If your binary distribution (the industrial device) isn't publicly available, then the source code needn't be either. You are obliged to provide the source only to those who have the binary code.
If your embedded device has large enough disk, just put the source code there, available via http or ssh or ftp. In your case it might even be sensible to include gcc in the disk (if it's large enough), so the end-user can actually modify the source in-site and recompile inside the device. This has the bonus, that if they break it, they'll call you and you get to do some billable hours fixing their mess:-)
Somebody should create closed source versions of the open source projects that are most often ripped off.
There's certainly a business case here. However, it's not easy, and there's competition (like commercial embedded operating systems) already. The most major difficulty would be marketing. How do you find the customers (who today get the GPL version with a command like 'apt-get source busybox', and know it), and convince them that your proprietary version is any good, and doesn't have a million bugs that have been ironed out from the GPL version by the millions of users.
Well, IANAL, but as anyone can claim to be the owner, I think anyone can sue.
And logically, that one gets paid or gets the debt, and funds the lawsuit, as a result of being the one who sued.
About e): Well, I guess same as someone can “troll’ by taking the free software (work of others) and selling it for money. But that’s kinda the point of GPL, no? Dunno.
Anyone who is a lawyer here to enlighten us?
As others have written, by default the authors own the copyrights to their specific creations.
The only possibility for "trolling" would be blackmailing, ie. discover product with GPL software, and demand money or you will inform the copyright holder about the violation.
Well, yes and no. If you only run th esoftware you need do nothing more, however:
I think it's been established in court, that copying the software from hard disk to memory is creating a copy as meant by copyright law. So if you load the binaries from HD to memory, you need to be prepared to provide your computer and memory also the source code, as stated by the license. Also make sure that the license text is part of the binary distributed from disk to memory, so your computer knows that it has the right to get the source code if it wants to.
You're missing the point. The GP is not saying the GPL is bad, he is saying the GPL is a license like every other license. Hence, GPL code is not "free" but it licensed and as such, if you want to use it, you have to abide by the license or get sued. Just like any other code licensed, proprietary or not.
"free" code is public domain code, or WTFPL code, but nothing more. Not GPL.
No, with GPL, the code is free, it can't be "locked away" while binaries are distributed. Any developers working with GPL code are not totally free, as the license requires them to maintain the freedom of code. And freedom of the code in turn enables a lot of things (learning, copying, modifying, ensuring interoperability, etc) that IMHO are very good, so requiring freedom of the code is quite justified.
Then there are other licenses, most notably BSD, which are more about the freedom of other developers at the expense of freedom of code, as they allow other developer to release binaries while locking the code away.
On one hand the GPL violations are not so great...however action like this isn't going to encourage people to embrace open source...
However, it's going to encourage people to write and share code under GPL, when they see that if they make something good, somebody else can't just take it to make money. It also shows to potential users of GPL code that they don't need to be overly paranoid, as the first action of copyright holder isn't to sue or to demand a lot of money, but instead trying to settle privately and quietly and for free (as in beer).
So how can it be fair to demand something back? No, it's just greedy.
Here is a little sketch then:
A boy scout near Safeway finishes helping an old man to unload the shopping cart into the car.
A 18-wheeler with Safeway insignia stops nearby. The driver climbs down, opens the trailer. Approaches the boy.
Driver: "Hey, boy, I saw you helping that old man, that was very kind of you."
Boy: "Thank you, Sir!"
Driver: "How about helping me a bit?"
Boy: "What can I do for you?"
Driver: "Well, I'm hungry a little, so I want to go to this here Burger King for an hour or two, and while I'm busy there could you please unload this trailer for me? It's just sacks of salt, nothing dangerous, and it's only 15 tons of it. There should be a dolly somewhere, I guess. Just like that old man did, I will thank you for your help. I'm of course already paid to to this, but I thought it could be more convenient if I find someone else to do my work for me, for free."
Boy: "Sir, I must respectfully decline. I have no desire to earn your money for you."
Driver: "Boy, you are so greedy!"
There's just one problem with this example, which makes it totally irrelevant to this case: The boy will have to use a lot of time and effort to unload the truck. If unloading was software source code, the boy wouldn't even need to know that a truck got unloaded "for free" as a result of the boy helping the old man.
