Nuh-uh. If there were a Tiger Automotive, that wouldn't stop Apple from putting out and trademarking the name of a Tiger operating system -- they're in different enough fields that they can each have an individual trademark within their field without potential for confusion. Likewise, I'm inclined to believe that the Tiger operating system and the TigerDirect mail-order sales company are in different enough businesses that the one having a trademark is irrelevant to the other.
Mind you, it's been years since I took business law, my memory's never been anything but bad, and I am not a lawyer.
Mmm. Once upon a time I wrote a test harness and framework for some Java code I was working on using one of the Java Scheme implementations. The individual tests were 80% one-liners -- far simpler, shorter and cleaner than would have been possible otherwise -- mostly owing to the lack of extra/unnecessary split between data and code.
Sure, the same code could have been written in Java (using reflection) or Python (using its language-native introspection) -- C++ is right out, having no runtime introspection capabilities -- but it was shorter, simpler and cleaner in Scheme.
Unfortunetly, the lack of a consistant (across implementations) and expansive runtime library makes scheme next to useless for a lot of practical purposes. *sigh*.
Re:I've recommended Skype to my clients
on
John Dvorak Hypes Skype
·
· Score: 4, Informative
For businesses wanting to cut long distance charges between satellite offices, families wanting to cut long distance charges when calling between family members, etc., Skype is the natural solution.
...whereas SIP is the standards-based solution. Particularly for businesses (where a bit of extra setup cost is managable in return for longer-term flexibility and savings), getting a proper, standard-based VoIP setup using Asterisk is The Right Thing:
A number of vendors' hardphones are available, almost all of which have vastly more sophisticated features than the little USB phones which are sold for use with Skype.
You can run your own voicemail / menu trees / custom phone-based applications / etc, and customize them as you like, without paying a thing for the privilege.
You have a wide array of codecs to choose from (so you can optimize for bandwidth, sound quality, resiliance against dropped packets, etc).
You can run your own interface into the conventional phone system, or choose the vendor through which to do so, rather than needing to pay Skype for the privilege.
For communications between family members, Skype is fine -- but for even semi-serious business use, it's woefully inadequate.
How do you think OSS projects get 3rd-party developers? They make something that businesses find interesting enough to devote staff to extend and bugfix.
I'm just such staff. When my company wants to use OpenVPN, XRMS, Asterisk or any other open source product, I make it integrate with our infrastructure; submit bug reports, write patches and utilities, and otherwise do what I need to to make it work -- and then I submit any part of my fixes and utilities that are generalizable (or otherwise interesting to anyone other than ourselves) back upstream. This has been at least a part of my role in every job I've had for the last five years.
Multiply me by however many thousands like me are out there, and you've got a substantial floating developer base that belongs to whatever projects have our employers' interest. The connection between having a larger userbase of plain users and having a wider userbase of business users isn't quite so clear -- but let me assert that it's there, for now; if you dispute it, that can be a focus for further discussion.
I think I've given you enough datapoints to draw an appropriate conclusion.
I have nothing against competantly implemented MI -- my compliant was about people (like several of the Java programmers I work with) who treat MI as inherintly evil just because C++ botched it so badly. And face it -- C++'s naiive MRO is evil. See here for a discussion of some of the considerations that go into a good one.
Plus, I'm a C++ person, so I don't mind multiple inheritance.
Funny -- I thought it was C++ people (as opposed to Python or Dylan people or otherwise folks using languages that implement it properly) who would be opposed to multiple inheritance.
If you agreed that your code may be used under the terms of the GPL, yes, you provided him a license.
Now, you check your code into $SOME_GUY's CVS repository with the intent that it become part of a GPLed work. One of two things in happening: An implicit license (for your patch to be covered by the GPL), or an implicit transfer of copyright.
Thing is, copyright transfers in the US must be explicit to be valid -- so what that leaves is Door A.
