but if i plant trees then there will be too much shade to run my solar PC, you insensitive clod!
By that time the trees will be mature enough to cut down and burn in your own steam power generator. You just need to stagger the planting/replanting so you have something mature to chop down each year.:-)
Solar powered PC's for 1500$ are a prime example of what's wrong with the consumerist approach to environmentalism.
I doubt whether the energy saved by running a PC off this thing will even offset the energy used in it's manufacture, but hey it sounds good and people go "aren't dell good environmentalists".
Your manufacturing energy argument is largely irrelevant since nearly all these consumers were going to buy a laptop regardless of whether it is green or not. Given that a computer is needed, it is good that it will be green to some degree. It is better to have a laptop that takes less power off of the grid. We are not going to solve energy programs with some magic bullet or radical shift in behavior, rather we are going to need a series of small changes over time. For example Germany industries power consumption over the last ten years.
If it is a long hair working as a code grunt/sysadmin in their it lot, may god make his/her hair glitter with sunshine and rustle in gentle, warm winds.
Well it will for one hour a day when he is taken from his cell to the prison yard for exercise. Intentionally disclosing social security numbers and other personally identifiable information probably violates several statues regarding information security and privacy.
And lets not forget the civil lawsuits that will result against this person. Those RIAA execs are going to be getting this guys computers (I hope they enjoy his JPG, MPG, and MP3 collections) and everything else he owns.
*NEVER* get involved in the legal system without a lawyer except for things like small claims court, traffic court, etc. You will "by definition" be acting as your own lawyer and therefore be a fool. Seriously, it can end up costing you far more than a couple of hundred buck for a short conversation with a lawyer. Sometimes you can get a consultation that includes advice for no charge.
Send a DMCA take down notice to the hosting provider since the contents of the website infringe on your copyright?:) You shouldn't even need a lawyer for that, as there are plenty of RIAA and MPAA examples floating around...
You will need a lawyer and buckets of money to throw upon the legal fire you will create. Be prepared to be counter sued. Some guesses: Restraint of trade, interference with a contract, intentional infliction of emotional distress?
"Copyright" is a legal term and can apply to any written work regardless of commercial or non-commercial use. "Copyleft" is just a cute gimmicky made up word. Note that the GPL 3 begins with "Copyright (C) 2007 Free Software Foundation" The creative commons license also refers to copyright with "Any of the above conditions can be waived if you get permission from the copyright holder."
A buyer is under no obligation to check facts provided by a seller. This includes verbal statements made during discussions. If someone makes a misrepresentation, and the misrepresentation is used in the decision making, then the legality of the contract is in question. The buyer should be able to get their money back and possibly damages as well. I am not a lawyer, just a geek who took a business law class. I think it is one of the most important classes I have taken.
In 6 months it will still be a very useful machine and be a lot cheaper.
They are already buying the least expensive parts available. Parts will not get any cheaper, but they will get better parts over time. Prices for a given part follow a U shaped curve, it starts high, comes down and hits a bottom, and then starts going up again (unless it just exits the market completely). What this project will most likely do is hop from part to part to stay at the bottom of the various curves.
Game developers are not ignoring Linux as a potential retail platform, they are merely doing the math and seeing that it is not justified.
You do realize that Valve is the *only* major game engine vendor that still doesn't provide a native Linux port, right?
Engine developers are very different from game developers. The option of doing Linux is a useful marketing bullet item. Having the option to target Linux if and when it becomes financially justifiable is nice. However offering such an option does not imply that native Linux versions are justifiable today. Keep in mind that engine developers are selling to people who won't have a finished game for years.
There are even free libraries to help ease the transition now. There's not much excuse left for why they continue to be Windows-only when it won't cost them much more development time. (It'll cost more test-time, but cross-platform programming tends to force proper coding, and fewer bugs to start with.)
I agree that cross platform development can help, however it makes far more sense to target Mac than Linux. Adding a third platform, Linux, would not improve things much over two, Win32 and Mac. Even when portions of a game are ported to Linux in order to create a server there is still a lot of work to be done with respect to getting the user interface and other client side code running.
