[...] in which Theo DeRaadt [...] still manages to sound like spoiled whiny tosser in the process.
No, he doesn't./. readers probably have so little practice speaking truth to power that they don't recognize what it looks like when it's laid out before them. The only non-surprise here is that another/. poster is finding a way to criticize those who defend our freedom to share and modify by speaking up and acting out. It's much like the overrated comments on the recent RMS in France thread where RMS was denied an audience with Prime Minister Dominique de Villepin; some posters in that thread chose to focus on RMS' dress, even implicltly supporting RMS' lack of a suit as a valid reason for dismissal rather than point out far more salient (possibly financial) relationships between de Villepin and Bill Gates (or other heads of state who do business with Microsoft and Bill Gates). de Raadt's strident message in this OpenBSD thread is on-topic, on-target, clearly written, precise, and perfectly appropriate. We need more such language in the pursuit of software freedom. I would have hoped that/. readers, being overwhelmingly computer users who probably receive very little respect in their own work regardless of how they dress, would be more inclined to weigh someone's message, not their appearance.
"The goal, from both sides, is to meet customer needs [...]
That might be the goal of both Microsoft and the Open Source Initiative or the goals of both Microsoft and the Open Source movement, but it is not the goal of the author of the GNU GPL—the most widely-used free software license. The goals of the Open Source movement are chiefly technological and economic and this is what makes them so attractive to business.
RMS, Eben Moglen, and the FSF make it very clear that the GNU GPL is about giving more computer users software freedom—the freedom to run, inspect, share, and modify computer software and to defend those rights even for derivative works. This is not to say that business can't be a part of making this happen, but business needs are not given primacy here and for good reasons. Business sometimes perverts the fight for freedom into what Microsoft and other proprietary software distributors want—to create a warm, fuzzy appeal to non-free software, thus making a place at the table for those who work against what the FSF and the GNU GPL work to create and maintain.
Over the years, many companies have contributed to free software development. Some of these companies primarily developed non-free software, but the two activities were separate; thus, we could ignore their non-free products, and work with them on free software projects. Then we could honestly thank them afterward for their free software contributions, without talking about the rest of what they did.
We cannot do the same with these new companies, because they won't let us. These companies actively invite the public to lump all their activities together; they want us to regard their non-free software as favorably as we would regard a real contribution, although it is not one. They present themselves as "open source companies," hoping that we will get a warm fuzzy feeling about them, and that we will be fuzzy-minded in applying it.
This manipulative practice would be no less harmful if it were done using the term "free software." But companies do not seem to use the term "free software" that way; perhaps its association with idealism makes it seem unsuitable. The term "open source" opened the door for this.
I can't really blame MS for being unable to support software that old.
But the free software community could. The free software community could even charge those who want their Windows 98 systems to continue to work on the Internet rather than be exposed to a growing series of discovered holes; some might do maintenance and bug-fixing work gratis. That's where the real problems is—proprietors forbid anyone from making the software better and proprietors forbid sharing the improved version of the software (if you discover some way to improve it). There's no argument in saying that Microsoft wouldn't make money from offering real commercial support (modifying, documenting, and providing other services for free software for a fee) when they are choosing that path themselves. The important thing here is not whether Microsoft would make money on this, it's the effect on the users. This is the time-honored problem of running proprietary software at all. Users deserve software freedom.
Proprietors agree with you, which is why they're interested in cutting their prices or giving away gratis copies of their software to large-seat clients in exchange for locking government users into something that will pay off (both monetarily and in terms of control) in the future. Money is not and should not be the chief rationale by which these decisions are made or else more valuable points that pay off now and in the future will be lost.
What, exactly, is "truly free software"? I can't find that term in the interview.
BBC on /.'s revamp?
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On The BBC 2.0
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· Score: 5, Informative
An interesting point from the BBC "Reboot" Q&A considering/.'s recent webpage redesign contest:
[...]To kick-off, jay left the following comment on the blog: "What you are really asking for is numerous submissions of what is in essence a $million rebranding. Not a bad exchange for an apple laptop."
I think it's worth pointing out from the very beginning that we are not asking people to provide million £ rebranding for us. Indeed we are NOT going to use or commission any designs for the final front page. Yes, we will turn the winning design into the homepage for a day - but that's as a prize and as recognition for the winning producer's efforts (and if they really don't want us to, then we won't).
I would completely agree with jay that we would be ripping people off if we were going to turn entries submitted into the final homepage design. But that's not the objective of this competition.
In part, Azureus and the BitTorrent programs are attractive because they are free software—users are free to run, share, and modify the software. By contrast, uTorrent is non-free software—users can't be sure what they're really running because they can't inspect the program or get others they trust to inspect the software for them. If uTorrent doesn't do what a user wants, changes are difficult to implement (if not effectively impossible) and are not legally allowed besides. Don't think about helping your community by improving uTorrent and distributing the improved version, users can't legally do that either. Despite these restrictions, the uTorrent refers to the situation uTorrent users face as "support" in the uTorrent FAQ which frames the issue not from the perspective that users deserve software freedom, but the more narrow developmental goals of the Open Source movement which merely shrugs slightly disappointedly at proprietary software.