This is also why folks like the FSF, Digium, etc. require copyright transfer forms from folks who contribute patches.
So if I put a padlock on your house without your asking but will let you have a key (to which I retain ownership rights) free of charge, compatible with 90% of keyrings, that's OK?
Even then, when the software turns out to be incompatible with Windows 2015 and Nikon has no intent to retain support for such an old camera, everyone loses. (One of my roommates is in exactly this position with some of his 1995-era periphreals -- entirely functional hardware, completely incompatible with Windows XP).
Are you having us all on? You obviously can't believe that. It IS a trivial thing. It's completely trivial.
The right to tinker and the ability to invent go hand-in-hand. Consider how many of the great scientists and inventors of the last century grew up tinkering with their radios; how many modern inventions have their origins in a garage, created by an individual who taught themselves by examining the works of others.
If this is trivial, it is on such trivialities that society's progress stands.
We're talking about different things then. I'm talking about the code required to unlock encrypted information, NOT the photograph, which is most certainly not owned by anyone but the photographer.
Yes -- but Nikon is encrypting (putting a padlock on) a portion of the photograph (particularly, the white balance information), which you acknowledge to be owned by the photographer.
Consequently, the initial comparison (to an individual padlocking the goods of others) applies cleanly.
What's the difference? Both are things that people think up.
The first history of patent protection I can find is the Venetian Statute of 1474, followed up by the 1623 Statute of Monopolies in Britain. Further, many early manufacturing monopoly grants appear to have had the intent of enriching the Crown (or rewarding friends thereof), rather than protecting a natural right of inventors; indeed, in England, prior to a series of publicly-demanded reforms, such monopolies were granted with little if any relationship between the grantee and the inventor of the good in question (if one existed); a monopoly on salt is one prime example.
The very matter of recognition of ownership of methods and processes having a shorter period of historical recognition than such ownership for other created works is in and of itself argument that a natural distinction exists between these classes.
Exactly. It was only in the 18th century that European tradition diverged from absolute legal protection of property rights.... The Native Americans still, to this day, consider it a crime to sing somebody else's song.
Erk. Granted -- as far as it goes, and no further. Your points apply specifically to subjects covered by copyright, as opposed to those to which patents apply. Even so, historically accepted copyright-equivalent protection was not necessarily enshrined in law with the full breadth and expansiveness it has today: Prior to any decisions leading to English common law being applicable, preventing duplication of written works was done via access control rather than by law preventing unauthorized duplication.
Even so, it's inapplicable to this discussion: As a file format is a method of storing a given kind of content, the format itself (as opposed to descriptions thereof) is patentable, not copyrightable; consequently, your evidence fails to directly apply.
Really? What percentage of market share would it take not to be a "nobody"? And should market share even be a factor when answering questions as to individuals' rights to tinker with their own, physical property?
You should be ashamed.
I would be ashamed if I were known as an individual who uses abusive language trivially; rather, those friends who know me well tend to be somewhat shocked when I speak profanely. This -- the right to tinker -- is by no means a trivial thing, however, and I think it worth spending some of that limited currency by which I can express the depth of my distaste for those who would hamstring the creative class.
The idea that songs and stories were the properties of the individuals and clans that composed them goes back tens of thousands of years.
First, we're not talking about songs or stories; we're talking about methods and processes.
Second, your "thousands of years" assertion is simply wrong. The Statute of Anne was early 1700s; and while the Greeks and Romans recognized the identity of their works' authors, said ownership conferred no economic rights.
Ultimately, though, I believe the idea in question (that is, the specific actions of Nikon), is a battle between competing intellectual rights, not necessarily one between "property" and "intellectual property".
Certainly. One of the impacts of the "intellectual property" turn of thought, however, is that it tends to gravitate towards the holder rather than the public: If something is one's property, one ought to be able to restrict it, do what one like with it, etc. If something is a public grant intended to promote the general welfare, then said general welfare (and thus rights of the public in general) are more in-mind when considering it.
