No I mean't people will either stick with GPL2 (which requires doing nothing) or replace the code with different code thats under BSD. The only problem with sticking with GPL2 is if the mainline project switches completely to GPL3, which is unlikely as you said because of trying to track down all the contributors.
If you distribute the code to a third party then you have to give *all* the source. Currently if you are using mixed code for say a webserver you don't, as that doesn't count as distribution.
As most GPL code says you can use version 2 or later, they will either stay using version 2, or replace the code with a BSD version. Linux is fairly unique in that it is only licensed under GPL2, so this will not affect companies like Google that modfiy Linux for in house use.
He has a problem with secondhand games, and I see his point - support and infrastructure costs going to customers who haven't paid the developer.
That is a completely bullshit argument. The original buyer paid the developer and then *sold* the game to someone else. So after the sale you again have one customer, not two. Support and infrastructure costs don't change at all due to second hand games, but they probably do increase due to bootlegged games, which are a completely different issue.
His argument is the same that the MPAA/RIAA push. They want to be paid every time you watch a movie or hear a song. Yeah sure, and hammer manufacturers would like some money every time I get my hammer out. I bet door makers would love if you had to pay every time you used a door. Copyright owners* have never made a sensible argument about why they should be special.
* Note I didn't say artists, because they are rarely the ones that end up owning the copyright.
If you are a company that doesn't have the skill to add a feature to the software, then how about paying the developers to fix it?
Open source coders can't run around fixing every bug for everyone for free. Open source does not remove the need to pay programmers. But you pay them for adding the features you need or fixing bugs you need fixed, instead of paying for a blackbox piece of closed source.
That strategy worked well in the Western World, but generally failed when the Roman Catholic Church went up against another major religion (like Islam). Much of the spread of western influence outside of the west happend despite the Church, with governments using the Church as a puppet to support their wars (the Spanish in South America).
I would say Christianity spread mainly by assimilation and adaption before it became the religion of Rome.
How can/.ers get upset over bandwidth "theft"?/. routinely blows peoples monthly bandwidth allocations and crushes whole web servers without even bothering to offer cache links./.er's have as much right to be upset about this as MS does about abuse of monopoly.
the general attitude on Slashdot that freedom of speech should have no consequences
That is what "free" speech means. It does not mean that you do not have to pay to speak (although it is also free as in beer).
Nope you are wrong. You can say whatever you want but people will argue back, call you an idiot or ostracize you. You can be a historian that denies the holocaust but you might find that you lose all professional respect and people will say nasty things about you. No one should be allowed to stop someone denying the holocaust. But that doesn't mean you can deny the holocaust and suffer no consequences.
But one of those consequences shouldn't be the government locking you up or killing you. However free speech doesn't mean other people have to accept or like what you say.
If you go around saying Linux sucks, and Microsoft have never done anything illegal; on slashdot then you will be modded down and flamed. However your comment won't be removed by the editors and is there for anyone who cares to look for it.
Responsibility - as you mention in a few cases - is quite important, but there is a definite difference between responsibility and oppression. Once communication is regulated in the way you seem to want to, this line will start creeping. I personally feel that some of the things already going on to limit anonymity of Internet communication are disturbing, and your mainstream argument of, "it's for your safety from the bad people who will hurt you," should not fly with people of intelligence.
Making judgements about what you apparently think I want is extremely foolish. I wasn't responding to this case in particular but to the general attitude on Slashdot that freedom of speech should have no consequences.
Making judgements is what courts are for. And apparently this case has at merit in the eyes of the plaintiff or else they wouldn't have filed. And it will be thrown out of court in short order if it doesn't have some merit. The dispute is between private citizens and its perfectly fine for the goverment to act as an arbiter. The main problems with freedom of speech happen when its a private citizen *against* the Government.
I think people should be allowed to say pretty much anything as long as they are willing to own those statements. What I have a problem with is anonymous people making mischief. I am very anti-censorship and Government interference in communications. I am also against most Western Governments currently in power and think that a revolution is probably the best way to sort them and their big business friends out.
And if my Government wants to do something about me saying these things they know exactly where I live.
Seriously when did people get this idea that you should be able to say whatever you want and never have any consequences? All freedom of speech means is that the Government won't try to stop your (should be political) speech. It doesn't mean you can libel and slander people anonymously consequence free.
Why should you be allowed to go around staring negative rumours about your business competitors? How would you like your boss to lie to a future employer that you got fired for drug abuse or for having kiddie porn?
People want rights but never seem to understand that responsibilities are just as important for the functioning of society.
