I have never met anyone who uses a computer and doesn't realize the difference between left click, right click and double click.
The article says that he had to route his connection through an anonymous proxy in the US to get a DRM licence to view his legitimately purchased content - are you telling me that the masses would know how to do this? I think not.
Would you consider it polite to hand a copy of a distribution's HCL to each family member who is considering buying computer hardware for you?
My familly firmly believes in making presents useful to eachother. If I tell my familly that a new modem would be useful then none of us would have any problem with discussing exact model details. In the same way, if my sister asked for a new pair of walking boots for christmas she would likely tell me exactly which to get. Works a hell of a lot better than just getting presents you'll never use.
It annoys the crap out of me that most (if not all) plugins aren't signed by their authors.
I see little point in signing (for the end user) - it gives a false sense of security. "It's signed so it must be ok I'll install it" - that's crap, the spyware author could just as easilly bought a certificate and signed his spyware - the end user will see that it's nice and fluffy and signed and think it's all ok.
Probably because they can't deal with their hardware that has no drivers. You try getting most winmodems to work with GNU/Linux.
Congratulations, you just completely diverted from your original arguement. The discussion was _not_ about hardware compatability, it was about the GUI.
But I still can hack out DOS commands without any thought
I used to be able to hack out DOS commands and think it was great, but having used Linux every day for 7 years (and occasionally for a lot longer than that) I now find DOS just isn't powerful enough and can quite see why windows needs a GUI file manager. In Linux I can usually do whatever I need to do with a batch of files using simple shell globbing rules or at worst case, proper regexes, but DOS doesn't support powerful globbing and regexes are nonexistent.
Which Linux-compatible ISP is as inexpensive as NetZero or Netscape? The amount that a NetZero or Netscape subscriber saves over a year compared to a full-price ISP such as AOL is nearly enough to pay for a Windows tax. Besides, some people can't even get as far as starting the dialer because many winmodems have no driver.
Well practically every ISP in the UK is "Linux compatable" (i.e. they use standard PPP so can be dialled by the Linux software just fine). My sister and parents are both using dialup TescoNet accounts, which are free except for call charges (this is fine for them since they don't use the internet a lot). I used to use a Demon dialup account until I got DSL from PlusNet (which costs me about 20 ukp a month - completely competetive with all the mid-sized ISPs and a lot cheaper than the big ISPs such as BT, AOL, etc).
As for the lack of driver for a winmodem, this just brongs me back to my other point of choosing hardware carefully.
Doesn't help if your ISP's custom dialer (netzero, aol, netscape, etc) is incompatible with Linux, because you can't even get so far as the Google home page.
It's not as if (for most people) changing ISP is difficult or traumatic.
Heck, people complained about the Windows XP Start Menu being green and/or shaped differently.
People complained, but they dealt with it ok - if people can deal with the start menu being green why can't they deal with the start menu having an icon of a red hat on it as it does in Fedora?
Though, running XPpro, I've managed to average a reinstall a year. Which is about what I get for any OS.
My main Linux workstation and server at home hasn't been reinstalled in 2 years - it's now on it's 4th (?) upgrade cycle (RH9, FC1, FC2, FC3). Admittedly the FC3 upgrade did break stuff quite badly but it didn't take a reinstall to fix it.
I haven't used Gnome in a good few years, but as long as the terminal is a needed and prominant feature,
It isn't - the terminal is there (and as an experienced geek I use it a lot) but you certainly don't need to use it - it's got most anything you need in the GUI including a graphical file manager (Nautilus). I, however, will be the first to tell you how much I hate graphical file managers though - I find managing files at the shell much nicer and quicker (again, that's down to geek experience)
The thing is, when I try to teach people how to use computers, the first thing I tell them is "don't worry about breaking it, you can't."
You can't break the hardware, but you can break the software - IMHO the user should be made aware of this but you should also point out that while they're learning then it's ok coz software can be reinstalled.
