Well then whether or not this is selling out is a personal thing. You (personally) can't label it unilaterally as "selling out" -- for you, maybe it would be. For others, it might not be, if their conscience has no issue with it.
But the article submitter *does* seem to have a conflict of conscience, so maybe this would be "selling out" for him.
Guy works on BSD-licensed open source project for two years. Community benefits. Guy stops working on project and moves on to something else.
Guy works on BSD-liceneed open source project for two years. Community benefits. Guy stops working on project to work on a legal closed fork of the same project.
The thing is... this guy is under no obligation to work on this OSS project forever. The community has benefited from the work he's already done, and him going off to work for a company that doesn't allow him to work on it anymore doesn't change that. From the community's perspective, they should be happy they got to benefit from this guy's unpaid hard work. From the guy's perspective, his volunteer work that he enjoys has landed him a great job.
I'd say go for it, but be careful that the terms of the agreement aren't something he'll regret later. I just can't bend this into the community being screwed over, in any shape or form. If the original author didn't want this to happen, he shouldn't have used the BSD license.
Painting this imaginary 'slashdot' as a hypocrite is a bit of a fallacy, because the poster you're looking for doesn't exist.
I never said he/she does. But there's a general sentiment on Slashdot that file sharing is perfectly fine, or at least a big huge grey area, and anyone who tries to prosecute file sharers is evil.
But you turn it around, and apply the same laws to open source, suddenly there's a double standard.
I'm not saying definitively that any one person holds both beliefs: that 1) copyright infringement via file sharing is ok, but 2) copyright infringement via violating an open source license is not ok, but who cares? Slashdot is made up of individuals, but there's quite a lot of group-think going on here. Slashdot, as a community, is often pretty hypocritical. That's a fact.
You have an interesting definition of "theft," then, one not supported by a normal dictionary, or a legal definition (the latter of which is what matters here). I don't see "depriving one's ability to distribute software" under "theft" in there.
Sigh. No, it was not theft, by any reasonable definition.
Jacobsen did not lose his copyright based on Katzer's actions. He merely lost his ability to *distribute* his code without infringing on Katzer's patent.
I don't care what "effectively" Katzer did, but in legal terms, they didn't "steal" anything.
I love how on/., when we're talking about file sharing, it's always "OMG it's not theft it's copyright infringement," but whenever an open source author is wronged, someone "stole" their work. Gimme a break.
Bzzt -- he wouldn't be allowed to *distribute* his own code. I fail to see a way that the court could disallow him from using his own code privately, in his own home.
Yes, lack of ability to distribute would suck too, but it's by no means the same thing.
It's tunable on Linux at least... you can set/proc/sys/vm/swappiness to something between 0 and 100 -- default is 60, lower values make the VM swap less aggressively. Not useful for average users, but we can handle it.
Because burning a bridge for no reason but venting your own frustration is unproductive at best, and damages future opportunities at worst? And hell, people talk. For all you know, the guy you interviewed with knows the guy who ends up interviewing you at the next company where you try to get a job. It's ridiculous what a small world it is in high tech.
No, copying someone else's work, or your CDs and DVDs and giving them to your cousin, is copyright infringement. Please read the law. While most content industries would like copyright to function exactly the same as real tangible property, it doesn't -- at least not yet.
I don't disagree that most people here like to have vast collections of media, and that tends to bias people against copyright, but that doesn't change the fact that copyright is not the same as property ownership.
That might just be a chronological effect. The culture and infrastructure for sharing copyrighted music came along many years before music was available for sale online. If, back in 1997 (just to pick a semi-arbitrary 90s year), studios started selling DRM-free music for $0.99 per song, maybe p2p music sharing would be much less rampant than it is today.
Bad analogy. Trademarks don't have the same "prior art" restrictions that patents do. If someone, right now, were to register a trademark for "Chicago2016", they'd have a valid claim on the domain based on trademark. Note that I'm not talking about an "assumed" mark -- if someone goes and specifically registers "Chicago2016", then they own the trademark on that, and ICANN/WIPO usually considers that grounds to take a domain name from someone and give it to the trademark holder.
