I can't boycott Sony over this! It'd mean I'd have to call off the boycott I imposed over the rootkit fiasco.
Sony have gone out of their way, time and again, to show that they are no friend to their customer. Personally, I'm amazed that anyone is buying their stuff at all.
Interesting. Perhaps they got a lot of complaints (as well they might).
I have to confess to mixed feelings now. I'd still quite like to take a look around, but the credit card episode doesn't really inspire confidence. I suppose the gripping hand is that I don't really have the time, in any case.
Still, kudos to them for cleaning up their act, at any rate.
The thing that puts me off second life is the registration process. I want to look around the place right? Thinking of buying some virtual real estate for wife, that sort of thing.
So I went to register: first they want an email address; then they want the marketing data; then they want your credit card number. Not that they're ever going to charge it, you understand. They just want to hold it on their database where it gives them a warm and cozy feeling.
It's classic sleazeball technique. Get as much resalable data from the mark as possible, starting with the least intrusive, and working up to something that could actually be used to defraud. I don't trust them, based purely on their methodology.
Needless to say, I didn't sign up. The next great step forward in computer aided interactions can happen without me, thank you very much.
until that command line is 100% optional, the masses will not accept Linux, period.
There's still things you can't do on XP without invoking a dos shell. Doesn't seem to have kept the Great Unclued from adopting it in droves.
Requiring the userbase to learn bash syntax and the whole Unix/Gnu command set, that would be a barrier to adoption. Having the occasional job that can't be easy done without a command line? They're used to that.
When I hear things like this, I always wonder how much of it is the company and how much or it is the phone operator. I mean, I ahve heard sales people say some amazingly stupid things in the past. Often not because of any intentional malice but simply because they have no clue
Which is fair enough as long as you're not suggesting that this excuses a company from responsibility or accountability.
If Comcast's salesmen are that ignorant or ill trained that they criminally mis-represent their employer's position on a regular basis, then the company should see to it that they are better trained. If the company is held liable for such exerices in stipidty, they will have an incentive to do this that might otherwise be lacking.
Otherwise "stupid employees" becomes a get out of jail free card for every variety of corporate misdemeanor going
"Compromise" with entities of great wealth and power generally means capitulation.
Capitulation? I'm not sure the dominance-or-submission works very well in this context. I mean if have frame this as total war, then Intel started out victorious. Moreover, the only thing they need do to remain victorious is ignore the free software/open source movement.
See, Intel (so far as I can tell, feel free to correct me) are not asking for any concessions from the community. What they are doing is making concessions. Granted, there may be some further concessions that we'd like to see. I really can't see how getting personal and calling people names is going to help anyone. Unless it's a case of "if BSD can't use the drivers, I don't want linux to benefit either" which is the closest i've seen to a rational justification for this latest piece of bad behaviour.
The only way for consumers to deal with a corporation of great wealth and power like Intel is to let them know you are willing to stop using their products, and further, to organize a boycott against them.
I still don't see why we can't do so politely. Pissing Intel off is not going to help.
This is no way to get the other side to play nicely with you.
I think part of the problem is that "compromise" isn't in Theo's mental dictionary. The whole point of Mr. Ketrenos is that compromise is possible, a useful message for many hardware suppliers. Theo, on the other hand, seems to read "compromise" and think "unconditional surrender", and then he gets to feeling all betrayed when the other party goes and does what they said they would.
It's ether that or Theo is a refugee from some parallel universe Bizzaro World, where "up yours, scumbags!" is a polite way to open a formal dialogue and "good morning, gentlemen" is a killing insult. One of the two, certainly.
I was disappointed. Larry usually does a better job of connecting the off topic stuff pack to Perl. This time he had maybe five or six puns and that was about it. The main thing I took away from it was the big slides with whatever. That and the theme of "learning not to care"
It all read to me as if he's disengaging himself from the Perl development process and looking forward to spending more time on Real Life. Good luck to him, if so; he's surely earned some time off to spend with his family.
"The point being made is that the new provisions of the GPLv3 are
concerned with the politics of the DMCA and DRM rather than the freedom
to read the source of, modify, learn from and distribute software. "
Alas people like you don't seem to realize that the two are bound to
each other. Clearly more education needs to be done.
If you find ignorance so offensive, why not explain the issues
yourself? You might find there's less of it to upset you. Of
course, that's assuming you understand the topic well enough to
explain anything, and I'm starting to wonder if that's a safe
assumption.
Let's face it, you don't appear to have read TFA, the Free Software
Definition, or any version of the GPL. In fact, the only thing
you've contributed to our discussion is a bit of fluff about "self healing
commons" nicked from one of Eben Moglen's speeches; probably by way of
the slashdot discussion about Ian Murdock's latest project a while back.
