I too think that Prof. Moglen's article's title "SCO: Without Fear and Without Research" is a fine title.
But the Slashdot thread title "OSDL Releases New Paper on SCO's Claims" steers the reader's attention to the wrong movement. I find it interesting that in this instance, the chief counsel for the Free Software Foundation is writing about the GNU General Public License (which both predate the Open Source movement by many years) and yet his work is credited to the so-called "Open Source Development Labs" (OSDL).
[Apple] just restricts certain computers from playing it [the music file], if they haven't purchased it.
The way you describe it makes it sound as if you are losing at least one freedom you have with CDs--you can take a CD to any CD player and play it. CDs are portable. It sounds like you're saying these files are not portable even for the licensee.
I personally don't see anything wrong with such an approach, it's called LEGAL.
Merely being legal is not enough to justify the public's loss of freedom. Lots of unsavory things are legal. As the FSF reminds us:
The idea that laws decide what is right or wrong is mistaken in general. Laws are, at their best, an attempt to achieve justice; to say that laws define justice or ethical conduct is turning things upside down.
By breaking the means the industry hopes to use to make their business viable you are only going to force them to cancel future projects which make music and other media easy for consumers to buy.
This needs to be tested to be proven true, and it could be that the trade off in copyright power these publishers desire is simply not worth having more published work in exchange.
As RMS explains quite well, copyright was set up in the US to benefit the user (the reader, the listener, the viewer), not the publisher or the author. Copyright is a means to modify the behavior of the author and publisher to give the public more published works. But we have traded away too many valuable rights in exchange for nothing. It's time we stopped buying their scare tactics and conflation of illegality with unethical behavior (as you did by referring to copyright infringement as "steal[ing]") so we can more reasonably decide if we want a few more published works in exchange for losing freedoms we hold dear.
The issue before us does not revolve around giving publishers all the copyright power they desire, nor does it revolve around being afraid to awaken a sleeping giant (as your post would erroneously suggest). We need to decide how much our freedoms are worth and be ready to say no when publishers ask for more power than we're ready to give up.
"Although Lindows.com certainly made a conscious decision to play with fire by choosing a product and company name that differs by only one letter from the world's leading computer software program, one could just as easily conclude that in 1983 Microsoft made an equally risky decision to name its product after a term commonly used in the trade to indicate the windowing capability of a graphical user interface."
But this story mainly serves to reinforce the value of repetition--in the aforementioned lawsuit, and as a professor who probably gives lectures, you probably already understand the value of repeating something you want to stick in people's minds. The reason people don't recall the trademark dispute is because few people heard of it. If we are to get people to use the word "windows" to mean something else (perhaps a general term that immediately makes them question the ambiguity) we must persist in repeating explanations and recent history. Widespread repetition is one way people learn new meanings (just as they learned "windows" in the computer sense as a colloquial synonym for "Microsoft Windows" and for the visual object one can drag around in a GUI).
I've been informally tracking conversation threads about Fedora Core. It seems to me that a lot of people are dancing around the question of how much security and bugfix updates are really worth. Apparently many people rely on Red Hat's security and bugfixes to where they will be missed if absent. But at the same time, people don't value them enough to pay (virtually anyone) for them, hence they would rather switch distributions than pay for the software improvements they've come to rely on.
Perhaps this is the watershed event that makes people aware of what a service economy looks like when people have to deal with something close to honest pricing--the end of getting Red Hat's widely-appreciated labor at no charge.
I have, let's say, 100 servers running rh8 and 9 and I use apt-get exclusively to keep them up to date.
apt-get will continue to work it does now for as long as the APT repositories exist and distribute compatible software. This is true for any APT repository distributing software for any operating system.
Can I switch to fedora and expect apt to still deliver updates in a timely manner?
According to Szulik's response, up2date in Fedora Core works with APT and YUM repositories. This would suggest you won't need the apt-get CLI program merely to update packages you already have installed. You might find it handy for other tasks (as well as the other APT programs).
Will rpmfind.net still have endless versions for me to choose from?
The only reason reason why this would go away is if a lot of people buy into mostly unwarranted fear of what FC has to offer and no longer choose to package software for FC GNU/Linux. I don't see how this ties into your APT questions.
This is being a bit pedantic, but either something is Open Source or it isnt. What may I ask is a "so-called" Open Source program?
Programs can also be Free Software or copylefted Free Software too (in many cases, such as GNU GPL programs, they are all these simultaneously so long as one only percieves these movements in terms of the licenses they advocate). In the context of the post I think it was perfectly clear I am distinguishing between why people are calling a program "Open Source" versus "Free Software".
"So-called" is a term often used by people to discredit a concept without having to resort to facts.
I appreciate the point you're raising, but you have misapplied the criticism. In this case I believe I made it quite clear that the Open Source movement is based on a philosophy that offers no reason to stick with the software they champion when proprietary programs outcompete on features or price. The Free Software movement does not have this problem because proprietary software, by definition, never offers the freedoms this movement is based on. The GNU project essay I linked to eloquently made this point well before I did.
The article mentions Linux all the time, and Linus, but it wouldn't be usable as an entirely free operating system without the free software from GNU.
