Let's say I download Microsoft's ASP.NET Starter Kit for free. I fix a few bugs, tweak some algorithms, and add my own ingenious extensions. I distribute it in binary form only, charging $1000 a pop, and call it Smegmaware. Despite the unpleasant name, it sells like hotcakes. Microsoft never sees a dime of my earnings, even though they did 80% of the work, nor do they get to see a single line of source code. Microsoft is all right with this. Hell, I might even sue Microsoft at the same time for unrelated matters.
Six months later, I get a personal visit from Richard Stallman. He tells me that software wants to be free. By this time I've already made enough money to send my daughter to college, so I figure, "Why not?" I see the light, and decide to release my software under the GNU GPL. Now Microsoft has two choices, where before they had only one. They can decide to ignore the existence of my modified/enhanced product, treating it for their purposes as if it were still a closed source product, and continue to enhance their original source code and build new products from it. Or they can take my fine product, use it however they like, create some new products with it, and release those new products under the GPL, making as much money as they did when I downloaded their software in the first place, i.e., none. If they go the second route, they can still, at the same time, integrate their original source code into other products and release in under terms of their choosing.
Yet, it's the second scenario Microsoft wants to prevent. Proprietary software that they can't touch is OK; Free Software that they can only handle in certain ways is not. I don't see how this can be seen as anything other than an extremely petty attack on those who choose to release software under the GPL. From Microsoft's financial and legal perspective, my re-releasing their code under the GPL is the same as my distributing it as proprietary software.
I can only think of two reasons for them to do this. One, they believe that anyone who would create a proprietary product from MS's labor is a mammon-worshiper who could be bought for a high enough price, a price that Microsoft will always be able to pay. If this is the case, they effectively still have access to any source code they want. But the Free Software hippies who would write software under the GPL might not render the code unto Caesar for any price.
Two, this clause is there for entirely political reasons. They have already created the myth that the GPL, through the actions of third parties, has the power to force copyright owners to relinquish control of their own works, and they've been trying to spread that myth throughout the business and government worlds. By inserting this clause, they help reinforce the myth, by leading the licensee to believe that there is a license out there that has the power to do that.
It's a really low blow when a licensing term targets one class of users without guaranteeing any benefit for the licensor.
Yeah, as someone in the Capital area, I was surprised to see that our local public television (and radio) station was at the cutting edge of special effects. Please, posters, be careful about how you capitalize stuff. The SFX company is Weta, not WETA (usually pronounced "double-u ee tee ay").
given that "its" is a possessive pronoun that fits the pattern: "yours", "his", "hers", "theirs", "its". (Weren't we were supposed to master all that in kindergarten?)
IMHO, this is about as good a pattern as saying "Humans, earthworms, jellyfish and pine trees are all living things that do not have gills, so let's put them in the same category." I was tested on the "its/it's" thing in 3rd grade; I think I got it wrong, but the teacher missed it. I took second place in a regional (a region of the city) spelling bee in 8th grade, but it was high school before someone finally told me what the "rule" was (I still consider it more a mnemonic than a rule) and I was able to spell them without trying to remember which was more important, the contraction or the possessive. I still enjoy spelling these two "correctly"; it's like a silent wink to the 5-10% of readers who know and care about the difference, letting them know I'm in the in-group.
It's a special pet peeve of mine because I taught English in Japan for a year, and my students always got it right!
I always noticed this when teaching English in Korea (3 years). I'd give them a nice smile and a pat on the back when they'd spell things right, but I'd jump for joy when they used the plural form for anything other than the stock plurals (shoes, sports, donuts, shirts, a few others that I forget). Rote memorization of how to spell stuff is easy for them compared to thinking about new concepts such as countability and definiteness, but breaking rules that natives never break is more likely to lead to miscommunication than breaking the rules most natives don't understand.
Wow, can't tell if that's just facetiousness or being sly about exactly which multi-billion dollar empire is being doomed here. Either way, I like it....
The purpose of the BSDL is to get standards adopted and prevent wheel-reinvention by having a freely-usable codebase out there - consider it a comprehensive code-library, if you will.
But what happens when Microsoft takes a "standard codebase", say, I don't know, Kerberos, and adds proprietary extensions to it, then uses its control of the market to establish its version as the de facto standard? Standards are meaningless if the most powerful companies ignore/extend them. "Embrace, extend, extinguish". Of course, you are still free to use and work on the original, but you won't be able to play with the rest of the world who, sheep-like, have run out and bought the M$ version.
