Sounds like you're not aware that Perens has diverged from the Open Source Movement calling it "probably the biggest mistake I've ever made" for precisely the reasons that you state. He's talked about this in a few places. A quick Google search pulls up this comment made on some obscure website called "Slashdot": http://ask.slashdot.org/comments.pl?sid=37241&cid= 4000835
I don't make it a habit to look up where someone previously associated with the Open Source Initiative might have said that it was "probably the biggest mistake I've ever made" just before I post. But I'm glad to know that he said this, thanks for pointing it out to me. By the way, the quote you cite is nowhere on that Slashdot page; it's from the grandparent article (see http://ask.slashdot.org/comments.pl?sid=37241&cid= 4000207).
Camera might be USB mass storage device.
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Xandros version 2
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· Score: 2, Informative
Does it support Kodak Easyshare cameras?
The Kodak Easyshare cameras I've seen are USB mass storage devices--you don't really need Kodak's proprietary software in order to get a copy of the pictures from the camera on to your computer. This is probably why you could "surf the cameras [sic] memory in Explorer" and why you will probably be able to do the same thing in any other OS that supports USB mass storage devices. On top of that, gPhoto supports many cameras including the Kodak Easyshare DX4900 and the gPhoto front-ends work flawlessly with the DX4900. I'm guessing it probably supports your Kodak camera too. gPhoto is Free Software.
Sure it would be nice to get popular really quickly.
It's interesting to note the GNU project's essay about the X Consortium and Open Group's plan for developing X and an essay on GNU/Linux naming. Both essays cite some calls for chasing popularity at the expense of software freedom. I think we're better off as a community letting popularity take a back seat to freedom.
Please Bruce Perens come back to your roots. I was so proud when I read your "It's Time to Talk About Free Software Again" essay. Please don't let a million dollars put you back into the open source and proprietary camp again.
Your point is well-taken, but I'm not sure what roots you're talking about here. Bruce Perens is part of the group that started the Open Source movement--the movement that wants to "sell" Free Software by never mentioning the software freedom and only talking about the practical advantages of a software development methodology. They do this because they believe this will make the software easier for other people (chiefly businesses) to adopt. The advantages that the Open Souce movement touts come from having software freedom, so it's quite ironic that the Open Source movement champions the practical benefits of software freedom while distancing themselves from freedom talk. This leads to a built-in flaw for the Open Source movement: people can't justify choosing the software the Open Source movement wants you to run and develop if there's a proprietary program that better meets your practical needs.
In an otherwise thoughtful and well-meaning letter, Bob Young incorrectly states opinions that are widely published elsewhere and fails to take Darl McBride's view of theft (versus copyright infringement) to task. Instead, Young reaffirms McBride's conflation of theft and copyright infringement and seriously mistakenly summarizes RMS' ideas.
Consider this part from Young's letter:
Secondly, no one is arguing against copyright. Everyone agrees intellectual property, from trademark law to copyrights and patents, is a good thing.
Ok, so maybe Richard Stallman of the Free Software Foundation, the inventor of the GPL license, thinks it is not a good idea to copyright software. But even Richard thinks copyright has its place to enable authors to earn a living. Free markets are not so fragile that a new idea like the GPL can threaten them. The only thing that can threaten free markets in a democracy is fear. Fear can cause well-meaning governments to enact flawed legislation. The kind of legislation the DMCA represents. The DMCA is the equivalent of trying to stop break-and-entry of homes by making screwdrivers illegal. Breaking and entering should be illegal. Allowing honest citizens to own innocent tools that evildoers might use to break and enter must remain perfectly legal. It is the crook who should be sent to jail, not the tool nor the owner of the tool.
Everyone does not agree that "intellectual property" is a good thing. RMS, for instance, has said that he has no opinions on "intellectual property" except to point out the misleading consequences one arrives at from using the term and how it prejudices one's thinking to treat disparate areas of law like property. RMS has opinions on patents, separate opinions on copyright, and separate opinions on trademark law. RMS does not mix up his ideas into one jumbled whole called "intellectual property".
Furthermore, I have never heard nor read RMS say "it is not a good idea to copyright software" nor does young provide a source for this summary. RMS is against patenting algorithms used in the creation of computer software and most software programmers I've met are in agreement with him because so-called 'software patents' do such a profound disservice to their work. As RMS points out in his critique of the term "intellectual property", copyright and patents are not the same, in fact they differ more than they are alike. Copyrights and patents aren't acquired in the same way, they don't last for the same length of time, they don't cover the same things, policy concerning these two disparate sets of laws aren't governed by the same office, and defending against copyright infringement is not at all the same as defending against patent infringement. But you can see how someone who believes "[e]veryone agrees intellectual property, from trademark law to copyrights and patents, is a good thing" would arrive at such a mistaken conclusion about RMS' ideas and whether these laws are well received.
With respect to the term of copyright, Young notes that "[t]he Supreme Court case that you [McBride] misrepresent in your latest open letter demonstrates the Justices think too much of a good thing may no longer be so good" but doesn't understand how he is (in the FSF's words) "making an appeal to authority...and misrepresenting what the authority says" by talking about copyright infringement as theft.
If we accept the idea that property and ideas and expression are all one and the same, we allow ourselves to deny that new ideas are built on old ideas (or more generally, the future is built on the past). The limits of copyright law look very wrong and we champion the same goals as the Bonos and we buy into the hypocrisy exhibited by the Disney corporation. Then we lose the argument we are struggling to make with legislators.
I think the advertising factor is underrated. People like to focus on the Internet and Dean's campaign funds, but I think a good deal of this is a result of the coverage his campaign receives to the exclusion of other campaigns.
As recently as the ABC Democratic party debate, Dean gets a lot of air time from mainstream corporate news agencies. Dean's ideas get covered but we don't hear about the other candidates' ideas. In the ABC debate, the first quarter (roughly) of this debate was spent with a Dean-centric version of the old joke "Enough of me talking about Howard Dean. What do you think about Howard Dean?" while more important national issues took a back seat. At the end of the debate, Al Sharpton was denied the chance to make a formal closing statement.
When Dennis Kucinich, Al Sharpton, and Carol Moseley Braun pointed out Koppel's bias of focusing on campaign funds and poll standing, Ted Koppel repeated his focus on the horse-race saying this was about "money and polls" and all but said these three candidates either had "vanity candidac[ies]" or should get out. Kucinich got the longest applause of the night with his response about how the media views politics. He has since said people who used to ignore him now applaud him for his forthrightness in addressing the media issue.
The day after the debate, ABC news decided to pull their embedded reporters from Kucinich, Sharpton, and Braun's campaigns. They claim they will still cover these campaigns by phone and they claim their coverage is more than other networks. Meanwhile, Braun, in an interview with Democracy Now! today, noted that their campaigns are polling higher in some places than John Edwards' but ABC is not pulling their reporters from day-to-day coverage of Edwards. I encourage you to hear the interview for yourself and hear how these three candidates and ABC explains ABC's decision.
Make it something people *want* to spend the $$$ on.
This means getting away from the it's-all-about-your-convenience marketing and moving toward marketing that stresses other factors. I want to pay for work I can use in ways mainstream book/movie/music publishers don't allow.