The free libraries are often overrated, they are not without their own troubles and tend to lead towards a least common denominator approach. Companies that develop for both Win32 and Mac or port from Win32 to Mac tend to use their own code developed over many years. However, I think Cider is threatening the idea of native ports to Mac, we'll have to wait and see how things go with these early adopters of Cider.
Ignoring (without specific reason) 2 of the 3 major OS's is a huge mistake, and Valve is making sure they are covered. It's not a big surprise.
It is a bit premature to say Valve will support native Linux clients. They are probably just hiring another person to work on Linux servers. The existing servers need to be maintained and new servers need to be developed for games under development.
Most official dedicated servers already have a linux port, and a way to interface them with the steam servers to update them.
They are hiring someone to port new game code to create servers for future games and/or maintain the existing servers for old games. They are merely continuing what they have already been doing, they just need another person.
With so much new support for Linux lately (Ubuntu, Dell, HP, ATI/AMD) it would be hard to ignore Linux as a gaming platform.
Game developers are not ignoring Linux as a potential retail platform, they are merely doing the math and seeing that it is not justified. The major problem is that Linux gamers generally dual boot or emulate, therefore they are already customers buying the Win32 version of the game. A Linux version of the game would merely replace a Win32 sale with a Linux sale, there is no new money in such a swap, the development and support costs are not paid for. These costs are only supported by *new* sales, this means sales to people who refuse to dual boot or emulate. This makes the Linux gaming market far smaller than most people think.
Mac used to be in a better situation because dual boot was impossible and emulation impractical. However with modern Intel based Macs this is no longer the case. Note what is happening there, developers are starting to use emulation. To oversimplify things, wine (Cider) is being linked into the Win32 game, as opposed to Linux where wine (Cedega) is a standalone tool. If developers start support Linux it will be through something like Cider where there is very little work compared to doing a native Linux port.
>> 2. You can take BSD-Licensed code, create a new file, add the code to that file and release the
>> result under a different license.
>No, that is a copyright violation. The license terms require that the copyright be preserved,
>otherwise you have no license to the original code.
Read the BSD license again. If you include it into your new license, there's no problem.
That is not what is being discussed in (2) where only the code is copied to the new file. What you are describing is what I said was necessary. Well, except that I wrote "copyright be preserved" where I meant "copyright and terms be preserved".
The notion that they collect "no personal information" is very clever, but untrue.
Microsoft can easily associate your pc with a record in their backend because each pc generates a unique signature.
I have some experience in this area. According to our attorneys, but being informally paraphrased by myself, it was important to never mix personally identifiable information (PII) and non-personal information. Any mixing or linking would cause the non-personal to become PII and therefore under the jurisdiction of US and international legislation, with more legislation on the way given the new found importance of this topic. So to make life simple, I may collect the operating system version for demographic reasons but I can not record an account name, IP number, or other PII with that information, nor could I have some common key to associate records in PII and non-personal databases.
So in other words, it is unethical to improve upon BSD code and release the improvements under the GPL? Well, I guess I'm unethical then, because I think that is fine, especially since the BSD crowd claims that this is an advantage of the BSD license compared with the GPL, and that this makes the BSD license "more free" than the GPL.
The BSD license give you the freedom to be unethical. That does not mean unethical behavior should not be called out for what it is.
The people favoring the GPL want to protect their code from being taken proprietary, something the BSD license does not do.
To take an existing BSD work, make minor changes/extensions, and deny this work to the community that you have derived from is unethical. Again, perfectly legal, but zealotry and counter to the FOSS spirit of giving back to those you build your work upon. If the amount of BSD code is minor, as when an operating system merely incorporates the BSD networking stack that is a different case. As would be a GPL'd application that incorporates just a few BSD components. However, taking a working BSD driver, making minor changes/enhancements, is very a different case.
2. You can take BSD-Licensed code, create a new file, add the code to that file and release the result under a different license.
No, that is a copyright violation. The license terms require that the copyright be preserved, otherwise you have no license to the original code. If your logic were true, people could do the same to GPL'd code.
If Theo didn't want people copying his code and redistributing it under another license, he should have used the GPL...
I think you are missing the point, it is one of ethics not legality. The FOSS community is built upon the notion of giving back. An ethical FOSS developer would take a BSD driver, improve it, and release his/her changes under the original license. This new work is usable in Linux and he has given back to the community that the improved driver is derived from. However in this case the developers chose to engage in zealotry, to violate the FOSS spirit of giving back, and that is very insightful into their character.
