People don't understand this very well. It is _NOT_ 3dNow or MMX. What we are talking about is a fairly large number of absolutely huge registers. If I'm not mistaken it'd also be possible to use them somewhat more inefficiently as ordinary registers, or as _sets_ of ordinary registers. The very first thing that comes to mind is not anything graphics related, but simply block moves. MacOS makes heavy use of double indirection, 'handles' to blocks that are moved by the Memory Manager. This API is widely used by applications and changes to the system's implementation would speed up most applications across the board, so long as they used Memory Manager calls. Asking the MacOS to allocate memory in a situation where it has to compact the application zone and move 60M of relocatable blocks could become quite radically faster if it could be done 128 bytes at a time. I think that sums it up, don't you? I hope linux geeks know what relocatable blocks are. Maybe that is something only systems hackers have to know about, or not even then. It's basically a way of defragging and optimising memory like you defrag and optimize disk:) now that I mention it, I have to seriously wonder whether Linux does its stuff by requiring a bit more space to work, and being beautifully unsophisticated about both disk and memory!;)
How about newspeak where "free" means "your work belongs to your owner. The contents of your _mind_ belong to your owner. You don't have a right to any of it because you chose to sign it away..." That is the current situation of corporate programming. The fellow being sued because the contents of his mind belong to the company is a Texan who had a bright idea at home, and found that he no longer had any right to ideas of his own when they might make the company a profit. _That_ is what RMS is against. Unless you are some sort of bizarrely anticorporation libertarian, you're arguing for a situation where it's less and less feasible to produce 'gifts' or 'work' unless you align with a powerful entity such as a corporation, which pays you in exchange for using your head as farmland for growing its ideas in- effectively, this viewpoint suggests the next life-form to take over the planet Earth will not be robots or AIs running amok, it will be the collective entity, corporations: legally given the status of entities, not subject to the same rules as humans, and power-grabbing as fast as they can, with Homo Sapiens Individualus set to go the way of the Neanderthal. Which is _quite_ a digression, frankly, but it all bears directly upon your views of what freedom is. The GPL and all that goes with it are there for a particular result: in effect, it is for giving the most power to individuals. It did not appear in a vacuum, or from a situation of individuals sharing freely in public domain: while that was happening there was no need for a GPL. Instead, it appeared out of a situation where all development and research HAD BEEN sucked into totally restricted corporate forms. This is simple history, and the seed of the GPL was what happened over LISP machines, a corporate fight over AI that wrecked the MIT AI lab (a haven for public domain), leaving it lifeless. Stallman essentially swore, "never again", and the result became the GPL. It is not for freedom-in-every-sense. It is for freedom-for-individuals-to-hack-together-and-share -information. Some versions of freedom are just plain better than others. Though I admit that isn't an argument to appeal to an anarchist;)
Interestingly, it does not even _force_ programming freedom in the fullest sense. I've written RMS about the 'corporate loophole' I found in the GPL, to get his opinion. His take on it is this: he's not at all happy that corporations can take GPLed code and internally develop it with all the unfree frills and trappings like NDAs and such, only 'freeing' the code upon release- which is something he accepts can happen- but he does not think it is overly significant, because he figures that truly free development (and free exchange of information) will be able to outperform development efforts hindered by the desire to make their programmers unfree. I can live with that. I think it's a very serious concern to have the everpresent potential of forkin' corporations around trying to influence things in greedy ways and cause confusion and intentional incompatibility, but I can't deny that personally I'd be with Stallman, sharing information, so his view that free cooperation will beat unfree manipulation is something I can happily strive to _make_ realistic. That is, after all, what I want to do with my life, so what's the big disaster if it's not being done in a protected environment? Might as well just work to prove Stallman right, rather than work to keep corporations from abusing the GPL system in an inefficient way.
cypherpunks/cypherpunks used to work, and the NYT has decided their ability to control hacker readers is more important than their demographics of people actually reading their e-rag. So they appear to be reading Slashdot, and _killing_ accounts mentioned here. I read the article, and I didn't sign up for anything. All you have to do is figure out password variations quicker than they can make them invalid. I hit one that has not been made invalid. I'm not going to repeat it here. It can just stay valid, thank you- representing the shared, passed-around newspaper of some clever hacker who could hit on a combination that another hacker could guess, but which would not be tracked and invalidated by whatever lunatic at the Times is responsible for at all costs making sure people _don't_ read the Times without logging in.:P Here's a question. If RMS reads the times, with his traditional login/PW of rms/rms, do they refuse to allow him the password he uses for himself, just because he lets other people know it? For a basically trivial information site which one would think they'd _want_ readership for?
*ahem* _nice_ spin;P It isn't. I've never been much for idealism. In this context I would like to think of myself as a realist- my best bet for doing well and being known in the industry in future is to do what I'm doing, start GPLing stuff NOW and not waste time attempting to GetRichQuick in the computer industry. For what I do, the facts are that doing creative work in the industry is very like trying to be a professional musician- if you want to have worse odds than playing the lottery and be exploited at the same time, go for it! That's the "facts". I don't see how accepting these facts is 'idealism', indeed it might well be called harsh cynicism about the industry. To me, the idealism is all these merry businessmen thinking they can make infinite money by playing peculiar money games- and especially, the idealism of the naive and stubborn programmers who persist in believing that they have a chance at hitting the big time. Doing what, I might ask? I won't accuse you back of being idealistic, but I would suggest that I don't fit the pattern either. Maybe the fact that I want to do something good in society is enough, but your comment does certainly sound more dismissive than that. I'm glad we sorted out this matter by pointing out that my opinion is based on facts rather than just idealism and _unwillingness_ to play vaporbusinessman. In fact, there's a very crap chance of that even working: people might as well go program free software, then at least they can be sure of keeping their own work!
Absolutely. I _have_ lost my belief in selling good ideas for money. I also don't believe people getting rich by gambling on internet startups are a good thing. I've been reading articles and analyses (some linked from Slashdot) suggesting that the tremendous emphasis on cash-out is leading to profusion of internet businesses which are not remotely viable businesses, in which the only point is to cash out, and no sound business plan or procedures are in place. Businesses which are experiencing 130% turnover in five years (if that!). Businesses which, although they have no plan for the future beyond the cash-out, although they turn over like a revolving door, are buying up intellectual property at a staggering rate through building patent portfolios to prevent anyone else from doing work comparable to theirs- without doing *squat* to see to it that they will be longterm stable businesses able to _deliver_ on those patented benefits to the consumer for years. So on the one hand, business seems to be trying to stake out permanent claims to areas of computing. On the other hand, it seems to be so in love with cash-out that these permanent claims risk becoming ghost towns (nuclear waste zones?) when the companies cash out, get bought and cease caring about being able to deliver on their promises- producing large areas of computing where nothing is happening, but the 'land' is owned by whoever bought out the company that used to be there, and No Trespassing signs are up. THIS is what your getting rich truly means in the modern day. Capitalism may not have failed- indeed, communism did not fail AS A CONCEPT, so how could Capitalism fail? But OUR VERSION of Capitalism is in the process of crashing and burning. I opt out. If it was a military or civil matter, I might be throwing grenades, so bitterly do I agree with what's going on. It is not, it is an economic matter, so I am doing everything I can to aid the biggest enemy of the current Capitalism that I can find. I figure that's the free software movement, since it is solely concerned with establishing products that work, available to all, and that are impossible to withhold for economic punishment. So I'm doing what I can with that. It may not be the greatest thing to ever hit the world, but I know what I want to do with it.