One of the great problems with the Internet currently is that there are so many anonymous cowards, who troll, spam and lie. There is very little consequence to such actions so people aren't inhibited.
I wasn't talking about the commandments. I meant all those little laws and statements scattered throughout the old testament, many of which Christ replaced (such as an eye for an eye). That is the problem with biblical literalism. If you are a Christian you should concern yourself with what Christ said. If you want to live by the old testament and ignore Christ you should convert to Judaism.
Yup what was before/caused the big bang is by definition unknowable. And religious people can always invoke God at they will never be disproved. So why some people feel the need to invoke God in areas in which we have evidence for the mundane, is just ridiculous. Especially when the scientific evidence doesn't disprove God at all, or change the marvelous probability of our existence.
These people aren't Christians. They are cultists trying to re-establish the clergy as the ultimate source of all knowledge. And I am yet to meet a bibilical literalist who follows the laws in the old testament which they proclaim as truth.
The geologists haven't been around to watch the transformations of the earth as they occured. How can we be sure that their theories on how these processes occur really be true? Aren't their theories based, at least in part, on carbon dating of the contents of the various layers of earth?
And no ID supporter was around when the bible was written so how can we be sure it wasn't written as a joke? Or that significant parts got altered out. Maybe Jesus supported Gay Marriage.
Science is based on the idea that physical laws don't change significantly. Since its almost impossible to detect if they have changed (at best we can detect if they are changing) you have to go on a bit of faith. Everything comes down to faith eventually (How do you know you aren't in the Matrix?), but you are better off basing your faith on scientific evidence then on literal interpretations of an ancient book that is full or parables and stories.
But hey maybe God is just fucking with us and put all those fossils in the ground.
I am truely sick of people who call themselves Christians but are really practising some whacky supersitious religion that has no place for critical thought.
To quote Mr Zdziarski's homepage: "to teach and to defend what I have come to find is a scientifically beautiful piece of logical harmony - the Bible"
Ah so science is a book that is thousands of years old and most of it is not corroborated in secondary sources? A book that is known to have been selectively edited through out its history for political reasons? So Jesus violating the laws of physics in his numerous miracles is science?
It certainly has great bits of logic and moral teaching in it (Do unto others, as you would have them do unto you), but it is not science. For someone to call it science shows that they have no understanding of science at all and it is no surprise that he thinks creationism and evolution should be taught in science class. I was taught creationism at school but in thelogy class.
I spent my entire education in christian schools. I have spent the last three weeks going to church to reconnect with God. Science does not preclude God. Just because God didn't have to make Adam from mud, after he made the world in six days, doesn't mean there is no God. No matter who much scientific knowledge we get there will always be room for God (What came before the Big Bang? And how did matter get the properties it has?).
For me God is the ultimate programmer. No sense doing all the work by hand when you can write some perl scripts to do it for you.
Science tells us what we can do and how. Religion tells us if we should.
1) You would get bad press from the hardcore players who generate a lot of early word of mouth for your games. These will probably be a large portion of your beta testers.
2) MMO's are basically IRC with a pretty screen saver. Personally I am running the game most of the time just to chat with friends while doing other stuff.
3) Addiction is how they retain users. They don't really want you to have the spare time to try out another MMO and decide you like it better. They would rather users had no spare time then to be constantly competing with other MMO's.
Don't punish me for the asshats in government, I don't vote for either of the major parties. But Im sure if you blocked Canberra (Australia's capital) from porn sites they would remove the law the next day.
How much money does Walmart make selling software? How many jobs such as dock workers, truck drivers, cashiers, janitors, are made available because they sell software? Notice that there are no programmers on the list? How many jobs are lost when this revenue stream evaporates? How many paying jobs are replaced by "other" types of jobs?
So? All that could be replaced in a heartbeat given that so many people have broadband connections now. That has nothing to do with open source or closed source software, that is a distribuition model, one which is increasingly outdated for non-physical products.
Open source does indeed have a lesson for business. But, it is a lesson that business should have learned a long time ago, that is, you can't make money by giving away the product.
Software isn't the product, enhancement and support of the software is the product. And even then most businesses will have nothing to do with supporting software, they will be providing other services or products. Most programmers are already doing this type of work. Open source allows you to amortize the cost of software over a large number of users. Commodity software has become infrastructure, just like roads, sewage and phones. Most businesses don't buy a phone network, they pay for the service.
Closed source software makers are horse breeders, and open source is the Ford Motor Company. Those who can't find a niche will need to find a new business with the revolution that is coming.
Fact: Most programmers don't work for commodity software companies.
Fact: Opensource only causes revenue losses for commodity software companies.