Actually it'd demonstrate the greed of the boy if it was about software. The boy could help the truck driver by just doing nothing, but instead he chooses to make demands. Certainly the boys demands (GPL license) are fair considering how much help it is, but still, any demands are infinitely more than zero effort (as the boy doesn't even need to know about it, and it doesn't affect the boy in any way), and infinite multiplier is certainly greedy.
But greed is good, when it's not excessive, and when it drives people to do more good, as I think is the case with GPL.
And I think the reason is greed: those releasing GPL software don't want the fruits of their work to be used by somebody to make money without any kind of compensation, but consider adhering to GPL to be enough compensation.
s/greed/fairness/
That is because a developer (GPL or BSD) doesn't get richer from releasing under GPL. If I want to share my code I want it to stay free, available to others for enjoyment, education and improvements. Why would a developer want to work days and nights on some code only to learn later that someone took it "as is", put into a box and sold 100M of these? I wouldn't be getting any money either way, but in case of GPL that "someone" would have to hire a programmer and make their own implementation; this is only fair.
Let's assume that somebody has written a piece of software he's not using to make money, and released the source. Now if somebody else takes that source and just uses it, does it hurt the original programmer? No, he probably wouldn't even know about it.
So how can it be fair to demand something back? No, it's just greedy. Not greed for money in this case, but greed for power (to force the other to do things in certain way, like according to GPL) and greed for fame and acknowledgment.
Only non-greedy, totally fair "license" for a freely available source code is the public domain "license", no strings attached. Everything else (even *BSD) puts greedy demands on the user of the "free" source code.
The core of the argument above is (and it only applies when), it makes no difference to the original programmer, if somebody else doesn't use the released code, or if he uses it "secretly" and without giving anything back in any form. And if it makes no difference to the programmer, it can't be fair to demand something on only one of these cases, when they're indistinguishable form the original programmer's point of view.
Disclaimer: I'm playing a bit of devil's advocate here and personally think it's just ifne to demand compensation, be it monetary or in the form of GPL or BSD license conditions;-)
You may be underestimating the penetration of products with BSD-derived code into the market. The difference is we get a slashdot story every time Linux is associated in any way with business (we even have the nifty penguin-briefcase icon), but BSD remains relatively hype-free, by design. But the real humor in your post is that both Linux and BSD on the desktop (which is what we're talking about in this thread) are essentially hobbyist operating systems. To pretend otherwise is like one hungry man gloating over another hungry man because he has a few more peas than the other in his soup.
No, Linux is used in technology companies as the main desktop environment quite a bit, average maybe 5%..10% in the companies I've worked in the last 10 years. Of course it's a tiny fraction of Windows desktops, but it's plenty enough to say Linux is not essentially a hobbyist desktop OS. On the other hand I don't remember anybody who used any flavor of *BSD as their primary desktop OS...
Btw, is there any *BSD-licenced desktop environment? I'm sure there are some window managers, but don't most *BSD desktops these days use GNOME or KDE, just like Linux?
On the general issue, I'm actually a bit curious why Linux is used instead of *BSD so much... I guess it's because some of the software will be GPL anyway, so it doesn't make much difference if entire system is GPL. Then the question becomes, why that useful piece of software was released under GPL and not under *BSD... And I think the reason is greed: those releasing GPL software don't want the fruits of their work to be used by somebody to make money without any kind of compensation, but consider adhering to GPL to be enough compensation.
Rather than Gnome leave GNU, wouldn't it be easier for Richard Stallman to just fork reality? It seems he's always wanted his own.
Mixing non-free software with free software systems is a slippery slope. To work on that slippery slope, as most real-world software development must, an anchor is needed. RMS and FSF are that anchor. Even though I don't agree with them 100%, I realize that my idea of good free software would be impossible if they didn't fight for their ideal and keep everything from sliding down the slippery slope.
So even if it's sometimes sensible and useful to mix free and non-free, especially from user point of view, I sure hope FSF and everything directly supported by FSF stays pure.
If you restrict it and keep proprietary software off, then it will become just hobbyist platform.
Indeed. Just compare *BSD operating systems, with a license very friendly to proprietary software, and Linux, which is GPL and rather unfriendly to proprietary code (just look at the proprietary kernel module mess). It's because of this that almost in almost all commercial cases, the OS is *BSD, while Linux is used almost exclusively by hobbyists such as IBM.
estimates that more than 95% of Google hits on the words 'work at home' are scams, link to scams, or other dead ends
If this is true, doesn't the FTC fraud department have it's job already done for it? If it were 5%, the fraud department would have to really work to find a scam, in this case, just click on a link, and viola, someone to prosecute.
