Not true. There are already alternatives to glibc, like diet libc.
And there are alternatives to the Linux kernel. This is really pointless.
When BitKeeper tried to pull similar shenanigans, Linus dropped BitKeeper like a stone, and wrote his own source code management system, called "git." The same thing will happen to the GNU/zealotware, if necessary.
I don't think even Linus is enough of a zealot to rewrite a compiler and a standard C library just so people can use his code in DRM'd apps.
No, it was a real and concrete question.
Is a company acting in bad faith if it...
That wasn't the question. The question was:
Are they going to go out of their way, and increase the cost of the product, to give this capability?
Where "this capability" is the ability to load custom code without printing a new chip.
It's a rhetorical question. Of course it's not likely that a company is going to take a significant profit hit to appear more friendly. The reason I brought up BSD is that this company, if they were smart, would be thinking the same thing. Will it cost more money to license proprietary stuff, develop everything in-house, use BSD, attempt to stick to GPLv2 code, or use GPLv3 and make it flashable?
I don't think that's unreasonable. GPL3 or no GPL3, they'd already be thinking about BSD, QNX, and whatever else might make sense. Removing one option from them is not going to kill their product, and I agree with removing the option where it concerns my code. After all, they're getting my code for free, damn straight I'm going to tell them what they can do with it.
RMS is setting the direction, and making the final calls.
Everyone else is just there to help point out self-contradictions and potential loopholes.
And hopefully to keep his zealotry in check.
The GPL isn't even done yet, and you're assuming that any open source which has anything to do with DRM won't be allowed?
I mean, Geocities is more analagous to Myspace than it is to blogs. Blogs are something fundamentally different, that wasn't really done much in the Geocities world. For one thing, people tend to keep up their blogs, whereas Geocities pages tended to be neglected and die off.
Myspace implements a blog, but so could Geocities.
You said it above, you can do anything you want with the source, but Linus goes further and says "not the hardware". As long as changes to the source are redistributed, Linus does not care if the binary will not run on *that* particular piece of hardware anymore, if thats a problem then don't buy the product.
Which is all very well and good. Vote with my dollars, don't support what I don't want. Well, I don't want them running my code, either.
And you know as well as I do that changes to the source are worthless unless you can run the binary to test them. It may or may not be practical to try to port such changes to other platforms, but why not use other platforms in the first place?
I find it very hard to imagine where having source code that you can't run is helpful at all.
The GPL-3 would make it all but impossible to implement effective DRM on hardware using GPL'd code.
So what? The GPL-2 makes it all but impossible to implement effective anti-cheat measures in FPS games. There is other software to choose from.
Adding requirements to distribute keys would kill any future for Linux in parts of the embedded space.
And also kill any future for parts of the embedded space using Linux.
Linus said it himself. He doesn't care about Linux's market share, he doesn't care if it displaces things.
Its all about the source. Not keys, not DRM and not limitations on use, hence no GPL-3 for the kernel.
Actually, that's academic and irrelevant. There will be no GPL-3 for the kernel because it's impractical to change it. There will likely be GPL-3 for other tools -- gcc, glibc, and so on. So just how useful is a kernel, by itself, in the embedded market? And suppose Linux was GPL-3 -- is Linux that much more useful than BSD there?
And it's funny how you worry about limitations on the use of DRM, which is itself a limitation that benefits no one except the copyright holder. And notice how I said "copyright holder", not "artist".
I agree with you here, difficulty levels are nice. I'd rather not give you cheat codes if I can help it.
But I do agree with you. I suck at racing games, and it's simply not worth it to me to compensate the way my brother does -- play a track 50 times until he gets it right. However, I can play through most FPSes on easy without too much repetition, so I play them instead. And RPGs, and a few others...
Still, a game being too difficult is a different complaint than a game being too long.
Someone actually proposed an idea once that could theoretically provide a way for voters to take their receipt home and verify, over the Internet, that their vote was properly counted. In this case, no matter how much someone tries to modify the software, no significant number of votes could ever be faked.
Unfortunately, I can't quite remember that, or where it's from. Also, the voting machines do suggest that there might be other examples, which we won't find till later. On the other hand, GPL does have some unintended annoyances, from time to time -- just look at the nVidia drivers.
