2.1. The Initial Developer Grant.
Subject to the restrictions on commercial use set forth below,
the Initial Developer hereby grants You a world-wide, Royalty-free, non-exclusive license, subject to third party intellectual property claims:
(a) to use, reproduce, modify, display, perform, sublicense and distribute the Original Code (or portions thereof) with or without Modifications, or as part of a Larger Work, provided, however, that You are not permitted under said license to create, sell, or distribute commercial products based on the Source Code;
So, without permission to sell it or to sell derived works, it's not Free Software, or OpenSource.
(this is important, because it means you can't integrate the code into existing commercial software, and it's incompatible with the GNU GPL, so you can't integrate this code into the majority of the software packages that come with a distro)
Ah, you're also arguing against something he didn't say.
He didn't claim to have invented/designed the features mentioned. He designed "the GNU system" as a system that includes feature X, Y, and Z.
Like if I design a scriptable, themeable text editor. There is no implicit claim of inventing scriptability or themeability. (and it wouldn't be the first such editor, but I would still have designed *my* editor.)
Ah, the strawman. You're arguing against something he didn't say.
The platform isn't the issue. RMS said that Free Software developers seem to do a better job. This may be because of peer review, or even the threat of peer review etc.
There are several reasons why GNU/Linux has few viruses:
We designed the GNU system, from the outset in 1984, as a multi-user timesharing system with security features. An ordinary user cannot change the system software. Linux, Torvalds' 1991 kernel, followed this design as well.
We did not make the incredibly stupid decision to design
applications so that they execute programs that arrive in the mail.
Free software developers seem to do a better job, overall. (This is the point that the Open Source Movement primarily focuses on. For us in the Free Software Movement, this is a nice bonus, but please mention that freedom is even more important.)
GNU/Linux is less popular than Windows and most virus developers target the more common system.
If everyone switches to GNU/Linux, reason 4 will go away, but not the others. Therefore, people can expect to have much fewer virus problems in a world of GNU/Linux users than then have now with Windows.
--END-OF-RMS-TEXT--
Ok, I checked, MPlayer does have problems
on
Mplayer Revisited
·
· Score: 1
If it infringes a patent that is not licensed for zero-cost use, it cannot be distributed under the GPL.
GPL, section 7: "If you cannot distribute so as to satisfy simultaneously your obligations under this License and any other pertinent obligations, then as a consequence you may not distribute the Program at all."
I asked a question and gave the basis for my question. The ffmpeg library does infringe a patent. The patent has not been enforced for decoding before, but that doesn't mean it will not be enforced in the future (say, when an IP firm buys the patent), and it has been enforced for encoding, so a programmer that receives this code cannot do what she likes with it.
Were the copyright violations fixed? (yet?)
on
Mplayer Revisited
·
· Score: 2, Insightful
The problem I heard about MPlayer was that it illegaly contained DivX code that was under a proprietary license.
Last time I checked was two months ago and MPlayer was still in violation of DivX copyrights. No distro can distribute it as the developer releases it. This is the real problem. This pushes it from Free Software to "cracked warez".
(SuSE, and maybe others, do distribute it but they rip out the illegal code, so it's missing a few codecs. Debian will also be shipping a stripped, legal version soon.)
Sun have some interesting technology in Java and the StarOffice additions to OpenOffice.org. They have made real efforts to interact with the Free Software community by releasing OpenOffice under the GPL/LGPL. We should be encouraging to release more Free Software, not telling them they're dead (when they're not).
Slashdot, you should be ashamed of yourself (more than usual).
These are the amendments from the pro-patent camp, the people pushing the directive.
The only good thing in there is the exclusion of Business Method patents. Everything else is just moving words around and generally strengthening the "software innovation = invention" stance. (inventions are patentable).
The vote is on the 24th of this month. No amendments have been adopted yet, that's what the vote is for.
Only a few MEPs give their email address on the Europarl site, but you can get a list of names and address and you can often find their email address with a google search for their name.
Please try to be as informative as possible. Many MEPs have said that they have been inundated with post and emails about this topic. What they want to hear is how they can fix the proposal, so mail them amendments and ask them to adopt existing amendments that are helpful to us. Portuguese MEP Jose Ribeiro E Castro has tabled the FFII mini-proposal, this is a great one for MEPs to adopt.