And it's precisely this where the matter lies: The line between Nikon's rights and those of the general public. Frankly, I don't even want to move that line very much: In my ideal world, Nikon would not be forced by act of government to disclose the information at hand (though government would not prohibit 3rd-party reverse engineering and disclosure) -- rather, they would see that such actions, by empowering their customer, make their hardware more useful and thus better able to compete; and they would take such an action out of enlightened self-interest.
On the other hand, it would be reasonable to have legislation or executive policy preventing government from purchasing hardware or software except that the protocols and data formats used by the same be published, archived and freely available to and implementable by 3rd parties (which would in turn prohibit Nikon from selling these cameras to government agencies without changing their policy). By ensuring continued access, independant of the supplier's continued existance and cooperation, to data produced with the device or software, and making the set of 3rd parties able to provide solutions to enhance that access as wide as possible, such a policy would prevent vendor lock in, encourage a larger set of possible bidders on contracts where interaction with such protocols or data storage formats is necessary, and otherwise be in the best interests of both the government itself and the general public (who, as a side-effect, have access to these specifications).
Perhaps we should choose the term "intellectual rights" rather than "intellectual property", but I despair of my ability as a singular entity to effect this change in society's common usage.
Perhaps referring independently to copyrights, patents, trademarks and trade secrets would be a still better approach. While I'll admit that there are cases where they may be delt with in the aggregate, they are different enough things that lumping them together can lead to confusion -- see the frequency of posters on/. indicating that patent rights terminate if not defended or spouting like misconceptions -- and separating them out not only avoids the need for a term akin to "intellectual property", but also helps to avoid such cases.
Further, a more general (and admittedly somewhat idealist) point: Were perceived inability of a single individual, acting alone, to make a substantial change in societal behaviour to stop all individuals from attempting to encourage such changes, we'd be a vastly poorer society. That one cannot change the world acting alone should be no reason not to act -- and, indeed, such inaction leaves those who are trying to change things much more alone than they would otherwise be.
I'm by no means claiming that the limited monopoly is of recent vintage; rather, I'm claiming that the manner of thought equating posession of this monopoly with physical property is so.
I think that, if you were to read the opinions of the Framers, you would find that they believed the concept of "Property" to be inseparable from the concept of "Liberty". It matters not, legally, whether you "accept such things", or not.
I agree with your premises, but fail to see what conclusion they should lead me to.
Intellectual property is indeed treated by society and the legal system similarly to physical property. I would be interested to hear you quote an example where the two are not effectively equivalent
First, as before, there's the intent of the exercise: Ownership of physical property is a basic right, whereas "ownership" of "intellectual propery" is a limited monopoly granted to further the public good, not as recognition of a basic right; it's this critical distinction that the phrase "intellectual propery" blurs, and therein is my criticism of the same. Going into a discussion of other, practical differences (such as fair use rights, government property ownership and such) would be simply a diversion from this point.
FYI, I actually meant "real propery" as in land (such being a particularly canonical example of physical property), and gave that particular bit of wording some thought (at least a half-second or so) before deciding on it. Perhaps, in hindsight, I should have decided differently -- but then, I think that some of the historical connotations of land ownership (indeed, the same ones that resulted in it being termed "real property") are increasingly attaching themselves to "intellectual property", with substantial resultant, long-term public harm.
Secondly, Nikon's customers don't want new and interesting software for their cameras. They want to depress the shutter and get photos out. They can do that now, admirably, with the software Nikon already provides.
If, that is, they're on a Nikon-supported software platform. If they're not, they're screwed -- and unable to help themselves. And $DEITY forbid someone might want to adjust their camera to work better in an unusual lighting situation beyond the manufacturer-provided controls.
See, some of us have been computing in a culture in which we take the ability to fix and extend the code we use almost for granted -- and indeed, it's in practice a very useful set of abilities to have. Finding out about the restrictions that exist outside this culture is jarring, and seeing folks defending it is almost reminiscent of listening to Chinese citizens defending their government's censorship-related activities as being in their own best interests.
