Hmm. I don't think that is much of a distinction. What is better, for me to paraphrase what you said, almost certainly getting something wrong in the translation, or to post exact words? People complained on this topic about posting a handful of words of context; imagine posting just someone else's interpretation of that snippet. How much more out of context and potentially misleading that is.
I think Raymond started hacking in the late 1970's. He was certainly around before the late 1980's. He claims to have been one of the first GNU volunteers back in 1982 or 83 and I have no reason to doubt him on that.
In recent years I've noticed that certain people have fanatically expounded the idea that the contents of an email message are private and cannot be quoted without permission from the author. I do not understand this. Excepts from email clearly fall under the Fair Use doctrine in copyright law. Additionally, this is not the way we treat other forms of interaction. If someone called me on the phone, or we spoke face to face, the contents of the discussion would not ordinarily be considered private. Unless someone specifically requests that information be kept private normally we don't ask permission to repeat what people told us to others.
Imagine that someone showed up at my house and screamed threats at me. Would you claim I should not be allowed to tell anyone that he did that without his permission? That seems like a dubious standard and one that is not followed in everyday life. We should apply the same standards to email that we apply to other interpersonal communication. The contents are not private unless specifically identified as such.
First off, that brief email quote almost certainly falls under the concept of Fair Use.
Second, I do not understand why people think email messages are supposed to be considered totally private. If we spoke face to face, you would never consider the things we talked about private unless there was some specific reason to believe they were. (ie, I told you "don't repeat this"). We generally don't have to ask people for permission to relay the things they told us in person to others. I don't see why email is any different.
I really am surprised to see the article present the unquestioned assumption that the reason for college is to enable you to succeed in a particular career. This is a technical/vocational school vision of college that I do not agree with.
I was a finance major, and that degree helped land me my first job. So from a voc-tech perspective, college helped me wonderfully. My first employer would never have considered me without a degree. For a more pure programming role, having a "resume" that includes hacking accomplishments in high school might be enough to get your foot in the door. Once you've been in the work force any period of time, the college degree drops off the recruiting radar scope. Some employers probably care that you do have one, but few care what it is in or where it is from. Even for one that wants you to have a degree, you can save money by getting it part time at a local college instead of spending big bucks on a full time four year program at a prestigous university.
But I am not satified with the voc-tech view of school. I very much have a vision of the university providing a undergraduate with a classical liberal arts education that enriches the mind, imparts a basic body of knowledge all educated people should have, and prepares the person for a lifetime of continued learning. I wish I had been more oriented towards this when I was in school. Fortunately I am an extremely strong self learner and so today I am able to educate myself despite not getting the best general preparation for it in school. I would like to see this more emphasized than the "learn these skills and you can get a job" curriculum the Salon article seems to be talking about.
Bruce Perens had a long history of blowups and angry exchanges prior to this. In fact, he once claimed on slashdot that he was through with free software forever. This history of instability did not appear to bother Eric Raymond until such time as Bruce split with him. Then all of sudden Raymond suddenly started noticing that Bruce has a tendency to go off half cocked.
My understanding of Eric Raymond is also that he has had numerous spats like this with people in the past. There's this, the trademark dispute with SPI, the ncurses affair, and more I hear.
Of course I'm in no position to complain. I've been in quite a few flame fests in my lifetime. People say things in the heat of anger that they regret later. Unfortunately, in the modern electronic world it is there for anyone to see forever. Most of us don't have our every electronic word or posting examined like these two guys do.
How about the two of them just let it drop. And make a committment to try to not take things personally in the future, even if they think it should be.
Geez, some of you people need a humor transplant. The person who wrote those 35 reasons was just heaping ridicule on Gore, not outlining a detailed case of why not to vote against him. I was interested to see Owen defend Dan Quayle though. (Not that his analogy was even correct: Dan Quayle mis-spoke because he was stupid, Al Gore just plain lied). It is interesting to see some people parroting the radical leftist party line on the affects of humans on the environment. Accuse your opponents of bad science without presenting any scientific evidence whatsover.
