> A) This is an evaluation. What the hell are you doing developing your primary application on an evaluation product?
I'm not the one developing it, this is what I heard and was looking up based on the last discussion on slashdot about the Qt license. But I am assuming they want to evaluate Qt in their developement project, to see if they want to stick with Qt, they allow windows developers this evaluation so its not a question of WHY they want it.
> B) It doesn't matter what their FAQ says, it matters what the license says. You may develop any software with the Qt/Free edition so long as you don't distribute it. Remember, your application isn't proprietary UNTIL you distribute it.
As I said previously, the issue is more then likely not to do with the Qt/Free edition license, it is more likely the license of the Qt/Professional edition that is limited by not allowing code developed from using the Qt/Free addition. Read the FAQ...
Can we use the Free Edition while developing our non-free application and then purchase commercial licenses when we start to sell it?
No. The Free Edition license applies to the development phase - anything developed without Professional or Enterprise Edition licenses must be released as free/open source software.
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Notice it says anything developed without Professional or Enterprise Edition licenses must be released as free/open source software.
If a company is willing to take the risk this is not a problem, but not many small commerical proprietary developers are less likely to take that risk. If this is wrong or a mistake they should change their FAQ, if not they are scaring away developers.
> You are talking about selling bandwidth, not software. If bandwidth was ever limited to the extent that you suggest, all of the 'tolls' would be going back to the ISPs, not the users.
No I am not (please dont tell me what I am talking about, I'm saying it so I know what I am talking about). And its not limited to bandwidth, think about it. If you had software that was worth thousands of dollars and there was no laws (copyright or otherwise) preventing you from reselling to other people, are you going to give it away for free?
Not competely fair, windows proprietary developers get a 30 day evalutation before they decide to buy. Unix proprietary developers have to fork out $2k or be open source, in the FAQ on their site it even states that (Unix) proprietary developers can not use the Qt/Free edition to develope their products and then switch to Qt/Professional (they state the license as applying to the developement process).
I think technically speaking, it should be proprietary/closed source commercial software, not just commercial software. Saying it your way is kind of to general and would confuse someone to think that RMS is anti-capitalism or something (he is actually anti-communism in many respects).
There is actually some irony in this though for KDE, the Qt license as I have read complaints about, doesnt like closed source commerical unix developers as much because there is no way for someone to evaluate Qt with out commiting their code to open source or forking out the $2k for the professional version, that is strictly on the Unix side, it seems on the windows side they want developers to jump on the Qt bandwagon (makes for more portable code to unix) so they provide a 30 day evaluation API. So They seem a bit more against Unix commercial applications. I got into a discussion about this on slashdot and the Faq on the trolltech website shows this. This will have an impact on unix developers who want to use Qt, but not GTK+, for their closed commerical applications, which ironicly GTK+ is more friendly to.
> Internet distribution essentially eliminates the 'cost' of distribution. When was the last time someone bought emacs?
But at the same time if the infrastructure were there on the internet for distributing for money, its there for distributing for free, (adding money to the infrastructure has its own issues to resolve before hand), then you could see a lot more people paying to download files, especially if people can buy a file and resell it at lower prices to other people (why give it away when you can sell it).
I dont entirely disagree with you, but I think you are just stating it wrong, it just sounds to funky that way. You can sell open source software PERIOD. Nothing prevents that from happening of course, but like you said you suggested but didnt say directly, you wont sell as many as some of your customers can give it away for free *or sell it* themselves. But you know what you do in that situation and no one has tried it yet, is charge a really high price for it, then the first one to buy it from you can then sell it at lower prices to several other people, and those people in turn sell to others, eventually you get down to the lower level where some people are paying and some are not. But think about it if you pay a lot of money for something are you going to give it away for free, or try to make some of your money back? After that though, the project will pretty much have alife of its own, someone else will create alternate products, but they will not be able to make as much money unless they make very large changes that someone would be willing to fork out the cache. The problem with this one right now, is that there is no infrastructure. Newer versions will not put out as much money, and rightly so because newer versions typically dont have huge changes to them that are benefitial to everyone. The other way money comes about, is contract work, you created it, you know the technically details of your program and/or you are in charge of the project, people who want to customize your project to their needs, will want to hire your expertise, this way has its own problems as well as it can be contract work, but either way you have made your self value increase, while you may not make a$$-raping profits, you have made yourself valuable in other ways.
LOL, sarcasm aside though, I cant believe someone would be so technically illiterate to say "It gives copyright owners permission to use encryption to block the duplication of copyright-protected works.", dont they realize that encryption does not prevent anyone from duplicating the encrypted data? How can they possibly lack this knowledge, its not a hard concept at all?! Do they think the rest of the world is stupid, or is it that their target audience is the stupid, we should all be embarrased about how illiterate our governments are about technology, they can not be that so detached from it can they?
Re:The better method?
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God's Debris
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· Score: 1
There is a balance and stability between organization and anarchy that we must play. Just as we can not be truely anarchist, we can not be truely organized, instead we must make do with being somewhere inbetween, there is an allowable points in a spectrum between organized (communist) and chaotic (anarchist) which are acceptible for our existence, if we go to any of the extremes we run the risk of destruction of ourselfs, our existence. It is like any other spectrum, like being between hot and cold, our survival is better at warm temperatures then cold or hot. Same with water and food, to much food or not enough food are unhealthy situations, to much water you drown, not enough water you dehydrate. There is a balance and an equilibrium. Even at existence of technology, neither organization and anarchy will get stronger or weaker, it will balance out and maybe change roles. For example the internet allows us to be organized, but at the same time technology allows us more independence from each other and more dependence on the internet which can be used to organize us virtually. The balance between organization and chaos is still there, its just spinning like yin and yang.