I don't much like having someone (be it someone at Nikon, or you) decide what I should be allowed to do with equipment I've purchased, because I'm accustomed to being able to put hardware to creative uses and purposes -- any use I want, within the bounds of legality. (Just this weekend, I've taught myself the art of writing drivers for USB devices in the pursuit of just such a project). For those of 'yall who would pigeonhole us as mere consumers and remove our right to tinker (because, after all, what need could we have to do anything beyond push the button and take out our picture?) --
It seems to me that the loudest complainants against the concept of intellectual property are either RMS, or people who do not actually create any IP of their own.
It seems to me that you'd do better to attack the idea, rather than the individual -- particularly when your attack is dead wrong. There are a great many creative people who think that overly expansive "IP" laws have the potential to stifle, rather than promote, creation.
Relatively few thing there should be no limited monopolies granted to promote authorship of creative works -- but beliving that such monopolies should exist does not mean one believes that lumping them in with real property is a method of thinking about them which promotes laws and policies in the best interests of the public.
I don't mean to be rude, I really don't. I'm just having a very hard time understanding how your statement doesn't boil down to "Give me your stuff, and by the way waive all moral and property rights to it in the process."
It does. There's nothing wrong about that, though.
If Nikon wants to have a maximally wide market for hardware, it's in their best interests to be permissive towards those who would make their hardware more useful to its customers.
Relatively recent tradition. "Intellectual property" is a term of modern vintage.
Like I said before, I understand that you really, really wish certain types of property weren't really property.
Rather, I object to certain classes of "stuff" being recently classed as property, and (as such) removed from the public domain for the exclusive benefit of a limited number of individuals. Taking away public rights (such as the right to use certain things which have recently been reclassed as being reserved for specific individuals) is also one of the things we don't want our government doing, no? In short, what you're forgetting: Adding a property right for one person is effectively taking away access to the thing that right "protects" from everyone else.
The original, traditional purpose for US copyright and patent law is "to promote the sciences and the useful arts". Reframing it with the (more traditionally European) goal of protecting some property right which is owed authors and creators does the public as a whole a disservice.
Your due process argument is unconvincing -- it depends on one already accepting such things as "property", which (obviously) we disagree on.
Arch is quite scalable, if used correctly -- and the remaining places where it aren't are either (1) implementation rather than design issues, or (2) issues which have a solution proposed which nobody's bothered to implement yet.
Folks who actually do their setup correctly (greedy, non-sparse revlibs; hardlink trees; reiserfs) have reported some very, very impressive benchmarks - and the remaining scalability issues mostly relate to patch log management, and there've been plenty of solutions proposed and on the table that could be implemented very, very quickly if anyone was feeling enough pain to prioritize them (or hire Tom to prioritize them -- same thing, really).
Oh, it's not that bad. Yes, Tom has given Arch features which are tied to how he works -- but none come to mind that actually stop you from working a different way, as opposed to merely being annoying.
Arch is a good tool -- once you've wrapped your mind around it. Coming from CVS, that's hard.
One of the problems I'm having at work is that, having wrapped my mind around Arch, I'm for all intends and purposes unable to go back to thinking in CVS primatives -- the conceptual model is that much better. However, since Arch isn't practical for use at my place of employment (no usable win32 port, much less one with a GUI the UI folks can use), I've become damn near useless as SCM advisor -- my mental model just isn't aligned for CVS anymore, and the thought of trying to "fix" that (by retraining myself to work within all of CVS's limitations again) is just too damn horrifying.
In a year and a half, maybe, or however long it is, Bazaar-NG will be ready for commercial use, and then we'll have somethnig that'll let me have my pretty conceptual model and actually be usable by the rest of staff. It's a dream, anyhow.