I read a little bit of the thread on the linux-kernel mailing list. One person told Stallman that this was not the place for mentioning GNU/Linux. Stallman claimed that someone else made a posting about it first, and that he felt compelled to respond. (I did not see the original post). Someone then told Stallman that he should just ignore posts that disagree with his opinion in the interest of preventing flame wars. I was highly amused by that. None of the people bashing Stallman for his GNU/Linux stand (including the author of that last message I mentioned) had any intention of simply ignoring Stallman's post, which probably would have been the way to really stop a flamewar. It takes two to tango. The easiest way for people who don't agree with Stallman to stop this whole mess is simply to ignore his comments on the topic. Writing editorials about it or bashing Stallman about it only feeds the fire.
JIT compiler drawbacks..
on
Java for EGCS
·
· Score: 3
This is not a Just-In-Time compiler. The goal of the project is to produce a complete development tool set for compiling Java to native code just like you compile C to native code. I'm guessing Cygnus probably plans to market this to the embedded systems market as well as to the free software community.
What I'm trying to say is that the "What is Free Software?" essay on the GNU web site is not meant to be a legal style definition of free software. You could (perhaps) devise a license that met the criteria there, but it would still be considered non-free. For example, the termination clause licenses fell into this category until the FSF updated the web site to address that particular problem. The Open Source Definition is presented as "meet these requirements, get our trademark".
I must say that I am sick of hearing about the WELL and how long it has been around and how influential it is. The very first BBS in the world was CBBS (now chinet) in Chicago. Ward Christiansen of CBBS wrote XMODEM. Almost everybody who's been on the Internet more than 4 years in Chicago is a former chinet user. (Rumor has it Randy Suess ran the thing out of his studio apartment with racks of modems everywhere). Very few people seem to know about CBBS though. I guess it is because the magazines that write about this stuff are concentrated in the Bay Area and thus focus on it.
Saying that Red Hat derives a benefit from someone else's voluntary labor is to state that they are benefitting from a positive externality. There are many instances of these. For example, if I paint my house, the value of all my neighbors' houses increases in value. Does that mean they are exploiting my unpaid labor? In general, America does not try to eliminate positive externalities. I do not get paid for everything I do that benefits someone else.
His server is running Microsoft IIS I notice. Also, news reports have it that when he debuted his site is had a place for kids to type in their home address in violation in privacy laws which require parental permission first. He claimed his site wasn't subject to those laws (was there "no controlling legal authority"?) but he took down the page anyway.
So you think that it is "imposing" on someone to insist that they not use a term you find offensive when addressing you. It a black man imposing if he objects to someone saying "Hey, nigger, I've got a question for you?" Stallman probably doesn't feel as strongly about GNU/Linux as that, but the same principle applies. People are asking Stallman questions they want the answer to. If they expect him to answer them, then they have to comply with his wishes in addressing him or he will exercise his free speech right not to answer. If the people asking questions do not wish to use GNU/Linux, that is certainly their right, just as it is Stallman's right to suggest that they use a different term and to refuse to answer if they do not.
You are certainly free to choose another definition and select software based on that or any other criteria. Stallman speaks only for himself and the GNU project that he is the head of. If other people choose to accept his opinions, that is there choice. But he is not forcing his definition on anyone else. If many people choose to agree with him, then that is a tribute to his persuasiveness.
I'd like to draw a distinction between what I think Stallman is trying to do and what Raymond is trying to do. Stallman is trying to explain what free software is. Raymond is trying to define what open source software is in a more rigid sense for his branding campaign. I do not see them as two conflicting defitions.
Restricting software to non-military use would, technically, make the software non-free. The underlying prinicple of free software is that the user is more important than the author. Proprietary software claims the author is more important than the user, and thus gives to the author the right to decide who can use the software and what they can do with it. Putting restrictions on the use of software based on the author's own private morality might seem reasonable (if you agree with the author's moral sense, that is), but is a form of controlling the users and dividing them nevertheless. It is basically saying "I will give you this software, but only if you promise not to share it with some other people I don't like". This is the classic proprietary divide and conquer the users strategy.
Don't forget, one person's no military use is another person's no use on the Sabbath. Or no use by homosexuals. Or no use by the KKK. Or no use by breweries. Once unleashed, where does such a thing stop?
