No, the GPL has the problem of co-existing in the same app as CDDL.
While SUN is at liberty to license software under any licence under the sun, they invented some - sorry - rather obscure minority version; long after GPL. Consequently, it was a compatibility problem introduced by SUN; knowing both would be incompatible. It is pretty daring to 'conclude' that GPL was the culprit, after all.
If Sun prefers to carve out a smaller community for itself, it is free to build its own little island, with its own big fence. The result will be, though, that Linux will continue to develop more quickly and it will bury Sun's license and its code, because the open, GPL method works better, and the GPL requirement of giving back all modifications results in rapid improvement. Sun is free to cut itself off from that, if it so chooses, but it will reap what it sows. If they imagined that the world would drop the GPL and adopt the CDDL instead, I trust by now they realize that isn't going to happen.
I can only wonder...... if you talk out of experience or some other, rather backwardly part ?
Oh, wait, you know some people who told you. I see.
No, there is no DTrace in Linux, and nothing close.
Containers, though, give you away. Which other platform allows you to, like, start 1000 virtual machines, each consuming 2-3 MB and virtually no CPU resources as long as you don't run anything in there ?
There is a lack of hardware support, no doubt. But also, the rumoured lack of stability is not trustworthy. Except, you run crappy, faulty, hardware. You are right about Nexenta, sitting inbetween chairs. Not loved by the SUN community and despised by the majority of the FOSS people. This is where, IMHHO, SUN failed. They are too technical and lacked a visionary to hop on that train.
Confirmed, alas. Used to have Sarge on my boxen, no problem, for years. Recently, with Etch, my server started to drop processes. My desktop lost one or another application as well. Since the hardware is unmodified, I guess it is an issue of the OS. OTOH, I have started to use Nexenta almost a year ago, and never has any kernel problem; any situation returned the control to me.
Though it is still in the making, yes ZFS has a better data integrity. It does not need any tricks when the power suddenly goes away to reconstruct the last ativities, because it is done in an atomic way.
I read (haven't tried myself) that someone simulated like a few million power outages, and the drive came back invariably. It also has a much improved self-check, scrub (which I have done), as well as the snapshots.
Now, this would be Insightful. I have been lurking around on the OpenSolaris lists, a few at least, and in general the posters were 'just 1337' and pulling their holy hand granades like hell when words as 'Linux' or 'GPL' appeared.
What about the licensing aspect of Indiana (until now I was only aware of Nevada), any real progress ?
LOL, give me apt-get over pkgadd and rpm etc any day of the year. Okay, give me pkgadd over rpm, but this is where I see flamebait twinkling; as 'rpm' was not to be found in my post.
(Just missed the FP, but still) this chance was missed a few times. The last one was when Nexenta was treated like a mother-in-law. If SUN wanted acceptance instead of l33t, GPL(v3) would have been the order of the day. As long as they dangle about with CDDL, they might as well pass away. Don't get me wrong, CDDL ('cuddle') is quite a good FOSS licence. But it has its problems with a coexistence side-by-side to GPL. And GNU is, love it or hate it, thousands of great applications; and moreover a licence accepted by the majority of FOSS developers.
I hope(d) Ian would have the power to apt-ing Solaris, but he doesn't seem to. And when you read the OpenSolaris lists, you find as much ego-tripping as on OpenBSD or Mac. They rather sink with pkgadd. And I cry for them, yes, because SunOS is the greatest kernel around, with limited hardware support. Back to licencing and square one.
Did you really try, Sir ? I am asking because I was trying off Frankfurt and had the office buildings in 3D, and the rolling hills east of Frankfurt underneath. And actually, finished by crashing into a forest at about 400m above sea level in rural Germany.
... and in the next move, Google and Yahoo will be forced to shut down their mail filtering capabilities in order to expediate the delivery of trojaned mails to Tora Bora.
"Intelligence is constant. Only the number of humans increases." Rapidly, as we can make out.
In a recent move, Angela Merkel has forced an amendment to the liberty laws through Der Bundestag. It is from now on prohibited to use any operating system that is non-trivial to break into. German police have started to do house-to-house searches of Internet users reported to be not hackable by the Security Services (SS) of the Federal Government. First images can be seen on http://www.liveleak.com/view?i=9db_1178813405
More action is to follow soon, the Minister of Information of the Federal Government, who only wanted to be known by his initials, JG, confirmed: "We have outlawed the use and ownership of any so-called security tool, to liberate Germans from FUD, Fear Uncertainty and Danger. We have outlawed any operating system that hinders the proper execution of the tasks of the SS." He promised to follow up on speculations of setting up a re-education camp for deviant Internet users in Bergen-Belsen. He asked the reporter to supply his e-mail address, in order to deliver the adequate response into her mailbox as soon as that response was ready.