Computers have two layers of complexity, hardware (which should have a specialist to fix, being that Joe User is frightened of wires), and software, which is fixable even in the worst circumstance relatively easily. If worse comes to worse there is a reinstall or a reformat to fix it, and this possibility does not work in a car.
Software is fixable so long as you have the original disks (an increasing trend seems to be for manufacturers to not supply original disks - at best case you seem to get the manufacturer's own "restore CD"). The point is that reformatting a box takes time and you'll probably lose important data that didn't get backed up before the wipe. I have no clue how much it costs to get a professional to do a complete windows reinstall - I'm guessing that most people aren't happy doing this themselves?
I would go so far as to argue that hardware is possibly easier for someone to deal with since it's mostly like Lego - e.g. unplug the power, rip out the old graphics card, stick in the new one, job done.
Computers should not be something feared, we should have just enough respect for them to take care of them, and that is it.
Indeed, but I get wholly wound up by peoples "want something for nothing" attitude - if you destroy your computer by fiddling with it and you're not competent enough to reinstall it yourself then you really need to be prepared to pay someone to fix it. This applies equally with anything - if you go into the engineer's setup menu on your TV and start mindlessly fiddling with settings then you're going to have to get someone who knows what they're doing to fix it.
OS X does come close to this
Sure, log in as root on OS X and type rm -rf / and then tell me it's not possible to trash your system through incompetence. As far as I'm concerned, most stuff that breaks is getting broken because users don't know their limitations:
- some users know they know nothing and just get on with using the computer for what they need
- Others know lots and can configure it how they want
- the third set of users know nothing about computers but think they're experts. These are the people who will trash their whole computer.
So either you have a choice - make a system that is fairly unfunctional on the grounds that it prevents people breaking it or make a system that can do anything but can be broken. Putting an "expert mode" in doesn't solve your problem because 99% of the time the people who break their computers are the people who think their experts anyway.
(And yes, as a computing professional I do sometimes get out of my depth and trash something. The difference is that I have the knowledge to fix it again).
XP is damn far
I've not used Windows since Win98, but from back then I remember an aweful lot of windows "weirdness" problems where the fix was "reinstall the machine"
all the Linux distros I've tried are lightyears away
You've obviously not been following the dumbing down of Gnome.
How do you expect the novice or casual user to become comfortable with using the command line?
There are graphical alternatives to that you know...
Besides, it's frequently been suggested that people who haven't used computers before are much happier dealing with a commandline than a GUI. (Can't find the URIs ATM but there have been studies that provide evidence for this).
OpenOffice.org is still missing a replacement for Microsoft Access, a graphical database design program. Novice or casual users do not want to learn PHP.
I'm not convinced that "novice or casual" users use free form databases like Access - i.e. if they want to store addresses they'll use a contact manager, etc. instead of designing their own database to do it.
No computer is like that, and none ever will be. Computers are complex things, and work in complex ways. Joe User can't fix a problem even on the easiest computer to use, the Macintosh.
I agree entirely - when a computer breaks you should send it to a professional to fix it. When my car creaks I don't try and fix it myself because I don't know how - I'd probably cause a lot of expensive damage if I tried.
The difference between computers and cars though seems to be that with a car people who don't know what they're doing just use it and if they need something fixing/upgrading/whatever they get a professional to do it. It seems that when you sit an average moron user infront of a computer they are quite happy to completely destroy it by installing new software and then when it all stops working they complain that they shouldn't have to be paying for someone to clear up the mess.
When was the last time you saw an "average" car user upgrade their 1.2 litre engine to a 1.4 themselves? Hell, I suspect that most car users would be scared to change their HT leads themselves...
a contact manager that can sync with both an Ericsson and Motorola phone
I use Evolution and Multisync to sync my Sony Ericsson P900 over bluetooth.
EAC and LAME
Grip and Lame.