So it is okay for Microsoft Windows to make use of BSD code, but it is not okay GNU/Linux because GNU/Linux 'locks the code away'?
It is not OK to delete the original BSD copyright notice. If the BSD code in the Windows source tree has this copyright intact MS is in compliance. If GPL folks delete this copyright notice and substitute GPL they are in violation. If they leave the original copyright intact and add the GPL for only their changes they are in compliance, although they are being unethical in this case and engaging in zealotry. They are free to do so, it is just insightful into their character. An ethical developer would have made changes and left it under the original license so that both communities would benefit, giving back to the BSD community that his/her work stands upon.
On the other hand, to hear the personal anecdotes of many (American) programmers on the Internet, the profession is lost and anyone in college majoring in computer science or software engineering must be either naive or insane.
And yet nearly everyone I know has an incredibly difficult time filling software engineering positions.
According to them, you have to be a genius programmer if you expect to compete successfully for the slim pickings that are left,...
Genius? No. However let me make a distinction between those who enter a computer science program because they are genuinely interested in software compared to those who entered because someone told them it was a good career path. The former will generally not have a problem, more on that below.
Let me also rant on "programmers" a little. During the internet bubble anyone who could write two partially correct lines of code/script fashioned themselves a programmer and some of these collected salaries far beyond their true worth. I think many of those whining about conditions today come from this pool of talent, not all, but many.
... there is no job security at all...
That is universal, not specific to software development. However software developers are inherently better prepared to move from one company to another, work from home, start your own business, etc.
... the technology changes so fast that if you allow yourself to slip behind you might as well kiss your career good-bye...
Now we return to those who have a genuine interest. Such people tend to tinker with new things at home, on their own time, for fun, and this helps them keep up to date and get/keep the jobs they want. I was dumbfounded many years ago when a coworker (fortunately on a different team) was hoping to be assigned to a particular project because he wanted to learn C++, the language that was to be used. He thought I was crazy when I suggested he get a compiler and learn the language on his own rather than wait for such an event.
However as a non American I must ask what did you think of the treatment of the French. Who disagreed with US policy and have the American media and public ridicule them as a country of cowards and idiots.
Let me begin with it is really the French government and elites that many Americans have problems with, as is the case with many of those who have problems with the US. It is not simply the disagreement over Iraq. It is a persistent notion among French elites that it is France's role to oppose the US, as publicly admitted by the previous administration. While Americans understand France's desire to regain a position of respect and leadership in the world community, many find this particular strategy to be rather insulting given the American blood shed for France, twice. Competing on superior ideas would be one thing, riding anti-American sentiment is another. Given the results of the French presidential elections it seems that the French people were not too fond of anti-American elitists either.:-)
The French government also lost moral credibility to Americans by continuing to arm Iraq after their use chemical weapons on civilians. The previous French government seemed to be "in bed" with Saddam. France's willingness to use lethal military force against Greenpeace - killing one member, but not Saddam, is the sort of hypocrisy many American's expect.
"The sinking of the Rainbow Warrior, codenamed Operation Satanic[1], was a special operation by the "action" branch of the French foreign intelligence services, the Direction Générale de la Sécurité Extérieure (DGSE), carried out on July 10, 1985. It aimed to sink the flagship of the Greenpeace fleet, the Rainbow Warrior, while she was docked in the port of Auckland, New Zealand, to prevent her from interfering in a nuclear test in Moruroa.
Fernando Pereira, a photographer, drowned on the sinking ship. Two of the French agents were subsequently arrested by the New Zealand Police on passport fraud and immigration charges. Following questioning, they were subsequently charged with arson, conspiracy to commit arson, willful damage, and murder. As part of a plea bargain, they eventually pleaded guilty to manslaughter and were sentenced to ten years, just over two of which they served.
The ensuing scandal resulted in the resignation of the French Defence Minister Charles Hernu, and the subject became so touchy that it was not until twenty years afterward that the personal responsibility of French President François Mitterrand was officially admitted." http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sinking_of_the_Rainbow_Warrior http://www.greenpeace.org/international/rainbow-warrior-bombing/spy-story
IIRC, France requested that their agents be allowed to complete their 10 year prison sentences in French territory. France violated the agreement and freed them soon after arrival.