And the GNU General Public License, which defends the Free Software community from proprietary derivatives. Torvalds gets a lot of credit he doesn't deserve in the BW article and the author shows no sign of understanding what contribution to the community Torvalds made. But judging by the bulk of posts moderated highly in this thread, I'd say a lot of readers and moderators are, unfortunately, comfortable in the myth that "Linux" is an operating system and that very little of value was developed before the Linux kernal appeared on the scene. Reading the GNU/Linux naming FAQ (particularly the parts around "Why not call the system "Linux" anyway, and strengthen Linus Torvalds' role as posterboy for our community?") is apparently going out of style except for when this FAQ is the story. Giving credit where credit is due is becoming a lost art.
You will have no reason not to switch to proprietary software when the proprietary software is low-cost. Despite what Open Source movement proponents say about making better code, many so-called Open Source programs are functionally inferior to their proprietary competitors. If all you value is saving money or the practical ends that the Open Source movement champions, you'll never miss the freedom to share and modify software. It's great to get someone interested in Free Software by demonstrating practical use, and it's true some people are uncomfortable talking about ethics and responsibility as well as convenience. But the Free Software community was not built by giving into whatever businesses want. The FSF wrote an interesting essay comparing the Free Software movement with the Open Source movement.
Crediting Linus Torvalds as an altrustic operator is simply incorrect. Torvalds' brand of pragmatism falls squarely into the problem I just described--his use of Bitkeeper is a perfect example. He is also not "Linux' guardian" (as the BusinessWeek article claims). If that title is accurate at all, it properly belongs to the GNU General Public License, the preeminent Free Software license written by the FSF: the organization whose ethical basis Torvalds dismisses.
I should be able to plug in most hotpluggable devices and see an icon for them so I can format the drive, rename/copy/delete files, etc. I think most end-users today would consider opening a terminal window and issuing a mount command as root to be too much hassle. Doing this on someone else's machine might not even be possible.
I'm mainly thinking of devices like keychain drives (memory sticks with USB connectors on them), firewire and USB hard drives, and digital cameras. The software to do this and get a usable icon on the desktop should be already installed and ready for use.
I don't know of any patent issues that would prevent this from being possible using exclusively free software. I tried setting this up with Red Hat 9 GNU/Linux and it was a disappointment because every so-called "solution" I came across would not scale up (adding entries to a device list hardcoded to particular/dev/ devices, or not being able to handle automatic mounting when the device is physically inserted and automatic unmounting when the device is physically removed).
The well known limitations of Fedora's multimedia capabilities plague every linux [sic] distribution. It's not Fedora's fault that US laws suck.
Looking at Loli-Queru's review of Yellow Dog's distribution of GNU/Linux (version 3.0.1) which includes an XMMS that can play MP3s (which probably qualifies in the US as patent infringement), I see that she finds it convenient and nice that XMMS plays MP3s without any additional software:
A nice addition to the system is that XMMS supports mp3s, even if RHL's doesn't. The YDL guys have re-compiled the original XMMS package and its libraries and not the Red Hat SRPM.
It seems to me she either wants to remain ignorant of powerful forces that shape the way in which people must do things (following the law, protesting bad laws) or she genuinely does not understand these forces. I think it's sad that she doesn't acknowledge how much "US laws suck" (to use your words) or what we could do to change the law so we don't have to contend with software patents anymore. She doesn't give any indication that Red Hat was making a strategic choice by not including MP3 software--they did not want to lose their business to a patent infringement lawsuit. More people need to tell users and citizens that stressing convenience over everything is part of the way we get into this mess, not the way we get out.
They [SuSE are] good citizens and give plenty back as well. What's the big deal?
Nobody is suggesting we judge a company by just one thing they do. No matter how well it works, non-free software is not a contribution to our community. Free software is a contribution to our community. So it's sad that they don't take the step to make their installer free. But I'm glad they help the development of other free software and distribute free software as well.
Let me get this straight. Suse provides you with the code to their installer. Suse allows you to modify their installer as long as you don't resell it. And this is a problem.
Yes, it is a problem for Free Software fans because they would give up the opportunity to make a profit. Some of this money they might choose to put into developing more Free Software. It would, therefore, injure the community to restrict people to non-commercial distribution.
Holy crap, we would be lucky if everyone else did that.
No, we would lose a valuable freedom we already have with Free Software. As I explained, commercial distribution is a valuable freedom we should not bargain away. As GNU/Linux distributions go, SuSE is the odd one out here--there are plenty of worthwhile distributions that ship nothing but Free Software. I can see why you might not value this freedom, you don't leverage it yourself. But consider that with other programs you use you are benefitting from others who do leverage this freedom: Red Hat and IBM's Linux kernal contributions, Red Hat's GNOME and KDE artwork, and Mozilla represent a little bit of the Free Software developed in part with commercial funding.
It [SuSE's installer is] a great piece of work, works really well, and I've never had a major problem with SUSE.
There are resellers who have just the opposite experience with SuSE's software.
And you are proposing that this be done how? The current voting is between two parties that agree on many, if not most, matters.