I'm not saying I agree with this practice, but that's just how it is.
I think you missed the point of the post to which you're responding. He was saying that if the employer is the kind of person who isn't going to hire him based on what's on his Facebook page, then he doesn't want to work for that employer anyway.
I tend to agree with that. And I'm not talking about super-crazy things, even. My Facebook profile is pretty tame. If a prospective employer is going to reject my application because my FB profile says my political leanings are "liberal," or that my religious viewpoint is "agnostic" (actually, I don't think I have the latter in there, but the point still stands), then I'm glad they saved me the trouble of finding out later that they're intolerant pricks. (Hell, if a prospective employer googles me and finds this Slashdot post, same goes.)
The only issue I have with employers looking at FB pages (etc.) is that it makes it easier for them to stumble upon information for which it's *illegal* for them to make a no-hire decision (like, for example, political affiliation). For me, I'd still say, "well, screw them, then," but I'm sure there are a lot of people out there who just really need a job and could be hurt by this type of thing. Who knows, though, I might be in that situation someday too and it could hurt me. But I shouldn't have to self-censor when it comes to those things, which is part of the reason why the law is there in the first place.
And yeah, if someone paid me a million bucks a week to shovel shit, I'd be there in a heartbeat. I fail to see what that has to do with the parent post, though.
Lobbying the government to force Slashdot into removing the links would be censorship. Trying to persuade the editors not to promote hateful and predatory sites is not.
Censorship is censorship, regardless of who practices it.
Slashdot is a private site that can and does take submitter URLs into account, that's why you don't see links to goatse or browser-based exploits on the front page. The only question up for debate is where you draw the line, and the only people who can really answer it are the editors.
Yes, and I'd call disallowing goatse links censorship as well. But it's censorship that I *like*, so I won't complain. (That sounds pretty awful, actually, now that I've typed it.)
My intention was to make them aware of the nature of that site, and to make the argument that it doesn't belong on the front page of Slashdot. The decision is theirs.
Well, when you put it that way, sure. But your initial post sounded more like a self-righteous rant than a carefully-considered suggestion to the Slashdot editors. Besides, posting a comment here isn't the best way to reach the editors; email is. (Though it's likely one of them has seen your post, especially given it's been moderated up to +5.)
Not once did I say that the editors should ban their accounts or stop accepting their submissions. I only suggested that they should think twice before posting links to Corrupt's neo-fascist site on the front page.
How is that not censorship? An article submitter's "reward" for submitting a story worthy of the front page is a link to a site of their choice. I don't think the editors should be taking that into account when deciding what articles to post.
Wow, shit, yeah, this hits me too. On Leopard here, C locale gives me 1.371 seconds, en_US.UTF-8 gives me 41.483 seconds. catted the file to/dev/null first in both cases to ensure the file was cached. Redirected the sort to/dev/null as well to avoid any i/o.
Linux is very stable relative to Windows [...] because drivers are much better written (owing to the fact that the bulk of drivers are community-written and/or open source instead of supported by an overworked small team of programmers employed by a hardware company that chronically under-invests in software development for its revenue-generating hardware products).
I think also a big part of it is that the bulk of drivers that any Linux user would use are maintained with and shipped with the kernel itself. When a kernel dev changes a driver interface that might have an effect on drivers, he goes and fixes up all the drivers along with it.
In fairness to software engineering, if the "bad" hardware driver can crash the system, then the system is not ready for production and has more than a few show-stopping (no pun intended) bugs. Take a look at basic kernel or micro-kernel design principles and stop spreading the view that catastrophically bad design is acceptable.
I don't disagree fundamentally, but... what are the options for OSes that make use of that design and are available and enterprise-ready today?
We're not talking about that. We're talking about companies using OSS internally for business purposes, not for selling/redistributing as part of a product.
Slashdot Mirror
Well then whether or not this is selling out is a personal thing. You (personally) can't label it unilaterally as "selling out" -- for you, maybe it would be. For others, it might not be, if their conscience has no issue with it.
But the article submitter *does* seem to have a conflict of conscience, so maybe this would be "selling out" for him.
