If you make a GPL'ed libarary and i write an application that uses its API, then my application is very much a derivative work.
Is this really clear? If so, would the GPL have needed an explicit clause to say that any software which won't function without another piece of software which is GPL must also be GPL?
I think you have it backwards: if that isn't the case, then that part of the license is meaningless. (But I tend to think that it is in face not the case, since "run this code from that library" is very different from "I've included here a copy of this code from that library", in the first case you still have to obtain that copy (presumably from the copyright holder) which is what copyright is all about.)
The fraud comes when a program that doesn't really have the the legal permission to use the internals provides a lie to do so.
How is such permission required? (Especially given that the end-user is permitted essentially arbitrary modifications so long as they don't redistribute, so no contributory infringement...)
If in the real world they distribute a plugin which calls an api entrypoint in the gcc plugin framework, how would they tell it not being a derivative work?
Because work A being a "derivative work" of work B is defined to mean that A includes material from B. Program C calling a function in program D does not mean that C includes part of D, so it does not make C a "derivative work" of D.
Whether A is a "derivative work" of B from the perspective of copyright, and whether it is derived from B from the perspective of scientific/academic attribution are separate questions.
I can't think of why. It's been a pretty clear issue with Linux modules. They have a string identifying their licensing. Some people fraud that string with an embedded null character, but it's still fraud.
It also causes the identification to not be accurate, and I think it's required for (some) interoperability (EXPORT_SYMBOL_GPL). (I also question whether it can properly be called "fraud", who is being tricked out of what?)
If there is a requirement for modules to identify their licensing, as with Linux, it may be that FSF changes their license to require that such identification be accurate,
Wouldn't that be about the same as solving the halting problem?
A plugin uses the host application's API. It is, therefore a derived work. In the case of the GPL, derived works must be distributed under compatible licenses.
It's only a "derivative work" of the application if it contains actual copyrightable stuff from the application. Things required purely for interoperability (like, say, function declarations or the data structures required by those functions) don't count.
Back when the IBM clone PCs came out, the clones had reverse-engineered and reimplemented BIOS code, very much derived from the original (copyrighted) BIOS. But it wasn't a "derivative work", because copyright covers the actual code itself, rather than what the code does.
The FSF could let the TIVO hole work _for_ them --
Require all plugins to link against a small (512 byte or so?) GPL'ed blob, and check for it at load time.
That has been tried before, and the courts said it doesn't work that way.
News article that mentions an older case (while discussing one that was ongoing):
Pre-DMCA cases involving video game consoles concluded that it was legal to copy code for the purposes of interoperability, Litman said. In Sony v. Connectix, the 9th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals concluded that it was legal for Connectix to copy the Sony PlayStation's BIOS for the purpose of interoperability.
With these principles in mind, the majority opinion held that the district court had erred in three ways. First, it had held that the Toner Loading Program was copyrightable simply because it "could be written in a number of different ways", without considering the practical realities. [18] Second, because of this mistaken standard, it had refused to consider whether or not the alternative Toner Loading Programs proposed by Lexmark were practical.[19] Third, it had concluded that the Toner Loading Program was not a "lock-out code", because it had not sufficiently considered how difficult it would be for SCC -- without Lexmark's knowledge of the code's structure and purpose -- to alter the code and still pass the printer's authentication mechanisms.[20]
"Those that you want to hire are not hirable, but those that are hirable you don't want."
Having a hard time wrapping my head around this one.
"Those that you want to hire are not hirable" -- anyone good already has a nice job.
"those that are hirable you don't want" -- everyone looking for work doesn't know shit.
Interesting to see the manager mind at work here though. Wouldn't it make sense to hire the person with the correct skillset? You know - like actually read resumes, and talk to people and make decisions based on that?
90% of everything is crap, so right from the start only 1 in 10 will be any good. Then consider that that 1 in 10 who is good won't get fired and will be more downsize-resistant, so maybe they're 10 times less likely to be looking for work. Then consider that when they do look for work, they won't have to apply to as many places, perhaps they apply to two or three jobs instead of 20 or 30. So you'll have to go through maybe 1,000 applications to find someone good. How does this compare to the number of applications you normally get for an open position?
What do you mean, "might cause severe or irreversible harm"? Is this "some crackpot says it could happen", or "not theoretically impossible" or "actual quantifiable possibility"?
This was always obviously a dire security hole, but Microsoft still (???) denies it is a bug.
It's not a bug. It's a misfeature. There are a huge number of very good reasons to have it (half the population or so), it's just that there are stronger reasons that it's bad.
Why does Microsoft make it so difficult to disable auto-run? I understand that many customers may like the feature, but why not a simple control panel entry to stop it? Is it somehow tied with DRM for playing videos? I'm not just griping - they must have some reason for this, anyone know what it is?