"The whole point of the danger of the fork is that you are going to have two actively developing groups working on increasingly incompatible code confusing the market." No, that's the whole point of the fork- if your agenda is to dissipate the potential threat of Linux. Look, pretend you read that bit of analysis in the middle of the Halloween Document, then maybe you'll see it in context. I'm just trying to highlight potential attacks before they happen so we have an idea what to do about them. I've talked to RMS on the subject. He is not happy that people can be forced to work on GPLed code in an unfree way, but he thinks the community can always outperform anyone silly enough to restrict people's communication. I'm not sure that's true. Prove me wrong!:)
Ob means obligatory, and BZZZZZT try again means that Gates never invented BASIC. You want to take Gates out of that top list and put "John Kemeny of Dartmouth" in his place. That's who invented BASIC, and maybe some day more people will give him credit for it than Gates.
Like it? Take it. It's an engine for generating entire universes, planets down to the 3dpi resolution, complete overwhelming amounts of synthetic data into the billions of gigabytes, and it's all generated from a 16M datafile and a series of extremely evil and effective hacks, and a profound desire for doing game optimizations and returning the results FAST FAST FAST so the game doesn't suck. No, it's not fractal. Yes, IT IS GPL. It's actually not even C (I'm told it looks like Python code- it's a funky Mac language called REALbasic that kicks butt for rapid prototyping but is not itself free) but that makes no difference- it is GPLed, and it is entirely original. Why isn't everybody doing it? Because it's too radical an idea to generate entire universes, whole planets entirely emergently, and then _explore_ them to find interesting places. Game developers usually want to write their 'maps' by hand, or at least edit them. In doing so, they limit themselves to little weenie maps;) and there is another way, and it is FREE. I don't know who else is out there ready to hit the world with genuinely innovative stuff under the GPL. I'm doing it. Why? Because I have no confidence in the ability of the U.S. legal system to protect me or my ideas. I have no confidence in business to be able to help me implement them. All the promises about innovating and making millions off of great ideas are all crap- that doesn't happen anymore, those days are over. And since the promise to the independent developer is a lie, I'm giving it away like crackdotcom gave away Golgotha when they went out of business- except I didn't go out of business. Take this stuff, do neat things with it, I certainly intend to. There will always be a version of it you can use in code. GPL doesn't seem to produce new, original stuff, hell! _ALL_ the stuff I've GPLed has been new, and some of it has been original by any standard (mind showing me the other space based game universes with nineteen million individually plotted stars, most of which have specific and consistently repeatable planets and entire landscapes and resource maps? That's what this is). I rushed this stuff into public view out of fear that patents were being written that touched some aspects of it. Any aspect- I don't labor under the misconception that patents make sense, or expect that anyone was duplicating the more large scale aspects. I also rushed it out there because of just such attitudes as yours. I wanted to prove them wrong, and continue to work at doing that. GPL is not a world of derivative crud. It is a philosophical statement, it is growing, and it is a way for a developer to be guaranteed freedom no matter what the commercial world might do to step on it or stop it. As the commercial world grows more and more poisonous, the number of people doing wholly original work and GPLing it will only grow.
"M$ could no more "hijack" Linux or anything Gnu"... *siiiiigh* Yes they could, and this is how. They can take anything GPLed and work with it. They legally will be working on it as a _single_ entity, that's the point of a corporation. They can get as many highly paid Unix gurus as they can afford, to do good work, and they can NDA them up the wazoo until the gurus can't even _breathe_ the smallest detail of the work to peers, because it remains a 'purely internal affair'. Then, all they have to do is release the final product, spend a _lot_ of money and effort to market the hell out of it, and quickly get busy on the next totally closed version, because the second they release a version they lose control over it and must change all the APIs in order to keep outside input from being relevant. None of this says MS can stop _other_ people from making Linuxes, or even that other people can't end up getting all the information and source from _old_ versions of MS Linuxes. However, that's not the point. They can hijack it because they can develop it in a completely closed manner because they are one entity under the law. The rest is pure arm-wrestling for marketshare. They're good at that, though not good enough to eliminate all traces of other linuxes in this situation. What would end up happening if they were really serious about this is that MS Linux would hit and hold about 60-70% of Linux marketshare, possibly through the bundling of proprietary software like IE, and never get more because it would be too hard to deprecate older versions, and any other distribution would be able to get total access to the guts of older versions- only the NEXT version would be totally inaccessible. This also assumes that people can be conditioned to seek out and acquire new versions of software.
"If you create the program, you control the source. You can choose a free or proprietary license." Not neccesarily. If you are working on GPLed source (and God help you if you're using a license even less free!) for a corporation, you control nothing. You can be legally barred from communicating with other developers on the same program. Finally, you obviously can't choose the license for what you created (as the GPL is 'tainting'), but you also can be completely controlled by your employer and forced to code things the way they want them done by simple pressure- if you won't, they will fire you from the project and find someone who will. To put it in the context originally intended, if you are a corporate programmer, you could be forbidden to work on any program as an individual, and anything you do may be claimed to be company property. As such, you can write the code but not be free to choose the license- furthermore, the corporation can choose to use the GPL and continue to forbid you any contact with your peers, insisting that only final results be publically released. They can also order you to change around everything to make it totally incompatible with outside forks of your program, fire you if you refuse and confiscate the _interim_ code you had (anything released is fair game), refusing you access to the GPLed source you were in the process of writing. *hammer* *hammer* *hammer* at these points, seeing as they are going to be affecting us GPL programmers whether or not we believe it... it's really quite plain and the corporation would be right in the law when doing this. Yes it's a problem.
"If the fork illustrated by #1 does happen, the GPL ensures that a third party can come along and find a way to make the two forked code bases distributable as a unit, with perhaps a compiler switch or a 'compile-time' module or patch." No it does not. Any corporation (but it has to be a corporation) can legally maintain a 'fork' under active development while refusing to release any information about their version of the GPLed code. They are only required to release source when they distribute binaries to 'another entity', and for the purposes of the law the corporation is ONE entity and they have as much right to restrict their employees with NDAs and draconian penalties as you have the right to insist that your left ankle not release your GPLed code until you're ready to do so. As such, any corporation is not only able to maintain a fork of GPLed source under tight control of the intellectual property, they are obliged to do so under their obligation to their stockholders and could be sued for not taking the opportunity to fork and try to take over the code. Not only that, by the same token they could be sued for allowing outsiders into their process of working on GPLed code because power and control that reaches the community is power that isn't going to the corporation, and they are obligated under the law to not 'give away' their opportunities. Corel was just the beginning- expect all corporations to understand this (and practice it, out of habit, even before understanding their position). Any GPLed code is subject to being forcibly forked into the community version, and more well-funded corporate versions for which no community involvement is ever possible- instead it is 'read-only' but you cannot effectively work with a fork when you are not legally allowed to share information, and unless you are an employee of the company, all they need do is use their customary NDAs (or indeed waivers of IP so the corporation keeps all rights to the interim code) and sue anyone for violating them. And win- because to the GPL, a corporation is _one_ person, and that person cannot be forced to release binaries, it can only be forced to release source with binaries. It's trivially easy to keep development going so that, when the source _is_ released, the dev team has already advanced far enough beyond that point that no merging with community versions is possible. I don't like it either, but THAT IS THE REALITY.
