The point is not wether you could draw a line. The point is a line was not drawn. Maybe a correction like this is needed (then again, it's as far as I know a hypothetical situation), but it's not in the present language of the license.
If this clause of the license holds, then it makes sense that it should be prohibited to GZIP or in any way compress GPL'd source code before distribution. There's no distinction made here between reversable or non-reversable obfuscation, and I don't know ANY coder who works directly with source code that's tarred or gzipped in any way or form.
I don't see that it's possible to 'draw a line' here creating a distinction. Therefore it's impossible to police.
Who is the "original author" of a work? If the work includes functions written by others, are they the original author?
Just about every C program I have ever seen is essentially derived from the original "Hello world" program from K&R. I guess we're lucky that program isn't GPL'd, or it would be the only GPL'd C program anybody could ever possibly 'own.'
Then again, out on the commune, the loyal serfs want it to be impossible for anybody to own anything...
I seem to remember that a few years ago (maybe as much as five to ten years ago) a vendor advertised a tool called "Shroud for C" in magazines like the C Users Journal. This product basically was an obfuscator. It's function was to strip all comments and globally replace all variables with horribly difficult to remember meaningless strings.
The purpose of this product was to make it possible to distribute source code that could be built and linked with other code (extendable) without it being possible for people you didn't want to poke around in the code and figure it out. Unless there are readability standards imposed in any licencing sceme (i.e. the GPL) I think this would be an excellent vehicle for organizations hostile to the GPL to incorporate GPL'd code in their products, extend, the code, but totally snarl up and render unusable the source they are required to release with their product. It seems like the inevitable endpoint of arrogant licenses like the GPL.
When people start distributing code in such a fashion, what can the gnu people do in response? Establish mandatory requirements that comments be left in code? Establish standards for meaningful variable names in all code? That doesn't sound very 'free' to me. Where would it end?
Does anybody know if "Shroud" products like this are still available? Is there an "open source" version of a utility like this available? *grin*
So a guarantee that we are all equally unfree can now be redefined as a form of freedom. Interesting.
Derivative 'closed source' work done to extend software covered by a BSD-type license does not preclude people from cotinuing to use the base code. It does not prevent them from extending the base code in a fully disclosed fashion if they so choose. Nobody has the base code 'taken away from them' by the closed extension of the code.
In the case of chips like this one, Saddam Hussein, the Chinese government, and various other bodies certainly favor open source. How many months before it's being used in their military communications? Crypto so cheap any despot can afford it.
Hackers won't be building, testing, debugging and rebuilding this 'open source' in little backyard fabs.
A few decades ago everybody was looking under their bed each night for communists. A few decades ago people were being hauled in front of boards to testify about actions they had taken in their youth that everybody had thought were forgotten.
The "founding fathers" lived in smallish communites where NOBODY had much privacy. Men like Jefferson deplored the growth of the kind of big metropolis that fosters the paranoid anonymous 'privacy' many people now demand.
But don't let the historical truth interfere with your ideology.
When crypto becomes common, it will soon afterwards become mandatory. We will be required to include encrypted digital signatures in all email and usenet messages. This will lead to mandatory tracability of all traffic and end-to-end validation of all communications. Traffic that isn't signed will be deleted at servers as spam. Unsigned messages will be banned from email servers. It's an inevitable part of the 'net becoming mainstream and secure enough for commerce.
If something like this became widespread?
on
The Factoid
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· Score: 2
It would then soon become mandatory. My boss would know how many times I went to the bathroom. The clerk at the supermarket would know if I'd been to the drug store beforehand. The police officer on the corner would know I'd walked kinda slow on my way to my car. etc.
(no, you don't need to spread the good word about OpenSource(tm) and how much better the world will be when everything is OpenSource(tm)- it's been said already repeatedly)
My Version 4.5 update came in the mail Monday. I purchase 4.0 and ran it successfully on one of my machines. I had to scramble around to find a video card that it supported though, switching in all the PCI video cards on my various machines to find the one BeOS accepted. The PCI cards I have are: #9 Reality 332 (S3-Virge) STB Powergraph 64 (S3-Trio64) STB Reality 3D (S3-Virge) I found that of the three cards, only the Powergraph 64 (oldest of the three cards) would work in Color (non-grayscale standard VGA).
I stopped using 4.0 after awhile hoping to put 4.5 on the machine when it became available. When 4.5 arrived this week, I put it onto the same machine, with the same video hardware. It no longer works. I haven't done the video-card switcharound again yet, but can't figure out why the card that worked earlier is now not working.
This is not a gripe about BeOS in general, but my first-hand experience is that in my case it seems that less hardware is supported on 4.5 than was with 4.0.
I'm looking forward to when I can get R4.5 going on that machine, though. I have some big audio files to edit, and the Be filesystem, from what I have read, appears to be the place to do it.