Now, the point of this post is this... each time I have looked at Linux to date I find it is not quite ready
I've not used a Windows machine (for anything serious) in over 2 years (and before then I wasn't using Windows very much). I've yet to find anything (that I want to do) that I can't do on Linux but I could do on Windows - infact most stuff would be a lot harder on Windows. Over the past year I've asked various friends why they use Windows at home and I haven't had any answer other than "because Linux doesn't run $latest_game" which totally reenforces my belief that Windows is a toy operating system.
When I'm lazy I stick to Windows, because it does work.
I don't understand how people can complain that Windows is easier - every time someone has a problem in Windows and asks me for help I'm left wondering how I fix it whereas in Linux the tools you need are just there. I.e. if I've got a networking problem, after checking the obvious I break out tcpdump and see what traffic is actually going where, that's something I can't do in Windows so I'm left without any clue what the problem is or how to fix it. And before you tell me to just download Ethereal or something, that isn't very easy when your network's broken now is it?
There are only 2 areas where Linux falls down IMHO: 1. Support for hardware is sometimes flakey or not there - usually this just means doing a little bit of googling before buying the hardware to check it works ok. 2. You can't just pick up $random_software from PC World and install it (in many cases there is a free alternative for Linux, so again often a little bit of research will help) - this is mostly a problem with games since there are no alternatives.
I personally think there is a lot of value in this. It's already put it back on my desk as a fun thing to do this afternoon (give Gentoo another try!).
I might point out that for your first outings into Linux land you probably want to pick a more friendly distribution. (I can't really comment here, having never used Gentoo, but I understand that it's probably not as friendly as Fedora or Mandrake).
What I keep hearing is that all those people who voted for Bush on election day based on their religious beliefs are idiots and stupid and in some cases I hear that they don't even deserve their vote
I have no problems with people voting based on their religious beliefs as long as they also take everything else into consideration (why vote for a warmonger just because he claims to have the same religious beliefs as you?)
The thing that really wound me up though was one of the TV interviews I saw with a Bush supporter - he claimed that "religious people always make better decisions than non-religious people". How arrogant is that? I'd argue that neither the religious or non-religious sides are any better qualified than eachother to make decisions.
Of course, going into a populated building with a few kilos of high explosive strapped to you and blowing up everyone who has different beliefs than you is obviously a "better" decision - most wars are about religion too.
Infact, it could be argued that atheists might take war and death more seriously than people who belief in an afterlife because in the eyes of aetheists when you kill someone you really are killing someone, not just sending them to an afterlife.
Soon we'll need licenses just to use the Internet.
This is not altogether a bad thing if you have to pass a test to get the licence - we'd have less clueless people around buying from spam and sending viruses around...
It also doesn't prohibit those same friends from actually listening to the song
I believe that's covered by "fair use" - you'll note that it _isn't_ legal to show a video you bought to a reasonable size audiance or broadcast a CD you bought (either over radio, the internet or even over a PA system).
You could always license the patent to other people for $0 and acceptance of the GPL, and keep the threat of breach of license:)
Doesn't that also defeat the point of the opensource model? Lets say you patent a "word processor" (ignore the fact that there's prior art, etc so that would never be patentable). You licence the idea of a word processor for $0 and acceptance of the GPL. So I decide I want to write a word processor too. You tell me thats fine but I must accept the GPL. So hold on - I've just produced a _completely_ independent project that happens to do the same job as yours and you're requiring me to release it under the GPL? Since I wrote all the code, etc should I not be allowed to release it under whatever licence I damned well want? (This works both ways - I may either want to release it under a closed source licence or under a completely unrestricted public domain licence whcih is less restricted than GPL).
This is essentially what is going on right now. While ideologically superior, the GPL has no real teeth, and is abused left and right by unscrupulous "developers"
There have been plenty of cases where said unscrupulous "developers" have been threatened with court action for violating the GPL and they have often backed down very quickly.
who repackage Open Source as their own, either whole hog, or berried in a larger theft.
