Software patents can stifle one's ability to write software that implements covered ideas. Most software patents are held by corporations. Merely accessing (seeing) source code is insufficient. Users need all of the freedoms free software grants them.
I don't refer to programs being "open" because that term frames the debate along the lines of the open source movement which I am not a member of. One reason I'm not a member of the open source movement is because the definition of "open source" does not require software licenses to allow users to make private (non-distributed) derivatives and use them at any time without telling others that these derivatives even exist. By contrast, this is a part of the definition of free software.
The important question has nothing to do with whether a proprietary derivative of a non-copylefted free software program was part of the commons to begin with, but why it was not a part of the commons and what the social and ethical ramifications of that decision are. For those who believe software freedom is worth having, you'll often find that these same people believe it is worth protecting which means that derivatives should be free as well.
When software was shared and modified without any restrictions (such as during the time Stallman was at MIT in the AI lab), there was no need for a free software movement because that sharing and modifying behavior was the norm. RMS says as much in his speeches and his essays.
But when proprietary software came on the scene, there was a need for organized political opposition, a real social movement, to disallowing users from sharing and modifying the software they used. That organized social movement did not exist and Stallman saw the need for it, so he began the GNU Project. Other people did not do that work.
The Open Source Initiative did not appear until over a decade after the GNU Project began. The open source movement it has a different philosophy which pushes aside software freedom talk so they can more effectively speak to their primary audience--businesses.
No, there's no contradiction because licensees choose what software they want to build upon. They could have chosen another program licensed more to their liking or they could have written the software themselves. A strong copylefted free software license's requirement to distribute source code when distributing the work (or a derivative of the work) is not imposed on anyone or any organization. This requirement is knowable well in advance.
Say what you will about how software ideas should not be patentable, but they are. And this continues to be one way to deny the free software community access to these ideas.
Who is "defin[ing] a word to mean whatever you want" or "[g]etting upset that someone used the word 'free' to mean 'no cost'"?
I can point to where the FSF patiently acknowledges the ambiguity and patiently explains why they are focusing on the freedom meaning (including explaining which specific freedoms you get). I've heard speeches where Eben Moglen, counsel for the FSF, uses the word to mean zero cost and freedom in the same speech.
As for "hacker", the term did not originally mean what the popular press means when they use the term. In fact, there was a book called "Hackers", which includes some information about RMS, which referred to the old usage of that term.
None of the replacements for "free software" you mention work well, and this is usually cleared up in every FSF talk at the top of the Q&A session. Liberated/unenslaved/freed software doesn't work for software that was always free from the start (like GNU Emacs). Entities can't be liberated if they were always free. This same problem plagues all but one of your other suggestions. Liberty software might have worked, but by now you're about 20 years too late. The term "free software" is already listed in the most widely-used free software license, the GNU GPL. Changing terms now would not clearly help.
But you also have the problem of specifying how software is free -- what freedoms do you get, exactly? Instead, I recommend taking the time to explain what software freedom means. This will require people to stop believing that the right combination of two words will accurately convey ideas of arbitrary complexity.
You're not alone in your thoughts on this issue, in fact the people who founded the Open Source Initiative (and thus started the open source movement) thought as you do and coined the term "open source", in part, to do this job.
"The term ``free software'' has an ambiguity problem: an unintended meaning, ``Software you can get for zero price,'' fits the term just as well as the intended meaning, ``software which gives the user certain freedoms.'' We address this problem by publishing a more precise definition of free software, but this is not a perfect solution; it cannot completely eliminate the problem. An unambiguously correct term would be better, if it didn't have other problems.
Unfortunately, all the alternatives in English have problems of their own. We've looked at many alternatives that people have suggested, but none is so clearly ``right'' that switching to it would be a good idea. Every proposed replacement for ``free software'' has a similar kind of semantic problem, or worse--and this includes ``open source software.''
The official definition of ``open source software,'' as published by the Open Source Initiative, is very close to our definition of free software; however, it is a little looser in some respects, and they have accepted a few licenses that we consider unacceptably restrictive of the users. However, the obvious meaning for the expression ``open source software'' is ``You can look at the source code.'' This is a much weaker criterion than free software; it includes free software, but also includes semi-free programs such as Xv, and even some proprietary programs, including Qt under its original license (before the QPL).
That obvious meaning for ``open source'' is not the meaning that its advocates intend. The result is that most people misunderstand what those advocates are advocating. Here is how writer Neal Stephenson defined ``open source'':
Linux is ``open source'' software meaning, simply, that anyone can get copies of its source code files.
I don't think he deliberately sought to reject or dispute the ``official'' definition. I think he simply applied the conventions of the English language to come up with a meaning for the term. The state of Kansas published a similar definition:
Make use of open-source software (OSS). OSS is software for which the source code is freely and publicly available, though the specific licensing agreements vary as to what one is allowed to do with that code.