There are people who don't want to be bothered to understand file hierarchies or the "My Computer" window. Microsoft wants to cater to these people, rather than demand that they take time to learn.
Have there been any cases where animals wandered through the automatic doors into some large store? This would be vaguely similar, a convenience feature with unforeseen side-effects.
Microsoft supplied the software that allows people's computers to become infected, then gave them false information leading them to believe they're safe, when they're not really.
Suspicious...
Yeah, it's almost like they value convenience over security (having autorun), and don't know how to write perfect bug-free software like the space shuttle people do (look at the "Update:" at the end of the advisory, the fix instructions should have worked, but they don't without a patch).
The lack of marketing is what makes Linux so great. Linux is what it is because it's made by technically proficient people for technically proficient people. We don't need marketing. The fact that it is free, and technically excellent is all that is needed to attract the kinds of people that will make Linux even better.
So you like being ignored by vendors of all sorts, because only Windows and OS X have enough market share for them to care about?
It is not illegal and has the same morality as a regular advertisement IMHO.
A regular advertisement is something you know is paid for, so you know it's one big lie-but-not-as-the-FTC-defines-it. The thing with these reviews is that they're actively interfering with the spread of accurate information (note that accurate information is rather critical to the proper functioning of markets), rather than just spewing their own obvious garbage that people can know to ignore.
"Belkin does not participate in . . . unethical practices like this."
paraphrase: We don't do what we just did.
It's more "the guy that did this was breaking our rules".
Of course I've heard that some companies set policies/targets that can't be realistically met without breaking the rules so they can shift blame from themselves to any individuals who fail to follow the 11th commandment ("thou shalt not get caught"), no idea if that might be the case here... probably only if this keeps happening, I guess.
I agree. This post is a troll.
btw; there was a reward for anyone who could recover data from a wiped drive offered up. I think/. even posted this up when it was offered.
The "reward" was a joke, something like $200. I'm pretty sure nobody who matters took them seriously, if they even knew about it.
It's very much like walking into a theater and watching a movie without buying a ticket.
Right, because downloading something from a random stranger puts a load on the RIAA's servers, and maybe interferes with them providing downloads to people who pay them...
Information will be free, despite everyone's best efforts, and it is on the whole detrimental to attempt to prevent this.
If something is not worth paying for, what makes it worth taking without paying for?
Nothing has been taken. A copy has been produced.
And by what right do you do that?
By what right do you forbid that? The copyright holder is not (necessarily) aware of the interaction, so by what right can they interfere? It doesn't affect them any more than going with a competitor would.
You obviously are not paying for those bits -- you're paying for the creator's work, time, and effort.
So go to a concert or buy mugs and T-shirts or something.
I get it. I really do. You feel that the artist does not have the right to charge for the work in the first place
Eh, sure they do. They just shouldn't be able to restrict what I can do with the work.
To an extent, I even agree. Anything that is/purely intellectual/ should not be 'ownable'; such only hurts society as a whole, and retards progress. But music is not purely intellectual. Even though there is no physical product, a lot of time and physical effort go into creating it.
Nothing is "purely intellectual" by that standard.
My own moral code calls it stealing - the semantics of whether something is physically lost are irrelevant to me.
So the only way for you to tell when I "steal" something from you is for you to spy on me and see what I have, rather than counting what you have. Call it "wrong" if you want, but you might want to consult a dictionary.
I think that the point the RIAA is trying to make is that by depriving them of the money they would have made from selling the CD to you, you're in essence stealing it.
I'm pretty sure that point has been completely discredited, it's fairly obvious that downloads do not equate to lost sales. (Their point also raises the absurd question of, buying from their competitors instead of them also deprives them of sales they could have made, so is that stealing from them?)
Of course, it'd make better economic sense for them to realize that people will download because it's easier, and because most of the stuff they're producing is crap and not worth the price of a CD, but still. I'm not holding my breath. It'd be nice if they realized that and adjusted their business model to suit, but I doubt it'll happen.
These companies are big enough that they might have a hard time going out of business fast enough to avoid having that realization forced on them. Well, at least in normal economic times.
I agree it's questionable as to whether it's legally stealing. But what about morally? That seems pretty clear-cut -
Yep, you forbidding me from freely sharing my knowledge with Bob is the worst kind of intellectual slavery.
taking someone else's work without paying for it, and without permission, is stealing.
Copying something is very different from taking something.
This isn't riaa brainwashing, it's the basic "right and wrong" thing that most folks are taught when growing up. I seem to be part of dwindling number of people who think that such actions are wrong. Who think that when I want a product, I don't have a right to just take it - even if the taking incurs no physical loss for anyone else.
Then people must be realizing that what they've been taught is nonsensical.
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If you make a GPL'ed libarary and i write an application that uses its API, then my application is very much a derivative work.
