Moderating this post as a troll was a mistake. I understand that it's sometimes hard to tell the difference, but believe it or not there are actually people out there who have legitimate questions and who deserve sensible answers. Remember, "troll" does not mean "opinion with which I disagree," nor does it mean "question that challenges my preconceptions and actually makes me think."
Are you kidding? Dude, you opened up the debate by accusing your president of being a coward, and concluding from that assertion that he can't be trusted. That's the mother of all ad hom attacks!
And then you get uppity and challenge a detractor to "actually debate sensibly?"
Pretty lame, dude.
Re:The only thing war has ever done is...
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No war here.
What's that got to do with it? The assertion, which I was backing up, was that the United States defeated communism. Whether we did it with diplomacy or with bombs isn't at issue.
Now, if you want to talk about whether war has ever accomplished anything, I'm afraid that's gonna open up a whole 'nother can of worms.
Re:Defying the UN
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Why is it NOT okay when Saddam defies the UN, but it's okay when President Bush does it? Could someone explain that to me, please?
A fair question. The answer is very long, but the short version is this: Iraq is in defiance of the United Nations, but the United States and our parters are not.
In 1991, after the Coalition forced Iraqi troops out of Kuwait, Iraq signed a cease-fire agreement that has come to be known as the Safwan Accords. (Safwan was the closest town to the random point in the desert where the generals from both sides met.) One of the terms of the Safwan Accords was that Iraq would comply with all relevant UN Security Council resolutions to reestablish peace in the region.
On April 3, 1991, the UN Security Council (UNSEC) passed resolution 687 which, among other things, called for Iraq to produce, within 15 days, a complete and accurate declaration of all their chemical, biological, and nuclear weapons and weapons programs as well as all ballistic missiles capable of flying more than 150 kilometers. Resolution 687 further demanded that Iraq, having made that declaration, then submit to the verifiable destruction of everything included in that declaration under the watchful eyes of the International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA) and the UN Special Commission on Iraq (UNSCOM).
Iraq never did make that declaration. They spent the next twelve years diddling around. They never complied, even partially, with resolution 687.
Now, UN resolutions come in three flavors. General Assembly resolutions and resolutions adopted by UNSEC under chapter VI of the UN Charter are not enforceable; the Charter provides no legal authority for any party, inside or outside of the UN, to enforce those resolutions. But UNSEC resolutions adopted under chapter VII are enforceable. The Charter calls on the member states of the Security Council to enforce chapter VII resolutions when the Security Council authorizes it.
UNSEC resolution 678-- not to be confused with 687-- authorized the members of the Security Council to use all necessary means to force Iraqi occupation forces out of Kuwait, and to enforce all relevant resolutions both existing and subsequent to resolve the conflict. Resolution 678 was adopted under chapter VII; the members of the Council were not only authorized to enforce it, they were actually obligated by the UN Charter.
So the situation in late 1991 was that there was a binding, enforceable UNSEC resolution on the books (687) with which Iraq was not in compliance, and another resolution (678), also binding and enforceable, obligating the members of the Council to use all necessary means to enforce that resolution.
Did anybody use military force during that period? Yes and no. The Coalition threatened Iraq regularly, and attacked Iraq on several occasions, most notably in December, 1998, during Operation Desert Fox. These threats and attacks were all perfectly legal, because of resolutions 678 (authorizing force) and 687 (with which Iraq was not in compliance).
Recently, certain members of the Council have expressed an unwillingness to pass another resolution explicitly authorizing the use of military force against Iraq. That's okay; we don't need one, because 678 already extends that authorization. Nobody on the Council has even so much as suggested trying to rescind resolution 678, so that mandate is still in effect.
Nor has any member of the Council suggested a resolution condemning the Transatlantic Alliance-- the United States, the United Kingdom, and Spain-- for their actions in this war.
The net result? Iraq is in blatant defiance of the United Nations, but the United States and our partners in the Alliance are not. In fact, according to the resolutions we have on paper tonight, the United States is, in fact, acting with the full authorization and sanction of the Security Council.
Don't be too surprised if you hear talk about changing that situation with another UNSEC resolution in the next few days. But then again, Germany, Russia, and China are already giving us their tacit support in private, and France knows which side their croissant is buttered on, so don't be too surprised if you don't.
In a time of peace, killing the leader of an enemy country is an assassination. In a time of open war-- such as this is; 250,000 troops amassed on your border with orders to go on the C-in-C's command qualifies as open war-- it's a military attack against a leadership target.
Semantics? Sure. But of such things history is made.
Re:Not a troll: How many civilians died last time?
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Does anyone here know the read civilian death toll from the last Iraqi war?
The Iraqi government reported 2,278 civilian deaths caused by Operation Desert Storm. This figure has been very widely reported; pretty much typing "gulf war 2278" into Google will get you sources. Here's one; scroll down to the section heading "Military Deaths in the Gulf War."
Note that this is the official Iraqi government death toll. If anything, one would expect this figure to be inflated; in fact, it seems to be one of the lowest figures reported, by a wide margin.