Let's face it, as much as I appreciate your efforts, here you are wrong.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dual_license states: A second use of dual-licensing with free software is for licence compatibility, allowing code from differently licensed free software projects to be combined, or to provide users the preference to pick a licence. The latter has obviously been the one here.
The terms about keeping the license terms intact refer logically to 'as long as you *use* this licence'. Or, along my example, you may remove the attribution (BSD) when you chose the 'do what you like' license.
Also your lines about the authorship are not valid. When I publish software, and write 'GPL' across it, I do never state nor even imply that I wrote all of that myself. It is understood that I take existing code and modify it.
Also, you confound the author and licensor. The author has offered the choice in writing: "Alternatively, this software may be distributed under the terms of the GNU General Public License ("GPL") version 2 as published by the Free Software Foundation." That means I may take the code and use and redistribute under GPLv2. Irrespective if I wrote it or not. This is neither re-licensing nor anyway legally or ethically questionable. You might even say I was the licensor, except of being a lame duck one: I may not change the license. But I may drop one; along to the explicit desire of the author.
I came across this term once too often. I am not so sure if this term is valid. 'Relicensing' has a clear flavour of 'changing the licence'. This is certainly not the case here. The authors have taken the liberty to slap two licences onto the code, two not fully compatible ones. With a tad of common sense, they wanted to offer their contribution to the two main streams of the world of FOSS or FLOSS or whatnot. So the proponents of GPL could use one of the licences under which it came, and fully valid on its own, and distribute the code. So could the 'Open' people, and use and develop and distribute the same sources. Should we not rather respect the wishes of the authors ? Sure, you can't remove the licence off a BSD code. But when the author states 'you may do with this what you like', then you can relicense it under BSD, or GPL, or Microsoft's EULA. There the term is appropriate. But if it is fully licenced under BSD, you don't need to carry the text of any other possible licence through to the end of time. Neither the other way round.
Would you guys be that up in arms if the licence was BSD and 'you may do with this what you like' ? I don't think so. I guess, you'd drop the 'you may do with this what you like' licence and consider it BSD. (I know this combination doesn't make any sense; but authors are at times funny people. Plus, further modifications can make a difference.) Therefore, why so emotional ?!
Dual-licensing, that means it *is* under GPL in the first place. And under BSD. No relicensing takes place at all.
Oh, yes. Informative, and no irony here from my side.
Are you guys crazy these days ? As much as I adore Theo, and as much as I run OpenBSD on all of my servers, this stretches beyond reason. Yes, your post is informative and I'd mod it +6 if only I could. Hopefully everyone reads it carefully before writing up more trash.
So, I do understand, that Theo doesn't like a dual-licensed software to be stripped off one of the licenses. Morally okay, sort of. Both, I mean. If the author licenses under two licenses, each is valid. On its own. So the GPL-people do nothing wrong, legally. Morally, though, true, they prevent modifications / improvements from being 'ported back' to BSD. So maybe they ought not use a single license. As much as I might agree, this is hypcrite. When Microsoft uses the software - and OpenBSD invites them to do so - and how much would I love if they came close to OpenBSD's clean code - so, when Microsoft takes the code, the BSD community tends to brag about this and eventually is very happy. Could anyone point out to any line of software that Microsoft would have given back to the BSD community under the BSD license ? Can it be true that there was more animosity between GPL and BSD than between BSD and proprietary ? At least, it looks likewise. Similar to the Shia killing their brothers, Sunni, in Iraq. And exactly vice versa. Somehow I understand the concerns of the BSD community, see above. Still, I can only appeal to the common sense: Be proud and happy that non-proprietary software thrives, in all of its flavours !
Oh, thanks for pointing this out. Has hit me a few times. Actually, there is no digital signal on transport. Even Ethernet is just an analogue wave, if you know what I mean. Finally, all physical transport media are analogue. The only digital part is the coding, be it source or channel coding. If you want, representation. The danger of a full analogue path is the representation of an amplitude by an amplitude (that is why it is called 'analogue'); while digital means a re-coding into 0's and 1's, where amplitude is represented by a combination of 0's and 1's; with a proper representation as long as 0's and 1's are properly distinguished.
