And if you think what the FSF do is not ethical, imagine what would happen if Cisco were using code seen under this [microsoft.com] licence, in violation of said, in a commercial product. Would it be ethical for MS Legal to have a "friendly chat" with Cisco?
Of course it wouldn't. Enforcing copyright, except in a defensive situation (such as Linux users countersuing SCO), is unethical.
As you can see, when you own a particular copy of a work, you may sell that copy (note singular form of "copy") without permission of the copyright holder. That's First Sale. There's nothing about being allowed to redistribute copies hundreds of thousands of times, and I cannot seriously believe that you ever actually thought that such activity was allowed by the First Sale doctrine.
You're the one confusing the law. If you lawfully obtain hundreds of thousands of copies, you can lawfully resell hundreds of thousands of copies.
Let's go back to the eBay reseller. Are you trying to claim that if I buy one copy of Windows I can resell it on eBay but if I buy two copies of Windows I can't resell them both on eBay? Or are you just confusing what Cisco is doing here?
Think of it this way: Cisco gets an operating system, that they can modify as much as they like for $0. All they have to do is release the source code along with any work they do that derives from it. They don't lose any money by allowing their modifications to be licensed under the GPL, so they still come out ahead. No one is forcing them to use Linux or accept the GPL but if they do then they should abide by the terms. Sounds perfectly ethical to me.
You're making the assumption that copyright law is ethical. I reject that assumption.
The FSF, however, would argue that it's Cisco that are being unethical, by providing software that isn't free.
I'd disagree. There's nothing unethical about not releasing your source code.
That body is copylefted, and free (albeit in a "your right to swing your fist ends at my nose" sense.)
C'mon now. Cisco is not actively hurting the FSF by not releasing source code. Maybe they're passively hurting the FSF, but this is much different from punching someone in the face.
The FSF is about making software free.
According to their own particular definition of free. And that's fine, they have a right to that opinion. I just don't think they should be forcing it upon others who are merely using code on which they hold the copyright.
Legally, they have the right to do what they are doing (maybe, like I said in another thread Cisco might have a First Sale defense). But ethically, I don't think they do have that right.
There's a huge difference between first sale (in which I sell a single copy of some software to one person, then no longer have it myself) and redistribution (in which I sell my embedded linux device 400,000+ times). The latter is clearly not "first sale".
Actually, First Sale makes no mention of a limit as to how many copies you can resell before it stops applying. Maybe there's a difference ethically, but there isn't a legal difference.
Just out of curiosity, why don't more people release their code under the BSD license?
Because if you license your code under the GPL, you can include GPLed and BSDLed works in it, but if you license your code under the BSDL, you can only include BSDLed works in it.
But as another poster pointed out, it would appear that it's only acceptable to enforce the terms of your license if you're a big multinational company.
LOL. And on Slashdot, it's only fair to enforce the terms of your license if you're not a big multinational company.
Is what the FSF doing legal? Sure. But I for one don't think it's ethical of them to force others to release their source code. That goes against the whole concept of making something Free, in my opinion.
Telstra is a big enough ISP that it could easily solve a large portion of the spam problem. All they have to do is make a few deals with other ISPs to collect deposits and fine their spamming customers and we'd see the problem go away real quick.
Of course this would only work if we allow no excuses. If someone downstream from you is sending the spam through you, tough luck. You'll be fined and it's up to you to collect from your customer if you want to be reinbursed. If your machines were hacked, tough luck again. You're still reponsible for the spam charge, and it's up to you to find the hacker, sue him or her for damages, and collect if you want to be reinbursed.
It's the George W. Bush approach to spamming. We will make no distinction between the spammers who send the spams and the ISPs who harbor them.
Remember, since the 70s, money IS speech. That's how coporations can get away with bribing politicians - SCOTUS ruled (very stupidly IMHO, but that's another issue) that giving money to people represents a form of speech, and is thus afforded First Amendment protects.
You completely misrepresent the Supreme Court ruling. The Supreme Court ruled that speech is speech.
For instance, the ACLU recently aired radio advertisements in Alaska, New Hampshire, Texas, Utah and Vermont in which they asked listeners to call their senators and urge them to stop "sneak and peek" searches under the PATRIOT Act....
The advertisements did not take any position for or against the lawmakers whose names were mentioned. Yet, under the new campaign finance law, those ads would be illegal if they were broadcast within 30 days of a primary or 60 days of a general election, the ACLU noted in legal papers.
I'd suggest you read Buckley v. Valeo before criticising it. It seems like you took a semi-accurate summary (money is speech) without looking at the details of the overturned act. Here's a direct quote: "Some forms of communication made possible by the giving and spending of money involve speech alone, some involve conduct primarily, and some involve a combination of the two." Clearly the court is not saying that money is speech.
Sorry, that's the broken window fallacy. Sure, programmers will spend more time rewriting pages, time they could be spending doing something productive, so the companies that hire them now make less profit and have to hire fewer workers.
So you've shown that one particular game cannot be secured in one particular way. That's not the same as it not being "mathematically possible to secure the client-server model of multiplayer gaming against cheating."
