The only platforms where one would actually need to buy binaries from GNU are platforms that virtually no-one uses. And even then, you don't have to go to GNU. You could get the source and build it yourself. The fact remains that GNU wouldn't exist without donations. That isn't viable for non-RMS software developers...
Read carefully what the FSF says. They say you can make money, but not for your code. You either have to do something else on the side, or you have to request donations/tips.
It is immoral to put up imaginary boundaries between people.
So then it's immoral that you don't let me come into your house as I please.
It is immoral to place restrictions on sharing without good cause.
What if the only way a developer can get funding is to establish restrictive licenses on their code. Isn't that a good cause? Which is better, to not have the software at all, or to have it but with the requirement that you must pay for it?
It seems the only method of making money the FSF considers acceptable is requesting donations. (That's what it is when people can still use your product without paying.)
Now bear in mind that Google couldn't even come up with the phrase, however much I +'d it to death, on its top ten list. If I only have that one phrase in memory on Google, I can't find it.
The problem is that you +'ed it too much. If you search for +"+but +that +the +dread" you'll notice that it gives you some warnings. Google's ignoring all of the +'s you added, because you're using some of them incorrectly. ("dread" is not a stop word, for example)
Instead, try searching for "but +that +the dread". Then you'll get what you're looking for.
In this case it matters because Guido wants it to be. Read that here.
You mean the part where Guido says:
I don't personally care any more whether Python will ever be GPL-compatible -- I'm just trying to do the FSF a favor because they like to use Python. With all the grief they're giving me, I wonder why I should be bothered any more.
Are there any? I see a lot of talk about freedom of speech, but when you look at what the software actually does, it looks like it's really just designed to help people trade warez anonymously. And no, this isn't flamebait. I want to know what genuinely legitimate uses Freenet has.
Imagine a software company CEO with a vision and sense of his own rightness as strong as Alex's. Even if that person's company wrote pretty rinky-dink code, I'll bet it could end up dominating the desktop computer operating system market.
I guess you just love MS Windows then. Hasn't Bill always been convinced that he was "right" despite the "rinky-dink code" in Windows?
Anyway, I don't call someone who sticks to their beliefs despite glaring proof that they are wrong admirable. I call them a stubborn fool.
When was the last time you met someone who left China and said "thank goodness I don't have to use that pictograph system [sic] those emperors put in place to keep everyone illiterate". Most Chinese continue to enjoy reading Chinese text long after they've left China and learned to read and write languages with phonetic alphabets.
And despite their many flaws, you can't really accuse China's communist government of encouraging illteracy. On the contrary, the communist government in China actually created simplified versions of a large number of the commonly used but complex characters (back in the 50's), and these became the standard character set in mainland China. (that's why there are both "simplified" and "traditional" Chinese characters) It's also interesting to note that Taiwan, which is much more democratic than mainland China, still uses the traditional character set -- the same character set supposedly used to keep everyone illiterate.
It sounds like it was traditional Chinese with bopomofo annotations. That's apparently a common way of teaching characters in Taiwan.
Bopomofo is essentially the same as pinyin, except pinyin uses English letters, while bopomofo uses non-roman characters. Mainland China uses pinyin, while Taiwan uses bopomofo. There's a 1-to-1 mapping between bopomofo and pinyin. Chinese is also tonal, so pinyin and bopomofo are also often augmented with "tone marks" or sometimes just numbers. Those would be the accents you saw.
Chinese uses unicode by combinations of roots and the other parts of the characters
While many of the more complex Chinese characters do consist fo simpler radicals used in combination, they're not encoded that way in Unicode. For example, the word "ma" used at the end of many questions consists of the character for mouth and the character for horse. In Unicode, the encoding for "ma" is completely unrelated to the character for mouth and the character for horse though.
(i know that they use some other type of syllabic system for teaching the writing system, or so i recall from Chinese lessons on TV... maybe that should be used to replace the pictograph system in place now, a system which was kept by the emperors in order to keep the masses illiterate)
Just because you can't read Chinese characters, it doesn't mean Chinese people can't.
The "syllabic system" you're talking about is probaby pinyin (or perhaps bopomofo, but it doesn't really matter - they're isomorphic). Converting Chinese text to pinyin actually results in information loss. It isn't a really viable solution. The Chinese people also like their linguistic system, despite what American public schools have taught you.
Yes, his anaology was a bit off. It would be more accurate to say "imagine if English-speakers were restricted to an alphabet which is missing characters like Æ or fi (the ligature)". While Unicode is missing lots of Chinese characters, the vast majority of the characters which are missing are characters that only historians use. One only needs to know about 2000 characters to be considered fluent in Chinese, and if you know 7000-8000 characters, you're way above average.
