Aside from the assumption of guilt being accorded RMS on the basis of one one-sided rant by someone who had a professional disagreement with the man, I agree with the overall gist of your comment. RMSes contributions aside, no one, regardless of their contribution, has the right to "stomp all over" anyone else, or limit their freedoms. RMS would almost certainly agree with you as well, and indeed insuring those freedoms is precisely why he authored the GPL to begin with.
Aside from the fact that I do not assume he is guilty, I agree with most of what you say as well. It doesn't matter whether this guy is right or wrong, and I think his comment to "never put anything you do under GPL" is misguided, but I do assume there were real events where he felt RMS had been underhanded. GPL and GNU is much larger than any one person, but RMS makes people feel like he thinks he owns it. He puts himself in the position of being the leader of a movement, and both he and his close associates owe it to everyone who contributes to respect that.
He is responsible for how he is percieved, so it does no good to say the accusations are exagerated. I didn't even know about the lignux thing. How can someone so brilliant in one way act so stupidly? IMHO, it's a fear response and he should just get over it and leave all the baggage behind. I really wish someone could reach him on this level because I really think it hurts the movement.
I've met him too, almost 20 years ago, about the time he wrote the the original GPL. At the time I was somewhat skeptical about it working, but I've always supported the basic idea. More recent events make it even more clear why software freedom is absolutely necessary, and I have nothing but the greatest respect for the insight (however motivated) that led to this. It has been a hugely successful undertaking, although far from complete or certain.
I really liked what you said in the original post because I think one of the dangers is fragmentation, and we really shouldn't be arguing about the small stuff. It is the essence of software that it wants to be free, but the real danger is from "the Architectures of Control", and their friends in Congress. I know the movement is resilient, but it is too dangerous to assume that internal bickering won't destroy it.
I'm sure both of us have exagerated our positions slightly to make them distinct, that's part of what makes for a good debate. It forces the other side to be clear about what they mean as well. I have no deep disagreement with anything you have written here.
Thanks for the excellent reply. That is more or less what I understood to be the case. I listen to my Windows experts even though I'm pretty actively staying away from getting too deep myself.
So what is the response of the Open/Free Source community to all of this? A Samba client on Windows might outperform the original code. The recent interview with Tresh made that clear. How hard would it be to make a replacement client? I know it won't be long before Palladium and related projects from MS make this even harder, but since when has that stopped anyone.
And what about an open replacement for their domain model? We went around this by using a MS domain controller with Samba servers. This was worthwhile because we needed both NFS and SMB from the same file systems. Even so there were some hoops to jump through.
If he controls both the server and the desktop, why use SMB at all?
I'm asking a serious question, becuase I don't know how easy it is to support NFS on Windows desktops. How much is all the MS naming service crap worth? Why not use and promote the open alternatives from the top down. TCP/IP, DNS, NFS, SMTP, ???.
If this sort of thing was provided as a turnkey package that a guy like this could use, it would give us another very credible example to point to. Sort of a Lindows Server, to steal the name but not the business model.
This should protect him from the service pack that breaks everything a lot more than using emulated MS protocols.
Color is exactly three dimentional. (At least as far as normal human vision is concerned.)
Then why is it alway represented by a two dimensional pallet? That's why I said "at least". And it isn't "exact" either, since many humans are missing at least one of the dimensions.
I don't think so. The US Navy or Coast Guard is able to operate on the high seas, although it may need some congressional support to do it legally. Applying international law implies that the damaged party is claiming protection of another state, which probably isn't the case here.
I think there is an international law of the sea, but it probably doesn't keep nations from enforcing their own laws. Maybe someone who knows can comment.
Very well put. I, and I'm sure many others, are right there with you on this. Freedom is the goal, and openness is an important step. Don't try to make all your arguments at once, it just confuses them. It's important to think and move strategically (oops, maybe I shouldn't give this away;-), after all MS does.
Many people coming from a proprietary mindset aren't able to make the complete leap from an information hoarding, toll-charging for every mile travelled mindset to the notion of software freedom, complete with all its ideals and, to the rest of us, obvious advantages of synergy, exponential cooperative growth and development of projects, and so on, but these very same people can and do make the leap toward understanding why the scientific method of sharing knowledge and submitting to rigorous peer review of code does lead to better software. It isn't the only aspect of free software that leads to better software, and it may not even be the most important factor, but it is a factor that they can understand. Once one has grown accustomed to these factors, and has moved one or more project to an open source or free software platform as a result, one begins to experience and learn the other advantages of free software (freedom from orphaned software, freedom from vendor coercion, freedom to set one's own upgrade cycle and timetable, freedom to fix libraries one's work depends on, rather than waiting months for the vendor to get around to it, freedom to leverage the work of others into getting a project out the door in a fraction of the time it would have otherwise taken, in short, freedom to use technology to serve one's business interests, rather than one's vendors' business intersts).
