hmmm this is a tricky one. Usually international trolls are easy to shut down by pointing out that Slashdot is not an international site but rather a USian site that is frequented by international guests.
BUT... in this particular instance the story is about aussiland. And since you did stroll up petting yer pet roo...
I still gotta give it to the other guy, the story wasn't about Breaking and Entering, so that mildly offtopic tanget falls back to the default of being USian.
*turns his thumb down, watches the lions tear you AND your damn roo limb for limb and giggles manically*
Well in all fairness the Michael Vick thing was a bit ridiculous and seriously overinflated. I mean really, about one in ten adolescent boys skins a cat and about half of them explode m80's in animal arses. If you are a dog person you should keep in mind that a small dog will often substitute for a cat in these examples.
What is this drive? Who knows, but what is clear is that while harming animals should be avoided it isn't something you destroy the lives of actual human beings for. Even a misdemeanor on your adult record can destroy your career.
A small fine seems to be an appropriate cap. Unlike a human life you can and often do place a value on animal life. The punishment for mistreating a cow should be limited to the market value of the cow and so forth with other animals. Killing or abusing rare or scarce animals carries an automatic higher potential fine. That keeps things within sane limits while still discouraging abuse.
"An open minded person that acts in the same manner as a closed minded person with the same information isn't more open minded."
That may be true but although a closed minded person may act the same in some instances they will not act the same in all. That is why open-mindedness is a core principle in science.
That is why there are no sides or conclusions in science. The scientific method allows only an ongoing process involving observations (facts) and guesses with varied degree of certainty ranging from educated (hypothesis) to successfully predicting (theory).
My apologies on that point. For some reason when I read the comment I only saw from here down:
"Actually, that's exactly the 1 condition on BSD'd code Ã"
It looked like you had dodged the question but looking back it displays correctly and I now see you did not. Slashdot has been behaving and displaying oddly at times for me lately on my laptop... maybe its the screen res. Not sure.
In any case. The BSD license is for those who contribute as a form of charity. The GPL is for those who contribute to scratch an itch and/or believe that philosophically all users should be entitled to the source for the applications they use and to be able to modify and fix those applications.
This is a valid view, especially when you consider that pre-software when you bought a copy of a work it was a physical work and you could modify or manipulate it as you wished. Once bought it belonged to you. Early on the copying devices whether reel to reel, cassette, or VHS were generally included in this and you could do what you wanted with that stuff as long as you bought your copy. If your VHS tape had a problem you could run it through filters or snipe and tape the magnetic film in the VHS and so forth.
The philosophy behind the GPL isn't some religious rant. Its the simple idea that once you have bought it, you own it and should be able to do what you want with it. It only seems like nonsensical religious ranting (and for some it maybe it has become that) because entire generations have grown up indoctrinated in the industry rights oriented world of licensed software.
That is why the GPL has the requirements it does. It isn't so much to pay back the original author or prevent people from making money, it is to assure users have the same right to tinker with and improve the software they have bought (or been given as the case may be) that they would have if they bought anything else.
Those who license under the GPL believe everyone should have this right, so if you want to take advantage of their labor and modify the toy and distribute it to others your only obligation is to extend those same rights to your own users.
Unlike the other individual who chose to argue this point with me you do indeed sound like one of the people I was referring to.
The religious and the atheists are black and white, agnostic is grey. What you describe as an atheist is indeed actually agnostic. The definitions you use for atheist and agnostic are incorrect because they serve no purpose.
There are atheists who do not merely believe that no creator is the most likely possibility but firmly believe they KNOW the answer to the question for a fact. I encounter these regularly, I encountered one of them in another long winded thread stemming from this same comment. He pays lip service to the idea of alternative possibilities but it is clear that he doesn't really believe they could exist and eventually that opinion was drawn out in his answers.
The definition of agnostic you are using refers to a class of person who does not exist outside of perhaps the mentally ill.
As for the religious.. I think we all know who those are.
No doubt there is plenty of gray that is difficult to classify. There are those who claim religion but in truth don't believe but are afraid they could be wrong. Do they qualify as religious or agnostic?
