As I recall, being royalty-free is a step in the right direction but insufficient for the Free Software community to be able to continue to innovate. The FSF made their concerns quite clear--if the W3C allows field-of-use restrictions to encumber standards, one is prevented from developing software that goes outside the prescribed activity.
I didn't see any language in Tim Berners-Lee's statement that directly addressed this concern.
illegally copying IP *is* theft. Make no bones about that.
What's interesting about your claim in a thread that centers on the GNU General Public License is how you are simultaneously misrepresenting two authorities you appeal to. Neither the FSF nor U.S. Copyright law consider copyright infringement to be theft.
And it's not surprising you would make such a mistake, considering you are arguing in terms of "IP" or intellectual property. It's important to understand that copyright law is not the same as patent law, trademark law, and other laws commonly discussed as "IP" and therefore it doesn't help anyone to think of them as a cohesive whole.
Yes. It's better to leave organized struggles to corporations. We should just run around like chickens with their heads cut off.
Not realizing the above is why so many young computer programmers (and Slashdot readers) don't maximize their power.
As I've gotten more involved in politics (being a member of a political party, running candidates for office, doing a public affairs radio show, just to name a few things), I've learned that a big part of political success comes from organizing people and making the organization outlast one's opponents. I treat it as a source of hope that ordinary people have the power to reorganize society to distribute power more equitably. Then, I hope, maintain their organization and prevent corporate and governmental abuses again.
"...just over half were Black and Hispanic." -- Greg Palast.
"...mostly African-American..." -- jbn-o.
I'll grant some credit for this, but not a lot. It was improper of me to leave out the Hispanic would-be voters, and for that I apologize. I can't independantly verify whether Choicepoint has received money or not, but I believe it is likely they will get more business for the stated research. However these objections leave aside a major issue--the 2000 U.S. Presidential election left out more voters than there was difference in votes between the two leading candidates. Is anyone working on reinstating the voting rights of the people who were disenfranchised? Democrats and Republicans both have the media's attention right now. They could draw national attention to this, but are they working on fixing this? I'd hate for registered legal voters to be kept out of the polls.
How 'bout you just report the facts, and leave the thinking and analysis to those who are qualified, eh?
This objection perpetuates a myth in reporting that isn't often discussed--the idea that you can "just report the facts". Since I made it easy for you to read the sources I referred to, I am obviously encouraging you to do so. I am not at all discouraging you from determining your own take on the matter. Finally, perhaps you don't know this, but Slashdot makes it easy for anonymous posts to be overlooked. Your input is likely to be read more if you post under an account name. Thanks for your input, but your tone is uncalled for.
I'm sure a few thousand mostly African-American Floridians will have some problems dismissing the fact that their incredibly important vote was prevented from being made. Losing one's voting right for no good reason is not a trivial thing. I'm not talking about pregnant and hanging chads here--more people lost their right to vote in Florida in 2000 than the number of votes difference between Bush and Gore. Since the Democrats don't seem to be concerned with the matter, and the Republicans benefit from pushing the issue aside, these voters have no major political party to turn to for getting off those scrub lists and regaining their right to vote. A lot of the people on those scrub lists were believed to be Democratic Party voters too.
If this is the first time you've heard of these would-be voters, consider reading "The Best Democracy Money Can Buy" by Greg Palast, an American investigative reporter for the BBC who broke the story that was largely ignored by American popular media (and appears to be treated as somehow trivial today).
So, no, I won't forget about it and I won't push it aside as some historical footnote. The U.S. Presidential election of 2000 was not as simple as pushing the election decision to a handful of U.S. Supreme Court judges.
Will there be an audio recording of the hearing anywhere (preferably in Ogg Vorbis or Ogg Speex format)? I'd love to play the hearing on my radio show "Digital Citizen" that focuses on issues of interest to the Free Software community. Perhaps a transcript I could read on the air?
If you happen to live in or near Champaign, Illinois, and you don't mind staying up late, you can hear my show on WEFT 90.1 FM at 2a-5a on Wednesdays (or late night Tuesdays, if you prefer). I generally focus on technology issues that have a social component to them, and this topic certainly qualifies. To help bring the issue of so-called "software patents" (more accurately, patents on algorithms used in computer software) I will air Stallman's patent talk after a brief rundown of some headlines.