There is nothing illegal about repackaging GPL'd software so long as you comply with the licence (that is you make the source available under the terms of GPL). Or had you not noticed that Red Hat, Suse, Debian, etc all repackage GNU/Linux as their own?
I really don't see how it's any different in software than anything else:
If you want to do _anything_ with some of my code, you have to get permission from me*. That permission may well be "yeah, do what you want with it" or it could be a strict licence agreement which outlines exactly what you can and can't do.
Similarly, if you want to do _anything_ with some music you have to get permission from the author*. Again, that could be anything from "you can play the music" to "you can republish the music".
(* subject to fair use laws, which should apply equally to all things including software)
The way copyright works _really_ isn't rocket science. The only place I can see confusion happening is when dealing with the licences, but this is a problem with the licence and _not_ a problem with the copyright. You don't need to throw away copyright just because some licences are unintelligable.
This is why very few opensource coders have applied for patents, the cost barrier.
I'd also suggest that opensource developers don't generally apply for software patents because they believe in the opensource model - a model that software patents destroy. Whats the point in opening up your source if it's illegal for anyone to use any of the ideas in the project anyway?
Unix is already good, and well known, and MS would like nothing better than to use some big chunks of it.
Hypothetically thinking for a second (and I don't know the answer to this - IANAL). Lets suppose the US binned copyright law and microsoft ripped off big chunks of (formerly) copyrighted code and used it themselves. Could the foreign offices of MS be sued for stealing this code since the rest of the world hasn't gone insane and binned copyright laws? I can just see the UK side of IBM sue the UK side of MS when MS rip off some IBM code because in the US the copyright nolonger has any legal standing.
Slashdot Mirror
I have never met anyone who uses a computer and doesn't realize the difference between left click, right click and double click.
The article says that he had to route his connection through an anonymous proxy in the US to get a DRM licence to view his legitimately purchased content - are you telling me that the masses would know how to do this? I think not.
Would you consider it polite to hand a copy of a distribution's HCL to each family member who is considering buying computer hardware for you?
My familly firmly believes in making presents useful to eachother. If I tell my familly that a new modem would be useful then none of us would have any problem with discussing exact model details. In the same way, if my sister asked for a new pair of walking boots for christmas she would likely tell me exactly which to get. Works a hell of a lot better than just getting presents you'll never use.
Without a driver for the video card, the machine will run in 16-color VGA mode, and people will think Linux's GUI is ugly.
Yes, but VGA cards are reasonably well supported - how does this at all relate to your comment about modems not working under Linux?
It annoys the crap out of me that most (if not all) plugins aren't signed by their authors.
I see little point in signing (for the end user) - it gives a false sense of security. "It's signed so it must be ok I'll install it" - that's crap, the spyware author could just as easilly bought a certificate and signed his spyware - the end user will see that it's nice and fluffy and signed and think it's all ok.
Probably because they can't deal with their hardware that has no drivers. You try getting most winmodems to work with GNU/Linux.
Congratulations, you just completely diverted from your original arguement. The discussion was _not_ about hardware compatability, it was about the GUI.
But I still can hack out DOS commands without any thought
I used to be able to hack out DOS commands and think it was great, but having used Linux every day for 7 years (and occasionally for a lot longer than that) I now find DOS just isn't powerful enough and can quite see why windows needs a GUI file manager. In Linux I can usually do whatever I need to do with a batch of files using simple shell globbing rules or at worst case, proper regexes, but DOS doesn't support powerful globbing and regexes are nonexistent.
Which Linux-compatible ISP is as inexpensive as NetZero or Netscape? The amount that a NetZero or Netscape subscriber saves over a year compared to a full-price ISP such as AOL is nearly enough to pay for a Windows tax. Besides, some people can't even get as far as starting the dialer because many winmodems have no driver.
Well practically every ISP in the UK is "Linux compatable" (i.e. they use standard PPP so can be dialled by the Linux software just fine). My sister and parents are both using dialup TescoNet accounts, which are free except for call charges (this is fine for them since they don't use the internet a lot). I used to use a Demon dialup account until I got DSL from PlusNet (which costs me about 20 ukp a month - completely competetive with all the mid-sized ISPs and a lot cheaper than the big ISPs such as BT, AOL, etc).