The only definitions that make sense for classification of everyone is use atheist to refer to a firm conclusion that there is no creator, religious to refer to a firm conclusion that there is a creator, and agnostic to refer to anyone who has not reached a firm conclusion either way. These are terms of belief/faith not action.
A religious person can believe there is a creator but that they don't know who or what that is and therefore behave as if there were no creator.
An agnostic could play the odds and act as if there were no creator or hedge their bets and follow the rules of some prevalent religion just in case.
I am confident that if you give this serious consideration you will realize that I am right. Functional definitions require the terms be used as I define them.
"Why did I change my mind? Because I feel that more and more religious people are starting to use the political process to enforce their views on society. This anti-intellectual, anti-scientific view is dangerous to society and to our future."
I certainly see your point here and when it comes to political causes I find myself arguing the side of atheists more often than not. But that doesn't change whether or not I mentally commit to a belief in something that is not a fact.
"You've presented nothing that contradicts it, so I'll assume you choose to believe it to be false because it violates the rules of your closed mind."
Indeed, you got me. Closing your mind to other sides leaves you just as open minded as leaving your mind open to other views.
You are making the above argument. You are using this argument as a premise for another argument. However, you have not presented any premise for your argument. Valid arguments require premises and you have presented none. Therefore your argument is invalid.
I am also making an argument and will clarify it for you. I am claiming that someone who remains open to possibilities will be more open minded than someone who closes their mind to alternatives. As premise I refer you to the dictionary definition of open-minded.
1. open-minded
Adjective
willing to consider new ideas; unprejudiced
By taking a side or view you have prejudiced yourself against opposing sides or views.
"Yes, it does. You act on the information you have."
Acting on the information you have does not require taking a side. It requires making a best guess at the answer based on the information available. All situations are like blackjack, the odds are never 100% they are always to some degree less certain. If the odds dictate I will take a card, there is no reason for me to form a mental and emotional attachment to that choice. I will remain open to the possibility that the card I took may bust me despite the odds.
"Everyone does. It's required for survival."
No, everyone doesn't. There is a requirement to take actions. There is no requirement to have faith that the decisions and actions are ultimately correct.
With that said. You have had more than ample opportunity to make your case and you have made no such case. If you feel the need to reply so you can have the last word go ahead. But I will not be responding further.
"Less theoretical: I suspect an awful lot of installed Linux systems do not provide any indication of how to get the source code and thus the installer also violated the GPL"
That wouldn't be true of any of the major distributions, they all include such notices on the distribution media.
"What I meant was that a bittorrent node splits up things into blocks and thus technically it is very likely it is transmitting a piece of GPL compiled code without including the necessary notice of availability of the source."
You are right that pieces would be transmitted in chunks, usually something like 64k. But those chunks probably wouldn't qualify for copyright protection as they are.
Even if they did, provided one had the right to distribute the material legally in the first place (and if the torrent includes a notice as we discussed above the seeders would) then distributing the chunks for the purpose of a torrent with the good faith intention of distributing the complete work in accord with the license would also qualify as fair use.
That said, thats just my understanding as an armchair copyright reform advocate. IANAL and you raise an interesting point. I have never heard that argument before.
Incorrect. Atheism is having faith that there is no creator. Agnostism is lacking faith in either view because there is no evidence either way.
Occams razor allows us to act despite the fact that nothing is certain but the simplest solution is quite often not the correct one.
Atheists are guilty of the commonly seen human flaw, the drive to pick a side or take a stance. In truth, there is no particular reason to take a stance.
"I assert that stating "I don't believe in XXX" and acting like you don't believe and "I don't know" and acting like you don't believe result in the same levels of closed-mindedness."
You can assert it all day long but that doesn't make it true, likely, or even logical.
"People aren't naturally open minded. It would take serious work."
Nobody is perfect but you are actually rejecting the idea that someone could be more open minded than yourself while admitting that you don't even bother to try but rather take sides on every issue even when there is no basis for your opinion!
"if I reserved judgement until I was sure, I'd never leave the house in the morning"
No, if you reserved ACTION until you were you'd never leave the house in the morning. Acting does not require a baseless conclusion.
