I agree with you. EFF was founded by John Perry Barlow, who wrote some music for the Grateful Dead and doesn't want to prevent other people from sharing his music. It seems that EFF thinks every artist, writer or programmer should behave this way.
Let me get this way: millions use Kazaa or whatever to get music, films and software without paying what the copyright holder demands for it. If you do this and don't get a subpoena, fine, but don't expect that the law should change for you. It is not everybody's right to share other people's music, and if the law starts to get enforced, tough luck.
I remember that, during the Napster and Morpheus trials, EFF lawyer's argued that P2P could be used fairly: to distribute open source, free software, freeware, shareware, music promos and music under the public domain. I agree with this point. But now EFF is blatantly defending people that are sharing music that they are not supposed to. They are loosing all their credit with this stupid campaign.
I have no problem with copyright, and the enforcing of copyright. It only gets ridiculous when it prevents abandoned books or films to reach the public domain, or when it tries to stop the development of new technology (like P2P networks or porting Linux to the Xbox). That is not to say I have never downloaded a music from Napster, or used a "warez": my point is that I know it is not my right to do this forever.
Talk about double standards... When Apple release their music store, that only works with iTunes, the everyone on Slashdot praised. When someone launches a similar site, but one that demands IE and Windows Media, everybody complains. The truth is: both are proprietary lock-ins, only Apple's has a cute face. If you don't want them to prosper, go buy your music elsewhere.
Anyone who had to work this weekend and hanged around Slashdot saw this post. Apparently, Red Hat has launched the Red Hat Linux Project, and that's why we have seen stories of the boxed version stepping out of the retail channel (it means, you will not buy a CD-Rom with RH for $ 40 on Amazon). According to their FAQ:
Q: Will Red Hat Linux be sold in retail?
A:The Red Hat Linux releases will not be sold through the retail channel as a shrinkwrapped box; the design of the project, with the potential for short release cycles, less certainty in release date, and so forth make it a poor match for the retail channel. Further information on the retail product line will be forthcoming closer to the product launch plan this fall. Red Hat Linux releases will be available as ISO images for both CDs and DVDs; will be sold online as physical media; will be distributed at Linux User Groups, in magazines, in books, and at trade shows; and will be actively pushed into content sharing networks such as BitTorrent. Not every distribution mechanism will necessarily be used for ever release; for example, not every release will show up at a trade show. However, each of these is a candidate, and some, including online ISO images, will be available for all releases.
If you are a corporation, though, you can still buy their over-priced Enterprise Version and have cess to SLAs and support contracts.
Well, the fact that no releases dates are setted are more a good point than a bad one ! Of course, in an ideal world where software would be released on dates (!), they won't have bugs either.
Yep, I heard Duke Nukem Forever will be the most perfect and bug-free software, ever.
I am not a Java expert, but another Java free software project believes the GPL and the LGPL are not suitable for use on projects that want to build a free platform that may be used to build free software and closed source software. The Enhydra software thinks that the Mozilla license is better, and released their source under a modified version, named Enhydra Public License.
That's what they say:
The GNU license (GPL) has its roots before modern Object Oriented languages became popular. It is viral in nature since it affects all code that extends or uses it. It is not entirely clear about where to draw the lines as to where external software gets "infected" by GPL's viral nature. In fact, one could easily argue that with Java, where everything is a library (class), any code that includes a GNU component must convert into GPL. [my emphasis]
The Enhydra Application Server provides an environment for application code to be loaded and executed, thus extending the original functionality of the base server. This is the primary way of developing systems built with Enhydra, and one might say that providing such an environment is the primary purpose of an Application Server. This is thus clearly incompatible with the GPL license since all the code that you might develop must also become GPL.
The LGPL takes the GPL license a step in the right direction by addressing libraries and clarifying that code that uses a library can carry any license, while code that modifies the library itself is subject to the LGPL license. We don't feel that we can use it because the Enhydra Server is not by any definition a library, but is a server or platform designed to call other code. Although LGPL has been used in Open Source Java initiatives, we believe that it still suffers from GPLs ambiguities for Java and we don't ever want to have to change our license again!
