Yes, that is exactly what we told the whining users back in the day when they fiercely resisted to stop using telnet, rlogin and similar old Unix crap.
I don't know about that, in the groups I worked with, all the users were happy to move to ssh once they learned how cool it is. Ssh seemed like a step up in every way, and I'm still happy to use it.
FWIW, I've only found one quote by Lennart Poettering about the entire thing (source):
I am not sure I follow. Note that user@.service is already reference counted by the login sessions around. i.e. it is started before the first user session of a specific user is created, and stopped when the last user session ends. I don't follow why that behaviour is not sufficient?
Lennart seems to have learned by now to be careful what he says in public, so I don't expect him to call anyone a moron here.
As for the lawyers, the lawyers may not understand this area of law is rather specialized and very technical.
Yes, that's why I talked to a lawyer who specializes in software copyright in Silicon Valley. But anyway, appeals to authority are lazy arguments, so I should go into more detail.
If you look at the case law, the courts don't consider the linking method at all, it's irrelevant. The courts use a different method to figure out what is a derivative work, the abstraction filtration comparison test.
Any reasonably written executable that does dynamic linking can choose or not to choose to load a library.
That's true, you can conditionally open a dll in your program using dlopen(), but it's an edge case.
As I mentioned in another post, the method of linkage doesn't matter, but whether it is a derivative work. There is a fairly complex process the court goes through to determine if something is a derivative work or not (more info here, and links to even more info), but it doesn't take into consideration linkage. Your list of linkage types is not relevant. Even inter-machine calls can make your program a derivative work.
It is true that in the 90s and late 80s when the GPL was born, Richard Stallman taught that linkage was an important aspect, and it seemed reasonable at the time; but since then, copyright law developed in a way he didn't expect.
Judge Alsup ruled that using an API dynamically (and even re-implementing it) isn't, because the library's API can't be copyright protected anyway.
It doesn't matter if the API is copyright or not, because you are still using all the code from the library: the actual implementation (unless you reimplemented it yourself).
I think by "worse" GP means "more clearly brings the result under the license used by the library". Static linking creates a strong case that the resulting executable must abide by the license of the library.
I'm not sure that's true. Because they're both derivative works.
Someone said that Alice in Wonderland is the best book on programming. "The Idea Factory" is about technology in the last century, and touches on computers, and is also quite readable. "The Art of Unix Programming" is worth a read, along with the jargon dictionary, and they're free. "Zero Bugs and Program Faster" has code examples from across half a century. This series was really great, but might be hard to find.
Because I don't have the power to actually do that, I have no reason to worry about the happiness other people.
When I actually get that power, I'll start considering their happiness in balance with my own.
Popularity is no indication of quality.
I wish for the end of "big oil" and even more people use that. Presumably if Facebook disappears, something better will replace it.
Truly you have a dizzying intellect lol; I think you still misunderstand things. I respect your willingness to do research, though.
Oracle is claiming that, given the evidence Google presented, even if all the evidence were 100% true, then it still wouldn't be enough to decide in Google's favor under the law. Oracle filed a rule 50 a motion. The rule here can be found by searching for a "rule 50 a motion."
Oracle is basing this motion not just on the commercial aspect, but based on the four statutory categories of fair use. They claim Google has not met the burden of proof in any of the categories (and a few categories beyond the statutory categories as well). You can read their full argument here. Notice that on the first line of their memorandum they cite the rule they are using.
Basically, Oracle is presupposing that it owns a language, so any use of that language's lexicon and grammar is theirs to control-- and assert that they get this power through copyright.
Here you are wrong, notice carefully the fine distinction, Oracle never claimed to own the Java language (so all those people thinking this case might settle the questions of languages being copyrighted were wrong), in fact, they admitted that they gave the language away. Instead, they claimed to own the Java standard library, and those packages are what this case is about.
This is a tricky area legally-- Copyright is not the appropriate vehicle for this kind of intellectual property. (Patents are the appropriate vehicle.)
The appellate court addressed (briefly) the question of patents vs copyright in their decision. You should read the decision, I think you might enjoy it.
Cool. If you'd like to test yourself, I wrote a small comprehension test here. You can read them (and without checking the instructions again) see if you can answer the questions.
