just nod their heads until the PHBs return to their offices, and then ignore them and do the work the way it's supposed to be done.
Think of it this way: if you were going to set up one world government, would you set it up so that resolutions could be vetoed by any single member of the Security Council?
Your post helped me really put my finger on what is wrong with the United Nations, and why as a world government it would not be the way to go. There is no system of checks and balances. I frankly am glad at the moment that the UN has little real power. It would be scary if it did.
The US system of government is based on checks and balances. No, the US is not perfect, its policies are not perfect, but the idea behind the system is sound. Congress votes bills into law by simple vote. The President can veto the bill. Congress can override the veto. The Courts can declare a law unconstitutional. Congress can pass constitutional amendments. And so on.
This does not exist in the UN. I think the UN members realize this, and they knowingly contribute to this emasculation of the world body, otherwise they would have changed it a long time ago.
You mentioned that the UN places sovereignty above world concerns. You got that right. And that's how it will always be, because the delegates to the UN realize that to have it otherwise means putting in those checks and balances that I mentioned, which in turns means giving up power, and that's not going to happen anytime soon.
I find that a rather far-fetched claim, in light of the USA's abject failure to win any form of UN approval or backing for their illegal invasion of Iraq.
Especially with the strong action that UN took against the US when the US blatantly defied it.
Therefore, what SETI should be looking for are signals that, at first, appear as white noise. Then try to decode them.
Other than this being like looking for the needle in the proverbial haystack, this is not what is behind the SETI project. SETI works under the assumption that someone out there is beaming a signal into space with the express intent of being discovered. A civilization attempting to do such a thing would attempt to make the signal as unambiguous as possible, at least the initial "greeting" message. This is why "Contact" used the plot device of having the initial signal be pulsed to represent the first few prime numbers. The idea behind it was that certain mathematical concepts are universal, and this would be a clear indication that there is an intelligence behind it.
There are people in Rwanda, survivors of the civil war, who might disagree with you. The mass media was used to incite and implement genocide.
This is not a good example, because the audience of the media were people that already had it in their heads to commit violence. THis is the same as the trite argument for banning porn. "We don't want to influence people into treating women as objects". While it is true that, exposed at too young an age, this could influence a person, we're talking adults here. Anyone "influenced" by such things as an adult most likely had propensities in that direction anyway, or would have found a trigger point somewhere else. So do we ban anything that may incite violence on the desperate hope that those unstable people don't find a trigger point somewhere else?
I always say: If you're unstable enough, you can find a trigger to commit violence from reading the back of a toothpaste tube.
Julius Streicher, publisher of Der Sturmer, was tried at Nuremberg, sentenced to death and executed for the role his "free speech" played in the deaths of millions of people.
What's your point? Even in the US, free speech does not absolve someone from responsibility. If I make disparaging comments about you in public, that's exercising my free speech, but you have every right under US civil law to sue me for libel if my statements are false and have caused you greivous harm.
Re:Online mentions in IBM filing
on
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I wish someone would deliver something like 32 tons of horse shit to th SCO offices.
I think that would be seen as very insulting.
To the horses, that is.
Mr. McBride's strategy now clear
on
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· Score: 1
What this recent turn of events has done is to truly clarify what McBride's strategy has been all along in this case. I believe that it was his hope that his steady escalation of claims would be accepted by the industry at large simply because each claim would seem to be a natural extension of the previous. Much like how totalitarian dictators come to power in a state that was formerly a democracy: Freedom and liberty is eroded bit by bit, and by the time someone notices, it is too late to stop it.
Observe the progression of SCO's claims:
The SCO compatibility libs on Linux infringe.
There are hundreds of lines of Linux code that infringe.
There are thousands of lines of Linux code taht infringe.
Four complete subsystems of the Linux kernel infringe, but only from 2.4 onward.
We have issues with the BSD code, which emcompasses all of Linux prior to 2.4.
The GPL is unconstitutional.
The failure of Mr. McBride's strategy is a combination of two factors: One, he moved too quickly and too publicly by foisting the billion dollar lawsuit on IBM, and two, he underestimated the collective voice of the open source community.
As a result of this strategic blunder, he is caught in a sort of twilight. He convinced just enough of the industry to bring in some investment dollars, but not enough to galvanize support from key sectors of the industry to give SCO the necessary "moral support". He tries to sound like he is coming from the moral high ground, but without any important voices chiming in support, he sounds more like a pariah than anything else.