Help another party grow. There are many third parties in the US. Help an independant candidate run. Find one that meets with your political beliefs and help them do their work so their ideas can be heard on TV and more people will be inclined to vote for them.
It's a self-fulfilling prophesy to do as Jack Black recently told Amy Goodman in an interview on "Democracy Now!"--he said he'd vote Green if they had a prayer (of winning). When people throw their vote behind the leader they devalue their vote and help make sure they will always have to choose between the best of the worst.
What you're saying is quite true--in the 2000 American presidential election Bush and Gore agreed on a number of important issues. Both supported the death penalty and both benefitted from excluding Nader and Buchanan from the televised debates (even though a majority of the public wanted to see these two candidates in the debates, probably to learn what they had to say). As a result, most voters had little to base their choice on and we got a roughly down-the-middle split. The Democrats and Republicans also ended up working together to keep thousands of would-be Democratic Party voters in Florida from excercising their voting rights in the 2000 election (the majority of which still do not have their voting rights, according to one Slashdot poster). More people were not allowed to vote than the number of votes which separated Bush and Gore in Florida.
So if you want to break the duopoly you should find another party or an independant candidate and volunteer for them. You can look into helping Open Debates get off the ground and bring us real TV debates. Nothing I'm suggesting will cost you much money, but it will cost you a great deal of time. Real political candidate volunteer work is repetitive and long. It is mostly not something you can do on the computer. I helped a local candidate run for Congress and I learned a great deal, it was very rewarding.
If you think you can avoid them [companies that hurt you] totally, good luck living off your home farm, and walking everywhere.. its not practical.
A common argument tactic is to push the debate into a false dichotomy--all or nothing--is a commonly used one. We see this with the MPAA/RIAA in copyright extension and copy prevention techniques (which attempt to keep you from making even non-infringing copies). In this instance, since you can't avoid doing business with all the companies that hurt you, you are somehow ethically justified in avoiding none of them. With this logic it's okay to throw up your hands in disgruntlement then pay to see the next Star Wars movie, buy proprietary software, or the next flashy tech trinket you want.
Don't fall for this trap. Nobody is asking you to avoid all companies that harm you. You can choose to avoid some of them and still lead a perfectly productive and entertained life. Start with the easy ones like major movie and record publishers. You might even save a few bucks in the process (which you might choose to spend on organizations and artists that aren't trying to restrict your freedom to share). With other goods and services, you can find alternatives. You can tell businesses that don't hurt you why you're willing to buy stuff from them instead of their competitor. Don't let the best be the enemy of the good.
First, I would like to thank you for keeping your patent issues separate from your copyright issues. Not enough people realize that copyright law is very different from patent law in many important ways.
In the case of his stance on patents, joking comments aside, I think it's pure pragmatism. The simple, legal fact is that researching patents to make sure Linux implementations were non-infringing would make hime more liable, not less.
I am not asking Torvalds to investigate specific patents that may or may not affect the development of the Linux kernal. What I'm talking about is the depth of understanding of the issues on how patent law hurts us as software developers, computer users, and citizens. Nothing Torvalds has offered on the subject of what are commonly called "software patents" comes close to the depth of understanding Stallman offers every time RMS gives his patent speech. Torvalds' apparent lack of understanding of the ethical and legal issues involved is profoundly impractical. Stallman's talk on the problems with software patents lists the reasons why it's not reasonable to ask anyone to search the patent database looking for possible infringements.
Torvalds has a golden opportunity to use his celebrity power to educate people about a common foe--the existence of software patents and how they hurt everyone except IBM. Or he could speak out on a number of other similar issues, like the ones Stallman talks about.
How about copyright? Again, pragmatism rules. How do you think SCO would have reacted if he'd gone to them a year ago and said "Hey, I'd like to compare Linux against the SysV source tree and see if there's any infringing code?"
It is SCO that is suing, not Torvalds. Torvalds' development strategy has lead to less than careful inclusion of non-free software into his branch of the Linux kernal and because this branch is so popular it is likely others have become dependent on the non-free software. As a result of not paying attention to the freedoms of Free Software and the license under which the Linux kernal is distributed, some have probably redistributed non-redistributable software. In the above link Stallman points out why this is:
"Linux, the kernel, is often thought of as the flagship of free software, yet its current version is partially non-free. How did this happen? This problem, like the decision to use Bitkeeper, reflects the attitude of the original developer of Linux, a person who thinks that "technically better" is more important than freedom.
"Value your freedom, or you will lose it, teaches history. `Don't bother us with politics,` respond those who don't want to learn."
However large book, music, and movie publishers have a lot of say in copyright policy and we're exporting our copyright policy to other countries through trade policies that don't benefit citizens. Stallman brings attention to our freedom to use, share, and modify software. Torvalds doesn't talk about freedom at all and is celebrated for not challenging the 'technically better' view of software.
I find that FC1 is not yet ready for the masses, but I arrive at that conclusion from a different angle than Eugenia Loli-Queru's--I'm using nothing on the system but what was supplied to me on the FC1 discs. I have no interest in doing things I can't do with non-free software (and a lot of things I can do with free software don't interest me either). I don't care about Flash or Java, and I'd rather play Ogg Vorbis files/webcasts than MP3s. I'm testing this on a 840.015MHz Pentium III (according to/proc/cpuinfo) with 768MB RAM.