Sorry to include so much, but I don't think this can be emphasised enough. Open Source strengthens Free Source, and this is why. It's also central to my criticism of RMS's stance on LGPL. I was trying to find a link to his position paper on this and instead I found this which is even more disturbing. From this link:
Stallman recently tried what I would call a hostile takeover of the
glibc development. He tried to conspire behind my back and persuade
the other main developers to take control so that in the end he is in
control and can dictate whatever pleases him. This attempt failed but
he kept on pressuring people everywhere and it got really ugly. In
the end I agreed to the creation of a so-called "steering committee"
(SC). The SC is different from the SC in projects like gcc in that it
does not make decisions. On this front nothing changed. The only
difference is that Stallman now has no right to complain anymore since
the SC he wanted acknowledged the status quo. I hope he will now shut
up forever.
The morale of this is that people will hopefully realize what a
control freak and raging manic Stallman is. Don't trust him. As soon
as something isn't in line with his view he'll stab you in the back.
NEVER voluntarily put a project you work on under the GNU umbrella
since this means in Stallman's opinion that he has the right to make
decisions for the project.
Now, I'm all in favor of giving credit where credit is due, and clearly Stallman has done a lot, but it doesn't give him the right to stomp on people who are contributing to the GPL world.
The GPL is brilliant in a number of ways, most important being the freedom it brings to software. But get this, Stallman fanatics, once he put it out there, he doesn't own it. The most important aspect of the GPL is that it builds trust that no one will be able to take private advantage of what you have freely given.
I have no problem with anyone calling it GNU/Linux, but to insist on it is to try and control things. Do we need language police? Let's be clear, RMS does not deserve credit for 95% of Linux, although his actual contribution is substantial. I'd like to know what percentage of the developers who actually contributed code under GPL whether under FSF or otherwise actually support what RMS is trying to do with it.
All this bickering needs to stop, and stop now. It is unproductive and damaging. Isn't there anyone close enough that can get this accross? Are all his associates sycophants? We need to make the tent bigger, not smaller.
Openness is on the road to freedom. Again from the parent comment:
So, while the differentiation between Free Software and Open Source is important, this bickering between the two is quite asinine and counterproductive, and while software freedom may encompass a more complete and accurate picture of the benefits offered by free software than Open Source does, Open Source bridges the divide and helps make those advantages available to many who otherwise would have never taken the opportunity. In so doing Open Source provides an important, some might argue critical, service to the Free Software community, and despite any disagreements between the two, Open Source is most certainly not 'off-white.'
Stop fighting with our friends please, and keep up the good work.
It's not really a linear scale. The colors analogy is good in that it is at least two dimensional depending on how you look at it.
This debate goes around endlessly because some people think that selling software isn't a valid choice. I'm willing to go down that road, but you have to prove you case, not bludgeon people into submission.
If you are going to open your source, you have to consider the market dynamics. GPL, LGPL and compatible licenses create a commons and protect it in a way that BSD and public domain do not. If all the players are cooperating, the differences are not that important, but if someone doesn't play nice (for example the Wright Brothers story), you don't have any legal recourse with BSD and public domain terms. Yes they are less restrictive, but that is not a universal good. If I'm trying to make money on related products and services, it doesn't help me if someome takes my contribution private. In fact, it damages the community who want to share cooperatively whether their motivation is fun, profit, or both.
One point people seem to miss about BSD style licensing. Since you can take a derivative private, you can also take it GPL. You just have to give credit and such, and to the extent that the derived product is better and different, it is now a pure GPL base for further work. Sure, you can go back to the fork and take that private, but that is the perogative of those supporting the non-GPL fork.
If you don't need to make money on products and services (e.g. an academic research environment), then you are not damaged in the same way when someone takes a derivative private. Of course, you could do this by releasing under GPL (or better LGPL), and selling commercial licenses if someone wants to implement a commercial derivative.
This started from a knee-jerk criticism of the 'open' choice as represented by Bruce in his "Sincere Choice" initiative. This criticism is misguided. Bruce is pushing for Open Standards and interoperability which has little to do with licensing terms. Openness is the important feature of standards, and it is exactly what we want in terms of policy and law. It's a matter of choice, plain and simple.
Unless you propose to do away with software copyrights, it doesn't matter anyway. If the standard is made concrete in a reference implementation, all Open Source standards are equally good. If you can look at the source, it is easy enough to re-implement under any license you want if you can look at the reference. Would any GPL zealot want to give me legal hassles because I was reading the GPL source while writing my own? I think not, and they wouldn't have much of a legal position anyway.
Same thing with Sun's Java Community License. Would they sue a GPL project because they are looking at the Sun reference? If they did, it would prove the openness was a shame in a way that everyone can see. The certification issue is different, but still needs to be addressed for any non-free but open standard (Java in this case).