There are some misunderstandings that remain unaddressed in this thread. The followups, I'm glad to see, display an understanding of the issues described in the GNU/Linux FAQ. I hope to clear up the issues I spotted which remain. All spelling in the quotes is in context.
I thank Mr Stallman for creating all the gnu[sic] software and for his vision of having groups of people working with each other and sharing intellectual idea's[sic] freely. Linux and perhaps FreeBSD would not be without him.
That's great. I hope you'll understand he's asking people to use the name GNU to get a share of the credit he (and many other people) think the GNU/Linux operating system is due. There is a technical advantage to distinguishing between the kernal and the rest of the OS here as well--it helps people speak more clearly about what they wish to address and thus avoid confusion.
He rails agaisn't anything non gpl including X11 but uses it on his desktop.
Actually he objects to the use of non-free software. He has no quarrel with non-GPL licenses so long as they are Free Software licenses. RMS might believe the GPL is a superior Free Software license to other Free Software licenses, but that does not stop him from recommending the use of Free Software under a variety of non-GPL licenses.
XFree86 is one example: XFree86 is Free Software so RMS doesn't object to its use and development. He goes further than that, actually. He is on record encouraging people to contribute their time and effort to it even under its non-copylefted Free Software license (the MIT X11 license). Unfortunately I don't have a specific pointer to precisely where the question arises, but if you listen to the Q&A sections of the history of Free Software talks, you'll hear him tell a questioner why he recommends against making a GPL-covered fork of XFree86.
His dream of free software and a community of sharing is here and he should chill. He got his gnutopia with debian.
I attended a lecture on Halloween a couple of years ago at the University of Chicago in which he said he talked briefly about the differences between Debian's Free Software Guidelines and the set of licenses it deems acceptable and the FSF's definition of Free Software and the set of licenses it deems acceptable. There is overwhelmingly large overlap but the two are not the same. So, no, he didn't get precisely everything he wanted with Debian but that didn't stop the FSF from pitching in (money or resources, I've forgotten which it was) to help get Debian started. Perhaps when GNU/Hurd is ready for ordinary users to use some people will make a GNU distribution that includes only Free Software as defined by the FSF.
However there is a more important issue at stake here: The Free Software community is constantly under attack from those who seek to compete with Free Software by making Free Software illegal or impossible to use and share. Patents on algorithms used in computer software (so-called "software patents") and the recent so-called "Super-DMCA" bills (now laws in many states) sweeping the US are examples of how laws can trump what you can do in your home with standard-compliant equipment and software hooked up to lines you pay to use. I'm not sure exactly what "chill[ing]" would entail, but it sounds like you want him to let his guard down and believe he has accomplished his goal. Far from it.
Some of the most important hurdles the Free Software community has yet to jump are legalistic and require becoming informed and putting aside some political differences to work together and defeat well-organized monied interests. These are not problems we can solve with our clever coding talents alone. The software the community put together, the community the GNU GPL built (which I believe will be perhaps his most important legacy) require eternal vigilance and, in exchange, can grant us one of the best things in the world: freedom.
No, not all browsers have this bug and so far I can't replicate similar sounding bugs in Mozilla producing a crash and loss of work. Also, not all browsers are so widely used and not all browsers integrate code with widely used e-mail clients (Outlook and Outlook express still use the same HTML renderer that is subject to so many problems). This leads to multiple paths to sabotage someone remotely, perhaps even anonymously. Let's not forget that any application that embeds MSIE/Windows' renderer is vulnerable. Considering how many people use MSIE on MS Windows and how many of them are affected by this bug, I'd hardly call revealing the bug a "joke".
This bug does *not* exist because MS is Evil.
I'm not encouraging anyone to think in the false dichotomy of good vs. evil and neither should you. Nobody is helped by glossing over relevant details of how this works or ignoring the wide scope of the bug. This is one of a long string of Microsoft bugs that directly adversely affects ordinary users. We are much better served by suggesting real-world fixes (such as switching to Mozilla to do most browsing, even under a proprietary operating system). We're also better off identifying this exemplar of the practical shortcomings of proprietary software. There's no workaround here--MSIE/Windows users must simply wait for a fix from the proprietor if they won't switch browsers (and any other app adversely affected by embedding the MSIE renderer).
Time to recognize a wider social significance.
