To me, this posting is evidence that we Mac users frequently don't appreciate just how good we have it. (i.e. Having to hold down the trackpad button, while restarting the computer is considered "severe.")
Hear, hear. Of course, to be fair, on a PC you could probably just press the "eject" button on the drive itself to get the disc out. But "eject" buttons are so 20th century....
they were "Right" to restrict their software so that other manufacturer's DVD burners couldnt be used with Apple's burning software?
Yup. Apple created iDVD, so they could choose which DVD players would be supported. Hell, if they'd wanted to, they probably could have done it by individual serial number. It's their software, so they can do whatever they want with it.
You can complain about it, of course, but nobody will pay any attention to you. To Mac owners who bought SuperDrive-equipped machines, iDVD is free. It's not available to anybody else. So you don't have much ground to complain.
They were "RIGHT" to leverage their software to increase their hardware sales?
Sure. Apple's been doing that since 1984. Apple is a hardware company, but the only reason-- well, not the only, but by far the best-- reason anybody buys their hardware is because of the software that runs on it. You can't run OS X on a Toshiba laptop, and you can't run iDVD with a third-party external DVD burner. That's Apple's way of doing business. If you don't like it-- though you'd be in the minority-- you're free to buy somebody else's stuff.
They were "RIGHT" to RESTRICT FUNCTIONALITY of their product to suit their needs?
You kinda lept from A to C without going through B first, here. How is supporting only a limited set of DVD burners restricting functionality? It's no different than when any computer software works with only a limited set of computer hardware.
That said, Apple would have been entirely within their rights to restrict the functionality of iDVD. In fact, in many ways, they have. iDVD is a consumer product, designed to be easy to use but not especially powerful. DVD Studio Pro, on the other hand, is designed to be more complex, but a lot more powerful. iDVD could, in theory, do everything that DVD Studio Pro does. But Apple decided to deliberately restrict the functionality of iDVD to keep it simple. So yeah, if this had been a restricting of functionality, Apple would have totally been in the right to do it.
You make as good of a product as you can, for the lowest price you can.
On what planet? On this one, you make a product that's as good as it has to be, for as much as people are willing to pay. That's how you stay in business. Apple has demonstrated repeatedly that their standards are higher than a lot of other software companies'; even Apple's free software is better than most comparable commercial products in the Windows world. But that doesn't mean Apple is running a soup kitchen. It's a business, not a charity.
Making a product CRAPPIER to make another product sell better does not help the consumers at all!
Better bring Mercedes to task, then. They sell the crappy E-class, just so people who don't want a crappy car will buy the S-class. For that matter, Boeing is really on my shitlist, too. They sell the crappy 737 just to boost sales of the 747 and 777. And what's with IBM selling all of those crappy Intel-based servers? They should be selling mainframes for $20 each with lifetime warranties! This process of selling a crappy product for less money-- or, in the case of iDVD, even giving it away-- has got to stop!
And keep trumpetting until the RIAA and Micro$oft lobbies have managed to buy all of your rights out from under you.
Okay, you've officially dropped off the deep end here. I kinda regret spending this time responding to your other points, because it's only now, when I see the last couple of lines of your message, that I realize you're kind of an idiot.
Oh, well. Maybe somebody else will read and be enlightened.
The DMCA is a bad law, and it gives any company fool enough to use it plenty of bad PR.
Not to start a flame war, but the DMCA isn't anywhere near as bad as most Slashdotters make it out to be. I've seen instances here of people saying things would or might be illegal under the DMCA that have nothing to do with that law. I'd suggest everybody-- opponent, proponent, whatever-- take a few minutes out and actually read the thing. It's not long. And while you're at it, you can invest a little more time and read all of Title 17. It's amazing to me how many people have the wrong idea about what the copyright laws actually say.
Just read the laws before forming an opinion, that's all I suggest.
That's a mighty strong statement to be putting in somebody else's mouth. Might want to back off of that position just a tad before you start to look like an idiot.
Trademarks are not just "legal formalities that only exists because of lawyers and idiots". Whether any given person believes that they are or not is irrelevant. Trademarks, and the rules governing them, are an important part of intellectual property law. Of course, I know that the most vocal Slashdotters will assert that all intellectual property law is baseless and corrupt, but those people simply don't know what they're talking about, so I won't even bother responding to such arguments.