Unfortunately, FC1 is still not something I can fully recommend to my friends who aren't so technical. I don't think it was a good idea to release the OS with the Add/Remove Software panel program not working and the RPM database being flaky. I keep bumping into problems with these two aspects of the system when I try to fix something in a way that can be easily removed or upgraded via RPM.
Some things I wished were a part of the default install for a workstation user include an OCR program (GOCR, for instance). I think OCR support is important and I'm not wedded to any particular OCR program, but GOCR (or JOCR) seems to be compatibly licensed and offer easy-to-use CLI access. With more users and more programmers, GOCR will become a better program for OCRing. The Add/Remove Software panel problem and the RPM database problem Loli-Queru mentioned make installing additional packages more difficult than they should be.
Other parts of FC1 I find mildly annoying, but not showstoppers: the up2date registration screen seems pointless to me now that it appears you don't need to register to get FC1 updates from the default location. I'm not sure why I was asked to supply an extant RHN ID or create a new one. To the uninitiated user, this could come off as peculiar to the point of wondering if their system is legitimate (at least until they see that updates are available to them). Focusing unfocused windows by clicking on their titlebar seems to make the window stick the mouse (and the cursor turn to the plus pointer). This was unexpected and not pleasant; because of this behavior I inadvertantly move windows a lot.
Unlike Loli-Queru, I would not have expected other packages to work seamlessly with FC1 out of the box (as Loli-Queru expected Flash to work). I figure those packages will come along as more people use the system.
One thing that could make bug reporting easier is if there were simpler categories in which to report errors. Novices are unlikely to know that something odd on the display (like the visual noise I get when moving windows around) is an XFree86 issue as opposed to a Linux kernal issue or a GNOME issue. To get helpful commentary from users, I think it would help to not have to know all the layers of a typical GNU/Linux installation. But this means more people crawling through bug databases reassigning bugs to the proper place. I'm not sure how to best handle the problem, but I think making bug database entry simpler and easier to do ad hoc is a step in the right direction.
Overall, it's an interesting system and I plan to give FC some more tries before I decide to go with another distribution. I'll continue to use RH9 or Debian as my day-to-day GNU/Linux distribution until FC3 or FC4 is out.
Linus however worries me, he seems to be so uninterested in the legal system that he might be considered ignorant of it.
I concur. It is precisely this go-along-to-get-along attitude on issues that control his ability to continue to do what he wants to do that appeal to many Slashdot readers, unfortunately. Torvalds reaffirms apathy by tossing off subjects as unimportant. He is an impressive hacker, but I hesitate to point to his words for informed opinion on political and ethical matters.
Stallman, by contrast, makes you listen to uncomfortable things like ethical computing--a subject too few other people even approach in their public speaking. Stallman recognizes the importance of the legalized bribery system Americans call campaign finance, and he has said if he had a way to fix it he would do so and nothing could make him prouder. Stallman seems, to me, to be much more in tune with the technological forces that affect our lives as hackers and citizens.
They have decided to disable the 'feature' that hijacks a random http request every 8 hours and redirects to a webpage advertising their parental control system.
The whole reason anyone got into this mess was because they blindly trusted non-free software. Don't make the same mistake twice. Get an inexpensive low-end PC and install a free software router on it. If you're technically savvy, help someone improve their distribution of a free software router (I'm sure there are many others) so novices can more easily use it. This is a great chance to contribute to a volunteer project and help people escape untrustworthy-by-default software.
Except if you look at recent history, the large corporations are not the ones abusing the patent system [...]
Please read this webpage on how valuable IBM considers its patents to be and why. IBM holds more patents than anyone else. When they say cross-licensing is an order of magnitude more valuable than infringement lawsuits, everyone had better listen. Cross-licensing takes away all of the exclusive power patents were invented to bestow upon the patent holder. Cross-licensing is only for the biggest patent holders, so it by definition does not serve the majority of patent holders well. The public is also not served well by it either. Your view of the matter is incorrect and your post is horribly overrated.
I concur. I wish more people understood the value of freedom (in its own terms and in terms of its practical impact--getting a new version of the Linux kernal and still be able to use the driver, being able to share the code with your friends and neighbors without legal problems, being able to inspect the code so you can be sure it's not doing anything bad) and demanded that from vendors.
I'm happy to work with commercial interests that help the Free Software community, and I'm happy to recommend them on-air too (I'm host of "Digital Citizen"--alternate Wednesdays, 8-10 PM).
You could have IBM apply for this patent, or you could have some less scrupulous company.
Or you could work to inform people about people about the problem with so-called software patents thus helping them understand why nobody should have them.
IBM is more likely to allow others to use this technology without filing patent infringement suits than some other company like amazon.com with its one-click shopping.
Just because you may avoid an infringement lawsuit doesn't mean you are being helped. Cross-licensing with IBM (or some other big patent holder) means you lose the exclusivity the patent system was built to create. If your product was built on these patents, you now have a potential competitor. This informative summary of a point raised in an old "Think" magazine article is telling:
The value IBM gets from
cross-licensing measures the trouble that the patent system would cause IBM if IBM could not avoid it. IBM's estimate is that the trouble could easily be ten times the good one can expect from one's own patents--even for a company with 9,000 of them.