What all of this points to is that the issues are considerable more complex than any one or two sentence statement can do justice to. I watched the PBS program on the engineering of the towers, and the conclusion is that the design could have been better. You can't lay it all on the original engineering, but there were some big oversights. I have a lot of trouble with the fact that the central core and exit stairs did not have a reinforced concrete barrier. The fireproofing on the steel also needs to be looked at. We know they thought about airplane impact, at least from an accident standpoint even if they didn't predict that airplanes might be larger in the future. The fact that the fireproofing could be blown off in a impact was a risk that could have been considered, and should be for future designs. This is probably a solvable problem.
The real failures were essentially management failures that marginalized warnings, and inter-agency rivalries. I for one would feel a lot better if somebody would step up and say "we could have done better, we're sorry". It's just shameful what passes for leadership these days.
I find it difficult to believe that you have been using slack, since your message displays an amazing lack of it. That is Bob, or Dr. Bob Dobbs. He is both the most and least significant figure of the Church of the Subgenius. Perhaps I have already said to much.
How insightful that you could figure me out from such a short comment.
If only Billy boy were so insightful, then maybe he would go on with his plan to own the world and ignore us like he did before. Not that it would make much difference, just it would be a lot more peaceful during the transition.
In all likelyhood, the way they fight probably hastens their demise.
It's a take-back because the LGPL came into being because in many cases strict GPL made it difficult or at least questionable to even use GPL tools in the production of software for sale. Then much later RMS decides that too many people are using LGPL and he doesn't like it. That's a take back as far as I'm concerned. Who really cares to debate which is worse, I don't.
Making something LGPL instead of GPL doesn't make it or any derivatives any less available to the community, but it does mean there are fewer situation that you can use the code in. In my opinion it is a good thing for Free Source libraries to become widely used, and a bad thing to duplicate efforts. Limiting the use of LGPL does bad and limits good. It also makes the GPL is viral arguments true, or at least seem true and that isn't good either.
I don't have an employer to please at the moment, so I have no outside motivation to influence my opinion in this matter. You are free to think differently. The argument that GPL code is 'better' is not persuasive if it doesn't fit in their business model. Not everyone has academic salaries or other means of support, so these are real concerns of people who support the idea of Free Source in a deep way.
The no incentive to create a free alternative is bogus. If you think that, you are too concerned with the short term. In the long term the GPL model will win, and the flexibility of the LGPL is a good thing. Freedom is about choice after all.
Gates makes it a war, but we will fight it on our own terms. Isn't choosing the battlefield one of the key points in "The Art of War"?
I think it shows that the community knows how to have fun and laugh at itself. This is a good thing. Coolness is not all about flashy looks and high frame rates. Besides, I'm sure these things can be improved. Is it free source as well as being freely available?
I would think that is the point. As long as it isn't a weapon, or anything else that would be dangerous to people on the ground, I would think you can do it. The certainly could legislate more restrictions, but as far as I know, safety is the only consideration.
I hope this is the easier port. Since it runs in Linux on the Xbox, does that make a native Linux port easier than the Windows port? I don't game much, but I need something after I get bored with xbill.
I presume that to publish a signed app, you have to pay MS a large sum of money? Is it one-time or per game sold? What if you give them away?
Would this game work if you did? Do you need MS dev tools, or what? Slashdot wants to know.
If it's a one-time cost, I bet the funds could be raised to do it. There must be a way to drive a truck through the Xbox business model with this sort of think.
By the way, I think this is very cool, but I don't have or want an Xbox, so I don't care that much.
Seems to me that this sort of thing has a research value at least, if not a monitary value. If you can't care for it I would hope it either goes someplace that benefits everyone. For some items a private collector will give it a good home, but other things belong in a museum or an archive.
Like when you see that $450,000 table in the Antique Road Show. If you had it, you'd have to sell it unless you could adaquately care for it. Not necessarily to the highest bidder either.
If you actuall read everything in the article, you would know he had some venture capitalists sniffing around. By keeping it small and not having a big marketting staff to support, he has kept it going through the lean times.
The VCs will give you money to expand, but then if the climate turns, they might not be willing to keep funding. Now you have made lots of commitments to customers, employees and supliers that you just can't keep up.
About three years back I got a great job with a dotcom just when they got funded by a VC. By the end of the year, the company had doubled in size and by the next spring they had to lay off about half of the current staff. When I shook hands with the CEO on my way out I could tell he was very sad that he had let all of us down this way. The CTO that I reported too couldn't even look me in the face, but that's another story. Recently I heard the were absorbed by the VC and pretty much closed up their operation.
It gets pretty weird, doesn't it. What's to stop the RIAA from influencing the USG to send ships to sink or confescate the vessels? You'd probably be safer in the territorial waters of a state that won't enforce. They would certainly raise a diplomatic stink if another country came to enforce without permission.