Of course, the open source people have tried to deal with this by publishing a precise definition for the term, just as we have done for ``free software.''
The improvements to the new BSD-based program are unavailable if the improvements are only distributed under a non-free license. The improvements should be a part of the commons as well, we should not seek new ways to treat a business like a charity.
Also, the new BSD license says absolutely nothing about software patents, another means of making work unavailable to the commons and the users of patent-encumbered programs. Despite the lack of thorough language in the GPL to cover software patents, the GPLv3 is expected to fully address them. I know of no such improved version of the new BSD license to cover software patents.
No license can prevent infringement, no matter what it says. No license's worthiness should be judged on that basis.
But you're right in that the community we get from the GPL is far better than allowing non-free derivatives where the community of those who share can't benefit from the improvements made to the work.
And it's our responsibility to be good to corporations, even to the point of allowing them to take works out of the commons, because why? The corporations that complain the most about the GNU GPL (Apple and Microsoft, among others) are those that treat their users horribly by distributing programs the users aren't allowed to inspect, share, or modify. The progress the free software movement made before the open source movement existed (which was over a decade of work) happened largely without the direct input of proprietors like what ESR is talking about. The GPL was never anti-business. And yet even after the open source movement continues to try to reframe the debate away from software freedom, the GNU GPL is the most popular free software license in existance.
I think ESR doesn't like the GPL because it works against the open source movement's goal to work for business by introducing them to programmers who are willing to work without payment (cheap labor has been a rallying cry of business, and a source of genuine social discontent amongst workers, for a very long time). The open source movement was founded and continues to do what they can to dismiss software freedom. Software freedom gives people the idea that they don't need the beneficiaries of "open source" as much as they need communities of partners, both individual and organizational. But open source advocates don't see this. They want to pretend that the free software movement and open source movement share a common philosophy despite that never having been the case.
ESR is showing off his ahistorical silliness again. But more importantly, he is trying to reframe the issues away from software freedom as a value unto itself and toward "openness" and innovation. From the very first lines of the article, and his speech, he wants his organization (the Open Source Initiative and, to a larger degree, the open source movement) to get credit for work he had nothing to do with writing -- the GNU GPL. The GPL predates anything to do with "open source" and therefore existed independant of it. Neither the OSI nor ESR have yet to write a single license which can compare to the licenses the Free Software Foundation have written. When it comes to advice about the GPL, consult with experts: Richard Stallman, Eben Moglen, and Brad Kuhn, FSF members all. Leave those who want to either "steal thunder" (as the saying goes) aside.
I pointed out that "commercial" is not the same as "proprietary". Hence, the non-GPL license for QT is poorly named. Its purpose, as you point out, is to satisfy proprietors. Calling this other license a "commercial" license gives the impression that the opposite is true of the GPL -- that one cannot do commercial work under the GPL -- which has never been the case.
So long as one is distributing derivatives of a GPL-covered work, or distributing a GPL-covered work, the rules of the GPL apply. Calling this "tainted" is imposing a value judgement on what's going on here.
In this case, one must distribute any GPL-covered work according to the restrictions of the GPL (distributing either a written promise valid for at least 3 years to distribute complete corresponding source code, or distributing the complete corresponding source code itself).
I understand fully that QT is doing with two licenses what GNOME does with one. But the name of the non-GPL QT license is not as clear as it should be. Whether QT is worth the cost of the proprietary license is immaterial to the point I made. What the LGPL allows licensees to do and what the LGPL places conditions on is also immaterial here because I did not confuse the GNU GPL and GNU LGPL at all. I understand the situation quite well and I conveyed my understanding appropriately in my grandparent post.
Trolltech has released Qt 4.0 both under commercial and GPL licenses [...]
I think what was meant here was proprietary licenses, not commercial licenses. This is a rather common misunderstanding that stems from not seeing the GNU GPL as a license under which one may do commercial work. But many developers and distributors have done commercial activity involving GPL-covered works over the years. What the GPL prohibits is distribution of proprietary derivatives, hence the GPL is not a proprietary software license.
I do the same thing when I am faced with animated user interfaces.
I also think these changes raise the level of entry for people with lower end machines -- poor computer users, chiefly -- as more OSes (even free software and open source OSes) require fancier displays just to do things that don't strictly need to be there.
You were just a little over 12 times too much. Let's just hop you don't write code for a living:p [...]
To you and the countless others on/. who offer their corrections in a similar tone: Yes, we get it, the parent poster goofed and you supplied a correction. Given the trivial context here, it's hardly a big deal and doesn't warrant sarcasm. Everyone make mistakes and plenty of people make mistakes in their work every day, including people who do work where lives are at stake. That's one reason why it is good to work with other people. In life it's far more important to be forgiving, keep things in perspective, and help other people without the wiseacre commentary and then move on.