Any big patent holder likes cross-licensing more than litigation because litigation is more risky than getting the competitive patent holder's permission in a contract. But this strategy can only work for large patent holders--any smaller patent holder cannot cross-license to avoid patent infringement lawsuits because they don't have the war chest of patents to work with.
Software patents are bad for anyone that isn't IBM. It would be reasonable to estimate the threat and harm they pose is inversely proportional to the number of patent one holds. This is not a reasonable way to do business in the field of computer software development. We all should work for bringing an end to this collective threat, not take solace in that we're likely to avoid a trip to court.
I would not want my charity to be used by a company to make their $$.
I wouldn't mind if someone distributed the data for a fee, but anything they distributed I would want complete access to as well including the ability to share it and modify it; this is one of the reasons why I like the GNU General Public License for computer programs. Like the Free Software Foundation (who wrote the license), I am also interested in building a commons with anyone who will help, including businesses, but I don't want to help those who keep their published improvements from me. It will take me some time to consider how well the GNU GPL applies to mapping data.
Slashdot Mirror
I too think that Prof. Moglen's article's title "SCO: Without Fear and Without Research" is a fine title.
But the Slashdot thread title "OSDL Releases New Paper on SCO's Claims" steers the reader's attention to the wrong movement. I find it interesting that in this instance, the chief counsel for the Free Software Foundation is writing about the GNU General Public License (which both predate the Open Source movement by many years) and yet his work is credited to the so-called "Open Source Development Labs" (OSDL).
The Open Source movement stands for a different philosophy than the Free Software movement. Perhaps people who submit articles for Slashdot don't commonly know who Eben Moglen is, what he does, or what movement's interests he represents.
The way you describe it makes it sound as if you are losing at least one freedom you have with CDs--you can take a CD to any CD player and play it. CDs are portable. It sounds like you're saying these files are not portable even for the licensee.
Merely being legal is not enough to justify the public's loss of freedom. Lots of unsavory things are legal. As the FSF reminds us:
This needs to be tested to be proven true, and it could be that the trade off in copyright power these publishers desire is simply not worth having more published work in exchange.
As RMS explains quite well, copyright was set up in the US to benefit the user (the reader, the listener, the viewer), not the publisher or the author. Copyright is a means to modify the behavior of the author and publisher to give the public more published works. But we have traded away too many valuable rights in exchange for nothing. It's time we stopped buying their scare tactics and conflation of illegality with unethical behavior (as you did by referring to copyright infringement as "steal[ing]") so we can more reasonably decide if we want a few more published works in exchange for losing freedoms we hold dear.
The issue before us does not revolve around giving publishers all the copyright power they desire, nor does it revolve around being afraid to awaken a sleeping giant (as your post would erroneously suggest). We need to decide how much our freedoms are worth and be ready to say no when publishers ask for more power than we're ready to give up.
It's unfortunate this word in the context of computing or GUIs doesn't also trigger the memory of a trademark dispute between Microsoft and Lindows. In this case, Microsoft lost and subsequently urged anyone referring to any version of their proprietary operating system (or the MS-DOS application) to call it by a more descriptive non-generic name. It's interesting to note Judge Coughenour's logic in denying Microsoft a preliminary injunction in this case:
But this story mainly serves to reinforce the value of repetition--in the aforementioned lawsuit, and as a professor who probably gives lectures, you probably already understand the value of repeating something you want to stick in people's minds. The reason people don't recall the trademark dispute is because few people heard of it. If we are to get people to use the word "windows" to mean something else (perhaps a general term that immediately makes them question the ambiguity) we must persist in repeating explanations and recent history. Widespread repetition is one way people learn new meanings (just as they learned "windows" in the computer sense as a colloquial synonym for "Microsoft Windows" and for the visual object one can drag around in a GUI).
I think RMS has some great ideas on copyright, including a good explanation for how copyright is commonly misinterpreted and a great starting place for the kind of policy we ought to pursue. I also agree with the FSF that the term "IP" (or "intellectual property") does more harm than good for informed debate.
I've been informally tracking conversation threads about Fedora Core. It seems to me that a lot of people are dancing around the question of how much security and bugfix updates are really worth. Apparently many people rely on Red Hat's security and bugfixes to where they will be missed if absent. But at the same time, people don't value them enough to pay (virtually anyone) for them, hence they would rather switch distributions than pay for the software improvements they've come to rely on.
Perhaps this is the watershed event that makes people aware of what a service economy looks like when people have to deal with something close to honest pricing--the end of getting Red Hat's widely-appreciated labor at no charge.
apt-get will continue to work it does now for as long as the APT repositories exist and distribute compatible software. This is true for any APT repository distributing software for any operating system.
According to Szulik's response, up2date in Fedora Core works with APT and YUM repositories. This would suggest you won't need the apt-get CLI program merely to update packages you already have installed. You might find it handy for other tasks (as well as the other APT programs).