I used to think so too, but you can fork GPLed code. You can't do it as an individual- only corporations can legally fork GPLed code. This is because they are legal individuals, and thus they are able to put their own programmers under NDAs (where you are not legally able to put your friends under NDAs w.r.t GPLed code) because the GPL applies only to them and the individual programmers are 'shielded' from being liable to the terms of the license. Doing so means they can accomplish substantially more development while remaining in an entirely closed process- and they will- the Corel beta argument was just the beginning, and apparently Corel was well within its rights. I don't like it either, but at this point a corporation has more freedom to fork and withhold GPLed code than an OSS developer has.
Seconded- "Artifical Life" is terrific:) its scope isn't quite as broad as "Hackers", but its depth is just as impressive, and the great thing about it is how it gives you tons and tons of program ideas. I defy any hacker to read this book without being inspired to do _something_:)
Hey, I consider that book _art_. I own a paperback copy and it might be the one book I'd rescue from a burning house:) The thing is as beautifully orchestrated as a fine novel- it's so much more than just information. Steven Levy absolutely rules:)
Hey, I have always been first to loudly insist that nothing could ever hurt GPLed development. I don't like it any more than you do, but I am questioning some of your assumptions. In particular, I am questioning whether poorer software would necessarily lead to less success. I'm questioning whether such a hijacking maneuver could be damaging, most significantly to the mainstream acceptance of open source. And I am questioning whether giving away a major tactical advantage to corporate 'individuals' is remotely healthy considering that those are the people patenting everything they possibly can. I never said, or suggested, that such a 'hijacking' would stop free software development entirely. I am saying that there's a danger that such a hijacking, combined with determined pursuit of all possible patents, could have two major effects:
"Linux" would mean 'MS' linux or whoever gains the upper hand as a corporation
Free software development could be forced not only into obscurity but entirely underground, because on the one hand improper patents can be bought that would prevent public/official work on entire areas of computing, and on the other hand a 'fake Linux' could be produced by hijacking, to confuse the public and _stop_ any inroads that Linux might be making.
If I was Microsoft, and I could be reasonably certain that the GPL applied not to individuals but only to the corporate entity, I would immediately take the opportunity to produce a Linux that was bundled with a great deal of proprietary software- which offered interfaces to Windows APIs. I'd get IE working on it, I'd bundle Office with it, I'd do everything possible to make it THE distribution to have around. The most important factor of this embrace and extend would not be the making an IE for linux- it would be making APIs available at all costs, and dumping the product on the market at a total loss to make damn sure that anybody who wants to make software for 'Linux' would be able to simply write software for Windows and then tell people to use a _particular_ Linux- MS linux! because that was the only 'compatible' version. It worked great for OS/2, and it will work great again. If you don't see the problem here... I don't know. I admit I don't share ESR's enthusiasm to co-assimilate with corporations and big business. As such, I am naturally more concerned at the prospect of a 'protected' way to completely debase the principle of free (libre) software and enable well-heeled corporations to exert added control on the market and the industry. It seems to me that a risk like this needs to be properly evaluated and taken seriously, and I'm one of the people formerly most fond of saying 'there's nothing to worry about, we have the GPL don't we?'. So many assumptions- that productivity is the only consideration, that 'cathedral' will automatically produce crap that is less robust, that Microsoft's testing process is worse than the distributed Linux bazaar (there are some serious omissions in Linux debugging, such as usability testing), that a heavily funded branded commercial Linux would _not_ damage the Linux market and cause intentional confusion in the mind of the customer... I appreciate the goodvibes but am not convinced. We'll see. And if Microsoft reads this and does what I outlined, they can test out whether the Microsoft Corporation really can move faster than the Open Source Movement. But faster or not- given that sort of opportunity, do you think they cannot take advantage of it, or produce massive success even if they have to half bribe people to do it and half make it all up?
I apologize for the spiteful remarks about you killing Linux. I was upset. This could indeed kill Linux- but it's not you doing it, or me, it's the legal situation of what a corporation is, for which neither of us are to blame. I am very sorry for sassing you in that manner, because it's really no joke.:(
"There are no patents, no trade secrets, no intellectual-property protections whatsoever. That's because no one person or company "owns" the software. A global, volunteer army of programmers create the software."
We would all like to believe that, but there might be a problem, and we need to have some lawyers' opinions on it. There would appear to be a loophole- maybe.
I've been having an argument with 'Fastolfe' in another Slashdot article, over application of the GPL, and he has raised a point that seems to have never occurred to anyone- and that could be fatal to the GPL and software using it. It has to do with a certain non-commonsense but possibly binding interpretation of what is a legal entity.
My argument was that regardless of context, a person conveying binary to another person was 'distribution', and the person distributing was subject to all the rules of the GPL. This includes being forbidden to work on the code if other restrictions prevented the person from living up to the GPL's rules. All this is in the GPL, and I read it literally as legal wording is meant to be read. It appeared to me that if a corporation was placing NDAs on internal developers, that this would forbid the developers from working on GPLed code unless they were allowed to follow the GPL's restrictions and got permission to distribute as individuals.
Under that interpretation, the GPL is bulletproof, and will 'route' information around attempts to block it. In any situation it would take only a single person to get information past a block, and all people cooperating on a private dev project would have to be keeping it private _voluntarily_ and could not be coerced without becoming unable to develop under the GPL at all. This is very obviously the _intent_ of the license. Unfortunately, there's a problem.
Fastolfe's position was this: a corporation is considered a legal entity. If a corporation has GPLed code, it can work on it in private as much as it likes, and only has to give source and let other people into its process when it feels like it. Furthermore, it is allowed to restrict its employees and forbid them to share information with the outside world, because for the purposes of the license agreement the code is being worked on by the corporation (a legal entity), and not the individuals. As such, the individuals can work on the code without personal liability as they are not working on it 'as themselves' but as parts of the corporation- and of course the whole point of a corporation is to do exactly this.
This is fatal to open source/free software, and in particular it is death to the GPL.
It's a question of practical distributed development. The reason the GPL works in the open source community is that people let each other into their process- even so, there is concern that a larger company like Red Hat will 'take over' by beginning to define what Linux must be. It is thought that this is impossible because of the GPL and the tendency of hackers to cooperate.