Even Information Theory proves the question wrong. A specific bandwidth and signal-noise ratio can transport a specific amount of information. There is no Perpetuum Mobile of information distribution where data rate can be produced from nothing, eh, from digitisation. Probably more recent 'products' of this same new system who set up such crap, since they haven't learned any better.
As much as I appreciate your post, I don't think you hit the target. FSF is not interested in the copyright aspect of it; nor in the contractual side. In principle, they (Microsoft-Suse) have given out vouchers. Vouchers that claim indemnity of patent infringement. Right ? These vouchers have no expiration date. Right ? When Suse gives out Suse GPLv3 to user X, GPLv3 applies. Right ? When Suse gave out Suse GPLv3 for a voucher, the terms on the voucher apply. Right ? The terms on then voucher state: 'No patent infringement here !'. Right ? GPLv3 states something like: If no infringement in one case, then no infringement for all cases. Right ? (This also makes some sense without vouchers.) Question: If I get Suse GPLv3 without a voucher, can I be sued for patent infringement ? Probably not.
Question of the day is: Since GPLv3 entered into force after the voucher was issued, does it apply retroactively ? This, actually, is a question. Some might say no, some might say yes. As much as I adore FSF, I am undecided. Let's stick to the burger: If I issue a voucher for a burger, without expiration date, and the burger gets slapped with a price increase because of 50% more meat, do I have to honour it ? I'd say of course, my mistake. On the other hand, we have 'nulla poena sine lege', and the collective exoneration of patent infringement had simply not been on the table at the date of issue of those vouchers. Still, the oversight is on Microsoft's side; and this is why I tend to be 70:30 for FSF here; and this is also why I think Microsoft is slightly nervous.
Interesting. Still, I don't get it. Looks like a circular problem to me.
Firstly, one does not 'opt for v3', how would or could one ? Whatever, let's say you redistribute software XYZ, v1.0, under GPLv3. Next, the author changes the license. He can't for v1.0 [No, he can't change for a software already distributed, retroactively]. So he moves his XYZ to v1.1, under GPLv2 only.
Until here I can follow So you have a GPLv3 license agreement with Microsoft for my software. Microsoft is not permitted under the terms of GPLv2 to redistribute the software under GPLv3.
But what does it mean ? And then I am lost: What would be the link between XYZ, v1.0, GPLv3; and XYZ, v1.1, GPLv2 ? I see none. Of course, neither Microsoft nor you may distribute XYZ v1.1 under GPLv3. But the change of licence does not affect the earlier XYZ, v1.0 under GPLv3.
So, if you wanted to distribute XYZ, v1.1 under GPLv2, you'd have to do exactly that. You'd have two legal products, two versions of XYZ. One under GPLv3 (v1.0) and one under GPLv2 (v1.1).
Now The only way Microsoft can legally do this is to obtain a GPLv3 license from [the author] does not make any sense. Since the author did explicitly not want that, why should he licence it to Microsoft, which would imply to the world ? Thus, they are bound by the terms of GPLv3. Yes, for the first version. Sorry, what was it you wanted to point out ?
1. The dreaded command prompt, so arrogantly looked down onto by 'we-are-so-advanced-Windows-GUI'-users comes in
2. So you are buying crap software for a hell of money, and then you have to share tips on the Internet, on how to nicely dissect pieces from here, and others from there, in order to gobble together a functional operating system !? Welcome to the world of GNU/Linux before 1998 !
I'm not that sure I understand what you mean. Keeping with my example: the many corks in the sea ride up on the incoming breaking wave, and when you observe them, there will be a line of them dancing on top of the wave. This 'wave edge' is 'propagating' at a speed of some meters per second. At first sight, one might want to submit that the wave propagates that fast. Fortunately, I invented the corks on it, and the corks don't move, but up and down. The wave top propagates faster, if the incoming wave approaches orthogonality w.r.t. the beach.
The same thing has in principle been observed in a waveguide. When you have multiple modes in it, there can be zig-zag propagation between the conductors. Some - already half a century ago - proposed these waves to beat Einstein, since the zig-zag path is longer than the straight path; meaning the waves travel faster than light. That was rebuked, though, since the information isn't transported faster than light. The 'wave edges' of yours - if I understand you right - surely propagate faster than light. But subsequent edges still don't come in faster than light; the information can't be sent faster.