As for the lack of driver for a winmodem, this just brongs me back to my other point of choosing hardware carefully.
Doesn't help if your ISP's custom dialer (netzero, aol, netscape, etc) is incompatible with Linux, because you can't even get so far as the Google home page.
It's not as if (for most people) changing ISP is difficult or traumatic.
Heck, people complained about the Windows XP Start Menu being green and/or shaped differently.
People complained, but they dealt with it ok - if people can deal with the start menu being green why can't they deal with the start menu having an icon of a red hat on it as it does in Fedora?
Though, running XPpro, I've managed to average a reinstall a year. Which is about what I get for any OS.
My main Linux workstation and server at home hasn't been reinstalled in 2 years - it's now on it's 4th (?) upgrade cycle (RH9, FC1, FC2, FC3). Admittedly the FC3 upgrade did break stuff quite badly but it didn't take a reinstall to fix it.
I haven't used Gnome in a good few years, but as long as the terminal is a needed and prominant feature,
It isn't - the terminal is there (and as an experienced geek I use it a lot) but you certainly don't need to use it - it's got most anything you need in the GUI including a graphical file manager (Nautilus). I, however, will be the first to tell you how much I hate graphical file managers though - I find managing files at the shell much nicer and quicker (again, that's down to geek experience)
1. Has anyone solved this problem at their workplace?
:)
I can't run IE at my workplace coz I don't have a Windows machine... next
The thing is, when I try to teach people how to use computers, the first thing I tell them is "don't worry about breaking it, you can't."
You can't break the hardware, but you can break the software - IMHO the user should be made aware of this but you should also point out that while they're learning then it's ok coz software can be reinstalled.
Computers have two layers of complexity, hardware (which should have a specialist to fix, being that Joe User is frightened of wires), and software, which is fixable even in the worst circumstance relatively easily. If worse comes to worse there is a reinstall or a reformat to fix it, and this possibility does not work in a car.
Software is fixable so long as you have the original disks (an increasing trend seems to be for manufacturers to not supply original disks - at best case you seem to get the manufacturer's own "restore CD"). The point is that reformatting a box takes time and you'll probably lose important data that didn't get backed up before the wipe. I have no clue how much it costs to get a professional to do a complete windows reinstall - I'm guessing that most people aren't happy doing this themselves?
I would go so far as to argue that hardware is possibly easier for someone to deal with since it's mostly like Lego - e.g. unplug the power, rip out the old graphics card, stick in the new one, job done.
Computers should not be something feared, we should have just enough respect for them to take care of them, and that is it.
Indeed, but I get wholly wound up by peoples "want something for nothing" attitude - if you destroy your computer by fiddling with it and you're not competent enough to reinstall it yourself then you really need to be prepared to pay someone to fix it. This applies equally with anything - if you go into the engineer's setup menu on your TV and start mindlessly fiddling with settings then you're going to have to get someone who knows what they're doing to fix it.
OS X does come close to this
Sure, log in as root on OS X and type rm -rf / and then tell me it's not possible to trash your system through incompetence. As far as I'm concerned, most stuff that breaks is getting broken because users don't know their limitations:
- some users know they know nothing and just get on with using the computer for what they need
- Others know lots and can configure it how they want
- the third set of users know nothing about computers but think they're experts. These are the people who will trash their whole computer.
So either you have a choice - make a system that is fairly unfunctional on the grounds that it prevents people breaking it or make a system that can do anything but can be broken. Putting an "expert mode" in doesn't solve your problem because 99% of the time the people who break their computers are the people who think their experts anyway.
(And yes, as a computing professional I do sometimes get out of my depth and trash something. The difference is that I have the knowledge to fix it again).