One of the reasons this gets confusing is because of the meaning of the word "casualties." In military parlance, a "casualty" is anybody who is killed or injured. So when people talk about "casualties," they are referring to the combined total of deaths and injuries. But some people misinterpret "casualties" to mean "deaths," which results in absurd overestimates of the number of people actually killed.
Also, many of the higher-- over 10,000-- estimates of Desert Storm deaths are reached by casting a very wide net. Some estimates were made by including deaths attributed to lack of health care services in the aftermath of the war, and so on. These indirect deaths are certainly significant, but they're basically impossible to estimate-- who knows if little Timmy (or whatever) would have died of a burst appendix if there had been no war-- so those figures are unreliable at best, and complete fictions at worst.
So the best number to use is the Iraqi government's own figure: 2,278.
Re:The only thing war has ever done is...
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After all, one man's terrorist is another man's freedom fighter...
No, that's not true.
Terrorism is, put simply, the deliberate targeting of civilians for the purpose of affecting political change through the infliction of mass casualties. Okay? The deliberate targeting of civilians. This has never been an acceptable tactic, either for armies or for guerilla freedom fighters.
The difference between a freedom fighter and a terrorist is that a freedom fighter blows up a tank, or a military base, while a terrorist blows up a bus or a pizza parlor.
Do you see the difference now?
Re:The only thing war has ever done is...
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The USSR brand of authoritian communism defeated itself, it was not defeated by the US
You could not be more wrong.
President Reagan essentially put the last nail in the coffin of the USSR at Reykjavik in 1986. In one, shining moment that was almost ignored by all involved at the time, President Reagan forced the Russians to commit to an arms race that they could ill afford, and more importantly handed Mr. Gorbachev a humiliating defeat at the negotiating table that led directly to the coup that effectively destroyed the USSR as a political entity in 1991. For more on this important piece of history, read this.
Nope. It's entirely pointy. The point is to (1) enforce chapter VII UNSEC resolutions, and (2) remove a threat to the United States of America.
counterproductive...
Well, I suppose that depends on what your idea of "productive" is. If your job is to preserve, protect, and defend the Constitution, then this war isn't counterproductive at all.
and un-Constitutional war
Wrong, wrong, wrong. First, the president is the chief executive of the armed forces-- as you, as a veteran, should know well-- so he has the sole and ultimate authority to employ the military in whatever way he sees fit. Second, though it was not required by the Constitution, Congress approved the use of the military for just this purpose back in October. All nice and legal.
How come Slick Willy gets impeached for getting a hummer in the oval office while Dubbya gets away with wiping his ass with the Constitution?
First of all, no veteran I know would ever even consider being disrespectful to the commander in chief. No matter what you think of the man who holds the office, the president is entitled to be addressed, even in the third person, with respect.
President Clinton was brought up for impeachment for perjury and obstruction of justice. The articles of impeachment, of course, did not pass the Senate.
And I have yet to hear of a single act that President Bush has done, or even been associated with, that could be called even questionable, much less criminal. Care to back that accusation up with something, sir?
I'll say again what I've said before: "viral" best describes the behavior of the GPL, connotations be damned. If you can suggest a better word, let's hear it. The words you suggested here are just silly; they may or may not be accurate descriptions of the GPL's intent, but they are definitely not accurate descriptions of its effects.
There is absolutely no requirement that you GPL your code, if you "accidentally" link with GPL'd code.
Let me see if I understand this. Let's say, hypothetically, that one were to link to a GPL-licensed library without fully understanding all the obligations that the GPL placed on one. You're saying that there is no requirement whatsoever that this individual place his program under the GPL. He has the option, you're saying, of simply rejecting the GPL, in which case he becomes guilty of copyright infringement.
Sure. No requirement at all, there. "You don't have to do it this way. Of course, if you don't, you're breaking the law, but it's not a requirement or anything."
Do you seriously think anybody believes this crap?
I've never seen someone argue that the GPL was viral who wasn't trying to prove that there was something wrong with it before...
Why does this not surprise me? Your preconceptions color your perceptions, you know. If you think the GPL is the greatest thing since sliced bread, it shouldn't come as a surprise to learn that you interpret even the most innocent discussion of the issue as an attack.
You cannot get "infected" with the GPL unless you deliberately "infect" yourself.
That's just like saying that you can't get infected with a cold unless you deliberately infect yourself. Which is, of course, wrong. All you have to do is come in contact in the right way to somebody who's carrying the virus, and you're stuck with it. In exactly the same way, if your program comes into contact in the right way-- by linking-- with a library that's licensed under the GPL, then by God you're stuck with it.
Of course, as you so helpfully pointed out, you're under no obligation. You could simply ignore the GPL and choose to break the law instead. That was very helpful, thanks.
There is no way to accidentally create a derivative work.
Bullshit. I've been involved with a company that did it; you are completely wrong about this.
"Calling" a library is not legally different to including the source code of the library in your program.
Whether it's legally different or not is not the question. (In fact, I suspect that it is very much different, but that's not the point here.) The fact is that calling a library is not the same as cutting-and-pasting, and that software that calls a library is not derived from that library. If I were to write a program that uses one of libcrypto's hash functions, my software would not be derived from libcrypto.
And yet the GPL would apply anyway, if libcrypto were GPL-licensed.