And if only 5% of hits are genuine, it's such a small percentage that it'd be ok to just prosecute and convict all without any investigation. That'd save a ton of taxpayer money!
The most interesting thing in the (short) article was that this is related to Congenital Insensitivity to Pain, the malady documented in the excellent film, A Life Without Pain. That explains something that made no sense -- how can these folks feel enough to pick up objects, but not feel that the object is a red-hot cinder?
I hope this is a first step towards not just discovering a cause of "phantom" pain... I hope it's a step towards eliminating *all* pain. I seem to end up on the bad side of the Slashdot community when I say this, but I think "congenital insensitivity to pain" is the next phase of human evolution. We already have several adaptations that have no advantage without a big brain -- decade-long adolescence, non-reproductive grandparents, non-seasonal sexual receptivity. I think eliminating pain is a very logical next phase.
It's an adaptation that wouldn't be possible without modern medicine, with antibiotics to prevent infection, and non-intrusive diagnostics to find that broken bone you don't feel. In fact, we probably need to progress further, to replace natural pain-dependent systems with technology. You wouldn't feel a heart attack coming on, but you might have a circuit installed that monitors your critical systems. You wouldn't have to croak "Call 911, I'm having a heart attack!" Your heart would call for help itself.
I'm in my 40s, and I know some day I'm going to be afflicted with the painful conditions that are inevitable this side of full-body replacement. If I've got some sort of inoperable tumor, and know it, why should I feel the pain? Or become an opioid zombie? Pain is a biological anachronism, and I look forward to the day it is banished from the human experience entirely.
Entirely? It never will be. First of all there are the poor who not only experience most of the pain (if you could find a measure for amount of pain) but can't afford any advanced technology to replace pain as key survival mechanism.
Second, even if pain could be removed selectively, childhood without sense of pain would produce an adult without necessary reflexes to live a normal active life. OTOH, if your life only happens in virtual reality, then you don't experience pain anyway, so why remove it? In that case you wouldn't move very much, so experiencing pain when something is wrong would be a life-saver for serious virtual reality junkie. I mean, just consider going to pee or getting bedsores treated, if there was no pain involved?;-)
And third, there are just so many trivial things that can be wrong with a human body, which we discover because of the pain they cause, and which are usually easily fixed by modern medicine if discovered early enough, that removing the pain would result in massive amount of early deaths and serious disability. Ear ache, inflamed appendix (deadly if not operated), tooth ache (can cause blood poisoning if not fixed), a wound bleeding dangerously, sprained or broken limb (even an open fracture), RSSI, a splinter under skin... Noticing any of them before they become serious problems depends on pain.
It's not a distribution method. You want the driver to be available when you release your device. Getting the driver to stock kernel will not get it distributed to the potential Linux-using customers, unless you can get the driver to the kernel at least a year before you release the device, so it has time to get to the actual distributions.
Specifically, at least a year before you release the device part. So what part of your reason explains why proprietary hardware vendors do not release device drivers for their new hardware for more than two or three years after the release of the hardware?
By your own opinion, hardware vendors could get their proprietary driver into the kernel, in at least a year, yet two and three years later some companies are still NOT releasing their proprietary drivers for Linux and Unix use. Nvidia and other GPU vendors are just the most recent offenders. There have been many new enhanced add on hardware devices for PCs over the years...yet those drivers, if they are ever released into open source, are only released after two, three or more years later...
How is this Linux and the Kernel developer's fault? It is not. Please stop spreading FUD!
The only thing that is Linux kernel community's fault is, that there is no way for a hardware maker to release a Linux driver with their hardware, along with Win and Mac drivers. The Linux kernel community has successfully (because it's intentional) failed to provide a driver interface that would be shared by every Linux distro with (for example) 2.6 kernel.
Sure, they are trying to offer something else, but quite obviously it's not working. Now ask yourself: if somebody makes an offer that is not taken by anybody, then is it the fault of the ones don't take the offer, or the fault of the one making such an offer?
The rest pretty much follows from this. The hardware makers are running a business, where they're trying to optimize resources spent for profit gained. The driver development model Linux offers just doesn't work with this terribly well. And in the end, Linux is not a good option for "average Joe" desktop user without a nerd kid/friend/whatever.
As a company, getting your driver into Linux should be pretty simple. It is a better distribution method.