While I don't see how the story summary makes Google out to be somehow better than Yahoo! here, I do think that this was a gratuitous Google mention for promotional value (name-dropping, albeit not mentioning famous people but instead famous organizations).
I don't know why people offer that as a viable option. It implicitly agrees with the parent stance by not criticizing its logic at all, yet simultaneously offers no course of action which allows people to help one another out of a fundamentally flawed situation. We should want to (and actually engage in) helping other people. My friends and neighbors might be amongst the viewers and, simply through ignorance of how computers work and what the free software movement proved is possible, might accept the bound-to-be-bad advice offered. I don't think they deserve to be treated that way.
This response tries to reframe a systemic issue as a point of personal preference--it's not about how the proposed system is likely to fail people in making important decisions, ignoring objectionable behavior instead of pointing out its failings is about letting the system have its way with people unimpeded in the slightest way.
And of course this video+audio data will be delivered to viewers exclusively in a proprietary and/or patent-encumbered format which requires proprietary software to see and hear.
Thus the irony: the software you will need in order to see the presentation is proprietary, and therefore, insecure by default--you can't legally inspect it to see what its doing when it runs. If you somehow learn that it is doing something you don't want it to do you can't legally improve it. And, to hold your community helpless, you can't legally share any improved version of the program with the community so that they don't have to live with the insecurity.
No doubt, the self-licking ice cream cone of "popularity" will be offered as the rationale to lure users into this downward spiral.
As far as the intended audience is concerned, no, it is not easy enough. Users of proprietary operating systems have not been taught to value software freedom, they have been taught to value price and convenience over everything else. That's a big part of the reason why they're users of proprietary operating systems. Hence, doing any manual effort to handle what they view as a system administration task is too much effort for them to expend. In their opinion, scanning and eradicating viruses, backdoors, trojan horses, etc. is something best done automatically, without any user intervention, and without interrupting what they use a computer for. It's accepted practice by now to somehow intercept a file open function call at the OS level, do all of the scan & repair work necessary before letting the OS pass the filehandle on to the caller in the normal fashion. Typing in any command or doing periodic scans doesn't address scan-on-open at all.
Installing Cygwin as a dependency for the ClamAV antivirus program is a showstopper for them. No significant group of Windows users are going to do this when every other program they have used has no dependencies. Requiring anything on the command line is a sign of an incomplete program in their eyes. And, as I explained above, this particular task shouldn't require any user interaction at all. It should "just work".
Now, I know that this is not too much to ask technical people to do, and I know that software freedom sometimes means living without certain conveniences for a while. But I ask that you keep your audience in mind and check to see if your audience matches the audience of people who could use the service that you recommend. Every Microsoft Windows user is told they need antivirus services. Thus, responding to that need by telling them to use this shell instead of that shell, or typing some simple command-line instruction will be perceived by them as too much.
I am not against changing the perception of this audience to match reality and to get them to see that software freedom is important. However, this takes time and persistence.
Is there a ClamAV for Microsoft Windows that will scan on demand? This makes scanning happen because its always on and invisible to novice users.
Is there a ClamAV for Microsoft Windows that will upgrade itself (virus definitions and "engine" as some anti-virus programs call it) when needed, invisibly, and on a schedule? This helps novice users not need to think about maintenance issues which, frankly, go unaddressed rather than better understood.
ClamWin won't yet do either of these things, according to its FAQ. I'd love to learn more about a free software anti-virus program for Microsoft Windows that could do these things.
Firefox's popularity will go down when Microsoft releases their new Internet Explorer for general use. From what I have heard, the new MSIE has tabs, the new MSIE will even display PNGs better, and it doubtless has other technical advances of one kind or another making it the least objectionable MSIE release to date. MSIE will continue to be the most convenient web browser for Windows users because it comes with Windows and is linked to on the desktop.
Why is this trouble for Firefox? Because Firefox is promoted on technical advances, therefore users will have no reason not to switch back to using MSIE.
Software freedom would be a compelling reason to stick with Firefox, but that's not the way Firefox is being pitched to users. Firefox doesn't cost any money to acquire or run, but MSIE doesn't cost its users additional money on top of the price of Windows (which is likely to come with their computer). So long as Firefox is promoted along lines that a proprietor with superior marketshare and advertising power can compete on, users will have learned no reason to favor an alternative.
Never point me to RMS as a source for legal advice. You're only going to annoy me, and still fail to make your point.
RMS continues to be a guiding authority for how the free software community interprets software patents, and for good reason. I could not care less about annoying you, but you show your stripes well enough by not explaining why you disagree with his arguments. That's not the way mature people engage in discussion. It's sad, really, that you dismiss his advice in this way. It not only reflects badly on you but it means that if you had any good advice to offer contrary to what we've heard and read, we can't benefit from it because you apparently refuse to divulge it.