Many socially progressive organizations and copyright holders know how hard this is to do--getting people to ask questions like where those ultra-cheap Wal-Mart t-shirts come from, how much the waitstaff at the local diner get paid, how much migrant farm workers make for an honest day's labor, and other related issues is very tough to do because there is a very well-organized media working to sell you on the idea that nothing matters except your immediate convenience. Questions about copyright and patent law (just to name a couple areas of law) are little different when it comes to establishing a new frame for debate.
Asking questions that step outside large publisher's framing of important issues, starting to talk about important issues from a new perspective is hard. We need more people to ask and talk about what copyright does, whether we are well served by the prejudice in the term "intellectual property" that encourages treating disparate areas of law like property, whether we are making a good trade-off with media we're not allowed to copy, share, or use to base derivative works on.
And I'm not at all convinced that Jobs or Apple is interested in asking these (ultimately more important) social questions.
Well, I'm not talking about issues that are important to "society" - that's a different topic was not relevant to my point at all.
It is always relevant to the issue of software freedom, which is a superior issue to convenience. Your point about calling people users (some say "consumers" in a similar vein) is true--when people are reduced to this status, society is given an inaccurate picture of how they should be treated. The word "citizen" paints a far more accurate picture because people do care about other issues when they are introduced to them. It also helps lead us to more beneficial conclusions about policy.
Those users don't care about anything else.
That's no excuse for purposefully keeping people in the dark about issues that matter. It has typically been the job of the unethical mass media to keep people from information and arguments that would awaken people's sensibilities about what really goes on in the world--how does Wal-Mart keep prices so low? Why should I run exclusively Free Software when some proprietary software offers better features? Why should I want to pay a few extra cents for tomatoes?--questions like these deserve answers and none are supplied when you focus away from behaving ethically.
Just beware that your perception of "freedom" may be different from others'.
Ironically, it's not as you think. The real difference is in who is being denied, not what is being denied. NVidia will not deny themselves the freedom to modify software or distribute it in whatever form they wish, even though they may have chosen to operate under various non-disclosure and patent licenses. Yet they will deny us the power to modify (possibly sharing too) by denying us complete corresponding source code and not giving us this freedom in their program's license. They also want to keep us helpless by denying us technical information about their hardware. And they want us to pay them for this privilege.
[...] none of the businesses should be forced to use GPL or any other single license for their works.
Nobody is ever forced to use the GNU General Public License (GPL). People and organizations choose to distribute derivative works based on GPL-covered works, so they choose to abide by the GPL's terms. Some choose to license their works under the GPL so others must choose whether they want to behave in accordance with the GPL. But nobody is forced to distribute programs under any particular license. With effort, everyone can either write their own software, hire someone to write software for them, or derive programs from something licensed under more liberal terms (including the MIT X11 and new BSD licenses).
Neither is, for example, NVidia.
NVidia is treating their customers wrongly because they distribute non-free software and no means to make Free Software replacements. NVidia chose to do business by tying themselves down under licenses that might prohibit Free Software drivers (or so you seem to be saying). A number of other video card manufacturers shows by existence that one can still make competitive hardware without doing this.
[...] I was just giving an example.
Your example wasn't analogous to what I was saying. I recognize the new BSD license as one of many Free Software licenses, one which purposefully does nothing to preserve the freedom of the software for derivative works. I see this as something people should know so they can make an informed choice when they wield the power to license.
Can you ask Linus to release Linux under BSD? You are making a similar argument towards, for example, NVidia.
I could, but I won't for reasons I've already described. As for NVidia, I am saying that I won't recommend anyone do business with NVidia (or recommend NVidia to others) until NVidia works with the Free Software community.
No, quite the opposite. It's not user's concern what patents and trade secrets your DVD writer or video card contains. At the same time, it's not users' concern whether the OS allows or doesn't allow the binary-only drivers either. It works both ways.
Either you're attempting to lump together disparate things here in an attempt to make it appear that I am not giving corporations something due them, or I'm not being sufficiently clear. I'll try to be more clear to avoid misunderstanding. Issues that directly affect the user's ability to do what is natural to do with technical information, and the profit motivation for a corporation are not the same thing and should not be treated as if they are of equal importance to society. It is definately the user's concern that trade secrets and patents step on user's freedoms. Therefore we should not dismiss these issues as irrelevant because in doing so we lose valuable freedoms. The Free Software community was built on paying attention to the freedoms to share and modify software, not ignoring them because some business tells us to.
Companies base their business models on technologies that they believe are superior and/or will generate most profit.
And sometimes businesses believe the wrong thing; sometimes they don't know their business as well as they would have you believe (I'm reminded of Jack Valenti's claims that the VCR was to Hollywood movie making as the Boston Strangler was to a woman alone, then later seeing the VCR become the centerpiece of a hugely profitable business model). Expanding their userbase is more likely to be profitable. So even according to this lesser value system of how to maximize profits, your view doesn't explain reality. ATI apparently thinks it's okay to develop competitive video cards and distribute specifications for the Free Software community to use to make drivers. This act deserves our support. It is possible to have what corporations call a "win-win" here--we can work with companies that don't step on our valued freedoms while giving them business. We can help good businesses help us. In the post to Fedora's mailing list I linked to earlier, I suggest we do just that by setting up a database listing only hardware that works with Free Software. We should leave out corporations that don't work with us, like NVidia, regardless of their proprietary drivers. Or we should mention why we are telling people to buy other hardware instead.
Yeah, well, the definition of "the right thing" is different for different people. Most of the times, it's "the money thing" that's more important for most corporations, anyway. Again, it's like saying Linus should free Linux of GPL and provide it under BSD license instead - it's the "right thing" after all - so that people enjoy freedom of doing whatever they wish with the software, including redistributing without having to provide source code.
Within the context of this conversation, the thing that matters for citizens is software freedom. So long as businesses don't interfere with our freedoms and conduct themselves ethically, I am fine with letting businesses do what they think they need to do to make a reasonable profit. I am also fine steering people away from those that don't work with us to make mutually beneficial products.
As for Linus Torvalds relicensing under a non-copyleft Free Software license, you are drawing a poor comparison. I never said he should do that, he doesn't have the power to do that (he's not the only copyright holder to the Linux kernal anymore), and I don't agree with that logic. Preserving software freedom for all users, including those that use derivative works, is important and worthwhile. I'm glad others distribute software under the new BSD and MIT X11 licenses, because they contribute to our community. But we also need licenses that create and preserve a commons like the GNU GPL does. Businesses have far too much power to dictate copyright and patent policy (particularly in the US via the legalized bribery scheme known as campaign finance).
In certain cases, manufacturers can provide open source modules, but many times, there simply is no viable way. Complex hardware or hardware/software combination is usually covered by multiple patents, trade secrets, copyrights, and various agreements between different parties.
You say that as if this is the user's concern. It isn't the user's problem that a manufacturer chose to saddle themselves with a variety of non-disclosure agreements and licenses that don't allow Free Software drivers. This is just another reason to avoid doing business with these manufacturers and more justification to reward those companies that do the right thing and allow users to enjoy software freedom.
