Nope. By living in Florida you've settled your claim with Microsoft. This claim, and any others you might have about things they did wrong before this year. If you don't want do to that, you have to explicitly opt out. Taking the vouchers has nothing to do with it.
The philosophy you refer to is all about creating stuff. It's not easily applied to destruction. However, one very efficient technique would be to figure out what companies like McDonald's get out of using SCO's products, and provide them a free replacement that works better.
Convincing them to actually switch will be harder, and I have no idea what it would take. One advantage lies in the nature of SCO deployments: if you stay compatible, you can replace the systems one by one which makes it a low-risk operation.
For best effect, convince them to issue a press release saying they're moving away from SCO because of SCO's predatory behavior towards its customers. For bonus points, have them cite intellectual property concerns.
SCO has been all over the place about what they're claiming. We've heard about patents, copyrights, trade secrets, and even trademarks, and vague "intellectual property rights". But the actual complaint they filed with the courts does NOT allege any copyright infringement, just breach of contract and unfair competition.
It took me a while to re-find these examples (the manuals have since been updated, and I no longer had the old versions), but I have them now. Anthony Towns gave me the reference.
The GDB manual has "A Sample GDB Session" marked invariant, and it had a companion manual which documented the stabs format (which encodes debugging information) which had the sections "Stabs Types" and "Stabs Sections" marked invariant. (Among others, in both cases.)
About your second point, I'm realised recently that invariant sections can't even be removed or updated by their author, even if they're no longer relevant, if the manual has been through a few hands already. Even the person who wrote and added an invariant section would have to get permission from all copyright holders to remove it. The FSF avoids this by collecting copyright assignments from all contributors, of course. Frankly, I wouldn't have a problem with the FSF using the GFDL as long as they didn't try to promote it as a generic solution.
I stopped buying their CDs when they started hiding fake CDs among the real ones.
I realize that boycotting them is going to make them yell even louder about "piracy". But look at it honestly, would they stop yelling if their profits went up? I don't think so. They'd just have more money for lawyers. Their ever-louder whining is the price we'll have to pay for the joy of watching them wither away and die in the remnants of their failed business model.
The possibilities you raise would all be copyright infringement or fraud, regardless of the license.
Furthermore, me changing the license text doesn't change the actual license of the document. It just means I'm lying about the actual license, and that's not allowed because the license is a legal document.
Also, the author's name is going to be in the copyright statements, not in an Invariant Section. Did you even check the GFDL's definition of Invariant Sections? Nothing in your rant is related to what I said.
With the GFDL, you have now permanently attached those 200 pages to the documentation of the program. No one is allowed to distribute any part of that documentation, modified or not, without including the prose of your dissertation. The manpage of that program is going to be pretty long.
If the code is also part of that document, then you probably have a license conflict between the GPL and the GFDL, unless you dual-licensed it.
Wouldn't it have been much easier to simply make the dissertation non-free, and release the code and documentation separately as a GPLed work?
The FSF itself has a history of marking primary sections as Invariant. What that means for the resulting license is anybody's guess.
This isn't related to comment you replied to, however. Notice that that was about an Invariant Section containing the author's opinion of a feature that was later removed.
My copy of the GPL, as well as the one on the FSF site, says "You are not required to accept this License, since you have not signed it. However, nothing else grants you permission to modify or distribute the Program or its derivative works."
It also says "Activities other than copying, distribution and modification are not covered by this License" and "The act of running the Program is not restricted".
Imagine this scenario: someone takes your book which is dedicated to Martin Luther King, then adds a lot of useful stuff to it, and then attaches a rant explaining how Adolf Hitler is much cooler than King and the original author was a wuss for choosing the wrong person to dedicate the book to. And then makes that rant an Invariant Section.
Now you can't use any of that new documentation in the next version of your book, unless you're willing to take the pro-Hitler rant as well. But the other person is free to take your new material, as long as he is willing to take any new Invariant Sections you add. This is the opposite of what copyleft is supposed to achieve.