XP is damn far
I've not used Windows since Win98, but from back then I remember an aweful lot of windows "weirdness" problems where the fix was "reinstall the machine"
all the Linux distros I've tried are lightyears away
You've obviously not been following the dumbing down of Gnome.
How do you expect the novice or casual user to become comfortable with using the command line?
There are graphical alternatives to that you know...
Besides, it's frequently been suggested that people who haven't used computers before are much happier dealing with a commandline than a GUI. (Can't find the URIs ATM but there have been studies that provide evidence for this).
OpenOffice.org is still missing a replacement for Microsoft Access, a graphical database design program. Novice or casual users do not want to learn PHP.
I'm not convinced that "novice or casual" users use free form databases like Access - i.e. if they want to store addresses they'll use a contact manager, etc. instead of designing their own database to do it.
No computer is like that, and none ever will be. Computers are complex things, and work in complex ways. Joe User can't fix a problem even on the easiest computer to use, the Macintosh.
I agree entirely - when a computer breaks you should send it to a professional to fix it. When my car creaks I don't try and fix it myself because I don't know how - I'd probably cause a lot of expensive damage if I tried.
The difference between computers and cars though seems to be that with a car people who don't know what they're doing just use it and if they need something fixing/upgrading/whatever they get a professional to do it. It seems that when you sit an average moron user infront of a computer they are quite happy to completely destroy it by installing new software and then when it all stops working they complain that they shouldn't have to be paying for someone to clear up the mess.
When was the last time you saw an "average" car user upgrade their 1.2 litre engine to a 1.4 themselves? Hell, I suspect that most car users would be scared to change their HT leads themselves...
1 - An installation standard that is every bit as idiot proof as installing a self executing binary with microsoft.
Errm... "yum install foo"
2 - An out of the box user interface that has the polished look and feel users have come to expect form Apple and MS.
Have you used a recent distro such as Fedora?
3 - Application suites competitive with pay products like Office.
OpenOffice?
a contact manager that can sync with both an Ericsson and Motorola phone
I use Evolution and Multisync to sync my Sony Ericsson P900 over bluetooth.
EAC and LAME
Grip and Lame.
Now, the point of this post is this... each time I have looked at Linux to date I find it is not quite ready
I've not used a Windows machine (for anything serious) in over 2 years (and before then I wasn't using Windows very much). I've yet to find anything (that I want to do) that I can't do on Linux but I could do on Windows - infact most stuff would be a lot harder on Windows. Over the past year I've asked various friends why they use Windows at home and I haven't had any answer other than "because Linux doesn't run $latest_game" which totally reenforces my belief that Windows is a toy operating system.
When I'm lazy I stick to Windows, because it does work.
I don't understand how people can complain that Windows is easier - every time someone has a problem in Windows and asks me for help I'm left wondering how I fix it whereas in Linux the tools you need are just there. I.e. if I've got a networking problem, after checking the obvious I break out tcpdump and see what traffic is actually going where, that's something I can't do in Windows so I'm left without any clue what the problem is or how to fix it. And before you tell me to just download Ethereal or something, that isn't very easy when your network's broken now is it?
There are only 2 areas where Linux falls down IMHO:
1. Support for hardware is sometimes flakey or not there - usually this just means doing a little bit of googling before buying the hardware to check it works ok.
2. You can't just pick up $random_software from PC World and install it (in many cases there is a free alternative for Linux, so again often a little bit of research will help) - this is mostly a problem with games since there are no alternatives.
I personally think there is a lot of value in this. It's already put it back on my desk as a fun thing to do this afternoon (give Gentoo another try!).
I might point out that for your first outings into Linux land you probably want to pick a more friendly distribution. (I can't really comment here, having never used Gentoo, but I understand that it's probably not as friendly as Fedora or Mandrake).
What I keep hearing is that all those people who voted for Bush on election day based on their religious beliefs are idiots and stupid and in some cases I hear that they don't even deserve their vote
I have no problems with people voting based on their religious beliefs as long as they also take everything else into consideration (why vote for a warmonger just because he claims to have the same religious beliefs as you?)