That isn't true. You do not actually have to physically provide the source with each individual binary, you only have to include notice it is available and provide means for the recipient of the binary to receive it if they request it. You can even charge them for your cost to provide them a copy.
In other words you are a freeloader who wants other people to write code for you so you can steal it and abuse your users by denying them the source code.
"No it hasn't. That guy was kind enough to give it away in an open way. This is the *point* of open source software, to be generous, and let everyone benefit from your work."
Says the guy who wants something for nothing. Maybe that is why you distribute open code but it isn't why I distribute open code. Even most charities are really in it so somebody somewhere along the line can get into a lower tax bracket.
"Then he (a) is not an open source developer (b) should use a closed license like the GPL, and stop claiming to be open."
Feel free to write your one man open license requirements and one man definitions. The rest of us aren't buying it.
The GPL allows anything except selfishly exploiting the gift you have received by not sharing with the same spirit in kind. Open source software does not exist so that you can effectively utilize slave labor to decrease your development costs and increase your profit margins.
The real answer is that while FreeBSD is a fine set of code it really doesn't offer anything that Linux doesn't offer. On the flip side, Linux offers numerous features and as a platform has much software available and is much more polished.
The only reason to use BSD is to find stable code you can exploit in your closed source app (i.e. Slave labor). Or for the masochists who want to avoid polish.
The community for a given derivative is its users. By definition the users will have a copy of the dervivative app and therefore the source. It was never intended that anyone and everyone should be required to have the changes.
In practice though, even private development will result in bug fixes and it will be in that private party's interest to pass those back to the original project so they are maintained by the community and don't have to be manually patched and merged in with each update.
In fact, all custom code that I have sold to companies I coded and then sold them a GPL license to the code instead of coding it on a contract for hire.
Most companies don't contract you to write code so they can own IP. They contract you to write code so they can perform a task.
If you explain to them that you will license the code under terms that gives them full access, the ability to make any changes they wish and hire anyone they want to make those changes in the future they will be happy.
In fact, they will love you even more when they find out you work this way so that you can use the code to save your clients money on future development and that their own project will cost them less because of code recycled from previous projects that were sold under the same terms.
Technically true but in practice it doesn't really work that way. Nobody is going to pay you a million dollars for a derivative unless it is substantial.
In practice that means the original developer is probably going to find and fix bugs in the original source. The client is going to want to update from time to time and the developer isn't going to want to have to personally test and patch up any code in those updates he doesn't have to so bug fixes for the original source will be contributed back. When updates do come around, it will reveal a whole slew of additional bug fixes and small behavior improvements that again will likely be contributed back for the developer/clients own future benefit.
The stuff that won't be contributed back is likely proprietary to the single client in this case so contributing it back wouldn't be especially useful anyway.
Now if you did the same for software that is going to be sold to multiple clients not only will you have made changes more likely to be accepted into the main project in the first place but you will have increased the odds that at one of those organizations will decide they would rather have the community update the app for them for free than keep paying you to do it.
"Not having a belief and having a belief of the absence are the same."
No they are not. To not have a belief is to reserve judgment. To believe the negative is to have formed and opinion.
"Do you believe there is a giant invisible elephant living in your living room?"
No, but there is evidence to support that opinion. Giant elephants in my living room would leave a great deal of evidence in the form of crushed furniture and very little elbow room.
But as for a giant elephant or other entity that crosses dimensional barriers and can't be seen or felt... how should I know? I act as if there is no such elephant because that is the simplest solution and practicality demands such but lacking evidence why would I form an opinion on the matter? That would be closed minded and ignorant.
The difference is important. When you reach a conclusion, as opposed to considering a matter open for debate, you automatically begin closing your mind on the matter. As time passes you require greater and greater evidence to sway you from your opinion. This is compounded by circumstantial evidence that doesn't contradict your belief. Although you might be open minded enough that you can be swayed the burden of evidence required to sway you and the caliber of evidence will raise. You will mentally raise the bar so to speak.
This is wrong, all unproven claims should require the same standard of proof. There is no such thing as an extraordinary claim and thus no claim requires evidence more extraordinary than another.