The thing is... this guy is under no obligation to work on this OSS project forever. The community has benefited from the work he's already done, and him going off to work for a company that doesn't allow him to work on it anymore doesn't change that. From the community's perspective, they should be happy they got to benefit from this guy's unpaid hard work. From the guy's perspective, his volunteer work that he enjoys has landed him a great job.
I'd say go for it, but be careful that the terms of the agreement aren't something he'll regret later. I just can't bend this into the community being screwed over, in any shape or form. If the original author didn't want this to happen, he shouldn't have used the BSD license.
Perhaps, but since enforcement of that is pretty much impossible, in practice, you can do whatever you want with the patented technology privately.
Painting this imaginary 'slashdot' as a hypocrite is a bit of a fallacy, because the poster you're looking for doesn't exist.
I never said he/she does. But there's a general sentiment on Slashdot that file sharing is perfectly fine, or at least a big huge grey area, and anyone who tries to prosecute file sharers is evil.
But you turn it around, and apply the same laws to open source, suddenly there's a double standard.
I'm not saying definitively that any one person holds both beliefs: that 1) copyright infringement via file sharing is ok, but 2) copyright infringement via violating an open source license is not ok, but who cares? Slashdot is made up of individuals, but there's quite a lot of group-think going on here. Slashdot, as a community, is often pretty hypocritical. That's a fact.
You have an interesting definition of "theft," then, one not supported by a normal dictionary, or a legal definition (the latter of which is what matters here). I don't see "depriving one's ability to distribute software" under "theft" in there.
So... you say it's the same thing, but then admit that it isn't, all in a single sentence? Which is it? You only get to pick one.
Sigh. No, it was not theft, by any reasonable definition.
/., when we're talking about file sharing, it's always "OMG it's not theft it's copyright infringement," but whenever an open source author is wronged, someone "stole" their work. Gimme a break.
Jacobsen did not lose his copyright based on Katzer's actions. He merely lost his ability to *distribute* his code without infringing on Katzer's patent.
I don't care what "effectively" Katzer did, but in legal terms, they didn't "steal" anything.
I love how on
Bzzt -- he wouldn't be allowed to *distribute* his own code. I fail to see a way that the court could disallow him from using his own code privately, in his own home.
Yes, lack of ability to distribute would suck too, but it's by no means the same thing.
Uhh... what dictionary says that?
Regardless, we're talking about the *legal* definition of theft here. Webster is irrelevant in this case.
No one is "losing their code." Nice straw man. Losing your ability to distribute your code isn't the same thing as physically losing it.
It's tunable on Linux at least... you can set /proc/sys/vm/swappiness to something between 0 and 100 -- default is 60, lower values make the VM swap less aggressively. Not useful for average users, but we can handle it.
Because burning a bridge for no reason but venting your own frustration is unproductive at best, and damages future opportunities at worst? And hell, people talk. For all you know, the guy you interviewed with knows the guy who ends up interviewing you at the next company where you try to get a job. It's ridiculous what a small world it is in high tech.
No, copying someone else's work, or your CDs and DVDs and giving them to your cousin, is copyright infringement. Please read the law. While most content industries would like copyright to function exactly the same as real tangible property, it doesn't -- at least not yet.
I don't disagree that most people here like to have vast collections of media, and that tends to bias people against copyright, but that doesn't change the fact that copyright is not the same as property ownership.
I didn't RTFA, so I don't know how appropriate this term is.
Don't worry, you didn't miss anything. The article basically says, "OMG WE ARE ALL SO PWNED!!111. But we're not going to tell you why."
That might just be a chronological effect. The culture and infrastructure for sharing copyrighted music came along many years before music was available for sale online. If, back in 1997 (just to pick a semi-arbitrary 90s year), studios started selling DRM-free music for $0.99 per song, maybe p2p music sharing would be much less rampant than it is today.
Just my speculation, though. Who knows.
Bad analogy. Trademarks don't have the same "prior art" restrictions that patents do. If someone, right now, were to register a trademark for "Chicago2016", they'd have a valid claim on the domain based on trademark. Note that I'm not talking about an "assumed" mark -- if someone goes and specifically registers "Chicago2016", then they own the trademark on that, and ICANN/WIPO usually considers that grounds to take a domain name from someone and give it to the trademark holder.