If you want to violate the laws governing the use of trademarks, that's fine by me. But don't argue that they don't apply. If you want to ignore Torvalds's own explicit instructions, that's fine too, but don't argue that he doesn't care whether you do.
Linus gave RMS permission to call anything Gnu/Linux
Nope. Read the interview again. He gave RMS permission to call GNU's distribution of Linux "GNU/Linux." Only thing is, that's not what RMS was asking for. So RMS does not now, and never has, had permission to use the "GNU/Linux" name the way he wants to.
I know RedHat, SuSE, Debian, Slackware, and Gentoo use kernels built by Gnu development tools
That's not important. Microsoft has repeatedly accused the GPL of being "viral," and of "infecting" every piece of software it touches. The big counter-argument to that point has been the GCC license, which explicitly says that programs compiled with GCC are not required to carry any particular license, and are not part of the GNU project. I use Mac OS X, and Apple's compiler is based on GCC. When I compile SurfWriter, I feel no particular compulsion to call it "GNU/SurfWriter." What development tools you use has no bearing at all on what you should call the end product.
Any software compiled with Gnu, upon a Linux-based OS, defines the software as Gnu/Linux.
By that same reasoning, any software compiled with GCC on Mac OS X defines the software was GNU/Mac OS X. Which is absurd. Your argument is flawed.
It also has nothing whatsoever to do with any other argument put forward to justify the bastardization "GNU/Linux."
What are you, an idiot? Read the rest of my post. I said-- paraphrasing here-- that you can't give desktop Linux away, but Apple has people paying for Mac OS X. That demonstrates that Apple has done something that all the Linux and BSD hackers in the world have been unable to do: create a UNIX-based operating system that ordinary people actually want to use.
You can be as sarcastic as you want; it doesn't diminish Apple's accomplishment.
Yet, community-led initiatives are actually becoming a viable alternative to the existing dominant OSes, competing with companies which have ungodly ammounts of money and huge user bases, and you're not impressed or excited.
That's because, as you say, "community-led initiatives" (which is what I call "hobby projects") are not viable alternatives to the existing OSs. If they were, people would be using them. But instead of downloading Red Hat Whatever for free, they're still buying Mac OS X by the truckload. Mac OS X was initially very sluggish-- it's gotten a lot better with each release-- and incompatible with tons of older Mac software. And yet people pay good money for it. Doesn't that tell you something?
Actually, I'd say making it actually work comes before branding. The reason why Apple doesn't use Hurd and XFree86 2 is because those things don't work, as in the often-used phrase "just works." Apple spent years and lots of money making OS X "just work." Nobody else in the world has ever had a UNIX-based operating system that "just worked." This is a significant achievement.
The problem with this reasoning is the assumption that a company (even the likes of Microsoft) will fix bugs and make changes to respond to customer demand.
The exact same line of thought can be applied to open-source projects. In either case, the maintainer-- be it a corporation or an individual-- may not do exactly what you want them to do, when you want them to do it. This is not a point for open-source software, I'm afraid.
The question still boils down to the same point: the only way being dependent on open-source software is better than being dependent on commercial software is if-- and that's a huge if-- you are willing to accept responsibility for maintaining the code yourself. If you are, then by all means, download the source code to whatever it is you want to use, and develop it to your heart's content. (Unless it's licensed under the GPL, of course, in which case you're better off writing your own implementation from scratch.)
As for your situation with the buggy compiler, that's a bad break, and you have my sympathy. But you would be no better off if you had the source code to the compiler, unless-- and that's a huge unless-- you were willing to accept responsibility for maintaining the compiler yourself. That's not an option most companies are willing to exercise.
This is not at issue. The trademark "Linux" describes "computer operating system software to facilitate computer use and operation." Whether Linus Torvalds's kernel constitutes a computer operating system or not is irrelevant. The question is whether the name "Linux" refers to the entire operating system or just the kernel, and the answer is clearly the former.
Give RMS his credit
This isn't about credit. This is about infringement. Torvalds has the exclusive right to determine how the name "Linux," when describing computer operating system software, is applied. That's what having a registered trademark means. He has indicated that while he has no objection to the term "GNU/Linux" to describe one particular release of the Linux operating system-- be it the FSF's, or Debian's, or the one released by Handsome Pete who dances for nickels-- he does object to the FSF's use of the name "GNU/Linux" to describe all releases of the Linux operating system. Torvalds's instructions are to call the Linux operating system "just plain 'Linux,'" so that's what people must do.