Legal battles are not always expensive. Most large corporations keep lawyers on staff anyway, so it never hurts to see if you can get the judge to make a speedy decision.
IBM has the most patents and they have lots of lawyers on staff ready to file patent applications and handle patent infringement cases. IBM says they get an order of magnitude more value from cross-licensing than pursuing lawsuits. This article clearly illustrates the value of cross-licensing. Since, for IBM, the burden of losing a patent infringement case is not very real, the burden must be very real for any other patent holder.
Corporations preclude competition on the cheap.
on
Apple Sued Over iTunes UI
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· Score: 2, Insightful
If you were Apple, you would not fight this in court. Settling out of court, paying a patent license fee, or cross-licensing are all far less expensive than fighting this in court and, therefore, much more attractive ways to deal with this nuisance. Each of these outcomes individually or collectively are more likely to occur than seeing this through to the end in court.
Remember one of the examples we learned about in RMS' discussion of the problem with software patents (transcript): Briefly, Paul Heckel threatened to sue Apple over a patent he held which covered something in Hypercard; Apple initially brushed him off but when he threatened to sue Apple's users for patent infringement Apple listened up and paid him off.
What wasn't supposed to be like this? Proprietary computer software?
On the contrary, proprietary computer software is supposed to engender dependency and erect walls between users to prevent them from helping one another. The point of proprietary software is to withhold both the details of operation of the software and any reasonable chance of changing the software from the user. Thus making the user truly helpless; the user cannot help themselves or their community. Thus, the user enters a state of perpetual dependency on a monopolist who, if they are sufficiently pervasive, have no incentive to allow the user increased access to the programs they sell licenses to. Quite to the contrary, if the proprietor can get the cooperation of a government, they can make dependency the de facto standard and perpetuate the profitable harm for decades.
I don't know how many examples of this behavior it will take to get people to realize that this is the plan working as it was supposed to be working.
Software freedom is the antidote. Don't get lost in a horse race; don't recommend switching from one master to another. Freedom means having no masters. Liberating users to be able to share and modify their software is the key to computing only as dependantly as the user wishes to. Software freedom is a hard message to spread when there are so many pressures to stay silent about freedom and focus on technical features instead, but we are all better off when we engage in freedom talk. Freedom talk scares the proprietors and frames the debate away from dependency on monopoly.
This explanation is where the argument falls down. The new BSD license (or the MIT X11 license which is quite similar) still have requirements for those who distribute derivative works. The requirements are not many, but they are not zero either.
In particular, you may certainly not "do whatever you want" with the source code or any derivative works. The only way to have that power is to either write your own code or base your work on something in the public domain. And even then you cannot "do whatever you want" with any code which implements patented ideas (one of the significant shortcomings of the new BSD and MIT X11 licenses) for which you don't have the appropriate patent license(s).
Furthermore, stealing is not copying. What we're discussing here is not theft, but copyright infringement (I also brought up patent infringement). Those who have the power (yes, power not freedom) to sublicense are not stealing anything, even if the derivative distributor does something that is against the copyright license.
First, this is a question for a competant copyright lawyer. You should not base business decisions on the musings of/. posters. That said, I'll pitch in my two cents because I think it should spark something for you to do some research on.
You have pointed to a non-existant page at Microsoft, so reading the terms you referred to is not as easy as following the link. However, regardless of what these terms are, if I were in your shoes, I would first want to know: is Microsoft's claim of being able to set terms by which screenshots are used based on some law? If they have no grounding in law, then their terms are useless, no matter how "easy" they make it for publishers to acceed to their request. You make it sound like your publisher is simply letting Microsoft tell them how to run their business, by blindly accepting and working within the limits drawn up by Microsoft then using that (possibly bogus claim of power) as a means of framing the debate for copyright holders in the free software world.
Questioning Microsoft's power is critical to answering your question because if Microsoft's claims are based on nothing but their desire to control you and your publisher, then you'll find that there is nothing for the free software community to do. Hence, asking the free software community for screenshot licensing terms is a moot point.
The text of the GNU GPL is an excellent example of this point: in the GPL, the most commonly used free software license, you'll find the text that reads "Activities other than copying, distribution and modification are not covered by this License; they are outside its scope.". This is because the FSF put a lot of work into writing a license that is actually based on copyright law, enforcible around the world wherever there is a copyright regime (because, at the basic level at which the GPL is written to work, these copyright systems are quite similar). The FSF, and all GPL licensors, draw strength from working so closely to what copyright law actually gives copyright holders power to work with. Microsoft, on the other hand, claims powers in its licenses which I doubt they have the power to enforce, such as their claim of prohibitng you from using FrontPage (Microsoft's web page editor) to make webpages which disparage Microsoft.