It's not a distribution method. You want the driver to be available when you release your device. Getting the driver to stock kernel will not get it distributed to the potential Linux-using customers, unless you can get the driver to the kernel at least a year before you release the device, so it has time to get to the actual distributions. And even then it will only get to the users who upgraded their OS after the driver was included in the kernel, anybody with a bit older Linux OS is out of reach. Very unrealistic. So, if you want to distribute a driver, you can't do it by getting it to the kernel, because it won't get distributed until it's too late.
Lets say that the copyright owners of btrfs create the windows/osx/solaris/aix drivers?
Or more realistically, if the copyright owners of btrfs grant an interested third party a special license to create a lgpl'd btrfs driver?
There can't be a "special license" to do LGPL version. Once such version is out, well, it's out. So they could as well make the whole thing LGPL (which IMHO would be a good idea).
But if there are a lot of developers, getting everybody to agree (or even to reach everybody) is a lot of work. Replacing=rewriting the code of those who don't agree might be on option, depending on how much of it there is.
But I'm pretty sure they actually thought about it and chose GPL over LGPL because they wanted to, so they're not likely to change (Google might find the answer).
What prevents other, non-GPL operating systems from using Btrfs?
Writing drivers for a filesystem is not a "derivative work" is it?
How good, accurate and up-to-date is the specification of btrfs?
If only real, accurate "specification" is the source code, then it's damn hard to create a compatible and reliable new implementation from scratch. File systems are complex, concurrent (meaning many files being accessed simultaneously) and performance-critical as well as reliability-critical. Getting it right is hard, while getting it wrong is bad, so there needs to be really good reasons to even try to do it, instead of using something that already works.
This is especially true while development is still continuing (as is case with btrfs).
Incidentally "climate change" is the trendy new word because "global warming" has the pesky tendency to be falsified whenever temperatures are cooler than expected. With a generic word like "climate change" you're only wrong if the temperature stays perfectly and exactly the same!
I'd like to point out one thing about above paragraph. "Whenever temperaturs are..." refers to weather. Weather is not climate, and single weather events (such as temperature during any one point of time) doesn't falsify or prove anything about climate. Mixing weather and climate tends to put a writer into the "don't know what they're talking about" bin.
Oh I acknowledge that. All rocket fuels are expensive to make, store and ship. This one looks reasonably (and relatively) cheap. However the "environmentally friendly" comment in TFA is what I didn't like. It's like saying "environmentally friendly cigarettes". Rocket fuel (of any type) does not qualify for the "environmentally friendly" label, even if this is the "friendliest" one...
That's what you get with life. Just look at Mars. Perfectly nice and beautiful environment. Compare to Earth: covered with various forms of nasty organic slime, hardly any unpolluted barren surface anywhere. And don't get me started with Earth's atmosphere, now that's a particularly nasty mix, full of poisons such as O2 and even O3, all released by life.
And now rocket fuels. This does not bode well for our solar system!
There were guys who have just 60 days worth of living money and if some idiot intern rejects their application, they will be financially doomed.
This is what I would call "poor risk assessment skills". If you're depending on a capricious entity for your livelihood, I'd suggest a change of employment cause you sure as hell ain't gonna change Apple.
I think that was the point. They thought Apple could be relied on. Now they know better...
Hint to Apple: you want exactly those people who are good SW guys but perhaps not the smartest as business people to do software for you. They're usually at least as interested in the software as the money they make off it, if not more. So they'll crank out cheap software for those who might buy Apple phones, thus providing Apple very cheap software base. You don't want to drive them to Android and later Maemo.
Though Maemo promises to be wicked cool from developer point of view, if you ask me:-)
So was phenol, for that matter. If it kills bacteria in 12 seconds, it's "not nice stuff". Oh yeah maybe the keratin on your skin will prevent it from penetrating. What if it gets in your sweat glands. What if your skin has a lesion, and the keratin is interrupted...
Well, soap and water is "not nice stuff" too, if you need to wash your hands all the time, like doctors and nurses should do between meeting patients.
This one gets filed in the "call me when we've been using it safely for 20 years" category. Until then I will stick to soap and water.
It's also worth noting that this does not remove any bacteria, it just kills them... And also it probably doesn't work as well on dirty hands, the dirt would probably protect the bacteria from plasma reactions. So soap isn't obsolete yet.