Good and evil are two sides of the same coin, just as rich and poor are two sides of the same coin. By that I mean that their existences are dependant upon each others oposites, if something does not have an oposite it does not exist, if there is no individual there is no group, if there is no group there is no individual. lets take the universe for example, lets say there is 2 things, things that exist and things that dont exist. Existence and nonexistence or 2 sides of the same coin, if nothing existed who would point out nonexistence? Okay now lets take it a step further, lets say out of the things that exist, there is several seperate blobs of existence that form a group, if there was only 1 blob there would be no group, if there is no group how can the blob understand what being an individual means, that is in the blobs dictionary there is no word group, or many, and no word individual or single, those concepts would not exist if there is nothing to contrast them to, no oposite, as there is no reason for them to exist. If there is no Yin there is no Yang. You can't be right if there was no such thing as wrong, something can not be good if something else is not evil.
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Re:as far as religion goes (from a Christian)
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God's Debris
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· Score: 1
As is said on at http://www.deism.com/deism_vs.htm
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"Something more therefore is necessary than mere cry and wholesale assertion, and that something is TRUTH; and as inquiry is the road to truth, he that is opposed to inquiry is not a friend to truth."
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"The God of truth is not the God of fable; when, therefore, any book is introduced into the world as the Word of God, and made a groundwork for religion, it ought to be scrutinized more than other books to see if it bear evidence of being what it is called. Our reverence to God demands that we do this, lest we ascribe to God what is not His, and our duty to ourselves demands it lest we take fable for fact, and rest our hope of salvation on a false foundation."
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Re:Scott Adams and E-Publishing
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God's Debris
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· Score: 1
I think Scott Adams is well set (doing what he has to do to make a buck) in this day in age, and quite frankly like you said and I agree with, good alternatives just are not available for him to do it diffrently.
I'm interested in his book, but I will avoid the ebook version and go for the hardback. That is more to do with ethical reasons, considering that a programmer was thrown in jail for publishing software, I'm sure Scott Adams would not like the idea of being thrown in jail for publishing a book.
One of the big hurdles to alternatives (non-donation based alternatives), unfortunetly are the IP laws themselves. Number 1 reason its a hurdle is that no one will be motivated to change their ways, even if their ways are becoming out dated and hurting everyone else, Second reason its a hurdle is that currently selling copys of copyright information is illegal and seen as criminal and it makes it harder for people to understand the under a diffrent system they would not be criminals but actually a big part of the market force. The third reason its a hurdle is the technology itself, if someone developes a network like gnutella where people can buy and sell information to and from each other that network would definetly be attacked by the cartels of the media world (RIAA MPAA, etc), and their reasoning will not be that people are giving away the media for free, but that people are making money off of it, even if that network was a legitimate way for smaller artists authors and musicians to make money by selling their work on this network with out having to go to a major publisher/distributor in order to do this, and on top of that gain a reputation and increase their worth in this network (increase the demand for your work and increase the price people will pay for it).
But dont confuse me with the people who think information should be free, I think *people* should be free. I should be free to buy Scott Adams book, and sell as many copies as I can. If the book sells well, the next book Scott Adam is to create and release, I will pay based upon how well his last book sold and what people thought of it, if I dont do this I will end up being among the last to get the book because the system is based upon distribution, those that pay the *most* are among the *first* to recieve the book from Scott Adams server himself, and those that want to pay the least (or not at all) have to wait a long time to get the book. This makes it much like the stock market, where I invest my money in someones book, and then try to sell as many copys at a good price as I can to other people to make a profit, except I am not just doing this for Scott Adams book, I am also doing this for other authors music, videos, games, software, etc, so there is a constant flow of information and its all paid for rather then given away for free, why give something away for free when you can make money transfering it to other people who want it. All of this controled through software and people, in an information market, deciding whether an author is a risk or if they are undervalued, and putting money down to make money off the next great hit.
While I believe you are paranoid, I think it more likely to turn into another hiroshima if we keep going the direction we are going. We are literarly provoking not just terrorists, but other anti-united-states sentiment. Normaly when a foriegn country/government gets nuclear weapons they in part become *actually* sovereign, that is other nations are less likely to fight with them, and if they do they will never escalate to a point where either side decides to use nuclear arsenal. This is why our government was freakishly trying to prevent the USSR China etc from having nukes, it makes the US less powerful, it means the US has less clout and must deal with others in order to get things done, rather then be able to threaten others with nuclear weapons. But the more our government over reacts at the presence of more and more nations getting nuclear weapons (we now have India, Pakistan, Israel, Iran, China, etc) either creating their own or buying them on the black market (russia is missing several of them), and the more it starts attacking (Iraq, Afganistan, etc) or promotes attacks of other countries (Israel) the higher the chances we will see a hiroshima or another vietnam.
Right now its not to bad, but it could easily have a turn for the worst, and the longer this "war" takes, the more likely it will turn bad.
But again, all the propoganda on the TV tries to suggest this is about freedom, but at the same time they are chipping away at OUR freedom and pointing fingers at the terrorists while they do it. This is opertunism at the highest levels. After the WTC attack, we saw people looting stores, we heard about people scamming donations, and even people increasing the prices on flags, all pure opertunism, and politicians are doing the same thing, taking this opertunity to destroy what little balance in power we had. They do the greatest dishonor to the dead then any one else, they use the dead as an excuse to take away the balance of power that kept our country in favor of freedom.
I have to agree with MacDaffy, that just does not respect the intentions of the first amendment. It may say "Congress", but that is a standard of freedom that should be respected and applied to other government facilities. It just makes sense that you dont want the government to use your tax money to endorse/respect an establishment of religion over other religions and beliefs. Would you as a christian be happy if some teacher started teaching budhism to your child in their class even though the class is not about religion at all, even though the first amendment only says "*Congress* shall make no *law*"? I dont think so. The problem is that at young ages children and teenagers tend to be more impressionable (not all of them are like this of course), and parents dont want some one to poison their minds with strange ideas. As for evolution, evolution is fact (that is that animals and plants evolve, like in insects that become immune to insectecides is proven), its the theory of evolution (abiogenesis) which is a *theory* and is presented as a *theory* not as fact, religion does not present itself as *theories* of creation they present themselves as *facts* of creation a diffrent thing all together. I would think it possible to have a class on general religion and philosophy, although most schools would probably not find it productive as they find english math and science as more important, but it would be interesting if they did.