People all too quickly forget that it wasn't pragmatism that made the community what it is. It wasn't paying attention to pragmatism that got us an entirely Free Software operating system. It's only because that system is so remarkably useful that people think they can afford to throw away the idealistic principles of software freedom in favor of the self-contradictory goal of pragmatism.
The Free Software Foundation wrote about this self-contradiction in this essay. In short, when people have proprietary code that works better than the Open Source alternative, the Open Source movement offers users no reason to reject the proprietary program. By contrast, the Free Software movement competes on something proprietary programs can never provide--software freedom--therefore Free Software always comes out ahead in a head-to-head comparison, even if it is less practical (which, sometimes, it is).
I recently wrote about this on the Fedora Core user's mailing list hosted by Red Hat. I think what we need to do is have an easy-to-use website that helps people find hardware that works completely with Free Software (all kinds of hardware). Right now, this means recommending ATI video cards (along with a bunch of other video cards) instead of NVidia's hardware. I think once we get organized and have a site that lets a user easily construct a shopping list (even finding supportive online dealers where users can buy what they need right from the site), some manufacturers will be proud to be on the list and continue to help us. Other manufacturers will want to get on the list and be pressured to help us by shipping specs and/or Free Software drivers. Is there anything like this already? We need to stop helping organizations that hurt us.
Al Gore had the power he needed to speak out and be heard about the profound damage to keeping the public informed and able to express themselves freely using elements of their own culture. Someone who is allegedly so "well-informed as possible on technology and issues that surround it" should understand the importance of a limited and short term of copyright, maintaining rules that prevent too few owners of the media, and stopping our public airwaves from being handed out as corporate welfare. These bills (now laws) did not do these important things.
The topic in this thread concerns Al Gore, who is a Democrat. I hold Republicans responsible too--don't buy into the myth that Republicans and Democrats are always adversaries. On a number of important issues they (unfortunately) agree (the official-sounding but private "Commission on Public Debates" is run by the RNC, DLC, and some private companies and the CPD works well to exclude third parties; the Senate unanimously approved the DMCA, to name a couple examples). Just because someone unfavorably mentions a Democrat doesn't mean that they are unwilling to hold Republicans or members of any other political party to the same scrutiny. As I've posted here in the past, I don't find any reason to give most Republicans or Democrats my vote.
What we're seeing here is massive deregulation and the ability to lock up expression to benefit large corporate publishers. I don't see Disney compromising by allowing others to build on their famous copyrighted works like they built on the famous works of so many others. I don't see the FCC holding major media owners to the regulations about the number of stations owned. I see our freedoms disappearing because both the Democrats and Republicans are willing to take corporate campaign cash and favors.
[...] responsible for helping to create I also invented the microphone [...]
Your copy of the Snopes article is not what they posted. Anyone who actually read what you posted would have noted this glaring discontinuity.
I can appreciate the clarification on Gore's "inventing" the Internet. But I think Gore gets too high a mark here and I'd like to point out why I think so as a side note to a comment I read in Snopes' essay.
Snopes cites Vince Cerf saying "that as a Senator and now as Vice President, Gore has made it a point to be as well-informed as possible on technology and issues that surround it" but by 1999 (the copyright date on the Cerf page Snopes cites), Clinton/Gore had brought us the 1996 Telecommunications Act (which was a big step toward the media deregulation many groups across a wide political spectrum rail against today), the Digital Millennium Copyright Act, and the 1998 Copyright Term Extension Act. So I come away thinking that Al Gore's legislative history deserves a more mixed review than Cerf (and Snopes) describe.
I volunteer at a community radio station (WEFT 90.1 FM) and I host "Digital Citizen", a bi-weekly show (Wednesdays 8-10p) that talks focuses on Free Software, copyright and patent issues, and related topics. I'd be happy to air interesting speeches or discussions from the Bangalore event. Unfortunately I can't make it to Bangalore to record the events myself, but if anyone has Ogg Vorbis files to share, that would be great.
This kind of information is public record anyway, I don't see what the big deal is.
The big deal is that inaccurate data can be the difference between someone getting a job or loan and not. As we rush headlong into putting more information into more hands, I think we have an obligation to create an environment where accuracy is prized and inaccuracies are corrected and harm resulting from those inaccuracies is righted.
As we move data like this online we have a golden opportunity to review its accuracy. I don't see any big effort to do this in the stories I've been reading about people putting more public data online.
He failed to mention that we (the SkyOS developers) have been in contact with a number of developers whose code we used in a few of the apps we include in SkyOS. None of them had an issue with our plan.
I didn't mention it because it's not relevant. This does nothing to address how you are denying the users the software freedom they deserve. It's unfortunate the programmers you've contacted told you it was okay to deny users their right to complete corresponding source code. I'm going to go out on a limb and guess you didn't get permission from the FSF to deny users their rights under the GPL. I'm also going to guess that you did not get the FSF's permission to continue to distribute the infringing GPL'd binaries you have been distributing. Do realize that:
you need to talk to copyright holders, not programmers? (these two groups are not always one and the same)
unless you're talking to all the copyright holders for a work, you have no alternative but to comply with the license for that work? (the GPL says, in part, that if you can't comply fully you have no right to distribute the work at all)
Robert did not delete the source code, he is using the source from SkyOS 4 to build the applications for SkyOS 5.0. He did not retain a copy of the earlier applications' source because he did not know he had to.
What sophistry. There is no difference in what you're saying here--Robert didn't delete the source code that you need to distribute to fully comply with the GPL, that source code has merely not been "retain[ed]". This wordplay misses the point entirely.
I'm sure Robert made a simple mistake and I'm not taking anyone to task for simple human error. Humans make mistakes and that's fine. What's important to me is that every binary you distribute now means more people that aren't ever going to get the source code they deserve. It also means more people that can't share copies of the GPL'd programs with their friends (because they can't comply with the GPL either). Perhaps I was wrong to say this source code had been deleted rather than "not retain[ed]", but the point remains--for GPL-covered works, you have outstanding obligations to distribute that source code, these are obligations you can't fill and these are obligations developers cannot waive. So, is it reasonable to continue to distribute more copies of these binaries? I don't think so. I think it's reasonable to stop distributing these infringing binaries and distribute source and binaries once you have the binaries you want to distribute (you said these will be part of SkyOS 5).
If I didn't trust that you'll do the right thing with SkyOS 5, I never would have said your OS deserves another look.
You are continuing to make more users who cannot ever leverage their freedoms to share and modify the source code to these GPL-covered programs. You need to act in good faith now. I'm fully willing to acknowledge and forgive mistakes. I'd bet most people are. But continuing to distribute binaries built from source you don't have any more is compounding your mistake, not making it better.
We have not received a request to stop binary distribution from any of the actual GPL app developers (and I hope we will not, that they will be as understanding as the other teams we HAVE contacted).