The major exception is Great Britian which, due to the feud between the Catholic and Anglican Churches, did not adopt the Gregorian Calendar until September 14, 1752.
And if you want to see something weird, but nifty, type the following into your local shell prompt:
Google is essentially a web-based frontend for the newsgroups, which doesn't even explain to users what USENET is, how or why it's different from the Internet, or that USENET isn't just a bunch of chat room type thingies hosted at Google.
Yes, aparently chinese for 'e-mail' is actually 'yi1-mei4er3'. (sort of like the chinese word for "coffee"... or the english word "tofu" for that matter.) And actually, she says the initial "ni3" is unnecessary; "you3 yi1 mei4 er3" would be fine.
well, no, my analogy doesn't work when you misread and/or change it. I specifically said "distribute a copy of Windows under my own license while ignoring MS's license". I thought that that made it clear that "..provided you had a license to distribute copies of windows" was NOT included.
My point is that your anaogy is invalid because you made the a priori assumption that Vidomi is violating the GPL by shipping the DLLs. If you think about it a bit, you'll see that this assumption is incorrect.
Vidomi is shipping two things:
a modified version of the VirtuaDub DLLs
their own proprietary software that dynamically links with the VirtuaDub DLLs
Ignore the proprietary software for a moment. Aren't they allowed to distribute the modified DLLs? Yes, provided they allow access to the source (which they do). So the DLLs are being distributed while still abiding by the GPL. In other words, if you want to make an anology including Microsoft Windows, you have to assume that the company is shipping licensed copies of Windows, because the VirtuaDub DLLs they're shipping do conform to the GPL.
The problem everyone has is with the proprietary code that Vidomi wrote. That's why I'm asking how you'd feel about it if they weren't shipping the modified DLLs at all. Because the DLLs are GPL compliant, so shipping those DLLs isn't the real issue here.
In your thought experiment, they would have had to compile at least a header into the original program in order to dynamically link later. Whether this was the original header or a reverse engineered header, its still a derivative of the original work. The header would be GPLd, compiled in -> entire work GPLd. You need the LGPL for that to work.
Unless the VirtuaDub headers contain inline code, that argument doesn't hold up at all, especially not if Vidomi was using reverse engineered headers. Using your logic, WINE is completely illegal, because it contains "reverse engineered headers" from Windows. Typical headers are really just interfaces, and it's long been argued that duplicating that form of interface is fair use.
If you were to make a shell for MS Windows, you could distribute your shell without any problems. You could even distribute it along with a copy of Windows, provided you had a license to distribute copies of Windows.
That same is true if you replace Windows with a GPLed piece of software, except that the precise terms of the license to distribute GPLed software is different than for Windows.
Here's an interesting thought experiment: if they didn't distribute the GPLed code in question, but instead only distributed their own binary, and recommended a list of mirrors where the GPLed software was available, would they be violating the GPL? Keep in mind that if you were to write a shell for MS Windows and distribute it without Windows but instead point users at microsfot.com (or even just say "requires MS Windows XX") it would be perfectly legal.
Unless Vidomi's code actually statically links with the GPL'ed code, then I think the FSF will either have to concede that it doesn't violate the GPL, or they'll have to admit that the GPL is not strictly less restrictive than plain old copyright.
Programming languages and natural languages are used for different purposes. The expressiveness of english is very handy when writing poetry or interesting prose. If you want to write code, clarity is more important than expressiveness. If that weren't true then we'd be programming in english.
It's for much the same reason that mathematicians, scientists and engineers have precise notation, rather than just using plain english. English is fine for added documentation (ie: comments, etc.) but for the actual code, you want something clear and easy to parse (ie: not Perl).
Good perl programmers can manage their code in such a way as to make it readable in 6 months and 9 months and 12 months. It's a matter of dicipline.
The vast majority of Perl programmers don't care about readability or maintainability. They care about reducing keystrokes. The few Perl programmers I've met that actually cared about readability and maintainability have since switched to Python. But I guess YMMV...
Yeah, except for two problems:
1. they didn't have a clear idea what these services should be.
2. there wasn't any reason why they would be better at providing these services than anyone else.
They didn't have a real business plan. They had some cool technical ideas, a lot of code, and mock-business-plan which helped get VC funding.
Python has taken off. Yes, less people use Python than use Perl. But less people use Linux than Windows. The difference is between the people in the know, and the unwashed masses...:-)
Slashdot Mirror
Where exactly can I find a GNU CD compiled for VAX?
Okay, you've got 2, maybe 3 buyers there...
Or HPUX?
Google?