"No, a theory is a hypothesis that has been through many experiments which have yielded verifiable evidence that it works how we think it works."
It is impossible to prove a hypothesis is correct. All you can do through experimentation is increase the probability of it being correct by demonstrating it correctly predicts the behavior of observations at some future date and thus closely resembles what is correct.
A theory is NOT a law. There are NO laws in science and treating theories as if they are laws is NOT scientific.
The world of science does not allow for beliefs or laws. At most it allows for very likely possibilities and acting as if those possibilities are true until evidence to the contrary comes along.
"That means that I believe in the absence because there is no proof for and without any affirmative proof, all belief should default to the "no" status."
Incorrect, the default is not to believe in the negative. The default is to not have a belief and to BEHAVE as if the simplest (and therefore most likely in the absence of evidence) possibility is the correct one.
"And yet the vast majority of people don't act that way."
Perhaps in your world. In the one the rest of us live in that is the bread and butter of existence. It is true that not all people behave that way all the time, we have intellect and are capable of choosing to act contrary to our base instincts but you are actually claiming the base instincts don't exist!
"Please point out a desire you have that is innate - that is, a desire that is not put to you by an external influence - that is neither neutral nor good."
Well that would be a trick question since I don't believe in a deity and therefore don't believe in any absolute tenents that define good and evil. I am speaking of the inconsistency of christian doctrine in this conversation. But according to the christian ideals these are all bad...
All male humans have an instinctual desire to mate at all opportunities with attractive partners (attractive largely coinciding with physical traits that indicate healthy child rearing capabilities)
All human females have an instinctual desire to mate and partner with males they believe offer stability and security. This is also known as gold digging.
In both cases it is lust, and therefore evil.
Humans have an innate desire to eat energy rich food as often as they can and until they are full. Vile and evil gluttons that they are. Give them an excess of energy rich food and you'll end up with an obesity epidemic to demonstrate the concept.
Humans and male humans in particular have territorial instincts and an instinct for social posturing and dominance that leads them to be proud and belittle to one another. This can be seen everywhere from schoolyard antics to the posturing of nations. This leads to all sorts of evil, including war, violence, theft, envy, etc.
Of course if you believe in evolution it is easy enough to find these behaviors in other animals and their interactions with one another. Apes in particular share many of our social behaviors toward one another.
If you don't believe in evolution that has lead to these instincts as a form of survival trait. You are left with god deliberately creating men with instincts to behave in a manner that is contrary to his commandments and would lead men to do most all the cruel and evil things they do. Acting in a kind and considerate manner and doing anything noble means deliberately and consciously overruling your natural instincts.
Then again, maybe your right. Maybe the majority of men with wives and girlfriends don't watch out of the corner of their eye when a woman with a hot body walks by. Maybe they lack those instincts to behave in a manner that is evil according to gods law. I'm just in a small majority who convinces themselves that this evil impulse is natural rather than learned behavior.
"Uh... that's what happened. You just happen to be looking at things from several thousand years down the road."
Several thousand years? LOL
Okay, anyway. No its not what happened because we are all born with innate desires that are neither neutral nor good (particularly in light of the bible ruleset).
"Both good and bad choices have their enticements. Bad choices often have better-looking enticements in the short run - and people have a tendency to not think about the long-term consequences of their actions."
Yeah, there are consequences, ramifications, and rewards for our choices in life. Making us good natured would mean we didn't have any instincts to do bad things and in fact are inclined to care for one another. Neutral would be for us to have no innate instinct to behave one way or the other. But that isn't the way humans are built, it is our natural inborn instinct to dominate, indulge, and act with cruelty toward one another.
Again, that behavior makes sense in a world of evolution where the most aggressive animals survived until we advanced to our present society where those things aren't as neccesary.
But it makes no sense for a benevolent deity to make evil creatures, tell them to be good, and call it free will.
Slashdot Mirror
hmmm this is a tricky one. Usually international trolls are easy to shut down by pointing out that Slashdot is not an international site but rather a USian site that is frequented by international guests.
BUT... in this particular instance the story is about aussiland. And since you did stroll up petting yer pet roo...
