How long do you suspect it will be before the Perl bigots flood this thread and drown out other useful discussion?
FWIW, Python's original name was ABC, as in "as easy as"...one of Guido's design goals was that it should be easy to learn and non-idiosyncratic, good ones to have in a first language. I don't have a lot of heartburn with this choice. --
So you were a *DOS* share/crippleware programmer. Big deal.
I don't suppose it's entered your tiny little 4004 of a brain that it's within the realm of possiblity that people can object to the GPV for reasons of principle, has it?
As it happens, I have never written a piece of shareware. What software I have written and released was either released under the same terms as the software of which it was a modification (as in, for example, my adaptation of the KA9Q TCP/IP suite to work with the Data General One laptop's nonstandard serial hardware), or else under a BSDish license (do as you like with it, just don't claim it as your own).
You'll get a lot farther along in this world if you'll quit assuming the worst of others' motives on exactly zero evidence.
The fact that SGI choose the GPL over the BSD licence to release their code under is proof that it's the BSD license that's seriously broken despite what idiots like yourself claim.
I suspect the value judgment you're claiming never entered anyone's mind at SGI; rather, the lawyers took one look at the situation and decided that using any other license than the GPV for code to be integrated into Linux created a legal minefield they'd much rather stay away from. That's the lawyerly thing to do. --
This happened to me as well, with IE5 on NT...but after I killed IE and restarted, and then went to the IP address, I was logged in. Musta set a cookie that persisted. --
the people who really seem to have the biggest problems with the GPL are for the most part windows shareware programers.
I started complaining about the GPV - and coined the term - in 1991 (or was it 1990? Damn, I gotta find a copy of that post). I didn't even load Windows - any version - on a computer until 1996. The license has always been broken, and some of us have been pointing that out since the beginning. --
Saving a weakly protected "free" software product, and ensuring that it forever remains Free is a worthwhile and laudable goal.
It would be, if the BSD-licensed product was indeed weakly protected. It is not. Nothing anyone can do, under any circumstances, can change the fact that the BSD code itself is freely redistributable. Someone who takes that code and modifies it, then releases it under a different license, can only affect the status of the code as modified. The original code is, and will always remain, unaffected.
I'd call that a "rescue", not a fork.
I'm deeply offended by this; as someone who gave 17 years of his life as a volunteer paramedic, doing real rescue, this is no better than those idiots who call themselves "Operation Rescue" in the name of bombing and vandalism. --
The guy who wrote the Miami TCP/IP stack for the Amiga did pretty much the same thing, execpt he turned the BSD TCP/IP stack into crippled shareware. And the BSD license supporters wonder why linux users prefer the GPL.
Fine. Don't like what the guy who wrote Miami did? Go get the BSD stack, which is STILL freely available, port it to the Amiga however you like, and go into competition with him. That's freedom. --
What is the difference between this and public domain now?
Without careful butt-covering, someone could take your public domain code, hang theircopyright notice on it, and claim it as their own. The BSD license prohibits that, without restricting any real freedoms: you can suck BSD-licensed source into your proprietary program, but you cannot (despite GPV zealots' strident claims) change the status of the original code, which will continue to be freely available regardless of what anyone else does. --
this means that BSD code can finally be released under the GPL after modification. yay!
Go right ahead. Don't be surprised when folks ignore you...after all, what's the point of doing a straight rerelease? People can still use the BSD-licensed version without the GPV baggage.
You may well have learned about Unix from Slackware...but have you learned about a solid, maintainable system suitable for real-world production use? While Slackware does indeed let you do what you want, it also makes life much harder in terms of performing upgrades in a consistent fashion that's likely to leave you with a running system when you're done.
Package management is designed to keep you from shooting yourself in the foot by installing components that are known to be incompatible or insufficiently recent. For your own uses, you might not care if your system is down for a day or three while you straighten it out; in the Real World, it makes a lot of difference.
The init scripts are another area like this, and one of my major complaints about BSD. I much prefer a flexible system where you don't have to go edit a critical system initialization script every time you want to change something. The SysV init script model has the serious advantage that it's robust in the face of a script error: one bad script doesn't hose up the whole system. There's been some discussion on the NetBSD mailing lists about adding a flexible startup system, even more so than SysV's (in particular, not depending on the file name to order execution), so the classic BSD init script may go the way of the buffalo even in BSD.
Finally, not having a color LS may be a minor annoyance for someone who doesn't want to set it up every time; for others (me included) who use their systems from other than the local console, it's a win. In any case, it's far from "HORRIBLE!". --
And the GPL doesn't prevent FreeBSD people from using the GNU utils, as long as they provide the source, etc. They will have problems using parts of the source code if they insist on the BSDL [...]