Actually, that could work, not in the perpetual energy sense obviously, but certainly you could take the concentrated salt product from your desalinization process and recoup some of the energy by using it for osmotic fuel in this process.
Yes, certainly, but it might make more sense to convert the desalination plant into water filtration plant, considering that you'll be needing this river of fresh water running past the osmotic power plant anyway...;-)
Slashdot Mirror
Titanic made a shit-load of money aswell....
And do you know how much it's been watched and re-watched, especially by the femal... Oh. Never mind.
If your binary distribution (the industrial device) isn't publicly available, then the source code needn't be either. You are obliged to provide the source only to those who have the binary code.
If your embedded device has large enough disk, just put the source code there, available via http or ssh or ftp. In your case it might even be sensible to include gcc in the disk (if it's large enough), so the end-user can actually modify the source in-site and recompile inside the device. This has the bonus, that if they break it, they'll call you and you get to do some billable hours fixing their mess :-)
Somebody should create closed source versions of the open source projects that are most often ripped off.
There's certainly a business case here. However, it's not easy, and there's competition (like commercial embedded operating systems) already. The most major difficulty would be marketing. How do you find the customers (who today get the GPL version with a command like 'apt-get source busybox', and know it), and convince them that your proprietary version is any good, and doesn't have a million bugs that have been ironed out from the GPL version by the millions of users.
Well, IANAL, but as anyone can claim to be the owner, I think anyone can sue.
And logically, that one gets paid or gets the debt, and funds the lawsuit, as a result of being the one who sued.
About e): Well, I guess same as someone can “troll’ by taking the free software (work of others) and selling it for money. But that’s kinda the point of GPL, no? Dunno.
Anyone who is a lawyer here to enlighten us?
As others have written, by default the authors own the copyrights to their specific creations.
The only possibility for "trolling" would be blackmailing, ie. discover product with GPL software, and demand money or you will inform the copyright holder about the violation.
Well, yes and no. If you only run th esoftware you need do nothing more, however:
I think it's been established in court, that copying the software from hard disk to memory is creating a copy as meant by copyright law. So if you load the binaries from HD to memory, you need to be prepared to provide your computer and memory also the source code, as stated by the license. Also make sure that the license text is part of the binary distributed from disk to memory, so your computer knows that it has the right to get the source code if it wants to.
True, but at $1M, he really only needs to sell one copy :-p
This also applies to old, previously owned cars. You only need to sell one for a million dollars... ;-)
You're missing the point. The GP is not saying the GPL is bad, he is saying the GPL is a license like every other license. Hence, GPL code is not "free" but it licensed and as such, if you want to use it, you have to abide by the license or get sued. Just like any other code licensed, proprietary or not.
"free" code is public domain code, or WTFPL code, but nothing more. Not GPL.
No, with GPL, the code is free, it can't be "locked away" while binaries are distributed. Any developers working with GPL code are not totally free, as the license requires them to maintain the freedom of code. And freedom of the code in turn enables a lot of things (learning, copying, modifying, ensuring interoperability, etc) that IMHO are very good, so requiring freedom of the code is quite justified.
Then there are other licenses, most notably BSD, which are more about the freedom of other developers at the expense of freedom of code, as they allow other developer to release binaries while locking the code away.
On one hand the GPL violations are not so great...however action like this isn't going to encourage people to embrace open source...
However, it's going to encourage people to write and share code under GPL, when they see that if they make something good, somebody else can't just take it to make money. It also shows to potential users of GPL code that they don't need to be overly paranoid, as the first action of copyright holder isn't to sue or to demand a lot of money, but instead trying to settle privately and quietly and for free (as in beer).
So how can it be fair to demand something back? No, it's just greedy.
Here is a little sketch then:
A boy scout near Safeway finishes helping an old man to unload the shopping cart into the car.
A 18-wheeler with Safeway insignia stops nearby. The driver climbs down, opens the trailer. Approaches the boy.
Driver: "Hey, boy, I saw you helping that old man, that was very kind of you."
Boy: "Thank you, Sir!"
Driver: "How about helping me a bit?"
Boy: "What can I do for you?"
Driver: "Well, I'm hungry a little, so I want to go to this here Burger King for an hour or two, and while I'm busy there could you please unload this trailer for me? It's just sacks of salt, nothing dangerous, and it's only 15 tons of it. There should be a dolly somewhere, I guess. Just like that old man did, I will thank you for your help. I'm of course already paid to to this, but I thought it could be more convenient if I find someone else to do my work for me, for free."