Apparently it takes so little to get some to give up their software freedom, even in circumstances where there are perfectly capable free software programs to do the same job.
Adjusting the screen resolution is one problem I've consistently seen with Ubuntu GNU/Linux.
This review is too kind on the matter for the audience I talk to; suggesting that novices use "sudo dpkg-reconfigure xserver-xorg" and answer questions about their hardware is not something I'd recommend to novices. While other parts of Ubuntu GNU/Linux shine for the novice, this is not one of them. Fedora Core GNU/Linux has always been better at letting me use the GNOME screen resolution adjuster (and setting the default to the highest screen resolution at the highest refresh rate so I don't often have to adjust the screen resolution at all) and getting the desired results.
I hope Ubuntu's chosen resolution picks the native resolution for LCD screens. I mostly work with users who have older computers and CRTs but are planning to switch to LCDs real soon now.
It's not a question of Sun owing OpenSSH developers anything, nor did I say it was. Please read what I wrote, not what you'd like me to have said instead.
Everyone agrees that Sun may build on OpenSSH code, even to make a proprietary derivative, that was never in question. The question is not legalistic and trying to frame everything in terms of who owes what to whom means you're missing out on a lot of what people do in polite society. The issue has to do with giving thanks and recognizing what made Sun's OpenSSH-based project work, particularly when giving thanks costs Sun so little. These are factors contained in no license. Nobody is saying OpenSSH has been taken advantage of. They chose their license carefully, cognizant of the consequences a non-copylefted free software license carries. One ought not forget to acknowledge the assistance of those who helped one get where they are.
It's a shame Sun behaves the way they choose to do, de Raadt put his finger right on it. And we can remember how Sun treats the OpenSSH team (and their own customers, since Sun distributes a proprietary derivative) when we decide whether we want to place our trust in a black box controlled by ungrateful people. Since other wealthy organizations also failed to help out, we can apply the same logic to them too (hence, it's worth keeping IBM, Red Hat, Apple, HP, and others in mind).
Your understanding of what "open source" means is also remarkably incorrect as that movement has more to do with programmatic convenience than you describe.
No, it's not flaming, it's fact-based observation. Accurate, on-point criticism shouldn't be waved away as "flaming" no matter how uncomfortable it makes your greedy friends at Sun feel.
And no, I have not noticed "how a lot of other projects ask for donations and it is fulfilled rathr[sic] quickly". I will look forward to your information showing a high number of projects getting donations rather quickly. To be even more on-topic, it would help if you could pick examples where businesses are donating, because de Raadt said that all of the OpenSSH donations to date were from individuals.
I'm not surprised, I understand that the OpenSSH license allows this to happen. I'd go further than what you say: multinational corporations have long proven their greed knows no bounds and they've done so in far more important situations than this. But this is not a licensing concern. At this scale of importance it's more an issue of manners, how people and organizations ought to behave in polite society. I think people are expressing disappointment that Sun has repeatedly turned down easy opportunities to be friendly with people who have helped them; the amount of money it would have cost Sun to do the nice thing here is many orders of magnitude less than the amount of money made from building on and commercially distributing OpenSSH.
Sun isn't the only organization in this position either, this isn't a bad apple situation. This is part of a pattern of big business policy decisions to behave in this fashion. Big businesses have a chance to look like they aren't rapaciously greedy. They're choosing to throw that chance away (for widely understood reasons which many protest daily in anti-corporate movements around the world) and it's our job to make sure these businesses know that we won't forget the choices they have made.
Clearly you have much to learn about being nice and putting things in perspective; how little it would have cost Sun, for instance, to do as the OpenSSH developers twice asked versus how selfish, greedy, and thankless it makes Sun look today. Another reminder of how big businesses should not be conflated with individuals in any sense.
Or perhaps you're really affirming power like a sycophant; you wish to continue to wield the power of thanklessness over those that choose to license under non-copylefted free software and open source licenses. You see a chance to justify using their works as you see fit by giving us an overly expansive interpretation of licensing, as if licensing covers everything. Saying thank you isn't a part of any license, nor could you enforce such a clause. But it sure looks bad when you don't thank anyone who helped you like Sun isn't thanking the OpenSSH developers.
"Pissing off" DARPA by speaking out against the invasion and occupation of Iraq?
And any organization that distributes proprietary software is more self serving than an organization that distributes software I have the right to run, share, and modify.
From what I read, this isn't really a licensing complaint. I'm sure de Raadt is fully aware of what happens when one doesn't look out for preserving software freedom for derivative works. His is a complaint about money and the enormous disparity between those who have a lot of money and those who don't; licensing OpenSSH under the GNU GPL wouldn't have gotten the OpenSSH developers the money they seek.
de Raadt noted that "Twice we asked them [Sun] to cover the travel and accommodation costs for a[n OpenSSH] developer to come to their event, and they refused.". That's Sun being greedy and other big businesses (Apple, Cisco, SGI, HP, Siemens, and various commercial GNU/Linux distributors including Red Hat and IBM) not doing anything to lighten the OpenSSH developers' load despite having billions of dollars between them.