That's just it, though. The people who work on BSD do insist on the BSDL and not on the GPV because the GPV conflicts with a central goal of the BSD project: to make a system with no restrictions on what can be done with it, specifically includingmaking and selling a proprietary, closed-source version of it. That is why you'll find lots of BSD code in Linux, but not the other way around: allowing the GPV to infect BSD would kill it. --
Why would you ever type anything but "ps axu"? I've been a BSD user since 1981. It's in my wetware. Anything else blows my circuits.
Your fingers type "ps axu". Mine type "ps -ef"...and every time I get a usage message, I say "ARGH!" as I type "ps auxgww" to get the same amount of information.
I can't claim 1981...just 1987, having been an early user of Microport System V/AT. (Yes, on a 286.) Everyone but BSD itself has adopted POSIX, which is little more than an outgrowth of the System V Interface Definition. Like it or not, SysV won the standards wars... --
If this bothers you so much, take the original code, fix it, and sell it, or give it away, or even GPV it. It's still there, freely available. Knock yourself out. This is the best kind of freedom: no strings attached. --
Um, wrong. Here where I work we have a BSDI server, it comes with source code for a BSD kernel. The source code is covered under a BSD license. It is not freely redistributable, and cannot be freely reused.
So? The original BSD code that BSDI's system was based on is in no way affected by BSDI's license. You can go do anything you want to with the original. BSDI is free to do whatever they wish with their code. You know, freedom.
Also, watch with the flamebait there, GNU has nothing to do with communism.
Sorry, you will never convince me of that: their utopia is exactly "from each according to his abilities, to each according to his needs". They deny ownership of software assets as vehemently as the Communists denied ownership of the means of production.
Personally I like the diversity. And as far as the GNU/GPL issues I don't understand the complaints. The GPL gives them every right to use those programs. It is kind of the point of the GPL.
No, the point of the GPV is to spread RMS' communist utopia. It's a political goal, having only peripherally to do with software.
The GPV does not allow reuse of Linux code in BSD while retaining the BSD license terms. Those who develop BSD have, as an explicit goal, allowing anyone to do anything they like with code - includeing use it in their proprietary programs without infecting them with its own license. GPV zealots don't understand this, and continue to flame based on the misconception that allowing people to use it for their own proprietary purposes allows it to be removed from public view. BULLSHIT! If this were indeed the case, then BSD WOULDN'T EXIST TODAY!
Those who flame BSD for not following the GPV's utopian ideals should realize that, just maybe, their communist utopia is not for everyone, and lay off. I would suggest that this would do wonders toward lowering the level of flamage from both sides. --
Maybe in theory the BSD license gives users more permissions than the GNU license
Ain't no theory. It's real fact. BSD code can be freely reused even if you don't buy into the GNU communist utopia. GPV-licensed code can't.
but in practice BSD code is often made proprietary, and thus is not freely re-distributable
This is an oft-repeated claim by GPV partisans, but it just doesn't hold up. If a vendor makes proprietary improvements to BSD code, he cannot prevent the original code from being redistributed. If this were the case, BSD wouldn't be possible.
There are many things I don't like about BSD (For god's sake, people, at least give me the option of using a POSIX-compatible PS!!), but the licensing is truly free - something you can't say about the GPV. --
Well, they are not going to open source it, so it can hardly be a true test of the open source concept. I've seen a lot of kvetching about the Sun license, but no explanations. Just why does Sun's license not qualify as "open source"? Does the OSF agree (or has anyone even asked)? --
This is probably one of the best tests of the open source concept...Can something as boring as an office applications suite attract the interest of the development community the same way that Linux has? --
For some reason, slashdot is mangling the URL when I paste it into an anchor tag. The URL is https://gullfoss.fcc.gov/cgi-bin/ws.exe/prod/ecfs/ comsrch.hts?ws_mode=retrieve_list&id_pro ceeding=99-25 (with no space in the middle of "proceeding"). You can also get there by entering "99-25" into the Proceeding field of the form you get at https://gullfoss.fcc. gov/cgi-bin/ws.exe/prod/ecfs/comsrch.hts. --
The text at the top is incorrect, partly. Original comments are due 2 August, not 1 September. The extra month only applies to reply comments, those filed specifically in response to other comments already filed.
A couple of other links: You can search the FCC's database for already filed comments in this proceeding (there are 974 of them as I write this), and file comments from your web browser.