So based on that, and the high insult to information ratio, I'm calling
Troll on this one. It's not been an entire waste of time, since I've gained
a better understanding of the issue through trying to explain it to you.
But, unless you have anything to actually contribute to the discussion,
I think I can find better uses for my time.
Still, better to light a candle than curse the darkness and all that. So let
me take a stab at explaining the relationship between the GPL the Free Software
Definition and Digital Rights Management. The one you understand so well
and I, so poorly. Perhaps it will help you with your homework or something.
Let's start with the
Free Software Definition
. You'll see it defines free software as one that gives the user
four specific freedoms. Let's quote them so we're both clear what we're
talking about:
The freedom to run the program, for any purpose (freedom 0).
The freedom to study how the program works, and adapt it to your needs (freedom 1). Access to the source code is a precondition for this.
The freedom to redistribute copies so you can help your neighbor
(freedom 2).
The freedom to improve the program, and release your improvements to the public, so that the whole community benefits (freedom 3). Access to the source code is a precondition for this.
Still with us? Good. Now, clearly the Spectre of DRM doesn't impact on
Freedoms 1-3. Nothing in DRM stops a user from obtaining the source under
the terms of the licence, from studying it, modifying it or distributing it.
So that leaves us with Freedom Zero: the freedom to run the program for
any purpose. DRM can, of course, prevent a program from being run on a given
platform. The trouble is that in this one instance, Stallman's prescience seems
to have deserted him; he neglected to add "on any machine" after "for any
purpose". Supporters of GPLv3 may argue that the intent was clear, and that
to suggest otherwise is mere hair-splitting. Since the Free Software Definition
is a philosophical and political document rather than a legal agreement,
most people would probably concede the point.
Interestingly, the GPLv2 predates the Free Software Agreement, and
hence makes no reference to the Four Freedoms. In particular, it
makes no reference to the right to run software, purpose or platform
notwithstanding. In fact it specifically disclaims any restrictions
to do with running the program:
Activities other than copying, distribution and modification are not
covered by this License; they are outside its scope. The act of
running the Program is not restricted
Now, as with the Free Software Definition, if take the GPLv2 as a
political manifesto, (and it clearly is), then we can dismiss this too
with handwaving. After all, the Free Software Definition says what
the FSF are trying to a
"Together, these could be interpretted as the FSF trying to impose their will on the FOSS community."
Could be by people who already hate the FSF, GPL and Stallman.
Nice. Reminds me of the neocon trolls who, when they don't have a good reply, always
fall back on "Why do you hate America?"
Doesn't work though. I mean, I think that FSF does useful work, that
the GPLv2 is a work of art and that Stallman is a bit of a twat to whom
we nevertheless owe a debt of gratitude. That's not exactly hatred by
any reasonable definition, but I can still see the points made in TFA.
Arguably? Did the article say how they would "force" the use? Did it
mention waterboarding? long periods of standing? Starvation and force
feeding? Subjecting to extreme tempratures, terrorising by dogs?
Here's a fun fact: dictionary.com lists 36 meanings for
force.
Surprisingly, none of them require torture, and a large number of them
make no reference to physical violence of any sort.
I am so glad you jumped on that word though. It shows where you lie ideologically.
Actually, I think you'll find you jumped on the word
forcing,
and that my comments are purely a response to that.
As to where I lie ideologically, I've already stated my position.
If you think that makes me a corporate astroturfer, so be it.
I have to say though that if you're going to take a attitude of "if
you're not with us, you're against us", you're going to alienate a lot
of moderates who might otherwise be sympathetic. Maybe you're OK with
that. I suppose it all depends on what you're trying to achieve.
No, it's much more complicated. The GPL is the instrument of a long
lasting, self healing commons of free code. It's the only license that
guarantees that the commons will be replenished to provide more code
for the future generations.
You are aware that TFA is discussing the GPLv3, aren't you? That
the kernel maintainers complaining are actually bang alongside the GPLv2,
but have reservations about version three? You said yourself it's a
complicated issue, why do you keep tying to oversimplify it?
"in a way that could not have been forseen by those developers who gave
their copyrights in trust to the FSF,"
I am sure the people who signed over their copyrights did it
knowingly. Once you sign over your copyright then I don't see how you
can complain about it afterwards.
Remember this bit?
These contributions have been given to the FSF not as a tribute to do with
as it will but under a solemn trust, as stated in article 9 of GPLv2,
only to licence the code under versions of the GPL that "... will be
similar in spirit to the present version".
The point being made is that the new provisions of the GPLv3 are concerned
with the politics of the DMCA and DRM rather than the freedom to read
the source of, modify, learn from and distribute software. In fact the
entire point of GPLv3 is that these measures can be used to control
software without violating those four freedoms.
Thus the authors take the position that the changes in V3 are
political rather than concerned with the original purpose of the
licence, as set forth by the GPL and the FSF, and thus they infer that
the GPLv3 will consistute a violation of that trust under which the
copyrights were assigned.