Just another stake in the heart of "the architecture of control". I'm not about to support this sort of thing either in principle or through buying pirated CDs, but it does demonstrate the weakness of the RIAA position. If you treat your customers with respect, they won't disapoint you. Let those who won't pay even what it is worth to them worry about their own karma.
Their site is uncomfortably cagey about the $price. That probably means, some suit dickers with your boss, feeling out "what the market will bear". IE the most money they can get.
You need to understand that it is exactly this issue that causes a lot of the problems. It is really worth reading all of the talk transcript from the guy who is going to debate the RIAA VP next week. It is exactly because of the desire to extract every dime available under the utility curve that leads to the desire to create non-transferable licensing (restrict right of first sale) and a host of other evils that almost everyone objects to.
How awful is it if you actually PAID MONEY for the software? Face it, if your boss doesn't have bucks, you don't have a job. Somebody's paying for the Linux kernel to be developed - if it costs 1% more, is that a big deal?
It isn't that simple. If a commercial tool is needed to participate, it limits the scope. Not everyone working on any given free source project is getting paid. Ok, so you can grab bitkeeper for free to work on the Linux kernel, that's sort of ok, but now they say you can't work on some projects if you do that. Sort of silly if you ask me, since it just gives them (BitMover) a black eye in the community and it won't slow down the development of the free alternative. It is, in fact, pretty easy to argue the opposite based on discussion of the issue here. Lots of people who were on the fence for this issue are going to move away from their product.
The transcript that I linked above makes the point that we don't actually know if BitMover is hurting or helping themselves. If they just GPLed their tool, and charged for support, commercial licenses, and other stuff, they might do better in the long run. It is a leap of faith, but you gotta ask how much the change of EULA language will hurt them in the long run. It will encourage more people to push the free alternative, and work to make that tool competetive. If it was GPLed, they would have the whole community behind them, and a lot of people would buy their books and support in gratitute for the gift of their software.
These issues are even more stark if you want to work on free hardware. The free tools are in a primitive state, so you are in a bind of choosing a less desirable tool vs something free. The producers of the commercial tools are afraid of their business drying up, so they won't do anything if it might help the free tools compete with them. You say, ok, so I'll find a tool I can use for free on free hardware even if it is closed source, but that slows down the free alternatives.
This is where you start to get just how important GPL is and why it is such an important innovation. One of the big problems in the sub-chip level hardware design is that the big tool makers have everything locked up and they don't talk to each other very well.
There are some open standards, but the whole mentality of closed intellectual property creates this situation where the best minds are all working to recreate the same tools and chip functions in each closed universe. This is even worse than it is for software because there aren't nearly as many people working in hardware as with software, and it is getting more complex just as fast.
My gut tells me that any company that makes the leap of faith and frees their intellectual property under GPL or similar terms will get back much more than they give up. It's hard, if not impossible to prove this, but instictively we know this when we look deeply at the issues.
On a side note, RMS doesn't think that the GPL is appropriate for hardware. It's bits all the way down until you start replicating the physical parts, and unlike software, it isn't possible to actually use it until you physically replicate it.
Nothing stops me from downloading the ISO images of RedHat's latest release cutting as many one-offs as I want on my CDR, or even making a run of CDs, and cutting them out of the loop completely. I can even offer my own support services to compete with RH. Doing this with chip or board level fabrication has considerably higher entry barriers, so potential "Red Hat Hardware" vendors would have less to worry about.
As long as I've come this far, I want to finish with a comment about the LGPL. From where I stand, RMS's stance on the LGPL is a take-back that is just as damaging, if not more so, as the EULA change being discussed. LGPL gives you a lot more choice in terms of integrating free and proprietary subsystems and components. Where free libraries have significantly extended functionality, he explicitly recomends GPL over LGPL. As an example if you want all the GNU goodies that make command line work so nice in bash, you have to either write your own or be ready to release your entire project under GPL. I might even agree with his goal of all software being free, but my choice is limited. What if I'm doing this work for an employer who is not ready to release the whole thing? I can't choose GPL, but I could choose LGPL.
This is the one case where I would claim that it goes beyond style, and the message itself actually hurts the movement.
Big deal, building a multi-lateral consensus is hard. As the only remaining super-power, and one that claims to believe in democratic principles, we have a unique responsibility to listen to and respect other voices. This is the opposite of what is happening now. We have a lot of allies that are willing and able to help with this, but they won't just be steamrollered.
Projects can be killed by poor process. One company I worked for had sufferred under a badly done attempt to add process after the fact. By the time I was there, this was all company history, but it was a horror story, and everyone was a little skittish about implementing more process.
If you are a software company, then you had better pay close attention to having the right process from the start. Once your into the project, you won't have time to go back and do planning and process. If your design and project methods aren't good, how can you even make a schedule or know how many programmers to hire? This is by definition more than a one or two person project or you wouldn't need a software company to do it.
That being said, don't go nuts on process either. Figure out what is most important to your project, and implement something that hits the important points. Use it and build good habits on your team, and you will be able to refine the process as you go. At the end of each product cycle you have to evaluate the performance of everything and make adjustments.