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HTML Rendering Crashes IE
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· Score: 2, Insightful
Of course any attempt to pass that as a security concern back then would have been laughed at. loudly.
And undeservedly. People who could not see the potential for the web and understand that a critical application like a web browser must be made crash-proof should be corrected. Not by pointing and laughing, but by careful and patient explanation about how more people in everyday society depend on a well-functioning web browser that can handle any input (including input from potentially hostile webpage authors) without crashing (and thus losing what could be valuable data).
I'm not sure what has fundamentally changed since then.
What has changed since the days when people used Netscape's version 3 browser is an increase in the number of people who use web browsers for important work. Developers who don't take this concern seriously are not developers one should trust with important data.
Applications should not respond to any input by crashing and applications should give the user a chance to lose data because someone on the net essentially (perhaps inadvertantly) instructed the application to crash.
Obviously I mistyped and the above should read "...applications should not give the user a chance to lose data..."
Re:An infinite loop is not a bug in the applicatio
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HTML Rendering Crashes IE
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It's a bug in the document.
No, if that does indeed crash an application it's a bug (and I'll assume, for the sake of argument, that the parent is correct even though other posters have stated they can't get Mozilla to crash from this). Applications should not respond to any input by crashing and applications should give the user a chance to lose data because someone on the net essentially (perhaps inadvertantly) instructed the application to crash.
I appreciate the logic of the loop you're describing, but the proper response to that is not to crash or enter some state where a user's data can be lost.
No matter what the input stream, the application should not respond by crashing.
If the entire application crashes and the user had something valuable in another window, that data loss could be a big deal. As we become more dependant on web browsing ordinary users type more valuable data into browsers, often without thinking about the need for making backups by entering data in some other place and copying it into the browser.
I think it'd be a great feature....but it would also suck Mozilla into the P2P world of legal BS. Do we want it there?
If the program has the ability to share data, it's already "there". Besides, I think there is now some good case law reaffirming the point in the landmark Betamax US Supreme Court case to point to. It's a good thing to tell people such programs are no more copyright infringing by nature than a VCR or a copying machine is. At least Judge Stephen Wilson said something similar in his decision:
Defendants distribute and support software, the users of which can and do choose to employ it for both lawful and unlawful ends. Grokster and StreamCast are not significantly different from companies that sell home video recorders or copy machines, both of which can be and are used to infringe copyrights.
We need to legitimize technology that encourages sharing by showing that such technology is okay, not help those who would demonize it by hiding our collective light under a barrel.
Informed political views are not Torvalds' forte.
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Linu[s Torvalds] discusses Politics here. Something his understanding of is obviously lacking.
I agree with the above (I made a small alteration--changing "Linux" to "Linus Torvalds" for clarity and what I thought you meant to type). Linus Torvalds' words in this mailing list post and other threads I've seen him contribute to suggest to me he genuinely believes his words and deeds are somehow apolitical; as if politics can be somehow absent from any collaborative human endeavor. This, for me, makes his political naivete more striking than the intended DRM substance of his commentary.
Upon reading the post, however, what I see is a bean counter mentality that can really be dangerous to open source projects as a whole. I shudder at the thought of hundreds of package maintainers being contacted to deal with this "license issue", which is really a non-issue to anyone with some common sense. This time would better be spent working on real problems -- it's not like Debian has none of those...
There are multiple real problems the Debian-legal mailing list has collected regarding the GFDL and if you read all the posts on this topic you might not have concluded as you did. Check out this thread for some poignant examples of real problems--practical concerns that give one pause before applying the GFDL, even without using invariant sections, to one's Free Software documentation. Contrary to what one might glean from the original poster's summary, not all the discussion on problems with the GFDL are contained in one debian-legal thread, not even the one I just pointed to.
Which brings me to another part of your response, "a bean counter mentality that can really be dangerous to open source projects". Debian and the FSF (the two organizations involved in this thread) are not for "open source". Both were formed long before the Open Source Initiative began and both pay attention to freedom to share and modify software. The mentality you dismiss as being dangerous is just the opposite of what you claim. It is entirely sensible and wise for an organization who cares about the freedoms of its users to act as Debian does by discussing license reviews freely and debate whether licenses Debian cares about are DFSG-free or not. Perhaps if you knew more about the two organizations involved here you would not make the mistake of ignoring or dismissing freedom as the Open Source movement does.