Come to think of it the people who signed over the copyrights are not
the ones who are complaining. It's the astro turfers that are complaining.
It's hard to imagine Greg Kroah-Hartman or Andrew Morton astroturfing for
anyone. Certainly we haven't heard from anyone who s
700 watts for 88 millinewtons. That's better than the ESA SMART-1 Ion drive, and at one tenth the size and ten times the expected lifetime, according to TFA.
The thrust produced isn't enough for terrestrial use, but in input is electric, so stallites can power the drive from solar panels.
At a guess? I'd say it's a reference to the bit in TFA where it says:
the FSF is proposing to shift all of its projects to GPLv3 and apply pressure to every other GPL licensed project to move
And also the section that reads:
attempting to write these type of restrictions into GPLv3 and then relicense all FSF code under it is tantamount to co-opting the work of all prior contributions into the service of the FSF's political ends, and thus represents a fundamental violation of the trust outlined in section 4
Together, these could be interpretted as the FSF trying to impose their will on the FOSS community. Arguably, it's sloppy use of the word "force" from the GP, but I didn't think the meaning was in any way unclear.
Last I checked it was completely voluntary to license the code under any license
mmm... but that's not the be all and end all of Freedom, is it? For example it's completely voluntary to purchase Microsoft Windows, but a lot of people still have ethical concerns over the Windows EULA.
... and even to modify code released under the GPL
True. But one of the concerns cited here is that the revised GPL further restricts the freedoms of the licencees, in a way that could not have been forseen by those developers who gave their copyrights in trust to the FSF, and that this violates, as TFA put it
a solemn trust, as stated in article 9 of GPLv2, only to licence the code under versions of the GPL that "... will be similar in spirit to the present version".
Moving on
You know what's not freedom? When you don't even have the right to look at the code, when you have severe restrictions on how a software can be used (not modified, used). That's severe.
And is that the only thing that's not freedom? Just because there exist other unfair restrictions in the world, that doesn't automatically imply that the FSF's stance is right, or justified, or ethical. I think the signatories in TFA have made a good point, and one which needs to be addressed. I don't think you can dismiss it so easily.
The problem of incomplete information for actors occurs in all economic
systems, and its existence in one is not an indictment of that system.
Well, certainly there's no economic system that offers perfect
information. I'm just not convinced that other economic systems lose
their benefits in the same way as a libertarian one. If Joe
Stalin tells the people they must all buy Kommunist Kabbages, then it
makes little difference whether they know of the existence of Capitalist
Cabbages or not, since Uncle Joe will not permit them to be sold.
even if a potato information cartel could form, and important information
about potatoes were somehow suppressed, that would at most mean that,
as you said, with respect to potato information, the economy has become
little more than communism, but would still be much better in all
other goods.
[taking your points slightly out of order...]
There's two points there to consider. First of all, I believe the
profit imperative means that it's entirely possible for a capitalist
monopoly to be considerably worse than communism. A communist economy
has a vested interest in building things to last, for example, so
we don't get the phenomena of made-to-break goods. The quality of
goods may be lower than in a healthy free market, but could end up
much higher than those in a corrupt market with captive communications.
That's not to say that communism is good, or that libertarianism is bad
(bearing in mind your apples-to-apples point) just that it's not safe to
assume that a libertarian model is at worst as good as communism.
The second point is that, if a cartel can gain broad based control of the
media, then they are in a position to dictate arbitrary monopolies. That potato
cartel, if they can control information to that extent, can probably
control information about apples, cheese and personal video recorders.
This opens new avenues of profit - investing in one brand of cheese, say,
and suppressing information about competitors. And since the cartel have
already demonstrated a willingness to abuse their control of information,
we must suppose that sooner or later they will attempt to control information about
all every product they can.
Libertarians for one don't claim that libertarian outcomes have some
metaphysical superiority, just that they can't predictably be improved
upon
That's true, if you accept the basic assumptions upon which the model founded.
The trouble is that the same is true of any economic system. You can't improve
upon Communism if you assume that everyone will be happy to share equally, for
instance. You can't improve upon Monarchy if you assume that the King rules by
Divine Right and that anything he does is therefore for the best. If you accept the
underlying assumptions, the model always works. So what we're doing here is
questioning some of the assumptions of libertarianism.
Many objections to libertarian stem from these kinds of loaded
comparisons. Yes, markets don't work as well as they could, the harder
it is for information to get out. But unless some other economy manages
that uncertainty, and those "search costs" better, it's not a strike
against libertarianism.