Boy: "Sir, I must respectfully decline. I have no desire to earn your money for you."
Driver: "Boy, you are so greedy!"
There's just one problem with this example, which makes it totally irrelevant to this case: The boy will have to use a lot of time and effort to unload the truck. If unloading was software source code, the boy wouldn't even need to know that a truck got unloaded "for free" as a result of the boy helping the old man.
Actually it'd demonstrate the greed of the boy if it was about software. The boy could help the truck driver by just doing nothing, but instead he chooses to make demands. Certainly the boys demands (GPL license) are fair considering how much help it is, but still, any demands are infinitely more than zero effort (as the boy doesn't even need to know about it, and it doesn't affect the boy in any way), and infinite multiplier is certainly greedy.
But greed is good, when it's not excessive, and when it drives people to do more good, as I think is the case with GPL.
And I think the reason is greed: those releasing GPL software don't want the fruits of their work to be used by somebody to make money without any kind of compensation, but consider adhering to GPL to be enough compensation.
That is because a developer (GPL or BSD) doesn't get richer from releasing under GPL. If I want to share my code I want it to stay free, available to others for enjoyment, education and improvements. Why would a developer want to work days and nights on some code only to learn later that someone took it "as is", put into a box and sold 100M of these? I wouldn't be getting any money either way, but in case of GPL that "someone" would have to hire a programmer and make their own implementation; this is only fair.
Let's assume that somebody has written a piece of software he's not using to make money, and released the source. Now if somebody else takes that source and just uses it, does it hurt the original programmer? No, he probably wouldn't even know about it.
So how can it be fair to demand something back? No, it's just greedy. Not greed for money in this case, but greed for power (to force the other to do things in certain way, like according to GPL) and greed for fame and acknowledgment.
Only non-greedy, totally fair "license" for a freely available source code is the public domain "license", no strings attached. Everything else (even *BSD) puts greedy demands on the user of the "free" source code.
The core of the argument above is (and it only applies when), it makes no difference to the original programmer, if somebody else doesn't use the released code, or if he uses it "secretly" and without giving anything back in any form. And if it makes no difference to the programmer, it can't be fair to demand something on only one of these cases, when they're indistinguishable form the original programmer's point of view.
Disclaimer: I'm playing a bit of devil's advocate here and personally think it's just ifne to demand compensation, be it monetary or in the form of GPL or BSD license conditions ;-)
You may be underestimating the penetration of products with BSD-derived code into the market. The difference is we get a slashdot story every time Linux is associated in any way with business (we even have the nifty penguin-briefcase icon), but BSD remains relatively hype-free, by design. But the real humor in your post is that both Linux and BSD on the desktop (which is what we're talking about in this thread) are essentially hobbyist operating systems. To pretend otherwise is like one hungry man gloating over another hungry man because he has a few more peas than the other in his soup.
No, Linux is used in technology companies as the main desktop environment quite a bit, average maybe 5%..10% in the companies I've worked in the last 10 years. Of course it's a tiny fraction of Windows desktops, but it's plenty enough to say Linux is not essentially a hobbyist desktop OS. On the other hand I don't remember anybody who used any flavor of *BSD as their primary desktop OS...
Btw, is there any *BSD-licenced desktop environment? I'm sure there are some window managers, but don't most *BSD desktops these days use GNOME or KDE, just like Linux?
On the general issue, I'm actually a bit curious why Linux is used instead of *BSD so much... I guess it's because some of the software will be GPL anyway, so it doesn't make much difference if entire system is GPL. Then the question becomes, why that useful piece of software was released under GPL and not under *BSD... And I think the reason is greed: those releasing GPL software don't want the fruits of their work to be used by somebody to make money without any kind of compensation, but consider adhering to GPL to be enough compensation.
Rather than Gnome leave GNU, wouldn't it be easier for Richard Stallman to just fork reality? It seems he's always wanted his own.
Mixing non-free software with free software systems is a slippery slope. To work on that slippery slope, as most real-world software development must, an anchor is needed. RMS and FSF are that anchor. Even though I don't agree with them 100%, I realize that my idea of good free software would be impossible if they didn't fight for their ideal and keep everything from sliding down the slippery slope.
So even if it's sometimes sensible and useful to mix free and non-free, especially from user point of view, I sure hope FSF and everything directly supported by FSF stays pure.