Slashdot Mirror
Nuh-uh. If there were a Tiger Automotive, that wouldn't stop Apple from putting out and trademarking the name of a Tiger operating system -- they're in different enough fields that they can each have an individual trademark within their field without potential for confusion. Likewise, I'm inclined to believe that the Tiger operating system and the TigerDirect mail-order sales company are in different enough businesses that the one having a trademark is irrelevant to the other.
Mind you, it's been years since I took business law, my memory's never been anything but bad, and I am not a lawyer.
Mmm. Once upon a time I wrote a test harness and framework for some Java code I was working on using one of the Java Scheme implementations. The individual tests were 80% one-liners -- far simpler, shorter and cleaner than would have been possible otherwise -- mostly owing to the lack of extra/unnecessary split between data and code.
Sure, the same code could have been written in Java (using reflection) or Python (using its language-native introspection) -- C++ is right out, having no runtime introspection capabilities -- but it was shorter, simpler and cleaner in Scheme.
Unfortunetly, the lack of a consistant (across implementations) and expansive runtime library makes scheme next to useless for a lot of practical purposes. *sigh*.
-
A number of vendors' hardphones are available, almost all of which have vastly more sophisticated features than the little USB phones which are sold for use with Skype.
-
You can run your own voicemail / menu trees / custom phone-based applications / etc, and customize them as you like, without paying a thing for the privilege.
-
You have a wide array of codecs to choose from (so you can optimize for bandwidth, sound quality, resiliance against dropped packets, etc).
-
You can run your own interface into the conventional phone system, or choose the vendor through which to do so, rather than needing to pay Skype for the privilege.
For communications between family members, Skype is fine -- but for even semi-serious business use, it's woefully inadequate.How do you think OSS projects get 3rd-party developers? They make something that businesses find interesting enough to devote staff to extend and bugfix.
I'm just such staff. When my company wants to use OpenVPN, XRMS, Asterisk or any other open source product, I make it integrate with our infrastructure; submit bug reports, write patches and utilities, and otherwise do what I need to to make it work -- and then I submit any part of my fixes and utilities that are generalizable (or otherwise interesting to anyone other than ourselves) back upstream. This has been at least a part of my role in every job I've had for the last five years.
Multiply me by however many thousands like me are out there, and you've got a substantial floating developer base that belongs to whatever projects have our employers' interest. The connection between having a larger userbase of plain users and having a wider userbase of business users isn't quite so clear -- but let me assert that it's there, for now; if you dispute it, that can be a focus for further discussion.
I think I've given you enough datapoints to draw an appropriate conclusion.
I have nothing against competantly implemented MI -- my compliant was about people (like several of the Java programmers I work with) who treat MI as inherintly evil just because C++ botched it so badly. And face it -- C++'s naiive MRO is evil. See here for a discussion of some of the considerations that go into a good one.
Plus, I'm a C++ person, so I don't mind multiple inheritance.
Funny -- I thought it was C++ people (as opposed to Python or Dylan people or otherwise folks using languages that implement it properly) who would be opposed to multiple inheritance.
If you agreed that your code may be used under the terms of the GPL, yes, you provided him a license.
Now, you check your code into $SOME_GUY's CVS repository with the intent that it become part of a GPLed work. One of two things in happening: An implicit license (for your patch to be covered by the GPL), or an implicit transfer of copyright.
Thing is, copyright transfers in the US must be explicit to be valid -- so what that leaves is Door A.
This is also why folks like the FSF, Digium, etc. require copyright transfer forms from folks who contribute patches.
So if I put a padlock on your house without your asking but will let you have a key (to which I retain ownership rights) free of charge, compatible with 90% of keyrings, that's OK?
Even then, when the software turns out to be incompatible with Windows 2015 and Nikon has no intent to retain support for such an old camera, everyone loses. (One of my roommates is in exactly this position with some of his 1995-era periphreals -- entirely functional hardware, completely incompatible with Windows XP).