For some reason this does not sound right (not what you are saying but what the FAQ says)... from the FAQ they mention that the Free Edition is licensed under both the GPL and QPL.
There may be a way to do this if your application during developement was licensed as GPL (assuming you are not afraid of one of your programmers taking the code and running with it), and then later versions change your license (remember you are in control of your own license) and switch to professional. They make the license a dual license in order to be compatible with more licenses like GPL, so making your developement version GPL may negate those parts of their license (assuming the restictions are in the free version license and not the professional). I dont see how they can lock your code to always be open source reguardless if you use their library or not, especially if you are the copyright holder of your own code (I have never heard of a copyright which takes away the rights of a copyright holder for every version of their own software). But even as far as I know the GPL does not apply to the copyright holder it applys to those who uses the copyright holders GPLed work, that is a copyright holder can change the license of their code from GPL to BSD or some proprietary license. GPL for example only applies if you use a GPL library, if you stop using a GPL library then it does not apply to your code anymore (this is how a lot of conflict ends when a commericial program tries to use GPL code, they either remove the code or GPL their software). The only way I can see this scheme of theres as working is if the profession versions license prohibits compilation with source code developed with the free version, that is if you develope with their free one and decide to switch to professional the professional license prohibits this, but you can still stop using the free version and move to an alternate library like GTK+ and then sell the software with no restrictions.
Or you can just be decietfull and this will work if you are a small enough developer. Develope with the free version anyway, see if you like it (evalute it), then if you like how it feels buy the full version, wait a while and refine and intergrate your code with the new professional version, work out some bugs and then finaly sell it as a product. I find it kind of strange though how they are sort of punishing commerical X11 developers by not having an evaluation version, or maybe they are just trying to gain more windows developers then unix developers. Troll Tech is definetly all around a strange company.
But I agree this probably is too risky to do and IAANAL, so most X11 developers are better off with GTK+, plus from a programming perspective I prefer GTK+ over Qt, they are 2 diffrent ways to program, one is constructive OOP, and the other is self-constructing OOP. That is one you inherit the widgets you wish to create, and the other is you put the widgets together like a construction set (my preference).
Oh well enough ranting.
Re:as far as religion goes (from a Christian)
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God's Debris
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· Score: 1
I agree with many parts of what you say.. but..
> It is true that many use religion, philosphy, money, relationships, sex, and other 'things' (including drugs, porn, video games, food, excercise, etc) in order to not have to deal and cope with life, but that no more makes them automatically 'wrong' than justification make it right.
Dont they do these things *to help* them deal and cope with life? Admittedly many of those things you mention in particular are not healthy (or good) ways of coping with problems in someones life, but many people use them to help them get by or make themselves feel better, or at least get distracted, which can or can not be helpful to someones physical body but more so to what makes their mind think its okay. But this is just language, and I hope you understand the difference in context, that there is good and bad ways of dealing and coping with life.
> The bible teaches us to question our own reality and our beliefs, otherwise we will never really have faith.
Admittedly I have not read the whole bible, but the amounts that I did read, and from the opinions of those who claim to live by it, say that you should not question the bible. That the bible is the word of God on faith not proof or evidence, and if you have doubts about the bible being the word of God you go to hell (a number of them like to tell people to go to hell and mean it). Many people I talk to and get into a discussion with rather quote phrases from the bible, like they are fighting off the devil who is asking them question, that is they try to demonize those who question their belief, and state that the bible says that satan questioned God and that is why Eve ate the apple, etc. They say they can not get me to believe only the holy ghost can do it, and that God talks to them through the scriptures, that is they say they actually hear God from the bible.
Anyway, they say seeking the tree of knowledge of good and evil is wrong.
My own beliefs, are more deist and agnostic. I tend to believe that God controls the universe as someone would control their own mind (omnipresent) as the universe is part of Gods mind, but not control the universe to anyones favor (doesnt control the universe in the favor of christians as many christians believe), that is an unbiased God. I believe in a God that is more of a scientist, one that is seeking knowledge as we seek knowledge, this also gives reason to why God created us (Christianity believes God created us because God needs us for fellowship, a good that needs is not one that is not perfect as they also believe God is perfect, a contradiction). One that is smarter and more knowledgable then us, but not omnipotent, does not have all knowledge, for anything that has all knowledge does not exist anymore. For if man kind were to recieve all knowledge there would be no more reason for man kind to exist, no curiousities no force to drive us to survive and learn, because anything we would want we could create with the knowledge, so no more needs or wants. I think God is closer to non-existence, because to have more knowledge gives us less and less reason to exist.
Okay so, under what I believe (which I do not hold to be the only possibility), God created us to learn about Gods own past, for God to interfer unequally/unfairly in the universe would result in contamination of an experiment. Lets just say for example that man kind advances so much but we are unable to examine the limits of our universe, we can only examine so small, and so large, the rest of our knowledge is left up to speculation and measurements. The only way to refine our knowledge is to build a super computer of sorts, that is to run a simulation of parallel universes using probability, the reason there are parallel universes, is like any inteligence (artificial or otherwise) we must use probability in order to figure out what is the most likely situation, so this God computer is trying to find out which kind of universe is most likely to have created itself, so it will run a simulation of simultanious/parallel universe at the same time and then as the simulation progresses removes universes that fail the experiment.