This is just like the extreme programming model where you prototype quickly and test constantly. Unlike writing programs, it's harder to automate the testing because your evaluating a human process, not a program. Performance metrics can help, but sometime they hide more than they reveal.
If the FBI followed the same rules they would (warrant, probable cause, etc.) then it is possible the Judge acted reasonable. I'd be interested in which is actually the case here.
Since it is also reasonable for a sovereign nation to have other rules, this question isn't really central. The burdon of proof should be on the U.S. and the FBI to show why they need to curcumvent those rules. And then the obvious question of what court would have authority to decide whether this burdon is met.
I really can't imagine a non-GPL fork of the kernel.
I can imagine it, I just can't see it going anywhere. If you are interested in commercializing a UNIX flavor, BSD is the OS of choice because it is an Open != Free license. Darwin as sold as NeXT and now OSX is an obvious example.
More likely is that some mergers between the HURD and Linux will occur, which will solidify the Linux kernel in the GPL camp. The point is that only if all of the copyright holders agree can the licensing be shifted. But, the Linux kernel has never been released except under GPL, so maybe it isn't even possible. In the beginning when there was only a handful of participants, maybe the kernel itself could have been released under another copyright (in addition to GPL), and maybe Linus could attempt to do this himself even. But why would he? This kind of action would rightly be seen as divisive, and would destroy the community's trust.
In other words, even if it was possible, it would not impact much because no one would be interested. If a Linux/Hurd merger occurs, it is no longer possible because at least the Hurd part would have to be removed first.
A seperate topic, but I think a merger is the most likely outcome because I'm sure there are good an worthy modules in both kernels, and the community is after the best.
Slashdot Mirror
Aside from the fact that I do not assume he is guilty, I agree with most of what you say as well. It doesn't matter whether this guy is right or wrong, and I think his comment to "never put anything you do under GPL" is misguided, but I do assume there were real events where he felt RMS had been underhanded. GPL and GNU is much larger than any one person, but RMS makes people feel like he thinks he owns it. He puts himself in the position of being the leader of a movement, and both he and his close associates owe it to everyone who contributes to respect that.
He is responsible for how he is percieved, so it does no good to say the accusations are exagerated. I didn't even know about the lignux thing. How can someone so brilliant in one way act so stupidly? IMHO, it's a fear response and he should just get over it and leave all the baggage behind. I really wish someone could reach him on this level because I really think it hurts the movement.
I've met him too, almost 20 years ago, about the time he wrote the the original GPL. At the time I was somewhat skeptical about it working, but I've always supported the basic idea. More recent events make it even more clear why software freedom is absolutely necessary, and I have nothing but the greatest respect for the insight (however motivated) that led to this. It has been a hugely successful undertaking, although far from complete or certain.
I really liked what you said in the original post because I think one of the dangers is fragmentation, and we really shouldn't be arguing about the small stuff. It is the essence of software that it wants to be free, but the real danger is from "the Architectures of Control", and their friends in Congress. I know the movement is resilient, but it is too dangerous to assume that internal bickering won't destroy it.
I'm sure both of us have exagerated our positions slightly to make them distinct, that's part of what makes for a good debate. It forces the other side to be clear about what they mean as well. I have no deep disagreement with anything you have written here.
So what is the response of the Open/Free Source community to all of this? A Samba client on Windows might outperform the original code. The recent interview with Tresh made that clear. How hard would it be to make a replacement client? I know it won't be long before Palladium and related projects from MS make this even harder, but since when has that stopped anyone.
And what about an open replacement for their domain model? We went around this by using a MS domain controller with Samba servers. This was worthwhile because we needed both NFS and SMB from the same file systems. Even so there were some hoops to jump through.
I'm asking a serious question, becuase I don't know how easy it is to support NFS on Windows desktops. How much is all the MS naming service crap worth? Why not use and promote the open alternatives from the top down. TCP/IP, DNS, NFS, SMTP, ???.
If this sort of thing was provided as a turnkey package that a guy like this could use, it would give us another very credible example to point to. Sort of a Lindows Server, to steal the name but not the business model.
This should protect him from the service pack that breaks everything a lot more than using emulated MS protocols.
Then why is it alway represented by a two dimensional pallet? That's why I said "at least". And it isn't "exact" either, since many humans are missing at least one of the dimensions.
I think there is an international law of the sea, but it probably doesn't keep nations from enforcing their own laws. Maybe someone who knows can comment.