You can patent a compression algorithm. If a format specifies a particular compression algorithm... well, there you are.
Patenting a file format itself... well, it shouldn't be possible. but MS has done it, so in the US at least it demonstrably is.
Are you having us all on? You obviously can't believe that. It IS a trivial thing. It's completely trivial.
The right to tinker and the ability to invent go hand-in-hand. Consider how many of the great scientists and inventors of the last century grew up tinkering with their radios; how many modern inventions have their origins in a garage, created by an individual who taught themselves by examining the works of others.
If this is trivial, it is on such trivialities that society's progress stands.
We're talking about different things then. I'm talking about the code required to unlock encrypted information, NOT the photograph, which is most certainly not owned by anyone but the photographer.
Yes -- but Nikon is encrypting (putting a padlock on) a portion of the photograph (particularly, the white balance information), which you acknowledge to be owned by the photographer.
Consequently, the initial comparison (to an individual padlocking the goods of others) applies cleanly.
What's the difference? Both are things that people think up.
... The Native Americans still, to this day, consider it a crime to sing somebody else's song.
The first history of patent protection I can find is the Venetian Statute of 1474, followed up by the 1623 Statute of Monopolies in Britain. Further, many early manufacturing monopoly grants appear to have had the intent of enriching the Crown (or rewarding friends thereof), rather than protecting a natural right of inventors; indeed, in England, prior to a series of publicly-demanded reforms, such monopolies were granted with little if any relationship between the grantee and the inventor of the good in question (if one existed); a monopoly on salt is one prime example.
The very matter of recognition of ownership of methods and processes having a shorter period of historical recognition than such ownership for other created works is in and of itself argument that a natural distinction exists between these classes.
Exactly. It was only in the 18th century that European tradition diverged from absolute legal protection of property rights.
Erk. Granted -- as far as it goes, and no further. Your points apply specifically to subjects covered by copyright, as opposed to those to which patents apply. Even so, historically accepted copyright-equivalent protection was not necessarily enshrined in law with the full breadth and expansiveness it has today: Prior to any decisions leading to English common law being applicable, preventing duplication of written works was done via access control rather than by law preventing unauthorized duplication.
Even so, it's inapplicable to this discussion: As a file format is a method of storing a given kind of content, the format itself (as opposed to descriptions thereof) is patentable, not copyrightable; consequently, your evidence fails to directly apply.
Nobody, statistically speaking, uses anything else.
Really? What percentage of market share would it take not to be a "nobody"? And should market share even be a factor when answering questions as to individuals' rights to tinker with their own, physical property?
You should be ashamed.
I would be ashamed if I were known as an individual who uses abusive language trivially; rather, those friends who know me well tend to be somewhat shocked when I speak profanely. This -- the right to tinker -- is by no means a trivial thing, however, and I think it worth spending some of that limited currency by which I can express the depth of my distaste for those who would hamstring the creative class.
The idea that songs and stories were the properties of the individuals and clans that composed them goes back tens of thousands of years.
First, we're not talking about songs or stories; we're talking about methods and processes.
Second, your "thousands of years" assertion is simply wrong. The Statute of Anne was early 1700s; and while the Greeks and Romans recognized the identity of their works' authors, said ownership conferred no economic rights.
Ultimately, though, I believe the idea in question (that is, the specific actions of Nikon), is a battle between competing intellectual rights, not necessarily one between "property" and "intellectual property".
/. indicating that patent rights terminate if not defended or spouting like misconceptions -- and separating them out not only avoids the need for a term akin to "intellectual property", but also helps to avoid such cases.
Certainly. One of the impacts of the "intellectual property" turn of thought, however, is that it tends to gravitate towards the holder rather than the public: If something is one's property, one ought to be able to restrict it, do what one like with it, etc. If something is a public grant intended to promote the general welfare, then said general welfare (and thus rights of the public in general) are more in-mind when considering it.