I still gotta give it to the other guy, the story wasn't about Breaking and Entering, so that mildly offtopic tanget falls back to the default of being USian.
*turns his thumb down, watches the lions tear you AND your damn roo limb for limb and giggles manically*
Trespassing is entering a person's property and staying without permission.
For instance coming onto the property with a sign telling you that you can't or remaining in my home after I ask you leave.
Well in all fairness the Michael Vick thing was a bit ridiculous and seriously overinflated. I mean really, about one in ten adolescent boys skins a cat and about half of them explode m80's in animal arses. If you are a dog person you should keep in mind that a small dog will often substitute for a cat in these examples.
What is this drive? Who knows, but what is clear is that while harming animals should be avoided it isn't something you destroy the lives of actual human beings for. Even a misdemeanor on your adult record can destroy your career.
A small fine seems to be an appropriate cap. Unlike a human life you can and often do place a value on animal life. The punishment for mistreating a cow should be limited to the market value of the cow and so forth with other animals. Killing or abusing rare or scarce animals carries an automatic higher potential fine. That keeps things within sane limits while still discouraging abuse.
"An open minded person that acts in the same manner as a closed minded person with the same information isn't more open minded."
That may be true but although a closed minded person may act the same in some instances they will not act the same in all. That is why open-mindedness is a core principle in science.
That is why there are no sides or conclusions in science. The scientific method allows only an ongoing process involving observations (facts) and guesses with varied degree of certainty ranging from educated (hypothesis) to successfully predicting (theory).
My apologies on that point. For some reason when I read the comment I only saw from here down:
"Actually, that's exactly the 1 condition on BSD'd code Ã"
It looked like you had dodged the question but looking back it displays correctly and I now see you did not. Slashdot has been behaving and displaying oddly at times for me lately on my laptop... maybe its the screen res. Not sure.
In any case. The BSD license is for those who contribute as a form of charity. The GPL is for those who contribute to scratch an itch and/or believe that philosophically all users should be entitled to the source for the applications they use and to be able to modify and fix those applications.
This is a valid view, especially when you consider that pre-software when you bought a copy of a work it was a physical work and you could modify or manipulate it as you wished. Once bought it belonged to you. Early on the copying devices whether reel to reel, cassette, or VHS were generally included in this and you could do what you wanted with that stuff as long as you bought your copy. If your VHS tape had a problem you could run it through filters or snipe and tape the magnetic film in the VHS and so forth.
The philosophy behind the GPL isn't some religious rant. Its the simple idea that once you have bought it, you own it and should be able to do what you want with it. It only seems like nonsensical religious ranting (and for some it maybe it has become that) because entire generations have grown up indoctrinated in the industry rights oriented world of licensed software.
That is why the GPL has the requirements it does. It isn't so much to pay back the original author or prevent people from making money, it is to assure users have the same right to tinker with and improve the software they have bought (or been given as the case may be) that they would have if they bought anything else.
Those who license under the GPL believe everyone should have this right, so if you want to take advantage of their labor and modify the toy and distribute it to others your only obligation is to extend those same rights to your own users.
What software and contributions are you referring to?
Unlike the other individual who chose to argue this point with me you do indeed sound like one of the people I was referring to.
The religious and the atheists are black and white, agnostic is grey. What you describe as an atheist is indeed actually agnostic. The definitions you use for atheist and agnostic are incorrect because they serve no purpose.
There are atheists who do not merely believe that no creator is the most likely possibility but firmly believe they KNOW the answer to the question for a fact. I encounter these regularly, I encountered one of them in another long winded thread stemming from this same comment. He pays lip service to the idea of alternative possibilities but it is clear that he doesn't really believe they could exist and eventually that opinion was drawn out in his answers.
The definition of agnostic you are using refers to a class of person who does not exist outside of perhaps the mentally ill.
As for the religious.. I think we all know who those are.
No doubt there is plenty of gray that is difficult to classify. There are those who claim religion but in truth don't believe but are afraid they could be wrong. Do they qualify as religious or agnostic?