According to Sun, the revenue for the third quarter was 2.79 BILLION, and, as business have been tough lately, their net income was "only" 4 million. 2 million is a lot for you and me, but not for a company like Sun, as they would get in return the animosity of all open source developers. Remember: Sun was almost forced to become a partner of the Slashdot readers, and have adopted Gnome as their desktop enviroment.
I am not defending the public funding of SETI, but cutting these expenses wouldn't help the US national debt. You would have better results looking at the taxes cut by W Bush and military spending in the war in Iraq (despite what he might say, this war has not ended and soldiers from both sides continue to die).
That 10% death rate is inflated. First of all, most of the people that got it was already in the hospital for one reason or another.
Those people were in a hospital because they were doctors and nurses, and were perfectly healthy before contracting SARS. The physician who discovered the disease died from SARS. If the WHO had not been careful, thousands of smart-asses would be saying now "the Canadian government should have given more attention to it when the outbreak was confined to one city".
This is, in my opinion, the only problem of this service: if you want to charge anyone for internet acess, you will enter in a costumer relationship and should get legal advice. Will you demmand that your costumers sign a contract, or will everything be based on a spoke agreement? The Riaa can't sue you if they come out of the blue and say: "someone has been using your conection for file sharing, and I am going to prossecute you". If they send a cease and desist letter to you, however, they might sue you if you don't cut file sharing for your costumers. You don't have to spy them, just use a firewall and block ports used by kazaa. Guess what: I am at work, and the sysadmin here blocks almost every port.
You might want to fight them in court, but in this case is good to have read the DMCA and Ip-related laws, and contract a good lawyer.
Personally, my iPaq got a lot more fun after I came across Pocket Nester, a Nintendo emulator licensed under the GPL. Now, whenever I am on the subway I can play Super Mario 3 and remember of simpler times.
Outsourcing only makes headlines when it is apllied on big corporations, to reduce costs (and staff, in the process). But it can be a good way for a small company to grow, have acess to new technology and don't loose focus on its main business. With outsourcing, strategic partnerships and consortiums, companies can grow without getting bloated. The IT industry is one of the best example of small companies entering in partnerships with other small companies and big corporations: the Wi-Fi alliance, the GSM Association, Java, Free Software in general, etc.
Think about it: Linux is important for a huge company like IBM, but "official" releases for the 2.4.x tree are released by Marcelo Tosatti, a guy that lives in Brazil and that works for a relatively small company.
According to the Kaffe website, it is a "a clean room implementation of the Java virtual machine, plus the associated class libraries needed to provide a Java runtime environment. The Kaffe virtual machine is free software, licensed under the terms of the GNU Public License."
At least in my country, the justification for cigarrette taxing is not influencing consumer bechavior (it may influence, but it is a side effect). As we have a public health care and smokers tend to have more diseases, they use the public hospitals more often and are taxed for it. If you want to destroy your lungs, fine, it's your problem.
But as we have public hospitals that must provide assistance to you, pay this tax for your cigarrettes.
People like Bruce Perens argue that governments shuold adopt open formats for public databases and documents, but I have never seen him proposing the taxation of individuals and enterprises data formats. According to this policy, you can develop and use a closed format, but if you sell software to the government, it must produce also at least one open format.
And you are assuming that this money would go to open source developers. I bet that 50% would pay the infrastructure the government would need to collect the tax, 30% for "open source" projects created for the sole purpose of benefiting from the funding and 10% for corruption. That would leave real open source projects with only 10% of the money, make closed source programs more expensive to the consumers and create a new cadre of parasites that live from this tax.
Isn't Bit Torrent designed precisely to prevent the slashdot effect, and to distribute the load among people that are downloading the file? I have never ran a torrent on a website, but according to the author, you can even pull the original file from your server, as long as enough people have left their clients open after the download (in torrent terms, the seed is alive).