Try and link against any non-free library and argue in court that you are just "calling" their library and therefore don't need to arrange for licensing with the vendor. The judge won't just laugh at you; he'll fine you.
Given that the purpose of a software library is for other programs to call it, I doubt that very much. One does not need a license to use a standalone program; one merely has to have legally obtained a copy of that program. (Most vendors require users to agree to a license in order to be in legal possession of the program, but that's not a necessary part of it.) One uses a library by calling it from one's own program; therefore, there is no obvious justification for requiring a license to link when no license is required to use.
In other words, I'm pretty sure you're wrong about all of this.
Your continued insistence that licensing doesn't apply because you're just linking is unbelievable.
My what that what what? Please don't put words in my mouth; my position on this thread has been crystal-clear from the beginning: the GPL attaches itself to programs that link with libraries that are licensed under the GPL. Therefore, the GPL can be truthfully and accurately described as "viral." That's it.
Is the entire cause of your confusion simply your lack of experience with real-world licensing?
Yes, that must be it. Pfeh.
What amazes me is the way you, and others, seem to hold on to the fantasy that I'm making an argument that I simply haven't made. One guy upbraided me earlier today because I was wrong that Microsoft's licenses were any less restrictive than the GPL. The fact that I never said anything about that one way or the other seemed lost on him. Now you're telling me I'm arguing about proprietary libraries and their licenses. Astounding!
However, just to be clear on this, let's look at some of the licenses that apply to some of the libraries installed on my computer right now.
Let's look at Foundation.framework, shall we? The license for that should be... hm. Can't seem to find out. How odd. Okay, maybe that's a bad example.
Let's try the ImageVision Library instead, libil.so. That license says... hmm... "SGI will grant to you a personal, non-transferable and non-exclusive right to use and execute the Software, without right to sublicense the Software." What else? Um... "You may distribute copies of the Software to others, if you include copy of this license agreement with each of such copies." Oh, that must be it. If you distribute ImageVision, you have to... wait, no. I was going to say that you have to license your program under the ImageVision license, but that's not what it says.
(Wanna read it for yourself? A version of it is on the web. I just picked ImageVision at random as my first example. It's entirely typical, as you can see for yourself.)
Huh. How very strange. It seems to me, just from a cursory glance, that these licenses are fundamentally different from the GPL. It seems, just from looking at them, that they do not require me to assign any particular license to my programs that link to these libraries. Isn't that interesting?
In other words, my dear friend, it seems you're wrong. It seems that the GPL-- and possibly other licenses that exhibit the same behavior as the GPL with regard to linked works, as opposed to derived works-- is uniquely viral.
Which was, as it turns out, my only point all along.
Have you even read documentation for a copylefted library, used it in an application, linked against the library and then distributed (yes, only then are you forced to make your derivative work copylefted also) it all by mistake or chance?
Yep. Once. Using Readline, which is why I've been using that library to illustrate my point. This was several years ago. We learned the hard way. That's why I'm so adamant about this.
And no one could possibly claim that it's easy to make the mistake to think that everything's ok, and distribute the thing not knowing anything about the license of the library.
No? That little "this license also applies to software that merely links to our library" loophole is insidious, and easy to miss. We missed it. As a result, we had to recall the product, rework the offending utility, and ship our customers new CD's. It was an incredible pain in the ass.
A mistake? Yes, definitely. But that doesn't change the fact that it happened, and that it can easily happen again to somebody else under the same circumstances.
You have created a derivative work of the readline library. If you haven't created a derivative work then you can prove it by not linking against the readline library.
You are unclear on what "derivative work" means, it seems. In the example I provided, the work is not derived from Readline, it merely calls on Readline to perform certain functions. This is Readline's purpose.
Back to the object-oriented programming analogy. If class Y is a subclass of class X, then class Y can be said to inherit from, or to be derived from, class X. If class Y merely includes an instance of class X as a member variable, then class Y is not a subclass of class X. This is the difference between inheritance and encapsulation.
My program calls Readline. It is not derived from Readline. But the GPL attaches itself to my program anyway. That's why GPL earns the description "viral." It doesn't merely propogate through its descendants; it propogates through any program that touches it.
The concept of Readline cannot be GPLed, only a specific implementation. I am sure there are non-GPL implementations of Readline.
It was pretty clear from context that I was referring to Readline, the GPL-licensed library distributed by the Free Software Foundation. Hence the capital "R" and all that. Libedit is not Readline, it is (or, rather, is intended to be) a replacement for Readline.
Is there any possible relationship between the fact that the GPL only grants permission to do things you could not do by default, which I reluded to in my earlier post, and the fact that calling the GPL viral is preposterous?
Nope. I don't care what the GPL does or doesn't grant; that doesn't matter at all. What matters is the mechanism through which it attaches itself to software.
If you write a program entirely from scratch, using nobody else's library or code, then you can choose to attach the GPL to that program. But that's not the only way the GPL comes into play. If you link your program with a GPL-licensed library, then the GPL attaches itself to your program. This behavior is viral. Any license that similarly propogates itself can be called viral, irrespective of that license's content or intentions.