It might even be illegal to operate an open relay [...]
Ah the memories. Did the city of Battle Creek, MI ever get its act together and hire a clueful sysadmin? After how that city manager's office overreacted to ORBZ (thus depriving the world of a valued resource), it would be pure schadenfreude to watch them lose a lawsuit for operating an open relay under the new law.
Was it ethical? No. I don't beleive so. They were using the work of a whole host of other people -- filmographers, recording engineers, writers, etc. -- to gain a cheap entry into the business. This is the equivalent of taking a novel by, say, Charles Dickens, editing it and perhaps adding another chapter, changing the title and claiming it as a new novel written by yourself. Really sleazy, IMHO.
I disagree. I don't think it's sleazy at all for three reasons:
When a work enters the public domain, you should be free do almost anything you want with the work, commercial distribution included (I mention this because Fox is making an issue of the amount of money Dastar spent versus how much they made on their derivative). Fox should have known what choosing to forgo their copyright powers on "Crusade in Europe" would entail. Fox bringing up how much money Dastar made with their derivative suggests to me Fox doesn't think it had enough time to make money from this documentary or that Fox wishes it could take the money Dastar made with "Campaigns in Europe".
Dastar is putting their name on "Campaigns in Europe" so anyone, as Justice Souter said, "can go to Dastar and raise the devil -- they know exactly who to blame." (a salient point you did not mention in your summary).
More generally, we all use published expressions made somewhere else to make new published expressions. There really are no new ideas under the sun.
I would not have guessed that anyone on/. would object to distributing a labeled derivative of a work in the public domain.
But I look forward to seeing what new limitations on deriving new works from works in the public domain the SCOTUS will impose on us. The way I see it, this case is only a copyright case in that it has the chance to severely curtail our freedoms with PD works.
Referring to your comment about Charles Dickens' works: I wonder how much money is Dickens' estate is out from all the productions of his stories that are in the PD? Society generally doesn't think it's bad if Masterpiece Theatre, say, decides to air a new movie based on some Dickens work (copying even the dialogue and character names) without prepending "Charles Dickens'" to the name of the movie. Similarly, lots of people make new works based on Shakespeare's stories and characters without explicitly acknowledging where the story or characters come from. Welcome to the PD.
The president of CDBaby visited my journal at one point and chimed in with tips when we were chatting over how to get the best MP3 encodes out of lame & CDEx.
It would be more insightful if that person were advocating not using codecs that are not freely available. Perhaps the president of CDBaby could spend some time helping to popularize Ogg Vorbis and give portable digital music players more reason to pursue a market not based on patent encumberance (that many people claim sounds better than MP3 anyhow).
I love people trying to find alternatives to Microsquat[sic], but I hate people trying to foist lazy crap down our throats in the name of Freedom. That baby should either be fixed, or thrown out with its bathwater.
Are you saying Apple's QuickTime player is being suggested "in the name of Freedom"? Apple's QuickTime player costs no money but is not Free Software. In the future one should be able to use Ogg Vorbis + Ogg Theora to functionally replace QuickTime for playing digital video (meaning Ogg programs won't necessarily understand QuickTime data but one could encode digital video with Ogg Theora). At that time you should see a Free Software program you could use.
I agree with your assessment of Apple's QuickTime player. Apple did a particularly poor job implementing their player on Microsoft Windows.
[...C]onsidering that they've almost certainly contributed several orders of magnitude more to the project than you have, I think that not being on an equal footing is entirely reasonable.
It's not reasonable if you're interested in software freedom, or building and maintaining a software commons. I know I would much rather work as equals in a project no matter how much code I've contributed, so I'm not going to get involved with software licensed under Microsoft's new license. I concur with oddjob, the GNU GPL lets me participate as equals with all the other GPL licensees for as long as the covered program is licensed under the GPL.
This is not the first time we've seen this kind of inequity among participants--there is a similar imbalance of power in the APSL (Apple Public Source License). The FSF commented on this in their essay describing why the APSL is not a Free Software license.
If you're not attempting to cheat your ISP (running 6 machines for the price of one if the ISP you use charges per machine or something) you should have no problem. If you do want to run your 6 machines just pay the extra or switch ISPs.