If corporations are able to work on GPLed source as themselves, it's as simple as this: Microsoft takes Linux. Microsoft develops an internal version of Linux, under tight wraps, as is their 'right' as a corporate entity, forbidding developers from communicating with others under harsh penalties, as is their right to make NDAs and restrict their employees. Microsoft then takes to releasing versions of Linux, as well-crafted as they can, using their own resources for distribution and promotion, and including whatever they need to (IE, Office) to make it the only distribution to own. The code that was originally GPL remains GPL, and source is duly released for only the _frozen_ and completed releases of the binaries- anyone attempting to interact with the GPLed code is told, quite legally, "That doesn't work with the current developer version, which is NDAed. If you're good we can hire you, you can sign the NDA, become _part_ of the corporate entity, and _then_ you can see it!".
As such, the corporation would be completely within the law and the GPL in hijacking development of GPLed source and 'leading' by ability to promote and distribute a particular version, flood the market with it. Anybody would be able to take final versions and do variations on them, but it would be trivially easy to make the MS version incompatible with any other version, because the active development would be under tight control.
The ONE point that would make all this possible is simply this: Is a corporate employee working on GPLed source the individual to whom the license applies, or is the corporation the one to whom the license applies and the individual 'insulated' from its effects?
That one question could change the world, and right now, I couldn't begin to guess what the legal answer truly is. The GPL is clearly aimed at applying to individuals, but the very concept of the corporation is aimed at 'shielding' individuals from exactly such obligations as the GPL attempts to impose. And if the corporation ends up able to legally and contractually maintain totally insulated GPLed development, Linux and any significant GPLed software is inevitably going to fork into mainstream corporate versions and the niche free versions we now know.
HELP! Is there a lawyer in the house, or anyone who can get it legally established that corporations cannot 'seize' GPLed source and fork it into 'corporate entity' owned development? This is a problem waiting to happen, and it does NOT seem that the answer is obviously favorable to open source. It could be fatal to open source as we know it.
You've raised a fair point. I'm starting from the position that any individual is a legal entity, and passing from any individual to any individual is 'distribution'. Do you, or anyone, have _legal_ backing for the viewpoint that anyone working for a corporation is not subject to the obligations of an individual, or responsible for those obligations? This is a _very_ important point, I think. It is possible that under some interpretations the legal system regarding this is fatal to all free software, and that the only option will be outright defiance of the legal system. So, the Big Question: If a corporation's employee downloads and works on a GPLed program, does the license apply to the person, or are the conditions of the license said to apply to the corporation itself, and all employees of the corpration have no rights under the law as individuals, and no ability to enter into contracts as individuals? This actually strikes a lot deeper than just the GPL, and I'd be very interested in what a real lawyer would have to say off the record about it. You, Fastolfe, may have just killed Linux >:) If your interpretation is correct, it is trivially easy and permitted for any corporation to do anything they want no matter how proprietary to any version of Linux or any software that is GPLed, restrict the information tightly, and then release only rigidly completed products without room for hackers to contribute anything. It also means any corporation can do this and keep a moving dev target internally, legally forbidding any communication with the outside world, making it impossible to interact with the corporate-controlled dev target. How does it feel to have killed the GPL and Linux? If you're wrong and I am right, then the longheld belief that no company can take over Linux stands unchallenged. If you are correct, we have no recourse in the legal system at all, and Linux can be forcibly forked and taken over as long as it is done by a corporate entity acting (as you explain) as one entity. Could we have a LAWYER please offer an opinion on this? Fastolfe has opened one _hell_ of a can of worms here. Is this in fact a fatal loophole, or not?
This could happen to any Linux game port in a heartbeat. As far as 'coexistence with Windows', it's a very bad sign. It might be that Linux can't trust the commercial world any more than the Mac can. What a rotten day for gaming (also today iEn, makers of Warbirds and Dawn Of Aces, laid off a big big chunk of their staff)
If I interpret the GPL correctly, you are not allowed to work with GPLed code if you are under legal obligation that prevents you from fully upholding the provisions of the GPL. Either you are legally able to distribute what you have with complete freedom, or you don't have legal permission to be working with the GPLed code at all. That means if there is an NDA or contract involved, it does not mean the (nonsensical) result that you are compelled to break the other contract: it means that you are not permitted to work on the GPLed code under those conditions. So if you have reason to worry about this, get yer paws off the GPLed code 'cause you aren't contractually allowed to work freely;P:)
You can't _have_ proprietary code mixed with the GPL, Fastolfe. That's why it's 'tainting'. The license is incompatible with other restrictions. It's quite clear about this. Yes, if you wanted to get technical and legalistic about it, coder X could be forced to give the source to coder Y because the license is GPL. There's no such thing as code that's based on GPLed code and gets to ignore the rules. That's why it's called tainting, and if you (you the programmer) don't like it, base your work off of some other code that isn't GPLed. You can't diminish the legal force of the license agreement by wishing it away. Microsoft themselves would not wish to cast doubt on license agreements being binding. The GPL is a Berlin Wall of code. It's like that on purpose and those of us who use it and defend it want it that way. It was written to be uncompromising, and to stay uncompromising. Companies not being able to customise GPLed programs for use with proprietary code is a GOOD thing. There's always BSD if you must do that, or why not just stay totally proprietary if you can't cooperate? But no- people expect to be able to use someone else's free code and exploit it and do nothing to match its spirit. The GPL says 'no way'. Write your own code if you must keep secrets, and much good may they do you as they'll probably be challenged in patent violation suits anyhow. As for Corel, they changed their terms. At no point did their methods of distribution change a thing. The license agreement says NOTHING about internal versus external distribution. The reality seems to be that distribution is 'passing from one legal entity to another'. Corel distributes every time a new person gets a copy of the binary or source. General public has nothing to do with it- legal terminology is LITERAL, and the GPL does not make exemptions for betas or anything else. It is _always_ in effect. That's why it's called 'tainting'. Making a smokescreen about this weakens the GPL by causing people to believe things about the license which are not supported in the wording of the license. Think literal literal literal, it's all about the most literal interpretation you can find, with no allowances for common sense or your desires. Hey, that's what the law is all about!