So now we have Mr. McBride scrambling to save his plan by clouding the issue. All it takes is reading the latest open letter from him. He uses specious analogies and false logic, plus deliberate misinterpretation of the constitution and complete ignorance of past court cases on copyright law (save for one that he mentions there about the copyright extension act that has nothing to do with this case).
It's a bit sad to watch, as he is not just destroying his company, but his own career as well.
Get this. The insurance was for their property on their property.
Try buying a house in the US with a mortgage loan that is more than 80% of the total cost of the house (i.e. your down payment is less than 20% of the price). Welcome to the wonderful world of mortgage insurance, a fee that does squat for you; it's insurance for the mortgage company in case you default.
Dunno about other countries, but in Canada it's against the law (or at least against merchant agreements) to charge a fee for accepting credit cards.
Not sure what the law says here in the US of A, but I do know that some of the things merchants attempt to do are against the policy of the credit card companies. I don't see the extra charge very much, but I still do see places claim they require a minimum order for credit card use. THAT is almost DEFINITELY against the policy of many credit card companies.
ALL PROFESSIONS have these charges. As a computer tech you have outragiously expensive equipment, strange arcane knowledge, a bizzare incomprehensible language, and all the other trappings of any of the High Priests of our culture. So how come I can't charge Lawyer/Doctor rates?
Because you don't have to pay six figures in malpractice insurance due to our litigation-happy society.
Considering Gates is responsible for BILLIONS of dollars going toward schools, scholarships, charitible work, health care improvements, etc, I highly doubt that.
Depends on what is more important to you, friends you acquire because you in effect bought them, or friends you acquire because they respect and admire your work. Personally, I prefer the latter.
How do we know that you didn't have a purple dragon in your garage for about one billionth of a trillionth of a second?
He did, as it only took this long for the purple dragon to collide with an anti-purple dragon and both disappear, as purple and anti-purple dragon pairs are constantly being created and destroyed. It's called Dragon-Point Energy.
Recent studies have shown, however, that having a large concentration of ethyl alcohol molecules nearby, preferably circulating in the bloodstream of the observer, can cause purple dragons to persist for far longer. This theory has yet to be proven, since it appears to be localized to the observer, much in the way that the act of observing a quantum event can affect it.
Slashdot Mirror
Where people get confused (either accidentally or intentionally) is this wording in section 3b):
Accompany it with a written offer, valid for at least three years, to give any third party, for a charge no more than your cost of physically performing source distribution, a complete machine-readable copy of the corresponding source code, to be distributed under the terms of Sections 1 and 2 above on a medium customarily used for software interchange
This only speaks about the source code, and only in the case where the source did not accompany the product. In other words, you can charge a million USD for the privilege of pre-compiling the software for people, providing support, upgrades, etc, but you cannot turn around and charge another million USD for the privilege of seeing the source code. This is why Red Hat can charge 200+ USD for their Enterprise Edition, but they must either include the source code of the GPLed pieces in the distribution (which they do), or allow you to download it for free or be mailed the source code and recover only the cost of shipping and media.
I don't buy this argument. The term "viral" to me perhaps has some connotations that are different than your thinking. In my thinking, the term "viral" conjures up something that happens against your will. For instance, I didn't ask to get the flu last winter, but because the flu is viral, I got it and probably passed it on to someone else before I realized what I had.
Likewise when I hear someone say the GPL is "viral", I conjure up an image of this evil GPL code somehow leaping into their application without their knowledge and infecting their codebase.
This is why people object to the term "viral". Using this word to describe how the GPL works is propaganda and FUD. It was purposely chosen by those who either are against the GPL or grossly misunderstood it to give more force to their arguments.
Most companies that have half a clue will not "accidentally" link to or compile in code that they cannot obtain proper rights and/or licenses to. Most companies have people that specifically look out for this sort of thing.
In fact, I remember my first job where a development group had to yank compression code from their module when during a routine audit, legal told them that their implementation was way too close to compression algorithm that Unisys owns the rights to (the one used in GIFs that caused such a stir).
In other words, if a company releases code that "accidentally" has code they do not have rights to or with a license incompatible with theirs, it's their own damn fault.
You don't need to go any further. The answer is no, the software you develop by merely using the tools does not make your software GPL. Mere use of the GPL'ed program does not make your software GPL.
For example, if I decide to develop, say, a game to run under Linux, using gcc to compile it, XFree libraries to render graphics, and the GIMP to create the graphical images, I can still choose to release that game under any license I choose.