Well you might be wonder what happens when this God computer gets to the point where the universes it simulates recreates itself, well it is going to keep on going, it is going to refine its knowledge and get its knowledge to be more accurate, and the future from there is that more and more universes will create more universes, sort of like recursive universes, sort of like GNU is Not Unix is Not Unix is Not Unix........ a recursive universe, sort of an infinite loop, at that point the machine is closer to nonexistent as it has less and less reason to exist.
Hear Scott Adam mention that gravity is a result of probability has sparked my interest deeply, as I said that is a sign that the universe itself may be in a mind/brain of sorts, that the universe is an intelegence trying to figure itself out.
Even though the Department of Justice claims to protect inmates' Sixth Amendment right to assistance of counsel in this new regulation by establishing a "firewall" within the department to prevent prosecutors from getting their hands on privileged information, Murphy questioned the department's trustworthiness. She pointed out that the Department of Justice just successfully petitioned Congress to remove the firewall between intelligence and criminal investigations, a key check on law enforcement power.
Ironically, the new regulations come at the same time as the Administration is seeking to repeal the McDade-Murtha Law, a measure that was passed in 1996 in response to questions of professional misconduct by government attorneys. Its repeal would allow federal prosecutors to follow a far more lax set of ethical standards than defense attorneys.
> This is not "let's completely throw away client-attorney privilege", it's "let's recognize that sometimes national security takes precedence". You still may disagree with this, but at least fight the correct target.
Actually what is there to fight is that what is to prevent favoritism/back scratching type of corruption of this? What is to prevent a prosecutor doing a favor for someone, and then asking for a favor in return to make sure that the defendants fit that 1%. I guess my concerns are over the details not the generality that you describe, its easy to say things in general, but there is diffrent specific ways to come about the same general results, they could even have a lottery where 1/10th of a 1% of the inmates could be the lucky winner, or it could be that a particular prosecutor gets to pick and choose. I mean is it going to be a debate between lawyers and a judge about whether to grant an attorny privacy with their client, or what?
Whats to prevent the prosecutors from getting insight into how the defense plans its case, and the weaknesses in their case? What is to make sure that if such insight is *taken* that it will not be abused to over prosecute people, minorities, or those that the government or those that have this power dont particularly like?
I sort of see what you mean, but I think you may be concerned about the wrong thing. The GPL covers distribution mostly, and does not force you to release internally developed source code that is GPLed, but (as I understand the GPL) I dont think you can have an NDA that prevents employed or contracted programmers from distributing the source code that is GPL. So even if you plan to release it commercially, those you hire to develope the source code can take the code and distribute it for free (or charge for it) on the internet (I may be wrong). At least if the free edition of QT works like GPL, then what can an employer do to prevent the distribution of the source code of a commercial project. So I can see where there is legitimate concern reguarding the license of the free version, what they need to do is have a seperate license or triple license for an evaluation version of their product for commercial businesses to try out their product. That is assuming they are really interested in commercial developers and are not more interested in getting commercial developers to go open source.
This is kind of deceptive, I passed reading the link and took your word for it because I was busy and I thought because you actually linked to something that it was probably true, and when I came back and finaly read it, RMS is no where in there, there is not even real indication that he has even read it, or if it even bothers him enough to want to go to the trouble of being elected to the board.
And I am not sure how exactly the hall of shame fits in this either, except show that there are a number of commercial GNOME (or are they GTK+) software out there.
If he was so dead set against commercial software he would have removed the LGPL license all together rather then support it at the FSF. The LGPL is what allows closed source developers to use libraries like GTK+.
For some reason hearing the word "lover" and "RMS" sounds strange. I would think "girl friend" "wife" or something like that would sound right, but "lover" makes him sound like some kind of suave romancer or something. But oh well I'm not really surprised (assuming an anonymous coward actually tells the truth), even Albert Einstein had trouble with relationships. Not that RMS is an Eistein:p, but that most people deeply into their art hobbies or professions have trouble in relationships.
I believe I get both of your points, which makes sense if you look at it this way. The previous poster seems more concerned about the price, not so much about whether they have to pay for it or not as you seem to think. But at the same time your comments about them developing it as open source still stand, and if the price is truly really high there are 2 possible reasons why : 1) less commercial proprietary customer base (results in increase in price, but this is less likely the reason) 2) like government, manipulate the population through taxation, and so they manipulate the commercial proprietiary software developers to go open source rather then proprietary. I think 2 is more likely seeing as they are advocates of open source, and you can still sell software (with out license fee) if you are open source.
Either way it seems that the previous poster is reasonably upset as that appears to be the intention of the price, to get them to release their work as open source rather then proprietary, and it seems aparent that they dont like it.
I could be mistaken on the pricing scheme, as I'm basing it on that posters comments, but it does seem steep, I might think diffrently if I understood it more (what that 2k is for).
> You can create an LGPL library on top of a GPL library.
Assuming I understand what you mean by "on top of", are you sure about that? Isnt that a way for proprietary applications to defeat the GPL? Like having an LGPL library act as a buffer between a proprietary application and a GPL library? Maybe I am mistaken about that.
I dont know, I saw a lot of rational arguements reguarding RMSs positions about the Qt license which was resolved by Troll Tech adding a clause for special programs that dont have compatible licenses with GPL. Zealots as defined in any dictionary is usually indicative by irrational arguements, the incompatibility of the licenses was not that small of an issue, especially as it applies to law and the way lawyers work, they use what ever they can have for an advantage to weaken the application of a license. The problem is that some many applications are affected by the legal standing of the GPL and LGPL licenses so it is by far not a small issue. I dont recall any irrational arguements during those times, anything that would indicate to me that someone was a zealot, more so then concerned about their own software license legal standing. I guess its a matter of point of view, there is probably some people out there talking about "KDE zealots" or something down those lines, although I dont recall seeing any of those either... hmmm...
Slashdot Mirror
> A) This is an evaluation. What the hell are you doing developing your primary application on an evaluation product?