I would also question the validity of Microsoft's screenshot licensing terms because I'd wonder if a screenshot is not simply the output of a process, something which the FSF claims is "legally impossible" for a copyright holder to control. The GPL has proven to be legally defensible (both because lawyers agree it is defensible and therefore encourage their clients not to bring suit based on the GPL, and in the few cases which have gone to court), hence I tend to trust the FSF's interpretation of copyright law.
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Software patents can stifle one's ability to write software that implements covered ideas. Most software patents are held by corporations. Merely accessing (seeing) source code is insufficient. Users need all of the freedoms free software grants them.
I don't refer to programs being "open" because that term frames the debate along the lines of the open source movement which I am not a member of. One reason I'm not a member of the open source movement is because the definition of "open source" does not require software licenses to allow users to make private (non-distributed) derivatives and use them at any time without telling others that these derivatives even exist. By contrast, this is a part of the definition of free software.
The important question has nothing to do with whether a proprietary derivative of a non-copylefted free software program was part of the commons to begin with, but why it was not a part of the commons and what the social and ethical ramifications of that decision are. For those who believe software freedom is worth having, you'll often find that these same people believe it is worth protecting which means that derivatives should be free as well.
When software was shared and modified without any restrictions (such as during the time Stallman was at MIT in the AI lab), there was no need for a free software movement because that sharing and modifying behavior was the norm. RMS says as much in his speeches and his essays.
But when proprietary software came on the scene, there was a need for organized political opposition, a real social movement, to disallowing users from sharing and modifying the software they used. That organized social movement did not exist and Stallman saw the need for it, so he began the GNU Project. Other people did not do that work.
The Open Source Initiative did not appear until over a decade after the GNU Project began. The open source movement it has a different philosophy which pushes aside software freedom talk so they can more effectively speak to their primary audience--businesses.
No, there's no contradiction because licensees choose what software they want to build upon. They could have chosen another program licensed more to their liking or they could have written the software themselves. A strong copylefted free software license's requirement to distribute source code when distributing the work (or a derivative of the work) is not imposed on anyone or any organization. This requirement is knowable well in advance.
Say what you will about how software ideas should not be patentable, but they are. And this continues to be one way to deny the free software community access to these ideas.
Who is "defin[ing] a word to mean whatever you want" or "[g]etting upset that someone used the word 'free' to mean 'no cost'"?
I can point to where the FSF patiently acknowledges the ambiguity and patiently explains why they are focusing on the freedom meaning (including explaining which specific freedoms you get). I've heard speeches where Eben Moglen, counsel for the FSF, uses the word to mean zero cost and freedom in the same speech.
As for "hacker", the term did not originally mean what the popular press means when they use the term. In fact, there was a book called "Hackers", which includes some information about RMS, which referred to the old usage of that term.
None of the replacements for "free software" you mention work well, and this is usually cleared up in every FSF talk at the top of the Q&A session. Liberated/unenslaved/freed software doesn't work for software that was always free from the start (like GNU Emacs). Entities can't be liberated if they were always free. This same problem plagues all but one of your other suggestions. Liberty software might have worked, but by now you're about 20 years too late. The term "free software" is already listed in the most widely-used free software license, the GNU GPL. Changing terms now would not clearly help.
But you also have the problem of specifying how software is free -- what freedoms do you get, exactly? Instead, I recommend taking the time to explain what software freedom means. This will require people to stop believing that the right combination of two words will accurately convey ideas of arbitrary complexity.
You're not alone in your thoughts on this issue, in fact the people who founded the Open Source Initiative (and thus started the open source movement) thought as you do and coined the term "open source", in part, to do this job.
As RMS points out, they too failed:
Please be more specific about what ideological goals you're referring to.
The improvements to the new BSD-based program are unavailable if the improvements are only distributed under a non-free license. The improvements should be a part of the commons as well, we should not seek new ways to treat a business like a charity.
Also, the new BSD license says absolutely nothing about software patents, another means of making work unavailable to the commons and the users of patent-encumbered programs. Despite the lack of thorough language in the GPL to cover software patents, the GPLv3 is expected to fully address them. I know of no such improved version of the new BSD license to cover software patents.
No license can prevent infringement, no matter what it says. No license's worthiness should be judged on that basis.
But you're right in that the community we get from the GPL is far better than allowing non-free derivatives where the community of those who share can't benefit from the improvements made to the work.
And it's our responsibility to be good to corporations, even to the point of allowing them to take works out of the commons, because why? The corporations that complain the most about the GNU GPL (Apple and Microsoft, among others) are those that treat their users horribly by distributing programs the users aren't allowed to inspect, share, or modify. The progress the free software movement made before the open source movement existed (which was over a decade of work) happened largely without the direct input of proprietors like what ESR is talking about. The GPL was never anti-business. And yet even after the open source movement continues to try to reframe the debate away from software freedom, the GNU GPL is the most popular free software license in existance.