Now, would the database schema/design now be GPL or would it be proprietary? It isn't compiled or linked to any 'librarys'. It is just instantiated into a physical instance. So, it should not be GPL'ed should it? What about a bunch of PHP scripts you run on Apache...those aren't GPL'ed are they?In all of these cases, you are simply using the program or library in question. That does not make it a derivative work. In my example above, there are several libraries that I may link to that are GPL. Linking does not constitute a derivative work, it constitutes merely using the library. Now, if I purposely built an extension to that library, actually recompiled the library with my new code, then in that case, yes, my code would have to be GPL as well.
One of the things that people need to keep in mind when speaking of "music piracy" is that there are two forms of piracy out there, both of which are as different as night and day, but he RIAA would prefer that people blur the line between them.
The type of piracy that people think about when the RIAA spews its propaganda is file-sharing "piracy". They whine about this and then point to their multi-million dollar losses.
But this is NOT the piracy that's causing them to lose money.
What has the potential to suck them dry is the second type of piracy. This is the kind sometimes run by organized crime. Big warehouses with CD duplicating machinery churning out fake copies of copyrighted music. This is very common overseas, usually in Asia. This type of piracy is very real and indistputably illegal AND immoral because it robs not just the RIAA of profit, but the artist as well.
But the RIAA purposely blurs the line between these for the purpose, I believe, of maintaining their strangehold on the distribution of music. The internet scares them because it opens up the possibility of increased competition. Thus they use the mass CD-duplication piracy problem (which IS a real problem) and use it as a convenient vehicle by which to forward their political agenda.
The moment that a major label Gets It and strikes out on its own to change its business model is the day that the RIAA will cease to be a cohesive political entity.
No, no. This is Slashdot. Here's how you do it:
Hot girls willing to do it with geeks!
1001 reasons why Micro$oft sucks!
Free LOTR stuff!!
What you've all waited for: the Torvalds-McBride Grudge Match!!
What you've all waited for: the Torvalds-RMS GNU/Grudge match!!
Find new ways to bash Star Trek, win a prize! (with apologies to CleverNickName)
I normally have a great deal of respect for ESR, but in this particular case, I think he misstepped. His statement about the hacker being "one of us" was totally wrong. No one who stoops to this sort of action is "one of us". What he should have done was distanced himself and the community from this hacker.
From the article header:
For the third time this year, the SCO Group's Web site came under attack, apparently by hackers unhappy with the company's legal threats against users of the Linux operating system.Where in the article did it say this? I certainly can't find it.
Slashdot editors might want to RTFA before approving a post. The submitter of this one got a wee bit overzealous.
Given the choice between having my ability to speak about a woman's breasts restricted and my ability to speak out against my government restricted, I'll choose the former. At least in that case, I can get the other restriction lifted if I'm vocal enough.
Didn't France try to sue Ebay in the US courts because they refused to block Nazi paraphrenalia from being sold? Ebay had already, I believe, pulled the items from ebay.fr, but France insisted Ebay find a way to block them from French citizens on ebay.com as well. The US courts, if I recall correctly, threw the case out because Ebay was based in the US and protected by the first amendment.
Let the UN do whatever the fuck they want. You'll just see more of this happening. Oh, China wants us to censor some American-based websites peddling these obscene ideas of democracy or Taiwanese independence? Tough shit. First amendment rules, baby.
Oh, good! In most IT departments I worked in, the IT people just nod their heads until the PHBs return to their offices, and then ignore them and do the work the way it's supposed to be done.
Your post helped me really put my finger on what is wrong with the United Nations, and why as a world government it would not be the way to go. There is no system of checks and balances. I frankly am glad at the moment that the UN has little real power. It would be scary if it did.
The US system of government is based on checks and balances. No, the US is not perfect, its policies are not perfect, but the idea behind the system is sound. Congress votes bills into law by simple vote. The President can veto the bill. Congress can override the veto. The Courts can declare a law unconstitutional. Congress can pass constitutional amendments. And so on.
This does not exist in the UN. I think the UN members realize this, and they knowingly contribute to this emasculation of the world body, otherwise they would have changed it a long time ago.
You mentioned that the UN places sovereignty above world concerns. You got that right. And that's how it will always be, because the delegates to the UN realize that to have it otherwise means putting in those checks and balances that I mentioned, which in turns means giving up power, and that's not going to happen anytime soon.
Especially with the strong action that UN took against the US when the US blatantly defied it.
Oh wait ... that didn't happen, did it?