So Linus should just let embedded Linux die because of your zealotry?
I didn't say that. And Linus doesn't have a choice here. The kernel will likely always be GPLv2, and if glibc and others switch to GPLv3, Linus won't be able to do a thing about it.
And you didn't answer the question.
It was a rhetorical question.
So was your question about killing embedded Linux, by the way. You can still have embedded, GPLv3 stuff, if you can find a way to make it programmable. I imagine someone will find a way of doing that and staying competitive.
Again, you didn't answer the question.
Sorry, "depends on the situation" isn't enough of an answer?
Nobody can answer these questions, because the GPLv3 is a confusing, overly broad mass of crap, that rivals the worst proprietary software licenses.
And if we get it right, it does have one advantage. Most proprietary licenses don't have a name -- you have to read the whole fucking license to know what it means. So, the only good proprietary license is an insanely short one.
GPLv3, no matter how bad it gets, is just one license, and you'll immediately know what it means whenever you see anything licensed "GPLv3", just like we do now with GPLv2. Even 10 licenses is better than an indefinite amount.
Except that RMS really is out to destroy DRM.
RMS is always the extreme. The GPLv3 is being drafted by more people than RMS.
I seriously want to strangle Tidus every time the little brat opens his mouth.
Fair enough. I almost did, but that's mainly due to the conditioning I have -- the guy's voiced so many damn anime characters. I've discovered recently, watching the English dub of End of Evangeleon, that there was some damned good voice acting, but that I still preferred the Japanese, because I've heard Shinji's voice so many places before, it's hard to take him seriously.
Once I got past that, well, he's not that bad. I'm not saying I like him -- he starts off as an arrogant jock -- but he's not bad.
Yuna starts off all right, but eventually starts to prattle like an airhead herself.
Here, I'll have to respectfully disagree. Maybe you just hate Emos, and by association, anything highly emotional or dramatic, but I think she had damned good reason to be dramatic. "I will defeat Sin, and I will do it without false hope."
The rest are just supporting characters and ultimately don't matter when you so despise the main two.
I suppose that makes it harder, but sometimes I feel like the game is worth playing for Auron alone.
What ultimately made me hate the game was the endless random combat that made me wish dearly for an "auto-resolve" just so I could move the bloody awful story along.
The vast majority of these practically can be "auto-resolved". Mash X. The ones that can't (boss battles) were interesting enough to me anyway.
But there really isn't anything else to the game -- I mean, are there *any* skills that aren't used in combat?
Blitzball. Weapon customization. Dodging lightning, mazes, and various other Legendary Weapon quests.
Question: How far have you actually gotten? Have you played other RPGs and enjoyed them?
Good points. Now, cars I'd object -- much of what's in a car should be possible to modify by the owner. I'm not saying it's a good idea, but it should be allowed.
Voting machines and web kiosks don't actually belong to the people using them, but it'd be difficult to find a legal way of putting this.
But back to Tivo: How does allowing infringing use diminish "significant non-infringing use" in any way?
Ooh! Ooh! I bet if I make my sledgehammers out of balloons, they'll never be used to kill anyone! But they'll still have the "significant non-infringing use" of being fun to play with!
In the real world, anything can be used by anybody to do something you don't want it to. I mean, it gets significantly fuzzier if you're, say, developing the atomic bomb, or writing a worm, but allowing people to program their Tivos seems reasonable, and preventing piracy seems like an annoying excuse not to. Seems like maybe they're afraid that the more people know about their devices, the more potential competition they would have from, say, MythTV.
But the law should concern itself with "significant non-infringing use" and leave it at that. I currently use mplayer for significant non-infringing DVD watching. That I can rip DVDs with mencoder, and sometimes do (rentals that have to go back before I've had a chance to watch them), shouldn't make mplayer illegal, nor its developers liable for anything. Same for Tivo.
So if you do up a flyer in OO and then someone, two years later, asks for the source, you would be required to provide the *exact version* of the source you used to produce the document or be in violation of the license.
Did you actually read my last comment? Here, for your convenience:
if we decide to add a "web services" clause, we should also allow anyone to point to upstream unless they've modified the code themselves.