You shouldn't look to the copyright holders to excuse behavior that doesn't help the users who want source code (Chris, definately, and perhaps Adam as well). The obligation you owe to Chris and Adam is just as important as if there were thousands of others who also want complete corresponding source code. I don't speak for any of these users, but from what I've read of their input they seem to be reasonable people. If you were willing to show good faith and stop distributing the infringing binaries, I'd bet that Adam and Chris would be more likely t
SkyOS' developers have (probably inadvertantly) deleted their only copy of the source code which corresponds to the GPL-covered binaries they distribute as part of SkyOS versions 3 and 4. This means they are incapable of complying with the GNU GPL because they cannot supply the necessary source code. This is disturbing because they continue to distribute infringing binaries as I write this. This is not an unfixable situation. This is a situation SkyOS' developers have chosen not to fix until some indeterminate date in the future.
To make matters worse, discussing the situation on their forums has become untenable. At least one forum poster (Adam) has had his posts removed apparently for speaking uncomfortable truths. It is impossible now to determine exactly what he said that was so offensive to the SkyOS forum moderators. As far as anyone can infer, by judging from Adam's remaining posts, he did not say anything offensive. It is likely that Adam explained how the SkyOS distributors were non-compliant. Chris (another poster to the SkyOS forums) and I have repeatedly requested that SkyOS stop distributing the infringing binaries from their forum. Apparently their reaction is to dismiss our requests.
This is why I recommend everyone steer clear of SkyOS for now and reevaluate it in version 5. When someone violates the license on a work that allows sharing and modification, a great deal of harm comes to those who are prohibited from leveraging their rights under a copylefted Free Software license. We are all out the improvements SkyOS' developers made to their version of the GPL-covered programs as well as the improvements that future derivative works could have implemented.
SkyOS' developers have promised they will fix their source code retention problems and become compliant for version 5 of SkyOS.
It's ironic but apropos that this essay only talks about the "Open Source" movement which dismisses software freedom and embraces practical development methodology in an attempt to talk to businesses. All of the interaction and software development occurs when people have the freedoms of Free Software (and other freedoms too, such as free speech). People will fight over technical aspects of programs, development strategies, and people will reinvent the wheel. But it's how people have worked since time immemorial in virtually every field of endeavor. These debates reinforce the importance of being able to express ourselves freely (and championing these freedoms widely).
Its a free OS, they just dont give the source code.
Actually, I was referring to software freedom. However the proximity of the word "free" to a cost reference may have been misleading.
Even OSNews had an article about the using GPL'ed tools doesnt open the OS.
Using GNU GPL-covered programs (in the US) doesn't compel one to ship source code for the OS because merely executing a program is not an activity regulated by US copyright law. The page I pointed to referred to an "ES1371 driver from Linux" as being something copied from the Linux kernal into SkyOS. Including a driver from the Linux kernal would most likely not be fair use, so one would have triggered source code distribution.
And licensing under the GNU GPL has nothing to do with "open[ing]" programs source code. The GPL was written by the Free Software Foundation years before the term "Open Source" was coined.
"The GPL requires that GPLed software (such as VLC and GRUB) either be distributed with the source code, or contain a written offer for the source code. SkyOS ships with neither."
If you want to verify that I'm citing Adam's claim correctly, you'd better read their archive of posts quickly; SkyOS' admins have already deleted some posts written by Adam (making it impossible to determine if they are editing out spam, silencing criticism, or something else).
"SkyOS itself does not include any GPL'd source code. We are not obligated to open source any portion of it.
SkyOS's binary iso distribution does include some GPL'd apps. We fully understand the law and nature of the GPL and comply with it fully. Any application that has been modified in any way and is included with the SkyOS package can be obtained by us via mail. Our obligation to offer written documentation of such an offer can be found here:
According to the GPL, in order to include modified GPL software packages in binary format, we must both offer a written statement extending users the offer of obtaining source code for modified GPL source from us, and provide said source code via the postal service (or, alternatively, an FTP, though postal service is preferred and is the option we use). We have fulfilled both of these requirements."
Taking Adam and Kelly's posts together, it's clear that SkyOS' assessment is wrong and this might be why they aren't shipping what they are required to ship under law--the promise for source is not shipped with the binaries, and neither is complete corresponding source code.
Too bad your reply had nothing to do about ATI Drivers, and slaming the authors of SkyOS.
Then you must have misread my post. As for SkyOS' authors, I take a dim view of people who react to a relevant point (such as Adam's) by hiding a critic's words from public view.
SCO Thinks linux[sic] has copied code too, should we believe SCO?
I think SCO has filed suit against IBM, not a computer program. SCO's charges should be taken very seriously and examined at face value, just as a court would. This appears to be just what the Free Software community is doing (more productively on Groklaw than on Slashdot
Start campaigning for Congresspeople to be from third parties, then move on to Governors and Senators before you try to tackle the President.
People say that like it's significantly easier to get local or Congressional district third-party candidates to win than it is to get a third-party President. It's much the same battle, no matter what level you're talking about, and virtually all of the people I've heard give that advice have no idea how much struggle is involved to get a third-party candidate on the ballot, much less in debates, advertised on TV, and getting them to win an election. Sometimes the press coverage of a presidential run coupled with local, district, and statewide runs are what third parties need to begin to be known. I think that's true for the Greens, for example.
I campaigned for a local man for Congress, he ran on a Green Party ticket. I joined the campaign chiefly because I wanted experience with politics I couldn't get any other way. I picked the Green campaign because of the available options (Republican or Green) the Greens were closer to my own political views. It was a lot of work just to get his name to appear on the ballot. The Democrats were initially not going to run any candidate against the incumbent Republican. But once they knew the Greens were serious about getting in office, the local Democratic Party contacted everyone they could to run and the last person they were going to call fortuitously accepted the job.
The reason the name "Green" meant anything to people who signed the petition to put our candidate on the ballot is because of Ralph Nader's celebrity and his run for President (which was endorsed by the Green Party). If we didn't have that to build on, I estimate that getting our candidate on the ballot would have been much more difficult.
Despite the Democratic Party's candidate showing up late to some events, speaking very poorly (being clearly out of his league on some topics), and not needing a public mandate to get on the ballot, the Democrat got roughly 30% of the vote. In the end, the predictable happened--the Republican incumbent won. He won the seat he paid over a million dollars to win the first time he ran (remember, that most of the time the candidate that spends the most wins). Incumbency also carries its own advantages ("franking" literature, for example, and having it delivered just in time to help with one's campaign for reelection) that only the richest candidate can afford to compete with. These and other factors help set the stage for staying in office until one chooses to retire. This means third parties require a lot of name recognition to effectively compete, particularly when one's party is unlikely to help pay for steep campaign bills (most of which are due to the steep cost of local media buys).
Did you miss "the prices themselves are facts or ideas and therefore subject to the exclusion of copyright on ideas" in tepples's comment?
No, but since that was a guess (in the beginning part of that sentence which you neglected to quote) and since the jist of that post and its subject header clearly indicate we're talking about fair use (when we're really not), my comment was warranted.
However, posting excerpts therefrom should count as news reporting, giving it a boost under the fair use criteria (17 USC 107).