(Now I am doing longer than I intended:) These German chaps also can't send faster than light; and they don't say so. They only say that some photons seem to have tunneled the gap in no-time. But the light as such hasn't been faster than the speed of light. If they shine the laser into prism A and retrieve the light from prism B at a distance of 1 m in less than 1/299792458000 sec, I rest my case. Until now, they haven't. Einstein has observed the corks and found - in general - water moving in at a speed of several cm per minute. The German chaps didn't deny that, but also observed and measured one wave crest and found it to be spreading at several meters per second. It would be dead wrong to deduce that the waves or even the water was rolling in at that speed.
I'm a n00b, or a non-quantum guy. So this may be stupid.
Don't worry. You're in/. Here we all are n00b, non-quantum or simply stupid. Welcome to the club.
Galileo proposed quite exactly what you do: uncover a lantern (or better two) postioned on two hilltops. 599584916m, though, made me smile. 599584 km and 916 m isn't quite that simple. And now to the core: you didn't read the article, did you ? They never suggested what you propose. They simply 'bridged' a distance of less than 1 m. But what they observed, was, that irrespective of that distance of up to 1 m, the light travelled in zero time. At least, they couldn't measure it. At least, it did take much less time than your 1/299792458 would require it to take. And, they didn't observe it like for a beam that your torch would produce, but for few particles of that beam only.
Personally, I think they're nuts. They confound group and phase velocities. Before you ask, here comes my explanation: A large group of drunkards has thrown the corks of their wine bottles into the sea, at incoming tide. The corks dance up and down on the waves; slowly attaining the beach. Then, waves break. When they do so, a whole wave front rolls over. To you, as standing on the beach, the peak of the rolling wave either spreads quickly to the left or right, depending on the incoming angle. The breaking of the in-rolling waves spreads quickly; one may as well say, that its phase instance propagates relatively fast to the left or right. If need, walk down to your next beach and observe how fast the state of the waves spread across the waves rolling ashore. That's 'phase speed': the propagation of the same phase (rolling over). What's that 'group speed' now ? Simply: the speed with which the corks are closing in on the beach. They're dancing up and down; the states of their phases propagate quickly. But their 'information', their physical existance, approaches the beach relatively much more slowly. The rolling-over of the phase might propagate by several meters per second. The actual approach of the corks towards the beach can as well be as slow as a few cm per minute. Einstein's speed of light applies to the light itself; in our example the corks. While propagation of the same phase is nothing but a maya; a virtual and artifial 'speed'. What those chaps observe is nothing but the latter: Some phase arrives on the other side of the gap as quickly as if there was no gap at all.
That much what a stupid non-quantum n00b has to add to your implied question.
Hmm. It actually is bad, in my humble opinion. I read the whole article, and was disgusted that these days Microsoft somehow has managed to make it to the image of the Robin Hood for computer users; the fearless party that ropes in and waits for the reports by the users in order to help them solve their problems. Neither the article nor De Consumentenbond point out that the mess and waste of time, money and energy on the users side is 100% self-inflicted; and due only to the desire of Redmond to make ever more money.
Let me also show off with my command of Dutch:
"Microsoft reacted by welcoming the research of the consumers' association. 'Microsoft is as always more than interested to learn about the experiences of the users with the new operating system Windows Vista.'"
"With the announcement of the consumers' association to collect eventual complaints, all additional information from the users is welcome. Microsoft understands that there might still be problems, and wants to resolve those quickly, also with the help of [its] partners."
Slashdot Mirror
---
Sometimes, when one's theories are confirmed, one feels closer to crying than beaming with vindification.
No, the GPL has the problem of co-existing in the same app as CDDL.
While SUN is at liberty to license software under any licence under the sun, they invented some - sorry - rather obscure minority version; long after GPL. Consequently, it was a compatibility problem introduced by SUN; knowing both would be incompatible. It is pretty daring to 'conclude' that GPL was the culprit, after all.