I'm suggesting that, since we're suggesting possible changes to the GPLv3 draft, such as requiring source code to be available if you see content produced by it, then we should also add a change such that distributors who don't modify the source can point to upstream.
Thus, unless I actually modified the OO source to create that flyer, I shouldn't be required to deliver it -- I can just point them to OO.org.
So, my question to you is, do you think it's an unreasonable burden to require that everyone who makes a flyer in OO should be able to point people to OO.org? And, do you think it's an unreasonable burden to require that anyone who makes a change in OO.org, even if they don't distribute that change, should produce source to it if they distribute a flyer created with it?
If not, should I go ahead and send these ideas in to the GPLv3 team?
Are they going to go out of their way, and increase the cost of the product, to give this capability?
Well, they have another choice: They could just use code that isn't GPL'd. There's always BSD.
But one possible outcome of this might be cheaper and better ways of adding such capability, to where it doesn't matter anymore.
If they provide a formally supported mechanism to change the software on the device-- which they must, according to the ideals expressed in the GPLv3-- they may be liable for when someone changes this software.
Oh, please. And Dell is liable for giving users a writable hard drive? And Microsoft is liable for allowing users to compile and run.EXE files?
Is the company acting in bad faith if it ships its embedded Linux with just exactly enough hard disk space to run the software it ships with, but no more?
Depends on the situation. It could be considered bad design -- they won't be able to provide any firmware updates of their own.
Is the company acting in bad faith if the product needs to interact with another, closed source product in order to usefully function?
In cases where this actually matters, usually no. For instance, I play open source games (Quake 3), running on an open source OS (Linux), that are really only playable on my hardware with the use of closed source software (binary nVidia drivers). This isn't great, but it's acceptable -- I can change just about any part of the kernel without breaking the nVidia drivers, and I can theoretically replace the nVidia drivers with an open source equivalent, if one is ever available.
It's an interesting point, but consider: GPL doesn't mean "free". A GPL'd product requiring Windows to run is one thing, but GPL'd programs are allowed to be sold, and if you create and sell GPL'd software, you're not required to provide the source code for free, except to people who already bought the binary.
All GPL means is that you have the right to tinker with your GPL'd software in any way you want, and redistribute anything you come up with.
What if the closed source product isn't even under their control, or contains DRM?
You're missing the point here, in much the same way Linus does, over and over. I don't think GPLv3 is intended to kill DRM entirely -- you can certainly have a bit of proprietary software which uses DRM, and it can talk to GPL'd software. The point is, you're not allowed to use DRM to force only one specific version of the GPL'd software to run.
So, for instance, it's perfectly alright to release a program that runs under Linux and uses DRM. It may even be alright to provide a binary module, much the same as nVidia does, required to run this program. What wouldn't be fair is if you based this program on the mplayer source, and implemented a DRM scheme such that only one version of mplayer can play the DRM'd content (verified by trusted computing). In the first example, I can still tweak Linux all I want, and the DRM software will still work. In the second example, if I make the smallest patch to mplayer -- or likely, even my kernel -- I won't be able to play DRM'd content anymore.
This doesn't prevent me from implementing trusted computing for security -- so long as I give users some keys that will allow them to tweak and sign the software themselves. Note that this doesn't imply giving users MY keys -- it doesn't mean that I can't send them signed binaries, and warn them if the signature doesn't match (or isn't from me), so long as they have the option to ignore the signature and use one of their own.
On the whole, the whole GPLv3 effort is just a very complicated political game trying to achieve something that can't be achieved by a software license-- the rollback of DRM and the service-based internet economy.
Is it good to/prevent/ someone from using Free software in a closed hardware system? I can think of some good examples where the answer is definitely "no".
Yes, family is more important, meaning you won't have much time playing games -- so play good ones. Or, get a Wii and play some good multiplayer ones with the family.
Neither GPL forces me to provide source code if I'm not asked for it. If someone comes asking, and I point them to openoffice.org, and they're happy, I think that still fulfills the license. And if they come asking, and they want it directly from me, then as I said, I'm happy to set up a temporary mirror, or burn them a CD and mail it to them, because that's probably going to be maybe one or two people.