You mean the word 'netiquette' still has meaning? In the usenet world of 1999? Surely you jest. Probably 90% of NNTP traffic today consists of people stripping attachments (pornography and warez) out of the.BINARY newsgroups. There are commercial applications for that express purpose these days (i.e. NewsBin, Pluckitt.) Hint: those programs IGNORE the text part of the message. That a site like Slashdot exists and thrives is testimony to the fact that the public forums have died in a sea of pollution. The discussions have been privatized; they occur on formus like Slashdot and closed mailing lists now.
Netiquette is dead. It's been replace by owners of private message bases, some who recruit moderators.
The interesting thing to know is if incremental damage will be shown, or if some threshold has to be reached for damage to occur. I.e. does the yuppie getting a blast of RF to the head from the cellphone get the same damage as somebody explosed to lower levels (say, someone who runs a PC with the cover off) over a longer period. The spectrum of the energy also matters, one would think. That Microwave oven wouldn't do much damage at 32 KHz...
There have already been virus attacks which take out the Flash bios on motherboards. It takes out the motherboard permanently unless the chip is socketed.
Unfortunately eBay doesn't seem to be preventable. I would settle for "For Auction" posts being banned from Usenet "For Sale" newsgroups, though. I am NOT interested in participating in an auction when I browse my favorite 'for sale' groups for deals on tech hardware (i.e. sci.electronics.equipment).
Microsoft Word existed on the DOS platform for quite awhile before the version for Windows was created. The first version for Windows was treated as a joke by Word for DOS users. I doubt they purchased it from an outside developer.
The "notion" for Visual Basic was lifted from Hypercard? Does that mean that because the "notion" for rockets came from WWII Germany, that the Germans delivered astronauts to the moon's surface?
Go ahead and have an opinion about what you feel is Microsoft's 'sole decent product.' Maybe someday the market will reflect your tastes. Until then.....
It is my opinion, therefore, that computer usage should be licensed and an 8 day waiting period established before a person can purchase a fully assembled PC.
Now there's the kind of openness all Linux users should be proud of!
Sysadmins of the world unite, to preserve the elitist clique!
When you want to go on a Sunday drive, do you get out the screw machine and start making screws to hold the manifold onto the engine block you'll soon be making? Sheesh.
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The point is not wether you could draw a line. The point is a line was not drawn. Maybe a correction like this is needed (then again, it's as far as I know a hypothetical situation), but it's not in the present language of the license.
If this clause of the license holds, then it makes sense that it should be prohibited to GZIP or in any way compress GPL'd source code before distribution. There's no distinction made here between reversable or non-reversable obfuscation, and I don't know ANY coder who works directly with source code that's tarred or gzipped in any way or form.
I don't see that it's possible to 'draw a line' here creating a distinction. Therefore it's impossible to police.
Who is the "original author" of a work? If the work includes functions written by others, are they the original author?
Just about every C program I have ever seen is essentially derived from the original "Hello world" program from K&R. I guess we're lucky that program isn't GPL'd, or it would be the only GPL'd C program anybody could ever possibly 'own.'
Then again, out on the commune, the loyal serfs want it to be impossible for anybody to own anything...
I seem to remember that a few years ago (maybe as much as five to ten years ago) a vendor advertised a tool called "Shroud for C" in magazines like the C Users Journal. This product basically was an obfuscator. It's function was to strip all comments and globally replace all variables with horribly difficult to remember meaningless strings.
The purpose of this product was to make it possible to distribute source code that could be built and linked with other code (extendable) without it being possible for people you didn't want to poke around in the code and figure it out. Unless there are readability standards imposed in any licencing sceme (i.e. the GPL) I think this would be an excellent vehicle for organizations hostile to the GPL to incorporate GPL'd code in their products, extend, the code, but totally snarl up and render unusable the source they are required to release with their product. It seems like the inevitable endpoint of arrogant licenses like the GPL.
When people start distributing code in such a fashion, what can the gnu people do in response? Establish mandatory requirements that comments be left in code? Establish standards for meaningful variable names in all code? That doesn't sound very 'free' to me. Where would it end?
Does anybody know if "Shroud" products like this are still available? Is there an "open source" version of a utility like this available? *grin*
the point of GPL is to restrict the restriction
Watch out there, you'll enter into an infinite loop and we'll have to hit the reset button...
So a guarantee that we are all equally unfree can now be redefined as a form of freedom. Interesting.
Derivative 'closed source' work done to extend software covered by a BSD-type license does not preclude people from cotinuing to use the base code. It does not prevent them from extending the base code in a fully disclosed fashion if they so choose. Nobody has the base code 'taken away from them' by the closed extension of the code.
In the case of chips like this one, Saddam Hussein, the Chinese government, and various other bodies certainly favor open source. How many months before it's being used in their military communications? Crypto so cheap any despot can afford it.
Hackers won't be building, testing, debugging and rebuilding this 'open source' in little backyard fabs.
A few decades ago everybody was looking under their bed each night for communists. A few decades ago people were being hauled in front of boards to testify about actions they had taken in their youth that everybody had thought were forgotten.