At what point do you begin to question your ISP's policies? If there's no technical reason to need more than one WAN-side IP address (such as using NAT), what's the point of paying for additional IP addresses? Why shouldn't the ISP change their business model to charge for bandwidth used or limit the bandwidth any user can use so they can't use more than the user's service fee can pay for?
Consider that at least three of the states listed (CO, FL, GA) have Republican governors IIRC; and the MPAA's strongest influence is traditionally within the Democratic camp.
Maybe the Democrats and the Republicans are more alike than is popularly recognized.
Why is that Stallman speech copyrighted instead of copylefted?
I think Stallman wants the speech (and the recording of the speech) to be widely available and he doesn't want anyone to distort his view by editing what he said. I also think he wants his speech to be distributed even by people who license their derivative works differently than he licensed his speech. Leveraging his power under copyright law is the way to accomplish this.
Not all fields benefit from patents
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Patents are a critical part of the foundation of successful free markets. Why would anyone want to innovate if not to profit from his innovations?
Some people forget that computing is one industry that did not always have to deal with patents as it does now. Computing was moving along perfectly well without them, so patents don't come off as necessary to spur innovation, but weapons to needlessly hobble competitors. Patents are being awarded for ridiculous and obvious ideas that stifle the development of software and hardware for all but the richest participants. The consumer does not benefit from this reduction in competition. Furthermore, your point suggests you think that if one industry has patents they all should have them. I suggest you examine the details on how patenting works in each field and you throw out such broad sweeping conclusions.
For a far more prescient, detailed, and learned view of patents specifically talking about patenting algorithms used in the production of computer software (sometimes inaccurately called "software patents"), listen to or read RMS' talk on patents.
Dubbed O-STEP, the Open Source Threshold Escrow Program allows vendors to license their products until so many millions are made, then agree to release the code under GPL.
The PC World article linked to never mentions the GNU GPL. The article says that under the plan the software will be "released under an open source license".
For all we know, this could be another way to get corporations to create and distribute software under self-interested Open Source non-Free Software licenses like the APSL. Or this could be a way to get more software released into freedom under Free Software licenses including the GNU GPL that also appear on OSI's acceptable license list. The statements quoted in the PC World article are too vague to jump to saying this will produce more GPL-covered software.
Slashdot Mirror
As I recall, being royalty-free is a step in the right direction but insufficient for the Free Software community to be able to continue to innovate. The FSF made their concerns quite clear--if the W3C allows field-of-use restrictions to encumber standards, one is prevented from developing software that goes outside the prescribed activity.
I didn't see any language in Tim Berners-Lee's statement that directly addressed this concern.
What's interesting about your claim in a thread that centers on the GNU General Public License is how you are simultaneously misrepresenting two authorities you appeal to. Neither the FSF nor U.S. Copyright law consider copyright infringement to be theft.
And it's not surprising you would make such a mistake, considering you are arguing in terms of "IP" or intellectual property. It's important to understand that copyright law is not the same as patent law, trademark law, and other laws commonly discussed as "IP" and therefore it doesn't help anyone to think of them as a cohesive whole.
Not realizing the above is why so many young computer programmers (and Slashdot readers) don't maximize their power.
As I've gotten more involved in politics (being a member of a political party, running candidates for office, doing a public affairs radio show, just to name a few things), I've learned that a big part of political success comes from organizing people and making the organization outlast one's opponents. I treat it as a source of hope that ordinary people have the power to reorganize society to distribute power more equitably. Then, I hope, maintain their organization and prevent corporate and governmental abuses again.
I'll grant some credit for this, but not a lot. It was improper of me to leave out the Hispanic would-be voters, and for that I apologize. I can't independantly verify whether Choicepoint has received money or not, but I believe it is likely they will get more business for the stated research. However these objections leave aside a major issue--the 2000 U.S. Presidential election left out more voters than there was difference in votes between the two leading candidates. Is anyone working on reinstating the voting rights of the people who were disenfranchised? Democrats and Republicans both have the media's attention right now. They could draw national attention to this, but are they working on fixing this? I'd hate for registered legal voters to be kept out of the polls.
This objection perpetuates a myth in reporting that isn't often discussed--the idea that you can "just report the facts". Since I made it easy for you to read the sources I referred to, I am obviously encouraging you to do so. I am not at all discouraging you from determining your own take on the matter. Finally, perhaps you don't know this, but Slashdot makes it easy for anonymous posts to be overlooked. Your input is likely to be read more if you post under an account name. Thanks for your input, but your tone is uncalled for.