I think ESR doesn't like the GPL because it works against the open source movement's goal to work for business by introducing them to programmers who are willing to work without payment (cheap labor has been a rallying cry of business, and a source of genuine social discontent amongst workers, for a very long time). The open source movement was founded and continues to do what they can to dismiss software freedom. Software freedom gives people the idea that they don't need the beneficiaries of "open source" as much as they need communities of partners, both individual and organizational. But open source advocates don't see this. They want to pretend that the free software movement and open source movement share a common philosophy despite that never having been the case.
ESR is showing off his ahistorical silliness again. But more importantly, he is trying to reframe the issues away from software freedom as a value unto itself and toward "openness" and innovation. From the very first lines of the article, and his speech, he wants his organization (the Open Source Initiative and, to a larger degree, the open source movement) to get credit for work he had nothing to do with writing -- the GNU GPL. The GPL predates anything to do with "open source" and therefore existed independant of it. Neither the OSI nor ESR have yet to write a single license which can compare to the licenses the Free Software Foundation have written. When it comes to advice about the GPL, consult with experts: Richard Stallman, Eben Moglen, and Brad Kuhn, FSF members all. Leave those who want to either "steal thunder" (as the saying goes) aside.
I pointed out that "commercial" is not the same as "proprietary". Hence, the non-GPL license for QT is poorly named. Its purpose, as you point out, is to satisfy proprietors. Calling this other license a "commercial" license gives the impression that the opposite is true of the GPL -- that one cannot do commercial work under the GPL -- which has never been the case.
So long as one is distributing derivatives of a GPL-covered work, or distributing a GPL-covered work, the rules of the GPL apply. Calling this "tainted" is imposing a value judgement on what's going on here.
In this case, one must distribute any GPL-covered work according to the restrictions of the GPL (distributing either a written promise valid for at least 3 years to distribute complete corresponding source code, or distributing the complete corresponding source code itself).
I understand fully that QT is doing with two licenses what GNOME does with one. But the name of the non-GPL QT license is not as clear as it should be. Whether QT is worth the cost of the proprietary license is immaterial to the point I made. What the LGPL allows licensees to do and what the LGPL places conditions on is also immaterial here because I did not confuse the GNU GPL and GNU LGPL at all. I understand the situation quite well and I conveyed my understanding appropriately in my grandparent post.
The Ogg Vorbis+Theora version works in Totem and Helix Player (better in Totem than Helix Player on my Fedora Core 4 GNU/Linux machine, actually).
Thanks to whomever made this version available. I appreciate distributing something for FLOSS users in FLOSS codecs.
From the /. summary:
I think what was meant here was proprietary licenses, not commercial licenses. This is a rather common misunderstanding that stems from not seeing the GNU GPL as a license under which one may do commercial work. But many developers and distributors have done commercial activity involving GPL-covered works over the years. What the GPL prohibits is distribution of proprietary derivatives, hence the GPL is not a proprietary software license.
I do the same thing when I am faced with animated user interfaces.
I also think these changes raise the level of entry for people with lower end machines -- poor computer users, chiefly -- as more OSes (even free software and open source OSes) require fancier displays just to do things that don't strictly need to be there.
To you and the countless others on /. who offer their corrections in a similar tone: Yes, we get it, the parent poster goofed and you supplied a correction. Given the trivial context here, it's hardly a big deal and doesn't warrant sarcasm. Everyone make mistakes and plenty of people make mistakes in their work every day, including people who do work where lives are at stake. That's one reason why it is good to work with other people. In life it's far more important to be forgiving, keep things in perspective, and help other people without the wiseacre commentary and then move on.
While I don't see how the story summary makes Google out to be somehow better than Yahoo! here, I do think that this was a gratuitous Google mention for promotional value (name-dropping, albeit not mentioning famous people but instead famous organizations).
I don't know why people offer that as a viable option. It implicitly agrees with the parent stance by not criticizing its logic at all, yet simultaneously offers no course of action which allows people to help one another out of a fundamentally flawed situation. We should want to (and actually engage in) helping other people. My friends and neighbors might be amongst the viewers and, simply through ignorance of how computers work and what the free software movement proved is possible, might accept the bound-to-be-bad advice offered. I don't think they deserve to be treated that way.
I've seen similar responses most recently around media criticism; point out how corporate news agencies will run government propaganda pieces as if they are news but they're really not, or point out how weapons manufacturers interests are served by the videogame-like war footage we see (Amy Goodman of "Democracy Now!" made this point in an intriguing talk she gave during a book tour), or point out an instance where pro-war voices are overrepresented in the popular news media and the almost non-sequitur response is "but you don't have to watch it! Just turn it off!".