Yes, I have to agree.
If you restrict it and keep proprietary software off, then it will become just hobbyist platform.
Indeed. Just compare *BSD operating systems, with a license very friendly to proprietary software, and Linux, which is GPL and rather unfriendly to proprietary code (just look at the proprietary kernel module mess). It's because of this that almost in almost all commercial cases, the OS is *BSD, while Linux is used almost exclusively by hobbyists such as IBM.
Sure, if you take something which doesn't belong to you (and without permission of course) you are a thief.
However, making a perfect duplicate of something without diminishing the original is not the same as taking it.
Do you mean, taking a copy is not taking a copy, it's just taking a copy? :-)
estimates that more than 95% of Google hits on the words 'work at home' are scams, link to scams, or other dead ends
If this is true, doesn't the FTC fraud department have it's job already done for it? If it were 5%, the fraud department would have to really work to find a scam, in this case, just click on a link, and viola, someone to prosecute.
And if only 5% of hits are genuine, it's such a small percentage that it'd be ok to just prosecute and convict all without any investigation. That'd save a ton of taxpayer money!
The most interesting thing in the (short) article was that this is related to Congenital Insensitivity to Pain, the malady documented in the excellent film, A Life Without Pain. That explains something that made no sense -- how can these folks feel enough to pick up objects, but not feel that the object is a red-hot cinder?
I hope this is a first step towards not just discovering a cause of "phantom" pain... I hope it's a step towards eliminating *all* pain. I seem to end up on the bad side of the Slashdot community when I say this, but I think "congenital insensitivity to pain" is the next phase of human evolution. We already have several adaptations that have no advantage without a big brain -- decade-long adolescence, non-reproductive grandparents, non-seasonal sexual receptivity. I think eliminating pain is a very logical next phase.
It's an adaptation that wouldn't be possible without modern medicine, with antibiotics to prevent infection, and non-intrusive diagnostics to find that broken bone you don't feel. In fact, we probably need to progress further, to replace natural pain-dependent systems with technology. You wouldn't feel a heart attack coming on, but you might have a circuit installed that monitors your critical systems. You wouldn't have to croak "Call 911, I'm having a heart attack!" Your heart would call for help itself.
I'm in my 40s, and I know some day I'm going to be afflicted with the painful conditions that are inevitable this side of full-body replacement. If I've got some sort of inoperable tumor, and know it, why should I feel the pain? Or become an opioid zombie? Pain is a biological anachronism, and I look forward to the day it is banished from the human experience entirely.
Entirely? It never will be. First of all there are the poor who not only experience most of the pain (if you could find a measure for amount of pain) but can't afford any advanced technology to replace pain as key survival mechanism.
Second, even if pain could be removed selectively, childhood without sense of pain would produce an adult without necessary reflexes to live a normal active life. OTOH, if your life only happens in virtual reality, then you don't experience pain anyway, so why remove it? In that case you wouldn't move very much, so experiencing pain when something is wrong would be a life-saver for serious virtual reality junkie. I mean, just consider going to pee or getting bedsores treated, if there was no pain involved? ;-)
And third, there are just so many trivial things that can be wrong with a human body, which we discover because of the pain they cause, and which are usually easily fixed by modern medicine if discovered early enough, that removing the pain would result in massive amount of early deaths and serious disability. Ear ache, inflamed appendix (deadly if not operated), tooth ache (can cause blood poisoning if not fixed), a wound bleeding dangerously, sprained or broken limb (even an open fracture), RSSI, a splinter under skin... Noticing any of them before they become serious problems depends on pain.
It's not a distribution method. You want the driver to be available when you release your device. Getting the driver to stock kernel will not get it distributed to the potential Linux-using customers, unless you can get the driver to the kernel at least a year before you release the device, so it has time to get to the actual distributions.
Specifically, at least a year before you release the device part. So what part of your reason explains why proprietary hardware vendors do not release device drivers for their new hardware for more than two or three years after the release of the hardware?
By your own opinion, hardware vendors could get their proprietary driver into the kernel, in at least a year, yet two and three years later some companies are still NOT releasing their proprietary drivers for Linux and Unix use. Nvidia and other GPU vendors are just the most recent offenders. There have been many new enhanced add on hardware devices for PCs over the years...yet those drivers, if they are ever released into open source, are only released after two, three or more years later...
How is this Linux and the Kernel developer's fault? It is not. Please stop spreading FUD!