Even tho I dont like the French(Ive had to work with them:) ) I found this behavior fairly appalling.
I've worked with the French for many years. While Parisians have a certain reputation/stereotype, much like New Yorkers, I've had friendly business relationships with them. I had noticed that those from the country side were more willing to engage in off-time recreational activities. However these activities were predominantly outdoor activities and perhaps it was simply an urbanite thing.
While traveling in Paris, and only being able to speak a few words of French - poorly, I've always been treated very well. This includes fancy restaurants and random bars off the tourist tracks. I don't rule out good luck. However I keep in mind something I heard at a marketing seminar, people are three times more likely to share negative experiences compared to positive experiences.
But anyway, it's stated in the GNU FAQ that you must distribute the sources with the binaries. You can't just refer to upstream or some other site because they might change. The exception is if you've made a deal with a site to keep the sources for you.
The FAQ is not the license, the license indicates a reference to a third party is OK. The FAQ item you cite even indicates that you are in compliance as long as the source has not changed, it only indicates non-compliance if and when the 3rd party site changes the source. If and when that happens you can update the reference. Sure, the FSF wants you to just put the source on your site, that's what the FAQ is suggesting, however the license does not require your to do so. If you have a link to the proper source you are in compliance.
For the same reason that someone who signs a contract without reading it and/or insisting on changes, deserves to be screwed. It's called a manual, it comes with the device, and you are allowed to read it. There is no "deception", only ignorance on the part of the user.
Terms in a contract are not always upheld. If they are too one sided, or absurd, a judge may rule something unconscionable. This is especially true for adhesion contracts, "take it or leave it", and even more so when there is a power imbalance between the parties such as large corp v a consumer.
Slashdot Mirror
but if i plant trees then there will be too much shade to run my solar PC, you insensitive clod!
:-)
By that time the trees will be mature enough to cut down and burn in your own steam power generator. You just need to stagger the planting/replanting so you have something mature to chop down each year.
Solar powered PC's for 1500$ are a prime example of what's wrong with the consumerist approach to environmentalism. I doubt whether the energy saved by running a PC off this thing will even offset the energy used in it's manufacture, but hey it sounds good and people go "aren't dell good environmentalists".
Your manufacturing energy argument is largely irrelevant since nearly all these consumers were going to buy a laptop regardless of whether it is green or not. Given that a computer is needed, it is good that it will be green to some degree. It is better to have a laptop that takes less power off of the grid. We are not going to solve energy programs with some magic bullet or radical shift in behavior, rather we are going to need a series of small changes over time. For example Germany industries power consumption over the last ten years.
If your company does not do evil, you dont have nothing to fear from anyone from slashdot crowd.
That is laughable given what many in the slashdot crowd consider evil. Developing closed source software for example.
If it is a long hair working as a code grunt/sysadmin in their it lot, may god make his/her hair glitter with sunshine and rustle in gentle, warm winds.
Well it will for one hour a day when he is taken from his cell to the prison yard for exercise. Intentionally disclosing social security numbers and other personally identifiable information probably violates several statues regarding information security and privacy.
And lets not forget the civil lawsuits that will result against this person. Those RIAA execs are going to be getting this guys computers (I hope they enjoy his JPG, MPG, and MP3 collections) and everything else he owns.
You shouldn't even need a lawyer for that
*NEVER* get involved in the legal system without a lawyer except for things like small claims court, traffic court, etc. You will "by definition" be acting as your own lawyer and therefore be a fool. Seriously, it can end up costing you far more than a couple of hundred buck for a short conversation with a lawyer. Sometimes you can get a consultation that includes advice for no charge.
Send a DMCA take down notice to the hosting provider since the contents of the website infringe on your copyright? :) You shouldn't even need a lawyer for that, as there are plenty of RIAA and MPAA examples floating around...
You will need a lawyer and buckets of money to throw upon the legal fire you will create. Be prepared to be counter sued. Some guesses: Restraint of trade, interference with a contract, intentional infliction of emotional distress?