I tell you what: I'll post... and then you can explain to me how the GPL is so much worse.
Worse than what? We're not comparing the GPL to anything here, although you seem hell-bent on doing so. Thus my exhortations to keep your ass on-topic, or take your argument elsewhere. Nobody in this thread wants to have a "GPL sucks/GPL rocks" debate.
Of course, given your nick, I suppose I shouldn't be surprised that you start with a faulty premise and derive ridiculous conclusions from it.
Heh, that's actually a pretty good one. Touche. However, if you read the book from which I got my nom de enchaînement a little more closely, you'll find that although Twirlip at first appeared to be a bit of a moron, he was in fact the only character in the book who actually knew what was going on. Compare, for example, Twirlip's insistence on the relevance of hexapodia to the first descriptions of the Skroderiders.
I didn't choose my pseudonym just because I liked the sound of it, you know.
Here's a quick quiz for you. What's the topic of discussion right now? Is this a general "GPL versus the big, bad, evil world" discussion? Is it a "let's all bitch about copyright law" discussion? Or is it merely a discussion of whether or not the term "viral" is an appropriate word to use to describe the GPL, and whether or not there is a better word?
For bonus points, explain what relationship, if any, your post had to the topic.
The use of "viral" to describe the GPL is hyperbole - viral has negative connotations that don't apply at all.
I'll say the same thing that I've said time and again in this thread: find us a better word, then. The word "viral," despite any connotations it may carry, most accurately describes the behavior of the GPL. If you want to argue that this isn't true, then that's fine, go for it. (I don't believe you'll succeed, but you're welcome to try.) On the other hand, if you want to argue that you don't like the word "viral" because it sounds ugly, then perhaps you're being too sensitive about it.
The bottom line is this: find a better word, and everybody will use it. Until a better word comes along, we'll continue to use the best one we have.
Oh, and including GPL libraries in your code doesn't make your code GPL - it just makes it illegal if your code isn't (or GPL compatible). That's not quite the same thing.
I can't believe you said that with a straight face.
No, it is not viral -- it doens't spread all by itself.
It spreads all by itself in the same way that a virus does. Let's say your friend has a cold, but you don't know it. He sneezes, you shake his hand, you rub your eye... the net result is that you get his cold. The virus has spread to you.
Let's say you've written a program that includes a command-based interface. You learned that Readline provides some neat features for managing a command-based interface, so you use it. The net result is that the GPL has "infected" you.
Now, let's talk about choice. You have the choice to ask all your friends if they have a cold before you shake their hands. That would be an unreasonable thing to do. You also have the choice to examine the license of every software library you call; that would be a very reasonable thing to do. But the net result is the same: if you come into contact with the GPL under the right circumstances, you will be "infected" by it.
Calling it viral is just repeating the lies that emerged from Redmond.
If you can come up with a better adjective that describes the GPL's behavior, I'd be only too happy to start using it. So far we've heard several suggestions, none of which has been any good. "Viral," connotations aside, does most accurately describe the behavior of the license.
Yeah, but Microsoft's business model was proved illegal in a court of law.
That is about the most absurd thing i've read on Slashdot in a long, long time. Some of Microsoft's business practices were found to be illegal. The basic business model-- developing software, keeping the source code secret, and then selling the executables for money-- isn't illegal, and it isn't unique to Microsoft.
And it's that business model that the FSF hates so deeply.
If you link in a library then you are creating a derivative work. Imagine you have written Product A and you chose the FOO license. Now you want to extend product A to use code exposed by Library B. The final product is no longer Product A; it has become product A v2.0.
That's pretty silly. You're running in circles to try to make a point; let me clear it up for you.
I write a program, from scratch. Let's say, to keep it simple, that this program is little more than "Hello, world!" It asks the user to type his or her name, then prints "Hello, (name)!" to standard output. Everybody who has ever done any programming has written this program about a dozen times.
But, in order to be clever, I use Readline for the input part of my program.
Now, let's be perfectly clear about this: I am not creating a derivative work of anything. I sit down and write an entirely new (if hardly original) program from scratch, one that happens to call Readline.
Poof. My program must be GPL-licensed.
So, you see, the GPL doesn't merely apply to works derived from other GPL-licensed works. The GPL doesn't merely pass down the "inheritance tree." Instead, it jumps across from library to program just like a... well, yeah. Just like a virus.
But then you lose your right to link against Library B. That's your choice.
Irrelevant, and you know it. We're not talking about choices here; we're talking about how the GPL behaves when people choose to use it, and even in some cases where people are forced to use it despite their choices. It's that behavior that's under scrutiny here, and that behavior is viral.
The GPL doesn't "spread" any more than any other license does.
If you link your program to libc, does your program have to carry the license that applies to libc? Of course not. What about if you link your program to Readline? Then your program has to carry the GPL.
Yes, Virginia, the GPL "spreads" more than any other license does.
Slashdot Mirror
Moderating this post as a troll was a mistake. I understand that it's sometimes hard to tell the difference, but believe it or not there are actually people out there who have legitimate questions and who deserve sensible answers. Remember, "troll" does not mean "opinion with which I disagree," nor does it mean "question that challenges my preconceptions and actually makes me think."