Or Solaris?
sunfreeware.com
The only platforms where one would actually need to buy binaries from GNU are platforms that virtually no-one uses. And even then, you don't have to go to GNU. You could get the source and build it yourself. The fact remains that GNU wouldn't exist without donations. That isn't viable for non-RMS software developers...
Read carefully what the FSF says. They say you can make money, but not for your code. You either have to do something else on the side, or you have to request donations/tips.
It is immoral to put up imaginary boundaries between people.
So then it's immoral that you don't let me come into your house as I please.
It is immoral to place restrictions on sharing without good cause.
What if the only way a developer can get funding is to establish restrictive licenses on their code. Isn't that a good cause? Which is better, to not have the software at all, or to have it but with the requirement that you must pay for it?
It seems the only method of making money the FSF considers acceptable is requesting donations. (That's what it is when people can still use your product without paying.)
Now bear in mind that Google couldn't even come up with the phrase, however much I +'d it to death, on its top ten list. If I only have that one phrase in memory on Google, I can't find it.
The problem is that you +'ed it too much. If you search for +"+but +that +the +dread" you'll notice that it gives you some warnings. Google's ignoring all of the +'s you added, because you're using some of them incorrectly. ("dread" is not a stop word, for example)
Instead, try searching for "but +that +the dread". Then you'll get what you're looking for.
You mean the part where Guido says:?
Are there any? I see a lot of talk about freedom of speech, but when you look at what the software actually does, it looks like it's really just designed to help people trade warez anonymously. And no, this isn't flamebait. I want to know what genuinely legitimate uses Freenet has.
Oh course, Lynx doesn't normally load images anyway, so it's reasonably immune to web bugs...
Imagine a software company CEO with a vision and sense of his own rightness as strong as Alex's. Even if that person's company wrote pretty rinky-dink code, I'll bet it could end up dominating the desktop computer operating system market.
I guess you just love MS Windows then. Hasn't Bill always been convinced that he was "right" despite the "rinky-dink code" in Windows?
Anyway, I don't call someone who sticks to their beliefs despite glaring proof that they are wrong admirable. I call them a stubborn fool.
When was the last time you met someone who left China and said "thank goodness I don't have to use that pictograph system [sic] those emperors put in place to keep everyone illiterate". Most Chinese continue to enjoy reading Chinese text long after they've left China and learned to read and write languages with phonetic alphabets.
And despite their many flaws, you can't really accuse China's communist government of encouraging illteracy. On the contrary, the communist government in China actually created simplified versions of a large number of the commonly used but complex characters (back in the 50's), and these became the standard character set in mainland China. (that's why there are both "simplified" and "traditional" Chinese characters) It's also interesting to note that Taiwan, which is much more democratic than mainland China, still uses the traditional character set -- the same character set supposedly used to keep everyone illiterate.
It sounds like it was traditional Chinese with bopomofo annotations. That's apparently a common way of teaching characters in Taiwan.
Bopomofo is essentially the same as pinyin, except pinyin uses English letters, while bopomofo uses non-roman characters. Mainland China uses pinyin, while Taiwan uses bopomofo. There's a 1-to-1 mapping between bopomofo and pinyin. Chinese is also tonal, so pinyin and bopomofo are also often augmented with "tone marks" or sometimes just numbers. Those would be the accents you saw.
There's a pretty good page with more info here.
Chinese uses unicode by combinations of roots and the other parts of the characters
While many of the more complex Chinese characters do consist fo simpler radicals used in combination, they're not encoded that way in Unicode. For example, the word "ma" used at the end of many questions consists of the character for mouth and the character for horse. In Unicode, the encoding for "ma" is completely unrelated to the character for mouth and the character for horse though.
(i know that they use some other type of syllabic system for teaching the writing system, or so i recall from Chinese lessons on TV... maybe that should be used to replace the pictograph system in place now, a system which was kept by the emperors in order to keep the masses illiterate)
Just because you can't read Chinese characters, it doesn't mean Chinese people can't.
The "syllabic system" you're talking about is probaby pinyin (or perhaps bopomofo, but it doesn't really matter - they're isomorphic). Converting Chinese text to pinyin actually results in information loss. It isn't a really viable solution. The Chinese people also like their linguistic system, despite what American public schools have taught you.
Yes, his anaology was a bit off. It would be more accurate to say "imagine if English-speakers were restricted to an alphabet which is missing characters like Æ or fi (the ligature)". While Unicode is missing lots of Chinese characters, the vast majority of the characters which are missing are characters that only historians use. One only needs to know about 2000 characters to be considered fluent in Chinese, and if you know 7000-8000 characters, you're way above average.