I am pretty sure, Groklaw wrote it up nicely:
If Sun prefers to carve out a smaller community for itself, it is free to build its own little island, with its own big fence. The result will be, though, that Linux will continue to develop more quickly and it will bury Sun's license and its code, because the open, GPL method works better, and the GPL requirement of giving back all modifications results in rapid improvement. Sun is free to cut itself off from that, if it so chooses, but it will reap what it sows. If they imagined that the world would drop the GPL and adopt the CDDL instead, I trust by now they realize that isn't going to happen.
I can only wonder ... ... if you talk out of experience or some other, rather backwardly part ?
Oh, wait, you know some people who told you. I see.
No, there is no DTrace in Linux, and nothing close.
Containers, though, give you away. Which other platform allows you to, like, start 1000 virtual machines, each consuming 2-3 MB and virtually no CPU resources as long as you don't run anything in there ?
There is a lack of hardware support, no doubt. But also, the rumoured lack of stability is not trustworthy. Except, you run crappy, faulty, hardware.
You are right about Nexenta, sitting inbetween chairs. Not loved by the SUN community and despised by the majority of the FOSS people.
This is where, IMHHO, SUN failed. They are too technical and lacked a visionary to hop on that train.
Confirmed, alas. Used to have Sarge on my boxen, no problem, for years. Recently, with Etch, my server started to drop processes. My desktop lost one or another application as well.
Since the hardware is unmodified, I guess it is an issue of the OS.
OTOH, I have started to use Nexenta almost a year ago, and never has any kernel problem; any situation returned the control to me.
YMMV
Though it is still in the making, yes ZFS has a better data integrity. It does not need any tricks when the power suddenly goes away to reconstruct the last ativities, because it is done in an atomic way.
I read (haven't tried myself) that someone simulated like a few million power outages, and the drive came back invariably. It also has a much improved self-check, scrub (which I have done), as well as the snapshots.
Now, this would be Insightful. I have been lurking around on the OpenSolaris lists, a few at least, and in general the posters were 'just 1337' and pulling their holy hand granades like hell when words as 'Linux' or 'GPL' appeared.
What about the licensing aspect of Indiana (until now I was only aware of Nevada), any real progress ?
Insightful ?
Why the hell did you && your mod think I put 'v3' in parenthesis ?
GPLv2 has been available (and proposed) for Solaris since 1991.
LOL, give me apt-get over pkgadd and rpm etc any day of the year.
Okay, give me pkgadd over rpm, but this is where I see flamebait twinkling; as 'rpm' was not to be found in my post.
(Just missed the FP, but still)
this chance was missed a few times. The last one was when Nexenta was treated like a mother-in-law.
If SUN wanted acceptance instead of l33t, GPL(v3) would have been the order of the day.
As long as they dangle about with CDDL, they might as well pass away. Don't get me wrong, CDDL ('cuddle') is quite a good FOSS licence. But it has its problems with a coexistence side-by-side to GPL. And GNU is, love it or hate it, thousands of great applications; and moreover a licence accepted by the majority of FOSS developers.
I hope(d) Ian would have the power to apt-ing Solaris, but he doesn't seem to. And when you read the OpenSolaris lists, you find as much ego-tripping as on OpenBSD or Mac. They rather sink with pkgadd.
And I cry for them, yes, because SunOS is the greatest kernel around, with limited hardware support. Back to licencing and square one.
Did you really try, Sir ?
I am asking because I was trying off Frankfurt and had the office buildings in 3D, and the rolling hills east of Frankfurt underneath. And actually, finished by crashing into a forest at about 400m above sea level in rural Germany.
... and in the next move, Google and Yahoo will be forced to shut down their mail filtering capabilities in order to expediate the delivery of trojaned mails to Tora Bora.
"Intelligence is constant. Only the number of humans increases." Rapidly, as we can make out.
Not just in theory, but in practice, too.
Practice, like, in Guantanamero ?
In a recent move, Angela Merkel has forced an amendment to the liberty laws through Der Bundestag. It is from now on prohibited to use any operating system that is non-trivial to break into.
German police have started to do house-to-house searches of Internet users reported to be not hackable by the Security Services (SS) of the Federal Government. First images can be seen on http://www.liveleak.com/view?i=9db_1178813405
More action is to follow soon, the Minister of Information of the Federal Government, who only wanted to be known by his initials, JG, confirmed:
"We have outlawed the use and ownership of any so-called security tool, to liberate Germans from FUD, Fear Uncertainty and Danger. We have outlawed any operating system that hinders the proper execution of the tasks of the SS." He promised to follow up on speculations of setting up a re-education camp for deviant Internet users in Bergen-Belsen. He asked the reporter to supply his e-mail address, in order to deliver the adequate response into her mailbox as soon as that response was ready.