I'm not saying I agree with this practice, but that's just how it is.
I think you missed the point of the post to which you're responding. He was saying that if the employer is the kind of person who isn't going to hire him based on what's on his Facebook page, then he doesn't want to work for that employer anyway.
I tend to agree with that. And I'm not talking about super-crazy things, even. My Facebook profile is pretty tame. If a prospective employer is going to reject my application because my FB profile says my political leanings are "liberal," or that my religious viewpoint is "agnostic" (actually, I don't think I have the latter in there, but the point still stands), then I'm glad they saved me the trouble of finding out later that they're intolerant pricks. (Hell, if a prospective employer googles me and finds this Slashdot post, same goes.)
The only issue I have with employers looking at FB pages (etc.) is that it makes it easier for them to stumble upon information for which it's *illegal* for them to make a no-hire decision (like, for example, political affiliation). For me, I'd still say, "well, screw them, then," but I'm sure there are a lot of people out there who just really need a job and could be hurt by this type of thing. Who knows, though, I might be in that situation someday too and it could hurt me. But I shouldn't have to self-censor when it comes to those things, which is part of the reason why the law is there in the first place.
And yeah, if someone paid me a million bucks a week to shovel shit, I'd be there in a heartbeat. I fail to see what that has to do with the parent post, though.
Lobbying the government to force Slashdot into removing the links would be censorship. Trying to persuade the editors not to promote hateful and predatory sites is not.
Censorship is censorship, regardless of who practices it.
Slashdot is a private site that can and does take submitter URLs into account, that's why you don't see links to goatse or browser-based exploits on the front page. The only question up for debate is where you draw the line, and the only people who can really answer it are the editors.
Yes, and I'd call disallowing goatse links censorship as well. But it's censorship that I *like*, so I won't complain. (That sounds pretty awful, actually, now that I've typed it.)
My intention was to make them aware of the nature of that site, and to make the argument that it doesn't belong on the front page of Slashdot. The decision is theirs.
Well, when you put it that way, sure. But your initial post sounded more like a self-righteous rant than a carefully-considered suggestion to the Slashdot editors. Besides, posting a comment here isn't the best way to reach the editors; email is. (Though it's likely one of them has seen your post, especially given it's been moderated up to +5.)
Not once did I say that the editors should ban their accounts or stop accepting their submissions. I only suggested that they should think twice before posting links to Corrupt's neo-fascist site on the front page.
How is that not censorship? An article submitter's "reward" for submitting a story worthy of the front page is a link to a site of their choice. I don't think the editors should be taking that into account when deciding what articles to post.
Good thing they added the hyphen there... 'expert sex change.com' might not attract the same kind of audience.
Wow, shit, yeah, this hits me too. On Leopard here, C locale gives me 1.371 seconds, en_US.UTF-8 gives me 41.483 seconds. catted the file to /dev/null first in both cases to ensure the file was cached. Redirected the sort to /dev/null as well to avoid any i/o.
The user is using CentOS -- apparently he isn't even paying RedHat for support, and is still bitching about it.
Linux is very stable relative to Windows [...] because drivers are much better written (owing to the fact that the bulk of drivers are community-written and/or open source instead of supported by an overworked small team of programmers employed by a hardware company that chronically under-invests in software development for its revenue-generating hardware products).
I think also a big part of it is that the bulk of drivers that any Linux user would use are maintained with and shipped with the kernel itself. When a kernel dev changes a driver interface that might have an effect on drivers, he goes and fixes up all the drivers along with it.
In fairness to software engineering, if the "bad" hardware driver can crash the system, then the system is not ready for production and has more than a few show-stopping (no pun intended) bugs. Take a look at basic kernel or micro-kernel design principles and stop spreading the view that catastrophically bad design is acceptable.
I don't disagree fundamentally, but... what are the options for OSes that make use of that design and are available and enterprise-ready today?
We're not talking about that. We're talking about companies using OSS internally for business purposes, not for selling/redistributing as part of a product.