There's simply too much information ( hundreds of units! ) to hand back & forth over a network connection. Consequently, each client runs its own simulation going of the entire game - the network traffic just serves the purpose of keeping everybody's simulations synchronized.
Seems like poor design to me. Each client should run a simulation of its own units, and any enemy units which it can see. If the client can't see the enemy's units, why does it need to have information about it? The server, of course, would have the full information about the entire game. Wouldn't necessarily have to run the simulation, as long as it recorded the information long enough to handle any disputes.
Maybe the way you explained is the way it's implemented, but that's not the best way.
If there is a second or two delay from bid or revealing of the cards as the server does validation, people won't notice.
Well, that's certainly untrue. A second or two delay will certainly be noticed. It's one of the few tells in online poker.
A second or two delay as to whether or not the server validates you actually have and can fire that weapon you're carrying and doing the same as you empty the clip of 200 is rather detrimental.
OK, but what does this have to do with whether or not you have source code?
Teamplay, while not accepted at almost any table, is technically not cheating.
Where are you getting that from? Teamplay is most certainly cheating. Haven't you ever watched Rounders? Take a look here:
Poker players are always aware of the possibility of collusion. Collusion is when two or more players on the same table work together as a team, unfairly knowing each other's cards, and betting with this knowledge in order to maximize their team's profits. Collusion destroys the integrity of any poker game. Any player that attempts to collude at ParadisePoker.com will be permanently banned from our games.
In your online poker example you can have a central trusted server that insures that nobody is cheating (at least technically).
Well yeah. Of course. You have to have that.
There is no way to do that with FPS's (not yet at least). The amount of info that would be needed to be passed between the client and the server in FPS games would be cripling if you expected the server to be the final arbitrator of all actions.
Well yeah, some things you can't do. Something in between a FPS and something like poker is something like Starcraft. Theoretically you could make Starcraft completely uncheatable. So like I tried to say before but probably didn't get it out right, yes, perhaps half-life can't be made uncheatable. But that's an aspect of the game itself, not an aspect of multiplayer gaming in general.
When you need to trust your client but you don't have control over it this is about all you can do.
That is, until Microsoft rolls out a true trusted computing platform. Bad for music lovers, perhaps, but this might be just the thing for gamers.
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And if you think what the FSF do is not ethical, imagine what would happen if Cisco were using code seen under this [microsoft.com] licence, in violation of said, in a commercial product. Would it be ethical for MS Legal to have a "friendly chat" with Cisco?
Of course it wouldn't. Enforcing copyright, except in a defensive situation (such as Linux users countersuing SCO), is unethical.
As you can see, when you own a particular copy of a work, you may sell that copy (note singular form of "copy") without permission of the copyright holder. That's First Sale. There's nothing about being allowed to redistribute copies hundreds of thousands of times, and I cannot seriously believe that you ever actually thought that such activity was allowed by the First Sale doctrine.
You're the one confusing the law. If you lawfully obtain hundreds of thousands of copies, you can lawfully resell hundreds of thousands of copies.
Let's go back to the eBay reseller. Are you trying to claim that if I buy one copy of Windows I can resell it on eBay but if I buy two copies of Windows I can't resell them both on eBay? Or are you just confusing what Cisco is doing here?
Think of it this way: Cisco gets an operating system, that they can modify as much as they like for $0. All they have to do is release the source code along with any work they do that derives from it. They don't lose any money by allowing their modifications to be licensed under the GPL, so they still come out ahead. No one is forcing them to use Linux or accept the GPL but if they do then they should abide by the terms. Sounds perfectly ethical to me.
You're making the assumption that copyright law is ethical. I reject that assumption.
The FSF, however, would argue that it's Cisco that are being unethical, by providing software that isn't free.
I'd disagree. There's nothing unethical about not releasing your source code.
That body is copylefted, and free (albeit in a "your right to swing your fist ends at my nose" sense.)
C'mon now. Cisco is not actively hurting the FSF by not releasing source code. Maybe they're passively hurting the FSF, but this is much different from punching someone in the face.
The FSF is about making software free.
According to their own particular definition of free. And that's fine, they have a right to that opinion. I just don't think they should be forcing it upon others who are merely using code on which they hold the copyright.
Legally, they have the right to do what they are doing (maybe, like I said in another thread Cisco might have a First Sale defense). But ethically, I don't think they do have that right.
I would imagine that the "First" in "First Sale" implies that it stops after the "First" "Sale" of the item.
You'd imagine wrong.
I mean, isn't that part obvious?
Read the law some time. It's not at all obvious.
There's a huge difference between first sale (in which I sell a single copy of some software to one person, then no longer have it myself) and redistribution (in which I sell my embedded linux device 400,000+ times). The latter is clearly not "first sale".
Actually, First Sale makes no mention of a limit as to how many copies you can resell before it stops applying. Maybe there's a difference ethically, but there isn't a legal difference.
It isn't the GPL that's stupid, it's companies that want their own IP protected while not respecting anyone else's.
Actually, it's both.
Just out of curiosity, why don't more people release their code under the BSD license?
