That was what I was wondering, how the hell can he get reviews pulled???
Well, they could keep the reviews online if they wanted. It's just that they want to continue be allowed to see movies before they are released in the futur...
No, disassembling the BIOS to find why it doesn't work is a very good thing to do. Especially in this case where he discovered that it was intentional. And now it's time to let people know what this manufacturer is doing.
Instead of focusing on criticizing Microsoft how about focus on making open source software that is not "as good" but rather "MUCH BETTER" than closed sourced equivalents?
And what's wrong with doing both ? RMS is not focused on criticizing, he's criticizing but also helping improving free software. There's no reason why he shouldn't criticize Microsoft if he has something to say. And by the way, doing much better than closed source software is usually not enough, if Firefox is succesful it's not only because they are doing better than IE, but because they have very good marketing, something that many open source projects are lacking. And yet it is not enought, IE is a peace of crap, but it is still by far the most used browser, because it comes preinstalled.
However, without Microsoft software, we would have never seen the price of computing dive into regular joe range.
Wrong, without MS we would have had BeOS for instance. Without their monopoly, we would have had much more competition and computing would have evolved in a better way. Maybe MS did some good things, but they locked everybody else out of OS development which is worse than all the good things they have done.
I did, especially the part where you said people who expect you to follow the license are "annoying" and where you asked "who cares" if you follow the license. I realize that was a rhetorical question, but the answer is still "the original author" I never say "who cares if you follow the license". I said "who cares if you don't comply with item b) by downloading the source code from an ftp server". It's different, I never said you shouldn't follow the license. And I guess the author wouldn't care about someone downloading the source code on a ftp server, if you comply with the license and send a cdrom to the people who request it.
You're violating the license, and that's copyright infringement, and that's not okay. No, you are not violating the license by letting people download the source code on an external ftp server. Or show me where the license say you shouldn't do something like that. It doesn't say anything like that, quite the contrary actually.
Read what I said, the offer to send the source by mail to whoever is asking is still valid. So I don't see how letting people know that the source is also available on some ftp server could be a violation of the license.
The copyright holder, who licensed the software under the terms of the GPL. No, there's really nothing in the license that prevent you to let people download the source code from an ftp server.
It's not compliant with item "b", but who cares ? 99% of people don't care as long as they can download it without any problem. For the 1% that absolutely don't want to download from an ftp server you can send them a CD.
You can, there's nothing that prevent you from doing this if it works. Or actually 99% of people will be happy with this and you can send the source on a CD to the other 1% that want to be annoying.
Here's what the GPLv2 says about this:
a) Accompany it with the complete corresponding machine-readable source code, which must be distributed under the terms of Sections 1 and 2 above on a medium customarily used for software interchange; or, b) Accompany it with a written offer, valid for at least three years, to give any third party, for a charge no more than your cost of physically performing source distribution, a complete machine-readable copy of the corresponding source code, to be distributed under the terms of Sections 1 and 2 above on a medium customarily used for software interchange; or, c) Accompany it with the information you received as to the offer to distribute corresponding source code. (This alternative is allowed only for noncommercial distribution and only if you received the program in object code or executable form with such an offer, in accord with Subsection b above.)
What if the end-user, the guy with the box, doesn't own it? Suppose the IPTV company maintains ownership of the box? Than the end-user wouldn't need to be provided with the code?
That's what free.fr (a french isp renting box running linux and other GPL software) is doing. But this is sort of a grey area here, the GPL doesn't talk about ownership, it talks about distribution, and this is up to the judge to decide whether it is distribution or not in this case. Here some people are going to sue free.fr because they refuse to distribute the sources they modified, we'll see what happens...
It depends. If they give the source code with the programs, then they can give it only to their customers, and they don't have to give it to anyone else. However if they decide instead to only give a written offer to ask the source with their programs, as allowed by the GPL, then they should give the source code to whoever is asking, not only customers.