Let's face it, as much as I appreciate your efforts, here you are wrong.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dual_license
states:
A second use of dual-licensing with free software is for licence compatibility, allowing code from differently licensed free software projects to be combined, or to provide users the preference to pick a licence.
The latter has obviously been the one here.
The terms about keeping the license terms intact refer logically to 'as long as you *use* this licence'. Or, along my example, you may remove the attribution (BSD) when you chose the 'do what you like' license.
Also your lines about the authorship are not valid. When I publish software, and write 'GPL' across it, I do never state nor even imply that I wrote all of that myself. It is understood that I take existing code and modify it.
Also, you confound the author and licensor. The author has offered the choice in writing:
"Alternatively, this software may be distributed under the terms of the GNU General Public License ("GPL") version 2 as published by the Free Software Foundation."
That means I may take the code and use and redistribute under GPLv2. Irrespective if I wrote it or not. This is neither re-licensing nor anyway legally or ethically questionable. You might even say I was the licensor, except of being a lame duck one: I may not change the license. But I may drop one; along to the explicit desire of the author.
I came across this term once too often.
I am not so sure if this term is valid. 'Relicensing' has a clear flavour of 'changing the licence'. This is certainly not the case here. The authors have taken the liberty to slap two licences onto the code, two not fully compatible ones.
With a tad of common sense, they wanted to offer their contribution to the two main streams of the world of FOSS or FLOSS or whatnot. So the proponents of GPL could use one of the licences under which it came, and fully valid on its own, and distribute the code. So could the 'Open' people, and use and develop and distribute the same sources.
Should we not rather respect the wishes of the authors ?
Sure, you can't remove the licence off a BSD code. But when the author states 'you may do with this what you like', then you can relicense it under BSD, or GPL, or Microsoft's EULA. There the term is appropriate. But if it is fully licenced under BSD, you don't need to carry the text of any other possible licence through to the end of time. Neither the other way round.
Would you guys be that up in arms if the licence was BSD and 'you may do with this what you like' ? I don't think so. I guess, you'd drop the 'you may do with this what you like' licence and consider it BSD.
(I know this combination doesn't make any sense; but authors are at times funny people. Plus, further modifications can make a difference.)
Therefore, why so emotional ?!
Dual-licensing, that means it *is* under GPL in the first place. And under BSD. No relicensing takes place at all.
Oh, yes. Informative, and no irony here from my side.
Are you guys crazy these days ? As much as I adore Theo, and as much as I run OpenBSD on all of my servers, this stretches beyond reason.
Yes, your post is informative and I'd mod it +6 if only I could.
Hopefully everyone reads it carefully before writing up more trash.
So, I do understand, that Theo doesn't like a dual-licensed software to be stripped off one of the licenses. Morally okay, sort of. Both, I mean. If the author licenses under two licenses, each is valid. On its own. So the GPL-people do nothing wrong, legally. Morally, though, true, they prevent modifications / improvements from being 'ported back' to BSD. So maybe they ought not use a single license.
As much as I might agree, this is hypcrite. When Microsoft uses the software - and OpenBSD invites them to do so - and how much would I love if they came close to OpenBSD's clean code - so, when Microsoft takes the code, the BSD community tends to brag about this and eventually is very happy.
Could anyone point out to any line of software that Microsoft would have given back to the BSD community under the BSD license ?
Can it be true that there was more animosity between GPL and BSD than between BSD and proprietary ? At least, it looks likewise. Similar to the Shia killing their brothers, Sunni, in Iraq. And exactly vice versa.
Somehow I understand the concerns of the BSD community, see above. Still, I can only appeal to the common sense: Be proud and happy that non-proprietary software thrives, in all of its flavours !
But, does it run on Linux ?
Oh, thanks for pointing this out. Has hit me a few times. Actually, there is no digital signal on transport. Even Ethernet is just an analogue wave, if you know what I mean. Finally, all physical transport media are analogue.
The only digital part is the coding, be it source or channel coding. If you want, representation. The danger of a full analogue path is the representation of an amplitude by an amplitude (that is why it is called 'analogue'); while digital means a re-coding into 0's and 1's, where amplitude is represented by a combination of 0's and 1's; with a proper representation as long as 0's and 1's are properly distinguished.