None of this would be an issue if the GFDL allowed removal of Invariant Sections.
These sections become permanently attached to the manual. Not being allowed to change them isn't a big problem. Not being allowed to remove them is a problem because it puts an onerous condition on the rest of the manual. For example, it makes it practically impossible to extract a page or two from one manual for use in another -- you have to copy various essays and rants as well.
Speaking for myself, I never minded having some non-modifiable essays in the documentation. What I don't like about the Invariant Sections is that in addition to being non-modifiable, they're non-removable. They're permanently attached to whatver document they happen to be in. That makes the rest of the document non-free, and that's what I care about.
If the GFDL's Invariant Sections could be removed, then they would be fine with me. I don't feel any urge to modify them.
The GFDL requires credits to be in the History section. The Invariant sections are over and above that. The FSF uses them for things like the GNU Manifesto and the emacs "Distribution" page (which is sure to become outdated at some point, so I really wonder why it's Invariant).
If I ever maintain a GFDL document I'll probably use them to explain how Debian developers are the secret masters of the world, who have been guiding human evolution for millions of years so that one day we may finally be free of the hostile K'reth who dwell under the sea.
By browbeating her password out of her this way, you reduced her resistance to future social engineering attempts. You should be teaching your users that they don't ever need to give out their passwords, regardless of who asks or in what circumstances. That's an easy rule to remember. Any complication you add to it just introduces confusion that an attacker can use.
Theo has a problem because DARPA went back on its promise. He'd have been a lot better off if DARPA hadn't approached him about the grant in the first place. Are you saying that breaking promises this way is a valid form of "repercussions" from the government?
The security measures, and actually the whole atmosphere at an airport make me feel very insecure. The guards are supposed to be good guys protecting us from the evil terrorists. Well, they don't look very good to me. They look threatening and intimidating, and apparently have full permission to inflict their bad tempers on random passengers. I've grown reluctant to fly because it means putting myself in such a powerless and sometimes humiliating position.
How do you know whether or not it's patented? There's hundreds of thousands of potentially applicable patents, in all sorts of languages, with clauses written in mind-numbing detail (and the clauses are deliberately written to be both broad and obscure). Furthermore, you'd have to figure out whether or not a patented algorithm is equivalent to yours, which is a hard problem in general (this is how LZW got patented twice).
The bottom line is, you can never be sure that a program or standard is free from patents.
You seem to have missed the main argument (and the original reason) for the GPL. If we have FreeBSD and MSBSD, then any improvements made on FreeBSD can be easily incorporated by Microsoft, but not the other way arund. This makes it an uneven competition, and FreeBSD could only win by having a vastly better development process, rather than by having superior software.
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Nope. By living in Florida you've settled your claim with Microsoft. This claim, and any others you might have about things they did wrong before this year. If you don't want do to that, you have to explicitly opt out. Taking the vouchers has nothing to do with it.
Same here, but the problem is that they attribute it to "Waahh! People aren't buying our records because of PIRACY! We need more laws!".
When actually I'm just tired of their shit. I'd tell them to come back when they're ready to sell real CDs again, but they're not listening.
Convincing them to actually switch will be harder, and I have no idea what it would take. One advantage lies in the nature of SCO deployments: if you stay compatible, you can replace the systems one by one which makes it a low-risk operation.
For best effect, convince them to issue a press release saying they're moving away from SCO because of SCO's predatory behavior towards its customers. For bonus points, have them cite intellectual property concerns.
"derivative works" under copyright law (which the GPL uses) don't include know-how, people and methods.
SCO has been all over the place about what they're claiming. We've heard about patents, copyrights, trade secrets, and even trademarks, and vague "intellectual property rights". But the actual complaint they filed with the courts does NOT allege any copyright infringement, just breach of contract and unfair competition.