"An earlier study on the distribution of the maintainability index [4] across various FreeBSD modules [35,Figure 7.3] showed that their maintainability was evenly distributed, with few outliers at each end. This makes me believe that the WRK code examined can be treated as a representative subset of the complete Windows operating system kernel." How are FreeBSD and Windows related ? You conclude something about Windows source code based on things you saw in FreeBSD source code ?
A new machine is usually cheaper than single day wasted by a highly skilled member or staff. If you are taking about some executives then a single hour can buy a laptop.
Buying a new machine is a lot of time wasted. And you're usually not buying only one machine.
Since everyone out there is familiar with windows from their home machine Windows gets it's much lower TCO from the money saved by not having to train your staff in the use of a new OS. The occasional inconvenience windows throws at us is not enough to justify the loss in productivity of training all our staff to a new and unfamiliar OS.
Did you know that Vista is a new and unfamiliar OS ? You're going to stay running XP forever ?
Obviously you didn't read all the details of this announcement. We're talking about fake interoperability here. Basically it says that you can be interoperable, but only if you pay the Microsoft tax.
Which is why that approach to open source can never succeed. The open source movement needs developers and software companies to succeed, and as long as the religious fanatics in the movement keep up their talk of destroying commercial software development, the majority of developers are going to put their effort into proprietary software.
The goal really is not to destroy commercial software development. It is to encourage open source commercial software development versus proprietary software development because it leads to better software for everybody.
Yes, maybe this isn't anything groundbreaking at all, and the license change is just a way to have free advertising on slashdot for a software that otherwise nobody would have noticed or wanted to use:)
wtf ? How is that related to the GPL ? It would be exactly the same with the BSD license or even proprietary licenses. When you say "do whatever you want with my software and share it with everybody", you can't tell people later to stop doing that. The same when you give something to someone, you can't take it back. Otherwise it would be quite easy to kill any open source software, just contribute a big piece of software to the project, wait a few years then ask people to stop using your code...
Yes, we already know we can share public things, and there is nothing wrong about that, that's not the problem we're talking about here. The thing we're talking about here is when some data that used to be private become shared.
Your private data, after you give it to Google, isn't private any more.
That's wrong. Or at least that's not what google says, and not what many people think. But if it becomes true, then I guess many people will leave google for an other provider that respects your privacy and does not share your private data with the world.
Slashdot Mirror
That was what I was wondering, how the hell can he get reviews pulled???
Well, they could keep the reviews online if they wanted. It's just that they want to continue be allowed to see movies before they are released in the futur ...
No, disassembling the BIOS to find why it doesn't work is a very good thing to do. Especially in this case where he discovered that it was intentional. And now it's time to let people know what this manufacturer is doing.
Instead of focusing on criticizing Microsoft how about focus on making open source software that is not "as good" but rather "MUCH BETTER" than closed sourced equivalents?
And what's wrong with doing both ? RMS is not focused on criticizing, he's criticizing but also helping improving free software. There's no reason why he shouldn't criticize Microsoft if he has something to say. And by the way, doing much better than closed source software is usually not enough, if Firefox is succesful it's not only because they are doing better than IE, but because they have very good marketing, something that many open source projects are lacking. And yet it is not enought, IE is a peace of crap, but it is still by far the most used browser, because it comes preinstalled.
However, without Microsoft software, we would have never seen the price of computing dive into regular joe range.
Wrong, without MS we would have had BeOS for instance. Without their monopoly, we would have had much more competition and computing would have evolved in a better way. Maybe MS did some good things, but they locked everybody else out of OS development which is worse than all the good things they have done.
Read what I said, the offer to send the source by mail to whoever is asking is still valid. So I don't see how letting people know that the source is also available on some ftp server could be a violation of the license.
It's not compliant with item "b", but who cares ?
99% of people don't care as long as they can download it without any problem. For the 1% that absolutely don't want to download from an ftp server you can send them a CD.
You can't point at someone else's FTP site
You can, there's nothing that prevent you from doing this if it works. Or actually 99% of people will be happy with this and you can send the source on a CD to the other 1% that want to be annoying.