"Copyright" is a legal term and can apply to any written work regardless of commercial or non-commercial use. "Copyleft" is just a cute gimmicky made up word. Note that the GPL 3 begins with "Copyright (C) 2007 Free Software Foundation" The creative commons license also refers to copyright with "Any of the above conditions can be waived if you get permission from the copyright holder."
A buyer is under no obligation to check facts provided by a seller. This includes verbal statements made during discussions. If someone makes a misrepresentation, and the misrepresentation is used in the decision making, then the legality of the contract is in question. The buyer should be able to get their money back and possibly damages as well. I am not a lawyer, just a geek who took a business law class. I think it is one of the most important classes I have taken.
In 6 months it will still be a very useful machine and be a lot cheaper.
They are already buying the least expensive parts available. Parts will not get any cheaper, but they will get better parts over time. Prices for a given part follow a U shaped curve, it starts high, comes down and hits a bottom, and then starts going up again (unless it just exits the market completely). What this project will most likely do is hop from part to part to stay at the bottom of the various curves.
Game developers are not ignoring Linux as a potential retail platform, they are merely doing the math and seeing that it is not justified.
You do realize that Valve is the *only* major game engine vendor that still doesn't provide a native Linux port, right?
Engine developers are very different from game developers. The option of doing Linux is a useful marketing bullet item. Having the option to target Linux if and when it becomes financially justifiable is nice. However offering such an option does not imply that native Linux versions are justifiable today. Keep in mind that engine developers are selling to people who won't have a finished game for years.
There are even free libraries to help ease the transition now. There's not much excuse left for why they continue to be Windows-only when it won't cost them much more development time. (It'll cost more test-time, but cross-platform programming tends to force proper coding, and fewer bugs to start with.)
I agree that cross platform development can help, however it makes far more sense to target Mac than Linux. Adding a third platform, Linux, would not improve things much over two, Win32 and Mac. Even when portions of a game are ported to Linux in order to create a server there is still a lot of work to be done with respect to getting the user interface and other client side code running.
The free libraries are often overrated, they are not without their own troubles and tend to lead towards a least common denominator approach. Companies that develop for both Win32 and Mac or port from Win32 to Mac tend to use their own code developed over many years. However, I think Cider is threatening the idea of native ports to Mac, we'll have to wait and see how things go with these early adopters of Cider.
Ignoring (without specific reason) 2 of the 3 major OS's is a huge mistake, and Valve is making sure they are covered. It's not a big surprise.
It is a bit premature to say Valve will support native Linux clients. They are probably just hiring another person to work on Linux servers. The existing servers need to be maintained and new servers need to be developed for games under development.
You sure you're not confusing Valve with Bungie?
:-)
Sorry, that is exactly what I am doing. Duh!
Most official dedicated servers already have a linux port, and a way to interface them with the steam servers to update them.
They are hiring someone to port new game code to create servers for future games and/or maintain the existing servers for old games. They are merely continuing what they have already been doing, they just need another person.
With so much new support for Linux lately (Ubuntu, Dell, HP, ATI/AMD) it would be hard to ignore Linux as a gaming platform.
Game developers are not ignoring Linux as a potential retail platform, they are merely doing the math and seeing that it is not justified. The major problem is that Linux gamers generally dual boot or emulate, therefore they are already customers buying the Win32 version of the game. A Linux version of the game would merely replace a Win32 sale with a Linux sale, there is no new money in such a swap, the development and support costs are not paid for. These costs are only supported by *new* sales, this means sales to people who refuse to dual boot or emulate. This makes the Linux gaming market far smaller than most people think.
Mac used to be in a better situation because dual boot was impossible and emulation impractical. However with modern Intel based Macs this is no longer the case. Note what is happening there, developers are starting to use emulation. To oversimplify things, wine (Cider) is being linked into the Win32 game, as opposed to Linux where wine (Cedega) is a standalone tool. If developers start support Linux it will be through something like Cider where there is very little work compared to doing a native Linux port.
It seems unlikely that Valve would go in this direction. Valve's founders are ex-Microsoft employees.
Valve's founders started as Macintosh developers who ported their products to Windows. Microsoft eventually bought them.
That said, I agree with others, this job is most likely to port new game code to Linux for use in game servers only.
>> 2. You can take BSD-Licensed code, create a new file, add the code to that file and release the
>> result under a different license.