. ht ml#Q9
I'm not the one developing it, this is what I heard and was looking up based on the last discussion on slashdot about the Qt license. But I am assuming they want to evaluate Qt in their developement project, to see if they want to stick with Qt, they allow windows developers this evaluation so its not a question of WHY they want it.
> B) It doesn't matter what their FAQ says, it matters what the license says. You may develop any software with the Qt/Free edition so long as you don't distribute it. Remember, your application isn't proprietary UNTIL you distribute it.
As I said previously, the issue is more then likely not to do with the Qt/Free edition license, it is more likely the license of the Qt/Professional edition that is limited by not allowing code developed from using the Qt/Free addition. Read the FAQ...
http://www.trolltech.com/developer/faqs/general
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Can we use the Free Edition while developing our non-free application and then purchase commercial licenses when we start to sell it?
No. The Free Edition license applies to the development phase - anything developed without Professional or Enterprise Edition licenses must be released as free/open source software.
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Notice it says anything developed without Professional or Enterprise Edition licenses must be released as free/open source software.
If a company is willing to take the risk this is not a problem, but not many small commerical proprietary developers are less likely to take that risk. If this is wrong or a mistake they should change their FAQ, if not they are scaring away developers.
> You are talking about selling bandwidth, not software. If bandwidth was ever limited to the extent that you suggest, all of the 'tolls' would be going back to the ISPs, not the users.
No I am not (please dont tell me what I am talking about, I'm saying it so I know what I am talking about). And its not limited to bandwidth, think about it. If you had software that was worth thousands of dollars and there was no laws (copyright or otherwise) preventing you from reselling to other people, are you going to give it away for free?
Not competely fair, windows proprietary developers get a 30 day evalutation before they decide to buy. Unix proprietary developers have to fork out $2k or be open source, in the FAQ on their site it even states that (Unix) proprietary developers can not use the Qt/Free edition to develope their products and then switch to Qt/Professional (they state the license as applying to the developement process).
I think technically speaking, it should be proprietary/closed source commercial software, not just commercial software. Saying it your way is kind of to general and would confuse someone to think that RMS is anti-capitalism or something (he is actually anti-communism in many respects).
There is actually some irony in this though for KDE, the Qt license as I have read complaints about, doesnt like closed source commerical unix developers as much because there is no way for someone to evaluate Qt with out commiting their code to open source or forking out the $2k for the professional version, that is strictly on the Unix side, it seems on the windows side they want developers to jump on the Qt bandwagon (makes for more portable code to unix) so they provide a 30 day evaluation API. So They seem a bit more against Unix commercial applications. I got into a discussion about this on slashdot and the Faq on the trolltech website shows this. This will have an impact on unix developers who want to use Qt, but not GTK+, for their closed commerical applications, which ironicly GTK+ is more friendly to.
> Internet distribution essentially eliminates the 'cost' of distribution. When was the last time someone bought emacs?
But at the same time if the infrastructure were there on the internet for distributing for money, its there for distributing for free, (adding money to the infrastructure has its own issues to resolve before hand), then you could see a lot more people paying to download files, especially if people can buy a file and resell it at lower prices to other people (why give it away when you can sell it).
I dont entirely disagree with you, but I think you are just stating it wrong, it just sounds to funky that way. You can sell open source software PERIOD. Nothing prevents that from happening of course, but like you said you suggested but didnt say directly, you wont sell as many as some of your customers can give it away for free *or sell it* themselves. But you know what you do in that situation and no one has tried it yet, is charge a really high price for it, then the first one to buy it from you can then sell it at lower prices to several other people, and those people in turn sell to others, eventually you get down to the lower level where some people are paying and some are not. But think about it if you pay a lot of money for something are you going to give it away for free, or try to make some of your money back? After that though, the project will pretty much have alife of its own, someone else will create alternate products, but they will not be able to make as much money unless they make very large changes that someone would be willing to fork out the cache. The problem with this one right now, is that there is no infrastructure. Newer versions will not put out as much money, and rightly so because newer versions typically dont have huge changes to them that are benefitial to everyone. The other way money comes about, is contract work, you created it, you know the technically details of your program and/or you are in charge of the project, people who want to customize your project to their needs, will want to hire your expertise, this way has its own problems as well as it can be contract work, but either way you have made your self value increase, while you may not make a$$-raping profits, you have made yourself valuable in other ways.
LOL, sarcasm aside though, I cant believe someone would be so technically illiterate to say "It gives copyright owners permission to use encryption to block the duplication of copyright-protected works.", dont they realize that encryption does not prevent anyone from duplicating the encrypted data? How can they possibly lack this knowledge, its not a hard concept at all?! Do they think the rest of the world is stupid, or is it that their target audience is the stupid, we should all be embarrased about how illiterate our governments are about technology, they can not be that so detached from it can they?
There is a balance and stability between organization and anarchy that we must play. Just as we can not be truely anarchist, we can not be truely organized, instead we must make do with being somewhere inbetween, there is an allowable points in a spectrum between organized (communist) and chaotic (anarchist) which are acceptible for our existence, if we go to any of the extremes we run the risk of destruction of ourselfs, our existence. It is like any other spectrum, like being between hot and cold, our survival is better at warm temperatures then cold or hot. Same with water and food, to much food or not enough food are unhealthy situations, to much water you drown, not enough water you dehydrate. There is a balance and an equilibrium. Even at existence of technology, neither organization and anarchy will get stronger or weaker, it will balance out and maybe change roles. For example the internet allows us to be organized, but at the same time technology allows us more independence from each other and more dependence on the internet which can be used to organize us virtually. The balance between organization and chaos is still there, its just spinning like yin and yang.