My main objection to libertarianism
lies not in the theory, but in the way it seems to have been hijacked by
the corporate right, so that we get deregulation for large corporations,
and lots of tough new laws protecting corporate interests at the expense
of private citizens. It's not a theoretical objection but a complaint
with the implementation. And in that respect the comparison with communism
(apples to apples) seems apt. Communism - share and share alike - seems
an unarguably fair and equitable way to organise a society. The main
strike against communism is that it seems not to work in practice. And
I think it's about time we began to quest
Participants in markets don't need to have perfect information for markets to be preferable to other methods of distribution
Does that continue to be true as the quality of information contines to degrade, I wonder?
For instance, if a cartel can control the disemmination of information to the extent that potential buyers are only aware of one product, the model becomes fuctionally identical to a monopoly. In such a case there's no difference between buying the only product you think exists, and a situation like Soviet Russia where you buy the only product the State allows to be sold.
Of course, the problem dosen't occur with something like potatoes, where anyone can theoretically grow their own, and where word of mouth is a workable commincation channel across the area of potential distribution. The problem comes with higher order products and services. Perhaps libertarianism just doesn't scale well?
In any case, I think the questions to be asking are how far can the quality of information degrade before a free market aproach ceases to have any benefit, and how quickly do those advantages degrade as information qualty drops below theoretical perfection. Then we'll be in a postion of being able to answer the GPs question as to whether libertairianism is practical in the real world, or whether like communisim, it's a nice idea, but always ends up drowing in corruption and protectionism.
How did we get off on this tangent anyway? Mod me offtopic by all means...
Yes, IDEs force programmers to code sloppily just as junk food forces weak people to become fat, amirite?
No, not really.
It's more like the way plate mail leads the wearer to emphasis certain social roles over others. I suppose there's nothing to stop someone in full armour competing in a 100m sprint or trying to make love. On the other hand, I suspect that they'll have a better chance of success and much more fun if they ditch the armour.
Maybe force is too strong a word. But as long as you employ so restrictive a tool, you're going to find certain areas of activity effectively closed to you.
How so? We use Eclipse at my company, and unless I missed something, I don't recall it forcing me to do anything. I essentially use it as a glorified text editor with built-in debugger & CVS support.
See, I tend to use the command shell to invoke a non-glorified text editor, with access to a debugger, cvs, and every other utility on the system if I want it. The IDE works by limiting your choices. That's the trade off - accessibility for flexibility. If you're happy with the package, that's great. But it does mean accepting the limitations imposed by the IDE. I've generally found I can do the task better and faster from a command line.
But, if I had to choose an IDE, it would probably be Eclipse.
Personally, I don't like operating systems. They force you into another's way of programming,
A point well made. Of course, with a decent operating system, you might not need a separate IDE.
... and encourage sloppy design by allowing the management of needless complexity. They make it easier for thoughtless programmers to maintain bad code, by postponing the day when the codebase collapses under its own weight.
Well it would have been well made with a little effort to maintain the analogy. Pity, you were doing so well...
Additionally, you seem to extoll the virtues of unix's command line processing - specifically, it's unstructured interprocess communication
Do I detect a devotee of the Microsoft Powershell? The one also known as MSH, Mush, Monad, Gonad and whatever they changed it to this week?
Throwing pure data around is a pretty terrible way to pass things between programs - the receiving program has no information as to what format the data is in, or any other metadata. Even if you're throwing text around, that text does have an inherent structure - each line might be an entry, for instance - and that structure isn't necessarily universal
Oddly enough that point occured to
Doug McIlroy and Ken Thompson
when they were putting pipes into the Unix shell. "Write programs that handle text streams, because that is a universal interface". You are, of course, entitle to your opinion, but the model cooked up in Bell Labs has been rather successful, and is quite highly regarded in some circles.
Without structured communication, two communicating programs might get confused as to what constitutes a list format
You've read the MS publicity packs, but not done any actual shell coding, right? The way it works is you have a lot of text based filters with well documented input and output formats. Or you write your own - simple programs or scripts themselves. The lack of metadata tends not to be a problem.
Some of them can be recognized, true, but not every file format has its own unique magic number, and even then, playing guessing games with incoming data is a dangerous plan to reliability.
In practice, you find yourself doing things like grep at source files to auto generate Makefiles, or running colon delimited records of your own devising through awk to auto generate record formats. The end points are well understood in advance.
It's not like we're reading a random socket open to the big bad Internet where anything might come down the pipe. We're talking about operatng on files that you wrote yourself in the development directory. There's not a lot of scope for surprises. And if you do have to cope with arbitrary data arriving from off platform, there are tools to help handle that too. Iptables would be my first thought...
I think it's like what the word processor did to the modern novel. Whem I were a lad, you used to down t'bookseller and there'd be row after row of slim 120 page novels, almost all of them well written. The reason was that editing a draft was a lot of work in those days; no search function on hard copy and cut and paste meant using scissors and a paste pot. There was a size beyond which editing became prohibitively expensive.
The result was that writers made an effort to get it right from the start. A lot more up-front thought went into writing, purely because mistakes were so expensive.