Because if you license your code under the GPL, you can include GPLed and BSDLed works in it, but if you license your code under the BSDL, you can only include BSDLed works in it.
But as another poster pointed out, it would appear that it's only acceptable to enforce the terms of your license if you're a big multinational company.
LOL. And on Slashdot, it's only fair to enforce the terms of your license if you're not a big multinational company.
Is what the FSF doing legal? Sure. But I for one don't think it's ethical of them to force others to release their source code. That goes against the whole concept of making something Free, in my opinion.
So by that logic, Linksys did not knowingly use (unless informed by Broadcom) Linux to jump on the work done by someone else.
Well, they probably knew about it, but don't they have the right of First Sale to redistribute it anyway?
If the FSF sued Linksys, it would be as bad as when Microsoft sues eBay resellers.
Free as in we're going to sue you.
Frickin' stupid GPL.
Telstra is a big enough ISP that it could easily solve a large portion of the spam problem. All they have to do is make a few deals with other ISPs to collect deposits and fine their spamming customers and we'd see the problem go away real quick.
Of course this would only work if we allow no excuses. If someone downstream from you is sending the spam through you, tough luck. You'll be fined and it's up to you to collect from your customer if you want to be reinbursed. If your machines were hacked, tough luck again. You're still reponsible for the spam charge, and it's up to you to find the hacker, sue him or her for damages, and collect if you want to be reinbursed.
It's the George W. Bush approach to spamming. We will make no distinction between the spammers who send the spams and the ISPs who harbor them.
Remember, since the 70s, money IS speech. That's how coporations can get away with bribing politicians - SCOTUS ruled (very stupidly IMHO, but that's another issue) that giving money to people represents a form of speech, and is thus afforded First Amendment protects.
You completely misrepresent the Supreme Court ruling. The Supreme Court ruled that speech is speech.
I'd suggest you read Buckley v. Valeo before criticising it. It seems like you took a semi-accurate summary (money is speech) without looking at the details of the overturned act. Here's a direct quote: "Some forms of communication made possible by the giving and spending of money involve speech alone, some involve conduct primarily, and some involve a combination of the two." Clearly the court is not saying that money is speech.
Nothing is being censored, people. Just don't get caught donating money to the site.
So if the government banned donations to the ACLU website, would that likewise not be censorship?
Arrrr...
Yes, and if you're a page-rewriter, then you'll be in business. But how many people do you know whose only skill is page-rewriting?
Sorry, that's the broken window fallacy. Sure, programmers will spend more time rewriting pages, time they could be spending doing something productive, so the companies that hire them now make less profit and have to hire fewer workers.
Think about the technology from 1983, would you use that over the current technology?
Well, RSA and LZW were both patented in 1983, and they are widely in use today.
If it could be done by a bot, it's not a very interesting game.
So you've shown that one particular game cannot be secured in one particular way. That's not the same as it not being "mathematically possible to secure the client-server model of multiplayer gaming against cheating."
There's simply too much information ( hundreds of units! ) to hand back & forth over a network connection. Consequently, each client runs its own simulation going of the entire game - the network traffic just serves the purpose of keeping everybody's simulations synchronized.
Seems like poor design to me. Each client should run a simulation of its own units, and any enemy units which it can see. If the client can't see the enemy's units, why does it need to have information about it? The server, of course, would have the full information about the entire game. Wouldn't necessarily have to run the simulation, as long as it recorded the information long enough to handle any disputes.
Maybe the way you explained is the way it's implemented, but that's not the best way.
If there is a second or two delay from bid or revealing of the cards as the server does validation, people won't notice.
Well, that's certainly untrue. A second or two delay will certainly be noticed. It's one of the few tells in online poker.
A second or two delay as to whether or not the server validates you actually have and can fire that weapon you're carrying and doing the same as you empty the clip of 200 is rather detrimental.
OK, but what does this have to do with whether or not you have source code?
Teamplay, while not accepted at almost any table, is technically not cheating.
Where are you getting that from? Teamplay is most certainly cheating. Haven't you ever watched Rounders? Take a look here:
What's the difference between the source code and the binary? The binary is more obscure.
How do you propose that opening the source will make the game more secure and less able to be illegally copied?
Well, by opening the source, it makes it legal to copy, so therefore it makes it impossible to be illegally copied... But that wasn't my point...
In your online poker example you can have a central trusted server that insures that nobody is cheating (at least technically).
Well yeah. Of course. You have to have that.
There is no way to do that with FPS's (not yet at least). The amount of info that would be needed to be passed between the client and the server in FPS games would be cripling if you expected the server to be the final arbitrator of all actions.
Well yeah, some things you can't do. Something in between a FPS and something like poker is something like Starcraft. Theoretically you could make Starcraft completely uncheatable. So like I tried to say before but probably didn't get it out right, yes, perhaps half-life can't be made uncheatable. But that's an aspect of the game itself, not an aspect of multiplayer gaming in general.
When you need to trust your client but you don't have control over it this is about all you can do.
That is, until Microsoft rolls out a true trusted computing platform. Bad for music lovers, perhaps, but this might be just the thing for gamers.