Ciaran O'Riordan
Bah Humbug, non-informed pessimistic replys are easy but stupid.
The vote has been delayed because the original proposal was not appropriate (everyone hated it). The original proposal was created with a very slim majoriy vote from the JURI committee (65 MEPs).
Having talked to many MEPs, I've heard that they know it's a crap proposal, but they don't know what to do to fix it. So I, along with many others, have been studying the European Patent Convention, the WTOs TRIPS agreement, and the proposal. We've been educating our MEPs, and now they don't want software patents.
The MEPs on the JURI committed are much more educated this time around, they are considering the FFII mini-proposal, almost all of them want to make sure that software is explicitly excluded from patentability.
Cosmetic changes won't fool anyone, the level of education among the EU lobbyists is quite impressive. I think we're going to win this one.
The committee responsible for this proposal is called JURI, it is made up of 65 MEPs. On June 17th, they voted on the final wording of the proposal. The vote passed by a small majority.
The next stage in the legistlative process is the plenary vote. This is the Big Vote where all 625 MEPs get to vote. In addition to Yes/No, the MEPs are also presented with a list of possible amendments. For this proposal to become acceptable, a vast array of amendments would be necessary (it's rotten to the core).
So 70 amendments were tabled and many protests happened. MEPs were inundated with post and email about this proposal. So much contraversy arised that the European Commission decided that the proposal was obviously not ready for a final vote. So the proposal has been handed back to JURI, and a more agreeable proposal has to be returned.
So now we have to contact just the MEPs on the JURI committee, and tell them how we want them to vote. "Vote No" is not an option, MEPs don't vote No without a very good reason. Proposals are expensive, translation to 12 languages etc., MEPs view rejection as a big waste of EP resources.
Most MEPs know that this proposal will be bad for our economy but they do not understand the whole situation, so we must tell them. (us knowing the whole situation is a prerequisite for this)
Our MEPs are asking us to tell them how to vote(!) and how to change/amend the proposal. We can win this one, but europeans aren't used to fighting our governments, were much more used to laughing at the US government.
So we were caught off gaurd. We've done extremely well, I think we can win this, but people have to continue to put in their free time and learn how to deal with this.
For complete beginners, it's probably too late to become effective (we have 3 weeks). For half-way-there's, keep workin'. (mail me if you need to clarify something, my email address is not hard to google for.
Interestingly, Microsoft has never taken anyone to court over patent infringement. It's not that they don't enforce them, they just do it by intimidating emails and threatening letters.
VirtualDub is a GPL'd media player. M$ told the author to remove the ability to play.asf movies because they are patented by M$.
Large corps can't possibly develop software without infringeing others patents so they crosslicense, thus forming patent sharing cartels that shield the Mega Corps from the problem and locking out any new competition.
The blinking cursor, and the nested menu structure are both patented. The owning companies only use the patents at strategic times. Is it possible to develop a competitive software package that doesn't have a nested menu structure?
A revolt is nearly impossible. Patents are state created private property. It's hard to regulate monopolies at the moment but it will be harder when their positions are held based on legitimate use of private property. If the EU adopts software patents, they will become a global "asset". That's when the real problem will begin.
> It is clearly not the minimum required to let > people use what you produce
Allowing people to use what you produce is simple, protecting your freedom and preserving it for others is the hard task that the GPL trys to solve.
The jungle is "freeer" than the city because I have the freedom to kill. In a society, we trade certain freedoms for other benefits, we trade the freedom to kill for the benefit of a safer living environment. When a freedom is of little use to use, we will trade it lightly.
The GPL restricts people from making proprietary versions. Since making proprietary versions is not important to free software developers, most choose to trade this freedom for the benefit of preserving the freedom of the code they release.
This is the basis of copyleft. The GNU GPL is the cornerstone of the GNU project. The success of the GNU project shows how solid it is.
> The whole point of it is the infectiousness
The GNU GPL is a sharing agreement. "Here's 7.8billion lines of code, you can use it if you like but you have to share any relevent parts of your code". No one gets sent to Guantanamo bay for saying No.
I can certainly put an "invariant sections adders are scum" section in my docs but that's kinda ok, they're *my* docs.