It would be a good thing to put into GPLv3, though -- if we decide to add a "web services" clause, we should also allow anyone to point to upstream unless they've modified the code themselves. In my case, that would mean pointing them to openoffice.org and gentoo.org. And since I didn't actually compile it from scratch (no amd64 support yet), I should be able to point them to my upstream source of binaries (gentoo), and let them go from there. (Gentoo refers them to OO.org...)
Anyway, do you have a real objection to this? Do you believe I should be able to download OpenOffice, hack it to support, say, Flash output, and send people the SWF without sending them my Flash hack?
I don't care about making my consumer-grade router outpace the Cisco gear I use at work. I care about being able to make my own software on par with IOS.
Two things:
Why don't you care about making your consumer-grade router outpace Cisco gear? That sounds like a laudible goal -- you'd obsolete Cisco gear instantly.
Wouldn't it be better if you could have access to the IOS source code, modify it, and load your modifications into the Cisco gear itself? That's the goal of GPLv3: Making hardware manufacturers stick to manufacturing hardware.
Except they can't be incorporated into your own project if every single piece of hardware for which the code is relevant is locked down tight.
Also, it would be nice if this could go both ways. Good ideas from Tivo could improve my project, but it would be nice if good ideas from MythTV could improve Tivo.
That's of considerably less use, and it's certainly not the intent of the GPL in the first place. The GPL was created because RMS was pissed about a printer driver that didn't work, that he could easily fix, but no one would give him the source code to do so. It would have started out as GPLv3 if it was a bug in printer firmware to which he had the source code, but no way of flashing it, especially if it was arbitrary about it -- techs from the printer company can flash it, but he can't.
But maybe this is where Linus differs -- maybe he really doesn't mind reading code that he'll never be able to use.
Might need some tweaking of the license, but sure. Most people would be happy with me pointing them to openoffice.org, and I'd be happy to burn a CD for the few who wouldn't. And yes, I did anticipate this, so why is it a problem?
I enjoyed Doom 3, for awhile. Eventually I just got sick of wasting time on it. You're still relatively early in the game -- towards the end, it just keeps steadily getting harder without getting scarier, and you become wholly desensitized to it. I think I cheated through much of the end.
I loved it, once, mostly. But it was not a good game. Quake 4 was much better -- it was actually fun to play. And Half-Life 2 was a masterpiece.
And for sheer story, Final Fantasy games beat them all. Games that make you cry.
If it would take me till Christmas to finish a game, I'd want it to be a masterpiece, not just good.
And again, the problem is that there may not be a substitute device. That is, there could be amazing, incredible innovation in some GPL'd code, that would be utterly useless to you without an open mp3 player. Now, that case is actually irrelevant now -- there's a player that encourages rockbox, and you can make Linux run on an iPod -- but it's still a valid point.
If you look at your history, I think RMS will back me up here. The whole free software movement was inspired by a printer driver without source code -- not because RMS particularly wanted to see how it worked, but because it didn't work, and he wanted to fix it.
I do not believe that I have a right to run any software I choose on a device the community did not (help) design.
Alright, then. I still think it's asinine of people to lock down a device so I can't run custom software on it. It is their right to develop such a device, but I do not want to help them, so I don't think it's their right to use my code in such a device.
So how's the code useful if you can't actually compile it and run it? Not to mention that you still don't have to give all of it back -- remember the Linksys routers?
Audio Blog. Bonus advantage: If you know what a blog is, you already know what an audio blog would look like. Furthermore, Video Blog sounds far better than "Video Podcast".
Slashdot Mirror
And there are alternatives to the Linux kernel. This is really pointless.
I don't think even Linus is enough of a zealot to rewrite a compiler and a standard C library just so people can use his code in DRM'd apps.
That wasn't the question. The question was:
Where "this capability" is the ability to load custom code without printing a new chip.
It's a rhetorical question. Of course it's not likely that a company is going to take a significant profit hit to appear more friendly. The reason I brought up BSD is that this company, if they were smart, would be thinking the same thing. Will it cost more money to license proprietary stuff, develop everything in-house, use BSD, attempt to stick to GPLv2 code, or use GPLv3 and make it flashable?