Many people coming from a proprietary mindset aren't able to make the complete leap from an information hoarding, toll-charging for every mile travelled mindset to the notion of software freedom, complete with all its ideals and, to the rest of us, obvious advantages of synergy, exponential cooperative growth and development of projects, and so on, but these very same people can and do make the leap toward understanding why the scientific method of sharing knowledge and submitting to rigorous peer review of code does lead to better software. It isn't the only aspect of free software that leads to better software, and it may not even be the most important factor, but it is a factor that they can understand. Once one has grown accustomed to these factors, and has moved one or more project to an open source or free software platform as a result, one begins to experience and learn the other advantages of free software (freedom from orphaned software, freedom from vendor coercion, freedom to set one's own upgrade cycle and timetable, freedom to fix libraries one's work depends on, rather than waiting months for the vendor to get around to it, freedom to leverage the work of others into getting a project out the door in a fraction of the time it would have otherwise taken, in short, freedom to use technology to serve one's business interests, rather than one's vendors' business intersts).
Sorry to include so much, but I don't think this can be emphasised enough. Open Source strengthens Free Source, and this is why. It's also central to my criticism of RMS's stance on LGPL. I was trying to find a link to his position paper on this and instead I found this which is even more disturbing. From this link:
Stallman recently tried what I would call a hostile takeover of the glibc development. He tried to conspire behind my back and persuade the other main developers to take control so that in the end he is in control and can dictate whatever pleases him. This attempt failed but he kept on pressuring people everywhere and it got really ugly. In the end I agreed to the creation of a so-called "steering committee" (SC). The SC is different from the SC in projects like gcc in that it does not make decisions. On this front nothing changed. The only difference is that Stallman now has no right to complain anymore since the SC he wanted acknowledged the status quo. I hope he will now shut up forever.
The morale of this is that people will hopefully realize what a control freak and raging manic Stallman is. Don't trust him. As soon as something isn't in line with his view he'll stab you in the back. NEVER voluntarily put a project you work on under the GNU umbrella since this means in Stallman's opinion that he has the right to make decisions for the project.
Now, I'm all in favor of giving credit where credit is due, and clearly Stallman has done a lot, but it doesn't give him the right to stomp on people who are contributing to the GPL world.
The GPL is brilliant in a number of ways, most important being the freedom it brings to software. But get this, Stallman fanatics, once he put it out there, he doesn't own it. The most important aspect of the GPL is that it builds trust that no one will be able to take private advantage of what you have freely given.
I have no problem with anyone calling it GNU/Linux, but to insist on it is to try and control things. Do we need language police? Let's be clear, RMS does not deserve credit for 95% of Linux, although his actual contribution is substantial. I'd like to know what percentage of the developers who actually contributed code under GPL whether under FSF or otherwise actually support what RMS is trying to do with it.
All this bickering needs to stop, and stop now. It is unproductive and damaging. Isn't there anyone close enough that can get this accross? Are all his associates sycophants? We need to make the tent bigger, not smaller.
Openness is on the road to freedom. Again from the parent comment:
So, while the differentiation between Free Software and Open Source is important, this bickering between the two is quite asinine and counterproductive, and while software freedom may encompass a more complete and accurate picture of the benefits offered by free software than Open Source does, Open Source bridges the divide and helps make those advantages available to many who otherwise would have never taken the opportunity. In so doing Open Source provides an important, some might argue critical, service to the Free Software community, and despite any disagreements between the two, Open Source is most certainly not 'off-white.'
Stop fighting with our friends please, and keep up the good work.
This debate goes around endlessly because some people think that selling software isn't a valid choice. I'm willing to go down that road, but you have to prove you case, not bludgeon people into submission.
If you are going to open your source, you have to consider the market dynamics. GPL, LGPL and compatible licenses create a commons and protect it in a way that BSD and public domain do not. If all the players are cooperating, the differences are not that important, but if someone doesn't play nice (for example the Wright Brothers story), you don't have any legal recourse with BSD and public domain terms. Yes they are less restrictive, but that is not a universal good. If I'm trying to make money on related products and services, it doesn't help me if someome takes my contribution private. In fact, it damages the community who want to share cooperatively whether their motivation is fun, profit, or both.
One point people seem to miss about BSD style licensing. Since you can take a derivative private, you can also take it GPL. You just have to give credit and such, and to the extent that the derived product is better and different, it is now a pure GPL base for further work. Sure, you can go back to the fork and take that private, but that is the perogative of those supporting the non-GPL fork.
If you don't need to make money on products and services (e.g. an academic research environment), then you are not damaged in the same way when someone takes a derivative private. Of course, you could do this by releasing under GPL (or better LGPL), and selling commercial licenses if someone wants to implement a commercial derivative.
This started from a knee-jerk criticism of the 'open' choice as represented by Bruce in his "Sincere Choice" initiative. This criticism is misguided. Bruce is pushing for Open Standards and interoperability which has little to do with licensing terms. Openness is the important feature of standards, and it is exactly what we want in terms of policy and law. It's a matter of choice, plain and simple.
Unless you propose to do away with software copyrights, it doesn't matter anyway. If the standard is made concrete in a reference implementation, all Open Source standards are equally good. If you can look at the source, it is easy enough to re-implement under any license you want if you can look at the reference. Would any GPL zealot want to give me legal hassles because I was reading the GPL source while writing my own? I think not, and they wouldn't have much of a legal position anyway.