Either that, or stop calling it any derivative of "Linux" altogether. Call it "GNUnux," or what have you.
That doesn't mean he sues people who don't call it just Linux; that means he encourages people to call it just Linux.
Sorry, you must have misread. The interview didn't say "I just encourage people to call it just plain 'Linux.'" It said "I just tell people to call it just plain 'Linux.'" He owns the trademark. If he says, "Call it just plain 'Linux,'" then that's what you have to do. It's not a question of encouraging. It's black-and-white.
The normal way to explicitly deny use of a trademark is through your lawyer.
Nope. Trademark licensing is a business transaction, not a legal one. Unless the license is part of a larger contract negotiation-- which is often, but not always, the case-- there's no need for lawyers to be involved.
And as I mentioned before, Debian GNU/Linux has existed for six years...
Do you have any information on licensing agreements between the Debian organization and Torvalds? (It's Torvalds, by the way, not Torvald.) Is there any evidence to indicate that the Debian organization does not have permission to use the name "GNU/Linux" from Torvalds? In fact, isn't it true that the aforementioned interview contains information that strongly suggests that they may?
Torvalds said, "rms asked me if I minded the name before starting to use it, and I said 'go ahead'....I also thought that rms would only use it for the specific release of Linux that the FSF was working on." This indicates that Torvalds clearly has no problem licensing the use of the name "Linux" as "GNU/Linux" with respect to a specific distribution. His objection is to the FSF's attempted use of "GNU/Linux" to describe any and all Linux operating system releases. Because the Debian organization releases uses the name "GNU/Linux" only to describe "the specific release of Linux" that they distribute, it's clear from his own statements that Debian's use of the "Linux" trademark is within the limits of Torvalds's unpublished guidelines.
Honestly, I'm not sure the Linux trademark is valid anymore.
It is. While it's true that a failure to defend one's trademark can be grounds for denying legal action to protect that trademark, it is not true that one's trademark becomes invalid through lack of litigation. Torvalds's trademark is valid until challenged in and annulled by a court of law.
You and I obviously have different definitions of "interesting." But no, I wasn't referring specifically or exclusively to Darwin. Rather, I was referring to the fact that Apple-- partly by standing on the shoulders of NeXT-- has been able to do something that no one else have ever been able to do before: create a UNIX-based operating system that is suitable for general-purpose desktop use by nontechnical users. What's more, they've even done such a good job with OS X that they've got people paying for it! I mean no disrespect to anybody, but in a very real sense you can't even give Linux or FreeBSD to the average home computer user, while Apple has people paying for OS X. That's an amazing accomplishment. Whether you like OS X or not, you have to respect Apple's achievement.
Oh, dude, you pretty much stuck your foot in it here. As evidence that Torvalds gave Stallman permission to use the name "GNU/Linux," you cited this article. Did you read it? Here's the salient portion.
HY: About the GNU/Linux argument; have you talked with Richard Stallman about this?
Linus: rms asked me if I minded the name before starting to use it, and I said "go ahead".
Sounds good, right? But the thing is, it didn't stop there. Torvalds goes on:
I didn't think it would explode into the large discussion it resulted in, and I also thought that rms would only use it for the specific release of Linux that the FSF was working on rather than "every" Linux system.
I never felt that the naming issue was all that important, but I was obviously wrong judging by how many people felt very strongly about it. So these days I just tell people to call it just plain "Linux" and nothing more.
(Emphasis mine.)
So Torvalds, who has exclusive control over the name "Linux," as used to describe computer operating system software, initially granted permission for the use of the name "GNU/Linux," but he and Stallman had different ideas of how that variation on the "Linux" trademark was to be used. In this interview, Torvalds makes it clear that he does not approve of the use of the mark "GNU/Linux" to describe "'every' Linux system." Consequently, the name "GNU/Linux" is an infringement on Torvalds's trademark.
If you want to call the operating system "Foonix," you're free to do so. You can call it whatever you want-- to the extent that you don't violate anybody's copyright. But you can't dilute or otherwise distort the trademark "Linux" without permission, which Torvalds explicitly denied in that interview.