It is certainly permissable to link GPL'd code with code under a different license. Otherwise how would GPL'd and LGPL'd code exist? The other code simply cannot add additional restrictions. I hope you don't claim that free software has to allow linking with code under any license. In that case only public domain software would qualify.
The GNU project has never gone into extreme detail on all the criteria software needs to meet in order to be free. Much like the famous Then the Open Source people took the Debian Free Software Guidelines and tried to turn them into a more legalistic framework. Companies now view the Open Source Definition as the "law" they have to comply with, and as with any laws, seek loopholes that will allow them to comply with the letter but not the spirit of the document in a way that gives them an advantage.
Unfortunately, finding loopholes in the OSD doesn't really make the resulting code free. (For example, those with termination clauses). Thus, the explanation of what free software is needs to be tightened. Richard Stallman did not just unilaterally change the definition of free software. Instead, he made explicit something that was true all along, but was never actually stated.
I hate to see these definitions become more legalistic. This is probably somewhat necessary though. Corporations who have no background in the free software community need more detailed information than those of us who have been immersed in it for some time. We just need to make clear that these documents aren't laws to be worked around and that finding a loophole in one of them doesn't mean your software will be considered free.
It gets harder to get better. If you go in with a score of 3, you are much less likely to get moderated up than if you went in with a score of 1. Moderators will think that you have already been bumped up! I kind of like it. As long as it doesn't result in people getting bumped down for comments that go in at a high moderation level (due to alignment) that are good, but probably aren't worthy of the high level. I think everyone should be able to make postings (especially replies) that are brief but not abusive or lame. These might be worth a 1, but if your alignment is 4, somebody might bump you down just because they think the comment is rated too high! I hope that doesn't happen.
In fact, investment banks routinely make IPO stock available first to their preferred customers. This may or may not include Intel, but it probably does not. However, the odds of you being able to purchase IPO stock at the IPO price are zilch, unless you have some sort of in with investment banks you might not have told us about.
One of the more outrageous practices of the investment banks was to hold back a portion of the IPO stock until the price had already shot up on the first day of trading. They then sold the stock to favored clients at the IPO prices for an instant arbitrage profit. I don't know of the SEC has cracked down on this or not, but they certainly should have.
The reason to "go public" is to raise funds for expansion. Secondary reasons are so you can cash out your venture capitalists. I don't know if Red Hat was backed by venture capital or just by the founders, so this may or may not be a concern. A third reason is so the founders can sell off some of their personal holdings in order to get cash. I should mention that you can "go public" by selling bonds as well. These often require registration statements and quarterly reports to be filed with the SEC. This is a great way to find out about private companies that don't have their stock traded yet.
Going public has its downsides. First is that you are required to file reports with the SEC, which exposes your financial structure and your financial reports to the outside world. The next is that it can be difficult to justify to stockholders long term investment that may or may not pan out. How does Red Hat justify to a mutual fund manager hiring Gnome developers then putting the resulting code under the GPL? It might be the best decision from a business as well as ethical standpoint, but it is non-traditional and would probably require some explaning.
Red Hat seems to be able to find funds via private placements, so has been able to avoid going public. Remember, the longer you hold off going public, the better for the initial stockholders who will generally see less dilution.
There are two ways to "buy equity" in a company. One is for you to acquire an existing share of stock from someone who owns one. The other way it to buy shares issued by the company. The first is more common, as that is what people do on the New York Stock Exchange every day. In the case of a private company, they are usually issuing new shares to investors because then then money goes into the company's coffers to fund expansion. However, doing this dilutes the ownership of the existing stockholders.
Typically there is no real limit on how many shares a company can issue. Corporate charters generally contain a maximum number of authorized shares, but this can be increased by a vote of the shareholders. The real problem is the dilution, which tends to anger existing shareholders if it is excessive. Publicly traded companies often lose 5-10% of their stock price when announcing secondary offerings. Issue to much stock and you'll drive your stock price down to zero!
Of course the Red Hat founders are probably stock rich and money poor. They might be selling off some of their personal shares in order to get cash to spend on houses or whatever. But it is pure speculation to think of such things.
Slashdot Mirror
Hmm. I don't think that is much of a distinction. What is better, for me to paraphrase what you said, almost certainly getting something wrong in the translation, or to post exact words? People complained on this topic about posting a handful of words of context; imagine posting just someone else's interpretation of that snippet. How much more out of context and potentially misleading that is.