*grin* *chuckle* *ROFL* Of all the examples they could have picked... For those puzzled, Jimi did a freeform version of the Star Spangled Banner at woodstock, at deafening volume with feedback and complete digressions into other musical quotes like "Purple Haze" if I remember the story, and mutated the bit about 'the rockets' red glare' into a raging shriek of atonal feedback followed by a bomb explosion by way of political commentary. If anybody thinks a computer can take the notion of a national anthem and twist it into such a powerful, creative, and politically significant statement on its own volition, they are quite mad. You could program the thing to do it- but then YOU become the musician, indirectly. At any rate, these silly people (was it the reviewer or the developers who didn't notice this?) who suggest seeing what would happen if you fed the Hendrixbot 'The Star Spangled Banner' have inadvertently illustrated in the most graphic and unforgettable manner... just how much can be _lost_ >;)
Slashdot Mirror
Eeek! Captain, look at the sneer! It's his evil twin brother Lore! What have you done with our Data, foul fiend? ;)
People don't understand this very well. It is _NOT_ 3dNow or MMX. What we are talking about is a fairly large number of absolutely huge registers. If I'm not mistaken it'd also be possible to use them somewhat more inefficiently as ordinary registers, or as _sets_ of ordinary registers. :) now that I mention it, I have to seriously wonder whether Linux does its stuff by requiring a bit more space to work, and being beautifully unsophisticated about both disk and memory! ;)
The very first thing that comes to mind is not anything graphics related, but simply block moves. MacOS makes heavy use of double indirection, 'handles' to blocks that are moved by the Memory Manager. This API is widely used by applications and changes to the system's implementation would speed up most applications across the board, so long as they used Memory Manager calls. Asking the MacOS to allocate memory in a situation where it has to compact the application zone and move 60M of relocatable blocks could become quite radically faster if it could be done 128 bytes at a time. I think that sums it up, don't you?
I hope linux geeks know what relocatable blocks are. Maybe that is something only systems hackers have to know about, or not even then. It's basically a way of defragging and optimising memory like you defrag and optimize disk
How about newspeak where "free" means "your work belongs to your owner. The contents of your _mind_ belong to your owner. You don't have a right to any of it because you chose to sign it away..."e -information. Some versions of freedom are just plain better than others. Though I admit that isn't an argument to appeal to an anarchist ;)
That is the current situation of corporate programming. The fellow being sued because the contents of his mind belong to the company is a Texan who had a bright idea at home, and found that he no longer had any right to ideas of his own when they might make the company a profit.
_That_ is what RMS is against. Unless you are some sort of bizarrely anticorporation libertarian, you're arguing for a situation where it's less and less feasible to produce 'gifts' or 'work' unless you align with a powerful entity such as a corporation, which pays you in exchange for using your head as farmland for growing its ideas in- effectively, this viewpoint suggests the next life-form to take over the planet Earth will not be robots or AIs running amok, it will be the collective entity, corporations: legally given the status of entities, not subject to the same rules as humans, and power-grabbing as fast as they can, with Homo Sapiens Individualus set to go the way of the Neanderthal.
Which is _quite_ a digression, frankly, but it all bears directly upon your views of what freedom is. The GPL and all that goes with it are there for a particular result: in effect, it is for giving the most power to individuals. It did not appear in a vacuum, or from a situation of individuals sharing freely in public domain: while that was happening there was no need for a GPL. Instead, it appeared out of a situation where all development and research HAD BEEN sucked into totally restricted corporate forms. This is simple history, and the seed of the GPL was what happened over LISP machines, a corporate fight over AI that wrecked the MIT AI lab (a haven for public domain), leaving it lifeless. Stallman essentially swore, "never again", and the result became the GPL. It is not for freedom-in-every-sense. It is for freedom-for-individuals-to-hack-together-and-shar
Interestingly, it does not even _force_ programming freedom in the fullest sense. I've written RMS about the 'corporate loophole' I found in the GPL, to get his opinion. His take on it is this: he's not at all happy that corporations can take GPLed code and internally develop it with all the unfree frills and trappings like NDAs and such, only 'freeing' the code upon release- which is something he accepts can happen- but he does not think it is overly significant, because he figures that truly free development (and free exchange of information) will be able to outperform development efforts hindered by the desire to make their programmers unfree.
I can live with that. I think it's a very serious concern to have the everpresent potential of forkin' corporations around trying to influence things in greedy ways and cause confusion and intentional incompatibility, but I can't deny that personally I'd be with Stallman, sharing information, so his view that free cooperation will beat unfree manipulation is something I can happily strive to _make_ realistic. That is, after all, what I want to do with my life, so what's the big disaster if it's not being done in a protected environment? Might as well just work to prove Stallman right, rather than work to keep corporations from abusing the GPL system in an inefficient way.
cypherpunks/cypherpunks used to work, and the NYT has decided their ability to control hacker readers is more important than their demographics of people actually reading their e-rag. So they appear to be reading Slashdot, and _killing_ accounts mentioned here. :P
I read the article, and I didn't sign up for anything. All you have to do is figure out password variations quicker than they can make them invalid. I hit one that has not been made invalid. I'm not going to repeat it here. It can just stay valid, thank you- representing the shared, passed-around newspaper of some clever hacker who could hit on a combination that another hacker could guess, but which would not be tracked and invalidated by whatever lunatic at the Times is responsible for at all costs making sure people _don't_ read the Times without logging in.
Here's a question. If RMS reads the times, with his traditional login/PW of rms/rms, do they refuse to allow him the password he uses for himself, just because he lets other people know it? For a basically trivial information site which one would think they'd _want_ readership for?
*ahem* _nice_ spin ;P
It isn't. I've never been much for idealism. In this context I would like to think of myself as a realist- my best bet for doing well and being known in the industry in future is to do what I'm doing, start GPLing stuff NOW and not waste time attempting to GetRichQuick in the computer industry. For what I do, the facts are that doing creative work in the industry is very like trying to be a professional musician- if you want to have worse odds than playing the lottery and be exploited at the same time, go for it!
That's the "facts". I don't see how accepting these facts is 'idealism', indeed it might well be called harsh cynicism about the industry. To me, the idealism is all these merry businessmen thinking they can make infinite money by playing peculiar money games- and especially, the idealism of the naive and stubborn programmers who persist in believing that they have a chance at hitting the big time. Doing what, I might ask?
I won't accuse you back of being idealistic, but I would suggest that I don't fit the pattern either. Maybe the fact that I want to do something good in society is enough, but your comment does certainly sound more dismissive than that. I'm glad we sorted out this matter by pointing out that my opinion is based on facts rather than just idealism and _unwillingness_ to play vaporbusinessman. In fact, there's a very crap chance of that even working: people might as well go program free software, then at least they can be sure of keeping their own work!
Absolutely. I _have_ lost my belief in selling good ideas for money. I also don't believe people getting rich by gambling on internet startups are a good thing. I've been reading articles and analyses (some linked from Slashdot) suggesting that the tremendous emphasis on cash-out is leading to profusion of internet businesses which are not remotely viable businesses, in which the only point is to cash out, and no sound business plan or procedures are in place. Businesses which are experiencing 130% turnover in five years (if that!). Businesses which, although they have no plan for the future beyond the cash-out, although they turn over like a revolving door, are buying up intellectual property at a staggering rate through building patent portfolios to prevent anyone else from doing work comparable to theirs- without doing *squat* to see to it that they will be longterm stable businesses able to _deliver_ on those patented benefits to the consumer for years.
So on the one hand, business seems to be trying to stake out permanent claims to areas of computing. On the other hand, it seems to be so in love with cash-out that these permanent claims risk becoming ghost towns (nuclear waste zones?) when the companies cash out, get bought and cease caring about being able to deliver on their promises- producing large areas of computing where nothing is happening, but the 'land' is owned by whoever bought out the company that used to be there, and No Trespassing signs are up.