The only reason reason why this would go away is if a lot of people buy into mostly unwarranted fear of what FC has to offer and no longer choose to package software for FC GNU/Linux. I don't see how this ties into your APT questions.
Programs can also be Free Software or copylefted Free Software too (in many cases, such as GNU GPL programs, they are all these simultaneously so long as one only percieves these movements in terms of the licenses they advocate). In the context of the post I think it was perfectly clear I am distinguishing between why people are calling a program "Open Source" versus "Free Software".
I appreciate the point you're raising, but you have misapplied the criticism. In this case I believe I made it quite clear that the Open Source movement is based on a philosophy that offers no reason to stick with the software they champion when proprietary programs outcompete on features or price. The Free Software movement does not have this problem because proprietary software, by definition, never offers the freedoms this movement is based on. The GNU project essay I linked to eloquently made this point well before I did.
And the GNU General Public License, which defends the Free Software community from proprietary derivatives. Torvalds gets a lot of credit he doesn't deserve in the BW article and the author shows no sign of understanding what contribution to the community Torvalds made. But judging by the bulk of posts moderated highly in this thread, I'd say a lot of readers and moderators are, unfortunately, comfortable in the myth that "Linux" is an operating system and that very little of value was developed before the Linux kernal appeared on the scene. Reading the GNU/Linux naming FAQ (particularly the parts around "Why not call the system "Linux" anyway, and strengthen Linus Torvalds' role as posterboy for our community?") is apparently going out of style except for when this FAQ is the story. Giving credit where credit is due is becoming a lost art.
You will have no reason not to switch to proprietary software when the proprietary software is low-cost. Despite what Open Source movement proponents say about making better code, many so-called Open Source programs are functionally inferior to their proprietary competitors. If all you value is saving money or the practical ends that the Open Source movement champions, you'll never miss the freedom to share and modify software. It's great to get someone interested in Free Software by demonstrating practical use, and it's true some people are uncomfortable talking about ethics and responsibility as well as convenience. But the Free Software community was not built by giving into whatever businesses want. The FSF wrote an interesting essay comparing the Free Software movement with the Open Source movement.
Crediting Linus Torvalds as an altrustic operator is simply incorrect. Torvalds' brand of pragmatism falls squarely into the problem I just described--his use of Bitkeeper is a perfect example. He is also not "Linux' guardian" (as the BusinessWeek article claims). If that title is accurate at all, it properly belongs to the GNU General Public License, the preeminent Free Software license written by the FSF: the organization whose ethical basis Torvalds dismisses.
I should be able to plug in most hotpluggable devices and see an icon for them so I can format the drive, rename/copy/delete files, etc. I think most end-users today would consider opening a terminal window and issuing a mount command as root to be too much hassle. Doing this on someone else's machine might not even be possible.
I'm mainly thinking of devices like keychain drives (memory sticks with USB connectors on them), firewire and USB hard drives, and digital cameras. The software to do this and get a usable icon on the desktop should be already installed and ready for use.
I don't know of any patent issues that would prevent this from being possible using exclusively free software. I tried setting this up with Red Hat 9 GNU/Linux and it was a disappointment because every so-called "solution" I came across would not scale up (adding entries to a device list hardcoded to particular /dev/ devices, or not being able to handle automatic mounting when the device is physically inserted and automatic unmounting when the device is physically removed).
Looking at Loli-Queru's review of Yellow Dog's distribution of GNU/Linux (version 3.0.1) which includes an XMMS that can play MP3s (which probably qualifies in the US as patent infringement), I see that she finds it convenient and nice that XMMS plays MP3s without any additional software:
It seems to me she either wants to remain ignorant of powerful forces that shape the way in which people must do things (following the law, protesting bad laws) or she genuinely does not understand these forces. I think it's sad that she doesn't acknowledge how much "US laws suck" (to use your words) or what we could do to change the law so we don't have to contend with software patents anymore. She doesn't give any indication that Red Hat was making a strategic choice by not including MP3 software--they did not want to lose their business to a patent infringement lawsuit. More people need to tell users and citizens that stressing convenience over everything is part of the way we get into this mess, not the way we get out.
Nobody is suggesting we judge a company by just one thing they do. No matter how well it works, non-free software is not a contribution to our community. Free software is a contribution to our community. So it's sad that they don't take the step to make their installer free. But I'm glad they help the development of other free software and distribute free software as well.
Yes, it is a problem for Free Software fans because they would give up the opportunity to make a profit. Some of this money they might choose to put into developing more Free Software. It would, therefore, injure the community to restrict people to non-commercial distribution.
No, we would lose a valuable freedom we already have with Free Software. As I explained, commercial distribution is a valuable freedom we should not bargain away. As GNU/Linux distributions go, SuSE is the odd one out here--there are plenty of worthwhile distributions that ship nothing but Free Software. I can see why you might not value this freedom, you don't leverage it yourself. But consider that with other programs you use you are benefitting from others who do leverage this freedom: Red Hat and IBM's Linux kernal contributions, Red Hat's GNOME and KDE artwork, and Mozilla represent a little bit of the Free Software developed in part with commercial funding.
There are resellers who have just the opposite experience with SuSE's software.