I think Raymond started hacking in the late 1970's. He was certainly around before the late 1980's. He claims to have been one of the first GNU volunteers back in 1982 or 83 and I have no reason to doubt him on that.
In recent years I've noticed that certain people have fanatically expounded the idea that the contents of an email message are private and cannot be quoted without permission from the author. I do not understand this. Excepts from email clearly fall under the Fair Use doctrine in copyright law. Additionally, this is not the way we treat other forms of interaction. If someone called me on the phone, or we spoke face to face, the contents of the discussion would not ordinarily be considered private. Unless someone specifically requests that information be kept private normally we don't ask permission to repeat what people told us to others.
Imagine that someone showed up at my house and screamed threats at me. Would you claim I should not be allowed to tell anyone that he did that without his permission? That seems like a dubious standard and one that is not followed in everyday life. We should apply the same standards to email that we apply to other interpersonal communication. The contents are not private unless specifically identified as such.
First off, that brief email quote almost certainly falls under the concept of Fair Use.
Second, I do not understand why people think email messages are supposed to be considered totally private. If we spoke face to face, you would never consider the things we talked about private unless there was some specific reason to believe they were. (ie, I told you "don't repeat this"). We generally don't have to ask people for permission to relay the things they told us in person to others. I don't see why email is any different.
I really am surprised to see the article present the unquestioned assumption that the reason for college is to enable you to succeed in a particular career. This is a technical/vocational school vision of college that I do not agree with.
I was a finance major, and that degree helped land me my first job. So from a voc-tech perspective, college helped me wonderfully. My first employer would never have considered me without a degree. For a more pure programming role, having a "resume" that includes hacking accomplishments in high school might be enough to get your foot in the door. Once you've been in the work force any period of time, the college degree drops off the recruiting radar scope. Some employers probably care that you do have one, but few care what it is in or where it is from. Even for one that wants you to have a degree, you can save money by getting it part time at a local college instead of spending big bucks on a full time four year program at a prestigous university.
But I am not satified with the voc-tech view of school. I very much have a vision of the university providing a undergraduate with a classical liberal arts education that enriches the mind, imparts a basic body of knowledge all educated people should have, and prepares the person for a lifetime of continued learning. I wish I had been more oriented towards this when I was in school. Fortunately I am an extremely strong self learner and so today I am able to educate myself despite not getting the best general preparation for it in school. I would like to see this more emphasized than the "learn these skills and you can get a job" curriculum the Salon article seems to be talking about.
Bruce Perens had a long history of blowups and angry exchanges prior to this. In fact, he once claimed on slashdot that he was through with free software forever. This history of instability did not appear to bother Eric Raymond until such time as Bruce split with him. Then all of sudden Raymond suddenly started noticing that Bruce has a tendency to go off half cocked.
My understanding of Eric Raymond is also that he has had numerous spats like this with people in the past. There's this, the trademark dispute with SPI, the ncurses affair, and more I hear.
Of course I'm in no position to complain. I've been in quite a few flame fests in my lifetime. People say things in the heat of anger that they regret later. Unfortunately, in the modern electronic world it is there for anyone to see forever. Most of us don't have our every electronic word or posting examined like these two guys do.
How about the two of them just let it drop. And make a committment to try to not take things personally in the future, even if they think it should be.
Geez, some of you people need a humor transplant. The person who wrote those 35 reasons was just heaping ridicule on Gore, not outlining a detailed case of why not to vote against him. I was interested to see Owen defend Dan Quayle though. (Not that his analogy was even correct: Dan Quayle mis-spoke because he was stupid, Al Gore just plain lied). It is interesting to see some people parroting the radical leftist party line on the affects of humans on the environment. Accuse your opponents of bad science without presenting any scientific evidence whatsover.
Al Gore would be just about the worst president I can possibly image. Here are a few articles with reasons why:
35 Reasons Not to Vote for Al Gore.
How to Tell the Difference Between Al Gore and the Unabomber
Apocalypse Gore
Not only is Al Gore a pathological liar like his buddy Clinton, he's also full of very whacky and very scary ideas.