It also points out how the marketplace has yet to make right any of this—no doubt Sun can go on treating their unpaid workers at OpenSSH poorly. I hope more people and organizations will recall de Raadt's words when considering doing business with Sun. We have the power to try and shame them into doing something they can each afford, we should use it. Along this line, interesting how individuals have contributed all of the money the OpenSSH team has made from this, despite that amount being under a paltry $1,000.
No, some patents affect a small number of manufacturers, for instance, hence they're merely industrial regulations—the patents involved in manufacturing cars are an often-cited example. These are quite different from software patents because people in their homes do make and distribute software which is covered by software patents. Different kinds of patents have different effects on society.
However if you want to argue that patents are not a good idea, you'll have some interesting company: the FTC and the Australian Government. According to a presentation by Ciarán O'Riordan at an event held on 2005-11-18 at the European Union offices, "the United States of America told us that software patents are a bad idea". In a 350-page report from the FTC "in 2003, they published their Report on Innovation, which was a 350 page report about the patent system - every aspect of the patent system in the USA.". According to this presentation, every aspect of the American patent system was critiqued and the FTC's "entire conclusion was negative. This wasn't a report just on software patents, this wasn't a response to anything in particular, and they didn't have an axe to grind, but simply for software they found that their was no benefit.". O'Riordan has a/. account, so perhaps he'll address this point in this thread.
Prior to this talk, and this FTC report, RMS gave a talk on the danger of software patents in which he pulls back the focus from patents on algorithms used in software and talks briefly about all patents:
In the 1980's the Australian Government commissioned a study of the patent system. The patent system in general, not software patents. This study concluded that Australia would be better off abolishing the patent system because it did very little good for society and cause a lot of trouble. The only reason they didn't recommend is that international pressure. So one of the things they cited was that patents which was supposed to disclose information so that they would no longer be secret or in fact useless, for that purpose, engineers never looked at patents to try and learn anything because it's too hard to read them. In fact they quoted that an engineer saying "I can't recognize my own inventions in patents".
Let's not kid ourselves, this is not some kind of attempt at neutrality (despite how the article's description might lead you to believe that). It's about a different set of values without any of the interesting debate that even tries to justify those values.
"[L]eav[ing] out the free software philosophy" just means sanctioning proprietary software. Arguing the popular doesn't mean arguing from neutrality, it means taking the well-worn path of discussing something that is beyond debate for most people because they're ignorant of an alternative and the rationale behind that alternative.
Most people have not been taught to value software freedom, hence they don't understand it. In "leaving out the free software philosophy" one skips past all of the interesting arguments (if free software is interesting, and why or why not) to something that has been done before: compare title counts and discover that Microsoft Windows has the most programs available for it that people are aware of, which itself is a biased count favoring what is widely advertised.
This rather naive notion assumes that the terms of patents wouldn't be extended like the term of copyright has been extended many times, so that these patents actually would expire in some relatively short amount of time. It assumes that the adverse impact borne by the poor would not be so great as to seriously injure and/or kill them. It assumes that the loss to other freedoms we value would not be so great that we would miss those other freedoms: what if an unlimited patent scope poses greater interference with our freedom of speech or assembly? What if our ability to effectively challenge our government's actions is curtailed in a whole new way, thanks to making every idea patentable?
I don't think your concept has been seriously considered enough to merit a +5 "Interesting" moderation, nor do I think it's good enough to seriously contemplate implementation. Your idea is what I'd normally associate with a shill for a large patent holder, like IBM or some other multinational corporation that cross-licenses its patents to cushion the blow the patent regime imposes on other organizations and individuals.
You can go to the Creative Commons website to familiarize yourself with the CC licenses, including licenses you're very unlikely to see used (such as the more objectionable CC licenses like the developing-nations license and the sampling license that disallows verbatim non-commercial sharing). Shrinkwrap licenses are commonly inaccessible to you until you buy the package and open it, or begin to install the software and see the license panel in the installer program, or somehow begin acquiring something you might not want once you've read its license.
But under all copyright licenses, if you behave in accordance with the default of copyright law (which, broadly speaking, is to deny you the freedom to engage in regulated behavior like copying, production of a derivative work, distribution, and public performance or display) you should be behaving within the law.
What you're identifying as poison is a part of the copyright system, and not a part of any particular license per se. But it is a good cue from the licensor if they don't make their licenses easy to discover without obtaining the service or product being licensed. To me, that's one mark of an individual or organization to avoid doing business with.
Your second argument is circular. Just because people say "I run Linux" doesn't make it fair or correct, as I have already explained.
Microsoft does call their product Microsoft Windows, particularly after February 2004 when they settled a trademark infringement lawsuit for many millions of dollars; a lawsuit they brought against Michael Robertson's "Lindows". After the judge denied Microsoft's preliminary injunction request and raised "serious questions" about Microsoft's trademark, Microsoft reconsidered their entire lawsuit and it wasn't long before they issued suggestions to reporters asking them to use the term "Microsoft Windows" which they could obtain trademark power on rather than "Windows" which they most likely could not. Now that GNU/Linux distribution carries a different name and Microsoft holds the "Lindows" trademark. This story was covered on/., you should look it up.