Even Information Theory proves the question wrong. A specific bandwidth and signal-noise ratio can transport a specific amount of information. There is no Perpetuum Mobile of information distribution where data rate can be produced from nothing, eh, from digitisation. Probably more recent 'products' of this same new system who set up such crap, since they haven't learned any better.
As much as I appreciate your post, I don't think you hit the target. FSF is not interested in the copyright aspect of it; nor in the contractual side.
In principle, they (Microsoft-Suse) have given out vouchers. Vouchers that claim indemnity of patent infringement. Right ?
These vouchers have no expiration date. Right ?
When Suse gives out Suse GPLv3 to user X, GPLv3 applies. Right ?
When Suse gave out Suse GPLv3 for a voucher, the terms on the voucher apply. Right ?
The terms on then voucher state: 'No patent infringement here !'. Right ?
GPLv3 states something like: If no infringement in one case, then no infringement for all cases. Right ?
(This also makes some sense without vouchers.)
Question: If I get Suse GPLv3 without a voucher, can I be sued for patent infringement ? Probably not.
Question of the day is: Since GPLv3 entered into force after the voucher was issued, does it apply retroactively ? This, actually, is a question.
Some might say no, some might say yes. As much as I adore FSF, I am undecided. Let's stick to the burger:
If I issue a voucher for a burger, without expiration date, and the burger gets slapped with a price increase because of 50% more meat, do I have to honour it ? I'd say of course, my mistake.
On the other hand, we have 'nulla poena sine lege', and the collective exoneration of patent infringement had simply not been on the table at the date of issue of those vouchers. Still, the oversight is on Microsoft's side; and this is why I tend to be 70:30 for FSF here; and this is also why I think Microsoft is slightly nervous.
Interesting. Still, I don't get it. Looks like a circular problem to me.
Firstly, one does not 'opt for v3', how would or could one ? Whatever, let's say you redistribute software XYZ, v1.0, under GPLv3. Next, the author changes the license. He can't for v1.0 [No, he can't change for a software already distributed, retroactively]. So he moves his XYZ to v1.1, under GPLv2 only.
Until here I can follow So you have a GPLv3 license agreement with Microsoft for my software. Microsoft is not permitted under the terms of GPLv2 to redistribute the software under GPLv3.
But what does it mean ? And then I am lost: What would be the link between XYZ, v1.0, GPLv3; and XYZ, v1.1, GPLv2 ? I see none. Of course, neither Microsoft nor you may distribute XYZ v1.1 under GPLv3. But the change of licence does not affect the earlier XYZ, v1.0 under GPLv3.
So, if you wanted to distribute XYZ, v1.1 under GPLv2, you'd have to do exactly that. You'd have two legal products, two versions of XYZ. One under GPLv3 (v1.0) and one under GPLv2 (v1.1).
Now The only way Microsoft can legally do this is to obtain a GPLv3 license from [the author] does not make any sense. Since the author did explicitly not want that, why should he licence it to Microsoft, which would imply to the world ?
Thus, they are bound by the terms of GPLv3. Yes, for the first version.
Sorry, what was it you wanted to point out ?
That's because /. has nothing left but loons like you ranting from your parents' basements.
/. has nothing left but loons like you ranting from your parents' basements. With me as sole exception."
I'll correct this for you:
"That's because
Oh no, wait, that's why you posted as AC; so that we wouldn't know the identity of you, as being doomed to live in your parents' basement forever.
He, solution is in sight for you and others:r -2003-adminpak-administration-tools-pack-on-vista/ for the details.
Just yesterday Stu posted about this problem in WServerNews "More On Thumbs Down On Vista For Admins".
Installing the Windows Server 2003 admin tools actually is said to help very much. Read http://4sysops.com/archives/install-windows-serve
This is funny in at least two ways:
1. The dreaded command prompt, so arrogantly looked down onto by 'we-are-so-advanced-Windows-GUI'-users comes in
2. So you are buying crap software for a hell of money, and then you have to share tips on the Internet, on how to nicely dissect pieces from here, and others from there, in order to gobble together a functional operating system !?
Welcome to the world of GNU/Linux before 1998 !
I'm not that sure I understand what you mean.