Good and evil are two sides of the same coin, just as rich and poor are two sides of the same coin. By that I mean that their existences are dependant upon each others oposites, if something does not have an oposite it does not exist, if there is no individual there is no group, if there is no group there is no individual. lets take the universe for example, lets say there is 2 things, things that exist and things that dont exist. Existence and nonexistence or 2 sides of the same coin, if nothing existed who would point out nonexistence? Okay now lets take it a step further, lets say out of the things that exist, there is several seperate blobs of existence that form a group, if there was only 1 blob there would be no group, if there is no group how can the blob understand what being an individual means, that is in the blobs dictionary there is no word group, or many, and no word individual or single, those concepts would not exist if there is nothing to contrast them to, no oposite, as there is no reason for them to exist. If there is no Yin there is no Yang. You can't be right if there was no such thing as wrong, something can not be good if something else is not evil.
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As is said on at http://www.deism.com/deism_vs.htm
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"Something more therefore is necessary than mere cry and wholesale assertion, and that something is TRUTH; and as inquiry is the road to truth, he that is opposed to inquiry is not a friend to truth."
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"The God of truth is not the God of fable; when, therefore, any book is introduced into the world as the Word of God, and made a groundwork for religion, it ought to be scrutinized more than other books to see if it bear evidence of being what it is called. Our reverence to God demands that we do this, lest we ascribe to God what is not His, and our duty to ourselves demands it lest we take fable for fact, and rest our hope of salvation on a false foundation."
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I think Scott Adams is well set (doing what he has to do to make a buck) in this day in age, and quite frankly like you said and I agree with, good alternatives just are not available for him to do it diffrently.
I'm interested in his book, but I will avoid the ebook version and go for the hardback. That is more to do with ethical reasons, considering that a programmer was thrown in jail for publishing software, I'm sure Scott Adams would not like the idea of being thrown in jail for publishing a book.
One of the big hurdles to alternatives (non-donation based alternatives), unfortunetly are the IP laws themselves. Number 1 reason its a hurdle is that no one will be motivated to change their ways, even if their ways are becoming out dated and hurting everyone else, Second reason its a hurdle is that currently selling copys of copyright information is illegal and seen as criminal and it makes it harder for people to understand the under a diffrent system they would not be criminals but actually a big part of the market force. The third reason its a hurdle is the technology itself, if someone developes a network like gnutella where people can buy and sell information to and from each other that network would definetly be attacked by the cartels of the media world (RIAA MPAA, etc), and their reasoning will not be that people are giving away the media for free, but that people are making money off of it, even if that network was a legitimate way for smaller artists authors and musicians to make money by selling their work on this network with out having to go to a major publisher/distributor in order to do this, and on top of that gain a reputation and increase their worth in this network (increase the demand for your work and increase the price people will pay for it).
But dont confuse me with the people who think information should be free, I think *people* should be free. I should be free to buy Scott Adams book, and sell as many copies as I can. If the book sells well, the next book Scott Adam is to create and release, I will pay based upon how well his last book sold and what people thought of it, if I dont do this I will end up being among the last to get the book because the system is based upon distribution, those that pay the *most* are among the *first* to recieve the book from Scott Adams server himself, and those that want to pay the least (or not at all) have to wait a long time to get the book. This makes it much like the stock market, where I invest my money in someones book, and then try to sell as many copys at a good price as I can to other people to make a profit, except I am not just doing this for Scott Adams book, I am also doing this for other authors music, videos, games, software, etc, so there is a constant flow of information and its all paid for rather then given away for free, why give something away for free when you can make money transfering it to other people who want it. All of this controled through software and people, in an information market, deciding whether an author is a risk or if they are undervalued, and putting money down to make money off the next great hit.
> The constitution is not worth a damn if our freedom and liberty is taken away by external enemies. Personally, I like my freedom and liberty.
That doesnt work, your enemies simply attack you from the inside rather then the outside.
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While I believe you are paranoid, I think it more likely to turn into another hiroshima if we keep going the direction we are going. We are literarly provoking not just terrorists, but other anti-united-states sentiment. Normaly when a foriegn country/government gets nuclear weapons they in part become *actually* sovereign, that is other nations are less likely to fight with them, and if they do they will never escalate to a point where either side decides to use nuclear arsenal. This is why our government was freakishly trying to prevent the USSR China etc from having nukes, it makes the US less powerful, it means the US has less clout and must deal with others in order to get things done, rather then be able to threaten others with nuclear weapons. But the more our government over reacts at the presence of more and more nations getting nuclear weapons (we now have India, Pakistan, Israel, Iran, China, etc) either creating their own or buying them on the black market (russia is missing several of them), and the more it starts attacking (Iraq, Afganistan, etc) or promotes attacks of other countries (Israel) the higher the chances we will see a hiroshima or another vietnam.
Right now its not to bad, but it could easily have a turn for the worst, and the longer this "war" takes, the more likely it will turn bad.
But again, all the propoganda on the TV tries to suggest this is about freedom, but at the same time they are chipping away at OUR freedom and pointing fingers at the terrorists while they do it. This is opertunism at the highest levels. After the WTC attack, we saw people looting stores, we heard about people scamming donations, and even people increasing the prices on flags, all pure opertunism, and politicians are doing the same thing, taking this opertunity to destroy what little balance in power we had. They do the greatest dishonor to the dead then any one else, they use the dead as an excuse to take away the balance of power that kept our country in favor of freedom.
I have to agree with MacDaffy, that just does not respect the intentions of the first amendment. It may say "Congress", but that is a standard of freedom that should be respected and applied to other government facilities. It just makes sense that you dont want the government to use your tax money to endorse/respect an establishment of religion over other religions and beliefs. Would you as a christian be happy if some teacher started teaching budhism to your child in their class even though the class is not about religion at all, even though the first amendment only says "*Congress* shall make no *law*"? I dont think so. The problem is that at young ages children and teenagers tend to be more impressionable (not all of them are like this of course), and parents dont want some one to poison their minds with strange ideas. As for evolution, evolution is fact (that is that animals and plants evolve, like in insects that become immune to insectecides is proven), its the theory of evolution (abiogenesis) which is a *theory* and is presented as a *theory* not as fact, religion does not present itself as *theories* of creation they present themselves as *facts* of creation a diffrent thing all together. I would think it possible to have a class on general religion and philosophy, although most schools would probably not find it productive as they find english math and science as more important, but it would be interesting if they did.