THIS is what your getting rich truly means in the modern day. Capitalism may not have failed- indeed, communism did not fail AS A CONCEPT, so how could Capitalism fail? But OUR VERSION of Capitalism is in the process of crashing and burning.
I opt out. If it was a military or civil matter, I might be throwing grenades, so bitterly do I agree with what's going on. It is not, it is an economic matter, so I am doing everything I can to aid the biggest enemy of the current Capitalism that I can find. I figure that's the free software movement, since it is solely concerned with establishing products that work, available to all, and that are impossible to withhold for economic punishment. So I'm doing what I can with that. It may not be the greatest thing to ever hit the world, but I know what I want to do with it.
"The whole point of the danger of the fork is that you are going to have two actively developing groups working on increasingly incompatible code confusing the market." :)
No, that's the whole point of the fork- if your agenda is to dissipate the potential threat of Linux. Look, pretend you read that bit of analysis in the middle of the Halloween Document, then maybe you'll see it in context. I'm just trying to highlight potential attacks before they happen so we have an idea what to do about them. I've talked to RMS on the subject. He is not happy that people can be forced to work on GPLed code in an unfree way, but he thinks the community can always outperform anyone silly enough to restrict people's communication. I'm not sure that's true. Prove me wrong!
Ob means obligatory, and BZZZZZT try again means that Gates never invented BASIC. You want to take Gates out of that top list and put "John Kemeny of Dartmouth" in his place. That's who invented BASIC, and maybe some day more people will give him credit for it than Gates.
http://www.airwindows.com/rotsos/index. html
;) and there is another way, and it is FREE.
Like it? Take it. It's an engine for generating entire universes, planets down to the 3dpi resolution, complete overwhelming amounts of synthetic data into the billions of gigabytes, and it's all generated from a 16M datafile and a series of extremely evil and effective hacks, and a profound desire for doing game optimizations and returning the results FAST FAST FAST so the game doesn't suck.
No, it's not fractal. Yes, IT IS GPL. It's actually not even C (I'm told it looks like Python code- it's a funky Mac language called REALbasic that kicks butt for rapid prototyping but is not itself free) but that makes no difference- it is GPLed, and it is entirely original.
Why isn't everybody doing it? Because it's too radical an idea to generate entire universes, whole planets entirely emergently, and then _explore_ them to find interesting places. Game developers usually want to write their 'maps' by hand, or at least edit them. In doing so, they limit themselves to little weenie maps
I don't know who else is out there ready to hit the world with genuinely innovative stuff under the GPL. I'm doing it. Why? Because I have no confidence in the ability of the U.S. legal system to protect me or my ideas. I have no confidence in business to be able to help me implement them. All the promises about innovating and making millions off of great ideas are all crap- that doesn't happen anymore, those days are over. And since the promise to the independent developer is a lie, I'm giving it away like crackdotcom gave away Golgotha when they went out of business- except I didn't go out of business. Take this stuff, do neat things with it, I certainly intend to. There will always be a version of it you can use in code.
GPL doesn't seem to produce new, original stuff, hell! _ALL_ the stuff I've GPLed has been new, and some of it has been original by any standard (mind showing me the other space based game universes with nineteen million individually plotted stars, most of which have specific and consistently repeatable planets and entire landscapes and resource maps? That's what this is).
I rushed this stuff into public view out of fear that patents were being written that touched some aspects of it. Any aspect- I don't labor under the misconception that patents make sense, or expect that anyone was duplicating the more large scale aspects. I also rushed it out there because of just such attitudes as yours. I wanted to prove them wrong, and continue to work at doing that. GPL is not a world of derivative crud. It is a philosophical statement, it is growing, and it is a way for a developer to be guaranteed freedom no matter what the commercial world might do to step on it or stop it. As the commercial world grows more and more poisonous, the number of people doing wholly original work and GPLing it will only grow.
"M$ could no more "hijack" Linux or anything Gnu"...
*siiiiigh*
Yes they could, and this is how. They can take anything GPLed and work with it. They legally will be working on it as a _single_ entity, that's the point of a corporation. They can get as many highly paid Unix gurus as they can afford, to do good work, and they can NDA them up the wazoo until the gurus can't even _breathe_ the smallest detail of the work to peers, because it remains a 'purely internal affair'. Then, all they have to do is release the final product, spend a _lot_ of money and effort to market the hell out of it, and quickly get busy on the next totally closed version, because the second they release a version they lose control over it and must change all the APIs in order to keep outside input from being relevant.
None of this says MS can stop _other_ people from making Linuxes, or even that other people can't end up getting all the information and source from _old_ versions of MS Linuxes. However, that's not the point. They can hijack it because they can develop it in a completely closed manner because they are one entity under the law. The rest is pure arm-wrestling for marketshare. They're good at that, though not good enough to eliminate all traces of other linuxes in this situation. What would end up happening if they were really serious about this is that MS Linux would hit and hold about 60-70% of Linux marketshare, possibly through the bundling of proprietary software like IE, and never get more because it would be too hard to deprecate older versions, and any other distribution would be able to get total access to the guts of older versions- only the NEXT version would be totally inaccessible. This also assumes that people can be conditioned to seek out and acquire new versions of software.
"If you create the program, you control the source. You can choose a free or proprietary license." Not neccesarily. If you are working on GPLed source (and God help you if you're using a license even less free!) for a corporation, you control nothing. You can be legally barred from communicating with other developers on the same program. Finally, you obviously can't choose the license for what you created (as the GPL is 'tainting'), but you also can be completely controlled by your employer and forced to code things the way they want them done by simple pressure- if you won't, they will fire you from the project and find someone who will.
To put it in the context originally intended, if you are a corporate programmer, you could be forbidden to work on any program as an individual, and anything you do may be claimed to be company property. As such, you can write the code but not be free to choose the license- furthermore, the corporation can choose to use the GPL and continue to forbid you any contact with your peers, insisting that only final results be publically released. They can also order you to change around everything to make it totally incompatible with outside forks of your program, fire you if you refuse and confiscate the _interim_ code you had (anything released is fair game), refusing you access to the GPLed source you were in the process of writing.
*hammer* *hammer* *hammer* at these points, seeing as they are going to be affecting us GPL programmers whether or not we believe it... it's really quite plain and the corporation would be right in the law when doing this. Yes it's a problem.
"If the fork illustrated by #1 does happen, the GPL ensures that a third party can come along and find a way to make the two forked code bases distributable as a unit, with perhaps a compiler switch or a 'compile-time' module or patch."
No it does not.
Any corporation (but it has to be a corporation) can legally maintain a 'fork' under active development while refusing to release any information about their version of the GPLed code. They are only required to release source when they distribute binaries to 'another entity', and for the purposes of the law the corporation is ONE entity and they have as much right to restrict their employees with NDAs and draconian penalties as you have the right to insist that your left ankle not release your GPLed code until you're ready to do so.