Care to actually debate sensibly...?
Are you kidding? Dude, you opened up the debate by accusing your president of being a coward, and concluding from that assertion that he can't be trusted. That's the mother of all ad hom attacks!
And then you get uppity and challenge a detractor to "actually debate sensibly?"
Pretty lame, dude.
No war here.
What's that got to do with it? The assertion, which I was backing up, was that the United States defeated communism. Whether we did it with diplomacy or with bombs isn't at issue.
Now, if you want to talk about whether war has ever accomplished anything, I'm afraid that's gonna open up a whole 'nother can of worms.
Why is it NOT okay when Saddam defies the UN, but it's okay when President Bush does it? Could someone explain that to me, please?
A fair question. The answer is very long, but the short version is this: Iraq is in defiance of the United Nations, but the United States and our parters are not.
In 1991, after the Coalition forced Iraqi troops out of Kuwait, Iraq signed a cease-fire agreement that has come to be known as the Safwan Accords. (Safwan was the closest town to the random point in the desert where the generals from both sides met.) One of the terms of the Safwan Accords was that Iraq would comply with all relevant UN Security Council resolutions to reestablish peace in the region.
On April 3, 1991, the UN Security Council (UNSEC) passed resolution 687 which, among other things, called for Iraq to produce, within 15 days, a complete and accurate declaration of all their chemical, biological, and nuclear weapons and weapons programs as well as all ballistic missiles capable of flying more than 150 kilometers. Resolution 687 further demanded that Iraq, having made that declaration, then submit to the verifiable destruction of everything included in that declaration under the watchful eyes of the International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA) and the UN Special Commission on Iraq (UNSCOM).
Iraq never did make that declaration. They spent the next twelve years diddling around. They never complied, even partially, with resolution 687.
Now, UN resolutions come in three flavors. General Assembly resolutions and resolutions adopted by UNSEC under chapter VI of the UN Charter are not enforceable; the Charter provides no legal authority for any party, inside or outside of the UN, to enforce those resolutions. But UNSEC resolutions adopted under chapter VII are enforceable. The Charter calls on the member states of the Security Council to enforce chapter VII resolutions when the Security Council authorizes it.
UNSEC resolution 678-- not to be confused with 687-- authorized the members of the Security Council to use all necessary means to force Iraqi occupation forces out of Kuwait, and to enforce all relevant resolutions both existing and subsequent to resolve the conflict. Resolution 678 was adopted under chapter VII; the members of the Council were not only authorized to enforce it, they were actually obligated by the UN Charter.
So the situation in late 1991 was that there was a binding, enforceable UNSEC resolution on the books (687) with which Iraq was not in compliance, and another resolution (678), also binding and enforceable, obligating the members of the Council to use all necessary means to enforce that resolution.
Did anybody use military force during that period? Yes and no. The Coalition threatened Iraq regularly, and attacked Iraq on several occasions, most notably in December, 1998, during Operation Desert Fox. These threats and attacks were all perfectly legal, because of resolutions 678 (authorizing force) and 687 (with which Iraq was not in compliance).
Recently, certain members of the Council have expressed an unwillingness to pass another resolution explicitly authorizing the use of military force against Iraq. That's okay; we don't need one, because 678 already extends that authorization. Nobody on the Council has even so much as suggested trying to rescind resolution 678, so that mandate is still in effect.
Nor has any member of the Council suggested a resolution condemning the Transatlantic Alliance-- the United States, the United Kingdom, and Spain-- for their actions in this war.
The net result? Iraq is in blatant defiance of the United Nations, but the United States and our partners in the Alliance are not. In fact, according to the resolutions we have on paper tonight, the United States is, in fact, acting with the full authorization and sanction of the Security Council.
Don't be too surprised if you hear talk about changing that situation with another UNSEC resolution in the next few days. But then again, Germany, Russia, and China are already giving us their tacit support in private, and France knows which side their croissant is buttered on, so don't be too surprised if you don't.
In a time of peace, killing the leader of an enemy country is an assassination. In a time of open war-- such as this is; 250,000 troops amassed on your border with orders to go on the C-in-C's command qualifies as open war-- it's a military attack against a leadership target.
Semantics? Sure. But of such things history is made.
Does anyone here know the read civilian death toll from the last Iraqi war?
The Iraqi government reported 2,278 civilian deaths caused by Operation Desert Storm. This figure has been very widely reported; pretty much typing "gulf war 2278" into Google will get you sources. Here's one; scroll down to the section heading "Military Deaths in the Gulf War."
Note that this is the official Iraqi government death toll. If anything, one would expect this figure to be inflated; in fact, it seems to be one of the lowest figures reported, by a wide margin.
One of the reasons this gets confusing is because of the meaning of the word "casualties." In military parlance, a "casualty" is anybody who is killed or injured. So when people talk about "casualties," they are referring to the combined total of deaths and injuries. But some people misinterpret "casualties" to mean "deaths," which results in absurd overestimates of the number of people actually killed.