The thing that really wound me up though was one of the TV interviews I saw with a Bush supporter - he claimed that "religious people always make better decisions than non-religious people". How arrogant is that? I'd argue that neither the religious or non-religious sides are any better qualified than eachother to make decisions.
Of course, going into a populated building with a few kilos of high explosive strapped to you and blowing up everyone who has different beliefs than you is obviously a "better" decision - most wars are about religion too.
Infact, it could be argued that atheists might take war and death more seriously than people who belief in an afterlife because in the eyes of aetheists when you kill someone you really are killing someone, not just sending them to an afterlife.
Soon we'll need licenses just to use the Internet.
This is not altogether a bad thing if you have to pass a test to get the licence - we'd have less clueless people around buying from spam and sending viruses around...
It also doesn't prohibit those same friends from actually listening to the song
I believe that's covered by "fair use" - you'll note that it _isn't_ legal to show a video you bought to a reasonable size audiance or broadcast a CD you bought (either over radio, the internet or even over a PA system).
You could always license the patent to other people for $0 and acceptance of the GPL, and keep the threat of breach of license :)
Doesn't that also defeat the point of the opensource model? Lets say you patent a "word processor" (ignore the fact that there's prior art, etc so that would never be patentable). You licence the idea of a word processor for $0 and acceptance of the GPL.
So I decide I want to write a word processor too. You tell me thats fine but I must accept the GPL. So hold on - I've just produced a _completely_ independent project that happens to do the same job as yours and you're requiring me to release it under the GPL? Since I wrote all the code, etc should I not be allowed to release it under whatever licence I damned well want? (This works both ways - I may either want to release it under a closed source licence or under a completely unrestricted public domain licence whcih is less restricted than GPL).
Dracionian EULAs are based in contract law, not in copyright.
So if I make lots of "backup" copies of Windows CDs before I agree to the EULA I'm fine then?
This is essentially what is going on right now. While ideologically superior, the GPL has no real teeth, and is abused left and right by unscrupulous "developers"
There have been plenty of cases where said unscrupulous "developers" have been threatened with court action for violating the GPL and they have often backed down very quickly.
who repackage Open Source as their own, either whole hog, or berried in a larger theft.
There is nothing illegal about repackaging GPL'd software so long as you comply with the licence (that is you make the source available under the terms of GPL). Or had you not noticed that Red Hat, Suse, Debian, etc all repackage GNU/Linux as their own?
Copyrights, in regard to software, aren't working
I really don't see how it's any different in software than anything else:
If you want to do _anything_ with some of my code, you have to get permission from me*. That permission may well be "yeah, do what you want with it" or it could be a strict licence agreement which outlines exactly what you can and can't do.
Similarly, if you want to do _anything_ with some music you have to get permission from the author*. Again, that could be anything from "you can play the music" to "you can republish the music".
(* subject to fair use laws, which should apply equally to all things including software)
The way copyright works _really_ isn't rocket science. The only place I can see confusion happening is when dealing with the licences, but this is a problem with the licence and _not_ a problem with the copyright. You don't need to throw away copyright just because some licences are unintelligable.
This is why very few opensource coders have applied for patents, the cost barrier.
I'd also suggest that opensource developers don't generally apply for software patents because they believe in the opensource model - a model that software patents destroy. Whats the point in opening up your source if it's illegal for anyone to use any of the ideas in the project anyway?
Unix is already good, and well known, and MS would like nothing better than to use some big chunks of it.
Hypothetically thinking for a second (and I don't know the answer to this - IANAL). Lets suppose the US binned copyright law and microsoft ripped off big chunks of (formerly) copyrighted code and used it themselves. Could the foreign offices of MS be sued for stealing this code since the rest of the world hasn't gone insane and binned copyright laws? I can just see the UK side of IBM sue the UK side of MS when MS rip off some IBM code because in the US the copyright nolonger has any legal standing.