The GPL is not infective. It's share and share alike. If it was truely infective, people would have driven it out long ago. Before critising it, remember that it is possibly the most used software license in the world.
As Torvalds says, the GPL is the minimum complexity required.
Free OSs lack advanced drivers and games. In this respect, GNU/Linux is the best of a bad lot. I regularly forget this since I use crap hardware and don't play games.
When it comes to hardware, I wouldn't buy anything from a manufacturer that doesn't produce either Free drivers or give the specs to the Linux developers so that we can develope our own drivers.
> Most people like things to work
Well, if most people rejected cards that only have non-free drivers then we'd see Free drivers appear sooner rather than later.
I can't expect all individuals to act in a community minded way, but I'm glad Xouvert won't be encouraging this counter productive behaviour.
> several other people have also had an impact > bigger than Stallman's
It's also worth noting how unlikely Stallman was.
Bill Gates has had a bigger influence on the world, but anyone could have predicted him. If he was never born, there would be someone else in his place.
Would there be another RMS if this RMS was never born?
His biography is really interesting, and of course it is Free. (www.faifzilla.org)
[I read your link] So, you're using GNU/Linux for seven years, you want good graphics performance but you didn't check to see if the card is supported before spending $400?
I know this takes up 6 minutes of your life, I think a quick check would be okay.
Slashdot Mirror
yeh, I just had a read of the license-1.0.txt
2.1. The Initial Developer Grant.
Subject to the restrictions on commercial use set forth below, the Initial Developer hereby grants You a world-wide, Royalty-free, non-exclusive license, subject to third party intellectual property claims:
(a) to use, reproduce, modify, display, perform, sublicense and distribute the Original Code (or portions thereof) with or without Modifications, or as part of a Larger Work, provided, however, that You are not permitted under said license to create, sell, or distribute commercial products based on the Source Code;
So, without permission to sell it or to sell derived works, it's not Free Software, or OpenSource.
(this is important, because it means you can't integrate the code into existing commercial software, and it's incompatible with the GNU GPL, so you can't integrate this code into the majority of the software packages that come with a distro)
Thanks tigre.
I've bookmarked the page. I'll suggest it for debian as soon as they have stable out the door.
> My problem is the way that RMS says Linus
.. as a multi-user timesharing system with security features. .. Linux .. followed this design as well"
> followed the GNU design.
RMS only said that the two projects followed the same design. Linus didn't know about GNU when he started on Linux, and RMS is aware of this.
"We designed the GNU system
Which is like me saying: "I designed my website to be XHTML 1.1 compliant. W3C later followed this design as well".
I know W3C didn't copy me, or even know about my site. Could it be that you are looking too hard for flaws in RMS's comment?
Ciaran O'Riordan
Sounds like a great idea. Do you have any more info on this? or a URL for more info?
I'm guessing it's a patch against GNU ld?
I wonder if there is any reason not to add this to Debian.
Ah, you're also arguing against something he didn't say.
He didn't claim to have invented/designed the features mentioned. He designed "the GNU system" as a system that includes feature X, Y, and Z.
Like if I design a scriptable, themeable text editor. There is no implicit claim of inventing scriptability or themeability. (and it wouldn't be the first such editor, but I would still have designed *my* editor.)
Ciaran O'Riordan
Ah, the strawman. You're arguing against something he didn't say.
The platform isn't the issue. RMS said that Free Software developers seem to do a better job. This may be because of peer review, or even the threat of peer review etc.
Ciaran O'Riordan
RMS commented on this issue earlier this year:
There are several reasons why GNU/Linux has few viruses:
If everyone switches to GNU/Linux, reason 4 will go away, but not the others. Therefore, people can expect to have much fewer virus problems in a world of GNU/Linux users than then have now with Windows.
--END-OF-RMS-TEXT--
If it infringes a patent that is not licensed for zero-cost use, it cannot be distributed under the GPL.
GPL, section 7:
"If you cannot distribute so as to satisfy simultaneously your obligations under this License and any other pertinent obligations, then as a consequence you may not distribute the Program at all."
I asked a question and gave the basis for my question. The ffmpeg library does infringe a patent. The patent has not been enforced for decoding before, but that doesn't mean it will not be enforced in the future (say, when an IP firm buys the patent), and it has been enforced for encoding, so a programmer that receives this code cannot do what she likes with it.