One thing to note when commenting to the FCC: The FCC is especially unswayed by the kind of rhetoric folks around here tend to sling. Go read the Linux Advocacy HOWTO, and then be even more reserved than it recommends. --
Somehow, I have little trouble believing this in the UK. Some provisions, like the one about tipping others off their communications may be monitored, are too totalitarian to believe. The US is taking some unreasonable provisions in the crypto area...but if this bill were introduced in the US, it'd be shouted down immediately.
"Any country with an Official Secrets Act has no business lecturing the US on freedom." -- Tom Clancy --
Slashdot Mirror
FWIW, Python's original name was ABC, as in "as easy as"...one of Guido's design goals was that it should be easy to learn and non-idiosyncratic, good ones to have in a first language. I don't have a lot of heartburn with this choice.
--
I don't suppose it's entered your tiny little 4004 of a brain that it's within the realm of possiblity that people can object to the GPV for reasons of principle, has it?
As it happens, I have never written a piece of shareware. What software I have written and released was either released under the same terms as the software of which it was a modification (as in, for example, my adaptation of the KA9Q TCP/IP suite to work with the Data General One laptop's nonstandard serial hardware), or else under a BSDish license (do as you like with it, just don't claim it as your own).
You'll get a lot farther along in this world if you'll quit assuming the worst of others' motives on exactly zero evidence.
The fact that SGI choose the GPL over the BSD licence to release their code under is proof that it's the BSD license that's seriously broken despite what idiots like yourself claim.
I suspect the value judgment you're claiming never entered anyone's mind at SGI; rather, the lawyers took one look at the situation and decided that using any other license than the GPV for code to be integrated into Linux created a legal minefield they'd much rather stay away from. That's the lawyerly thing to do.
--
This happened to me as well, with IE5 on NT...but after I killed IE and restarted, and then went to the IP address, I was logged in. Musta set a cookie that persisted.
--
the people who really seem to have the biggest problems with the GPL are for the most part windows shareware programers.
I started complaining about the GPV - and coined the term - in 1991 (or was it 1990? Damn, I gotta find a copy of that post). I didn't even load Windows - any version - on a computer until 1996. The license has always been broken, and some of us have been pointing that out since the beginning.
--
It would be, if the BSD-licensed product was indeed weakly protected. It is not. Nothing anyone can do, under any circumstances, can change the fact that the BSD code itself is freely redistributable. Someone who takes that code and modifies it, then releases it under a different license, can only affect the status of the code as modified. The original code is, and will always remain, unaffected.
I'd call that a "rescue", not a fork.
I'm deeply offended by this; as someone who gave 17 years of his life as a volunteer paramedic, doing real rescue, this is no better than those idiots who call themselves "Operation Rescue" in the name of bombing and vandalism.
--
The guy who wrote the Miami TCP/IP stack for the Amiga did pretty much the same thing, execpt he turned the BSD TCP/IP stack into crippled shareware. And the BSD license supporters wonder why linux users prefer the GPL.
Fine. Don't like what the guy who wrote Miami did? Go get the BSD stack, which is STILL freely available, port it to the Amiga however you like, and go into competition with him. That's freedom.
--
It's spelled G-P-L. Please grow up.
The GPV is exactly that: a legal virus that infects everything it touches. Honesty demands that I call it what it is.
--
What is the difference between this and public domain now?
Without careful butt-covering, someone could take your public domain code, hang theircopyright notice on it, and claim it as their own. The BSD license prohibits that, without restricting any real freedoms: you can suck BSD-licensed source into your proprietary program, but you cannot (despite GPV zealots' strident claims) change the status of the original code, which will continue to be freely available regardless of what anyone else does.
--
this means that BSD code can finally be released under the GPL after modification. yay!
Go right ahead. Don't be surprised when folks ignore you...after all, what's the point of doing a straight rerelease? People can still use the BSD-licensed version without the GPV baggage.
--
Package management is designed to keep you from shooting yourself in the foot by installing components that are known to be incompatible or insufficiently recent. For your own uses, you might not care if your system is down for a day or three while you straighten it out; in the Real World, it makes a lot of difference.
The init scripts are another area like this, and one of my major complaints about BSD. I much prefer a flexible system where you don't have to go edit a critical system initialization script every time you want to change something. The SysV init script model has the serious advantage that it's robust in the face of a script error: one bad script doesn't hose up the whole system. There's been some discussion on the NetBSD mailing lists about adding a flexible startup system, even more so than SysV's (in particular, not depending on the file name to order execution), so the classic BSD init script may go the way of the buffalo even in BSD.
Finally, not having a color LS may be a minor annoyance for someone who doesn't want to set it up every time; for others (me included) who use their systems from other than the local console, it's a win. In any case, it's far from "HORRIBLE!".