As previous posts have said, people buying SCO stock are trying to make a jackpot in a lotery-like game. If the case against IBM and Linux suceeds, SCO could make millions, even billions, for the next years from licensing.
But I agree that this is a very risky bet. I wouldn't put a quarter on SCO stock, in a couple of months Enron's stocks will be more valuable.
The Linux Today article is misleading. The brazilian government has not aproved a bill to mandate the use of free or open source software. They will try to use free software as much as possible, to save money and to avoid paying software licences to foreing countires. Brazil is facing a tough time to pay all his externals debts (check out the IMF website) and does not have much dollars to spend.
This is not to say that proprietary software is banned in the government. The policy will shift to allow companies that use free software solutions partipate in public concurrences. And every software used by the government, regardless of its platform, should be interoperable. No government website may carry a tag "best viewed with browser x or Y". The software developed by the brazilian IRS, that today is avaliable only for Windows, will have a Linux port. Sergio Amadeu told me this policy can be summarized in one sentence: "the brazilian government will not force anyone to use proprietary or free software". That is 100% on the spirit of free software and open source.
Nowadays the use of Windows is predominant in the brazilian government, but that will change. Many governments are considering this direction, and Brazil is just another case. The government is not anti-Microsoft, is just considering a better option for the country.
As a coincidence, I am a brasilian journalist and I have wrote a story about it. On monday you can check it out in www.jb.com.br/internet (those that don't speak portuguese will have to use Babel Fish).
Michael Robertson made a strong claim about Microsoft and Tiger Direct. This claim is, alone, relevant information. As it has been refuted by Tiger Direct, Lindows costumers might have a different perception on the seriousness of Robertson. The judgment should be left to the public.
This only makes the lawsuit more important. It seems that Apple's use of the term "Unix-based" could confuse consumers, and brands exist exactly to inform consumers.
Apple should stop saying Unix-powered, Unix-based or whatever. It is based in FreeBSD, period. They also help an open source project, so kudos to them, bu don't call it Unix unless it is Unix.
Acording to the increasing rumors, Apple is about to launch computers with a new line of 64 bit processors, the IBM's 970. It will demand a new OS (that wil be Mac OS X Panther), but should be compatible with a modified version of Jaguar. So, when the new 64 bit Macintoshes are released, the public might have have to wait a few more months for a 64 bit version of Quark...
This is not competition, it is unfair use of economic power. IF Microsoft brought down the price of Windows XP for ALL costumers, that would be competition. As they seem to be doing that for only some people, that's abuse.
It is clearly illegal, and if Michael Robertson can prove that, they certainly have a case against Microsoft. As all he has been doing is talk, it is not confirmed. Yet.
Slashdot Mirror
Let me get this way: millions use Kazaa or whatever to get music, films and software without paying what the copyright holder demands for it. If you do this and don't get a subpoena, fine, but don't expect that the law should change for you. It is not everybody's right to share other people's music, and if the law starts to get enforced, tough luck.
I remember that, during the Napster and Morpheus trials, EFF lawyer's argued that P2P could be used fairly: to distribute open source, free software, freeware, shareware, music promos and music under the public domain. I agree with this point. But now EFF is blatantly defending people that are sharing music that they are not supposed to. They are loosing all their credit with this stupid campaign.
I have no problem with copyright, and the enforcing of copyright. It only gets ridiculous when it prevents abandoned books or films to reach the public domain, or when it tries to stop the development of new technology (like P2P networks or porting Linux to the Xbox). That is not to say I have never downloaded a music from Napster, or used a "warez": my point is that I know it is not my right to do this forever.
Talk about double standards... When Apple release their music store, that only works with iTunes, the everyone on Slashdot praised. When someone launches a similar site, but one that demands IE and Windows Media, everybody complains. The truth is: both are proprietary lock-ins, only Apple's has a cute face. If you don't want them to prosper, go buy your music elsewhere.