The problem I heard about MPlayer was that it illegaly contained DivX code that was under a proprietary license.
Last time I checked was two months ago and MPlayer was still in violation of DivX copyrights. No distro can distribute it as the developer releases it. This is the real problem. This pushes it from Free Software to "cracked warez".
(SuSE, and maybe others, do distribute it but they rip out the illegal code, so it's missing a few codecs. Debian will also be shipping a stripped, legal version soon.)
Ciaran O'Riordan
ESR is a jackass.
Sun have some interesting technology in Java and the StarOffice additions to OpenOffice.org. They have made real efforts to interact with the Free Software community by releasing OpenOffice under the GPL/LGPL. We should be encouraging to release more Free Software, not telling them they're dead (when they're not).
Ciaran O'Riordan
Wow!
All this while assinating union leaders in developing nations.
Those cola loving fellows are hard workers.
Ciaran O'Riordan
Slashdot, you should be ashamed of yourself (more than usual).
These are the amendments from the pro-patent camp, the people pushing the directive.
The only good thing in there is the exclusion of Business Method patents. Everything else is just moving words around and generally strengthening the "software innovation = invention" stance. (inventions are patentable).
The vote is on the 24th of this month. No amendments have been adopted yet, that's what the vote is for.
Ciaran O'Riordan
Nah, the Open Source Developers Network using the proprietary SourceForge code with IBMs proprietary DB2 as it's back end is funnier :)
Ciaran O'Riordan
From FSFs license list:
This license is used by most of PHP4. It is a non-copyleft free software license which is incompatible with the GNU GPL.
We recommend that you not use this license for anything except PHP add-ons.
Ciaran O'Riordan
Only a few MEPs give their email address on the Europarl site, but you can get a list of names and address and you can often find their email address with a google search for their name.
r tition?ilg=EN&iorig=home
Listing of MEPs by country:
http://wwwdb.europarl.eu.int/ep5/owa/p_meps2.repa
Please try to be as informative as possible. Many MEPs have said that they have been inundated with post and emails about this topic. What they want to hear is how they can fix the proposal, so mail them amendments and ask them to adopt existing amendments that are helpful to us. Portuguese MEP Jose Ribeiro E Castro has tabled the FFII mini-proposal, this is a great one for MEPs to adopt.
Ciaran O'Riordan
On the FSFE-IE list, we collaborated to produce a joint mail. We mailed it to all 102 MEPs from the UK and Ireland.
It's available here.
Ciaran O'Riordan
Bah Humbug, non-informed pessimistic replys are easy but stupid.
The vote has been delayed because the original proposal was not appropriate (everyone hated it). The original proposal was created with a very slim majoriy vote from the JURI committee (65 MEPs).
Having talked to many MEPs, I've heard that they know it's a crap proposal, but they don't know what to do to fix it. So I, along with many others, have been studying the European Patent Convention, the WTOs TRIPS agreement, and the proposal. We've been educating our MEPs, and now they don't want software patents.
The MEPs on the JURI committed are much more educated this time around, they are considering the FFII mini-proposal, almost all of them want to make sure that software is explicitly excluded from patentability.
Cosmetic changes won't fool anyone, the level of education among the EU lobbyists is quite impressive. I think we're going to win this one.
Ciaran O'Riordan
The committee responsible for this proposal is called JURI, it is made up of 65 MEPs. On June 17th, they voted on the final wording of the proposal. The vote passed by a small majority.
The next stage in the legistlative process is the plenary vote. This is the Big Vote where all 625 MEPs get to vote. In addition to Yes/No, the MEPs are also presented with a list of possible amendments. For this proposal to become acceptable, a vast array of amendments would be necessary (it's rotten to the core).
So 70 amendments were tabled and many protests happened. MEPs were inundated with post and email about this proposal. So much contraversy arised that the European Commission decided that the proposal was obviously not ready for a final vote. So the proposal has been handed back to JURI, and a more agreeable proposal has to be returned.
So now we have to contact just the MEPs on the JURI committee, and tell them how we want them to vote. "Vote No" is not an option, MEPs don't vote No without a very good reason. Proposals are expensive, translation to 12 languages etc., MEPs view rejection as a big waste of EP resources.