No, you are incorrect. The decision in Feist says facts are not copyrightable (see the decision in section II A says "This case concerns the interaction of two well-established propositions. The first is that facts are not copyrightable; the other, that compilations of facts generally are."). This would mean we're not dealing with fair use, we're dealing with something outside of the US copyright regime. As Lawrence Lessig made quite clear in his "Free Culture" speech in 2002:
Talking about fair use, this is not fair use; this is unregulated use. To read is not a fair use; it's an unregulated use. To give it to someone is not a fair use; it's unregulated. To sell it, to sleep on top of it, to do any of these things with this text is unregulated. Now, in the center of this unregulated use, there is a small bit of stuff regulated by the copyright law; for example, publishing the book--that's regulated. And then within this small range of things regulated by copyright law, there's this tiny band before the Internet of stuff we call fair use: Uses that otherwise would be regulated but that the law says you can engage in without the permission of anybody else. For example, quoting a text in another text--that's a copy, but it's a still fair use. That means the world was divided into three camps, not two: Unregulated uses, regulated uses that were fair use, and the quintessential copyright world. Three categories.
So if citing facts were fair use that would mean ordinarily citing facts is regulated activity but you're allowed to do it in certain circumstances. But since we're dealing with activity not regulated by copyright law, this means fair use is not the key to understanding why we can cite the price of Best Buy's goods any time we want without first getting permission from Best Buy. This is also a very potent rationale for FatWallet against Best Buy.
If anyone has any ATI contacts, call them up and ask them to support the project with some hardware and any documents they can provide.
Why would I want to help a non-free OS get support? Can't the SkyOS team spend money on the parts they need to build their business (after all, they charge money for their system)? Can't they learn what they want to know from the XFree86 source code? That source code is licensed under terms that allows proprietary derivatives (unlike the GNU General Public License which SkyOS might be infringing). I'm reminded of what RMS said he told developers a while back about non-free Unix source code--(paraphrasing) AT&T is not a charity, don't donate your effort.
Sometimes we can bypass all politics, lets see if someone out there can do it.
Sometimes people ignore real issues (like software freedom) to pretend they're irrelevant. Abiding by copyright law has serious consequences. If the SkyOS team is found liable for copyright infringement, they'll learn just how unwise it is to ignore politics.
[T]he reasonably priced support option is gone, and there's nothing they offer between outlandishly expensive enterprise support and free no support.
Perhaps you should recognize the support value of free software is in its ability to go around to other programmers and ask how much they will charge you to change this software. One can't do that with proprietary software because there's no source code to fix and there's no license with terms that allow changing the program to suit my needs.
You should start a business supplying support to all the Red Hat users who were "abandoned" by Red Hat. You wouldn't have to do any programming, you could create a referral service connecting free software users with free software programmers. Something like Pricewatch, but for programming expertise. This way you'll get the support you desire at the best price the market has to offer.
Slashdot Mirror
I don't make it a habit to look up where someone previously associated with the Open Source Initiative might have said that it was "probably the biggest mistake I've ever made" just before I post. But I'm glad to know that he said this, thanks for pointing it out to me. By the way, the quote you cite is nowhere on that Slashdot page; it's from the grandparent article (see http://ask.slashdot.org/comments.pl?sid=37241&cid= 4000207).
I came across an interesting essay of RMS' on "biopiracy" that is worth considering.
The Kodak Easyshare cameras I've seen are USB mass storage devices--you don't really need Kodak's proprietary software in order to get a copy of the pictures from the camera on to your computer. This is probably why you could "surf the cameras [sic] memory in Explorer" and why you will probably be able to do the same thing in any other OS that supports USB mass storage devices. On top of that, gPhoto supports many cameras including the Kodak Easyshare DX4900 and the gPhoto front-ends work flawlessly with the DX4900. I'm guessing it probably supports your Kodak camera too. gPhoto is Free Software.
It's interesting to note the GNU project's essay about the X Consortium and Open Group's plan for developing X and an essay on GNU/Linux naming. Both essays cite some calls for chasing popularity at the expense of software freedom. I think we're better off as a community letting popularity take a back seat to freedom.
Your point is well-taken, but I'm not sure what roots you're talking about here. Bruce Perens is part of the group that started the Open Source movement--the movement that wants to "sell" Free Software by never mentioning the software freedom and only talking about the practical advantages of a software development methodology. They do this because they believe this will make the software easier for other people (chiefly businesses) to adopt. The advantages that the Open Souce movement touts come from having software freedom, so it's quite ironic that the Open Source movement champions the practical benefits of software freedom while distancing themselves from freedom talk. This leads to a built-in flaw for the Open Source movement: people can't justify choosing the software the Open Source movement wants you to run and develop if there's a proprietary program that better meets your practical needs.
The Free Software Foundation wrote an interesting essay on the differences between the Open Source and Free Software movements that also discusses shortcomings of focusing on the Open Source movement's goals.
In an otherwise thoughtful and well-meaning letter, Bob Young incorrectly states opinions that are widely published elsewhere and fails to take Darl McBride's view of theft (versus copyright infringement) to task. Instead, Young reaffirms McBride's conflation of theft and copyright infringement and seriously mistakenly summarizes RMS' ideas.
Consider this part from Young's letter:
Everyone does not agree that "intellectual property" is a good thing. RMS, for instance, has said that he has no opinions on "intellectual property" except to point out the misleading consequences one arrives at from using the term and how it prejudices one's thinking to treat disparate areas of law like property. RMS has opinions on patents, separate opinions on copyright, and separate opinions on trademark law. RMS does not mix up his ideas into one jumbled whole called "intellectual property".
Furthermore, I have never heard nor read RMS say "it is not a good idea to copyright software" nor does young provide a source for this summary. RMS is against patenting algorithms used in the creation of computer software and most software programmers I've met are in agreement with him because so-called 'software patents' do such a profound disservice to their work. As RMS points out in his critique of the term "intellectual property", copyright and patents are not the same, in fact they differ more than they are alike. Copyrights and patents aren't acquired in the same way, they don't last for the same length of time, they don't cover the same things, policy concerning these two disparate sets of laws aren't governed by the same office, and defending against copyright infringement is not at all the same as defending against patent infringement. But you can see how someone who believes "[e]veryone agrees intellectual property, from trademark law to copyrights and patents, is a good thing" would arrive at such a mistaken conclusion about RMS' ideas and whether these laws are well received.
With respect to the term of copyright, Young notes that "[t]he Supreme Court case that you [McBride] misrepresent in your latest open letter demonstrates the Justices think too much of a good thing may no longer be so good" but doesn't understand how he is (in the FSF's words) "making an appeal to authority...and misrepresenting what the authority says" by talking about copyright infringement as theft.
If we accept the idea that property and ideas and expression are all one and the same, we allow ourselves to deny that new ideas are built on old ideas (or more generally, the future is built on the past). The limits of copyright law look very wrong and we champion the same goals as the Bonos and we buy into the hypocrisy exhibited by the Disney corporation. Then we lose the argument we are struggling to make with legislators.
I think the advertising factor is underrated. People like to focus on the Internet and Dean's campaign funds, but I think a good deal of this is a result of the coverage his campaign receives to the exclusion of other campaigns.