I don't think that's unreasonable. GPL3 or no GPL3, they'd already be thinking about BSD, QNX, and whatever else might make sense. Removing one option from them is not going to kill their product, and I agree with removing the option where it concerns my code. After all, they're getting my code for free, damn straight I'm going to tell them what they can do with it.
And hopefully to keep his zealotry in check.
The GPL isn't even done yet, and you're assuming that any open source which has anything to do with DRM won't be allowed?
I mean, Geocities is more analagous to Myspace than it is to blogs. Blogs are something fundamentally different, that wasn't really done much in the Geocities world. For one thing, people tend to keep up their blogs, whereas Geocities pages tended to be neglected and die off.
Myspace implements a blog, but so could Geocities.
Which is all very well and good. Vote with my dollars, don't support what I don't want. Well, I don't want them running my code, either.
And you know as well as I do that changes to the source are worthless unless you can run the binary to test them. It may or may not be practical to try to port such changes to other platforms, but why not use other platforms in the first place?
I find it very hard to imagine where having source code that you can't run is helpful at all.
So what? The GPL-2 makes it all but impossible to implement effective anti-cheat measures in FPS games. There is other software to choose from.
And also kill any future for parts of the embedded space using Linux.
Linus said it himself. He doesn't care about Linux's market share, he doesn't care if it displaces things.
Actually, that's academic and irrelevant. There will be no GPL-3 for the kernel because it's impractical to change it. There will likely be GPL-3 for other tools -- gcc, glibc, and so on. So just how useful is a kernel, by itself, in the embedded market? And suppose Linux was GPL-3 -- is Linux that much more useful than BSD there?
And it's funny how you worry about limitations on the use of DRM, which is itself a limitation that benefits no one except the copyright holder. And notice how I said "copyright holder", not "artist".
I agree with you here, difficulty levels are nice. I'd rather not give you cheat codes if I can help it.
But I do agree with you. I suck at racing games, and it's simply not worth it to me to compensate the way my brother does -- play a track 50 times until he gets it right. However, I can play through most FPSes on easy without too much repetition, so I play them instead. And RPGs, and a few others...
Still, a game being too difficult is a different complaint than a game being too long.
Someone actually proposed an idea once that could theoretically provide a way for voters to take their receipt home and verify, over the Internet, that their vote was properly counted. In this case, no matter how much someone tries to modify the software, no significant number of votes could ever be faked.
Unfortunately, I can't quite remember that, or where it's from. Also, the voting machines do suggest that there might be other examples, which we won't find till later. On the other hand, GPL does have some unintended annoyances, from time to time -- just look at the nVidia drivers.
I didn't say that. And Linus doesn't have a choice here. The kernel will likely always be GPLv2, and if glibc and others switch to GPLv3, Linus won't be able to do a thing about it.
It was a rhetorical question.
So was your question about killing embedded Linux, by the way. You can still have embedded, GPLv3 stuff, if you can find a way to make it programmable. I imagine someone will find a way of doing that and staying competitive.
Sorry, "depends on the situation" isn't enough of an answer?
And if we get it right, it does have one advantage. Most proprietary licenses don't have a name -- you have to read the whole fucking license to know what it means. So, the only good proprietary license is an insanely short one.
GPLv3, no matter how bad it gets, is just one license, and you'll immediately know what it means whenever you see anything licensed "GPLv3", just like we do now with GPLv2. Even 10 licenses is better than an indefinite amount.
RMS is always the extreme. The GPLv3 is being drafted by more people than RMS.
And you accuse me of zealotry?
So you're saying there's nothing preventing my good ideas from improving Tivo? I don't think Tivo likes me loading custom software onto it...
Please, try to see something more complex. If all that matters is the financials of a nation, than tell me, why are we in Iraq?
Fair enough. I almost did, but that's mainly due to the conditioning I have -- the guy's voiced so many damn anime characters. I've discovered recently, watching the English dub of End of Evangeleon, that there was some damned good voice acting, but that I still preferred the Japanese, because I've heard Shinji's voice so many places before, it's hard to take him seriously.
Once I got past that, well, he's not that bad. I'm not saying I like him -- he starts off as an arrogant jock -- but he's not bad.
Here, I'll have to respectfully disagree. Maybe you just hate Emos, and by association, anything highly emotional or dramatic, but I think she had damned good reason to be dramatic. "I will defeat Sin, and I will do it without false hope."