Help another party grow. There are many third parties in the US. Help an independant candidate run. Find one that meets with your political beliefs and help them do their work so their ideas can be heard on TV and more people will be inclined to vote for them.
It's a self-fulfilling prophesy to do as Jack Black recently told Amy Goodman in an interview on "Democracy Now!"--he said he'd vote Green if they had a prayer (of winning). When people throw their vote behind the leader they devalue their vote and help make sure they will always have to choose between the best of the worst.
What you're saying is quite true--in the 2000 American presidential election Bush and Gore agreed on a number of important issues. Both supported the death penalty and both benefitted from excluding Nader and Buchanan from the televised debates (even though a majority of the public wanted to see these two candidates in the debates, probably to learn what they had to say). As a result, most voters had little to base their choice on and we got a roughly down-the-middle split. The Democrats and Republicans also ended up working together to keep thousands of would-be Democratic Party voters in Florida from excercising their voting rights in the 2000 election (the majority of which still do not have their voting rights, according to one Slashdot poster). More people were not allowed to vote than the number of votes which separated Bush and Gore in Florida.
So if you want to break the duopoly you should find another party or an independant candidate and volunteer for them. You can look into helping Open Debates get off the ground and bring us real TV debates. Nothing I'm suggesting will cost you much money, but it will cost you a great deal of time. Real political candidate volunteer work is repetitive and long. It is mostly not something you can do on the computer. I helped a local candidate run for Congress and I learned a great deal, it was very rewarding.
A common argument tactic is to push the debate into a false dichotomy--all or nothing--is a commonly used one. We see this with the MPAA/RIAA in copyright extension and copy prevention techniques (which attempt to keep you from making even non-infringing copies). In this instance, since you can't avoid doing business with all the companies that hurt you, you are somehow ethically justified in avoiding none of them. With this logic it's okay to throw up your hands in disgruntlement then pay to see the next Star Wars movie, buy proprietary software, or the next flashy tech trinket you want.
Don't fall for this trap. Nobody is asking you to avoid all companies that harm you. You can choose to avoid some of them and still lead a perfectly productive and entertained life. Start with the easy ones like major movie and record publishers. You might even save a few bucks in the process (which you might choose to spend on organizations and artists that aren't trying to restrict your freedom to share). With other goods and services, you can find alternatives. You can tell businesses that don't hurt you why you're willing to buy stuff from them instead of their competitor. Don't let the best be the enemy of the good.
First, I would like to thank you for keeping your patent issues separate from your copyright issues. Not enough people realize that copyright law is very different from patent law in many important ways.
I am not asking Torvalds to investigate specific patents that may or may not affect the development of the Linux kernal. What I'm talking about is the depth of understanding of the issues on how patent law hurts us as software developers, computer users, and citizens. Nothing Torvalds has offered on the subject of what are commonly called "software patents" comes close to the depth of understanding Stallman offers every time RMS gives his patent speech. Torvalds' apparent lack of understanding of the ethical and legal issues involved is profoundly impractical. Stallman's talk on the problems with software patents lists the reasons why it's not reasonable to ask anyone to search the patent database looking for possible infringements.
Torvalds has a golden opportunity to use his celebrity power to educate people about a common foe--the existence of software patents and how they hurt everyone except IBM. Or he could speak out on a number of other similar issues, like the ones Stallman talks about.
It is SCO that is suing, not Torvalds. Torvalds' development strategy has lead to less than careful inclusion of non-free software into his branch of the Linux kernal and because this branch is so popular it is likely others have become dependent on the non-free software. As a result of not paying attention to the freedoms of Free Software and the license under which the Linux kernal is distributed, some have probably redistributed non-redistributable software. In the above link Stallman points out why this is:
However large book, music, and movie publishers have a lot of say in copyright policy and we're exporting our copyright policy to other countries through trade policies that don't benefit citizens. Stallman brings attention to our freedom to use, share, and modify software. Torvalds doesn't talk about freedom at all and is celebrated for not challenging the 'technically better' view of software.
I find that FC1 is not yet ready for the masses, but I arrive at that conclusion from a different angle than Eugenia Loli-Queru's--I'm using nothing on the system but what was supplied to me on the FC1 discs. I have no interest in doing things I can't do with non-free software (and a lot of things I can do with free software don't interest me either). I don't care about Flash or Java, and I'd rather play Ogg Vorbis files/webcasts than MP3s. I'm testing this on a 840.015MHz Pentium III (according to /proc/cpuinfo) with 768MB RAM.
Unfortunately, FC1 is still not something I can fully recommend to my friends who aren't so technical. I don't think it was a good idea to release the OS with the Add/Remove Software panel program not working and the RPM database being flaky. I keep bumping into problems with these two aspects of the system when I try to fix something in a way that can be easily removed or upgraded via RPM.
Some things I wished were a part of the default install for a workstation user include an OCR program (GOCR, for instance). I think OCR support is important and I'm not wedded to any particular OCR program, but GOCR (or JOCR) seems to be compatibly licensed and offer easy-to-use CLI access. With more users and more programmers, GOCR will become a better program for OCRing. The Add/Remove Software panel problem and the RPM database problem Loli-Queru mentioned make installing additional packages more difficult than they should be.