Here's what the GPLv2 says about this :
a) Accompany it with the complete corresponding machine-readable source code, which must be distributed under the terms of Sections 1 and 2 above on a medium customarily used for software interchange; or,b) Accompany it with a written offer, valid for at least three years, to give any third party, for a charge no more than your cost of physically performing source distribution, a complete machine-readable copy of the corresponding source code, to be distributed under the terms of Sections 1 and 2 above on a medium customarily used for software interchange; or,
c) Accompany it with the information you received as to the offer to distribute corresponding source code. (This alternative is allowed only for noncommercial distribution and only if you received the program in object code or executable form with such an offer, in accord with Subsection b above.)
What if the end-user, the guy with the box, doesn't own it? Suppose the IPTV company maintains ownership of the box? Than the end-user wouldn't need to be provided with the code?
That's what free.fr (a french isp renting box running linux and other GPL software) is doing. But this is sort of a grey area here, the GPL doesn't talk about ownership, it talks about distribution, and this is up to the judge to decide whether it is distribution or not in this case. Here some people are going to sue free.fr because they refuse to distribute the sources they modified, we'll see what happens ...
It depends. If they give the source code with the programs, then they can give it only to their customers, and they don't have to give it to anyone else. However if they decide instead to only give a written offer to ask the source with their programs, as allowed by the GPL, then they should give the source code to whoever is asking, not only customers.
Microsoft has been punished already. Time to move on.
Not true, it has NOT been punished, because it didn't do yet what it has been asked to.
A new machine is usually cheaper than single day wasted by a highly skilled member or staff. If you are taking about some executives then a single hour can buy a laptop.
Buying a new machine is a lot of time wasted. And you're usually not buying only one machine.
Since everyone out there is familiar with windows from their home machine Windows gets it's much lower TCO from the money saved by not having to train your staff in the use of a new OS. The occasional inconvenience windows throws at us is not enough to justify the loss in productivity of training all our staff to a new and unfamiliar OS.
Did you know that Vista is a new and unfamiliar OS ? You're going to stay running XP forever ?
Obviously you didn't read all the details of this announcement. We're talking about fake interoperability here. Basically it says that you can be interoperable, but only if you pay the Microsoft tax.
"Promise not to sue (which may be broken any day) => not GPL compatibility."
Actually it's worse than that. Promise not to sue, but only for non-commercial distribution => absolutly not GPL compatible
I think you quoted the most important lines of this announcement.
Which is why that approach to open source can never succeed. The open source movement needs developers and software companies to succeed, and as long as the religious fanatics in the movement keep up their talk of destroying commercial software development, the majority of developers are going to put their effort into proprietary software.
The goal really is not to destroy commercial software development. It is to encourage open source commercial software development versus proprietary software development because it leads to better software for everybody.
Yes, maybe this isn't anything groundbreaking at all, and the license change is just a way to have free advertising on slashdot for a software that otherwise nobody would have noticed or wanted to use :)
wtf ? How is that related to the GPL ? It would be exactly the same with the BSD license or even proprietary licenses. When you say "do whatever you want with my software and share it with everybody", you can't tell people later to stop doing that. The same when you give something to someone, you can't take it back. Otherwise it would be quite easy to kill any open source software, just contribute a big piece of software to the project, wait a few years then ask people to stop using your code...
No, I don't think it works for very small patches, it has to be copyrightable.
Were you really talking about having a drink when saying "highly illegal" ?
Yes, we already know we can share public things, and there is nothing wrong about that, that's not the problem we're talking about here. The thing we're talking about here is when some data that used to be private become shared.
Your private data, after you give it to Google, isn't private any more.
That's wrong. Or at least that's not what google says, and not what many people think. But if it becomes true, then I guess many people will leave google for an other provider that respects your privacy and does not share your private data with the world.
Google isn't sharing any private user data
It's not private data anymore, but it used to be before this change. That's why people are complaining.