The only definitions that make sense for classification of everyone is use atheist to refer to a firm conclusion that there is no creator, religious to refer to a firm conclusion that there is a creator, and agnostic to refer to anyone who has not reached a firm conclusion either way. These are terms of belief/faith not action.
A religious person can believe there is a creator but that they don't know who or what that is and therefore behave as if there were no creator.
An agnostic could play the odds and act as if there were no creator or hedge their bets and follow the rules of some prevalent religion just in case.
I am confident that if you give this serious consideration you will realize that I am right. Functional definitions require the terms be used as I define them.
"Why did I change my mind? Because I feel that more and more religious people are starting to use the political process to enforce their views on society. This anti-intellectual, anti-scientific view is dangerous to society and to our future."
I certainly see your point here and when it comes to political causes I find myself arguing the side of atheists more often than not. But that doesn't change whether or not I mentally commit to a belief in something that is not a fact.
"You've presented nothing that contradicts it, so I'll assume you choose to believe it to be false because it violates the rules of your closed mind."
Indeed, you got me. Closing your mind to other sides leaves you just as open minded as leaving your mind open to other views.
You are making the above argument. You are using this argument as a premise for another argument. However, you have not presented any premise for your argument. Valid arguments require premises and you have presented none. Therefore your argument is invalid.
I am also making an argument and will clarify it for you. I am claiming that someone who remains open to possibilities will be more open minded than someone who closes their mind to alternatives. As premise I refer you to the dictionary definition of open-minded.
1. open-minded
Adjective
willing to consider new ideas; unprejudiced
By taking a side or view you have prejudiced yourself against opposing sides or views.
"Yes, it does. You act on the information you have."
Acting on the information you have does not require taking a side. It requires making a best guess at the answer based on the information available. All situations are like blackjack, the odds are never 100% they are always to some degree less certain. If the odds dictate I will take a card, there is no reason for me to form a mental and emotional attachment to that choice. I will remain open to the possibility that the card I took may bust me despite the odds.
"Everyone does. It's required for survival."
No, everyone doesn't. There is a requirement to take actions. There is no requirement to have faith that the decisions and actions are ultimately correct.
With that said. You have had more than ample opportunity to make your case and you have made no such case. If you feel the need to reply so you can have the last word go ahead. But I will not be responding further.
"Less theoretical: I suspect an awful lot of installed Linux systems do not provide any indication of how to get the source code and thus the installer also violated the GPL"
That wouldn't be true of any of the major distributions, they all include such notices on the distribution media.
"What I meant was that a bittorrent node splits up things into blocks and thus technically it is very likely it is transmitting a piece of GPL compiled code without including the necessary notice of availability of the source."
You are right that pieces would be transmitted in chunks, usually something like 64k. But those chunks probably wouldn't qualify for copyright protection as they are.
Even if they did, provided one had the right to distribute the material legally in the first place (and if the torrent includes a notice as we discussed above the seeders would) then distributing the chunks for the purpose of a torrent with the good faith intention of distributing the complete work in accord with the license would also qualify as fair use.
That said, thats just my understanding as an armchair copyright reform advocate. IANAL and you raise an interesting point. I have never heard that argument before.
"They don't. Atheism is the absence of faith."
Incorrect. Atheism is having faith that there is no creator. Agnostism is lacking faith in either view because there is no evidence either way.
Occams razor allows us to act despite the fact that nothing is certain but the simplest solution is quite often not the correct one.
Atheists are guilty of the commonly seen human flaw, the drive to pick a side or take a stance. In truth, there is no particular reason to take a stance.
"I assert that stating "I don't believe in XXX" and acting like you don't believe and "I don't know" and acting like you don't believe result in the same levels of closed-mindedness."
You can assert it all day long but that doesn't make it true, likely, or even logical.
"People aren't naturally open minded. It would take serious work."
Nobody is perfect but you are actually rejecting the idea that someone could be more open minded than yourself while admitting that you don't even bother to try but rather take sides on every issue even when there is no basis for your opinion!
"if I reserved judgement until I was sure, I'd never leave the house in the morning"
No, if you reserved ACTION until you were you'd never leave the house in the morning. Acting does not require a baseless conclusion.