These days, wordprocessing has increased the maximum editable size by something up to a factor of fifty. This means that writers don't need to think so hard about how to get the point across in a limited number of words, and they don't need to plan so carefully, because rearranging things is so cheap. And so we get the bloated, meandering several thousand page "epics" that clog modern bookshops.
Of course, some writers make effective use of the word processor, and a few make good use of the extra scope allowed by a much longer novel. So I'm not suggesting that we do away with word processors, nor by analogy am I against IDEs as such. But I think perhaps there is a quality vs quantity tradeoff, and the WP and the IDE both shift the slider a bit further toward "quantity" than I'm comfortable with. Your mileage may of course vary.
Development environments seem to provide ease of use and not much else. How do they "force" people to maintain bad code?
Now, now. I said they forced people to use someone elses methodology, and that they allowed bad code to be maintained way past the point where it would have been abandoned or refactored in a command line environment. Two separate points, you'll notice.
I've pretty much addressed the second point above. For the first, I think an IDE tends to encapsulate the practices and prejudices of its lead developer. At best, you get something that's fairly flexible across tasks that the designer performs regualrly. At worst, you get something that tries to force you to adopt what the developer thinks is best practice. In both cases, you can quickly come unstuck if you try to do something they didn't think of, or something they didn't want you to do.
I've yet to find an IDE that didn't make me feel like I was trying to type whilst wearing boxing gloves. But as I said at the start, it's a personal opinion.
tell you what..build me a windows forms app with vi and I'll use VS.net
I'm not actually opposed to GUI based forms designers, or to code generation suites where the problem is well understood. I just don't think that this functionality is best provided by embedding it into my favourite text editor. That's the point you see - to have lots of separate tools that can be combined flexibly, rather than a single monolithic tool that embodies the design time assumptions of the lead developer.
...and I'll do it 10 times better in 1/10th the time as you.
You might be surprised. I've recently looked at some of the code that VS2003 generates and it's pretty pedestrian stuff. That's forgivable from generated code, but you don't have to do it like that. I reckon I could write a shell tool to generate equivalent code from user defined text file. There are a couple of framework approaches I think would take the pain out of forms writing as well. I've done it before in other environments.
Give me a fucking break....vi....
Here's a challenge for you: why don't you go and write me a chat server in
Boo using VS 2003. I'll have mine written and tested using vi before you're done writing the necessary plug-in. Oh, and I expect it work on Linux under Mono as well as Windows
with.NET
Slashdot Mirror
I can't boycott Sony over this! It'd mean I'd have to call off the boycott I imposed over the rootkit fiasco.
Sony have gone out of their way, time and again, to show that they are no friend to their customer. Personally, I'm amazed that anyone is buying their stuff at all.
I have to confess to mixed feelings now. I'd still quite like to take a look around, but the credit card episode doesn't really inspire confidence. I suppose the gripping hand is that I don't really have the time, in any case.
Still, kudos to them for cleaning up their act, at any rate.
So I went to register: first they want an email address; then they want the marketing data; then they want your credit card number. Not that they're ever going to charge it, you understand. They just want to hold it on their database where it gives them a warm and cozy feeling.
It's classic sleazeball technique. Get as much resalable data from the mark as possible, starting with the least intrusive, and working up to something that could actually be used to defraud. I don't trust them, based purely on their methodology.
Needless to say, I didn't sign up. The next great step forward in computer aided interactions can happen without me, thank you very much.
There's still things you can't do on XP without invoking a dos shell. Doesn't seem to have kept the Great Unclued from adopting it in droves.
Requiring the userbase to learn bash syntax and the whole Unix/Gnu command set, that would be a barrier to adoption. Having the occasional job that can't be easy done without a command line? They're used to that.
Of course it does. Well, it's as valid a viewpoint as any other, anyway. That's what relativity is all about.
You can have the entire universe revolve around you, personally, if you like; all you need to do is define a suitable fixed point.
You may however encounter some debate as to whether your system is the most useful to eamine the universe.
Which is fair enough as long as you're not suggesting that this excuses a company from responsibility or accountability.
If Comcast's salesmen are that ignorant or ill trained that they criminally mis-represent their employer's position on a regular basis, then the company should see to it that they are better trained. If the company is held liable for such exerices in stipidty, they will have an incentive to do this that might otherwise be lacking.
Otherwise "stupid employees" becomes a get out of jail free card for every variety of corporate misdemeanor going
Capitulation? I'm not sure the dominance-or-submission works very well in this context. I mean if have frame this as total war, then Intel started out victorious. Moreover, the only thing they need do to remain victorious is ignore the free software/open source movement.