About your second point, I'm realised recently that invariant sections can't even be removed or updated by their author, even if they're no longer relevant, if the manual has been through a few hands already. Even the person who wrote and added an invariant section would have to get permission from all copyright holders to remove it. The FSF avoids this by collecting copyright assignments from all contributors, of course. Frankly, I wouldn't have a problem with the FSF using the GFDL as long as they didn't try to promote it as a generic solution.
I stopped buying their CDs when they started hiding fake CDs among the real ones.
I realize that boycotting them is going to make them yell even louder about "piracy". But look at it honestly, would they stop yelling if their profits went up? I don't think so. They'd just have more money for lawyers. Their ever-louder whining is the price we'll have to pay for the joy of watching them wither away and die in the remnants of their failed business model.
Furthermore, me changing the license text doesn't change the actual license of the document. It just means I'm lying about the actual license, and that's not allowed because the license is a legal document.
Also, the author's name is going to be in the copyright statements, not in an Invariant Section. Did you even check the GFDL's definition of Invariant Sections? Nothing in your rant is related to what I said.
If the code is also part of that document, then you probably have a license conflict between the GPL and the GFDL, unless you dual-licensed it.
Wouldn't it have been much easier to simply make the dissertation non-free, and release the code and documentation separately as a GPLed work?
This isn't related to comment you replied to, however. Notice that that was about an Invariant Section containing the author's opinion of a feature that was later removed.
It also says "Activities other than copying, distribution and modification are not covered by this License" and "The act of running the Program is not restricted".
Now you can't use any of that new documentation in the next version of your book, unless you're willing to take the pro-Hitler rant as well. But the other person is free to take your new material, as long as he is willing to take any new Invariant Sections you add. This is the opposite of what copyleft is supposed to achieve.
None of this would be an issue if the GFDL allowed removal of Invariant Sections.
init, getty, login, and more are not GNU tools.
These sections become permanently attached to the manual. Not being allowed to change them isn't a big problem. Not being allowed to remove them is a problem because it puts an onerous condition on the rest of the manual. For example, it makes it practically impossible to extract a page or two from one manual for use in another -- you have to copy various essays and rants as well.
If the GFDL's Invariant Sections could be removed, then they would be fine with me. I don't feel any urge to modify them.
If I ever maintain a GFDL document I'll probably use them to explain how Debian developers are the secret masters of the world, who have been guiding human evolution for millions of years so that one day we may finally be free of the hostile K'reth who dwell under the sea.
Then I'd have fun :-)
By browbeating her password out of her this way, you reduced her resistance to future social engineering attempts. You should be teaching your users that they don't ever need to give out their passwords, regardless of who asks or in what circumstances. That's an easy rule to remember. Any complication you add to it just introduces confusion that an attacker can use.
Theo has a problem because DARPA went back on its promise. He'd have been a lot better off if DARPA hadn't approached him about the grant in the first place. Are you saying that breaking promises this way is a valid form of "repercussions" from the government?
The security measures, and actually the whole atmosphere at an airport make me feel very insecure. The guards are supposed to be good guys protecting us from the evil terrorists. Well, they don't look very good to me. They look threatening and intimidating, and apparently have full permission to inflict their bad tempers on random passengers. I've grown reluctant to fly because it means putting myself in such a powerless and sometimes humiliating position.
The bottom line is, you can never be sure that a program or standard is free from patents.
"All this wheeling and dealing, it's not for money, it's for fun! Money is just the way we keep score."
You seem to have missed the main argument (and the original reason) for the GPL. If we have FreeBSD and MSBSD, then any improvements made on FreeBSD can be easily incorporated by Microsoft, but not the other way arund. This makes it an uneven competition, and FreeBSD could only win by having a vastly better development process, rather than by having superior software.
If a programmer can't figure out whether or not it's free, then it isn't. Anything else is impractical.
There's a huge list of other online booksellers at noamazon.