This response tries to reframe a systemic issue as a point of personal preference--it's not about how the proposed system is likely to fail people in making important decisions, ignoring objectionable behavior instead of pointing out its failings is about letting the system have its way with people unimpeded in the slightest way.
And of course this video+audio data will be delivered to viewers exclusively in a proprietary and/or patent-encumbered format which requires proprietary software to see and hear.
Thus the irony: the software you will need in order to see the presentation is proprietary, and therefore, insecure by default--you can't legally inspect it to see what its doing when it runs. If you somehow learn that it is doing something you don't want it to do you can't legally improve it. And, to hold your community helpless, you can't legally share any improved version of the program with the community so that they don't have to live with the insecurity.
No doubt, the self-licking ice cream cone of "popularity" will be offered as the rationale to lure users into this downward spiral.
As far as the intended audience is concerned, no, it is not easy enough. Users of proprietary operating systems have not been taught to value software freedom, they have been taught to value price and convenience over everything else. That's a big part of the reason why they're users of proprietary operating systems. Hence, doing any manual effort to handle what they view as a system administration task is too much effort for them to expend. In their opinion, scanning and eradicating viruses, backdoors, trojan horses, etc. is something best done automatically, without any user intervention, and without interrupting what they use a computer for. It's accepted practice by now to somehow intercept a file open function call at the OS level, do all of the scan & repair work necessary before letting the OS pass the filehandle on to the caller in the normal fashion. Typing in any command or doing periodic scans doesn't address scan-on-open at all.
Installing Cygwin as a dependency for the ClamAV antivirus program is a showstopper for them. No significant group of Windows users are going to do this when every other program they have used has no dependencies. Requiring anything on the command line is a sign of an incomplete program in their eyes. And, as I explained above, this particular task shouldn't require any user interaction at all. It should "just work".
Now, I know that this is not too much to ask technical people to do, and I know that software freedom sometimes means living without certain conveniences for a while. But I ask that you keep your audience in mind and check to see if your audience matches the audience of people who could use the service that you recommend. Every Microsoft Windows user is told they need antivirus services. Thus, responding to that need by telling them to use this shell instead of that shell, or typing some simple command-line instruction will be perceived by them as too much.
I am not against changing the perception of this audience to match reality and to get them to see that software freedom is important. However, this takes time and persistence.
Is there a ClamAV for Microsoft Windows that will scan on demand? This makes scanning happen because its always on and invisible to novice users.
Is there a ClamAV for Microsoft Windows that will upgrade itself (virus definitions and "engine" as some anti-virus programs call it) when needed, invisibly, and on a schedule? This helps novice users not need to think about maintenance issues which, frankly, go unaddressed rather than better understood.
ClamWin won't yet do either of these things, according to its FAQ. I'd love to learn more about a free software anti-virus program for Microsoft Windows that could do these things.
Firefox's popularity will go down when Microsoft releases their new Internet Explorer for general use. From what I have heard, the new MSIE has tabs, the new MSIE will even display PNGs better, and it doubtless has other technical advances of one kind or another making it the least objectionable MSIE release to date. MSIE will continue to be the most convenient web browser for Windows users because it comes with Windows and is linked to on the desktop.
Why is this trouble for Firefox? Because Firefox is promoted on technical advances, therefore users will have no reason not to switch back to using MSIE.
Software freedom would be a compelling reason to stick with Firefox, but that's not the way Firefox is being pitched to users. Firefox doesn't cost any money to acquire or run, but MSIE doesn't cost its users additional money on top of the price of Windows (which is likely to come with their computer). So long as Firefox is promoted along lines that a proprietor with superior marketshare and advertising power can compete on, users will have learned no reason to favor an alternative.
RMS continues to be a guiding authority for how the free software community interprets software patents, and for good reason. I could not care less about annoying you, but you show your stripes well enough by not explaining why you disagree with his arguments. That's not the way mature people engage in discussion. It's sad, really, that you dismiss his advice in this way. It not only reflects badly on you but it means that if you had any good advice to offer contrary to what we've heard and read, we can't benefit from it because you apparently refuse to divulge it.
IBM has the most patents and they have lots of lawyers on staff ready to file patent applications and handle patent infringement cases. IBM says they get an order of magnitude more value from cross-licensing than pursuing lawsuits. This article clearly illustrates the value of cross-licensing. Since, for IBM, the burden of losing a patent infringement case is not very real, the burden must be very real for any other patent holder.
If you were Apple, you would not fight this in court. Settling out of court, paying a patent license fee, or cross-licensing are all far less expensive than fighting this in court and, therefore, much more attractive ways to deal with this nuisance. Each of these outcomes individually or collectively are more likely to occur than seeing this through to the end in court.