And it's precisely this where the matter lies: The line between Nikon's rights and those of the general public. Frankly, I don't even want to move that line very much: In my ideal world, Nikon would not be forced by act of government to disclose the information at hand (though government would not prohibit 3rd-party reverse engineering and disclosure) -- rather, they would see that such actions, by empowering their customer, make their hardware more useful and thus better able to compete; and they would take such an action out of enlightened self-interest.
On the other hand, it would be reasonable to have legislation or executive policy preventing government from purchasing hardware or software except that the protocols and data formats used by the same be published, archived and freely available to and implementable by 3rd parties (which would in turn prohibit Nikon from selling these cameras to government agencies without changing their policy). By ensuring continued access, independant of the supplier's continued existance and cooperation, to data produced with the device or software, and making the set of 3rd parties able to provide solutions to enhance that access as wide as possible, such a policy would prevent vendor lock in, encourage a larger set of possible bidders on contracts where interaction with such protocols or data storage formats is necessary, and otherwise be in the best interests of both the government itself and the general public (who, as a side-effect, have access to these specifications).
Perhaps we should choose the term "intellectual rights" rather than "intellectual property", but I despair of my ability as a singular entity to effect this change in society's common usage.
Perhaps referring independently to copyrights, patents, trademarks and trade secrets would be a still better approach. While I'll admit that there are cases where they may be delt with in the aggregate, they are different enough things that lumping them together can lead to confusion -- see the frequency of posters on
Further, a more general (and admittedly somewhat idealist) point: Were perceived inability of a single individual, acting alone, to make a substantial change in societal behaviour to stop all individuals from attempting to encourage such changes, we'd be a vastly poorer society. That one cannot change the world acting alone should be no reason not to act -- and, indeed, such inaction leaves those who are trying to change things much more alone than they would otherwise be.
I'm by no means claiming that the limited monopoly is of recent vintage; rather, I'm claiming that the manner of thought equating posession of this monopoly with physical property is so.
I think that, if you were to read the opinions of the Framers, you would find that they believed the concept of "Property" to be inseparable from the concept of "Liberty". It matters not, legally, whether you "accept such things", or not.
I agree with your premises, but fail to see what conclusion they should lead me to.
Intellectual property is indeed treated by society and the legal system similarly to physical property. I would be interested to hear you quote an example where the two are not effectively equivalent
First, as before, there's the intent of the exercise: Ownership of physical property is a basic right, whereas "ownership" of "intellectual propery" is a limited monopoly granted to further the public good, not as recognition of a basic right; it's this critical distinction that the phrase "intellectual propery" blurs, and therein is my criticism of the same. Going into a discussion of other, practical differences (such as fair use rights, government property ownership and such) would be simply a diversion from this point.
FYI, I actually meant "real propery" as in land (such being a particularly canonical example of physical property), and gave that particular bit of wording some thought (at least a half-second or so) before deciding on it. Perhaps, in hindsight, I should have decided differently -- but then, I think that some of the historical connotations of land ownership (indeed, the same ones that resulted in it being termed "real property") are increasingly attaching themselves to "intellectual property", with substantial resultant, long-term public harm.
Secondly, Nikon's customers don't want new and interesting software for their cameras. They want to depress the shutter and get photos out. They can do that now, admirably, with the software Nikon already provides.
If, that is, they're on a Nikon-supported software platform. If they're not, they're screwed -- and unable to help themselves. And $DEITY forbid someone might want to adjust their camera to work better in an unusual lighting situation beyond the manufacturer-provided controls.
See, some of us have been computing in a culture in which we take the ability to fix and extend the code we use almost for granted -- and indeed, it's in practice a very useful set of abilities to have. Finding out about the restrictions that exist outside this culture is jarring, and seeing folks defending it is almost reminiscent of listening to Chinese citizens defending their government's censorship-related activities as being in their own best interests.
