This doesn't completely answer your question, but according to this page...
the GNU compiler for the Ada language is being funded by the US Air Force, which believes this is the most cost-effective way to get a high quality compiler
For a list of unofficial translations of the GPL into 31 different languages (including five into spanish) see this article. The official position of the translations (from the above site) is...
The reason the FSF does not approve these translations as officially valid is that checking them would be difficult and expensive (needing the help of bilingual lawyers in other countries). Even worse, if an error did slip through, the results could be disastrous for the whole free software community. As long as the translations are unofficial, they can't do any harm, and we hope they help more people understand the GPL.
Where in the Constitution is Freedom of Privacy stated?
We're getting way OT here, but checking my version of the Constitution it looks like Amendment IV is a good candidate...
The right of the people to be secure in their persons, houses, papers, and effects, against unreasonable searches and seizures, shall not be violated, and no warrants shall issue, but upon probable cause, supported by oath or affirmation, and particularly describing the place to be searched, and the persons or things to be seized.
...and of course we shouldn't forget about the ninth amendment...
The enumeration in the Constitution, of certain rights, shall not be construed to deny or disparage others retained by the people.
Well the tenth amendment is also intersting...
The powers not delegated to the United States by the Constitution, nor prohibited by it to the states, are reserved to the states respectively, or to the people.
...because if you live in a state like Montana, your state constituion says...
Section 10. Right of privacy. The right of individual privacy is essential to the well-being of a free society and shall not be infringed without the showing of a compelling state interest.
in a legally signed document scenario, you might arange for an electronic notary to annotate your document with the date you signed it and then sign the annoted document. Then people could tell whether the document was signed before your key was compromised, and a fraudster needs to get at both your secret and that of the notary.
Hmmm...that works for the patch repository, but I'm not sure it's perfect for the legal situation. Let's say Alice wants to get out of a digital contract with Bob, she merely has to state that her key was compromised _before_ the notary's time stamp. But I'll bet that someone has already come up with a better contract signing algorithm.
Why stop at just regulating technicians? I see a lot of low quality posting on Slashdot that I would prefer not to see. Maybe the government should regulate Slashdot posters to ensure high quality posts. I mean, if I'm a sysadmin for a large company and I take some advice from "Ask Slashdot" respondents, I could royaly screw up my network. And for that matter, I see a lot of low quality advice from untrusted sources all over the internet. What we probably need is a government controlled firewall to protect us from all of the bad things we might encounter on the 'Net. I'm also concerned about buggy software. It costs untold billions in security breaches. And I suspect that whole Linux thing is merely a trojan, waiting for a critical mass of people to adopt it, before it unleashes itself on an unsuspecting world. I know I would feel a lot better if people who wrote and/or distributed software were regulated. Of course hardware is no different, just think of all the copyright violations that could be avoided if hardware was regulated to prevent unauthorized copying of copyrighted material. That's probably another $100 billion or so that could be saved by just a little more regulation. And anyone who would oppose these ideas is probably just a terrorist scumbag and we should lock him up without trial or due process. Trials and due process cost a big-ole bundle of money and our goal is to save people (taxpayers) money with just a little bit government regulation. Arrrrgh! Come on people, THINK OF THE CHILDREN!
Grabbing my copy off the shelf, I notice on the copyright page...
Copyright (C) 2002 Free Software Foundation, Inc.
along with this message...
Permission is granted to make and distribute verbatim copies of the book provided the copyright notice and this permission notice are preserved on all copies. Permission is granted to copy and distribute modified version of the book under the condition for verbatim copying Permission is granted to copy and distribute translations of this book into another, from the original English, with respect to the conditions on distribution of modified versions above, provided that it has been approved by the Free software Foundation.
and on the first page of every chapter is this notice...