Er ... what was your point again?
Unless their biology is so utterly alien that we would not realize this before the picture was plastered on the cover of the latest issue of Time.
Or they could think that we failed their expectations and send the equivalent of a DoS attack.
Other than this being like looking for the needle in the proverbial haystack, this is not what is behind the SETI project. SETI works under the assumption that someone out there is beaming a signal into space with the express intent of being discovered. A civilization attempting to do such a thing would attempt to make the signal as unambiguous as possible, at least the initial "greeting" message. This is why "Contact" used the plot device of having the initial signal be pulsed to represent the first few prime numbers. The idea behind it was that certain mathematical concepts are universal, and this would be a clear indication that there is an intelligence behind it.
This is not a good example, because the audience of the media were people that already had it in their heads to commit violence. THis is the same as the trite argument for banning porn. "We don't want to influence people into treating women as objects". While it is true that, exposed at too young an age, this could influence a person, we're talking adults here. Anyone "influenced" by such things as an adult most likely had propensities in that direction anyway, or would have found a trigger point somewhere else. So do we ban anything that may incite violence on the desperate hope that those unstable people don't find a trigger point somewhere else?
I always say: If you're unstable enough, you can find a trigger to commit violence from reading the back of a toothpaste tube.
Julius Streicher, publisher of Der Sturmer, was tried at Nuremberg, sentenced to death and executed for the role his "free speech" played in the deaths of millions of people.
What's your point? Even in the US, free speech does not absolve someone from responsibility. If I make disparaging comments about you in public, that's exercising my free speech, but you have every right under US civil law to sue me for libel if my statements are false and have caused you greivous harm.
I think that would be seen as very insulting.
To the horses, that is.
What this recent turn of events has done is to truly clarify what McBride's strategy has been all along in this case. I believe that it was his hope that his steady escalation of claims would be accepted by the industry at large simply because each claim would seem to be a natural extension of the previous. Much like how totalitarian dictators come to power in a state that was formerly a democracy: Freedom and liberty is eroded bit by bit, and by the time someone notices, it is too late to stop it.
Observe the progression of SCO's claims:
The failure of Mr. McBride's strategy is a combination of two factors: One, he moved too quickly and too publicly by foisting the billion dollar lawsuit on IBM, and two, he underestimated the collective voice of the open source community.
As a result of this strategic blunder, he is caught in a sort of twilight. He convinced just enough of the industry to bring in some investment dollars, but not enough to galvanize support from key sectors of the industry to give SCO the necessary "moral support". He tries to sound like he is coming from the moral high ground, but without any important voices chiming in support, he sounds more like a pariah than anything else.
So now we have Mr. McBride scrambling to save his plan by clouding the issue. All it takes is reading the latest open letter from him. He uses specious analogies and false logic, plus deliberate misinterpretation of the constitution and complete ignorance of past court cases on copyright law (save for one that he mentions there about the copyright extension act that has nothing to do with this case).
It's a bit sad to watch, as he is not just destroying his company, but his own career as well.
Try buying a house in the US with a mortgage loan that is more than 80% of the total cost of the house (i.e. your down payment is less than 20% of the price). Welcome to the wonderful world of mortgage insurance, a fee that does squat for you; it's insurance for the mortgage company in case you default.
Not sure what the law says here in the US of A, but I do know that some of the things merchants attempt to do are against the policy of the credit card companies. I don't see the extra charge very much, but I still do see places claim they require a minimum order for credit card use. THAT is almost DEFINITELY against the policy of many credit card companies.
Because you don't have to pay six figures in malpractice insurance due to our litigation-happy society.
Depends on what is more important to you, friends you acquire because you in effect bought them, or friends you acquire because they respect and admire your work. Personally, I prefer the latter.
He did, as it only took this long for the purple dragon to collide with an anti-purple dragon and both disappear, as purple and anti-purple dragon pairs are constantly being created and destroyed. It's called Dragon-Point Energy.
Recent studies have shown, however, that having a large concentration of ethyl alcohol molecules nearby, preferably circulating in the bloodstream of the observer, can cause purple dragons to persist for far longer. This theory has yet to be proven, since it appears to be localized to the observer, much in the way that the act of observing a quantum event can affect it.
No, we tried that here at Sun and the sun hired a lawyer and sent us a cease & desist order for using their Sun Flares(tm) trademark.
The sun also sent us a lengthy list of other trademarks we can't use. One trademark, Sun Go Nova(tm), makes us a little nervous.