I suppose that makes it harder, but sometimes I feel like the game is worth playing for Auron alone.
The vast majority of these practically can be "auto-resolved". Mash X. The ones that can't (boss battles) were interesting enough to me anyway.
Blitzball. Weapon customization. Dodging lightning, mazes, and various other Legendary Weapon quests.
Question: How far have you actually gotten? Have you played other RPGs and enjoyed them?
You're thinking of MySpace.
And also, Geocities is a horrible word for it, even with the "clone" modifier.
Good points. Now, cars I'd object -- much of what's in a car should be possible to modify by the owner. I'm not saying it's a good idea, but it should be allowed.
Voting machines and web kiosks don't actually belong to the people using them, but it'd be difficult to find a legal way of putting this.
But back to Tivo: How does allowing infringing use diminish "significant non-infringing use" in any way?
Ooh! Ooh! I bet if I make my sledgehammers out of balloons, they'll never be used to kill anyone! But they'll still have the "significant non-infringing use" of being fun to play with!
In the real world, anything can be used by anybody to do something you don't want it to. I mean, it gets significantly fuzzier if you're, say, developing the atomic bomb, or writing a worm, but allowing people to program their Tivos seems reasonable, and preventing piracy seems like an annoying excuse not to. Seems like maybe they're afraid that the more people know about their devices, the more potential competition they would have from, say, MythTV.
But the law should concern itself with "significant non-infringing use" and leave it at that. I currently use mplayer for significant non-infringing DVD watching. That I can rip DVDs with mencoder, and sometimes do (rentals that have to go back before I've had a chance to watch them), shouldn't make mplayer illegal, nor its developers liable for anything. Same for Tivo.
Did you actually read my last comment? Here, for your convenience:
I'm suggesting that, since we're suggesting possible changes to the GPLv3 draft, such as requiring source code to be available if you see content produced by it, then we should also add a change such that distributors who don't modify the source can point to upstream.
Thus, unless I actually modified the OO source to create that flyer, I shouldn't be required to deliver it -- I can just point them to OO.org.
So, my question to you is, do you think it's an unreasonable burden to require that everyone who makes a flyer in OO should be able to point people to OO.org? And, do you think it's an unreasonable burden to require that anyone who makes a change in OO.org, even if they don't distribute that change, should produce source to it if they distribute a flyer created with it?
If not, should I go ahead and send these ideas in to the GPLv3 team?
Well, they have another choice: They could just use code that isn't GPL'd. There's always BSD.
But one possible outcome of this might be cheaper and better ways of adding such capability, to where it doesn't matter anymore.
Oh, please. And Dell is liable for giving users a writable hard drive? And Microsoft is liable for allowing users to compile and run .EXE files?
Depends on the situation. It could be considered bad design -- they won't be able to provide any firmware updates of their own.
In cases where this actually matters, usually no. For instance, I play open source games (Quake 3), running on an open source OS (Linux), that are really only playable on my hardware with the use of closed source software (binary nVidia drivers). This isn't great, but it's acceptable -- I can change just about any part of the kernel without breaking the nVidia drivers, and I can theoretically replace the nVidia drivers with an open source equivalent, if one is ever available.
It's an interesting point, but consider: GPL doesn't mean "free". A GPL'd product requiring Windows to run is one thing, but GPL'd programs are allowed to be sold, and if you create and sell GPL'd software, you're not required to provide the source code for free, except to people who already bought the binary.
All GPL means is that you have the right to tinker with your GPL'd software in any way you want, and redistribute anything you come up with.
You're missing the point here, in much the same way Linus does, over and over. I don't think GPLv3 is intended to kill DRM entirely -- you can certainly have a bit of proprietary software which uses DRM, and it can talk to GPL'd software. The point is, you're not allowed to use DRM to force only one specific version of the GPL'd software to run.
So, for instance, it's perfectly alright to release a program that runs under Linux and uses DRM. It may even be alright to provide a binary module, much the same as nVidia does, required to run this program. What wouldn't be fair is if you based this program on the mplayer source, and implemented a DRM scheme such that only one version of mplayer can play the DRM'd content (verified by trusted computing). In the first example, I can still tweak Linux all I want, and the DRM software will still work. In the second example, if I make the smallest patch to mplayer -- or likely, even my kernel -- I won't be able to play DRM'd content anymore.