Verbatim copying and distribution of this entire article is permitted in any medium, provided this notice is preserved
Elections are flawed. Stated a slightly more contentious way; collective decision making is flawed. That is why it is important to limit the amount of voting that is needed in the first place and why individual liberty is so important. When I go to the store I can vote for Coke or Pepsi. Or I can vote for both on the same shopping spree. Or maybe most importantly, I can boycott all caffinated sugar water. And with a constituency of one, whatever I vote for wins. All without impacting what anyone else would choose. That is why those who plead for a more informed voting citizenry are misguided. A voter can't/won't/shouldn't have to take the time to study every issue (even the ones he doesn't care one iota about) on the ballot.
So I'll follow up with my favorite quote on voting by Marilyn vos Savant (Okay, it is not exactly about voting, but you get the point),
When you spend your own money on yourself (such as buying yourself a tie or a handbag), you do an excellent job of keeping the cost down and getting exactly what you want. But when you spend you own money on someone else (such as buying a gift tie and hand bag for your parents), you still keep the cost down, but you don't get them what they'd choose themselves. (Think about all the gifts you've ever received; what percentage of them would you have chosen yourself?) Even worse, when you spend a third party's money on someone else, you not only don't get the recipient what he or she would choose, there's no pressure to keep the cost under control. (Imagine being allowed to charge that gift tie to the "taxpayers" instead of to your own account; would you worry abouth the cost?)
Here is one ray of sunshine though. In the state of Oregon you sign up on the No Call List and
"A telemarketer who unlawfully calls a telephone number on the 'No Call' List violates Oregon's Unlawful Trade Practices
Act (ORS 646.605 - 646.656), and is subject to civil penalties of up to $25,000 per violation."
After signing up, the number of unsolicited phone calls I get has dropped to zero.
...and if your idea is worth the $12,000,000 to $40,000,000 in sales Don Lancaster says it should in order to break-even, the cost of a good patent attorney should be worth while.
One would think the big number in each corner would be a pretty big giveaway as to the bill's value.
But would it be too much to ask for them to change the font? Something basic like Courier, without all of the curlicues would go a long way towards increasing quick recognition.
Slashdot Mirror
You might want to check out the League for Programming Freedom
Creative Commons might have what you are looking for. Licenses for other artistic works like music, books, etc.
The FSF has an extensive article about what you can do to help the GNU Project, along with a section specifically mentioning the FSF.
You should check out Mr. Moglen's article about this very issue.
Microsoft's anti-GPL offensive this summer has sparked renewed speculation about whether the GPL is ``enforceable.'' This particular example of ``FUD'' (fear, uncertainty and doubt) is always a little amusing to me. I'm the only lawyer on earth who can say this, I suppose, but it makes me wonder what everyone's wondering about: Enforcing the GPL is something that I do all the time. Because free software is an unorthodox concept in contemporary society, people tend to assume that such an atypical goal must be pursued using unusually ingenious, and therefore fragile, legal machinery. But the assumption is faulty. The goal of the Free Software Foundation in designing and publishing the GPL, is unfortunately unusual: we're reshaping how programs are made in order to give everyone the right to understand, repair, improve, and redistribute the best-quality software on earth. This is a transformative enterprise; it shows how in the new, networked society traditional ways of doing business can be displaced by completely different models of production and distribution. But the GPL, the legal device that makes everything else possible, is a very robust machine precisely because it is made of the simplest working parts. The essence of copyright law, like other systems of property rules, is the power to exclude. The copyright holder is legally empowered to exclude all others from copying, distributing, and making derivative works. This right to exclude implies an equally large power to license--that is, to grant permission to do what would otherwise be forbidden. Licenses are not contracts: the work's user is obliged to remain within the bounds of the license not because she voluntarily promised, but because she doesn't have any right to act at all except as the license permits. But most proprietary software companies want more power than copyright alone gives them. These companies say their software is ``licensed'' to consumers, but the license contains obligations that copyright law knows nothing about. Software you're not allowed to understand, for example, often requires you to agree not to decompile it. Copyright law doesn't prohibit decompilation, the prohibition is just a contract term you agree to as a condition of getting the software when you buy the product under shrink wrap in a