Finally, filling in "the last critical gap" doesn't give one the power to deny all other contributors to the system and take full credit. Calling the official GNU system by their chosen name doesn't mean they deserve no share of the credit for the system running with other kernels.
While it's true that ImageMagick isn't licensed under the GPL, I hope nobody comes away thinking that licensing under the GPL precludes commercial distribution or incorporation into a commercial program. That's never been the case.
Being licensed under the GNU General Public License doesn't preclude use in commercial software. In fact, many GPL-covered programs are commercially distributed and some even have remarkably lucrative consultancies developing them (such as GCC).
Furthermore, one can build on GPL-covered programs in other programs (even proprietary programs) because it all depends on how the GPL'd program is called.
Interesting how Microsoft may "call [Microsoft Windows XP SP2] what they want" yet you believe that respecting the name Stallman gave GNU requires a license clause demanding something, thus you choose to ask "Where exactly does the GPL (or anything else in the business or software world) require you to give credit to someone via the naming of a product?".
How about that this is not a matter of legality, but a matter of respect. One ought to call things by their proper names: the kernel Linus Torvalds started is called "Linux", the operating system Microsoft distributes is called "Microsoft Windows", and the operating system Richard Stallman started is called "GNU". The union of the GNU OS with the Linux kernel is reasonably called "GNU/Linux" or "GNU+Linux" so that both projects get a share of the credit. As more variants of GNU appear which feature different kernels or kernel replacements (I know of 3 so far), it is respectful and technically useful to identify them by their proper names as well.
Please read the first paragraph of my first post, particularly the part where I say that Linux kernel licensing isn't under Torvalds' exclusive control and hasn't been for most of that kernels existence.
I'd say proprietary software, regardless of its ostensible purpose, "is just another backdoor for anything, be it an attacker or virus, to use to compromise your system/network". No matter how expert you are, you might never know what it does because you are not allowed to learn more. Proprietary programs can do plenty of things you don't want them to do and those bad things can happen without you knowing about the bad things they do. You're denied any opportunity to learn what proprietary software does, to change the program to do something better, or to help others by sharing the improved program with your community. This occurs regardless of how one acquires the proprietary software.
I disagree with blaming the victim for not knowing how their computer works--nobody is "asking" or "begging" for trouble. Users shouldn't have to know what's going on in a technical sense if they don't want to know, even though there are horrible consequences of not knowing (ignorance is never advisable, but people should be free to make that choice). Forbidding people any opportunity to know more is anti-social; it holds people helpless to help themselves or others and leaves them dependant on a master who doesn't have their best interests in mind. Switching to another proprietor (as some in this/. thread have suggested) is no solution because that is just switching from one master to another. What's needed is freedom.
I understand what you were getting at, but I don't think that would help spread the idea of giving GNU a fair share of the credit for the operating system. What opponents find more palatable would only confirm their misunderstanding, not help spread how things actually happened or give fair credit. Those who are opposed to using the term "GNU/Linux", are likely to react by saying how such a term would confirm the idea that Linux is an operating system and that this so-called "Linux system" is a part of the GNU Project. For opponents of the term GNU/Linux, it's perfectly fine to continue denying GNU any credit for the operating system and associating the system exclusively with Linus Torvalds and his political views (which exist and can be understood despite his insistence that he doesn't want software to have a political component).
The FSF distinguish between "GNU Linux" (a Linux which is a part of the GNU project, like "GNU Emacs") and "GNU/Linux" (or, if you prefer, "GNU+Linux"). It's a very subtle difference, typographically speaking. But since there is no such thing as a Linux kernel which is an official part of the GNU Project, a GNU Linux, it's not very vigorously discussed.
Torvalds should stick to technical matters.
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Linus on GPL3 In Forbes
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· Score: 3, Insightful
I wonder if Linus even has the real authority to unilaterly switch to an alternative license.
He doesn't. The Linux kernel hasn't been under his exclusive copyright for most of its existence. Not even his fork is under his copyright alone because he doesn't collect copyright assignments from contributors to his fork. This seems to me to be right in line with the general lack of foresight and considerable confusion about software freedom I've come to associate with him (see his use of Bitkeeper and his objection to Andrew Tridgell's work on a Bitkeeper repo pulling program for other examples).
By his own admission he is not a deep thinker about the philosophical (he says polical) part of the job.
All the more reason why Forbes should have interviewed people who are deep thinkers about issues relevant to the GPL: RMS, Eben Moglen, or someone from the FSF who could have spoken with more insight and a clear understanding of what the license is meant to achieve. Interviewing Torvalds about licensing is usually fruitless because he gets another chance to demonstrate how much he doesn't understand the goals of the license and how much he doesn't agree with what he doesn't understand.