Q: Will Red Hat Linux be sold in retail?
A:The Red Hat Linux releases will not be sold through the retail channel as a shrinkwrapped box; the design of the project, with the potential for short release cycles, less certainty in release date, and so forth make it a poor match for the retail channel. Further information on the retail product line will be forthcoming closer to the product launch plan this fall. Red Hat Linux releases will be available as ISO images for both CDs and DVDs; will be sold online as physical media; will be distributed at Linux User Groups, in magazines, in books, and at trade shows; and will be actively pushed into content sharing networks such as BitTorrent. Not every distribution mechanism will necessarily be used for ever release; for example, not every release will show up at a trade show. However, each of these is a candidate, and some, including online ISO images, will be available for all releases.
If you are a corporation, though, you can still buy their over-priced Enterprise Version and have cess to SLAs and support contracts.
Yep, I heard Duke Nukem Forever will be the most perfect and bug-free software, ever.
That's what they say:
The GNU license (GPL) has its roots before modern Object Oriented languages became popular. It is viral in nature since it affects all code that extends or uses it. It is not entirely clear about where to draw the lines as to where external software gets "infected" by GPL's viral nature. In fact, one could easily argue that with Java, where everything is a library (class), any code that includes a GNU component must convert into GPL. [my emphasis]
The Enhydra Application Server provides an environment for application code to be loaded and executed, thus extending the original functionality of the base server. This is the primary way of developing systems built with Enhydra, and one might say that providing such an environment is the primary purpose of an Application Server. This is thus clearly incompatible with the GPL license since all the code that you might develop must also become GPL.
The LGPL takes the GPL license a step in the right direction by addressing libraries and clarifying that code that uses a library can carry any license, while code that modifies the library itself is subject to the LGPL license. We don't feel that we can use it because the Enhydra Server is not by any definition a library, but is a server or platform designed to call other code. Although LGPL has been used in Open Source Java initiatives, we believe that it still suffers from GPLs ambiguities for Java and we don't ever want to have to change our license again!
According to Sun, the revenue for the third quarter was 2.79 BILLION, and, as business have been tough lately, their net income was "only" 4 million. 2 million is a lot for you and me, but not for a company like Sun, as they would get in return the animosity of all open source developers. Remember: Sun was almost forced to become a partner of the Slashdot readers, and have adopted Gnome as their desktop enviroment.
Apparently, they used Windows XP to ease to port of PC games for their console, and not because they can't develop a platform.
I am not defending the public funding of SETI, but cutting these expenses wouldn't help the US national debt. You would have better results looking at the taxes cut by W Bush and military spending in the war in Iraq (despite what he might say, this war has not ended and soldiers from both sides continue to die).
Those people were in a hospital because they were doctors and nurses, and were perfectly healthy before contracting SARS. The physician who discovered the disease died from SARS. If the WHO had not been careful, thousands of smart-asses would be saying now "the Canadian government should have given more attention to it when the outbreak was confined to one city".
You might want to fight them in court, but in this case is good to have read the DMCA and Ip-related laws, and contract a good lawyer.
Personally, my iPaq got a lot more fun after I came across Pocket Nester, a Nintendo emulator licensed under the GPL. Now, whenever I am on the subway I can play Super Mario 3 and remember of simpler times.
Think about it: Linux is important for a huge company like IBM, but "official" releases for the 2.4.x tree are released by Marcelo Tosatti, a guy that lives in Brazil and that works for a relatively small company.
According to the Kaffe website, it is a "a clean room implementation of the Java virtual machine, plus the associated class libraries needed to provide a Java runtime environment. The Kaffe virtual machine is free software, licensed under the terms of the GNU Public License."
But as we have public hospitals that must provide assistance to you, pay this tax for your cigarrettes.