For some reason this does not sound right (not what you are saying but what the FAQ says)... from the FAQ they mention that the Free Edition is licensed under both the GPL and QPL.
There may be a way to do this if your application during developement was licensed as GPL (assuming you are not afraid of one of your programmers taking the code and running with it), and then later versions change your license (remember you are in control of your own license) and switch to professional. They make the license a dual license in order to be compatible with more licenses like GPL, so making your developement version GPL may negate those parts of their license (assuming the restictions are in the free version license and not the professional). I dont see how they can lock your code to always be open source reguardless if you use their library or not, especially if you are the copyright holder of your own code (I have never heard of a copyright which takes away the rights of a copyright holder for every version of their own software). But even as far as I know the GPL does not apply to the copyright holder it applys to those who uses the copyright holders GPLed work, that is a copyright holder can change the license of their code from GPL to BSD or some proprietary license. GPL for example only applies if you use a GPL library, if you stop using a GPL library then it does not apply to your code anymore (this is how a lot of conflict ends when a commericial program tries to use GPL code, they either remove the code or GPL their software). The only way I can see this scheme of theres as working is if the profession versions license prohibits compilation with source code developed with the free version, that is if you develope with their free one and decide to switch to professional the professional license prohibits this, but you can still stop using the free version and move to an alternate library like GTK+ and then sell the software with no restrictions.
Or you can just be decietfull and this will work if you are a small enough developer. Develope with the free version anyway, see if you like it (evalute it), then if you like how it feels buy the full version, wait a while and refine and intergrate your code with the new professional version, work out some bugs and then finaly sell it as a product. I find it kind of strange though how they are sort of punishing commerical X11 developers by not having an evaluation version, or maybe they are just trying to gain more windows developers then unix developers. Troll Tech is definetly all around a strange company.
But I agree this probably is too risky to do and IAANAL, so most X11 developers are better off with GTK+, plus from a programming perspective I prefer GTK+ over Qt, they are 2 diffrent ways to program, one is constructive OOP, and the other is self-constructing OOP. That is one you inherit the widgets you wish to create, and the other is you put the widgets together like a construction set (my preference).
Oh well enough ranting.
I agree with many parts of what you say.. but..
> It is true that many use religion, philosphy, money, relationships, sex, and other 'things' (including drugs, porn, video games, food, excercise, etc) in order to not have to deal and cope with life, but that no more makes them automatically 'wrong' than justification make it right.
Dont they do these things *to help* them deal and cope with life? Admittedly many of those things you mention in particular are not healthy (or good) ways of coping with problems in someones life, but many people use them to help them get by or make themselves feel better, or at least get distracted, which can or can not be helpful to someones physical body but more so to what makes their mind think its okay. But this is just language, and I hope you understand the difference in context, that there is good and bad ways of dealing and coping with life.
> The bible teaches us to question our own reality and our beliefs, otherwise we will never really have faith.
Admittedly I have not read the whole bible, but the amounts that I did read, and from the opinions of those who claim to live by it, say that you should not question the bible. That the bible is the word of God on faith not proof or evidence, and if you have doubts about the bible being the word of God you go to hell (a number of them like to tell people to go to hell and mean it). Many people I talk to and get into a discussion with rather quote phrases from the bible, like they are fighting off the devil who is asking them question, that is they try to demonize those who question their belief, and state that the bible says that satan questioned God and that is why Eve ate the apple, etc. They say they can not get me to believe only the holy ghost can do it, and that God talks to them through the scriptures, that is they say they actually hear God from the bible.
Anyway, they say seeking the tree of knowledge of good and evil is wrong.
My own beliefs, are more deist and agnostic. I tend to believe that God controls the universe as someone would control their own mind (omnipresent) as the universe is part of Gods mind, but not control the universe to anyones favor (doesnt control the universe in the favor of christians as many christians believe), that is an unbiased God. I believe in a God that is more of a scientist, one that is seeking knowledge as we seek knowledge, this also gives reason to why God created us (Christianity believes God created us because God needs us for fellowship, a good that needs is not one that is not perfect as they also believe God is perfect, a contradiction). One that is smarter and more knowledgable then us, but not omnipotent, does not have all knowledge, for anything that has all knowledge does not exist anymore. For if man kind were to recieve all knowledge there would be no more reason for man kind to exist, no curiousities no force to drive us to survive and learn, because anything we would want we could create with the knowledge, so no more needs or wants. I think God is closer to non-existence, because to have more knowledge gives us less and less reason to exist.
Okay so, under what I believe (which I do not hold to be the only possibility), God created us to learn about Gods own past, for God to interfer unequally/unfairly in the universe would result in contamination of an experiment. Lets just say for example that man kind advances so much but we are unable to examine the limits of our universe, we can only examine so small, and so large, the rest of our knowledge is left up to speculation and measurements. The only way to refine our knowledge is to build a super computer of sorts, that is to run a simulation of parallel universes using probability, the reason there are parallel universes, is like any inteligence (artificial or otherwise) we must use probability in order to figure out what is the most likely situation, so this God computer is trying to find out which kind of universe is most likely to have created itself, so it will run a simulation of simultanious/parallel universe at the same time and then as the simulation progresses removes universes that fail the experiment.
Well you might be wonder what happens when this God computer gets to the point where the universes it simulates recreates itself, well it is going to keep on going, it is going to refine its knowledge and get its knowledge to be more accurate, and the future from there is that more and more universes will create more universes, sort of like recursive universes, sort of like GNU is Not Unix is Not Unix is Not Unix........ a recursive universe, sort of an infinite loop, at that point the machine is closer to nonexistent as it has less and less reason to exist.