The major exception is Great Britian which, due to the feud between the Catholic and Anglican Churches, did not adopt the Gregorian Calendar until September 14, 1752.
And if you want to see something weird, but nifty, type the following into your local shell prompt:
cal 9 1752
Google is essentially a web-based frontend for the newsgroups, which doesn't even explain to users what USENET is, how or why it's different from the Internet, or that USENET isn't just a bunch of chat room type thingies hosted at Google.
.
Take a look at http://groups.google.com/googlegroups/basics.html
My girlfriend says it's actually:
ni3 you3 yi1 mei4 er3
Yes, aparently chinese for 'e-mail' is actually 'yi1-mei4er3'. (sort of like the chinese word for "coffee"... or the english word "tofu" for that matter.) And actually, she says the initial "ni3" is unnecessary; "you3 yi1 mei4 er3" would be fine.
My point is that your anaogy is invalid because you made the a priori assumption that Vidomi is violating the GPL by shipping the DLLs. If you think about it a bit, you'll see that this assumption is incorrect.
Vidomi is shipping two things:
- a modified version of the VirtuaDub DLLs
- their own proprietary software that dynamically links with the VirtuaDub DLLs
Ignore the proprietary software for a moment. Aren't they allowed to distribute the modified DLLs? Yes, provided they allow access to the source (which they do). So the DLLs are being distributed while still abiding by the GPL. In other words, if you want to make an anology including Microsoft Windows, you have to assume that the company is shipping licensed copies of Windows, because the VirtuaDub DLLs they're shipping do conform to the GPL.The problem everyone has is with the proprietary code that Vidomi wrote. That's why I'm asking how you'd feel about it if they weren't shipping the modified DLLs at all. Because the DLLs are GPL compliant, so shipping those DLLs isn't the real issue here.
In your thought experiment, they would have had to compile at least a header into the original program in order to dynamically link later. Whether this was the original header or a reverse engineered header, its still a derivative of the original work. The header would be GPLd, compiled in -> entire work GPLd. You need the LGPL for that to work.
Unless the VirtuaDub headers contain inline code, that argument doesn't hold up at all, especially not if Vidomi was using reverse engineered headers. Using your logic, WINE is completely illegal, because it contains "reverse engineered headers" from Windows. Typical headers are really just interfaces, and it's long been argued that duplicating that form of interface is fair use.
Your analogy doesn't work.
If you were to make a shell for MS Windows, you could distribute your shell without any problems. You could even distribute it along with a copy of Windows, provided you had a license to distribute copies of Windows.
That same is true if you replace Windows with a GPLed piece of software, except that the precise terms of the license to distribute GPLed software is different than for Windows.
Here's an interesting thought experiment: if they didn't distribute the GPLed code in question, but instead only distributed their own binary, and recommended a list of mirrors where the GPLed software was available, would they be violating the GPL? Keep in mind that if you were to write a shell for MS Windows and distribute it without Windows but instead point users at microsfot.com (or even just say "requires MS Windows XX") it would be perfectly legal.
Unless Vidomi's code actually statically links with the GPL'ed code, then I think the FSF will either have to concede that it doesn't violate the GPL, or they'll have to admit that the GPL is not strictly less restrictive than plain old copyright.
Programming languages and natural languages are used for different purposes. The expressiveness of english is very handy when writing poetry or interesting prose. If you want to write code, clarity is more important than expressiveness. If that weren't true then we'd be programming in english.
It's for much the same reason that mathematicians, scientists and engineers have precise notation, rather than just using plain english. English is fine for added documentation (ie: comments, etc.) but for the actual code, you want something clear and easy to parse (ie: not Perl).
Good perl programmers can manage their code in such a way as to make it readable in 6 months and 9 months and 12 months. It's a matter of dicipline.
The vast majority of Perl programmers don't care about readability or maintainability. They care about reducing keystrokes. The few Perl programmers I've met that actually cared about readability and maintainability have since switched to Python. But I guess YMMV...
Yeah, except for two problems:
1. they didn't have a clear idea what these services should be.
2. there wasn't any reason why they would be better at providing these services than anyone else.
They didn't have a real business plan. They had some cool technical ideas, a lot of code, and mock-business-plan which helped get VC funding.
Here it is.
Now pay up.
While I agree with your main points, I'm a bit puzzled by this comment:
this is expressly why Windows 95 defaulted to hiding file extensions and the subdirectory trees.
I don't recall Windows 95 hiding subdirectory trees.
Actually, the PVCS web interface is all but unusable on Linux. But I've heard the Windows interface is reasonably nice.
Python has taken off. Yes, less people use Python than use Perl. But less people use Linux than Windows. The difference is between the people in the know, and the unwashed masses... :-)