See, Intel (so far as I can tell, feel free to correct me) are not asking for any concessions from the community. What they are doing is making concessions. Granted, there may be some further concessions that we'd like to see. I really can't see how getting personal and calling people names is going to help anyone. Unless it's a case of "if BSD can't use the drivers, I don't want linux to benefit either" which is the closest i've seen to a rational justification for this latest piece of bad behaviour.
I still don't see why we can't do so politely. Pissing Intel off is not going to help.
I think part of the problem is that "compromise" isn't in Theo's mental dictionary. The whole point of Mr. Ketrenos is that compromise is possible, a useful message for many hardware suppliers. Theo, on the other hand, seems to read "compromise" and think "unconditional surrender", and then he gets to feeling all betrayed when the other party goes and does what they said they would.
It's ether that or Theo is a refugee from some parallel universe Bizzaro World, where "up yours, scumbags!" is a polite way to open a formal dialogue and "good morning, gentlemen" is a killing insult. One of the two, certainly.
In fact it sucks less by precisely the minimum decrement of suckage allowed under law, and only then when compelled by the court. Way to go, paypal.
This doesn't make them any more honest, it just stops one of their unfair practices. I'm sure they can think of others.
It all read to me as if he's disengaging himself from the Perl development process and looking forward to spending more time on Real Life. Good luck to him, if so; he's surely earned some time off to spend with his family.
Pity about the speech though.
If you need the source code to determine a licence violation, and they won't give you the source code, then your stuffed. With or without DRM.
Good politicians have facts to back up the rhetoric. You've only offered one so far, and you got that wrong.
Go away and learn your subject. Come back when you know what you're taking about.
If you find ignorance so offensive, why not explain the issues yourself? You might find there's less of it to upset you. Of course, that's assuming you understand the topic well enough to explain anything, and I'm starting to wonder if that's a safe assumption.
Let's face it, you don't appear to have read TFA, the Free Software Definition, or any version of the GPL. In fact, the only thing you've contributed to our discussion is a bit of fluff about "self healing commons" nicked from one of Eben Moglen's speeches; probably by way of the slashdot discussion about Ian Murdock's latest project a while back.
So based on that, and the high insult to information ratio, I'm calling Troll on this one. It's not been an entire waste of time, since I've gained a better understanding of the issue through trying to explain it to you. But, unless you have anything to actually contribute to the discussion, I think I can find better uses for my time.
Still, better to light a candle than curse the darkness and all that. So let me take a stab at explaining the relationship between the GPL the Free Software Definition and Digital Rights Management. The one you understand so well and I, so poorly. Perhaps it will help you with your homework or something.
Let's start with the Free Software Definition . You'll see it defines free software as one that gives the user four specific freedoms. Let's quote them so we're both clear what we're talking about:
Still with us? Good. Now, clearly the Spectre of DRM doesn't impact on Freedoms 1-3. Nothing in DRM stops a user from obtaining the source under the terms of the licence, from studying it, modifying it or distributing it. So that leaves us with Freedom Zero: the freedom to run the program for any purpose. DRM can, of course, prevent a program from being run on a given platform. The trouble is that in this one instance, Stallman's prescience seems to have deserted him; he neglected to add "on any machine" after "for any purpose". Supporters of GPLv3 may argue that the intent was clear, and that to suggest otherwise is mere hair-splitting. Since the Free Software Definition is a philosophical and political document rather than a legal agreement, most people would probably concede the point.
Interestingly, the GPLv2 predates the Free Software Agreement, and hence makes no reference to the Four Freedoms. In particular, it makes no reference to the right to run software, purpose or platform notwithstanding. In fact it specifically disclaims any restrictions to do with running the program:
Now, as with the Free Software Definition, if take the GPLv2 as a political manifesto, (and it clearly is), then we can dismiss this too with handwaving. After all, the Free Software Definition says what the FSF are trying to a
Nice. Reminds me of the neocon trolls who, when they don't have a good reply, always fall back on "Why do you hate America?"
Doesn't work though. I mean, I think that FSF does useful work, that the GPLv2 is a work of art and that Stallman is a bit of a twat to whom we nevertheless owe a debt of gratitude. That's not exactly hatred by any reasonable definition, but I can still see the points made in TFA.
Here's a fun fact: dictionary.com lists 36 meanings for force. Surprisingly, none of them require torture, and a large number of them make no reference to physical violence of any sort.
Actually, I think you'll find you jumped on the word forcing, and that my comments are purely a response to that. As to where I lie ideologically, I've already stated my position. If you think that makes me a corporate astroturfer, so be it.
I have to say though that if you're going to take a attitude of "if you're not with us, you're against us", you're going to alienate a lot of moderates who might otherwise be sympathetic. Maybe you're OK with that. I suppose it all depends on what you're trying to achieve.
You are aware that TFA is discussing the GPLv3, aren't you? That the kernel maintainers complaining are actually bang alongside the GPLv2, but have reservations about version three? You said yourself it's a complicated issue, why do you keep tying to oversimplify it?