Thanks for pointing out that article. It makes the issue even more crystal-clear to me.
I ask you this: do you think it is the place of Free/Open Source developers to innovate (which will take a long time), or only to copy what Microsoft and other proprietary software companies do?
It is the place of the open source developers to innovate. Most of them don't. It is the place of the FSF to engage in politics. Most everyone ignores them.
Meanwhile, companies like Apple, and others, are doing the really interesting things.
The open source idea sounds okay, but it's not working out the way people seemed to expect it to.
Lot's of people I know criticize Free/Open Source Software just rips stuff off, and doesn't innovate.
(Hand goes up.) That would be me. Just, you know, credit where it's due.
These guys were talking about buiding a multi-server OS back at the beginning of the 90s.
The thing is, though, that they're still talking about it, and haven't been able to actually do anything with it. The world has gotten bored with Hurd. It's just not interesting any more, except possibly to academics who are fascinated by it for its abstract value alone. Not that there's anything wrong with that, but don't expect me to get all hot and bothered because the design is different in some exciting but arcane way.
Not true, friend. There are alternatives even to the GNU C library for those who object to RMS's politics.
And whether or not one uses the GNU C compiler is irrelevant. Code compiled with GCC is not part of the GNU project, nor it is required to be licensed with the GNU license. If you prefer, though, you can use Intel's C compiler, or Metrowerks's, or whichever compiler will work with your target architecture.
And you're mistaken about one more thing. The reason people drop the "GNU/" part of the name "GNU/Linux" is because "Linux," as has been pointed out again and again here by a persistent AC, is a registered trademark. Calling anything "GNU/Linux" without Linus Torvald's permission is infringement, and it's illegal. The name of the operating system is "Linux," and unless Torvalds says otherwise, that's the end of that.
The OP was not on the road to offending anyone except people like you who can't comprehend the meaning of a simple sentence.
Wrong. As I clearly stated, calling Christianity a mythology is very offensive to many, many people. I don't happen to be one of them, except to the extent that people who go out of their way to trivialize a belief system held by over a billion people kinda annoy me.
And as for the rest of your remark, as you can clearly see, I will respond to whomever I please.
If all browsers report that they're MSIE, and they all include kludges to render crappy HTML coded specificly for MSIE, then all browsers effectively become MSIE, and Bill wins.
Hardly. Internet Explorer reports that it's Mozilla*, but do you think that makes anybody feel any better?
China invented fireworks. No fireworks for you! Bye bye fourth of July. Phoenicians invented the "English" alphabet, so you best stop writing! Arabs invented Algebra and the "English" system of numerals is Indian in origin. There goes math! In fact, 0 is a concept that originated in India, so you'll have to find another value to denote your IQ.
Duh! All that stuff happened before America was around! Those countries had no choice but to invent their own stuff. And look! It took them four thousand years to do it! America went from oxen and ploughs to 747s, space lasers, pr0n, individually packaged pre-moistened towelettes, microwave burritos, electricity, HDTV, indoor plumbing, hydroponics, the Internet, and the god-damned atom bomb in a little over two hundred years! What has the rest of the world done in that time? Nothin'! Bunch of lazy, good-for-nothing lazy people...
(Yes, I'm kidding. If you're not laughing, it just means my sense of humor is better than yours.)
It only offended me to the extent that it appeared you were tweaking Christians needlessly. I don't count myself as part of that group, but I get annoyed at that sort of thing anyway. Since it seems that wasn't your intention, let's call it a wash.
On the contrary, IIRC, it went 66, 166, 266, 366, 466, 566, 667. More accurate or not, it was inconsistent.
The floors in every building I've ever been in go 11, 12, 14, 15. Welcome to our world.;-)
"Fundamentalist reactionary types?" Hardly. I have no particular opinion on God; I've never met the gentleman. I was simply pointing out that the OP was on the road to offending lots and lots of people unnecessarily.
Then again, there are people out there who sometimes go out of their way to offend people needlessly. Maybe that's the sort of person I'm dealing with here.
Slashdot Mirror
To me, this posting is evidence that we Mac users frequently don't appreciate just how good we have it. (i.e. Having to hold down the trackpad button, while restarting the computer is considered "severe.")