If you make niche software (to small a market for a good opensource alternative), or customise software for your company, then you have nothing to fear from opensource. In fact you will probably end up making more money as your company doesn't need to spend thousands of dollars paying for proprietary software (most of which ends up paying executives and marketers), and can put more dollars into customising opensource apps.
Not to mention how much more efficient you can be when you can fix bugs and add features instead of waiting months for the vendor to hopefully do it for you. Or that you can hire a multitude of companies to provide support and do this work for you, when you are stuck with the one vendor with proprietary software.
Opensource is taking away the revenue stream of charging for common software. But is adding new competitive ones for modification and support of software.
Which would be a win for the "no software patents" side. Software can already be copyrighted, a new type of engine (a physical invention) can't. So why does software need copyright and patents?
What magical quality of software allows it to be patentable when you can't patent a novel?
Right now they have methods in the EU to protect "Intellectual property". Its called copyright. If your invention is so obvious that someone can replicate it just from hearing a description of it, then it doesn't deserve a patent.
I might add that patents were originally made so that the plans to construct a new invention wouldn't be hidden by the inventor, and thus society would benefit after the monoploy expired. How many of the people that have software patents have provided even psuedo code? You wouldn't get a patent on a physcial device by giving a rough description of it.
This is a plan on how someone could kill the President of a United States. Wait until the POTUS is known to be inside 1600 Pensylvania Av then either A) Detonate a Truck filled with high explosive outside the oval office, or B) Hijack an airliner and crash it into the building.
Wow the FBI better lock me up for giving away this tottally non-obvious information to the terrorists. Hell I even gave them the address and everything.
Or maybe talking about obvious and non-specific information with the intent to prevent such an attack occuring is something people should be rewarded for?
It is said of all open source that is only more secure because it doesn't have much market share compared to closed source applications.
Of course the best example for open source security is Apache.
Security has nothing to do with closed or open source. Secure products will be made by people who care about security, and until very recently Microsoft didn't care. Any open source application that relies on the community doing security auditing will be full of bugs. The most secure programs are those that are designed to be secure and have regular security audits by the primary developers.
Stop comparing the US to other countries. Im sorry the fact that other contries are smarter or not is bullshit and anyone who actually reads the numbers will see that unlike other contries, the US is the only large country that requires attendance to high school. Most countries dont even send their children TO high school, they take tests and then are forcfully placed into what their job will be based on those tests.
What absolute rubbish. The US system is pretty much the same as the system in nearly every other western nation and most asian nations. I challenge you to name one western country that doesn't have compulsory education (to around age 15), or a single country where people are forced into jobs based on testing.
"You have ordered one hundred thousand of XYZ stock. Is this correct?"
Instead of:
"You have ordered 100,000 of XYZ stock. Is this correct?"
Would you have made the same mistake? One hundred thousand is much harder to mistake for ten thousand, then 100,000 is to 10,000. And thats a simple idea a university student just thought up. Software engineers for this type of software really need to be held legally responsible like real engineers are.
Slashdot Mirror
No I mean't people will either stick with GPL2 (which requires doing nothing) or replace the code with different code thats under BSD. The only problem with sticking with GPL2 is if the mainline project switches completely to GPL3, which is unlikely as you said because of trying to track down all the contributors.
If you distribute the code to a third party then you have to give *all* the source. Currently if you are using mixed code for say a webserver you don't, as that doesn't count as distribution.
As most GPL code says you can use version 2 or later, they will either stay using version 2, or replace the code with a BSD version. Linux is fairly unique in that it is only licensed under GPL2, so this will not affect companies like Google that modfiy Linux for in house use.
That is a completely bullshit argument. The original buyer paid the developer and then *sold* the game to someone else. So after the sale you again have one customer, not two. Support and infrastructure costs don't change at all due to second hand games, but they probably do increase due to bootlegged games, which are a completely different issue.
His argument is the same that the MPAA/RIAA push. They want to be paid every time you watch a movie or hear a song. Yeah sure, and hammer manufacturers would like some money every time I get my hammer out. I bet door makers would love if you had to pay every time you used a door. Copyright owners* have never made a sensible argument about why they should be special.
* Note I didn't say artists, because they are rarely the ones that end up owning the copyright.
If you are a company that doesn't have the skill to add a feature to the software, then how about paying the developers to fix it? Open source coders can't run around fixing every bug for everyone for free. Open source does not remove the need to pay programmers. But you pay them for adding the features you need or fixing bugs you need fixed, instead of paying for a blackbox piece of closed source.
The space shuttle [i]is[/i] 1970's tech.