As recently as the ABC Democratic party debate, Dean gets a lot of air time from mainstream corporate news agencies. Dean's ideas get covered but we don't hear about the other candidates' ideas. In the ABC debate, the first quarter (roughly) of this debate was spent with a Dean-centric version of the old joke "Enough of me talking about Howard Dean. What do you think about Howard Dean?" while more important national issues took a back seat. At the end of the debate, Al Sharpton was denied the chance to make a formal closing statement.
When Dennis Kucinich, Al Sharpton, and Carol Moseley Braun pointed out Koppel's bias of focusing on campaign funds and poll standing, Ted Koppel repeated his focus on the horse-race saying this was about "money and polls" and all but said these three candidates either had "vanity candidac[ies]" or should get out. Kucinich got the longest applause of the night with his response about how the media views politics. He has since said people who used to ignore him now applaud him for his forthrightness in addressing the media issue.
The day after the debate, ABC news decided to pull their embedded reporters from Kucinich, Sharpton, and Braun's campaigns. They claim they will still cover these campaigns by phone and they claim their coverage is more than other networks. Meanwhile, Braun, in an interview with Democracy Now! today, noted that their campaigns are polling higher in some places than John Edwards' but ABC is not pulling their reporters from day-to-day coverage of Edwards. I encourage you to hear the interview for yourself and hear how these three candidates and ABC explains ABC's decision.
This means getting away from the it's-all-about-your-convenience marketing and moving toward marketing that stresses other factors. I want to pay for work I can use in ways mainstream book/movie/music publishers don't allow.
Many socially progressive organizations and copyright holders know how hard this is to do--getting people to ask questions like where those ultra-cheap Wal-Mart t-shirts come from, how much the waitstaff at the local diner get paid, how much migrant farm workers make for an honest day's labor, and other related issues is very tough to do because there is a very well-organized media working to sell you on the idea that nothing matters except your immediate convenience. Questions about copyright and patent law (just to name a couple areas of law) are little different when it comes to establishing a new frame for debate.
Asking questions that step outside large publisher's framing of important issues, starting to talk about important issues from a new perspective is hard. We need more people to ask and talk about what copyright does, whether we are well served by the prejudice in the term "intellectual property" that encourages treating disparate areas of law like property, whether we are making a good trade-off with media we're not allowed to copy, share, or use to base derivative works on.
And I'm not at all convinced that Jobs or Apple is interested in asking these (ultimately more important) social questions.
It is always relevant to the issue of software freedom, which is a superior issue to convenience. Your point about calling people users (some say "consumers" in a similar vein) is true--when people are reduced to this status, society is given an inaccurate picture of how they should be treated. The word "citizen" paints a far more accurate picture because people do care about other issues when they are introduced to them. It also helps lead us to more beneficial conclusions about policy.
That's no excuse for purposefully keeping people in the dark about issues that matter. It has typically been the job of the unethical mass media to keep people from information and arguments that would awaken people's sensibilities about what really goes on in the world--how does Wal-Mart keep prices so low? Why should I run exclusively Free Software when some proprietary software offers better features? Why should I want to pay a few extra cents for tomatoes?--questions like these deserve answers and none are supplied when you focus away from behaving ethically.
Ironically, it's not as you think. The real difference is in who is being denied, not what is being denied. NVidia will not deny themselves the freedom to modify software or distribute it in whatever form they wish, even though they may have chosen to operate under various non-disclosure and patent licenses. Yet they will deny us the power to modify (possibly sharing too) by denying us complete corresponding source code and not giving us this freedom in their program's license. They also want to keep us helpless by denying us technical information about their hardware. And they want us to pay them for this privilege.
Nobody is ever forced to use the GNU General Public License (GPL). People and organizations choose to distribute derivative works based on GPL-covered works, so they choose to abide by the GPL's terms. Some choose to license their works under the GPL so others must choose whether they want to behave in accordance with the GPL. But nobody is forced to distribute programs under any particular license. With effort, everyone can either write their own software, hire someone to write software for them, or derive programs from something licensed under more liberal terms (including the MIT X11 and new BSD licenses).
NVidia is treating their customers wrongly because they distribute non-free software and no means to make Free Software replacements. NVidia chose to do business by tying themselves down under licenses that might prohibit Free Software drivers (or so you seem to be saying). A number of other video card manufacturers shows by existence that one can still make competitive hardware without doing this.
Your example wasn't analogous to what I was saying. I recognize the new BSD license as one of many Free Software licenses, one which purposefully does nothing to preserve the freedom of the software for derivative works. I see this as something people should know so they can make an informed choice when they wield the power to license.
I could, but I won't for reasons I've already described. As for NVidia, I am saying that I won't recommend anyone do business with NVidia (or recommend NVidia to others) until NVidia works with the Free Software community.
Either you're attempting to lump together disparate things here in an attempt to make it appear that I am not giving corporations something due them, or I'm not being sufficiently clear. I'll try to be more clear to avoid misunderstanding. Issues that directly affect the user's ability to do what is natural to do with technical information, and the profit motivation for a corporation are not the same thing and should not be treated as if they are of equal importance to society. It is definately the user's concern that trade secrets and patents step on user's freedoms. Therefore we should not dismiss these issues as irrelevant because in doing so we lose valuable freedoms. The Free Software community was built on paying attention to the freedoms to share and modify software, not ignoring them because some business tells us to.
And sometimes businesses believe the wrong thing; sometimes they don't know their business as well as they would have you believe (I'm reminded of Jack Valenti's claims that the VCR was to Hollywood movie making as the Boston Strangler was to a woman alone, then later seeing the VCR become the centerpiece of a hugely profitable business model). Expanding their userbase is more likely to be profitable. So even according to this lesser value system of how to maximize profits, your view doesn't explain reality. ATI apparently thinks it's okay to develop competitive video cards and distribute specifications for the Free Software community to use to make drivers. This act deserves our support. It is possible to have what corporations call a "win-win" here--we can work with companies that don't step on our valued freedoms while giving them business. We can help good businesses help us. In the post to Fedora's mailing list I linked to earlier, I suggest we do just that by setting up a database listing only hardware that works with Free Software. We should leave out corporations that don't work with us, like NVidia, regardless of their proprietary drivers. Or we should mention why we are telling people to buy other hardware instead.
Within the context of this conversation, the thing that matters for citizens is software freedom. So long as businesses don't interfere with our freedoms and conduct themselves ethically, I am fine with letting businesses do what they think they need to do to make a reasonable profit. I am also fine steering people away from those that don't work with us to make mutually beneficial products.
As for Linus Torvalds relicensing under a non-copyleft Free Software license, you are drawing a poor comparison. I never said he should do that, he doesn't have the power to do that (he's not the only copyright holder to the Linux kernal anymore), and I don't agree with that logic. Preserving software freedom for all users, including those that use derivative works, is important and worthwhile. I'm glad others distribute software under the new BSD and MIT X11 licenses, because they contribute to our community. But we also need licenses that create and preserve a commons like the GNU GPL does. Businesses have far too much power to dictate copyright and patent policy (particularly in the US via the legalized bribery scheme known as campaign finance).
My apology for leaving out the link to the essay I referred to.