Hear, hear. Of course, to be fair, on a PC you could probably just press the "eject" button on the drive itself to get the disc out. But "eject" buttons are so 20th century....
they were "Right" to restrict their software so that other manufacturer's DVD burners couldnt be used with Apple's burning software?
Yup. Apple created iDVD, so they could choose which DVD players would be supported. Hell, if they'd wanted to, they probably could have done it by individual serial number. It's their software, so they can do whatever they want with it.
You can complain about it, of course, but nobody will pay any attention to you. To Mac owners who bought SuperDrive-equipped machines, iDVD is free. It's not available to anybody else. So you don't have much ground to complain.
They were "RIGHT" to leverage their software to increase their hardware sales?
Sure. Apple's been doing that since 1984. Apple is a hardware company, but the only reason-- well, not the only, but by far the best-- reason anybody buys their hardware is because of the software that runs on it. You can't run OS X on a Toshiba laptop, and you can't run iDVD with a third-party external DVD burner. That's Apple's way of doing business. If you don't like it-- though you'd be in the minority-- you're free to buy somebody else's stuff.
They were "RIGHT" to RESTRICT FUNCTIONALITY of their product to suit their needs?
You kinda lept from A to C without going through B first, here. How is supporting only a limited set of DVD burners restricting functionality? It's no different than when any computer software works with only a limited set of computer hardware.
That said, Apple would have been entirely within their rights to restrict the functionality of iDVD. In fact, in many ways, they have. iDVD is a consumer product, designed to be easy to use but not especially powerful. DVD Studio Pro, on the other hand, is designed to be more complex, but a lot more powerful. iDVD could, in theory, do everything that DVD Studio Pro does. But Apple decided to deliberately restrict the functionality of iDVD to keep it simple. So yeah, if this had been a restricting of functionality, Apple would have totally been in the right to do it.
You make as good of a product as you can, for the lowest price you can.
On what planet? On this one, you make a product that's as good as it has to be, for as much as people are willing to pay. That's how you stay in business. Apple has demonstrated repeatedly that their standards are higher than a lot of other software companies'; even Apple's free software is better than most comparable commercial products in the Windows world. But that doesn't mean Apple is running a soup kitchen. It's a business, not a charity.
Making a product CRAPPIER to make another product sell better does not help the consumers at all!
Better bring Mercedes to task, then. They sell the crappy E-class, just so people who don't want a crappy car will buy the S-class. For that matter, Boeing is really on my shitlist, too. They sell the crappy 737 just to boost sales of the 747 and 777. And what's with IBM selling all of those crappy Intel-based servers? They should be selling mainframes for $20 each with lifetime warranties! This process of selling a crappy product for less money-- or, in the case of iDVD, even giving it away-- has got to stop!
And keep trumpetting until the RIAA and Micro$oft lobbies have managed to buy all of your rights out from under you.
Okay, you've officially dropped off the deep end here. I kinda regret spending this time responding to your other points, because it's only now, when I see the last couple of lines of your message, that I realize you're kind of an idiot.
Oh, well. Maybe somebody else will read and be enlightened.
The DMCA is a bad law, and it gives any company fool enough to use it plenty of bad PR.
Not to start a flame war, but the DMCA isn't anywhere near as bad as most Slashdotters make it out to be. I've seen instances here of people saying things would or might be illegal under the DMCA that have nothing to do with that law. I'd suggest everybody-- opponent, proponent, whatever-- take a few minutes out and actually read the thing. It's not long. And while you're at it, you can invest a little more time and read all of Title 17. It's amazing to me how many people have the wrong idea about what the copyright laws actually say.
Just read the laws before forming an opinion, that's all I suggest.
That's a mighty strong statement to be putting in somebody else's mouth. Might want to back off of that position just a tad before you start to look like an idiot.
Trademarks are not just "legal formalities that only exists because of lawyers and idiots". Whether any given person believes that they are or not is irrelevant. Trademarks, and the rules governing them, are an important part of intellectual property law. Of course, I know that the most vocal Slashdotters will assert that all intellectual property law is baseless and corrupt, but those people simply don't know what they're talking about, so I won't even bother responding to such arguments.
If you want to violate the laws governing the use of trademarks, that's fine by me. But don't argue that they don't apply. If you want to ignore Torvalds's own explicit instructions, that's fine too, but don't argue that he doesn't care whether you do.