I'm sure a few thousand mostly African-American Floridians will have some problems dismissing the fact that their incredibly important vote was prevented from being made. Losing one's voting right for no good reason is not a trivial thing. I'm not talking about pregnant and hanging chads here--more people lost their right to vote in Florida in 2000 than the number of votes difference between Bush and Gore. Since the Democrats don't seem to be concerned with the matter, and the Republicans benefit from pushing the issue aside, these voters have no major political party to turn to for getting off those scrub lists and regaining their right to vote. A lot of the people on those scrub lists were believed to be Democratic Party voters too.
The same company that prevented these thousands of (disproportionately African-American) voters from voting in Florida in 2000 (a Choicepoint subsidiary called Database Technologies) stands to be paid millions of dollars by the Bush administration to collect detailed personal information on the populations of foreign countries.
If this is the first time you've heard of these would-be voters, consider reading "The Best Democracy Money Can Buy" by Greg Palast, an American investigative reporter for the BBC who broke the story that was largely ignored by American popular media (and appears to be treated as somehow trivial today).
So, no, I won't forget about it and I won't push it aside as some historical footnote. The U.S. Presidential election of 2000 was not as simple as pushing the election decision to a handful of U.S. Supreme Court judges.
Will there be an audio recording of the hearing anywhere (preferably in Ogg Vorbis or Ogg Speex format)? I'd love to play the hearing on my radio show "Digital Citizen" that focuses on issues of interest to the Free Software community. Perhaps a transcript I could read on the air?
If you happen to live in or near Champaign, Illinois, and you don't mind staying up late, you can hear my show on WEFT 90.1 FM at 2a-5a on Wednesdays (or late night Tuesdays, if you prefer). I generally focus on technology issues that have a social component to them, and this topic certainly qualifies. To help bring the issue of so-called "software patents" (more accurately, patents on algorithms used in computer software) I will air Stallman's patent talk after a brief rundown of some headlines.
There are some misunderstandings that remain unaddressed in this thread. The followups, I'm glad to see, display an understanding of the issues described in the GNU/Linux FAQ. I hope to clear up the issues I spotted which remain. All spelling in the quotes is in context.
That's great. I hope you'll understand he's asking people to use the name GNU to get a share of the credit he (and many other people) think the GNU/Linux operating system is due. There is a technical advantage to distinguishing between the kernal and the rest of the OS here as well--it helps people speak more clearly about what they wish to address and thus avoid confusion.
Actually he objects to the use of non-free software. He has no quarrel with non-GPL licenses so long as they are Free Software licenses. RMS might believe the GPL is a superior Free Software license to other Free Software licenses, but that does not stop him from recommending the use of Free Software under a variety of non-GPL licenses.
XFree86 is one example: XFree86 is Free Software so RMS doesn't object to its use and development. He goes further than that, actually. He is on record encouraging people to contribute their time and effort to it even under its non-copylefted Free Software license (the MIT X11 license). Unfortunately I don't have a specific pointer to precisely where the question arises, but if you listen to the Q&A sections of the history of Free Software talks, you'll hear him tell a questioner why he recommends against making a GPL-covered fork of XFree86.
I attended a lecture on Halloween a couple of years ago at the University of Chicago in which he said he talked briefly about the differences between Debian's Free Software Guidelines and the set of licenses it deems acceptable and the FSF's definition of Free Software and the set of licenses it deems acceptable. There is overwhelmingly large overlap but the two are not the same. So, no, he didn't get precisely everything he wanted with Debian but that didn't stop the FSF from pitching in (money or resources, I've forgotten which it was) to help get Debian started. Perhaps when GNU/Hurd is ready for ordinary users to use some people will make a GNU distribution that includes only Free Software as defined by the FSF.
However there is a more important issue at stake here: The Free Software community is constantly under attack from those who seek to compete with Free Software by making Free Software illegal or impossible to use and share. Patents on algorithms used in computer software (so-called "software patents") and the recent so-called "Super-DMCA" bills (now laws in many states) sweeping the US are examples of how laws can trump what you can do in your home with standard-compliant equipment and software hooked up to lines you pay to use. I'm not sure exactly what "chill[ing]" would entail, but it sounds like you want him to let his guard down and believe he has accomplished his goal. Far from it.