As such, any corporation is not only able to maintain a fork of GPLed source under tight control of the intellectual property, they are obliged to do so under their obligation to their stockholders and could be sued for not taking the opportunity to fork and try to take over the code. Not only that, by the same token they could be sued for allowing outsiders into their process of working on GPLed code because power and control that reaches the community is power that isn't going to the corporation, and they are obligated under the law to not 'give away' their opportunities.
Corel was just the beginning- expect all corporations to understand this (and practice it, out of habit, even before understanding their position). Any GPLed code is subject to being forcibly forked into the community version, and more well-funded corporate versions for which no community involvement is ever possible- instead it is 'read-only' but you cannot effectively work with a fork when you are not legally allowed to share information, and unless you are an employee of the company, all they need do is use their customary NDAs (or indeed waivers of IP so the corporation keeps all rights to the interim code) and sue anyone for violating them. And win- because to the GPL, a corporation is _one_ person, and that person cannot be forced to release binaries, it can only be forced to release source with binaries. It's trivially easy to keep development going so that, when the source _is_ released, the dev team has already advanced far enough beyond that point that no merging with community versions is possible.
I don't like it either, but THAT IS THE REALITY.
I used to think so too, but you can fork GPLed code. You can't do it as an individual- only corporations can legally fork GPLed code. This is because they are legal individuals, and thus they are able to put their own programmers under NDAs (where you are not legally able to put your friends under NDAs w.r.t GPLed code) because the GPL applies only to them and the individual programmers are 'shielded' from being liable to the terms of the license.
Doing so means they can accomplish substantially more development while remaining in an entirely closed process- and they will- the Corel beta argument was just the beginning, and apparently Corel was well within its rights.
I don't like it either, but at this point a corporation has more freedom to fork and withhold GPLed code than an OSS developer has.
Seconded- "Artifical Life" is terrific :) its scope isn't quite as broad as "Hackers", but its depth is just as impressive, and the great thing about it is how it gives you tons and tons of program ideas. I defy any hacker to read this book without being inspired to do _something_ :)
Hey, I consider that book _art_. I own a paperback copy and it might be the one book I'd rescue from a burning house :) :)
The thing is as beautifully orchestrated as a fine novel- it's so much more than just information. Steven Levy absolutely rules
"Let's go for it!" == #1 get-picked-up line to use around the whole football team ;P (yeesh!)
I never said, or suggested, that such a 'hijacking' would stop free software development entirely. I am saying that there's a danger that such a hijacking, combined with determined pursuit of all possible patents, could have two major effects:
- "Linux" would mean 'MS' linux or whoever gains the upper hand as a corporation
- Free software development could be forced not only into obscurity but entirely underground, because on the one hand improper patents can be bought that would prevent public/official work on entire areas of computing, and on the other hand a 'fake Linux' could be produced by hijacking, to confuse the public and _stop_ any inroads that Linux might be making.
If I was Microsoft, and I could be reasonably certain that the GPL applied not to individuals but only to the corporate entity, I would immediately take the opportunity to produce a Linux that was bundled with a great deal of proprietary software- which offered interfaces to Windows APIs. I'd get IE working on it, I'd bundle Office with it, I'd do everything possible to make it THE distribution to have around. The most important factor of this embrace and extend would not be the making an IE for linux- it would be making APIs available at all costs, and dumping the product on the market at a total loss to make damn sure that anybody who wants to make software for 'Linux' would be able to simply write software for Windows and then tell people to use a _particular_ Linux- MS linux! because that was the only 'compatible' version.It worked great for OS/2, and it will work great again. If you don't see the problem here... I don't know. I admit I don't share ESR's enthusiasm to co-assimilate with corporations and big business. As such, I am naturally more concerned at the prospect of a 'protected' way to completely debase the principle of free (libre) software and enable well-heeled corporations to exert added control on the market and the industry.
It seems to me that a risk like this needs to be properly evaluated and taken seriously, and I'm one of the people formerly most fond of saying 'there's nothing to worry about, we have the GPL don't we?'. So many assumptions- that productivity is the only consideration, that 'cathedral' will automatically produce crap that is less robust, that Microsoft's testing process is worse than the distributed Linux bazaar (there are some serious omissions in Linux debugging, such as usability testing), that a heavily funded branded commercial Linux would _not_ damage the Linux market and cause intentional confusion in the mind of the customer... I appreciate the goodvibes but am not convinced. We'll see. And if Microsoft reads this and does what I outlined, they can test out whether the Microsoft Corporation really can move faster than the Open Source Movement. But faster or not- given that sort of opportunity, do you think they cannot take advantage of it, or produce massive success even if they have to half bribe people to do it and half make it all up?
I apologize for the spiteful remarks about you killing Linux. I was upset. This could indeed kill Linux- but it's not you doing it, or me, it's the legal situation of what a corporation is, for which neither of us are to blame. :(
I am very sorry for sassing you in that manner, because it's really no joke.
"There are no patents, no trade secrets, no intellectual-property protections whatsoever. That's because no one person or company "owns" the software. A global, volunteer army of programmers create the software."
We would all like to believe that, but there might be a problem, and we need to have some lawyers' opinions on it. There would appear to be a loophole- maybe.
I've been having an argument with 'Fastolfe' in another Slashdot article, over application of the GPL, and he has raised a point that seems to have never occurred to anyone- and that could be fatal to the GPL and software using it. It has to do with a certain non-commonsense but possibly binding interpretation of what is a legal entity.
My argument was that regardless of context, a person conveying binary to another person was 'distribution', and the person distributing was subject to all the rules of the GPL. This includes being forbidden to work on the code if other restrictions prevented the person from living up to the GPL's rules. All this is in the GPL, and I read it literally as legal wording is meant to be read. It appeared to me that if a corporation was placing NDAs on internal developers, that this would forbid the developers from working on GPLed code unless they were allowed to follow the GPL's restrictions and got permission to distribute as individuals.
Under that interpretation, the GPL is bulletproof, and will 'route' information around attempts to block it. In any situation it would take only a single person to get information past a block, and all people cooperating on a private dev project would have to be keeping it private _voluntarily_ and could not be coerced without becoming unable to develop under the GPL at all. This is very obviously the _intent_ of the license. Unfortunately, there's a problem.
Fastolfe's position was this: a corporation is considered a legal entity. If a corporation has GPLed code, it can work on it in private as much as it likes, and only has to give source and let other people into its process when it feels like it. Furthermore, it is allowed to restrict its employees and forbid them to share information with the outside world, because for the purposes of the license agreement the code is being worked on by the corporation (a legal entity), and not the individuals. As such, the individuals can work on the code without personal liability as they are not working on it 'as themselves' but as parts of the corporation- and of course the whole point of a corporation is to do exactly this.
This is fatal to open source/free software, and in particular it is death to the GPL.
It's a question of practical distributed development. The reason the GPL works in the open source community is that people let each other into their process- even so, there is concern that a larger company like Red Hat will 'take over' by beginning to define what Linux must be. It is thought that this is impossible because of the GPL and the tendency of hackers to cooperate.