Linus gave RMS permission to call anything Gnu/Linux
Nope. Read the interview again. He gave RMS permission to call GNU's distribution of Linux "GNU/Linux." Only thing is, that's not what RMS was asking for. So RMS does not now, and never has, had permission to use the "GNU/Linux" name the way he wants to.
I know RedHat, SuSE, Debian, Slackware, and Gentoo use kernels built by Gnu development tools
That's not important. Microsoft has repeatedly accused the GPL of being "viral," and of "infecting" every piece of software it touches. The big counter-argument to that point has been the GCC license, which explicitly says that programs compiled with GCC are not required to carry any particular license, and are not part of the GNU project. I use Mac OS X, and Apple's compiler is based on GCC. When I compile SurfWriter, I feel no particular compulsion to call it "GNU/SurfWriter." What development tools you use has no bearing at all on what you should call the end product.
Any software compiled with Gnu, upon a Linux-based OS, defines the software as Gnu/Linux.
By that same reasoning, any software compiled with GCC on Mac OS X defines the software was GNU/Mac OS X. Which is absurd. Your argument is flawed.
It also has nothing whatsoever to do with any other argument put forward to justify the bastardization "GNU/Linux."
What are you, an idiot? Read the rest of my post. I said-- paraphrasing here-- that you can't give desktop Linux away, but Apple has people paying for Mac OS X. That demonstrates that Apple has done something that all the Linux and BSD hackers in the world have been unable to do: create a UNIX-based operating system that ordinary people actually want to use.
You can be as sarcastic as you want; it doesn't diminish Apple's accomplishment.
Yet, community-led initiatives are actually becoming a viable alternative to the existing dominant OSes, competing with companies which have ungodly ammounts of money and huge user bases, and you're not impressed or excited.
That's because, as you say, "community-led initiatives" (which is what I call "hobby projects") are not viable alternatives to the existing OSs. If they were, people would be using them. But instead of downloading Red Hat Whatever for free, they're still buying Mac OS X by the truckload. Mac OS X was initially very sluggish-- it's gotten a lot better with each release-- and incompatible with tons of older Mac software. And yet people pay good money for it. Doesn't that tell you something?
Actually, I'd say making it actually work comes before branding. The reason why Apple doesn't use Hurd and XFree86 2 is because those things don't work, as in the often-used phrase "just works." Apple spent years and lots of money making OS X "just work." Nobody else in the world has ever had a UNIX-based operating system that "just worked." This is a significant achievement.
The problem with this reasoning is the assumption that a company (even the likes of Microsoft) will fix bugs and make changes to respond to customer demand.
The exact same line of thought can be applied to open-source projects. In either case, the maintainer-- be it a corporation or an individual-- may not do exactly what you want them to do, when you want them to do it. This is not a point for open-source software, I'm afraid.
The question still boils down to the same point: the only way being dependent on open-source software is better than being dependent on commercial software is if-- and that's a huge if-- you are willing to accept responsibility for maintaining the code yourself. If you are, then by all means, download the source code to whatever it is you want to use, and develop it to your heart's content. (Unless it's licensed under the GPL, of course, in which case you're better off writing your own implementation from scratch.)
As for your situation with the buggy compiler, that's a bad break, and you have my sympathy. But you would be no better off if you had the source code to the compiler, unless-- and that's a huge unless-- you were willing to accept responsibility for maintaining the compiler yourself. That's not an option most companies are willing to exercise.
I'm sorry, but a kernel is not an OS.
This is not at issue. The trademark "Linux" describes "computer operating system software to facilitate computer use and operation." Whether Linus Torvalds's kernel constitutes a computer operating system or not is irrelevant. The question is whether the name "Linux" refers to the entire operating system or just the kernel, and the answer is clearly the former.
Give RMS his credit
This isn't about credit. This is about infringement. Torvalds has the exclusive right to determine how the name "Linux," when describing computer operating system software, is applied. That's what having a registered trademark means. He has indicated that while he has no objection to the term "GNU/Linux" to describe one particular release of the Linux operating system-- be it the FSF's, or Debian's, or the one released by Handsome Pete who dances for nickels-- he does object to the FSF's use of the name "GNU/Linux" to describe all releases of the Linux operating system. Torvalds's instructions are to call the Linux operating system "just plain 'Linux,'" so that's what people must do.