Same thing with Sun's Java Community License. Would they sue a GPL project because they are looking at the Sun reference? If they did, it would prove the openness was a shame in a way that everyone can see. The certification issue is different, but still needs to be addressed for any non-free but open standard (Java in this case).
The real failures were essentially management failures that marginalized warnings, and inter-agency rivalries. I for one would feel a lot better if somebody would step up and say "we could have done better, we're sorry". It's just shameful what passes for leadership these days.
I find it difficult to believe that you have been using slack, since your message displays an amazing lack of it. That is Bob, or Dr. Bob Dobbs. He is both the most and least significant figure of the Church of the Subgenius. Perhaps I have already said to much.
If only Billy boy were so insightful, then maybe he would go on with his plan to own the world and ignore us like he did before. Not that it would make much difference, just it would be a lot more peaceful during the transition.
In all likelyhood, the way they fight probably hastens their demise.
Making something LGPL instead of GPL doesn't make it or any derivatives any less available to the community, but it does mean there are fewer situation that you can use the code in. In my opinion it is a good thing for Free Source libraries to become widely used, and a bad thing to duplicate efforts. Limiting the use of LGPL does bad and limits good. It also makes the GPL is viral arguments true, or at least seem true and that isn't good either.
I don't have an employer to please at the moment, so I have no outside motivation to influence my opinion in this matter. You are free to think differently. The argument that GPL code is 'better' is not persuasive if it doesn't fit in their business model. Not everyone has academic salaries or other means of support, so these are real concerns of people who support the idea of Free Source in a deep way.
The no incentive to create a free alternative is bogus. If you think that, you are too concerned with the short term. In the long term the GPL model will win, and the flexibility of the LGPL is a good thing. Freedom is about choice after all.
I think it shows that the community knows how to have fun and laugh at itself. This is a good thing. Coolness is not all about flashy looks and high frame rates. Besides, I'm sure these things can be improved. Is it free source as well as being freely available?
I would think that is the point. As long as it isn't a weapon, or anything else that would be dangerous to people on the ground, I would think you can do it. The certainly could legislate more restrictions, but as far as I know, safety is the only consideration.
I hope this is the easier port. Since it runs in Linux on the Xbox, does that make a native Linux port easier than the Windows port? I don't game much, but I need something after I get bored with xbill.
Would this game work if you did? Do you need MS dev tools, or what? Slashdot wants to know.
If it's a one-time cost, I bet the funds could be raised to do it. There must be a way to drive a truck through the Xbox business model with this sort of think.
By the way, I think this is very cool, but I don't have or want an Xbox, so I don't care that much.
Like when you see that $450,000 table in the Antique Road Show. If you had it, you'd have to sell it unless you could adaquately care for it. Not necessarily to the highest bidder either.
Thanks for the links, though.
The VCs will give you money to expand, but then if the climate turns, they might not be willing to keep funding. Now you have made lots of commitments to customers, employees and supliers that you just can't keep up.
About three years back I got a great job with a dotcom just when they got funded by a VC. By the end of the year, the company had doubled in size and by the next spring they had to lay off about half of the current staff. When I shook hands with the CEO on my way out I could tell he was very sad that he had let all of us down this way. The CTO that I reported too couldn't even look me in the face, but that's another story. Recently I heard the were absorbed by the VC and pretty much closed up their operation.
in his teaming up with Bob to work on Slackware?
Just another stake in the heart of "the architecture of control". I'm not about to support this sort of thing either in principle or through buying pirated CDs, but it does demonstrate the weakness of the RIAA position. If you treat your customers with respect, they won't disapoint you. Let those who won't pay even what it is worth to them worry about their own karma.
You need to understand that it is exactly this issue that causes a lot of the problems. It is really worth reading all of the talk transcript from the guy who is going to debate the RIAA VP next week. It is exactly because of the desire to extract every dime available under the utility curve that leads to the desire to create non-transferable licensing (restrict right of first sale) and a host of other evils that almost everyone objects to.
How awful is it if you actually PAID MONEY for the software? Face it, if your boss doesn't have bucks, you don't have a job. Somebody's paying for the Linux kernel to be developed - if it costs 1% more, is that a big deal?
It isn't that simple. If a commercial tool is needed to participate, it limits the scope. Not everyone working on any given free source project is getting paid. Ok, so you can grab bitkeeper for free to work on the Linux kernel, that's sort of ok, but now they say you can't work on some projects if you do that. Sort of silly if you ask me, since it just gives them (BitMover) a black eye in the community and it won't slow down the development of the free alternative. It is, in fact, pretty easy to argue the opposite based on discussion of the issue here. Lots of people who were on the fence for this issue are going to move away from their product.