Also, many of the higher-- over 10,000-- estimates of Desert Storm deaths are reached by casting a very wide net. Some estimates were made by including deaths attributed to lack of health care services in the aftermath of the war, and so on. These indirect deaths are certainly significant, but they're basically impossible to estimate-- who knows if little Timmy (or whatever) would have died of a burst appendix if there had been no war-- so those figures are unreliable at best, and complete fictions at worst.
So the best number to use is the Iraqi government's own figure: 2,278.
After all, one man's terrorist is another man's freedom fighter ...
No, that's not true.
Terrorism is, put simply, the deliberate targeting of civilians for the purpose of affecting political change through the infliction of mass casualties. Okay? The deliberate targeting of civilians. This has never been an acceptable tactic, either for armies or for guerilla freedom fighters.
The difference between a freedom fighter and a terrorist is that a freedom fighter blows up a tank, or a military base, while a terrorist blows up a bus or a pizza parlor.
Do you see the difference now?
The USSR brand of authoritian communism defeated itself, it was not defeated by the US
You could not be more wrong.
President Reagan essentially put the last nail in the coffin of the USSR at Reykjavik in 1986. In one, shining moment that was almost ignored by all involved at the time, President Reagan forced the Russians to commit to an arms race that they could ill afford, and more importantly handed Mr. Gorbachev a humiliating defeat at the negotiating table that led directly to the coup that effectively destroyed the USSR as a political entity in 1991. For more on this important piece of history, read this.
this pointless...
Nope. It's entirely pointy. The point is to (1) enforce chapter VII UNSEC resolutions, and (2) remove a threat to the United States of America.
counterproductive...
Well, I suppose that depends on what your idea of "productive" is. If your job is to preserve, protect, and defend the Constitution, then this war isn't counterproductive at all.
and un-Constitutional war
Wrong, wrong, wrong. First, the president is the chief executive of the armed forces-- as you, as a veteran, should know well-- so he has the sole and ultimate authority to employ the military in whatever way he sees fit. Second, though it was not required by the Constitution, Congress approved the use of the military for just this purpose back in October. All nice and legal.
How come Slick Willy gets impeached for getting a hummer in the oval office while Dubbya gets away with wiping his ass with the Constitution?
First of all, no veteran I know would ever even consider being disrespectful to the commander in chief. No matter what you think of the man who holds the office, the president is entitled to be addressed, even in the third person, with respect.
President Clinton was brought up for impeachment for perjury and obstruction of justice. The articles of impeachment, of course, did not pass the Senate.
And I have yet to hear of a single act that President Bush has done, or even been associated with, that could be called even questionable, much less criminal. Care to back that accusation up with something, sir?
How about "community"? Or "shared"? Or "open"?
;-)
Heh. That's a good one.
I'll say again what I've said before: "viral" best describes the behavior of the GPL, connotations be damned. If you can suggest a better word, let's hear it. The words you suggested here are just silly; they may or may not be accurate descriptions of the GPL's intent, but they are definitely not accurate descriptions of its effects.
Sure, we had the Spiro Agnu watch, but I wasn't aware that that had actually resulted in a redefinition of "counterclockwise".
Imagine a circular room. When you enter the room, you turn right and circle the room around its perimeter until you get back to the door again.
Which way did you circle the room? Clockwise, or counterclockwise?
There is absolutely no requirement that you GPL your code, if you "accidentally" link with GPL'd code.
Let me see if I understand this. Let's say, hypothetically, that one were to link to a GPL-licensed library without fully understanding all the obligations that the GPL placed on one. You're saying that there is no requirement whatsoever that this individual place his program under the GPL. He has the option, you're saying, of simply rejecting the GPL, in which case he becomes guilty of copyright infringement.
Sure. No requirement at all, there. "You don't have to do it this way. Of course, if you don't, you're breaking the law, but it's not a requirement or anything."
Do you seriously think anybody believes this crap?
I've never seen someone argue that the GPL was viral who wasn't trying to prove that there was something wrong with it before...
Why does this not surprise me? Your preconceptions color your perceptions, you know. If you think the GPL is the greatest thing since sliced bread, it shouldn't come as a surprise to learn that you interpret even the most innocent discussion of the issue as an attack.
You cannot get "infected" with the GPL unless you deliberately "infect" yourself.
That's just like saying that you can't get infected with a cold unless you deliberately infect yourself. Which is, of course, wrong. All you have to do is come in contact in the right way to somebody who's carrying the virus, and you're stuck with it. In exactly the same way, if your program comes into contact in the right way-- by linking-- with a library that's licensed under the GPL, then by God you're stuck with it.
Of course, as you so helpfully pointed out, you're under no obligation. You could simply ignore the GPL and choose to break the law instead. That was very helpful, thanks.
There is no way to accidentally create a derivative work.
Bullshit. I've been involved with a company that did it; you are completely wrong about this.
"Calling" a library is not legally different to including the source code of the library in your program.
Whether it's legally different or not is not the question. (In fact, I suspect that it is very much different, but that's not the point here.) The fact is that calling a library is not the same as cutting-and-pasting, and that software that calls a library is not derived from that library. If I were to write a program that uses one of libcrypto's hash functions, my software would not be derived from libcrypto.
And yet the GPL would apply anyway, if libcrypto were GPL-licensed.