Most MEPs know that this proposal will be bad for our economy but they do not understand the whole situation, so we must tell them. (us knowing the whole situation is a prerequisite for this)
Our MEPs are asking us to tell them how to vote(!) and how to change/amend the proposal. We can win this one, but europeans aren't used to fighting our governments, were much more used to laughing at the US government.
So we were caught off gaurd. We've done extremely well, I think we can win this, but people have to continue to put in their free time and learn how to deal with this.
For complete beginners, it's probably too late to become effective (we have 3 weeks). For half-way-there's, keep workin'. (mail me if you need to clarify something, my email address is not hard to google for.
That's not the way the patents problem works.
.asf movies because they are patented by M$.
Interestingly, Microsoft has never taken anyone to court over patent infringement. It's not that they don't enforce them, they just do it by intimidating emails and threatening letters.
VirtualDub is a GPL'd media player. M$ told the author to remove the ability to play
Large corps can't possibly develop software without infringeing others patents so they crosslicense, thus forming patent sharing cartels that shield the Mega Corps from the problem and locking out any new competition.
The blinking cursor, and the nested menu structure are both patented. The owning companies only use the patents at strategic times. Is it possible to develop a competitive software package that doesn't have a nested menu structure?
A revolt is nearly impossible. Patents are state created private property. It's hard to regulate monopolies at the moment but it will be harder when their positions are held based on legitimate use of private property. If the EU adopts software patents, they will become a global "asset". That's when the real problem will begin.
Ciaran O'Riordan
> It is clearly not the minimum required to let
> people use what you produce
Allowing people to use what you produce is simple, protecting your freedom and preserving it for others is the hard task that the GPL trys to solve.
The jungle is "freeer" than the city because I have the freedom to kill. In a society, we trade certain freedoms for other benefits, we trade the freedom to kill for the benefit of a safer living environment. When a freedom is of little use to use, we will trade it lightly.
The GPL restricts people from making proprietary versions. Since making proprietary versions is not important to free software developers, most choose to trade this freedom for the benefit of preserving the freedom of the code they release.
This is the basis of copyleft. The GNU GPL is the cornerstone of the GNU project. The success of the GNU project shows how solid it is.
> The whole point of it is the infectiousness
The GNU GPL is a sharing agreement. "Here's 7.8billion lines of code, you can use it if you like but you have to share any relevent parts of your code". No one gets sent to Guantanamo bay for saying No.
I can certainly put an "invariant sections adders are scum" section in my docs but that's kinda ok, they're *my* docs.
The GPL is not infective. It's share and share alike. If it was truely infective, people would have driven it out long ago. Before critising it, remember that it is possibly the most used software license in the world.
As Torvalds says, the GPL is the minimum complexity required.
Ok, you have me.
Free OSs lack advanced drivers and games. In this respect, GNU/Linux is the best of a bad lot. I regularly forget this since I use crap hardware and don't play games.
When it comes to hardware, I wouldn't buy anything from a manufacturer that doesn't produce either Free drivers or give the specs to the Linux developers so that we can develope our own drivers.
> Most people like things to work
Well, if most people rejected cards that only have non-free drivers then we'd see Free drivers appear sooner rather than later.
I can't expect all individuals to act in a community minded way, but I'm glad Xouvert won't be encouraging this counter productive behaviour.
> Does he also believe that non-free architects,
> authors, musicians
He distinguishes between technical works, works of art, and personal expressions. His "must be Free" mandate only applys to technically useful works.
He believes that non-commercial distribution of all works should be allowed. Some works should be alterable, some shouldn't.
He admits to not having a solution that he's completely satisfied with for non-software works.
> several other people have also had an impact
> bigger than Stallman's
It's also worth noting how unlikely Stallman was.
Bill Gates has had a bigger influence on the world, but anyone could have predicted him. If he was never born, there would be someone else in his place.
Would there be another RMS if this RMS was never born?
His biography is really interesting, and of course it is Free. (www.faifzilla.org)
Ciaran O'Riordan
[I read your link]
So, you're using GNU/Linux for seven years, you want good graphics performance but you didn't check to see if the card is supported before spending $400?
I know this takes up 6 minutes of your life, I think a quick check would be okay.