He claims that use of GPL-covered programs is restricted by the first draft of GPLv3: "You cannot install it on your hardware (laser-equipped shark or otherwise) without also making sure that others can install another version.". That is a good thing because that's critical to software freedom. His criticism is confusing: he professes to want to be allowed to fix things, yet he criticizes along the lines of preventing people from stopping users to be able to fix things. He also doesn't seem to understand that others might want to tinker things he doesn't want to tinker with (a dishwasher or a DVR). Heaven forbid anyone wants to change the length of a wash, rinse, or dry cycle or a DVR that only deletes recorded programs when the user says to do so.
He views the GPLv2 as a contract: "However, I don't think that's part of my GPLv2 contract." and Eben Moglen made it quite clear in his detailed discussion of GPLv3 that the GPL has not been and will not be a contract. There's even a section in the draft GPLv3 called "Not a Contract". I'd rather take Moglen's legal advice than Torvalds', particularly when it comes to interpreting the GPL.
It's also hard to take Torvalds' complaints seriously because he refuses to become a part of the year-long revision process, even by submitting comments to the GPLv3 FSF site.
If not a fork is all but inevitable (GNU/Linux anyone?). My guess is he will talk like this from time to time but will be under pressure to maintain the status quo.
GNU/Linux isn't a fork, it's the GNU operating system featuring the Linux kernel. This is distinct from the GNU operating system featuring a kernel from one of the BSD systems, or the official GNU operating system which runs with the HURD.
Slashdot Mirror
No, he doesn't. /. readers probably have so little practice speaking truth to power that they don't recognize what it looks like when it's laid out before them. The only non-surprise here is that another /. poster is finding a way to criticize those who defend our freedom to share and modify by speaking up and acting out. It's much like the overrated comments on the recent RMS in France thread where RMS was denied an audience with Prime Minister Dominique de Villepin; some posters in that thread chose to focus on RMS' dress, even implicltly supporting RMS' lack of a suit as a valid reason for dismissal rather than point out far more salient (possibly financial) relationships between de Villepin and Bill Gates (or other heads of state who do business with Microsoft and Bill Gates). de Raadt's strident message in this OpenBSD thread is on-topic, on-target, clearly written, precise, and perfectly appropriate. We need more such language in the pursuit of software freedom. I would have hoped that /. readers, being overwhelmingly computer users who probably receive very little respect in their own work regardless of how they dress, would be more inclined to weigh someone's message, not their appearance.
That might be the goal of both Microsoft and the Open Source Initiative or the goals of both Microsoft and the Open Source movement, but it is not the goal of the author of the GNU GPL—the most widely-used free software license. The goals of the Open Source movement are chiefly technological and economic and this is what makes them so attractive to business.
RMS, Eben Moglen, and the FSF make it very clear that the GNU GPL is about giving more computer users software freedom—the freedom to run, inspect, share, and modify computer software and to defend those rights even for derivative works. This is not to say that business can't be a part of making this happen, but business needs are not given primacy here and for good reasons. Business sometimes perverts the fight for freedom into what Microsoft and other proprietary software distributors want—to create a warm, fuzzy appeal to non-free software, thus making a place at the table for those who work against what the FSF and the GNU GPL work to create and maintain.
As RMS makes clear in "Why "Free Software" is better than "Open Source"":
But the free software community could. The free software community could even charge those who want their Windows 98 systems to continue to work on the Internet rather than be exposed to a growing series of discovered holes; some might do maintenance and bug-fixing work gratis. That's where the real problems is—proprietors forbid anyone from making the software better and proprietors forbid sharing the improved version of the software (if you discover some way to improve it). There's no argument in saying that Microsoft wouldn't make money from offering real commercial support (modifying, documenting, and providing other services for free software for a fee) when they are choosing that path themselves. The important thing here is not whether Microsoft would make money on this, it's the effect on the users. This is the time-honored problem of running proprietary software at all. Users deserve software freedom.
Proprietors agree with you, which is why they're interested in cutting their prices or giving away gratis copies of their software to large-seat clients in exchange for locking government users into something that will pay off (both monetarily and in terms of control) in the future. Money is not and should not be the chief rationale by which these decisions are made or else more valuable points that pay off now and in the future will be lost.
What, exactly, is "truly free software"? I can't find that term in the interview.
An interesting point from the BBC "Reboot" Q&A considering /.'s recent webpage redesign contest:
In part, Azureus and the BitTorrent programs are attractive because they are free software—users are free to run, share, and modify the software. By contrast, uTorrent is non-free software—users can't be sure what they're really running because they can't inspect the program or get others they trust to inspect the software for them. If uTorrent doesn't do what a user wants, changes are difficult to implement (if not effectively impossible) and are not legally allowed besides. Don't think about helping your community by improving uTorrent and distributing the improved version, users can't legally do that either. Despite these restrictions, the uTorrent refers to the situation uTorrent users face as "support" in the uTorrent FAQ which frames the issue not from the perspective that users deserve software freedom, but the more narrow developmental goals of the Open Source movement which merely shrugs slightly disappointedly at proprietary software.
Apparently it takes so little to get some to give up their software freedom, even in circumstances where there are perfectly capable free software programs to do the same job.
Adjusting the screen resolution is one problem I've consistently seen with Ubuntu GNU/Linux.