Is this really clear? If so, would the GPL have needed an explicit clause to say that any software which won't function without another piece of software which is GPL must also be GPL?
I think you have it backwards: if that isn't the case, then that part of the license is meaningless. (But I tend to think that it is in face not the case, since "run this code from that library" is very different from "I've included here a copy of this code from that library", in the first case you still have to obtain that copy (presumably from the copyright holder) which is what copyright is all about.)
The fraud comes when a program that doesn't really have the the legal permission to use the internals provides a lie to do so.
How is such permission required? (Especially given that the end-user is permitted essentially arbitrary modifications so long as they don't redistribute, so no contributory infringement...)
If in the real world they distribute a plugin which calls an api entrypoint in the gcc plugin framework, how would they tell it not being a derivative work?
Because work A being a "derivative work" of work B is defined to mean that A includes material from B. Program C calling a function in program D does not mean that C includes part of D, so it does not make C a "derivative work" of D.
Whether A is a "derivative work" of B from the perspective of copyright, and whether it is derived from B from the perspective of scientific/academic attribution are separate questions.
I can't think of why. It's been a pretty clear issue with Linux modules. They have a string identifying their licensing. Some people fraud that string with an embedded null character, but it's still fraud.
It also causes the identification to not be accurate, and I think it's required for (some) interoperability (EXPORT_SYMBOL_GPL). (I also question whether it can properly be called "fraud", who is being tricked out of what?)
If there is a requirement for modules to identify their licensing, as with Linux, it may be that FSF changes their license to require that such identification be accurate,
Wouldn't that be about the same as solving the halting problem?
Reverse engineering is a means of avoiding trade-secret protection, not copyright.
What about the clean-room BIOS (re)implementation for the IBM PC clones?
A plugin uses the host application's API. It is, therefore a derived work. In the case of the GPL, derived works must be distributed under compatible licenses.
It's only a "derivative work" of the application if it contains actual copyrightable stuff from the application. Things required purely for interoperability (like, say, function declarations or the data structures required by those functions) don't count.
Back when the IBM clone PCs came out, the clones had reverse-engineered and reimplemented BIOS code, very much derived from the original (copyrighted) BIOS. But it wasn't a "derivative work", because copyright covers the actual code itself, rather than what the code does.
The FSF could let the TIVO hole work _for_ them -- Require all plugins to link against a small (512 byte or so?) GPL'ed blob, and check for it at load time.
That has been tried before, and the courts said it doesn't work that way.
News article that mentions an older case (while discussing one that was ongoing):
The outcome of the case that article was about:
"Those that you want to hire are not hirable, but those that are hirable you don't want."
Having a hard time wrapping my head around this one.
"Those that you want to hire are not hirable" -- anyone good already has a nice job.
"those that are hirable you don't want" -- everyone looking for work doesn't know shit.
Interesting to see the manager mind at work here though. Wouldn't it make sense to hire the person with the correct skillset? You know - like actually read resumes, and talk to people and make decisions based on that?
90% of everything is crap, so right from the start only 1 in 10 will be any good. Then consider that that 1 in 10 who is good won't get fired and will be more downsize-resistant, so maybe they're 10 times less likely to be looking for work. Then consider that when they do look for work, they won't have to apply to as many places, perhaps they apply to two or three jobs instead of 20 or 30. So you'll have to go through maybe 1,000 applications to find someone good. How does this compare to the number of applications you normally get for an open position?
What do you mean, "might cause severe or irreversible harm"? Is this "some crackpot says it could happen", or "not theoretically impossible" or "actual quantifiable possibility"?
This sounds like FUD masquerading as logic.
But at the same time, show me a large scale project done in PHP, and I'll show you a large scale project that would have been better off in Python.
How can you build anything large-scale in a language too dynamic for proper static verification?
Of all the biases exhibited here at Slashdot---and there are many!---the bias favoring low-id users is probably the most idiotic.
Sorry, but we only consider critiques from users numbered below 636672.
Of all the biases exhibited here at Slashdot---and there are many!---the bias favoring low-id users is probably the most idiotic.
That's because Hoover sucks
...Is that good or bad?
This was always obviously a dire security hole, but Microsoft still (???) denies it is a bug.
It's not a bug. It's a misfeature. There are a huge number of very good reasons to have it (half the population or so), it's just that there are stronger reasons that it's bad.
Why does Microsoft make it so difficult to disable auto-run? I understand that many customers may like the feature, but why not a simple control panel entry to stop it? Is it somehow tied with DRM for playing videos? I'm not just griping - they must have some reason for this, anyone know what it is?
There are people who don't want to be bothered to understand file hierarchies or the "My Computer" window. Microsoft wants to cater to these people, rather than demand that they take time to learn.