>No, that is a copyright violation. The license terms require that the copyright be preserved,
>otherwise you have no license to the original code.
Read the BSD license again. If you include it into your new license, there's no problem.
That is not what is being discussed in (2) where only the code is copied to the new file. What you are describing is what I said was necessary. Well, except that I wrote "copyright be preserved" where I meant "copyright and terms be preserved".
The notion that they collect "no personal information" is very clever, but untrue. Microsoft can easily associate your pc with a record in their backend because each pc generates a unique signature.
I have some experience in this area. According to our attorneys, but being informally paraphrased by myself, it was important to never mix personally identifiable information (PII) and non-personal information. Any mixing or linking would cause the non-personal to become PII and therefore under the jurisdiction of US and international legislation, with more legislation on the way given the new found importance of this topic. So to make life simple, I may collect the operating system version for demographic reasons but I can not record an account name, IP number, or other PII with that information, nor could I have some common key to associate records in PII and non-personal databases.
So in other words, it is unethical to improve upon BSD code and release the improvements under the GPL? Well, I guess I'm unethical then, because I think that is fine, especially since the BSD crowd claims that this is an advantage of the BSD license compared with the GPL, and that this makes the BSD license "more free" than the GPL.
The BSD license give you the freedom to be unethical. That does not mean unethical behavior should not be called out for what it is.
The people favoring the GPL want to protect their code from being taken proprietary, something the BSD license does not do.
To take an existing BSD work, make minor changes/extensions, and deny this work to the community that you have derived from is unethical. Again, perfectly legal, but zealotry and counter to the FOSS spirit of giving back to those you build your work upon. If the amount of BSD code is minor, as when an operating system merely incorporates the BSD networking stack that is a different case. As would be a GPL'd application that incorporates just a few BSD components. However, taking a working BSD driver, making minor changes/enhancements, is very a different case.
2. You can take BSD-Licensed code, create a new file, add the code to that file and release the result under a different license.
No, that is a copyright violation. The license terms require that the copyright be preserved, otherwise you have no license to the original code. If your logic were true, people could do the same to GPL'd code.
If Theo didn't want people copying his code and redistributing it under another license, he should have used the GPL...
I think you are missing the point, it is one of ethics not legality. The FOSS community is built upon the notion of giving back. An ethical FOSS developer would take a BSD driver, improve it, and release his/her changes under the original license. This new work is usable in Linux and he has given back to the community that the improved driver is derived from. However in this case the developers chose to engage in zealotry, to violate the FOSS spirit of giving back, and that is very insightful into their character.
So it is okay for Microsoft Windows to make use of BSD code, but it is not okay GNU/Linux because GNU/Linux 'locks the code away'?
It is not OK to delete the original BSD copyright notice. If the BSD code in the Windows source tree has this copyright intact MS is in compliance. If GPL folks delete this copyright notice and substitute GPL they are in violation. If they leave the original copyright intact and add the GPL for only their changes they are in compliance, although they are being unethical in this case and engaging in zealotry. They are free to do so, it is just insightful into their character. An ethical developer would have made changes and left it under the original license so that both communities would benefit, giving back to the BSD community that his/her work stands upon.
On the other hand, to hear the personal anecdotes of many (American) programmers on the Internet, the profession is lost and anyone in college majoring in computer science or software engineering must be either naive or insane.
...
... there is no job security at all ...
... the technology changes so fast that if you allow yourself to slip behind you might as well kiss your career good-bye ...
And yet nearly everyone I know has an incredibly difficult time filling software engineering positions.
According to them, you have to be a genius programmer if you expect to compete successfully for the slim pickings that are left,
Genius? No. However let me make a distinction between those who enter a computer science program because they are genuinely interested in software compared to those who entered because someone told them it was a good career path. The former will generally not have a problem, more on that below.
Let me also rant on "programmers" a little. During the internet bubble anyone who could write two partially correct lines of code/script fashioned themselves a programmer and some of these collected salaries far beyond their true worth. I think many of those whining about conditions today come from this pool of talent, not all, but many.
That is universal, not specific to software development. However software developers are inherently better prepared to move from one company to another, work from home, start your own business, etc.