Hey,/. community, I love you guys, but geez, you've just committed yet another baseless smear. M$'s licensing requirement was nothing more drastic than "All your software must have a BSD-like license". From the linked-to message:
The section as it originally appeared in the agreement:
"By posting Your Stuff, You grant to Microsoft, under all of Your intellectual property and proprietary rights the following worldwide, non-exclusive, perpetual, irrevocable, royalty free, fully paid up rights: (1) to make, use, copy, modify and create derivative works of Your Stuff; (2) to publicly perform or display, import, broadcast, transmit, distribute, license, offer to sell, and sell, rent, lease, and lend copies of Your Stuff (and derivative works thereof); (3) to sublicense to third parties, including the right to sublicense to further third parties; and (ii) You agree You won't commence any legal action against Microsoft or any Participant or Visitor for exercising any of these rights."
Seems pretty clear to me that they're not saying you must sign your code over to them, merely that they are free to do as they please with it (though probably not contribute back to it).
Since Mircosoft is going to buy yahoo in november,
Ah, Mircosoft. I remember they once produced Web-based software that purported to take your picture via your monitor. Unfortunately, I can't seem to find that little gem anymore. I tried www.mircosoft.com, but that turned up nothing.
BTW, can you explain the bit where Mojo typed "Pray for Mojo"? It didn't make enough sense to me for it to be worth having the pet shop owner go inside, get a keyboard, and wait for the monkey to type that, so I figured it must be a reference to something I don't know about.
Perhaps more important, on the C++ side, is the general fact that code compiled with one C++ compiler is not likely to work with code generated by a different compiler. C++ specifies the use of name mangling, but doesn't specify how that is to be implemented. So all your class names and so on are represented in some compiler-specific way in the shared libraries, making them inaccessible to programs compiled with a different C++ compiler, unless the makers of the two compilers have gotten together and somehow agreed on exactly how to do the name mangling (which has not happened to date, that I've heard of).
I can't speak for C support, but the failure of Borland C++ to support the GNU compiler is inevitable, and not anyone's fault, except maybe Bjarne Stroustrup's.
The bartender is not so cruel, but he does get impatient.
On the fourth day, the fish goes up to the bar, asking for fish food again. Bartender says, "look, this is a bar. We sell liquor. What ever gave you the idea you could get fish food here?" The fish replies, "I thought my best bet would be to go to the same place that Mr. Higgenbotham over there goes. Someone told me his eating habits were the same as mine." The bartender says, "Mr. Higgenbotham? He's just an old lush. He comes in here every night and gets sloshed." The fish looks at the bartender, looks at Mr. Higgenbotham, then looks back at the bartender. Then he slaps his fin against his forehead. "Oh, THAT'S what that meant!"
I'd been wondering when something was going to appear on/. about this new "JPEG Virus". I'd been waiting for someone to explain to me just how the image transmits the virus "when it is viewed", or, more likely, for someone to blow this theory out of the water.
I got the story from Washington Post, which, naturally, fell woefully short in explaining how a strictly-data format can be executed just be being viewed, but I couldn't find any reference to it on McAfee's site.
I'm sure I'm not the only University of Maryland student/alum to see this and think for a second that someone at UMCP has just produced a new handheld and named it after the school's mascot.
Believe it or not, this is a "feature" -- from the point of view of software vendors. This feature (or at least this type of feature) allows things like that portion of the screen reserved for ads that you can't get rid of, provided by your second-rate ISP. It also made possible a nice thing I was once faced with at a previous workplace. Whenever I started up my computer, I would be presented with an Acceptable Use Policy window which I could not close or move, and which always stayed on top. I would have to click "I Agree" to make it go away, otherwise I couldn't get any work done. PHBs and proprietary software vendors love that! Don't imagine you could do that in Linux, though; the user has too much control.
Sawfish does have that Windows/KDE-style stack-order-preserving feature, when using the "Cycle Windows" function (as named in the shortcut key config dialog). Unfortunately, the mini-window it pops up does not show all the icons available, only the one for the currently selected window (thus you'll see the icon change as you repeatedly hit Tab while holding down the Alt key). But other than that, it works fine, and I can jump back-and-forth between two windows without having to go through all the other ones.
"Cycle windows" I suppose is not really a great name for this function, since it sounds like it would have the annoying behavior you described, where going from window A to B right back to A again requires, in total, N repetitions of the Tab key, where N is the number of windows you have open. BTW, I think Sawfish also provides this type of cycling, with the functions "Next Window" and "Next Workspace Window".
One of the beauties of the GPL is that it is ALWAYS the SAME (sometimes mod a few special dispensations which are easy to find). That means if I download a piece of software that is GPL, I don't have to read the license; i've already read it fifty times in other pieces of software or on the FSF site, and unlike the other EULAs for all the various sofware procucts out there, I've seen this same one enough times that I can actually understand it and how to follow it.
Not entirely.... I've been following this, and I wasn't aware that a runtime environment had been developed for Linux. Is this correct? The announcement doesn't enlighten much with all its talk of mint and so on. Mint, then, is the counterpart for the JVM for Linux? And it can run the C# "executable"?