Other parts of FC1 I find mildly annoying, but not showstoppers: the up2date registration screen seems pointless to me now that it appears you don't need to register to get FC1 updates from the default location. I'm not sure why I was asked to supply an extant RHN ID or create a new one. To the uninitiated user, this could come off as peculiar to the point of wondering if their system is legitimate (at least until they see that updates are available to them). Focusing unfocused windows by clicking on their titlebar seems to make the window stick the mouse (and the cursor turn to the plus pointer). This was unexpected and not pleasant; because of this behavior I inadvertantly move windows a lot.
Unlike Loli-Queru, I would not have expected other packages to work seamlessly with FC1 out of the box (as Loli-Queru expected Flash to work). I figure those packages will come along as more people use the system.
One thing that could make bug reporting easier is if there were simpler categories in which to report errors. Novices are unlikely to know that something odd on the display (like the visual noise I get when moving windows around) is an XFree86 issue as opposed to a Linux kernal issue or a GNOME issue. To get helpful commentary from users, I think it would help to not have to know all the layers of a typical GNU/Linux installation. But this means more people crawling through bug databases reassigning bugs to the proper place. I'm not sure how to best handle the problem, but I think making bug database entry simpler and easier to do ad hoc is a step in the right direction.
Overall, it's an interesting system and I plan to give FC some more tries before I decide to go with another distribution. I'll continue to use RH9 or Debian as my day-to-day GNU/Linux distribution until FC3 or FC4 is out.
Happy hacking.
I concur. It is precisely this go-along-to-get-along attitude on issues that control his ability to continue to do what he wants to do that appeal to many Slashdot readers, unfortunately. Torvalds reaffirms apathy by tossing off subjects as unimportant. He is an impressive hacker, but I hesitate to point to his words for informed opinion on political and ethical matters.
Stallman, by contrast, makes you listen to uncomfortable things like ethical computing--a subject too few other people even approach in their public speaking. Stallman recognizes the importance of the legalized bribery system Americans call campaign finance, and he has said if he had a way to fix it he would do so and nothing could make him prouder. Stallman seems, to me, to be much more in tune with the technological forces that affect our lives as hackers and citizens.
He would not represent that movement at all. He is the first to speak up when people make the mistake you just did. If you listen to his speeches, you can read or hear him speak on this issue when he corrected Mike Uretsky. I think you would be well served to learn what he has to say instead of judging him by your prejudical view of his appearance.
The whole reason anyone got into this mess was because they blindly trusted non-free software. Don't make the same mistake twice. Get an inexpensive low-end PC and install a free software router on it. If you're technically savvy, help someone improve their distribution of a free software router (I'm sure there are many others) so novices can more easily use it. This is a great chance to contribute to a volunteer project and help people escape untrustworthy-by-default software.
Please read this webpage on how valuable IBM considers its patents to be and why. IBM holds more patents than anyone else. When they say cross-licensing is an order of magnitude more valuable than infringement lawsuits, everyone had better listen. Cross-licensing takes away all of the exclusive power patents were invented to bestow upon the patent holder. Cross-licensing is only for the biggest patent holders, so it by definition does not serve the majority of patent holders well. The public is also not served well by it either. Your view of the matter is incorrect and your post is horribly overrated.
I concur. I wish more people understood the value of freedom (in its own terms and in terms of its practical impact--getting a new version of the Linux kernal and still be able to use the driver, being able to share the code with your friends and neighbors without legal problems, being able to inspect the code so you can be sure it's not doing anything bad) and demanded that from vendors.
I'm happy to work with commercial interests that help the Free Software community, and I'm happy to recommend them on-air too (I'm host of "Digital Citizen"--alternate Wednesdays, 8-10 PM).
Or you could work to inform people about people about the problem with so-called software patents thus helping them understand why nobody should have them.
Just because you may avoid an infringement lawsuit doesn't mean you are being helped. Cross-licensing with IBM (or some other big patent holder) means you lose the exclusivity the patent system was built to create. If your product was built on these patents, you now have a potential competitor. This informative summary of a point raised in an old "Think" magazine article is telling:
Any big patent holder likes cross-licensing more than litigation because litigation is more risky than getting the competitive patent holder's permission in a contract. But this strategy can only work for large patent holders--any smaller patent holder cannot cross-license to avoid patent infringement lawsuits because they don't have the war chest of patents to work with.
Software patents are bad for anyone that isn't IBM. It would be reasonable to estimate the threat and harm they pose is inversely proportional to the number of patent one holds. This is not a reasonable way to do business in the field of computer software development. We all should work for bringing an end to this collective threat, not take solace in that we're likely to avoid a trip to court.
I wouldn't mind if someone distributed the data for a fee, but anything they distributed I would want complete access to as well including the ability to share it and modify it; this is one of the reasons why I like the GNU General Public License for computer programs. Like the Free Software Foundation (who wrote the license), I am also interested in building a commons with anyone who will help, including businesses, but I don't want to help those who keep their published improvements from me. It will take me some time to consider how well the GNU GPL applies to mapping data.