This review is too kind on the matter for the audience I talk to; suggesting that novices use "sudo dpkg-reconfigure xserver-xorg" and answer questions about their hardware is not something I'd recommend to novices. While other parts of Ubuntu GNU/Linux shine for the novice, this is not one of them. Fedora Core GNU/Linux has always been better at letting me use the GNOME screen resolution adjuster (and setting the default to the highest screen resolution at the highest refresh rate so I don't often have to adjust the screen resolution at all) and getting the desired results.
I hope Ubuntu's chosen resolution picks the native resolution for LCD screens. I mostly work with users who have older computers and CRTs but are planning to switch to LCDs real soon now.
It's not a question of Sun owing OpenSSH developers anything, nor did I say it was. Please read what I wrote, not what you'd like me to have said instead.
Everyone agrees that Sun may build on OpenSSH code, even to make a proprietary derivative, that was never in question. The question is not legalistic and trying to frame everything in terms of who owes what to whom means you're missing out on a lot of what people do in polite society. The issue has to do with giving thanks and recognizing what made Sun's OpenSSH-based project work, particularly when giving thanks costs Sun so little. These are factors contained in no license. Nobody is saying OpenSSH has been taken advantage of. They chose their license carefully, cognizant of the consequences a non-copylefted free software license carries. One ought not forget to acknowledge the assistance of those who helped one get where they are.
It's a shame Sun behaves the way they choose to do, de Raadt put his finger right on it. And we can remember how Sun treats the OpenSSH team (and their own customers, since Sun distributes a proprietary derivative) when we decide whether we want to place our trust in a black box controlled by ungrateful people. Since other wealthy organizations also failed to help out, we can apply the same logic to them too (hence, it's worth keeping IBM, Red Hat, Apple, HP, and others in mind).
Your understanding of what "open source" means is also remarkably incorrect as that movement has more to do with programmatic convenience than you describe.
No, it's not flaming, it's fact-based observation. Accurate, on-point criticism shouldn't be waved away as "flaming" no matter how uncomfortable it makes your greedy friends at Sun feel.
And no, I have not noticed "how a lot of other projects ask for donations and it is fulfilled rathr[sic] quickly". I will look forward to your information showing a high number of projects getting donations rather quickly. To be even more on-topic, it would help if you could pick examples where businesses are donating, because de Raadt said that all of the OpenSSH donations to date were from individuals.
I'm not surprised, I understand that the OpenSSH license allows this to happen. I'd go further than what you say: multinational corporations have long proven their greed knows no bounds and they've done so in far more important situations than this. But this is not a licensing concern. At this scale of importance it's more an issue of manners, how people and organizations ought to behave in polite society. I think people are expressing disappointment that Sun has repeatedly turned down easy opportunities to be friendly with people who have helped them; the amount of money it would have cost Sun to do the nice thing here is many orders of magnitude less than the amount of money made from building on and commercially distributing OpenSSH.
Sun isn't the only organization in this position either, this isn't a bad apple situation. This is part of a pattern of big business policy decisions to behave in this fashion. Big businesses have a chance to look like they aren't rapaciously greedy. They're choosing to throw that chance away (for widely understood reasons which many protest daily in anti-corporate movements around the world) and it's our job to make sure these businesses know that we won't forget the choices they have made.
Clearly you have much to learn about being nice and putting things in perspective; how little it would have cost Sun, for instance, to do as the OpenSSH developers twice asked versus how selfish, greedy, and thankless it makes Sun look today. Another reminder of how big businesses should not be conflated with individuals in any sense.
Or perhaps you're really affirming power like a sycophant; you wish to continue to wield the power of thanklessness over those that choose to license under non-copylefted free software and open source licenses. You see a chance to justify using their works as you see fit by giving us an overly expansive interpretation of licensing, as if licensing covers everything. Saying thank you isn't a part of any license, nor could you enforce such a clause. But it sure looks bad when you don't thank anyone who helped you like Sun isn't thanking the OpenSSH developers.
"Pissing off" DARPA by speaking out against the invasion and occupation of Iraq?
And any organization that distributes proprietary software is more self serving than an organization that distributes software I have the right to run, share, and modify.
From what I read, this isn't really a licensing complaint. I'm sure de Raadt is fully aware of what happens when one doesn't look out for preserving software freedom for derivative works. His is a complaint about money and the enormous disparity between those who have a lot of money and those who don't; licensing OpenSSH under the GNU GPL wouldn't have gotten the OpenSSH developers the money they seek.
de Raadt noted that "Twice we asked them [Sun] to cover the travel and accommodation costs for a[n OpenSSH] developer to come to their event, and they refused.". That's Sun being greedy and other big businesses (Apple, Cisco, SGI, HP, Siemens, and various commercial GNU/Linux distributors including Red Hat and IBM) not doing anything to lighten the OpenSSH developers' load despite having billions of dollars between them.
It also points out how the marketplace has yet to make right any of this—no doubt Sun can go on treating their unpaid workers at OpenSSH poorly. I hope more people and organizations will recall de Raadt's words when considering doing business with Sun. We have the power to try and shame them into doing something they can each afford, we should use it. Along this line, interesting how individuals have contributed all of the money the OpenSSH team has made from this, despite that amount being under a paltry $1,000.