Remember this bit?
The point being made is that the new provisions of the GPLv3 are concerned with the politics of the DMCA and DRM rather than the freedom to read the source of, modify, learn from and distribute software. In fact the entire point of GPLv3 is that these measures can be used to control software without violating those four freedoms.
Thus the authors take the position that the changes in V3 are political rather than concerned with the original purpose of the licence, as set forth by the GPL and the FSF, and thus they infer that the GPLv3 will consistute a violation of that trust under which the copyrights were assigned.
It's hard to imagine Greg Kroah-Hartman or Andrew Morton astroturfing for anyone. Certainly we haven't heard from anyone who s
The thrust produced isn't enough for terrestrial use, but in input is electric, so stallites can power the drive from solar panels.
At a guess? I'd say it's a reference to the bit in TFA where it says:
And also the section that reads:
Together, these could be interpretted as the FSF trying to impose their will on the FOSS community. Arguably, it's sloppy use of the word "force" from the GP, but I didn't think the meaning was in any way unclear.
mmm... but that's not the be all and end all of Freedom, is it? For example it's completely voluntary to purchase Microsoft Windows, but a lot of people still have ethical concerns over the Windows EULA.
True. But one of the concerns cited here is that the revised GPL further restricts the freedoms of the licencees, in a way that could not have been forseen by those developers who gave their copyrights in trust to the FSF, and that this violates, as TFA put it
Moving on
And is that the only thing that's not freedom? Just because there exist other unfair restrictions in the world, that doesn't automatically imply that the FSF's stance is right, or justified, or ethical. I think the signatories in TFA have made a good point, and one which needs to be addressed. I don't think you can dismiss it so easily.
Well, certainly there's no economic system that offers perfect information. I'm just not convinced that other economic systems lose their benefits in the same way as a libertarian one. If Joe Stalin tells the people they must all buy Kommunist Kabbages, then it makes little difference whether they know of the existence of Capitalist Cabbages or not, since Uncle Joe will not permit them to be sold.
[taking your points slightly out of order ...]
There's two points there to consider. First of all, I believe the profit imperative means that it's entirely possible for a capitalist monopoly to be considerably worse than communism. A communist economy has a vested interest in building things to last, for example, so we don't get the phenomena of made-to-break goods. The quality of goods may be lower than in a healthy free market, but could end up much higher than those in a corrupt market with captive communications. That's not to say that communism is good, or that libertarianism is bad (bearing in mind your apples-to-apples point) just that it's not safe to assume that a libertarian model is at worst as good as communism.
The second point is that, if a cartel can gain broad based control of the media, then they are in a position to dictate arbitrary monopolies. That potato cartel, if they can control information to that extent, can probably control information about apples, cheese and personal video recorders. This opens new avenues of profit - investing in one brand of cheese, say, and suppressing information about competitors. And since the cartel have already demonstrated a willingness to abuse their control of information, we must suppose that sooner or later they will attempt to control information about all every product they can.
That's true, if you accept the basic assumptions upon which the model founded. The trouble is that the same is true of any economic system. You can't improve upon Communism if you assume that everyone will be happy to share equally, for instance. You can't improve upon Monarchy if you assume that the King rules by Divine Right and that anything he does is therefore for the best. If you accept the underlying assumptions, the model always works. So what we're doing here is questioning some of the assumptions of libertarianism.
My main objection to libertarianism lies not in the theory, but in the way it seems to have been hijacked by the corporate right, so that we get deregulation for large corporations, and lots of tough new laws protecting corporate interests at the expense of private citizens. It's not a theoretical objection but a complaint with the implementation. And in that respect the comparison with communism (apples to apples) seems apt. Communism - share and share alike - seems an unarguably fair and equitable way to organise a society. The main strike against communism is that it seems not to work in practice. And I think it's about time we began to quest
Where's Inspector Gill now that we need him?
Does that continue to be true as the quality of information contines to degrade, I wonder?
For instance, if a cartel can control the disemmination of information to the extent that potential buyers are only aware of one product, the model becomes fuctionally identical to a monopoly. In such a case there's no difference between buying the only product you think exists, and a situation like Soviet Russia where you buy the only product the State allows to be sold.
Of course, the problem dosen't occur with something like potatoes, where anyone can theoretically grow their own, and where word of mouth is a workable commincation channel across the area of potential distribution. The problem comes with higher order products and services. Perhaps libertarianism just doesn't scale well?
In any case, I think the questions to be asking are how far can the quality of information degrade before a free market aproach ceases to have any benefit, and how quickly do those advantages degrade as information qualty drops below theoretical perfection. Then we'll be in a postion of being able to answer the GPs question as to whether libertairianism is practical in the real world, or whether like communisim, it's a nice idea, but always ends up drowing in corruption and protectionism.