Try and link against any non-free library and argue in court that you are just "calling" their library and therefore don't need to arrange for licensing with the vendor. The judge won't just laugh at you; he'll fine you.
Given that the purpose of a software library is for other programs to call it, I doubt that very much. One does not need a license to use a standalone program; one merely has to have legally obtained a copy of that program. (Most vendors require users to agree to a license in order to be in legal possession of the program, but that's not a necessary part of it.) One uses a library by calling it from one's own program; therefore, there is no obvious justification for requiring a license to link when no license is required to use.
In other words, I'm pretty sure you're wrong about all of this.
Your continued insistence that licensing doesn't apply because you're just linking is unbelievable.
My what that what what? Please don't put words in my mouth; my position on this thread has been crystal-clear from the beginning: the GPL attaches itself to programs that link with libraries that are licensed under the GPL. Therefore, the GPL can be truthfully and accurately described as "viral." That's it.
Is the entire cause of your confusion simply your lack of experience with real-world licensing?
Yes, that must be it. Pfeh.
What amazes me is the way you, and others, seem to hold on to the fantasy that I'm making an argument that I simply haven't made. One guy upbraided me earlier today because I was wrong that Microsoft's licenses were any less restrictive than the GPL. The fact that I never said anything about that one way or the other seemed lost on him. Now you're telling me I'm arguing about proprietary libraries and their licenses. Astounding!
However, just to be clear on this, let's look at some of the licenses that apply to some of the libraries installed on my computer right now.
Let's look at Foundation.framework, shall we? The license for that should be... hm. Can't seem to find out. How odd. Okay, maybe that's a bad example.
Let's try the ImageVision Library instead, libil.so. That license says... hmm... "SGI will grant to you a personal, non-transferable and non-exclusive right to use and execute the Software, without right to sublicense the Software." What else? Um... "You may distribute copies of the Software to others, if you include copy of this license agreement with each of such copies." Oh, that must be it. If you distribute ImageVision, you have to... wait, no. I was going to say that you have to license your program under the ImageVision license, but that's not what it says.
(Wanna read it for yourself? A version of it is on the web. I just picked ImageVision at random as my first example. It's entirely typical, as you can see for yourself.)
Huh. How very strange. It seems to me, just from a cursory glance, that these licenses are fundamentally different from the GPL. It seems, just from looking at them, that they do not require me to assign any particular license to my programs that link to these libraries. Isn't that interesting?
In other words, my dear friend, it seems you're wrong. It seems that the GPL-- and possibly other licenses that exhibit the same behavior as the GPL with regard to linked works, as opposed to derived works-- is uniquely viral.
Which was, as it turns out, my only point all along.
Have you even read documentation for a copylefted library, used it in an application, linked against the library and then distributed (yes, only then are you forced to make your derivative work copylefted also) it all by mistake or chance?
Yep. Once. Using Readline, which is why I've been using that library to illustrate my point. This was several years ago. We learned the hard way. That's why I'm so adamant about this.
And no one could possibly claim that it's easy to make the mistake to think that everything's ok, and distribute the thing not knowing anything about the license of the library.
No? That little "this license also applies to software that merely links to our library" loophole is insidious, and easy to miss. We missed it. As a result, we had to recall the product, rework the offending utility, and ship our customers new CD's. It was an incredible pain in the ass.
A mistake? Yes, definitely. But that doesn't change the fact that it happened, and that it can easily happen again to somebody else under the same circumstances.
You have created a derivative work of the readline library. If you haven't created a derivative work then you can prove it by not linking against the readline library.
You are unclear on what "derivative work" means, it seems. In the example I provided, the work is not derived from Readline, it merely calls on Readline to perform certain functions. This is Readline's purpose.
Back to the object-oriented programming analogy. If class Y is a subclass of class X, then class Y can be said to inherit from, or to be derived from, class X. If class Y merely includes an instance of class X as a member variable, then class Y is not a subclass of class X. This is the difference between inheritance and encapsulation.
My program calls Readline. It is not derived from Readline. But the GPL attaches itself to my program anyway. That's why GPL earns the description "viral." It doesn't merely propogate through its descendants; it propogates through any program that touches it.
- What you expected.
- What you did.
- What you got.
It's much more likely to be remembered if you keep it short and sweet.This is also, incidentally, the scientific method in a nutshell. That's not a coincidence.
The concept of Readline cannot be GPLed, only a specific implementation. I am sure there are non-GPL implementations of Readline.
It was pretty clear from context that I was referring to Readline, the GPL-licensed library distributed by the Free Software Foundation. Hence the capital "R" and all that. Libedit is not Readline, it is (or, rather, is intended to be) a replacement for Readline.
Is there any possible relationship between the fact that the GPL only grants permission to do things you could not do by default, which I reluded to in my earlier post, and the fact that calling the GPL viral is preposterous?
Nope. I don't care what the GPL does or doesn't grant; that doesn't matter at all. What matters is the mechanism through which it attaches itself to software.
If you write a program entirely from scratch, using nobody else's library or code, then you can choose to attach the GPL to that program. But that's not the only way the GPL comes into play. If you link your program with a GPL-licensed library, then the GPL attaches itself to your program. This behavior is viral. Any license that similarly propogates itself can be called viral, irrespective of that license's content or intentions.