The only other announced Democratic candidate is Bill Bradley.
I read a little bit of the thread on the linux-kernel mailing list. One person told Stallman that this was not the place for mentioning GNU/Linux. Stallman claimed that someone else made a posting about it first, and that he felt compelled to respond. (I did not see the original post). Someone then told Stallman that he should just ignore posts that disagree with his opinion in the interest of preventing flame wars. I was highly amused by that. None of the people bashing Stallman for his GNU/Linux stand (including the author of that last message I mentioned) had any intention of simply ignoring Stallman's post, which probably would have been the way to really stop a flamewar. It takes two to tango. The easiest way for people who don't agree with Stallman to stop this whole mess is simply to ignore his comments on the topic. Writing editorials about it or bashing Stallman about it only feeds the fire.
This is not a Just-In-Time compiler. The goal of the project is to produce a complete development tool set for compiling Java to native code just like you compile C to native code. I'm guessing Cygnus probably plans to market this to the embedded systems market as well as to the free software community.
What I'm trying to say is that the "What is Free Software?" essay on the GNU web site is not meant to be a legal style definition of free software. You could (perhaps) devise a license that met the criteria there, but it would still be considered non-free. For example, the termination clause licenses fell into this category until the FSF updated the web site to address that particular problem. The Open Source Definition is presented as "meet these requirements, get our trademark".
I must say that I am sick of hearing about the WELL and how long it has been around and how influential it is. The very first BBS in the world was CBBS (now chinet) in Chicago. Ward Christiansen of CBBS wrote XMODEM. Almost everybody who's been on the Internet more than 4 years in Chicago is a former chinet user. (Rumor has it Randy Suess ran the thing out of his studio apartment with racks of modems everywhere). Very few people seem to know about CBBS though. I guess it is because the magazines that write about this stuff are concentrated in the Bay Area and thus focus on it.
Saying that Red Hat derives a benefit from someone else's voluntary labor is to state that they are benefitting from a positive externality. There are many instances of these. For example, if I paint my house, the value of all my neighbors' houses increases in value. Does that mean they are exploiting my unpaid labor? In general, America does not try to eliminate positive externalities. I do not get paid for everything I do that benefits someone else.
You could insist that they call you God if they want to interview you or talk to you.
His server is running Microsoft IIS I notice. Also, news reports have it that when he debuted his site is had a place for kids to type in their home address in violation in privacy laws which require parental permission first. He claimed his site wasn't subject to those laws (was there "no controlling legal authority"?) but he took down the page anyway.
So you think that it is "imposing" on someone to insist that they not use a term you find offensive when addressing you. It a black man imposing if he objects to someone saying "Hey, nigger, I've got a question for you?" Stallman probably doesn't feel as strongly about GNU/Linux as that, but the same principle applies. People are asking Stallman questions they want the answer to. If they expect him to answer them, then they have to comply with his wishes in addressing him or he will exercise his free speech right not to answer. If the people asking questions do not wish to use GNU/Linux, that is certainly their right, just as it is Stallman's right to suggest that they use a different term and to refuse to answer if they do not.
You are certainly free to choose another definition and select software based on that or any other criteria. Stallman speaks only for himself and the GNU project that he is the head of. If other people choose to accept his opinions, that is there choice. But he is not forcing his definition on anyone else. If many people choose to agree with him, then that is a tribute to his persuasiveness.
I'd like to draw a distinction between what I think Stallman is trying to do and what Raymond is trying to do. Stallman is trying to explain what free software is. Raymond is trying to define what open source software is in a more rigid sense for his branding campaign. I do not see them as two conflicting defitions.
Restricting software to non-military use would, technically, make the software non-free. The underlying prinicple of free software is that the user is more important than the author. Proprietary software claims the author is more important than the user, and thus gives to the author the right to decide who can use the software and what they can do with it. Putting restrictions on the use of software based on the author's own private morality might seem reasonable (if you agree with the author's moral sense, that is), but is a form of controlling the users and dividing them nevertheless. It is basically saying "I will give you this software, but only if you promise not to share it with some other people I don't like". This is the classic proprietary divide and conquer the users strategy.