Some of the most important hurdles the Free Software community has yet to jump are legalistic and require becoming informed and putting aside some political differences to work together and defeat well-organized monied interests. These are not problems we can solve with our clever coding talents alone. The software the community put together, the community the GNU GPL built (which I believe will be perhaps his most important legacy) require eternal vigilance and, in exchange, can grant us one of the best things in the world: freedom.
No, not all browsers have this bug and so far I can't replicate similar sounding bugs in Mozilla producing a crash and loss of work. Also, not all browsers are so widely used and not all browsers integrate code with widely used e-mail clients (Outlook and Outlook express still use the same HTML renderer that is subject to so many problems). This leads to multiple paths to sabotage someone remotely, perhaps even anonymously. Let's not forget that any application that embeds MSIE/Windows' renderer is vulnerable. Considering how many people use MSIE on MS Windows and how many of them are affected by this bug, I'd hardly call revealing the bug a "joke".
I'm not encouraging anyone to think in the false dichotomy of good vs. evil and neither should you. Nobody is helped by glossing over relevant details of how this works or ignoring the wide scope of the bug. This is one of a long string of Microsoft bugs that directly adversely affects ordinary users. We are much better served by suggesting real-world fixes (such as switching to Mozilla to do most browsing, even under a proprietary operating system). We're also better off identifying this exemplar of the practical shortcomings of proprietary software. There's no workaround here--MSIE/Windows users must simply wait for a fix from the proprietor if they won't switch browsers (and any other app adversely affected by embedding the MSIE renderer).
And undeservedly. People who could not see the potential for the web and understand that a critical application like a web browser must be made crash-proof should be corrected. Not by pointing and laughing, but by careful and patient explanation about how more people in everyday society depend on a well-functioning web browser that can handle any input (including input from potentially hostile webpage authors) without crashing (and thus losing what could be valuable data).
What has changed since the days when people used Netscape's version 3 browser is an increase in the number of people who use web browsers for important work. Developers who don't take this concern seriously are not developers one should trust with important data.
I wrote:
Obviously I mistyped and the above should read "...applications should not give the user a chance to lose data..."
No, if that does indeed crash an application it's a bug (and I'll assume, for the sake of argument, that the parent is correct even though other posters have stated they can't get Mozilla to crash from this). Applications should not respond to any input by crashing and applications should give the user a chance to lose data because someone on the net essentially (perhaps inadvertantly) instructed the application to crash.
I appreciate the logic of the loop you're describing, but the proper response to that is not to crash or enter some state where a user's data can be lost.
I see the significance in two ways right now:
If the program has the ability to share data, it's already "there". Besides, I think there is now some good case law reaffirming the point in the landmark Betamax US Supreme Court case to point to. It's a good thing to tell people such programs are no more copyright infringing by nature than a VCR or a copying machine is. At least Judge Stephen Wilson said something similar in his decision:
We need to legitimize technology that encourages sharing by showing that such technology is okay, not help those who would demonize it by hiding our collective light under a barrel.
I agree with the above (I made a small alteration--changing "Linux" to "Linus Torvalds" for clarity and what I thought you meant to type). Linus Torvalds' words in this mailing list post and other threads I've seen him contribute to suggest to me he genuinely believes his words and deeds are somehow apolitical; as if politics can be somehow absent from any collaborative human endeavor. This, for me, makes his political naivete more striking than the intended DRM substance of his commentary.
There are multiple real problems the Debian-legal mailing list has collected regarding the GFDL and if you read all the posts on this topic you might not have concluded as you did. Check out this thread for some poignant examples of real problems--practical concerns that give one pause before applying the GFDL, even without using invariant sections, to one's Free Software documentation. Contrary to what one might glean from the original poster's summary, not all the discussion on problems with the GFDL are contained in one debian-legal thread, not even the one I just pointed to.
Which brings me to another part of your response, "a bean counter mentality that can really be dangerous to open source projects". Debian and the FSF (the two organizations involved in this thread) are not for "open source". Both were formed long before the Open Source Initiative began and both pay attention to freedom to share and modify software. The mentality you dismiss as being dangerous is just the opposite of what you claim. It is entirely sensible and wise for an organization who cares about the freedoms of its users to act as Debian does by discussing license reviews freely and debate whether licenses Debian cares about are DFSG-free or not. Perhaps if you knew more about the two organizations involved here you would not make the mistake of ignoring or dismissing freedom as the Open Source movement does.