That strategy worked well in the Western World, but generally failed when the Roman Catholic Church went up against another major religion (like Islam). Much of the spread of western influence outside of the west happend despite the Church, with governments using the Church as a puppet to support their wars (the Spanish in South America).
I would say Christianity spread mainly by assimilation and adaption before it became the religion of Rome.
Putting 666 in their phone number must be part of their pact with Satan.
How can /.ers get upset over bandwidth "theft"? /. routinely blows peoples monthly bandwidth allocations and crushes whole web servers without even bothering to offer cache links. /.er's have as much right to be upset about this as MS does about abuse of monopoly.
Nope you are wrong. You can say whatever you want but people will argue back, call you an idiot or ostracize you. You can be a historian that denies the holocaust but you might find that you lose all professional respect and people will say nasty things about you. No one should be allowed to stop someone denying the holocaust. But that doesn't mean you can deny the holocaust and suffer no consequences.
But one of those consequences shouldn't be the government locking you up or killing you. However free speech doesn't mean other people have to accept or like what you say.
If you go around saying Linux sucks, and Microsoft have never done anything illegal; on slashdot then you will be modded down and flamed. However your comment won't be removed by the editors and is there for anyone who cares to look for it.
Making judgements about what you apparently think I want is extremely foolish. I wasn't responding to this case in particular but to the general attitude on Slashdot that freedom of speech should have no consequences.
Making judgements is what courts are for. And apparently this case has at merit in the eyes of the plaintiff or else they wouldn't have filed. And it will be thrown out of court in short order if it doesn't have some merit. The dispute is between private citizens and its perfectly fine for the goverment to act as an arbiter. The main problems with freedom of speech happen when its a private citizen *against* the Government.
I think people should be allowed to say pretty much anything as long as they are willing to own those statements. What I have a problem with is anonymous people making mischief. I am very anti-censorship and Government interference in communications. I am also against most Western Governments currently in power and think that a revolution is probably the best way to sort them and their big business friends out.
And if my Government wants to do something about me saying these things they know exactly where I live.
Seriously when did people get this idea that you should be able to say whatever you want and never have any consequences? All freedom of speech means is that the Government won't try to stop your (should be political) speech. It doesn't mean you can libel and slander people anonymously consequence free.
Why should you be allowed to go around staring negative rumours about your business competitors? How would you like your boss to lie to a future employer that you got fired for drug abuse or for having kiddie porn?
People want rights but never seem to understand that responsibilities are just as important for the functioning of society.
One of the great problems with the Internet currently is that there are so many anonymous cowards, who troll, spam and lie. There is very little consequence to such actions so people aren't inhibited.
I wasn't talking about the commandments. I meant all those little laws and statements scattered throughout the old testament, many of which Christ replaced (such as an eye for an eye). That is the problem with biblical literalism. If you are a Christian you should concern yourself with what Christ said. If you want to live by the old testament and ignore Christ you should convert to Judaism.
Yup what was before/caused the big bang is by definition unknowable. And religious people can always invoke God at they will never be disproved. So why some people feel the need to invoke God in areas in which we have evidence for the mundane, is just ridiculous. Especially when the scientific evidence doesn't disprove God at all, or change the marvelous probability of our existence. These people aren't Christians. They are cultists trying to re-establish the clergy as the ultimate source of all knowledge. And I am yet to meet a bibilical literalist who follows the laws in the old testament which they proclaim as truth.
And no ID supporter was around when the bible was written so how can we be sure it wasn't written as a joke? Or that significant parts got altered out. Maybe Jesus supported Gay Marriage.
Science is based on the idea that physical laws don't change significantly. Since its almost impossible to detect if they have changed (at best we can detect if they are changing) you have to go on a bit of faith. Everything comes down to faith eventually (How do you know you aren't in the Matrix?), but you are better off basing your faith on scientific evidence then on literal interpretations of an ancient book that is full or parables and stories.
But hey maybe God is just fucking with us and put all those fossils in the ground.
I am truely sick of people who call themselves Christians but are really practising some whacky supersitious religion that has no place for critical thought.
To quote Mr Zdziarski's homepage:
"to teach and to defend what I have come to find is a scientifically beautiful piece of logical harmony - the Bible"
Ah so science is a book that is thousands of years old and most of it is not corroborated in secondary sources? A book that is known to have been selectively edited through out its history for political reasons? So Jesus violating the laws of physics in his numerous miracles is science?
It certainly has great bits of logic and moral teaching in it (Do unto others, as you would have them do unto you), but it is not science. For someone to call it science shows that they have no understanding of science at all and it is no surprise that he thinks creationism and evolution should be taught in science class. I was taught creationism at school but in thelogy class.