This doesn't prevent me from implementing trusted computing for security -- so long as I give users some keys that will allow them to tweak and sign the software themselves. Note that this doesn't imply giving users MY keys -- it doesn't mean that I can't send them signed binaries, and warn them if the signature doesn't match (or isn't from me), so long as they have the option to ignore the signature and use one of their own.
Linus said, "Rea
I'd like to here about these examples...
Yes, family is more important, meaning you won't have much time playing games -- so play good ones. Or, get a Wii and play some good multiplayer ones with the family.
Let's make this simple, then.
The EU is actually punishing Microsoft for something the DOJ silently dropped, but for which they are still guilty.
The EU is doing the DOJ's job for them.
Neither GPL forces me to provide source code if I'm not asked for it. If someone comes asking, and I point them to openoffice.org, and they're happy, I think that still fulfills the license. And if they come asking, and they want it directly from me, then as I said, I'm happy to set up a temporary mirror, or burn them a CD and mail it to them, because that's probably going to be maybe one or two people.
It would be a good thing to put into GPLv3, though -- if we decide to add a "web services" clause, we should also allow anyone to point to upstream unless they've modified the code themselves. In my case, that would mean pointing them to openoffice.org and gentoo.org. And since I didn't actually compile it from scratch (no amd64 support yet), I should be able to point them to my upstream source of binaries (gentoo), and let them go from there. (Gentoo refers them to OO.org...)
Anyway, do you have a real objection to this? Do you believe I should be able to download OpenOffice, hack it to support, say, Flash output, and send people the SWF without sending them my Flash hack?
Two things:
Except they can't be incorporated into your own project if every single piece of hardware for which the code is relevant is locked down tight.
Also, it would be nice if this could go both ways. Good ideas from Tivo could improve my project, but it would be nice if good ideas from MythTV could improve Tivo.
That's of considerably less use, and it's certainly not the intent of the GPL in the first place. The GPL was created because RMS was pissed about a printer driver that didn't work, that he could easily fix, but no one would give him the source code to do so. It would have started out as GPLv3 if it was a bug in printer firmware to which he had the source code, but no way of flashing it, especially if it was arbitrary about it -- techs from the printer company can flash it, but he can't.
But maybe this is where Linus differs -- maybe he really doesn't mind reading code that he'll never be able to use.
Might need some tweaking of the license, but sure. Most people would be happy with me pointing them to openoffice.org, and I'd be happy to burn a CD for the few who wouldn't. And yes, I did anticipate this, so why is it a problem?
I enjoyed Doom 3, for awhile. Eventually I just got sick of wasting time on it. You're still relatively early in the game -- towards the end, it just keeps steadily getting harder without getting scarier, and you become wholly desensitized to it. I think I cheated through much of the end.
I loved it, once, mostly. But it was not a good game. Quake 4 was much better -- it was actually fun to play. And Half-Life 2 was a masterpiece.
And for sheer story, Final Fantasy games beat them all. Games that make you cry.
If it would take me till Christmas to finish a game, I'd want it to be a masterpiece, not just good.
And again, the problem is that there may not be a substitute device. That is, there could be amazing, incredible innovation in some GPL'd code, that would be utterly useless to you without an open mp3 player. Now, that case is actually irrelevant now -- there's a player that encourages rockbox, and you can make Linux run on an iPod -- but it's still a valid point.
If you look at your history, I think RMS will back me up here. The whole free software movement was inspired by a printer driver without source code -- not because RMS particularly wanted to see how it worked, but because it didn't work, and he wanted to fix it.
Alright, then. I still think it's asinine of people to lock down a device so I can't run custom software on it. It is their right to develop such a device, but I do not want to help them, so I don't think it's their right to use my code in such a device.
So how's the code useful if you can't actually compile it and run it? Not to mention that you still don't have to give all of it back -- remember the Linksys routers?
Audio Blog. Bonus advantage: If you know what a blog is, you already know what an audio blog would look like. Furthermore, Video Blog sounds far better than "Video Podcast".