Either that, or stop calling it any derivative of "Linux" altogether. Call it "GNUnux," or what have you.
That doesn't mean he sues people who don't call it just Linux; that means he encourages people to call it just Linux.
...I also thought that rms would only use it for the specific release of Linux that the FSF was working on." This indicates that Torvalds clearly has no problem licensing the use of the name "Linux" as "GNU/Linux" with respect to a specific distribution. His objection is to the FSF's attempted use of "GNU/Linux" to describe any and all Linux operating system releases. Because the Debian organization releases uses the name "GNU/Linux" only to describe "the specific release of Linux" that they distribute, it's clear from his own statements that Debian's use of the "Linux" trademark is within the limits of Torvalds's unpublished guidelines.
Sorry, you must have misread. The interview didn't say "I just encourage people to call it just plain 'Linux.'" It said "I just tell people to call it just plain 'Linux.'" He owns the trademark. If he says, "Call it just plain 'Linux,'" then that's what you have to do. It's not a question of encouraging. It's black-and-white.
The normal way to explicitly deny use of a trademark is through your lawyer.
Nope. Trademark licensing is a business transaction, not a legal one. Unless the license is part of a larger contract negotiation-- which is often, but not always, the case-- there's no need for lawyers to be involved.
And as I mentioned before, Debian GNU/Linux has existed for six years...
Do you have any information on licensing agreements between the Debian organization and Torvalds? (It's Torvalds, by the way, not Torvald.) Is there any evidence to indicate that the Debian organization does not have permission to use the name "GNU/Linux" from Torvalds? In fact, isn't it true that the aforementioned interview contains information that strongly suggests that they may?
Torvalds said, "rms asked me if I minded the name before starting to use it, and I said 'go ahead'.
Honestly, I'm not sure the Linux trademark is valid anymore.
It is. While it's true that a failure to defend one's trademark can be grounds for denying legal action to protect that trademark, it is not true that one's trademark becomes invalid through lack of litigation. Torvalds's trademark is valid until challenged in and annulled by a court of law.
You and I obviously have different definitions of "interesting." But no, I wasn't referring specifically or exclusively to Darwin. Rather, I was referring to the fact that Apple-- partly by standing on the shoulders of NeXT-- has been able to do something that no one else have ever been able to do before: create a UNIX-based operating system that is suitable for general-purpose desktop use by nontechnical users. What's more, they've even done such a good job with OS X that they've got people paying for it! I mean no disrespect to anybody, but in a very real sense you can't even give Linux or FreeBSD to the average home computer user, while Apple has people paying for OS X. That's an amazing accomplishment. Whether you like OS X or not, you have to respect Apple's achievement.
That's what I meant by "interesting."
So Torvalds, who has exclusive control over the name "Linux," as used to describe computer operating system software, initially granted permission for the use of the name "GNU/Linux," but he and Stallman had different ideas of how that variation on the "Linux" trademark was to be used. In this interview, Torvalds makes it clear that he does not approve of the use of the mark "GNU/Linux" to describe "'every' Linux system." Consequently, the name "GNU/Linux" is an infringement on Torvalds's trademark.
If you want to call the operating system "Foonix," you're free to do so. You can call it whatever you want-- to the extent that you don't violate anybody's copyright. But you can't dilute or otherwise distort the trademark "Linux" without permission, which Torvalds explicitly denied in that interview.
Thanks for pointing out that article. It makes the issue even more crystal-clear to me.
Are you the same AC? Again, your calculator is broken. Two to the sixty-fourth power is 16.7 million terabytes, not 1.6 million terabytes.
Your calculator is broken.
2^64 = 18,446,744,073,709,551,616, or
16,777,216 terabytes, 1 TB = 2^40 bytes
(Amazingly, the lame(ness) filter did not vomit all over this post.)
You have got to be kidding, right?
I ask you this: do you think it is the place of Free/Open Source developers to innovate (which will take a long time), or only to copy what Microsoft and other proprietary software companies do?
It is the place of the open source developers to innovate. Most of them don't. It is the place of the FSF to engage in politics. Most everyone ignores them.
Meanwhile, companies like Apple, and others, are doing the really interesting things.