I tell you what: I'll post... and then you can explain to me how the GPL is so much worse.
Worse than what? We're not comparing the GPL to anything here, although you seem hell-bent on doing so. Thus my exhortations to keep your ass on-topic, or take your argument elsewhere. Nobody in this thread wants to have a "GPL sucks/GPL rocks" debate.
Of course, given your nick, I suppose I shouldn't be surprised that you start with a faulty premise and derive ridiculous conclusions from it.
Heh, that's actually a pretty good one. Touche. However, if you read the book from which I got my nom de enchaînement a little more closely, you'll find that although Twirlip at first appeared to be a bit of a moron, he was in fact the only character in the book who actually knew what was going on. Compare, for example, Twirlip's insistence on the relevance of hexapodia to the first descriptions of the Skroderiders.
I didn't choose my pseudonym just because I liked the sound of it, you know.
Using ReadLine itself does not infect your program with the GPL. Linking your program with a GPLed library that includes ReadLine does.
Readline is a GPL-licensed library. Using it is sufficient to require you to license your entire program under the GPL.
Here's a quick quiz for you. What's the topic of discussion right now? Is this a general "GPL versus the big, bad, evil world" discussion? Is it a "let's all bitch about copyright law" discussion? Or is it merely a discussion of whether or not the term "viral" is an appropriate word to use to describe the GPL, and whether or not there is a better word?
For bonus points, explain what relationship, if any, your post had to the topic.
The use of "viral" to describe the GPL is hyperbole - viral has negative connotations that don't apply at all.
I'll say the same thing that I've said time and again in this thread: find us a better word, then. The word "viral," despite any connotations it may carry, most accurately describes the behavior of the GPL. If you want to argue that this isn't true, then that's fine, go for it. (I don't believe you'll succeed, but you're welcome to try.) On the other hand, if you want to argue that you don't like the word "viral" because it sounds ugly, then perhaps you're being too sensitive about it.
The bottom line is this: find a better word, and everybody will use it. Until a better word comes along, we'll continue to use the best one we have.
Oh, and including GPL libraries in your code doesn't make your code GPL - it just makes it illegal if your code isn't (or GPL compatible). That's not quite the same thing.
I can't believe you said that with a straight face.
No, it is not viral -- it doens't spread all by itself.
It spreads all by itself in the same way that a virus does. Let's say your friend has a cold, but you don't know it. He sneezes, you shake his hand, you rub your eye... the net result is that you get his cold. The virus has spread to you.
Let's say you've written a program that includes a command-based interface. You learned that Readline provides some neat features for managing a command-based interface, so you use it. The net result is that the GPL has "infected" you.
Now, let's talk about choice. You have the choice to ask all your friends if they have a cold before you shake their hands. That would be an unreasonable thing to do. You also have the choice to examine the license of every software library you call; that would be a very reasonable thing to do. But the net result is the same: if you come into contact with the GPL under the right circumstances, you will be "infected" by it.
Calling it viral is just repeating the lies that emerged from Redmond.
If you can come up with a better adjective that describes the GPL's behavior, I'd be only too happy to start using it. So far we've heard several suggestions, none of which has been any good. "Viral," connotations aside, does most accurately describe the behavior of the license.
Yeah, but Microsoft's business model was proved illegal in a court of law.
That is about the most absurd thing i've read on Slashdot in a long, long time. Some of Microsoft's business practices were found to be illegal. The basic business model-- developing software, keeping the source code secret, and then selling the executables for money-- isn't illegal, and it isn't unique to Microsoft.
And it's that business model that the FSF hates so deeply.
If you link in a library then you are creating a derivative work. Imagine you have written Product A and you chose the FOO license. Now you want to extend product A to use code exposed by Library B. The final product is no longer Product A; it has become product A v2.0.
That's pretty silly. You're running in circles to try to make a point; let me clear it up for you.
I write a program, from scratch. Let's say, to keep it simple, that this program is little more than "Hello, world!" It asks the user to type his or her name, then prints "Hello, (name)!" to standard output. Everybody who has ever done any programming has written this program about a dozen times.
But, in order to be clever, I use Readline for the input part of my program.
Now, let's be perfectly clear about this: I am not creating a derivative work of anything. I sit down and write an entirely new (if hardly original) program from scratch, one that happens to call Readline.
Poof. My program must be GPL-licensed.
So, you see, the GPL doesn't merely apply to works derived from other GPL-licensed works. The GPL doesn't merely pass down the "inheritance tree." Instead, it jumps across from library to program just like a... well, yeah. Just like a virus.
But then you lose your right to link against Library B. That's your choice.
Irrelevant, and you know it. We're not talking about choices here; we're talking about how the GPL behaves when people choose to use it, and even in some cases where people are forced to use it despite their choices. It's that behavior that's under scrutiny here, and that behavior is viral.
The GPL doesn't "spread" any more than any other license does.
If you link your program to libc, does your program have to carry the license that applies to libc? Of course not. What about if you link your program to Readline? Then your program has to carry the GPL.
Yes, Virginia, the GPL "spreads" more than any other license does.