That isn't true. You do not actually have to physically provide the source with each individual binary, you only have to include notice it is available and provide means for the recipient of the binary to receive it if they request it. You can even charge them for your cost to provide them a copy.
In other words you are a freeloader who wants other people to write code for you so you can steal it and abuse your users by denying them the source code.
"No it hasn't. That guy was kind enough to give it away in an open way. This is the *point* of open source software, to be generous, and let everyone benefit from your work."
Says the guy who wants something for nothing. Maybe that is why you distribute open code but it isn't why I distribute open code. Even most charities are really in it so somebody somewhere along the line can get into a lower tax bracket.
"Then he (a) is not an open source developer (b) should use a closed license like the GPL, and stop claiming to be open."
Feel free to write your one man open license requirements and one man definitions. The rest of us aren't buying it.
The GPL allows anything except selfishly exploiting the gift you have received by not sharing with the same spirit in kind. Open source software does not exist so that you can effectively utilize slave labor to decrease your development costs and increase your profit margins.
The real answer is that while FreeBSD is a fine set of code it really doesn't offer anything that Linux doesn't offer. On the flip side, Linux offers numerous features and as a platform has much software available and is much more polished.
The only reason to use BSD is to find stable code you can exploit in your closed source app (i.e. Slave labor). Or for the masochists who want to avoid polish.
"I (and I'm sure I'm not the only one) use Linux because it WORKS and does what I want it to in the situations that I apply it to."
And it WORKS because the GPL has allowed and required contributions to add all that glorious functionality you leech.
Spoken like someone makes their living off closed source software. The rest of us have no use for it.
The community for a given derivative is its users. By definition the users will have a copy of the dervivative app and therefore the source. It was never intended that anyone and everyone should be required to have the changes.
In practice though, even private development will result in bug fixes and it will be in that private party's interest to pass those back to the original project so they are maintained by the community and don't have to be manually patched and merged in with each update.
You can sell GPL software for any rate you want.
In fact, all custom code that I have sold to companies I coded and then sold them a GPL license to the code instead of coding it on a contract for hire.
Most companies don't contract you to write code so they can own IP. They contract you to write code so they can perform a task.
If you explain to them that you will license the code under terms that gives them full access, the ability to make any changes they wish and hire anyone they want to make those changes in the future they will be happy.
In fact, they will love you even more when they find out you work this way so that you can use the code to save your clients money on future development and that their own project will cost them less because of code recycled from previous projects that were sold under the same terms.
Technically true but in practice it doesn't really work that way. Nobody is going to pay you a million dollars for a derivative unless it is substantial.
In practice that means the original developer is probably going to find and fix bugs in the original source. The client is going to want to update from time to time and the developer isn't going to want to have to personally test and patch up any code in those updates he doesn't have to so bug fixes for the original source will be contributed back. When updates do come around, it will reveal a whole slew of additional bug fixes and small behavior improvements that again will likely be contributed back for the developer/clients own future benefit.
The stuff that won't be contributed back is likely proprietary to the single client in this case so contributing it back wouldn't be especially useful anyway.
Now if you did the same for software that is going to be sold to multiple clients not only will you have made changes more likely to be accepted into the main project in the first place but you will have increased the odds that at one of those organizations will decide they would rather have the community update the app for them for free than keep paying you to do it.
"Not having a belief and having a belief of the absence are the same."
No they are not. To not have a belief is to reserve judgment. To believe the negative is to have formed and opinion.
"Do you believe there is a giant invisible elephant living in your living room?"
No, but there is evidence to support that opinion. Giant elephants in my living room would leave a great deal of evidence in the form of crushed furniture and very little elbow room.
But as for a giant elephant or other entity that crosses dimensional barriers and can't be seen or felt... how should I know? I act as if there is no such elephant because that is the simplest solution and practicality demands such but lacking evidence why would I form an opinion on the matter? That would be closed minded and ignorant.
The difference is important. When you reach a conclusion, as opposed to considering a matter open for debate, you automatically begin closing your mind on the matter. As time passes you require greater and greater evidence to sway you from your opinion. This is compounded by circumstantial evidence that doesn't contradict your belief. Although you might be open minded enough that you can be swayed the burden of evidence required to sway you and the caliber of evidence will raise. You will mentally raise the bar so to speak.