Keeping with my example: the many corks in the sea ride up on the incoming breaking wave, and when you observe them, there will be a line of them dancing on top of the wave. This 'wave edge' is 'propagating' at a speed of some meters per second. At first sight, one might want to submit that the wave propagates that fast. Fortunately, I invented the corks on it, and the corks don't move, but up and down. The wave top propagates faster, if the incoming wave approaches orthogonality w.r.t. the beach.
The same thing has in principle been observed in a waveguide. When you have multiple modes in it, there can be zig-zag propagation between the conductors. Some - already half a century ago - proposed these waves to beat Einstein, since the zig-zag path is longer than the straight path; meaning the waves travel faster than light. That was rebuked, though, since the information isn't transported faster than light.
The 'wave edges' of yours - if I understand you right - surely propagate faster than light. But subsequent edges still don't come in faster than light; the information can't be sent faster.
(Now I am doing longer than I intended:) These German chaps also can't send faster than light; and they don't say so. They only say that some photons seem to have tunneled the gap in no-time. But the light as such hasn't been faster than the speed of light. If they shine the laser into prism A and retrieve the light from prism B at a distance of 1 m in less than 1/299792458000 sec, I rest my case. Until now, they haven't.
Einstein has observed the corks and found - in general - water moving in at a speed of several cm per minute. The German chaps didn't deny that, but also observed and measured one wave crest and found it to be spreading at several meters per second. It would be dead wrong to deduce that the waves or even the water was rolling in at that speed.
I'm a n00b, or a non-quantum guy. So this may be stupid.
/. Here we all are n00b, non-quantum or simply stupid. Welcome to the club.
Don't worry. You're in
Galileo proposed quite exactly what you do: uncover a lantern (or better two) postioned on two hilltops.
599584916m, though, made me smile. 599584 km and 916 m isn't quite that simple.
And now to the core: you didn't read the article, did you ? They never suggested what you propose. They simply 'bridged' a distance of less than 1 m. But what they observed, was, that irrespective of that distance of up to 1 m, the light travelled in zero time. At least, they couldn't measure it. At least, it did take much less time than your 1/299792458 would require it to take.
And, they didn't observe it like for a beam that your torch would produce, but for few particles of that beam only.
Personally, I think they're nuts. They confound group and phase velocities.
Before you ask, here comes my explanation: A large group of drunkards has thrown the corks of their wine bottles into the sea, at incoming tide. The corks dance up and down on the waves; slowly attaining the beach. Then, waves break. When they do so, a whole wave front rolls over. To you, as standing on the beach, the peak of the rolling wave either spreads quickly to the left or right, depending on the incoming angle. The breaking of the in-rolling waves spreads quickly; one may as well say, that its phase instance propagates relatively fast to the left or right. If need, walk down to your next beach and observe how fast the state of the waves spread across the waves rolling ashore.
That's 'phase speed': the propagation of the same phase (rolling over).
What's that 'group speed' now ? Simply: the speed with which the corks are closing in on the beach. They're dancing up and down; the states of their phases propagate quickly. But their 'information', their physical existance, approaches the beach relatively much more slowly.
The rolling-over of the phase might propagate by several meters per second. The actual approach of the corks towards the beach can as well be as slow as a few cm per minute.
Einstein's speed of light applies to the light itself; in our example the corks. While propagation of the same phase is nothing but a maya; a virtual and artifial 'speed'.
What those chaps observe is nothing but the latter: Some phase arrives on the other side of the gap as quickly as if there was no gap at all.
That much what a stupid non-quantum n00b has to add to your implied question.
Hmm. It actually is bad, in my humble opinion. I read the whole article, and was disgusted that these days Microsoft somehow has managed to make it to the image of the Robin Hood for computer users; the fearless party that ropes in and waits for the reports by the users in order to help them solve their problems.
Neither the article nor De Consumentenbond point out that the mess and waste of time, money and energy on the users side is 100% self-inflicted; and due only to the desire of Redmond to make ever more money.
Let me also show off with my command of Dutch:
"Microsoft reacted by welcoming the research of the consumers' association. 'Microsoft is as always more than interested to learn about the experiences of the users with the new operating system Windows Vista.'"
"With the announcement of the consumers' association to collect eventual complaints, all additional information from the users is welcome. Microsoft understands that there might still be problems, and wants to resolve those quickly, also with the help of [its] partners."
I wonder: should I puke or vomit ?