Slashdot Mirror
So let me get this straight.
Let's say I download Microsoft's ASP.NET Starter Kit for free. I fix a few bugs, tweak some algorithms, and add my own ingenious extensions. I distribute it in binary form only, charging $1000 a pop, and call it Smegmaware. Despite the unpleasant name, it sells like hotcakes. Microsoft never sees a dime of my earnings, even though they did 80% of the work, nor do they get to see a single line of source code. Microsoft is all right with this. Hell, I might even sue Microsoft at the same time for unrelated matters.
Six months later, I get a personal visit from Richard Stallman. He tells me that software wants to be free. By this time I've already made enough money to send my daughter to college, so I figure, "Why not?" I see the light, and decide to release my software under the GNU GPL. Now Microsoft has two choices, where before they had only one. They can decide to ignore the existence of my modified/enhanced product, treating it for their purposes as if it were still a closed source product, and continue to enhance their original source code and build new products from it. Or they can take my fine product, use it however they like, create some new products with it, and release those new products under the GPL, making as much money as they did when I downloaded their software in the first place, i.e., none. If they go the second route, they can still, at the same time, integrate their original source code into other products and release in under terms of their choosing.
Yet, it's the second scenario Microsoft wants to prevent. Proprietary software that they can't touch is OK; Free Software that they can only handle in certain ways is not. I don't see how this can be seen as anything other than an extremely petty attack on those who choose to release software under the GPL. From Microsoft's financial and legal perspective, my re-releasing their code under the GPL is the same as my distributing it as proprietary software.
I can only think of two reasons for them to do this. One, they believe that anyone who would create a proprietary product from MS's labor is a mammon-worshiper who could be bought for a high enough price, a price that Microsoft will always be able to pay. If this is the case, they effectively still have access to any source code they want. But the Free Software hippies who would write software under the GPL might not render the code unto Caesar for any price.
Two, this clause is there for entirely political reasons. They have already created the myth that the GPL, through the actions of third parties, has the power to force copyright owners to relinquish control of their own works, and they've been trying to spread that myth throughout the business and government worlds. By inserting this clause, they help reinforce the myth, by leading the licensee to believe that there is a license out there that has the power to do that.
It's a really low blow when a licensing term targets one class of users without guaranteeing any benefit for the licensor.
90.9 on your FM dial.
Yeah, as someone in the Capital area, I was surprised to see that our local public television (and radio) station was at the cutting edge of special effects. Please, posters, be careful about how you capitalize stuff. The SFX company is Weta, not WETA (usually pronounced "double-u ee tee ay").
given that "its" is a possessive pronoun that fits the pattern: "yours", "his", "hers", "theirs", "its". (Weren't we were supposed to master all that in kindergarten?)
IMHO, this is about as good a pattern as saying "Humans, earthworms, jellyfish and pine trees are all living things that do not have gills, so let's put them in the same category." I was tested on the "its/it's" thing in 3rd grade; I think I got it wrong, but the teacher missed it. I took second place in a regional (a region of the city) spelling bee in 8th grade, but it was high school before someone finally told me what the "rule" was (I still consider it more a mnemonic than a rule) and I was able to spell them without trying to remember which was more important, the contraction or the possessive. I still enjoy spelling these two "correctly"; it's like a silent wink to the 5-10% of readers who know and care about the difference, letting them know I'm in the in-group.
It's a special pet peeve of mine because I taught English in Japan for a year, and my students always got it right!
I always noticed this when teaching English in Korea (3 years). I'd give them a nice smile and a pat on the back when they'd spell things right, but I'd jump for joy when they used the plural form for anything other than the stock plurals (shoes, sports, donuts, shirts, a few others that I forget). Rote memorization of how to spell stuff is easy for them compared to thinking about new concepts such as countability and definiteness, but breaking rules that natives never break is more likely to lead to miscommunication than breaking the rules most natives don't understand.
If you ask simiar questions in the metric system, the answers are easy. They also all begin with a "1" and end with a bunch of "0"s.
Wow, can't tell if that's just facetiousness or being sly about exactly which multi-billion dollar empire is being doomed here. Either way, I like it....
This is why you say "This is he" not "him"
I do? Oh wait, never mind, you were talking to the parent poster. I don't know what s/he does.
Imagine a Beowulf cluster of those!
The purpose of the BSDL is to get standards adopted and prevent wheel-reinvention by having a freely-usable codebase out there - consider it a comprehensive code-library, if you will.
But what happens when Microsoft takes a "standard codebase", say, I don't know, Kerberos, and adds proprietary extensions to it, then uses its control of the market to establish its version as the de facto standard? Standards are meaningless if the most powerful companies ignore/extend them. "Embrace, extend, extinguish". Of course, you are still free to use and work on the original, but you won't be able to play with the rest of the world who, sheep-like, have run out and bought the M$ version.