Remember one of the examples we learned about in RMS' discussion of the problem with software patents (transcript): Briefly, Paul Heckel threatened to sue Apple over a patent he held which covered something in Hypercard; Apple initially brushed him off but when he threatened to sue Apple's users for patent infringement Apple listened up and paid him off.
It has to be pointed out that this is just another reason to not do business with Apple. /. readers bend over backwards to not find fault with Apple but Apple's actions harm users because Apple wields the same patent power that Contois Music Technology is using against Apple here -- Apple holds patents which cover font hinting which adversely impact free software users who want smooth fonts on the screen. Apple also claims patents on the "Enterprise Object Framework" which adversely impacts the GNUStep work and thus serves as another obstruction to free software users.
What wasn't supposed to be like this? Proprietary computer software?
On the contrary, proprietary computer software is supposed to engender dependency and erect walls between users to prevent them from helping one another. The point of proprietary software is to withhold both the details of operation of the software and any reasonable chance of changing the software from the user. Thus making the user truly helpless; the user cannot help themselves or their community. Thus, the user enters a state of perpetual dependency on a monopolist who, if they are sufficiently pervasive, have no incentive to allow the user increased access to the programs they sell licenses to. Quite to the contrary, if the proprietor can get the cooperation of a government, they can make dependency the de facto standard and perpetuate the profitable harm for decades.
I don't know how many examples of this behavior it will take to get people to realize that this is the plan working as it was supposed to be working.
Software freedom is the antidote. Don't get lost in a horse race; don't recommend switching from one master to another. Freedom means having no masters. Liberating users to be able to share and modify their software is the key to computing only as dependantly as the user wishes to. Software freedom is a hard message to spread when there are so many pressures to stay silent about freedom and focus on technical features instead, but we are all better off when we engage in freedom talk. Freedom talk scares the proprietors and frames the debate away from dependency on monopoly.
This explanation is where the argument falls down. The new BSD license (or the MIT X11 license which is quite similar) still have requirements for those who distribute derivative works. The requirements are not many, but they are not zero either.
In particular, you may certainly not "do whatever you want" with the source code or any derivative works. The only way to have that power is to either write your own code or base your work on something in the public domain. And even then you cannot "do whatever you want" with any code which implements patented ideas (one of the significant shortcomings of the new BSD and MIT X11 licenses) for which you don't have the appropriate patent license(s).
Furthermore, stealing is not copying. What we're discussing here is not theft, but copyright infringement (I also brought up patent infringement). Those who have the power (yes, power not freedom) to sublicense are not stealing anything, even if the derivative distributor does something that is against the copyright license.
First, this is a question for a competant copyright lawyer. You should not base business decisions on the musings of /. posters. That said, I'll pitch in my two cents because I think it should spark something for you to do some research on.
You have pointed to a non-existant page at Microsoft, so reading the terms you referred to is not as easy as following the link. However, regardless of what these terms are, if I were in your shoes, I would first want to know: is Microsoft's claim of being able to set terms by which screenshots are used based on some law? If they have no grounding in law, then their terms are useless, no matter how "easy" they make it for publishers to acceed to their request. You make it sound like your publisher is simply letting Microsoft tell them how to run their business, by blindly accepting and working within the limits drawn up by Microsoft then using that (possibly bogus claim of power) as a means of framing the debate for copyright holders in the free software world.
Questioning Microsoft's power is critical to answering your question because if Microsoft's claims are based on nothing but their desire to control you and your publisher, then you'll find that there is nothing for the free software community to do. Hence, asking the free software community for screenshot licensing terms is a moot point.
The text of the GNU GPL is an excellent example of this point: in the GPL, the most commonly used free software license, you'll find the text that reads "Activities other than copying, distribution and modification are not covered by this License; they are outside its scope.". This is because the FSF put a lot of work into writing a license that is actually based on copyright law, enforcible around the world wherever there is a copyright regime (because, at the basic level at which the GPL is written to work, these copyright systems are quite similar). The FSF, and all GPL licensors, draw strength from working so closely to what copyright law actually gives copyright holders power to work with. Microsoft, on the other hand, claims powers in its licenses which I doubt they have the power to enforce, such as their claim of prohibitng you from using FrontPage (Microsoft's web page editor) to make webpages which disparage Microsoft.
I would also question the validity of Microsoft's screenshot licensing terms because I'd wonder if a screenshot is not simply the output of a process, something which the FSF claims is "legally impossible" for a copyright holder to control. The GPL has proven to be legally defensible (both because lawyers agree it is defensible and therefore encourage their clients not to bring suit based on the GPL, and in the few cases which have gone to court), hence I tend to trust the FSF's interpretation of copyright law.