The "founding fathers" lived in smallish communites where NOBODY had much privacy. Men like Jefferson deplored the growth of the kind of big metropolis that fosters the paranoid anonymous 'privacy' many people now demand.
But don't let the historical truth interfere with your ideology.
When crypto becomes common, it will soon afterwards become mandatory. We will be required to include encrypted digital signatures in all email and usenet messages. This will lead to mandatory tracability of all traffic and end-to-end validation of all communications. Traffic that isn't signed will be deleted at servers as spam. Unsigned messages will be banned from email servers. It's an inevitable part of the 'net becoming mainstream and secure enough for commerce.
It would then soon become mandatory. My boss would know how many times I went to the bathroom. The clerk at the supermarket would know if I'd been to the drug store beforehand. The police officer on the corner would know I'd walked kinda slow on my way to my car. etc.
I take it that the Ethical Treatment of Animal Bytes doesn't simply involve clubbing the biting animal to death.... heh
The two totals combined will probably be less than the number of copies sold for Windows in Rhode Island.
Only to some people.
(no, you don't need to spread the good word about OpenSource(tm) and how much better the world will be when everything is OpenSource(tm)- it's been said already repeatedly)
My Version 4.5 update came in the mail Monday. I purchase 4.0 and ran it successfully on one of my machines. I had to scramble around to find a video card that it supported though, switching in all the PCI video cards on my various machines to find the one BeOS accepted. The PCI cards I have are:
#9 Reality 332 (S3-Virge)
STB Powergraph 64 (S3-Trio64)
STB Reality 3D (S3-Virge)
I found that of the three cards, only the Powergraph 64 (oldest of the three cards) would work in Color (non-grayscale standard VGA).
I stopped using 4.0 after awhile hoping to put 4.5 on the machine when it became available. When 4.5 arrived this week, I put it onto the same machine, with the same video hardware. It no longer works. I haven't done the video-card switcharound again yet, but can't figure out why the card that worked earlier is now not working.
This is not a gripe about BeOS in general, but my first-hand experience is that in my case it seems that less hardware is supported on 4.5 than was with 4.0.
I'm looking forward to when I can get R4.5 going on that machine, though. I have some big audio files to edit, and the Be filesystem, from what I have read, appears to be the place to do it.
You mean the word 'netiquette' still has meaning? In the usenet world of 1999? Surely you jest. Probably 90% of NNTP traffic today consists of people stripping attachments (pornography and warez) out of the .BINARY newsgroups. There are commercial applications for that express purpose these days (i.e. NewsBin, Pluckitt.) Hint: those programs IGNORE the text part of the message. That a site like Slashdot exists and thrives is testimony to the fact that the public forums have died in a sea of pollution. The discussions have been privatized; they occur on formus like Slashdot and closed mailing lists now.
Netiquette is dead. It's been replace by owners of private message bases, some who recruit moderators.
watch out for bitmaps of black helicopters, doodz!
The interesting thing to know is if incremental damage will be shown, or if some threshold has to be reached for damage to occur. I.e. does the yuppie getting a blast of RF to the head from the cellphone get the same damage as somebody explosed to lower levels (say, someone who runs a PC with the cover off) over a longer period. The spectrum of the energy also matters, one would think. That Microwave oven wouldn't do much damage at 32 KHz...
There have already been virus attacks which take out the Flash bios on motherboards. It takes out the motherboard permanently unless the chip is socketed.
This has been changed. the B now stands for bitmap. (j/k)
Unfortunately eBay doesn't seem to be preventable.
I would settle for "For Auction" posts being banned from Usenet "For Sale" newsgroups, though.
I am NOT interested in participating in an auction when I browse my favorite 'for sale' groups for deals on tech hardware (i.e. sci.electronics.equipment).
Microsoft Word existed on the DOS platform for quite awhile before the version for Windows was created. The first version for Windows was treated as a joke by Word for DOS users. I doubt they purchased it from an outside developer.
The "notion" for Visual Basic was lifted from Hypercard? Does that mean that because the "notion" for rockets came from WWII Germany, that the Germans delivered astronauts to the moon's surface?
Go ahead and have an opinion about what you feel is Microsoft's 'sole decent product.' Maybe someday the market will reflect your tastes. Until then.....
It is my opinion, therefore, that computer usage should be licensed and an 8 day waiting period established before a person can purchase a fully assembled PC.
Now there's the kind of openness all Linux users should be proud of!
Sysadmins of the world unite, to preserve the elitist clique!
Ken Thompson was the wakeup call. Metcalfe is your wife yelling that the eggs are getting cold. How long are you guys gonna stay in bed?
When you want to go on a Sunday drive, do you get out the screw machine and start making screws to hold the manifold onto the engine block you'll soon be making? Sheesh.
BeOS even has a telnet daemon, and an ftp daemon, and all that stuff.
The thing it doesn't have is all the groups/multiple users overhead that weighs down Unix and Linux.
These days, I am the single user of many machines on my home network. So it's the opposite of crowding a few dozen users onto a single machine.