My guess is that the jury got as far as "The pertinent Android versions are:... Cupcake, Donut, Eclair, Froyo, Gingerbread, Honeycomb, Ice CreamSandwich, Jelly Bean, Kit-Kat, Lollipop, and Marshmallow" and started salivating. Nothing named like the above could possibly be infringing or bad (except for your GI) ergo Google's use of Java (Mmmmm, coffee and donuts and icecream) was fair use. Case closed!
Brutal. Maybe Oracle will appeal based on the refreshments served to the jurors.
Also worth mentioning that C is portable across languages.....that is, a library written in C can be run from python, or from Java, or from C++, or TCL or whatever.....
IANAL, but the jury instructions seem pretty reasonable to me. The instructions are pretty long, but they seem to be written very clearly and have a minimum of jargon (legal or technical).
Maybe.....but there are plenty of crucial details that matter. For example, you read it; did you notice which of the four fair-use categories is most important? How much in favor of Google (at most) should the third fair-use category be weighted? These are details that could completely change a judgement, but they are subtle and hard to understand from the argument.
Here's another example (and this is one that Oracle already complained about). Read this sentence from the instructions to the jury: "Sun developed the Java programming language and made it free for all to use." When you read it, a reasonable juror might wonder, "What is Oracle really complaining about here? They made it free! so of course Google used it." Later the document tries to clarify that the API was not free, but may be fair use, etc. The question is whether the jury was able to understand the full subtle paragraph, or just read the first sentence (which is definitely the easiest-to-read sentence in the paragraph).
It sounds like it to you, but in court there are legal definitions for things like "reasonable jury" and Oracle will need to prove that their case fits that definition.
Slashdot Mirror
Yes, that is exactly what we told the whining users back in the day when they fiercely resisted to stop using telnet, rlogin and similar old Unix crap.
I don't know about that, in the groups I worked with, all the users were happy to move to ssh once they learned how cool it is. Ssh seemed like a step up in every way, and I'm still happy to use it.
Wow, thanks for that; I always wondered why my nohup processes were dying when I logged out (I didn't know about the ampersand).
Nice find, thanks.
That's an interesting example, but I can't help getting the feeling that you haven't read the link I gave you.
I am not sure I follow. Note that user@.service is already reference counted by the login sessions around. i.e. it is started before the first user session of a specific user is created, and stopped when the last user session ends. I don't follow why that behaviour is not sufficient?
Lennart seems to have learned by now to be careful what he says in public, so I don't expect him to call anyone a moron here.
As for the lawyers, the lawyers may not understand this area of law is rather specialized and very technical.
Yes, that's why I talked to a lawyer who specializes in software copyright in Silicon Valley. But anyway, appeals to authority are lazy arguments, so I should go into more detail.
If you look at the case law, the courts don't consider the linking method at all, it's irrelevant. The courts use a different method to figure out what is a derivative work, the abstraction filtration comparison test.
Any reasonably written executable that does dynamic linking can choose or not to choose to load a library.
That's true, you can conditionally open a dll in your program using dlopen(), but it's an edge case.
As I mentioned in another post, the method of linkage doesn't matter, but whether it is a derivative work. There is a fairly complex process the court goes through to determine if something is a derivative work or not (more info here, and links to even more info), but it doesn't take into consideration linkage. Your list of linkage types is not relevant. Even inter-machine calls can make your program a derivative work.
It is true that in the 90s and late 80s when the GPL was born, Richard Stallman taught that linkage was an important aspect, and it seemed reasonable at the time; but since then, copyright law developed in a way he didn't expect.
If it can dynamically link to either A or B, then the case is no different than if you can statically link to either A or B.
I've talked with lawyers about this very topic, and the method of linking isn't particularly important.
COPYright essentially controls the right to make copies, not the right to use. If I buy a book, I can't legally make and distribute copies of it;
If you create a derivative work, copyright also controls the right to make copies of that derivative work.
Further, my distribution of a dynamically linked executable doesn't actually even USE the library.
The executable won't run at all without the library being present, it pretty clearly uses it.
The LGPL covers more than just the API: it covers all the implementation code in the library as well.
Judge Alsup ruled that using an API dynamically (and even re-implementing it) isn't, because the library's API can't be copyright protected anyway.