Hear Scott Adam mention that gravity is a result of probability has sparked my interest deeply, as I said that is a sign that the universe itself may be in a mind/brain of sorts, that the universe is an intelegence trying to figure itself out.
Yeah but the ACLU article states...
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Even though the Department of Justice claims to protect inmates' Sixth Amendment right to assistance of counsel in this new regulation by establishing a "firewall" within the department to prevent prosecutors from getting their hands on privileged information, Murphy questioned the department's trustworthiness. She pointed out that the Department of Justice just successfully petitioned Congress to remove the firewall between intelligence and criminal investigations, a key check on law enforcement power.
Ironically, the new regulations come at the same time as the Administration is seeking to repeal the McDade-Murtha Law, a measure that was passed in 1996 in response to questions of professional misconduct by government attorneys. Its repeal would allow federal prosecutors to follow a far more lax set of ethical standards than defense attorneys.
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As has been said, who will watch the watcher?
> This is not "let's completely throw away client-attorney privilege", it's "let's recognize that sometimes national security takes precedence". You still may disagree with this, but at least fight the correct target.
Actually what is there to fight is that what is to prevent favoritism/back scratching type of corruption of this? What is to prevent a prosecutor doing a favor for someone, and then asking for a favor in return to make sure that the defendants fit that 1%. I guess my concerns are over the details not the generality that you describe, its easy to say things in general, but there is diffrent specific ways to come about the same general results, they could even have a lottery where 1/10th of a 1% of the inmates could be the lucky winner, or it could be that a particular prosecutor gets to pick and choose. I mean is it going to be a debate between lawyers and a judge about whether to grant an attorny privacy with their client, or what?
Whats to prevent the prosecutors from getting insight into how the defense plans its case, and the weaknesses in their case? What is to make sure that if such insight is *taken* that it will not be abused to over prosecute people, minorities, or those that the government or those that have this power dont particularly like?
I sort of see what you mean, but I think you may be concerned about the wrong thing. The GPL covers distribution mostly, and does not force you to release internally developed source code that is GPLed, but (as I understand the GPL) I dont think you can have an NDA that prevents employed or contracted programmers from distributing the source code that is GPL. So even if you plan to release it commercially, those you hire to develope the source code can take the code and distribute it for free (or charge for it) on the internet (I may be wrong). At least if the free edition of QT works like GPL, then what can an employer do to prevent the distribution of the source code of a commercial project. So I can see where there is legitimate concern reguarding the license of the free version, what they need to do is have a seperate license or triple license for an evaluation version of their product for commercial businesses to try out their product. That is assuming they are really interested in commercial developers and are not more interested in getting commercial developers to go open source.
This is kind of deceptive, I passed reading the link and took your word for it because I was busy and I thought because you actually linked to something that it was probably true, and when I came back and finaly read it, RMS is no where in there, there is not even real indication that he has even read it, or if it even bothers him enough to want to go to the trouble of being elected to the board.
And I am not sure how exactly the hall of shame fits in this either, except show that there are a number of commercial GNOME (or are they GTK+) software out there.
If he was so dead set against commercial software he would have removed the LGPL license all together rather then support it at the FSF. The LGPL is what allows closed source developers to use libraries like GTK+.
For some reason hearing the word "lover" and "RMS" sounds strange. I would think "girl friend" "wife" or something like that would sound right, but "lover" makes him sound like some kind of suave romancer or something. But oh well I'm not really surprised (assuming an anonymous coward actually tells the truth), even Albert Einstein had trouble with relationships. Not that RMS is an Eistein :p, but that most people deeply into their art hobbies or professions have trouble in relationships.
I believe I get both of your points, which makes sense if you look at it this way. The previous poster seems more concerned about the price, not so much about whether they have to pay for it or not as you seem to think. But at the same time your comments about them developing it as open source still stand, and if the price is truly really high there are 2 possible reasons why : 1) less commercial proprietary customer base (results in increase in price, but this is less likely the reason) 2) like government, manipulate the population through taxation, and so they manipulate the commercial proprietiary software developers to go open source rather then proprietary. I think 2 is more likely seeing as they are advocates of open source, and you can still sell software (with out license fee) if you are open source.
Either way it seems that the previous poster is reasonably upset as that appears to be the intention of the price, to get them to release their work as open source rather then proprietary, and it seems aparent that they dont like it.
I could be mistaken on the pricing scheme, as I'm basing it on that posters comments, but it does seem steep, I might think diffrently if I understood it more (what that 2k is for).
Yup they need to, I would have never known (I read it 3 times and not once did I think about it) if you hadn't responded.
And that makes sense why the Linux distros are not in violation.
> You can create an LGPL library on top of a GPL library.
Assuming I understand what you mean by "on top of", are you sure about that? Isnt that a way for proprietary applications to defeat the GPL? Like having an LGPL library act as a buffer between a proprietary application and a GPL library? Maybe I am mistaken about that.
I dont know, I saw a lot of rational arguements reguarding RMSs positions about the Qt license which was resolved by Troll Tech adding a clause for special programs that dont have compatible licenses with GPL. Zealots as defined in any dictionary is usually indicative by irrational arguements, the incompatibility of the licenses was not that small of an issue, especially as it applies to law and the way lawyers work, they use what ever they can have for an advantage to weaken the application of a license. The problem is that some many applications are affected by the legal standing of the GPL and LGPL licenses so it is by far not a small issue. I dont recall any irrational arguements during those times, anything that would indicate to me that someone was a zealot, more so then concerned about their own software license legal standing. I guess its a matter of point of view, there is probably some people out there talking about "KDE zealots" or something down those lines, although I dont recall seeing any of those either... hmmm...