Ah the memories. Did the city of Battle Creek, MI ever get its act together and hire a clueful sysadmin? After how that city manager's office overreacted to ORBZ (thus depriving the world of a valued resource), it would be pure schadenfreude to watch them lose a lawsuit for operating an open relay under the new law.
I disagree. I don't think it's sleazy at all for three reasons:
I would not have guessed that anyone on /. would object to distributing a labeled derivative of a work in the public domain.
But I look forward to seeing what new limitations on deriving new works from works in the public domain the SCOTUS will impose on us. The way I see it, this case is only a copyright case in that it has the chance to severely curtail our freedoms with PD works.
Referring to your comment about Charles Dickens' works: I wonder how much money is Dickens' estate is out from all the productions of his stories that are in the PD? Society generally doesn't think it's bad if Masterpiece Theatre, say, decides to air a new movie based on some Dickens work (copying even the dialogue and character names) without prepending "Charles Dickens'" to the name of the movie. Similarly, lots of people make new works based on Shakespeare's stories and characters without explicitly acknowledging where the story or characters come from. Welcome to the PD.
It would be more insightful if that person were advocating not using codecs that are not freely available. Perhaps the president of CDBaby could spend some time helping to popularize Ogg Vorbis and give portable digital music players more reason to pursue a market not based on patent encumberance (that many people claim sounds better than MP3 anyhow).
Are you saying Apple's QuickTime player is being suggested "in the name of Freedom"? Apple's QuickTime player costs no money but is not Free Software. In the future one should be able to use Ogg Vorbis + Ogg Theora to functionally replace QuickTime for playing digital video (meaning Ogg programs won't necessarily understand QuickTime data but one could encode digital video with Ogg Theora). At that time you should see a Free Software program you could use.
I agree with your assessment of Apple's QuickTime player. Apple did a particularly poor job implementing their player on Microsoft Windows.
It's not reasonable if you're interested in software freedom, or building and maintaining a software commons. I know I would much rather work as equals in a project no matter how much code I've contributed, so I'm not going to get involved with software licensed under Microsoft's new license. I concur with oddjob, the GNU GPL lets me participate as equals with all the other GPL licensees for as long as the covered program is licensed under the GPL.
This is not the first time we've seen this kind of inequity among participants--there is a similar imbalance of power in the APSL (Apple Public Source License). The FSF commented on this in their essay describing why the APSL is not a Free Software license.
At what point do you begin to question your ISP's policies? If there's no technical reason to need more than one WAN-side IP address (such as using NAT), what's the point of paying for additional IP addresses? Why shouldn't the ISP change their business model to charge for bandwidth used or limit the bandwidth any user can use so they can't use more than the user's service fee can pay for?
Maybe the Democrats and the Republicans are more alike than is popularly recognized.
I think Stallman wants the speech (and the recording of the speech) to be widely available and he doesn't want anyone to distort his view by editing what he said. I also think he wants his speech to be distributed even by people who license their derivative works differently than he licensed his speech. Leveraging his power under copyright law is the way to accomplish this.
Some people forget that computing is one industry that did not always have to deal with patents as it does now. Computing was moving along perfectly well without them, so patents don't come off as necessary to spur innovation, but weapons to needlessly hobble competitors. Patents are being awarded for ridiculous and obvious ideas that stifle the development of software and hardware for all but the richest participants. The consumer does not benefit from this reduction in competition. Furthermore, your point suggests you think that if one industry has patents they all should have them. I suggest you examine the details on how patenting works in each field and you throw out such broad sweeping conclusions.
For a far more prescient, detailed, and learned view of patents specifically talking about patenting algorithms used in the production of computer software (sometimes inaccurately called "software patents"), listen to or read RMS' talk on patents.
The PC World article linked to never mentions the GNU GPL. The article says that under the plan the software will be "released under an open source license".
For all we know, this could be another way to get corporations to create and distribute software under self-interested Open Source non-Free Software licenses like the APSL. Or this could be a way to get more software released into freedom under Free Software licenses including the GNU GPL that also appear on OSI's acceptable license list. The statements quoted in the PC World article are too vague to jump to saying this will produce more GPL-covered software.