People like Bruce Perens argue that governments shuold adopt open formats for public databases and documents, but I have never seen him proposing the taxation of individuals and enterprises data formats. According to this policy, you can develop and use a closed format, but if you sell software to the government, it must produce also at least one open format.
And you are assuming that this money would go to open source developers. I bet that 50% would pay the infrastructure the government would need to collect the tax, 30% for "open source" projects created for the sole purpose of benefiting from the funding and 10% for corruption. That would leave real open source projects with only 10% of the money, make closed source programs more expensive to the consumers and create a new cadre of parasites that live from this tax.
Isn't Bit Torrent designed precisely to prevent the slashdot effect, and to distribute the load among people that are downloading the file? I have never ran a torrent on a website, but according to the author, you can even pull the original file from your server, as long as enough people have left their clients open after the download (in torrent terms, the seed is alive).
I agree with you that SCO has no chance with this lawsuit. I'm just commenting on why so many people are buying their stock.
But I agree that this is a very risky bet. I wouldn't put a quarter on SCO stock, in a couple of months Enron's stocks will be more valuable.
Và direto à fonte em www.governoeletronico.e.gov.br.
This is not to say that proprietary software is banned in the government. The policy will shift to allow companies that use free software solutions partipate in public concurrences. And every software used by the government, regardless of its platform, should be interoperable. No government website may carry a tag "best viewed with browser x or Y". The software developed by the brazilian IRS, that today is avaliable only for Windows, will have a Linux port. Sergio Amadeu told me this policy can be summarized in one sentence: "the brazilian government will not force anyone to use proprietary or free software". That is 100% on the spirit of free software and open source.
Nowadays the use of Windows is predominant in the brazilian government, but that will change. Many governments are considering this direction, and Brazil is just another case. The government is not anti-Microsoft, is just considering a better option for the country.
As a coincidence, I am a brasilian journalist and I have wrote a story about it. On monday you can check it out in www.jb.com.br/internet (those that don't speak portuguese will have to use Babel Fish).
Para todos aqueles que lÃem portuguÃs, aqui vai uma pequena explicaÃão: o site Linux Today não compreendeu o artigo original da EFE, que na verdade faz referÃncia a uma matéria publicada no jornal Valor hà umas duas semanas.
O governo federal tomou a decisão estratégica de usar softwares livres o mÃximo possÃvel, e não foi aprovada nenhuma lei que obriga seu uso. O Sérgio Amadeu coordena o programa Governo EletrÃnico, e até agosto vai aprontar um estudo que irà levantar onde é possÃvel usar Linux e softwares livres, sem prejudicar o trabalho governamental. O primeiro grande sistema a sofrer uma migraÃão é o do comprasnet, o pregão eletrÃnico do governo que hoje opera sobre um mainframe e que serà trocado por um cluster de servidores Intel com Linux. Sou repÃrter do caderno Internet do Jornal do Brasil e escrevi uma extensa matéria sobre o assunto. Na segunda-feira procurem o JB nas bancas para saber mais, ou acessem o site http://jbonline.terra.com.br/internet.
Michael Robertson made a strong claim about Microsoft and Tiger Direct. This claim is, alone, relevant information. As it has been refuted by Tiger Direct, Lindows costumers might have a different perception on the seriousness of Robertson. The judgment should be left to the public.
Apple should stop saying Unix-powered, Unix-based or whatever. It is based in FreeBSD, period. They also help an open source project, so kudos to them, bu don't call it Unix unless it is Unix.
That's why I like GNU: it's not Unix!
Acording to the increasing rumors, Apple is about to launch computers with a new line of 64 bit processors, the IBM's 970. It will demand a new OS (that wil be Mac OS X Panther), but should be compatible with a modified version of Jaguar. So, when the new 64 bit Macintoshes are released, the public might have have to wait a few more months for a 64 bit version of Quark...
It is clearly illegal, and if Michael Robertson can prove that, they certainly have a case against Microsoft. As all he has been doing is talk, it is not confirmed. Yet.