store, or accept a ``clickwrap license'' on line. Copyright is just leverage for taking even more away from users. The GPL, on the other hand, subtracts from copyright rather than adding to it. The license doesn't have to be complicated, because we try to control users as little as possible. Copyright grants publishers power to forbid users to exercise rights to copy, modify, and distribute that we believe all users should have; the GPL thus relaxes almost all the restrictions of the copyright system. The only thing we absolutely require is that anyone distributing GPL'd works or works made from GPL'd works distribute in turn under GPL. That condition is a very minor restriction, from the copyright point of view. Much more restrictive licenses are routinely held enforceable: every license involved in every single copyright lawsuit is more restrictive than the GPL. Because there's nothing complex or controversial about the license's substantive provisions, I have never even seen a serious argument that the GPL exceeds a licensor's powers. But it is sometimes said that the GPL can't be enforced because users haven't ``accepted'' it. This claim is based on a misunderstanding. The license does not require anyone to accept it in order to acquire, install, use, inspect, or even experimentally modify GPL'd software. All of those activities are either forbidden or controlled by proprietary software firms, so they require you to accept a license, including contractual provisions outside the reach of copyright, before you can use their works. The free software movement thinks all those activities are rights, which all users ought to have; we don't even want to cover those activities by license. Almost everyone who uses GPL'd software from day to day needs no license, and accepts none. The GPL only obliges you if you distribute software made from GPL'd code, and only needs to be accepted when redistribution occurs. And because no one can ever redistribute without a license, we can safely presume that anyone redistributing GPL'd software intended to accept the GPL. After all, the GPL requires each copy of covered software to include the license text, so everyone is fully informed. Despite the FUD, as a copyright license the GPL is absolutely solid. That's why I've been able to enforce it dozens of times over nearly ten years, without ever going to court. Meanwhile, much murmuring has been going on in recent months to the supposed effect that the absence of judicial enforcement, in US or other courts, somehow demonstrates that there is something wrong with the GPL, that its unusual policy goal is implemented in a technically indefensible way, or that the Free Software Foundation, which authors the license, is afraid of testing it in court. Precisely the reverse is true. We do not find ourselves taking the GPL to court because no one has yet been willing to risk contesting it with us there. So what happens when the GPL is violated? With software for which the Free Software Foundation holds the copyright (either because we wrote the programs in the first place, or because free software authors have assigned us the copyright, in order to take advantage of our expertise in protecting their software's freedom), the first step is a report, usually received by email to . We ask the reporters of violations to help us establish necessary facts, and then we conduct whatever further investigation is required. We reach this stage dozens of times a year. A quiet initial contact is usually sufficient to resolve the problem. Parties thought they were complying with GPL, and are pleased to follow advice on the correction of an error. Sometimes, however, we believe that confidence-building measures will be required, because the scale of the violation or its persistence in time makes mere voluntary compliance insufficient. In such situations we work with organizations to establish GPL-compliance programs within their enterprises, led by senior managers who report to us, and directly to their enterprises' managing boards, regularly. In particularly complex cases, we have sometimes insisted upon measures that would make subsequent judicial enforcement simple and rapid in the event of future violation. In approximately a decade of enforcing the GPL, I have never insisted on payment of damages to the Foundation for violation of the license, and I have rarely required public admission of wrongdoing. Our position has always been that compliance with the license, and security for future good behavior, are the most important goals. We have done everything to make it easy for violators to comply, and we have offered oblivion with respect to past faults. In the early years of the free software movement, this was probably the only strategy available. Expensive and burdensome litigation might have destroyed the FSF, or at least prevented it from doing what we knew was necessary to make the free software movement the permanent force in reshaping the software industry that it has now become. Over time, however, we persisted in our approach to license enforcement not because we had to, but because it worked. An entire industry grew up around free software, all of whose participants understood the overwhelming importance of the GPL--no one wanted to be seen as the villain who stole free