--
And the GPL doesn't prevent FreeBSD people from using the GNU utils, as long as they provide the source, etc. They will have problems using parts of the source code if they insist on the BSDL [...]
That's just it, though. The people who work on BSD do insist on the BSDL and not on the GPV because the GPV conflicts with a central goal of the BSD project: to make a system with no restrictions on what can be done with it, specifically includingmaking and selling a proprietary, closed-source version of it. That is why you'll find lots of BSD code in Linux, but not the other way around: allowing the GPV to infect BSD would kill it.
--
It gets old.
The truth never gets old...except to those who would deny it.
--
Why would you ever type anything but "ps axu"? I've been a BSD user since 1981. It's in my wetware. Anything else blows my circuits.
Your fingers type "ps axu". Mine type "ps -ef"...and every time I get a usage message, I say "ARGH!" as I type "ps auxgww" to get the same amount of information.
I can't claim 1981...just 1987, having been an early user of Microport System V/AT. (Yes, on a 286.) Everyone but BSD itself has adopted POSIX, which is little more than an outgrowth of the System V Interface Definition. Like it or not, SysV won the standards wars...
--
If this bothers you so much, take the original code, fix it, and sell it, or give it away, or even GPV it. It's still there, freely available. Knock yourself out. This is the best kind of freedom: no strings attached.
--
Touche.
--
So? The original BSD code that BSDI's system was based on is in no way affected by BSDI's license. You can go do anything you want to with the original. BSDI is free to do whatever they wish with their code. You know, freedom.
Also, watch with the flamebait there, GNU has nothing to do with communism.
Sorry, you will never convince me of that: their utopia is exactly "from each according to his abilities, to each according to his needs". They deny ownership of software assets as vehemently as the Communists denied ownership of the means of production.
--
Personally I like the diversity. And as far as the GNU/GPL issues I don't understand the complaints. The GPL gives them every right to use those programs. It is kind of the point of the GPL.
No, the point of the GPV is to spread RMS' communist utopia. It's a political goal, having only peripherally to do with software.
The GPV does not allow reuse of Linux code in BSD while retaining the BSD license terms. Those who develop BSD have, as an explicit goal, allowing anyone to do anything they like with code - includeing use it in their proprietary programs without infecting them with its own license. GPV zealots don't understand this, and continue to flame based on the misconception that allowing people to use it for their own proprietary purposes allows it to be removed from public view.
BULLSHIT!
If this were indeed the case, then BSD WOULDN'T EXIST TODAY!
Those who flame BSD for not following the GPV's utopian ideals should realize that, just maybe, their communist utopia is not for everyone, and lay off. I would suggest that this would do wonders toward lowering the level of flamage from both sides.
--
Ain't no theory. It's real fact. BSD code can be freely reused even if you don't buy into the GNU communist utopia. GPV-licensed code can't.
but in practice BSD code is often made proprietary, and thus is not freely re-distributable
This is an oft-repeated claim by GPV partisans, but it just doesn't hold up. If a vendor makes proprietary improvements to BSD code, he cannot prevent the original code from being redistributed. If this were the case, BSD wouldn't be possible.
There are many things I don't like about BSD (For god's sake, people, at least give me the option of using a POSIX-compatible PS!!), but the licensing is truly free - something you can't say about the GPV.
--
Well, they are not going to open source it, so it can hardly be a true test of the open source concept.
I've seen a lot of kvetching about the Sun license, but no explanations. Just why does Sun's license not qualify as "open source"? Does the OSF agree (or has anyone even asked)?
--
This is probably one of the best tests of the open source concept...Can something as boring as an office applications suite attract the interest of the development community the same way that Linux has?
--
What reliable, well-engineered commercial software? NT?
--
Oh, boy. Just the story I needed to read on my 39th birthday.
--
For some reason, slashdot is mangling the URL when I paste it into an anchor tag. The URL is https://gullfoss.fcc.gov/cgi-bin/ws.exe/prod/ecfs/ comsrch.hts?ws_mode=retrieve_list&id_pro ceeding=99-25 (with no space in the middle of "proceeding"). You can also get there by entering "99-25" into the Proceeding field of the form you get at https://gullfoss.fcc. gov/cgi-bin/ws.exe/prod/ecfs/comsrch.hts.
--
A couple of other links: You can search the FCC's database for already filed comments in this proceeding (there are 974 of them as I write this), and file comments from your web browser.
One thing to note when commenting to the FCC: The FCC is especially unswayed by the kind of rhetoric folks around here tend to sling. Go read the Linux Advocacy HOWTO, and then be even more reserved than it recommends.
--
"Any country with an Official Secrets Act has no business lecturing the US on freedom." -- Tom Clancy
--