This is wrong, all unproven claims should require the same standard of proof. There is no such thing as an extraordinary claim and thus no claim requires evidence more extraordinary than another.
"No, a theory is a hypothesis that has been through many experiments which have yielded verifiable evidence that it works how we think it works."
It is impossible to prove a hypothesis is correct. All you can do through experimentation is increase the probability of it being correct by demonstrating it correctly predicts the behavior of observations at some future date and thus closely resembles what is correct.
A theory is NOT a law. There are NO laws in science and treating theories as if they are laws is NOT scientific.
The world of science does not allow for beliefs or laws. At most it allows for very likely possibilities and acting as if those possibilities are true until evidence to the contrary comes along.
"That means that I believe in the absence because there is no proof for and without any affirmative proof, all belief should default to the "no" status."
Incorrect, the default is not to believe in the negative. The default is to not have a belief and to BEHAVE as if the simplest (and therefore most likely in the absence of evidence) possibility is the correct one.
"And yet the vast majority of people don't act that way."
Perhaps in your world. In the one the rest of us live in that is the bread and butter of existence. It is true that not all people behave that way all the time, we have intellect and are capable of choosing to act contrary to our base instincts but you are actually claiming the base instincts don't exist!
"Please point out a desire you have that is innate - that is, a desire that is not put to you by an external influence - that is neither neutral nor good."
Well that would be a trick question since I don't believe in a deity and therefore don't believe in any absolute tenents that define good and evil. I am speaking of the inconsistency of christian doctrine in this conversation. But according to the christian ideals these are all bad...
All male humans have an instinctual desire to mate at all opportunities with attractive partners (attractive largely coinciding with physical traits that indicate healthy child rearing capabilities)
All human females have an instinctual desire to mate and partner with males they believe offer stability and security. This is also known as gold digging.
In both cases it is lust, and therefore evil.
Humans have an innate desire to eat energy rich food as often as they can and until they are full. Vile and evil gluttons that they are. Give them an excess of energy rich food and you'll end up with an obesity epidemic to demonstrate the concept.
Humans and male humans in particular have territorial instincts and an instinct for social posturing and dominance that leads them to be proud and belittle to one another. This can be seen everywhere from schoolyard antics to the posturing of nations. This leads to all sorts of evil, including war, violence, theft, envy, etc.
Of course if you believe in evolution it is easy enough to find these behaviors in other animals and their interactions with one another. Apes in particular share many of our social behaviors toward one another.
If you don't believe in evolution that has lead to these instincts as a form of survival trait. You are left with god deliberately creating men with instincts to behave in a manner that is contrary to his commandments and would lead men to do most all the cruel and evil things they do. Acting in a kind and considerate manner and doing anything noble means deliberately and consciously overruling your natural instincts.
Then again, maybe your right. Maybe the majority of men with wives and girlfriends don't watch out of the corner of their eye when a woman with a hot body walks by. Maybe they lack those instincts to behave in a manner that is evil according to gods law. I'm just in a small majority who convinces themselves that this evil impulse is natural rather than learned behavior.
"Uh... that's what happened. You just happen to be looking at things from several thousand years down the road."
Several thousand years? LOL
Okay, anyway. No its not what happened because we are all born with innate desires that are neither neutral nor good (particularly in light of the bible ruleset).
"Both good and bad choices have their enticements. Bad choices often have better-looking enticements in the short run - and people have a tendency to not think about the long-term consequences of their actions."
Yeah, there are consequences, ramifications, and rewards for our choices in life. Making us good natured would mean we didn't have any instincts to do bad things and in fact are inclined to care for one another. Neutral would be for us to have no innate instinct to behave one way or the other. But that isn't the way humans are built, it is our natural inborn instinct to dominate, indulge, and act with cruelty toward one another.
Again, that behavior makes sense in a world of evolution where the most aggressive animals survived until we advanced to our present society where those things aren't as neccesary.
But it makes no sense for a benevolent deity to make evil creatures, tell them to be good, and call it free will.