Have there been any cases where animals wandered through the automatic doors into some large store? This would be vaguely similar, a convenience feature with unforeseen side-effects.
Microsoft supplied the software that allows people's computers to become infected, then gave them false information leading them to believe they're safe, when they're not really.
Suspicious...
Yeah, it's almost like they value convenience over security (having autorun), and don't know how to write perfect bug-free software like the space shuttle people do (look at the "Update:" at the end of the advisory, the fix instructions should have worked, but they don't without a patch).
Marketing is what's missing to Linux today.
The lack of marketing is what makes Linux so great. Linux is what it is because it's made by technically proficient people for technically proficient people. We don't need marketing. The fact that it is free, and technically excellent is all that is needed to attract the kinds of people that will make Linux even better.
So you like being ignored by vendors of all sorts, because only Windows and OS X have enough market share for them to care about?
How many does take to become "policy" or "conspiracy".
Three. The first time is happenstance, and the second is coincidence.
It is not illegal and has the same morality as a regular advertisement IMHO.
A regular advertisement is something you know is paid for, so you know it's one big lie-but-not-as-the-FTC-defines-it. The thing with these reviews is that they're actively interfering with the spread of accurate information (note that accurate information is rather critical to the proper functioning of markets), rather than just spewing their own obvious garbage that people can know to ignore.
"Belkin does not participate in . . . unethical practices like this." paraphrase: We don't do what we just did.
It's more "the guy that did this was breaking our rules".
Of course I've heard that some companies set policies/targets that can't be realistically met without breaking the rules so they can shift blame from themselves to any individuals who fail to follow the 11th commandment ("thou shalt not get caught"), no idea if that might be the case here... probably only if this keeps happening, I guess.
I agree. This post is a troll. btw; there was a reward for anyone who could recover data from a wiped drive offered up. I think /. even posted this up when it was offered.
The "reward" was a joke, something like $200. I'm pretty sure nobody who matters took them seriously, if they even knew about it.
Copyright infringement is theft.
However, it is theft of services, not of goods.
It's very much like walking into a theater and watching a movie without buying a ticket.
Right, because downloading something from a random stranger puts a load on the RIAA's servers, and maybe interferes with them providing downloads to people who pay them...
Ah, yes. "Information wants to be free"?
Information will be free, despite everyone's best efforts, and it is on the whole detrimental to attempt to prevent this.
If something is not worth paying for, what makes it worth taking without paying for?
Nothing has been taken. A copy has been produced.
And by what right do you do that?
By what right do you forbid that? The copyright holder is not (necessarily) aware of the interaction, so by what right can they interfere? It doesn't affect them any more than going with a competitor would.
You obviously are not paying for those bits -- you're paying for the creator's work, time, and effort.
So go to a concert or buy mugs and T-shirts or something.
I get it. I really do. You feel that the artist does not have the right to charge for the work in the first place
Eh, sure they do. They just shouldn't be able to restrict what I can do with the work.
To an extent, I even agree. Anything that is /purely intellectual/ should not be 'ownable'; such only hurts society as a whole, and retards progress. But music is not purely intellectual. Even though there is no physical product, a lot of time and physical effort go into creating it.
Nothing is "purely intellectual" by that standard.
My own moral code calls it stealing - the semantics of whether something is physically lost are irrelevant to me.
So the only way for you to tell when I "steal" something from you is for you to spy on me and see what I have, rather than counting what you have. Call it "wrong" if you want, but you might want to consult a dictionary.
I think that the point the RIAA is trying to make is that by depriving them of the money they would have made from selling the CD to you, you're in essence stealing it.
I'm pretty sure that point has been completely discredited, it's fairly obvious that downloads do not equate to lost sales. (Their point also raises the absurd question of, buying from their competitors instead of them also deprives them of sales they could have made, so is that stealing from them?)
Of course, it'd make better economic sense for them to realize that people will download because it's easier, and because most of the stuff they're producing is crap and not worth the price of a CD, but still. I'm not holding my breath. It'd be nice if they realized that and adjusted their business model to suit, but I doubt it'll happen.
These companies are big enough that they might have a hard time going out of business fast enough to avoid having that realization forced on them. Well, at least in normal economic times.
I agree it's questionable as to whether it's legally stealing. But what about morally? That seems pretty clear-cut -
Yep, you forbidding me from freely sharing my knowledge with Bob is the worst kind of intellectual slavery.
taking someone else's work without paying for it, and without permission, is stealing.
Copying something is very different from taking something.
This isn't riaa brainwashing, it's the basic "right and wrong" thing that most folks are taught when growing up. I seem to be part of dwindling number of people who think that such actions are wrong. Who think that when I want a product, I don't have a right to just take it - even if the taking incurs no physical loss for anyone else.
Then people must be realizing that what they've been taught is nonsensical.