If corporations are able to work on GPLed source as themselves, it's as simple as this: Microsoft takes Linux. Microsoft develops an internal version of Linux, under tight wraps, as is their 'right' as a corporate entity, forbidding developers from communicating with others under harsh penalties, as is their right to make NDAs and restrict their employees. Microsoft then takes to releasing versions of Linux, as well-crafted as they can, using their own resources for distribution and promotion, and including whatever they need to (IE, Office) to make it the only distribution to own. The code that was originally GPL remains GPL, and source is duly released for only the _frozen_ and completed releases of the binaries- anyone attempting to interact with the GPLed code is told, quite legally, "That doesn't work with the current developer version, which is NDAed. If you're good we can hire you, you can sign the NDA, become _part_ of the corporate entity, and _then_ you can see it!".
As such, the corporation would be completely within the law and the GPL in hijacking development of GPLed source and 'leading' by ability to promote and distribute a particular version, flood the market with it. Anybody would be able to take final versions and do variations on them, but it would be trivially easy to make the MS version incompatible with any other version, because the active development would be under tight control.
The ONE point that would make all this possible is simply this: Is a corporate employee working on GPLed source the individual to whom the license applies, or is the corporation the one to whom the license applies and the individual 'insulated' from its effects?
That one question could change the world, and right now, I couldn't begin to guess what the legal answer truly is. The GPL is clearly aimed at applying to individuals, but the very concept of the corporation is aimed at 'shielding' individuals from exactly such obligations as the GPL attempts to impose. And if the corporation ends up able to legally and contractually maintain totally insulated GPLed development, Linux and any significant GPLed software is inevitably going to fork into mainstream corporate versions and the niche free versions we now know.
HELP! Is there a lawyer in the house, or anyone who can get it legally established that corporations cannot 'seize' GPLed source and fork it into 'corporate entity' owned development? This is a problem waiting to happen, and it does NOT seem that the answer is obviously favorable to open source. It could be fatal to open source as we know it.
You've raised a fair point.
I'm starting from the position that any individual is a legal entity, and passing from any individual to any individual is 'distribution'.
Do you, or anyone, have _legal_ backing for the viewpoint that anyone working for a corporation is not subject to the obligations of an individual, or responsible for those obligations? This is a _very_ important point, I think. It is possible that under some interpretations the legal system regarding this is fatal to all free software, and that the only option will be outright defiance of the legal system.
So, the Big Question:
If a corporation's employee downloads and works on a GPLed program, does the license apply to the person, or are the conditions of the license said to apply to the corporation itself, and all employees of the corpration have no rights under the law as individuals, and no ability to enter into contracts as individuals?
This actually strikes a lot deeper than just the GPL, and I'd be very interested in what a real lawyer would have to say off the record about it.
You, Fastolfe, may have just killed Linux >:)
If your interpretation is correct, it is trivially easy and permitted for any corporation to do anything they want no matter how proprietary to any version of Linux or any software that is GPLed, restrict the information tightly, and then release only rigidly completed products without room for hackers to contribute anything. It also means any corporation can do this and keep a moving dev target internally, legally forbidding any communication with the outside world, making it impossible to interact with the corporate-controlled dev target.
How does it feel to have killed the GPL and Linux? If you're wrong and I am right, then the longheld belief that no company can take over Linux stands unchallenged. If you are correct, we have no recourse in the legal system at all, and Linux can be forcibly forked and taken over as long as it is done by a corporate entity acting (as you explain) as one entity.
Could we have a LAWYER please offer an opinion on this? Fastolfe has opened one _hell_ of a can of worms here. Is this in fact a fatal loophole, or not?
This could happen to any Linux game port in a heartbeat. As far as 'coexistence with Windows', it's a very bad sign. It might be that Linux can't trust the commercial world any more than the Mac can. What a rotten day for gaming (also today iEn, makers of Warbirds and Dawn Of Aces, laid off a big big chunk of their staff)
If I interpret the GPL correctly, you are not allowed to work with GPLed code if you are under legal obligation that prevents you from fully upholding the provisions of the GPL. Either you are legally able to distribute what you have with complete freedom, or you don't have legal permission to be working with the GPLed code at all. That means if there is an NDA or contract involved, it does not mean the (nonsensical) result that you are compelled to break the other contract: it means that you are not permitted to work on the GPLed code under those conditions. ;P :)
So if you have reason to worry about this, get yer paws off the GPLed code 'cause you aren't contractually allowed to work freely
You can't _have_ proprietary code mixed with the GPL, Fastolfe. That's why it's 'tainting'. The license is incompatible with other restrictions. It's quite clear about this.
Yes, if you wanted to get technical and legalistic about it, coder X could be forced to give the source to coder Y because the license is GPL. There's no such thing as code that's based on GPLed code and gets to ignore the rules. That's why it's called tainting, and if you (you the programmer) don't like it, base your work off of some other code that isn't GPLed. You can't diminish the legal force of the license agreement by wishing it away. Microsoft themselves would not wish to cast doubt on license agreements being binding.
The GPL is a Berlin Wall of code. It's like that on purpose and those of us who use it and defend it want it that way. It was written to be uncompromising, and to stay uncompromising.
Companies not being able to customise GPLed programs for use with proprietary code is a GOOD thing. There's always BSD if you must do that, or why not just stay totally proprietary if you can't cooperate? But no- people expect to be able to use someone else's free code and exploit it and do nothing to match its spirit. The GPL says 'no way'. Write your own code if you must keep secrets, and much good may they do you as they'll probably be challenged in patent violation suits anyhow.
As for Corel, they changed their terms. At no point did their methods of distribution change a thing. The license agreement says NOTHING about internal versus external distribution. The reality seems to be that distribution is 'passing from one legal entity to another'. Corel distributes every time a new person gets a copy of the binary or source. General public has nothing to do with it- legal terminology is LITERAL, and the GPL does not make exemptions for betas or anything else. It is _always_ in effect. That's why it's called 'tainting'. Making a smokescreen about this weakens the GPL by causing people to believe things about the license which are not supported in the wording of the license. Think literal literal literal, it's all about the most literal interpretation you can find, with no allowances for common sense or your desires. Hey, that's what the law is all about!
*grin* *chuckle* *ROFL*
Of all the examples they could have picked...
For those puzzled, Jimi did a freeform version of the Star Spangled Banner at woodstock, at deafening volume with feedback and complete digressions into other musical quotes like "Purple Haze" if I remember the story, and mutated the bit about 'the rockets' red glare' into a raging shriek of atonal feedback followed by a bomb explosion by way of political commentary.
If anybody thinks a computer can take the notion of a national anthem and twist it into such a powerful, creative, and politically significant statement on its own volition, they are quite mad. You could program the thing to do it- but then YOU become the musician, indirectly. At any rate, these silly people (was it the reviewer or the developers who didn't notice this?) who suggest seeing what would happen if you fed the Hendrixbot 'The Star Spangled Banner' have inadvertently illustrated in the most graphic and unforgettable manner... just how much can be _lost_ >;)