Don't forget, one person's no military use is another person's no use on the Sabbath. Or no use by homosexuals. Or no use by the KKK. Or no use by breweries. Once unleashed, where does such a thing stop?
It is certainly permissable to link GPL'd code with code under a different license. Otherwise how would GPL'd and LGPL'd code exist? The other code simply cannot add additional restrictions. I hope you don't claim that free software has to allow linking with code under any license. In that case only public domain software would qualify.
The GNU project has never gone into extreme detail on all the criteria software needs to meet in order to be free. Much like the famous Then the Open Source people took the Debian Free Software Guidelines and tried to turn them into a more legalistic framework. Companies now view the Open Source Definition as the "law" they have to comply with, and as with any laws, seek loopholes that will allow them to comply with the letter but not the spirit of the document in a way that gives them an advantage.
Unfortunately, finding loopholes in the OSD doesn't really make the resulting code free. (For example, those with termination clauses). Thus, the explanation of what free software is needs to be tightened. Richard Stallman did not just unilaterally change the definition of free software. Instead, he made explicit something that was true all along, but was never actually stated.
I hate to see these definitions become more legalistic. This is probably somewhat necessary though. Corporations who have no background in the free software community need more detailed information than those of us who have been immersed in it for some time. We just need to make clear that these documents aren't laws to be worked around and that finding a loophole in one of them doesn't mean your software will be considered free.
It gets harder to get better. If you go in with a score of 3, you are much less likely to get moderated up than if you went in with a score of 1. Moderators will think that you have already been bumped up! I kind of like it. As long as it doesn't result in people getting bumped down for comments that go in at a high moderation level (due to alignment) that are good, but probably aren't worthy of the high level. I think everyone should be able to make postings (especially replies) that are brief but not abusive or lame. These might be worth a 1, but if your alignment is 4, somebody might bump you down just because they think the comment is rated too high! I hope that doesn't happen.
In fact, investment banks routinely make IPO stock available first to their preferred customers. This may or may not include Intel, but it probably does not. However, the odds of you being able to purchase IPO stock at the IPO price are zilch, unless you have some sort of in with investment banks you might not have told us about.
One of the more outrageous practices of the investment banks was to hold back a portion of the IPO stock until the price had already shot up on the first day of trading. They then sold the stock to favored clients at the IPO prices for an instant arbitrage profit. I don't know of the SEC has cracked down on this or not, but they certainly should have.
The reason to "go public" is to raise funds for expansion. Secondary reasons are so you can cash out your venture capitalists. I don't know if Red Hat was backed by venture capital or just by the founders, so this may or may not be a concern. A third reason is so the founders can sell off some of their personal holdings in order to get cash. I should mention that you can "go public" by selling bonds as well. These often require registration statements and quarterly reports to be filed with the SEC. This is a great way to find out about private companies that don't have their stock traded yet.
Going public has its downsides. First is that you are required to file reports with the SEC, which exposes your financial structure and your financial reports to the outside world. The next is that it can be difficult to justify to stockholders long term investment that may or may not pan out. How does Red Hat justify to a mutual fund manager hiring Gnome developers then putting the resulting code under the GPL? It might be the best decision from a business as well as ethical standpoint, but it is non-traditional and would probably require some explaning.
Red Hat seems to be able to find funds via private placements, so has been able to avoid going public. Remember, the longer you hold off going public, the better for the initial stockholders who will generally see less dilution.
There are two ways to "buy equity" in a company. One is for you to acquire an existing share of stock from someone who owns one. The other way it to buy shares issued by the company. The first is more common, as that is what people do on the New York Stock Exchange every day. In the case of a private company, they are usually issuing new shares to investors because then then money goes into the company's coffers to fund expansion. However, doing this dilutes the ownership of the existing stockholders.
Typically there is no real limit on how many shares a company can issue. Corporate charters generally contain a maximum number of authorized shares, but this can be increased by a vote of the shareholders. The real problem is the dilution, which tends to anger existing shareholders if it is excessive. Publicly traded companies often lose 5-10% of their stock price when announcing secondary offerings. Issue to much stock and you'll drive your stock price down to zero!
Of course the Red Hat founders are probably stock rich and money poor. They might be selling off some of their personal shares in order to get cash to spend on houses or whatever. But it is pure speculation to think of such things.