software, and no one wanted to be the customer, business partner, or even employee of such a bad actor. Faced with a choice between compliance without publicity or a campaign of bad publicity and a litigation battle they could not win, violators chose not to play it the hard way. We have even, once or twice, faced enterprises which, under US copyright law, were engaged in deliberate, criminal copyright infringement: taking the source code of GPL'd software, recompiling it with an attempt to conceal its origin, and offering it for sale as a proprietary product. I have assisted free software developers other than the FSF to deal with such problems, which we have resolved--since the criminal infringer would not voluntarily desist and, in the cases I have in mind, legal technicalities prevented actual criminal prosecution of the violators--by talking to redistributors and potential customers. ``Why would you want to pay serious money,'' we have asked, ``for software that infringes our license and will bog you down in complex legal problems, when you can have the real thing for free?'' Customers have never failed to see the pertinence of the question. The stealing of free software is one place where, indeed, crime doesn't pay. But perhaps we have succeeded too well. If I had used the courts to enforce the GPL years ago, Microsoft's whispering would now be falling on deaf ears. Just this month I have been working on a couple of moderately sticky situations. ``Look,'' I say, ``at how many people all over the world are pressuring me to enforce the GPL in court, just to prove I can. I really need to make an example of someone. Would you like to volunteer?'' Someday someone will. But that someone's customers are going to go elsewhere, talented technologists who don't want their own reputations associated with such an enterprise will quit, and bad publicity will smother them. And that's all before we even walk into court. The first person who tries it will certainly wish he hadn't. Our way of doing law has been as unusual as our way of doing software, but that's just the point. Free software matters because it turns out that the different way is the right way after all. Eben Moglen is professor of law and legal history at Columbia University Law School. He serves without fee as General Counsel of the Free Software Foundation. Copyright © 2001 Eben Moglen Verbatim copying and distribution of this entire article is permitted in any medium, provided this notice is preserved.
We're getting way OT here, but checking my version of the Constitution it looks like Amendment IV is a good candidate...
Hmmm...that works for the patch repository, but I'm not sure it's perfect for the legal situation. Let's say Alice wants to get out of a digital contract with Bob, she merely has to state that her key was compromised _before_ the notary's time stamp. But I'll bet that someone has already come up with a better contract signing algorithm.
Why stop at just regulating technicians? I see a lot of low quality posting on Slashdot that I would prefer not to see. Maybe the government should regulate Slashdot posters to ensure high quality posts. I mean, if I'm a sysadmin for a large company and I take some advice from "Ask Slashdot" respondents, I could royaly screw up my network. And for that matter, I see a lot of low quality advice from untrusted sources all over the internet. What we probably need is a government controlled firewall to protect us from all of the bad things we might encounter on the 'Net. I'm also concerned about buggy software. It costs untold billions in security breaches. And I suspect that whole Linux thing is merely a trojan, waiting for a critical mass of people to adopt it, before it unleashes itself on an unsuspecting world. I know I would feel a lot better if people who wrote and/or distributed software were regulated. Of course hardware is no different, just think of all the copyright violations that could be avoided if hardware was regulated to prevent unauthorized copying of copyrighted material. That's probably another $100 billion or so that could be saved by just a little more regulation. And anyone who would oppose these ideas is probably just a terrorist scumbag and we should lock him up without trial or due process. Trials and due process cost a big-ole bundle of money and our goal is to save people (taxpayers) money with just a little bit government regulation. Arrrrgh! Come on people, THINK OF THE CHILDREN!
along with this message...
and on the first page of every chapter is this notice...So I'll follow up with my favorite quote on voting by Marilyn vos Savant (Okay, it is not exactly about voting, but you get the point),
Alabama, Alaska, Arkansas, California, Colorado, Connecticut, Florida, Georgia, Idaho, Indiana, Kansas, Kentucky, Louisiana, Maine, Massachusetts, Minnesota, Missouri, New York, Oklahoma, Oregon, Pennsylvania, Tennessee, Texas, Vermont, Wisconsin, Wyoming,
See Also, The Feds
After signing up, the number of unsolicited phone calls I get has dropped to zero.
Although $20 trillion from precious metal asteroid mining might provide some incentive.
But would it be too much to ask for them to change the font? Something basic like Courier, without all of the curlicues would go a long way towards increasing quick recognition.