I spent my entire education in christian schools. I have spent the last three weeks going to church to reconnect with God. Science does not preclude God. Just because God didn't have to make Adam from mud, after he made the world in six days, doesn't mean there is no God. No matter who much scientific knowledge we get there will always be room for God (What came before the Big Bang? And how did matter get the properties it has?).
For me God is the ultimate programmer. No sense doing all the work by hand when you can write some perl scripts to do it for you.
Science tells us what we can do and how. Religion tells us if we should.
1) You would get bad press from the hardcore players who generate a lot of early word of mouth for your games. These will probably be a large portion of your beta testers. 2) MMO's are basically IRC with a pretty screen saver. Personally I am running the game most of the time just to chat with friends while doing other stuff. 3) Addiction is how they retain users. They don't really want you to have the spare time to try out another MMO and decide you like it better. They would rather users had no spare time then to be constantly competing with other MMO's.
Don't punish me for the asshats in government, I don't vote for either of the major parties. But Im sure if you blocked Canberra (Australia's capital) from porn sites they would remove the law the next day.
So? All that could be replaced in a heartbeat given that so many people have broadband connections now. That has nothing to do with open source or closed source software, that is a distribuition model, one which is increasingly outdated for non-physical products.
Software isn't the product, enhancement and support of the software is the product. And even then most businesses will have nothing to do with supporting software, they will be providing other services or products. Most programmers are already doing this type of work. Open source allows you to amortize the cost of software over a large number of users. Commodity software has become infrastructure, just like roads, sewage and phones. Most businesses don't buy a phone network, they pay for the service.
Closed source software makers are horse breeders, and open source is the Ford Motor Company. Those who can't find a niche will need to find a new business with the revolution that is coming.
Fact: Most programmers don't work for commodity software companies.
Fact: Opensource only causes revenue losses for commodity software companies.
If you make niche software (to small a market for a good opensource alternative), or customise software for your company, then you have nothing to fear from opensource. In fact you will probably end up making more money as your company doesn't need to spend thousands of dollars paying for proprietary software (most of which ends up paying executives and marketers), and can put more dollars into customising opensource apps.
Not to mention how much more efficient you can be when you can fix bugs and add features instead of waiting months for the vendor to hopefully do it for you. Or that you can hire a multitude of companies to provide support and do this work for you, when you are stuck with the one vendor with proprietary software.
Opensource is taking away the revenue stream of charging for common software. But is adding new competitive ones for modification and support of software.
Which would be a win for the "no software patents" side. Software can already be copyrighted, a new type of engine (a physical invention) can't. So why does software need copyright and patents?
What magical quality of software allows it to be patentable when you can't patent a novel?
Right now they have methods in the EU to protect "Intellectual property". Its called copyright. If your invention is so obvious that someone can replicate it just from hearing a description of it, then it doesn't deserve a patent.
I might add that patents were originally made so that the plans to construct a new invention wouldn't be hidden by the inventor, and thus society would benefit after the monoploy expired. How many of the people that have software patents have provided even psuedo code? You wouldn't get a patent on a physcial device by giving a rough description of it.
This is a plan on how someone could kill the President of a United States. Wait until the POTUS is known to be inside 1600 Pensylvania Av then either A) Detonate a Truck filled with high explosive outside the oval office, or B) Hijack an airliner and crash it into the building.
Wow the FBI better lock me up for giving away this tottally non-obvious information to the terrorists. Hell I even gave them the address and everything.
Or maybe talking about obvious and non-specific information with the intent to prevent such an attack occuring is something people should be rewarded for?
It is said of all open source that is only more secure because it doesn't have much market share compared to closed source applications.
Of course the best example for open source security is Apache.
Security has nothing to do with closed or open source. Secure products will be made by people who care about security, and until very recently Microsoft didn't care. Any open source application that relies on the community doing security auditing will be full of bugs. The most secure programs are those that are designed to be secure and have regular security audits by the primary developers.
I had that happen to me several times last week.
What absolute rubbish. The US system is pretty much the same as the system in nearly every other western nation and most asian nations. I challenge you to name one western country that doesn't have compulsory education (to around age 15), or a single country where people are forced into jobs based on testing.
If the order confirmation page had asked:
"You have ordered one hundred thousand of XYZ stock. Is this correct?"
Instead of:
"You have ordered 100,000 of XYZ stock. Is this correct?"
Would you have made the same mistake? One hundred thousand is much harder to mistake for ten thousand, then 100,000 is to 10,000. And thats a simple idea a university student just thought up. Software engineers for this type of software really need to be held legally responsible like real engineers are.