The transcript that I linked above makes the point that we don't actually know if BitMover is hurting or helping themselves. If they just GPLed their tool, and charged for support, commercial licenses, and other stuff, they might do better in the long run. It is a leap of faith, but you gotta ask how much the change of EULA language will hurt them in the long run. It will encourage more people to push the free alternative, and work to make that tool competetive. If it was GPLed, they would have the whole community behind them, and a lot of people would buy their books and support in gratitute for the gift of their software.
These issues are even more stark if you want to work on free hardware. The free tools are in a primitive state, so you are in a bind of choosing a less desirable tool vs something free. The producers of the commercial tools are afraid of their business drying up, so they won't do anything if it might help the free tools compete with them. You say, ok, so I'll find a tool I can use for free on free hardware even if it is closed source, but that slows down the free alternatives.
This is where you start to get just how important GPL is and why it is such an important innovation. One of the big problems in the sub-chip level hardware design is that the big tool makers have everything locked up and they don't talk to each other very well.
There are some open standards, but the whole mentality of closed intellectual property creates this situation where the best minds are all working to recreate the same tools and chip functions in each closed universe. This is even worse than it is for software because there aren't nearly as many people working in hardware as with software, and it is getting more complex just as fast.
My gut tells me that any company that makes the leap of faith and frees their intellectual property under GPL or similar terms will get back much more than they give up. It's hard, if not impossible to prove this, but instictively we know this when we look deeply at the issues.
On a side note, RMS doesn't think that the GPL is appropriate for hardware. It's bits all the way down until you start replicating the physical parts, and unlike software, it isn't possible to actually use it until you physically replicate it.
Nothing stops me from downloading the ISO images of RedHat's latest release cutting as many one-offs as I want on my CDR, or even making a run of CDs, and cutting them out of the loop completely. I can even offer my own support services to compete with RH. Doing this with chip or board level fabrication has considerably higher entry barriers, so potential "Red Hat Hardware" vendors would have less to worry about.
As long as I've come this far, I want to finish with a comment about the LGPL. From where I stand, RMS's stance on the LGPL is a take-back that is just as damaging, if not more so, as the EULA change being discussed. LGPL gives you a lot more choice in terms of integrating free and proprietary subsystems and components. Where free libraries have significantly extended functionality, he explicitly recomends GPL over LGPL. As an example if you want all the GNU goodies that make command line work so nice in bash, you have to either write your own or be ready to release your entire project under GPL. I might even agree with his goal of all software being free, but my choice is limited. What if I'm doing this work for an employer who is not ready to release the whole thing? I can't choose GPL, but I could choose LGPL.
This is the one case where I would claim that it goes beyond style, and the message itself actually hurts the movement.
Big deal, building a multi-lateral consensus is hard. As the only remaining super-power, and one that claims to believe in democratic principles, we have a unique responsibility to listen to and respect other voices. This is the opposite of what is happening now. We have a lot of allies that are willing and able to help with this, but they won't just be steamrollered.
If you are a software company, then you had better pay close attention to having the right process from the start. Once your into the project, you won't have time to go back and do planning and process. If your design and project methods aren't good, how can you even make a schedule or know how many programmers to hire? This is by definition more than a one or two person project or you wouldn't need a software company to do it.
That being said, don't go nuts on process either. Figure out what is most important to your project, and implement something that hits the important points. Use it and build good habits on your team, and you will be able to refine the process as you go. At the end of each product cycle you have to evaluate the performance of everything and make adjustments.
This is just like the extreme programming model where you prototype quickly and test constantly. Unlike writing programs, it's harder to automate the testing because your evaluating a human process, not a program. Performance metrics can help, but sometime they hide more than they reveal.
Since it is also reasonable for a sovereign nation to have other rules, this question isn't really central. The burdon of proof should be on the U.S. and the FBI to show why they need to curcumvent those rules. And then the obvious question of what court would have authority to decide whether this burdon is met.
I can imagine it, I just can't see it going anywhere. If you are interested in commercializing a UNIX flavor, BSD is the OS of choice because it is an Open != Free license. Darwin as sold as NeXT and now OSX is an obvious example.
More likely is that some mergers between the HURD and Linux will occur, which will solidify the Linux kernel in the GPL camp. The point is that only if all of the copyright holders agree can the licensing be shifted. But, the Linux kernel has never been released except under GPL, so maybe it isn't even possible. In the beginning when there was only a handful of participants, maybe the kernel itself could have been released under another copyright (in addition to GPL), and maybe Linus could attempt to do this himself even. But why would he? This kind of action would rightly be seen as divisive, and would destroy the community's trust.
In other words, even if it was possible, it would not impact much because no one would be interested. If a Linux/Hurd merger occurs, it is no longer possible because at least the Hurd part would have to be removed first.
A seperate topic, but I think a merger is the most likely outcome because I'm sure there are good an worthy modules in both kernels, and the community is after the best.