Now we return to those who have a genuine interest. Such people tend to tinker with new things at home, on their own time, for fun, and this helps them keep up to date and get/keep the jobs they want. I was dumbfounded many years ago when a coworker (fortunately on a different team) was hoping to be assigned to a particular project because he wanted to learn C++, the language that was to be used. He thought I was crazy when I suggested he get a compiler and learn the language on his own rather than wait for such an event.
However as a non American I must ask what did you think of the treatment of the French. Who disagreed with US policy and have the American media and public ridicule them as a country of cowards and idiots.
:-)
:) ) I found this behavior fairly appalling.
Let me begin with it is really the French government and elites that many Americans have problems with, as is the case with many of those who have problems with the US. It is not simply the disagreement over Iraq. It is a persistent notion among French elites that it is France's role to oppose the US, as publicly admitted by the previous administration. While Americans understand France's desire to regain a position of respect and leadership in the world community, many find this particular strategy to be rather insulting given the American blood shed for France, twice. Competing on superior ideas would be one thing, riding anti-American sentiment is another. Given the results of the French presidential elections it seems that the French people were not too fond of anti-American elitists either.
The French government also lost moral credibility to Americans by continuing to arm Iraq after their use chemical weapons on civilians. The previous French government seemed to be "in bed" with Saddam. France's willingness to use lethal military force against Greenpeace - killing one member, but not Saddam, is the sort of hypocrisy many American's expect.
"The sinking of the Rainbow Warrior, codenamed Operation Satanic[1], was a special operation by the "action" branch of the French foreign intelligence services, the Direction Générale de la Sécurité Extérieure (DGSE), carried out on July 10, 1985. It aimed to sink the flagship of the Greenpeace fleet, the Rainbow Warrior, while she was docked in the port of Auckland, New Zealand, to prevent her from interfering in a nuclear test in Moruroa.
Fernando Pereira, a photographer, drowned on the sinking ship. Two of the French agents were subsequently arrested by the New Zealand Police on passport fraud and immigration charges. Following questioning, they were subsequently charged with arson, conspiracy to commit arson, willful damage, and murder. As part of a plea bargain, they eventually pleaded guilty to manslaughter and were sentenced to ten years, just over two of which they served.
The ensuing scandal resulted in the resignation of the French Defence Minister Charles Hernu, and the subject became so touchy that it was not until twenty years afterward that the personal responsibility of French President François Mitterrand was officially admitted."
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sinking_of_the_Rainbow_Warrior
http://www.greenpeace.org/international/rainbow-warrior-bombing/spy-story
IIRC, France requested that their agents be allowed to complete their 10 year prison sentences in French territory. France violated the agreement and freed them soon after arrival.
Even tho I dont like the French(Ive had to work with them
I've worked with the French for many years. While Parisians have a certain reputation/stereotype, much like New Yorkers, I've had friendly business relationships with them. I had noticed that those from the country side were more willing to engage in off-time recreational activities. However these activities were predominantly outdoor activities and perhaps it was simply an urbanite thing.
While traveling in Paris, and only being able to speak a few words of French - poorly, I've always been treated very well. This includes fancy restaurants and random bars off the tourist tracks. I don't rule out good luck. However I keep in mind something I heard at a marketing seminar, people are three times more likely to share negative experiences compared to positive experiences.
But anyway, it's stated in the GNU FAQ that you must distribute the sources with the binaries. You can't just refer to upstream or some other site because they might change. The exception is if you've made a deal with a site to keep the sources for you.
The FAQ is not the license, the license indicates a reference to a third party is OK. The FAQ item you cite even indicates that you are in compliance as long as the source has not changed, it only indicates non-compliance if and when the 3rd party site changes the source. If and when that happens you can update the reference. Sure, the FSF wants you to just put the source on your site, that's what the FAQ is suggesting, however the license does not require your to do so. If you have a link to the proper source you are in compliance.
For the same reason that someone who signs a contract without reading it and/or insisting on changes, deserves to be screwed. It's called a manual, it comes with the device, and you are allowed to read it. There is no "deception", only ignorance on the part of the user.
Terms in a contract are not always upheld. If they are too one sided, or absurd, a judge may rule something unconscionable. This is especially true for adhesion contracts, "take it or leave it", and even more so when there is a power imbalance between the parties such as large corp v a consumer.