No, some patents affect a small number of manufacturers, for instance, hence they're merely industrial regulations—the patents involved in manufacturing cars are an often-cited example. These are quite different from software patents because people in their homes do make and distribute software which is covered by software patents. Different kinds of patents have different effects on society.
However if you want to argue that patents are not a good idea, you'll have some interesting company: the FTC and the Australian Government. According to a presentation by Ciarán O'Riordan at an event held on 2005-11-18 at the European Union offices, "the United States of America told us that software patents are a bad idea". In a 350-page report from the FTC "in 2003, they published their Report on Innovation, which was a 350 page report about the patent system - every aspect of the patent system in the USA.". According to this presentation, every aspect of the American patent system was critiqued and the FTC's "entire conclusion was negative. This wasn't a report just on software patents, this wasn't a response to anything in particular, and they didn't have an axe to grind, but simply for software they found that their was no benefit.". O'Riordan has a /. account, so perhaps he'll address this point in this thread.
Prior to this talk, and this FTC report, RMS gave a talk on the danger of software patents in which he pulls back the focus from patents on algorithms used in software and talks briefly about all patents:
Let's not kid ourselves, this is not some kind of attempt at neutrality (despite how the article's description might lead you to believe that). It's about a different set of values without any of the interesting debate that even tries to justify those values.
"[L]eav[ing] out the free software philosophy" just means sanctioning proprietary software. Arguing the popular doesn't mean arguing from neutrality, it means taking the well-worn path of discussing something that is beyond debate for most people because they're ignorant of an alternative and the rationale behind that alternative.
Most people have not been taught to value software freedom, hence they don't understand it. In "leaving out the free software philosophy" one skips past all of the interesting arguments (if free software is interesting, and why or why not) to something that has been done before: compare title counts and discover that Microsoft Windows has the most programs available for it that people are aware of, which itself is a biased count favoring what is widely advertised.
This rather naive notion assumes that the terms of patents wouldn't be extended like the term of copyright has been extended many times, so that these patents actually would expire in some relatively short amount of time. It assumes that the adverse impact borne by the poor would not be so great as to seriously injure and/or kill them. It assumes that the loss to other freedoms we value would not be so great that we would miss those other freedoms: what if an unlimited patent scope poses greater interference with our freedom of speech or assembly? What if our ability to effectively challenge our government's actions is curtailed in a whole new way, thanks to making every idea patentable?
I don't think your concept has been seriously considered enough to merit a +5 "Interesting" moderation, nor do I think it's good enough to seriously contemplate implementation. Your idea is what I'd normally associate with a shill for a large patent holder, like IBM or some other multinational corporation that cross-licenses its patents to cushion the blow the patent regime imposes on other organizations and individuals.
You can go to the Creative Commons website to familiarize yourself with the CC licenses, including licenses you're very unlikely to see used (such as the more objectionable CC licenses like the developing-nations license and the sampling license that disallows verbatim non-commercial sharing). Shrinkwrap licenses are commonly inaccessible to you until you buy the package and open it, or begin to install the software and see the license panel in the installer program, or somehow begin acquiring something you might not want once you've read its license.
But under all copyright licenses, if you behave in accordance with the default of copyright law (which, broadly speaking, is to deny you the freedom to engage in regulated behavior like copying, production of a derivative work, distribution, and public performance or display) you should be behaving within the law.
What you're identifying as poison is a part of the copyright system, and not a part of any particular license per se. But it is a good cue from the licensor if they don't make their licenses easy to discover without obtaining the service or product being licensed. To me, that's one mark of an individual or organization to avoid doing business with.
Apparently you haven't read the GNU/Linux naming FAQ which addresses many of your concerns.
Your second argument is circular. Just because people say "I run Linux" doesn't make it fair or correct, as I have already explained.
Microsoft does call their product Microsoft Windows, particularly after February 2004 when they settled a trademark infringement lawsuit for many millions of dollars; a lawsuit they brought against Michael Robertson's "Lindows". After the judge denied Microsoft's preliminary injunction request and raised "serious questions" about Microsoft's trademark, Microsoft reconsidered their entire lawsuit and it wasn't long before they issued suggestions to reporters asking them to use the term "Microsoft Windows" which they could obtain trademark power on rather than "Windows" which they most likely could not. Now that GNU/Linux distribution carries a different name and Microsoft holds the "Lindows" trademark. This story was covered on /., you should look it up.
Finally, filling in "the last critical gap" doesn't give one the power to deny all other contributors to the system and take full credit. Calling the official GNU system by their chosen name doesn't mean they deserve no share of the credit for the system running with other kernels.
While it's true that ImageMagick isn't licensed under the GPL, I hope nobody comes away thinking that licensing under the GPL precludes commercial distribution or incorporation into a commercial program. That's never been the case.
Being licensed under the GNU General Public License doesn't preclude use in commercial software. In fact, many GPL-covered programs are commercially distributed and some even have remarkably lucrative consultancies developing them (such as GCC).
Furthermore, one can build on GPL-covered programs in other programs (even proprietary programs) because it all depends on how the GPL'd program is called.