The open source idea sounds okay, but it's not working out the way people seemed to expect it to.
Lot's of people I know criticize Free/Open Source Software just rips stuff off, and doesn't innovate.
(Hand goes up.) That would be me. Just, you know, credit where it's due.
These guys were talking about buiding a multi-server OS back at the beginning of the 90s.
The thing is, though, that they're still talking about it, and haven't been able to actually do anything with it. The world has gotten bored with Hurd. It's just not interesting any more, except possibly to academics who are fascinated by it for its abstract value alone. Not that there's anything wrong with that, but don't expect me to get all hot and bothered because the design is different in some exciting but arcane way.
Stallman is pushing this thing because its modular and relies on the Mach microkernel and the Flux OSKit library....
Okay, that's why he's pushing it today. Why was he pushing it yesterday, when it had nothing to do with OSKit?
Good thing Linus Torvald gave RMS permission, then, isn't it?
That never happened, did it?
And what gives Linus Torvalds the right to say what the name of the OS is?
The United States Patent and Trademark Office. The trademark serial number is 74560867. Feel free to look it up at http://www.uspto.gov.
Not true, friend. There are alternatives even to the GNU C library for those who object to RMS's politics.
And whether or not one uses the GNU C compiler is irrelevant. Code compiled with GCC is not part of the GNU project, nor it is required to be licensed with the GNU license. If you prefer, though, you can use Intel's C compiler, or Metrowerks's, or whichever compiler will work with your target architecture.
And you're mistaken about one more thing. The reason people drop the "GNU/" part of the name "GNU/Linux" is because "Linux," as has been pointed out again and again here by a persistent AC, is a registered trademark. Calling anything "GNU/Linux" without Linus Torvald's permission is infringement, and it's illegal. The name of the operating system is "Linux," and unless Torvalds says otherwise, that's the end of that.
The OP was not on the road to offending anyone except people like you who can't comprehend the meaning of a simple sentence.
Wrong. As I clearly stated, calling Christianity a mythology is very offensive to many, many people. I don't happen to be one of them, except to the extent that people who go out of their way to trivialize a belief system held by over a billion people kinda annoy me.
And as for the rest of your remark, as you can clearly see, I will respond to whomever I please.
If all browsers report that they're MSIE, and they all include kludges to render crappy HTML coded specificly for MSIE, then all browsers effectively become MSIE, and Bill wins.
Hardly. Internet Explorer reports that it's Mozilla*, but do you think that makes anybody feel any better?
*Mozilla/4.0 (compatible; MSIE 5.2; Mac_PowerPC)
China invented fireworks. No fireworks for you! Bye bye fourth of July. Phoenicians invented the "English" alphabet, so you best stop writing! Arabs invented Algebra and the "English" system of numerals is Indian in origin. There goes math! In fact, 0 is a concept that originated in India, so you'll have to find another value to denote your IQ.
Duh! All that stuff happened before America was around! Those countries had no choice but to invent their own stuff. And look! It took them four thousand years to do it! America went from oxen and ploughs to 747s, space lasers, pr0n, individually packaged pre-moistened towelettes, microwave burritos, electricity, HDTV, indoor plumbing, hydroponics, the Internet, and the god-damned atom bomb in a little over two hundred years! What has the rest of the world done in that time? Nothin'! Bunch of lazy, good-for-nothing lazy people...
(Yes, I'm kidding. If you're not laughing, it just means my sense of humor is better than yours.)
I'm sorry if I offended you in doing so.
;-)
It only offended me to the extent that it appeared you were tweaking Christians needlessly. I don't count myself as part of that group, but I get annoyed at that sort of thing anyway. Since it seems that wasn't your intention, let's call it a wash.
On the contrary, IIRC, it went 66, 166, 266, 366, 466, 566, 667. More accurate or not, it was inconsistent.
The floors in every building I've ever been in go 11, 12, 14, 15. Welcome to our world.
"Fundamentalist reactionary types?" Hardly. I have no particular opinion on God; I've never met the gentleman. I was simply pointing out that the OP was on the road to offending lots and lots of people unnecessarily.
Then again, there are people out there who sometimes go out of their way to offend people needlessly. Maybe that's the sort of person I'm dealing with here.
Either way, that's about enough of that.