I don't much like having someone (be it someone at Nikon, or you) decide what I should be allowed to do with equipment I've purchased, because I'm accustomed to being able to put hardware to creative uses and purposes -- any use I want, within the bounds of legality. (Just this weekend, I've taught myself the art of writing drivers for USB devices in the pursuit of just such a project). For those of 'yall who would pigeonhole us as mere consumers and remove our right to tinker (because, after all, what need could we have to do anything beyond push the button and take out our picture?) --
Go to hell.
It seems to me that the loudest complainants against the concept of intellectual property are either RMS, or people who do not actually create any IP of their own.
It seems to me that you'd do better to attack the idea, rather than the individual -- particularly when your attack is dead wrong. There are a great many creative people who think that overly expansive "IP" laws have the potential to stifle, rather than promote, creation.
Relatively few thing there should be no limited monopolies granted to promote authorship of creative works -- but beliving that such monopolies should exist does not mean one believes that lumping them in with real property is a method of thinking about them which promotes laws and policies in the best interests of the public.
I don't mean to be rude, I really don't. I'm just having a very hard time understanding how your statement doesn't boil down to "Give me your stuff, and by the way waive all moral and property rights to it in the process."
It does. There's nothing wrong about that, though.
If Nikon wants to have a maximally wide market for hardware, it's in their best interests to be permissive towards those who would make their hardware more useful to its customers.
The law, and our tradition, says different.
Relatively recent tradition. "Intellectual property" is a term of modern vintage.
Like I said before, I understand that you really, really wish certain types of property weren't really property.
Rather, I object to certain classes of "stuff" being recently classed as property, and (as such) removed from the public domain for the exclusive benefit of a limited number of individuals. Taking away public rights (such as the right to use certain things which have recently been reclassed as being reserved for specific individuals) is also one of the things we don't want our government doing, no? In short, what you're forgetting: Adding a property right for one person is effectively taking away access to the thing that right "protects" from everyone else.
The original, traditional purpose for US copyright and patent law is "to promote the sciences and the useful arts". Reframing it with the (more traditionally European) goal of protecting some property right which is owed authors and creators does the public as a whole a disservice.
Your due process argument is unconvincing -- it depends on one already accepting such things as "property", which (obviously) we disagree on.
This is beyond annoying, it makes arch unusable for my fairly simple needs.
Unless, that is, you make the version part of your branch name.
Arch is quite scalable, if used correctly -- and the remaining places where it aren't are either (1) implementation rather than design issues, or (2) issues which have a solution proposed which nobody's bothered to implement yet.
Folks who actually do their setup correctly (greedy, non-sparse revlibs; hardlink trees; reiserfs) have reported some very, very impressive benchmarks - and the remaining scalability issues mostly relate to patch log management, and there've been plenty of solutions proposed and on the table that could be implemented very, very quickly if anyone was feeling enough pain to prioritize them (or hire Tom to prioritize them -- same thing, really).
Oh, it's not that bad. Yes, Tom has given Arch features which are tied to how he works -- but none come to mind that actually stop you from working a different way, as opposed to merely being annoying.
That said, I'm anxiously awaiting Bazaar-NG.
Arch is a good tool -- once you've wrapped your mind around it. Coming from CVS, that's hard.
One of the problems I'm having at work is that, having wrapped my mind around Arch, I'm for all intends and purposes unable to go back to thinking in CVS primatives -- the conceptual model is that much better. However, since Arch isn't practical for use at my place of employment (no usable win32 port, much less one with a GUI the UI folks can use), I've become damn near useless as SCM advisor -- my mental model just isn't aligned for CVS anymore, and the thought of trying to "fix" that (by retraining myself to work within all of CVS's limitations again) is just too damn horrifying.
In a year and a half, maybe, or however long it is, Bazaar-NG will be ready for commercial use, and then we'll have somethnig that'll let me have my pretty conceptual model and actually be usable by the rest of staff. It's a dream, anyhow.