It doesn't matter if the API is copyright or not, because you are still using all the code from the library: the actual implementation (unless you reimplemented it yourself).
I think by "worse" GP means "more clearly brings the result under the license used by the library". Static linking creates a strong case that the resulting executable must abide by the license of the library.
I'm not sure that's true. Because they're both derivative works.
Someone said that Alice in Wonderland is the best book on programming. "The Idea Factory" is about technology in the last century, and touches on computers, and is also quite readable. "The Art of Unix Programming" is worth a read, along with the jargon dictionary, and they're free. "Zero Bugs and Program Faster" has code examples from across half a century. This series was really great, but might be hard to find.
Static linking is worse than dynamic linking.
Why? Seems about the same to me, the only difference being the --static flag on the compiler command line (or whatever, depending on your compiler).
Because I don't have the power to actually do that, I have no reason to worry about the happiness other people.
When I actually get that power, I'll start considering their happiness in balance with my own.
No, I'd be happy if Facebook disappeared before an alternative showed up. I'm not dictating anything, I don't have that power.
Popularity is no indication of quality.
I wish for the end of "big oil" and even more people use that. Presumably if Facebook disappears, something better will replace it.
Hopefully it's a mirror that reflects Facebook's destiny.
If you keep that stuff in your database, encrypt it!
Oracle is claiming that, given the evidence Google presented, even if all the evidence were 100% true, then it still wouldn't be enough to decide in Google's favor under the law. Oracle filed a rule 50 a motion. The rule here can be found by searching for a "rule 50 a motion."
Oracle is basing this motion not just on the commercial aspect, but based on the four statutory categories of fair use. They claim Google has not met the burden of proof in any of the categories (and a few categories beyond the statutory categories as well). You can read their full argument here. Notice that on the first line of their memorandum they cite the rule they are using.
Basically, Oracle is presupposing that it owns a language, so any use of that language's lexicon and grammar is theirs to control-- and assert that they get this power through copyright.
Here you are wrong, notice carefully the fine distinction, Oracle never claimed to own the Java language (so all those people thinking this case might settle the questions of languages being copyrighted were wrong), in fact, they admitted that they gave the language away. Instead, they claimed to own the Java standard library, and those packages are what this case is about.
This is a tricky area legally-- Copyright is not the appropriate vehicle for this kind of intellectual property. (Patents are the appropriate vehicle.)
The appellate court addressed (briefly) the question of patents vs copyright in their decision. You should read the decision, I think you might enjoy it.
My guess is that the jury got as far as "The pertinent Android versions are: ... Cupcake, Donut, Eclair, Froyo, Gingerbread, Honeycomb, Ice CreamSandwich, Jelly Bean, Kit-Kat, Lollipop, and Marshmallow" and started salivating. Nothing named like the above could possibly be infringing or bad (except for your GI) ergo Google's use of Java (Mmmmm, coffee and donuts and icecream) was fair use. Case closed!
Brutal. Maybe Oracle will appeal based on the refreshments served to the jurors.
Also worth mentioning that C is portable across languages.....that is, a library written in C can be run from python, or from Java, or from C++, or TCL or whatever.....
I thought the patents were determined to cancel each other out in the first court case.
IANAL, but the jury instructions seem pretty reasonable to me. The instructions are pretty long, but they seem to be written very clearly and have a minimum of jargon (legal or technical).
Maybe.....but there are plenty of crucial details that matter. For example, you read it; did you notice which of the four fair-use categories is most important? How much in favor of Google (at most) should the third fair-use category be weighted? These are details that could completely change a judgement, but they are subtle and hard to understand from the argument.
Here's another example (and this is one that Oracle already complained about). Read this sentence from the instructions to the jury: "Sun developed the Java programming language and made it free for all to use." When you read it, a reasonable juror might wonder, "What is Oracle really complaining about here? They made it free! so of course Google used it." Later the document tries to clarify that the API was not free, but may be fair use, etc. The question is whether the jury was able to understand the full subtle paragraph, or just read the first sentence (which is definitely the easiest-to-read sentence in the paragraph).
That's a no true scottsman, straight up!
It sounds like it to you, but in court there are legal definitions for things like "reasonable jury" and Oracle will need to prove that their case fits that definition.