Ted Knight was right when he said "The world needs ditch diggers too." There will be a ton of other smart guys out there.
:)
And let's not forget what happens when you have too many geeks moving to one place and intermarrying
Seems pretty clear to me that they're not saying you must sign your code over to them, merely that they are free to do as they please with it (though probably not contribute back to it).
Since Mircosoft is going to buy yahoo in november,
Ah, Mircosoft. I remember they once produced Web-based software that purported to take your picture via your monitor. Unfortunately, I can't seem to find that little gem anymore. I tried www.mircosoft.com, but that turned up nothing.
BTW, can you explain the bit where Mojo typed "Pray for Mojo"? It didn't make enough sense to me for it to be worth having the pet shop owner go inside, get a keyboard, and wait for the monkey to type that, so I figured it must be a reference to something I don't know about.
Any way you could speed up development on it?
Please tell me where I can get the source for the Sun JRE.
Argh! The spelling around here is... unseemly!
Perhaps more important, on the C++ side, is the general fact that code compiled with one C++ compiler is not likely to work with code generated by a different compiler. C++ specifies the use of name mangling, but doesn't specify how that is to be implemented. So all your class names and so on are represented in some compiler-specific way in the shared libraries, making them inaccessible to programs compiled with a different C++ compiler, unless the makers of the two compilers have gotten together and somehow agreed on exactly how to do the name mangling (which has not happened to date, that I've heard of).
I can't speak for C support, but the failure of Borland C++ to support the GNU compiler is inevitable, and not anyone's fault, except maybe Bjarne Stroustrup's.
The uuencoded files I've seen never contain any lowercase letters.
The bartender is not so cruel, but he does get impatient.
On the fourth day, the fish goes up to the bar, asking for fish food again. Bartender says, "look, this is a bar. We sell liquor. What ever gave you the idea you could get fish food here?"
The fish replies, "I thought my best bet would be to go to the same place that Mr. Higgenbotham over there goes. Someone told me his eating habits were the same as mine."
The bartender says, "Mr. Higgenbotham? He's just an old lush. He comes in here every night and gets sloshed."
The fish looks at the bartender, looks at Mr. Higgenbotham, then looks back at the bartender. Then he slaps his fin against his forehead. "Oh, THAT'S what that meant!"
I'd been wondering when something was going to appear on /. about this new "JPEG Virus". I'd been waiting for someone to explain to me just how the image transmits the virus "when it is viewed", or, more likely, for someone to blow this theory out of the water.
I got the story from Washington Post, which, naturally, fell woefully short in explaining how a strictly-data format can be executed just be being viewed, but I couldn't find any reference to it on McAfee's site.
I'm sure I'm not the only University of Maryland student/alum to see this and think for a second that someone at UMCP has just produced a new handheld and named it after the school's mascot.
Go Terps!
Believe it or not, this is a "feature" -- from the point of view of software vendors. This feature (or at least this type of feature) allows things like that portion of the screen reserved for ads that you can't get rid of, provided by your second-rate ISP. It also made possible a nice thing I was once faced with at a previous workplace. Whenever I started up my computer, I would be presented with an Acceptable Use Policy window which I could not close or move, and which always stayed on top. I would have to click "I Agree" to make it go away, otherwise I couldn't get any work done. PHBs and proprietary software vendors love that! Don't imagine you could do that in Linux, though; the user has too much control.
Sawfish does have that Windows/KDE-style stack-order-preserving feature, when using the "Cycle Windows" function (as named in the shortcut key config dialog). Unfortunately, the mini-window it pops up does not show all the icons available, only the one for the currently selected window (thus you'll see the icon change as you repeatedly hit Tab while holding down the Alt key). But other than that, it works fine, and I can jump back-and-forth between two windows without having to go through all the other ones.
"Cycle windows" I suppose is not really a great name for this function, since it sounds like it would have the annoying behavior you described, where going from window A to B right back to A again requires, in total, N repetitions of the Tab key, where N is the number of windows you have open. BTW, I think Sawfish also provides this type of cycling, with the functions "Next Window" and "Next Workspace Window".
One of the beauties of the GPL is that it is ALWAYS the SAME (sometimes mod a few special dispensations which are easy to find). That means if I download a piece of software that is GPL, I don't have to read the license; i've already read it fifty times in other pieces of software or on the FSF site, and unlike the other EULAs for all the various sofware procucts out there, I've seen this same one enough times that I can actually understand it and how to follow it.
Hope this helps
Not entirely.... I've been following this, and I wasn't aware that a runtime environment had been developed for Linux. Is this correct? The announcement doesn't enlighten much with all its talk of mint and so on. Mint, then, is the counterpart for the JVM for Linux? And it can run the C# "executable"?