Interesting how Microsoft may "call [Microsoft Windows XP SP2] what they want" yet you believe that respecting the name Stallman gave GNU requires a license clause demanding something, thus you choose to ask "Where exactly does the GPL (or anything else in the business or software world) require you to give credit to someone via the naming of a product?".
How about that this is not a matter of legality, but a matter of respect. One ought to call things by their proper names: the kernel Linus Torvalds started is called "Linux", the operating system Microsoft distributes is called "Microsoft Windows", and the operating system Richard Stallman started is called "GNU". The union of the GNU OS with the Linux kernel is reasonably called "GNU/Linux" or "GNU+Linux" so that both projects get a share of the credit. As more variants of GNU appear which feature different kernels or kernel replacements (I know of 3 so far), it is respectful and technically useful to identify them by their proper names as well.
Please read the first paragraph of my first post, particularly the part where I say that Linux kernel licensing isn't under Torvalds' exclusive control and hasn't been for most of that kernels existence.
I'd say proprietary software, regardless of its ostensible purpose, "is just another backdoor for anything, be it an attacker or virus, to use to compromise your system/network". No matter how expert you are, you might never know what it does because you are not allowed to learn more. Proprietary programs can do plenty of things you don't want them to do and those bad things can happen without you knowing about the bad things they do. You're denied any opportunity to learn what proprietary software does, to change the program to do something better, or to help others by sharing the improved program with your community. This occurs regardless of how one acquires the proprietary software.
/. thread have suggested) is no solution because that is just switching from one master to another. What's needed is freedom.
I disagree with blaming the victim for not knowing how their computer works--nobody is "asking" or "begging" for trouble. Users shouldn't have to know what's going on in a technical sense if they don't want to know, even though there are horrible consequences of not knowing (ignorance is never advisable, but people should be free to make that choice). Forbidding people any opportunity to know more is anti-social; it holds people helpless to help themselves or others and leaves them dependant on a master who doesn't have their best interests in mind. Switching to another proprietor (as some in this
I understand what you were getting at, but I don't think that would help spread the idea of giving GNU a fair share of the credit for the operating system. What opponents find more palatable would only confirm their misunderstanding, not help spread how things actually happened or give fair credit. Those who are opposed to using the term "GNU/Linux", are likely to react by saying how such a term would confirm the idea that Linux is an operating system and that this so-called "Linux system" is a part of the GNU Project. For opponents of the term GNU/Linux, it's perfectly fine to continue denying GNU any credit for the operating system and associating the system exclusively with Linus Torvalds and his political views (which exist and can be understood despite his insistence that he doesn't want software to have a political component).
The FSF distinguish between "GNU Linux" (a Linux which is a part of the GNU project, like "GNU Emacs") and "GNU/Linux" (or, if you prefer, "GNU+Linux"). It's a very subtle difference, typographically speaking. But since there is no such thing as a Linux kernel which is an official part of the GNU Project, a GNU Linux, it's not very vigorously discussed.
He doesn't. The Linux kernel hasn't been under his exclusive copyright for most of its existence. Not even his fork is under his copyright alone because he doesn't collect copyright assignments from contributors to his fork. This seems to me to be right in line with the general lack of foresight and considerable confusion about software freedom I've come to associate with him (see his use of Bitkeeper and his objection to Andrew Tridgell's work on a Bitkeeper repo pulling program for other examples).
All the more reason why Forbes should have interviewed people who are deep thinkers about issues relevant to the GPL: RMS, Eben Moglen, or someone from the FSF who could have spoken with more insight and a clear understanding of what the license is meant to achieve. Interviewing Torvalds about licensing is usually fruitless because he gets another chance to demonstrate how much he doesn't understand the goals of the license and how much he doesn't agree with what he doesn't understand.
He claims that use of GPL-covered programs is restricted by the first draft of GPLv3: "You cannot install it on your hardware (laser-equipped shark or otherwise) without also making sure that others can install another version.". That is a good thing because that's critical to software freedom. His criticism is confusing: he professes to want to be allowed to fix things, yet he criticizes along the lines of preventing people from stopping users to be able to fix things. He also doesn't seem to understand that others might want to tinker things he doesn't want to tinker with (a dishwasher or a DVR). Heaven forbid anyone wants to change the length of a wash, rinse, or dry cycle or a DVR that only deletes recorded programs when the user says to do so.
He views the GPLv2 as a contract: "However, I don't think that's part of my GPLv2 contract." and Eben Moglen made it quite clear in his detailed discussion of GPLv3 that the GPL has not been and will not be a contract. There's even a section in the draft GPLv3 called "Not a Contract". I'd rather take Moglen's legal advice than Torvalds', particularly when it comes to interpreting the GPL.
It's also hard to take Torvalds' complaints seriously because he refuses to become a part of the year-long revision process, even by submitting comments to the GPLv3 FSF site.
GNU/Linux isn't a fork, it's the GNU operating system featuring the Linux kernel. This is distinct from the GNU operating system featuring a kernel from one of the BSD systems, or the official GNU operating system which runs with the HURD.