How did we get off on this tangent anyway? Mod me offtopic by all means...
Don't need to bring gun control into it at all...
No, not really.
It's more like the way plate mail leads the wearer to emphasis certain social roles over others. I suppose there's nothing to stop someone in full armour competing in a 100m sprint or trying to make love. On the other hand, I suspect that they'll have a better chance of success and much more fun if they ditch the armour.
Maybe force is too strong a word. But as long as you employ so restrictive a tool, you're going to find certain areas of activity effectively closed to you.
See, I tend to use the command shell to invoke a non-glorified text editor, with access to a debugger, cvs, and every other utility on the system if I want it. The IDE works by limiting your choices. That's the trade off - accessibility for flexibility. If you're happy with the package, that's great. But it does mean accepting the limitations imposed by the IDE. I've generally found I can do the task better and faster from a command line.
But, if I had to choose an IDE, it would probably be Eclipse.
A point well made. Of course, with a decent operating system, you might not need a separate IDE.
Well it would have been well made with a little effort to maintain the analogy. Pity, you were doing so well...
Do I detect a devotee of the Microsoft Powershell? The one also known as MSH, Mush, Monad, Gonad and whatever they changed it to this week?
Oddly enough that point occured to Doug McIlroy and Ken Thompson when they were putting pipes into the Unix shell. "Write programs that handle text streams, because that is a universal interface". You are, of course, entitle to your opinion, but the model cooked up in Bell Labs has been rather successful, and is quite highly regarded in some circles.
You've read the MS publicity packs, but not done any actual shell coding, right? The way it works is you have a lot of text based filters with well documented input and output formats. Or you write your own - simple programs or scripts themselves. The lack of metadata tends not to be a problem.
In practice, you find yourself doing things like grep at source files to auto generate Makefiles, or running colon delimited records of your own devising through awk to auto generate record formats. The end points are well understood in advance.
It's not like we're reading a random socket open to the big bad Internet where anything might come down the pipe. We're talking about operatng on files that you wrote yourself in the development directory. There's not a lot of scope for surprises. And if you do have to cope with arbitrary data arriving from off platform, there are tools to help handle that too. Iptables would be my first thought...
I think it's like what the word processor did to the modern novel. Whem I were a lad, you used to down t'bookseller and there'd be row after row of slim 120 page novels, almost all of them well written. The reason was that editing a draft was a lot of work in those days; no search function on hard copy and cut and paste meant using scissors and a paste pot. There was a size beyond which editing became prohibitively expensive.
The result was that writers made an effort to get it right from the start. A lot more up-front thought went into writing, purely because mistakes were so expensive.
These days, wordprocessing has increased the maximum editable size by something up to a factor of fifty. This means that writers don't need to think so hard about how to get the point across in a limited number of words, and they don't need to plan so carefully, because rearranging things is so cheap. And so we get the bloated, meandering several thousand page "epics" that clog modern bookshops.
Of course, some writers make effective use of the word processor, and a few make good use of the extra scope allowed by a much longer novel. So I'm not suggesting that we do away with word processors, nor by analogy am I against IDEs as such. But I think perhaps there is a quality vs quantity tradeoff, and the WP and the IDE both shift the slider a bit further toward "quantity" than I'm comfortable with. Your mileage may of course vary.
Now, now. I said they forced people to use someone elses methodology, and that they allowed bad code to be maintained way past the point where it would have been abandoned or refactored in a command line environment. Two separate points, you'll notice.
I've pretty much addressed the second point above. For the first, I think an IDE tends to encapsulate the practices and prejudices of its lead developer. At best, you get something that's fairly flexible across tasks that the designer performs regualrly. At worst, you get something that tries to force you to adopt what the developer thinks is best practice. In both cases, you can quickly come unstuck if you try to do something they didn't think of, or something they didn't want you to do.
I've yet to find an IDE that didn't make me feel like I was trying to type whilst wearing boxing gloves. But as I said at the start, it's a personal opinion.
I'm not actually opposed to GUI based forms designers, or to code generation suites where the problem is well understood. I just don't think that this functionality is best provided by embedding it into my favourite text editor. That's the point you see - to have lots of separate tools that can be combined flexibly, rather than a single monolithic tool that embodies the design time assumptions of the lead developer.
You might be surprised. I've recently looked at some of the code that VS2003 generates and it's pretty pedestrian stuff. That's forgivable from generated code, but you don't have to do it like that. I reckon I could write a shell tool to generate equivalent code from user defined text file. There are a couple of framework approaches I think would take the pain out of forms writing as well. I've done it before in other environments.
Here's a challenge for you: why don't you go and write me a chat server in Boo using VS 2003. I'll have mine written and tested using vi before you're done writing the necessary plug-in. Oh, and I expect it work on Linux under Mono as well as Windows with .NET
Have fun!