You say that as if this is the user's concern. It isn't the user's problem that a manufacturer chose to saddle themselves with a variety of non-disclosure agreements and licenses that don't allow Free Software drivers. This is just another reason to avoid doing business with these manufacturers and more justification to reward those companies that do the right thing and allow users to enjoy software freedom.
People all too quickly forget that it wasn't pragmatism that made the community what it is. It wasn't paying attention to pragmatism that got us an entirely Free Software operating system. It's only because that system is so remarkably useful that people think they can afford to throw away the idealistic principles of software freedom in favor of the self-contradictory goal of pragmatism.
The Free Software Foundation wrote about this self-contradiction in this essay. In short, when people have proprietary code that works better than the Open Source alternative, the Open Source movement offers users no reason to reject the proprietary program. By contrast, the Free Software movement competes on something proprietary programs can never provide--software freedom--therefore Free Software always comes out ahead in a head-to-head comparison, even if it is less practical (which, sometimes, it is).
I recently wrote about this on the Fedora Core user's mailing list hosted by Red Hat. I think what we need to do is have an easy-to-use website that helps people find hardware that works completely with Free Software (all kinds of hardware). Right now, this means recommending ATI video cards (along with a bunch of other video cards) instead of NVidia's hardware. I think once we get organized and have a site that lets a user easily construct a shopping list (even finding supportive online dealers where users can buy what they need right from the site), some manufacturers will be proud to be on the list and continue to help us. Other manufacturers will want to get on the list and be pressured to help us by shipping specs and/or Free Software drivers. Is there anything like this already? We need to stop helping organizations that hurt us.
Al Gore had the power he needed to speak out and be heard about the profound damage to keeping the public informed and able to express themselves freely using elements of their own culture. Someone who is allegedly so "well-informed as possible on technology and issues that surround it" should understand the importance of a limited and short term of copyright, maintaining rules that prevent too few owners of the media, and stopping our public airwaves from being handed out as corporate welfare. These bills (now laws) did not do these important things.
The topic in this thread concerns Al Gore, who is a Democrat. I hold Republicans responsible too--don't buy into the myth that Republicans and Democrats are always adversaries. On a number of important issues they (unfortunately) agree (the official-sounding but private "Commission on Public Debates" is run by the RNC, DLC, and some private companies and the CPD works well to exclude third parties; the Senate unanimously approved the DMCA, to name a couple examples). Just because someone unfavorably mentions a Democrat doesn't mean that they are unwilling to hold Republicans or members of any other political party to the same scrutiny. As I've posted here in the past, I don't find any reason to give most Republicans or Democrats my vote.
What we're seeing here is massive deregulation and the ability to lock up expression to benefit large corporate publishers. I don't see Disney compromising by allowing others to build on their famous copyrighted works like they built on the famous works of so many others. I don't see the FCC holding major media owners to the regulations about the number of stations owned. I see our freedoms disappearing because both the Democrats and Republicans are willing to take corporate campaign cash and favors.
Your copy of the Snopes article is not what they posted. Anyone who actually read what you posted would have noted this glaring discontinuity.
I can appreciate the clarification on Gore's "inventing" the Internet. But I think Gore gets too high a mark here and I'd like to point out why I think so as a side note to a comment I read in Snopes' essay.
Snopes cites Vince Cerf saying "that as a Senator and now as Vice President, Gore has made it a point to be as well-informed as possible on technology and issues that surround it" but by 1999 (the copyright date on the Cerf page Snopes cites), Clinton/Gore had brought us the 1996 Telecommunications Act (which was a big step toward the media deregulation many groups across a wide political spectrum rail against today), the Digital Millennium Copyright Act, and the 1998 Copyright Term Extension Act. So I come away thinking that Al Gore's legislative history deserves a more mixed review than Cerf (and Snopes) describe.
I volunteer at a community radio station (WEFT 90.1 FM) and I host "Digital Citizen", a bi-weekly show (Wednesdays 8-10p) that talks focuses on Free Software, copyright and patent issues, and related topics. I'd be happy to air interesting speeches or discussions from the Bangalore event. Unfortunately I can't make it to Bangalore to record the events myself, but if anyone has Ogg Vorbis files to share, that would be great.
Thanks in advance.
The big deal is that inaccurate data can be the difference between someone getting a job or loan and not. As we rush headlong into putting more information into more hands, I think we have an obligation to create an environment where accuracy is prized and inaccuracies are corrected and harm resulting from those inaccuracies is righted.
As we move data like this online we have a golden opportunity to review its accuracy. I don't see any big effort to do this in the stories I've been reading about people putting more public data online.
I didn't mention it because it's not relevant. This does nothing to address how you are denying the users the software freedom they deserve. It's unfortunate the programmers you've contacted told you it was okay to deny users their right to complete corresponding source code. I'm going to go out on a limb and guess you didn't get permission from the FSF to deny users their rights under the GPL. I'm also going to guess that you did not get the FSF's permission to continue to distribute the infringing GPL'd binaries you have been distributing. Do realize that:
What sophistry. There is no difference in what you're saying here--Robert didn't delete the source code that you need to distribute to fully comply with the GPL, that source code has merely not been "retain[ed]". This wordplay misses the point entirely.
I'm sure Robert made a simple mistake and I'm not taking anyone to task for simple human error. Humans make mistakes and that's fine. What's important to me is that every binary you distribute now means more people that aren't ever going to get the source code they deserve. It also means more people that can't share copies of the GPL'd programs with their friends (because they can't comply with the GPL either). Perhaps I was wrong to say this source code had been deleted rather than "not retain[ed]", but the point remains--for GPL-covered works, you have outstanding obligations to distribute that source code, these are obligations you can't fill and these are obligations developers cannot waive. So, is it reasonable to continue to distribute more copies of these binaries? I don't think so. I think it's reasonable to stop distributing these infringing binaries and distribute source and binaries once you have the binaries you want to distribute (you said these will be part of SkyOS 5).
If I didn't trust that you'll do the right thing with SkyOS 5, I never would have said your OS deserves another look.
You are continuing to make more users who cannot ever leverage their freedoms to share and modify the source code to these GPL-covered programs. You need to act in good faith now. I'm fully willing to acknowledge and forgive mistakes. I'd bet most people are. But continuing to distribute binaries built from source you don't have any more is compounding your mistake, not making it better.
You shouldn't look to the copyright holders to excuse behavior that doesn't help the users who want source code (Chris, definately, and perhaps Adam as well). The obligation you owe to Chris and Adam is just as important as if there were thousands of others who also want complete corresponding source code. I don't speak for any of these users, but from what I've read of their input they seem to be reasonable people. If you were willing to show good faith and stop distributing the infringing binaries, I'd bet that Adam and Chris would be more likely t
SkyOS' developers have (probably inadvertantly) deleted their only copy of the source code which corresponds to the GPL-covered binaries they distribute as part of SkyOS versions 3 and 4. This means they are incapable of complying with the GNU GPL because they cannot supply the necessary source code. This is disturbing because they continue to distribute infringing binaries as I write this. This is not an unfixable situation. This is a situation SkyOS' developers have chosen not to fix until some indeterminate date in the future.
To make matters worse, discussing the situation on their forums has become untenable. At least one forum poster (Adam) has had his posts removed apparently for speaking uncomfortable truths. It is impossible now to determine exactly what he said that was so offensive to the SkyOS forum moderators. As far as anyone can infer, by judging from Adam's remaining posts, he did not say anything offensive. It is likely that Adam explained how the SkyOS distributors were non-compliant. Chris (another poster to the SkyOS forums) and I have repeatedly requested that SkyOS stop distributing the infringing binaries from their forum. Apparently their reaction is to dismiss our requests.
This is why I recommend everyone steer clear of SkyOS for now and reevaluate it in version 5. When someone violates the license on a work that allows sharing and modification, a great deal of harm comes to those who are prohibited from leveraging their rights under a copylefted Free Software license. We are all out the improvements SkyOS' developers made to their version of the GPL-covered programs as well as the improvements that future derivative works could have implemented.
SkyOS' developers have promised they will fix their source code retention problems and become compliant for version 5 of SkyOS.
It's ironic but apropos that this essay only talks about the "Open Source" movement which dismisses software freedom and embraces practical development methodology in an attempt to talk to businesses. All of the interaction and software development occurs when people have the freedoms of Free Software (and other freedoms too, such as free speech). People will fight over technical aspects of programs, development strategies, and people will reinvent the wheel. But it's how people have worked since time immemorial in virtually every field of endeavor. These debates reinforce the importance of being able to express ourselves freely (and championing these freedoms widely).
Actually, I was referring to software freedom. However the proximity of the word "free" to a cost reference may have been misleading.
Using GNU GPL-covered programs (in the US) doesn't compel one to ship source code for the OS because merely executing a program is not an activity regulated by US copyright law. The page I pointed to referred to an "ES1371 driver from Linux" as being something copied from the Linux kernal into SkyOS. Including a driver from the Linux kernal would most likely not be fair use, so one would have triggered source code distribution.
And licensing under the GNU GPL has nothing to do with "open[ing]" programs source code. The GPL was written by the Free Software Foundation years before the term "Open Source" was coined.
A poster to the SkyOS forums ("Adam") says that:
If you want to verify that I'm citing Adam's claim correctly, you'd better read their archive of posts quickly; SkyOS' admins have already deleted some posts written by Adam (making it impossible to determine if they are editing out spam, silencing criticism, or something else).
Kelly (who appears to speak for SkyOS) erroneously believes that SkyOS' distributors has to distribute source code for a GPL-covered program (or a promise for the source code to this program) only if they distribute a modified version of a GPL-covered program:
Taking Adam and Kelly's posts together, it's clear that SkyOS' assessment is wrong and this might be why they aren't shipping what they are required to ship under law--the promise for source is not shipped with the binaries, and neither is complete corresponding source code.
Then you must have misread my post. As for SkyOS' authors, I take a dim view of people who react to a relevant point (such as Adam's) by hiding a critic's words from public view.
I think SCO has filed suit against IBM, not a computer program. SCO's charges should be taken very seriously and examined at face value, just as a court would. This appears to be just what the Free Software community is doing (more productively on Groklaw than on Slashdot
People say that like it's significantly easier to get local or Congressional district third-party candidates to win than it is to get a third-party President. It's much the same battle, no matter what level you're talking about, and virtually all of the people I've heard give that advice have no idea how much struggle is involved to get a third-party candidate on the ballot, much less in debates, advertised on TV, and getting them to win an election. Sometimes the press coverage of a presidential run coupled with local, district, and statewide runs are what third parties need to begin to be known. I think that's true for the Greens, for example.
I campaigned for a local man for Congress, he ran on a Green Party ticket. I joined the campaign chiefly because I wanted experience with politics I couldn't get any other way. I picked the Green campaign because of the available options (Republican or Green) the Greens were closer to my own political views. It was a lot of work just to get his name to appear on the ballot. The Democrats were initially not going to run any candidate against the incumbent Republican. But once they knew the Greens were serious about getting in office, the local Democratic Party contacted everyone they could to run and the last person they were going to call fortuitously accepted the job.
The reason the name "Green" meant anything to people who signed the petition to put our candidate on the ballot is because of Ralph Nader's celebrity and his run for President (which was endorsed by the Green Party). If we didn't have that to build on, I estimate that getting our candidate on the ballot would have been much more difficult.
Despite the Democratic Party's candidate showing up late to some events, speaking very poorly (being clearly out of his league on some topics), and not needing a public mandate to get on the ballot, the Democrat got roughly 30% of the vote. In the end, the predictable happened--the Republican incumbent won. He won the seat he paid over a million dollars to win the first time he ran (remember, that most of the time the candidate that spends the most wins). Incumbency also carries its own advantages ("franking" literature, for example, and having it delivered just in time to help with one's campaign for reelection) that only the richest candidate can afford to compete with. These and other factors help set the stage for staying in office until one chooses to retire. This means third parties require a lot of name recognition to effectively compete, particularly when one's party is unlikely to help pay for steep campaign bills (most of which are due to the steep cost of local media buys).
No, but since that was a guess (in the beginning part of that sentence which you neglected to quote) and since the jist of that post and its subject header clearly indicate we're talking about fair use (when we're really not), my comment was warranted.
No, you are incorrect. The decision in Feist says facts are not copyrightable (see the decision in section II A says "This case concerns the interaction of two well-established propositions. The first is that facts are not copyrightable; the other, that compilations of facts generally are."). This would mean we're not dealing with fair use, we're dealing with something outside of the US copyright regime. As Lawrence Lessig made quite clear in his "Free Culture" speech in 2002:
So if citing facts were fair use that would mean ordinarily citing facts is regulated activity but you're allowed to do it in certain circumstances. But since we're dealing with activity not regulated by copyright law, this means fair use is not the key to understanding why we can cite the price of Best Buy's goods any time we want without first getting permission from Best Buy. This is also a very potent rationale for FatWallet against Best Buy.
Why would I want to help a non-free OS get support? Can't the SkyOS team spend money on the parts they need to build their business (after all, they charge money for their system)? Can't they learn what they want to know from the XFree86 source code? That source code is licensed under terms that allows proprietary derivatives (unlike the GNU General Public License which SkyOS might be infringing). I'm reminded of what RMS said he told developers a while back about non-free Unix source code--(paraphrasing) AT&T is not a charity, don't donate your effort.
Sometimes people ignore real issues (like software freedom) to pretend they're irrelevant. Abiding by copyright law has serious consequences. If the SkyOS team is found liable for copyright infringement, they'll learn just how unwise it is to ignore politics.
Perhaps you should recognize the support value of free software is in its ability to go around to other programmers and ask how much they will charge you to change this software. One can't do that with proprietary software because there's no source code to fix and there's no license with terms that allow changing the program to suit my needs.
You should start a business supplying support to all the Red Hat users who were "abandoned" by Red Hat. You wouldn't have to do any programming, you could create a referral service connecting free software users with free software programmers. Something like Pricewatch, but for programming expertise. This way you'll get the support you desire at the best price the market has to offer.