The only thing that is Linux kernel community's fault is, that there is no way for a hardware maker to release a Linux driver with their hardware, along with Win and Mac drivers. The Linux kernel community has successfully (because it's intentional) failed to provide a driver interface that would be shared by every Linux distro with (for example) 2.6 kernel.
Sure, they are trying to offer something else, but quite obviously it's not working. Now ask yourself: if somebody makes an offer that is not taken by anybody, then is it the fault of the ones don't take the offer, or the fault of the one making such an offer?
The rest pretty much follows from this. The hardware makers are running a business, where they're trying to optimize resources spent for profit gained. The driver development model Linux offers just doesn't work with this terribly well. And in the end, Linux is not a good option for "average Joe" desktop user without a nerd kid/friend/whatever.
As a company, getting your driver into Linux should be pretty simple. It is a better distribution method.
It's not a distribution method. You want the driver to be available when you release your device. Getting the driver to stock kernel will not get it distributed to the potential Linux-using customers, unless you can get the driver to the kernel at least a year before you release the device, so it has time to get to the actual distributions. And even then it will only get to the users who upgraded their OS after the driver was included in the kernel, anybody with a bit older Linux OS is out of reach. Very unrealistic. So, if you want to distribute a driver, you can't do it by getting it to the kernel, because it won't get distributed until it's too late.
I think I have a (theoretical) solution to that.
Lets say that the copyright owners of btrfs create the windows/osx/solaris/aix drivers?
Or more realistically, if the copyright owners of btrfs grant an interested third party a special license to create a lgpl'd btrfs driver?
There can't be a "special license" to do LGPL version. Once such version is out, well, it's out. So they could as well make the whole thing LGPL (which IMHO would be a good idea).
But if there are a lot of developers, getting everybody to agree (or even to reach everybody) is a lot of work. Replacing=rewriting the code of those who don't agree might be on option, depending on how much of it there is.
But I'm pretty sure they actually thought about it and chose GPL over LGPL because they wanted to, so they're not likely to change (Google might find the answer).
What prevents other, non-GPL operating systems from using Btrfs?
Writing drivers for a filesystem is not a "derivative work" is it?
How good, accurate and up-to-date is the specification of btrfs?
If only real, accurate "specification" is the source code, then it's damn hard to create a compatible and reliable new implementation from scratch. File systems are complex, concurrent (meaning many files being accessed simultaneously) and performance-critical as well as reliability-critical. Getting it right is hard, while getting it wrong is bad, so there needs to be really good reasons to even try to do it, instead of using something that already works.
This is especially true while development is still continuing (as is case with btrfs).
Incidentally "climate change" is the trendy new word because "global warming" has the pesky tendency to be falsified whenever temperatures are cooler than expected. With a generic word like "climate change" you're only wrong if the temperature stays perfectly and exactly the same!
I'd like to point out one thing about above paragraph. "Whenever temperaturs are..." refers to weather. Weather is not climate, and single weather events (such as temperature during any one point of time) doesn't falsify or prove anything about climate. Mixing weather and climate tends to put a writer into the "don't know what they're talking about" bin.
Oh I acknowledge that. All rocket fuels are expensive to make, store and ship. This one looks reasonably (and relatively) cheap. However the "environmentally friendly" comment in TFA is what I didn't like. It's like saying "environmentally friendly cigarettes". Rocket fuel (of any type) does not qualify for the "environmentally friendly" label, even if this is the "friendliest" one...
That's what you get with life. Just look at Mars. Perfectly nice and beautiful environment. Compare to Earth: covered with various forms of nasty organic slime, hardly any unpolluted barren surface anywhere. And don't get me started with Earth's atmosphere, now that's a particularly nasty mix, full of poisons such as O2 and even O3, all released by life.
And now rocket fuels. This does not bode well for our solar system!
There were guys who have just 60 days worth of living money and if some idiot intern rejects their application, they will be financially doomed.
This is what I would call "poor risk assessment skills". If you're depending on a capricious entity for your livelihood, I'd suggest a change of employment cause you sure as hell ain't gonna change Apple.
I think that was the point. They thought Apple could be relied on. Now they know better...
Hint to Apple: you want exactly those people who are good SW guys but perhaps not the smartest as business people to do software for you. They're usually at least as interested in the software as the money they make off it, if not more. So they'll crank out cheap software for those who might buy Apple phones, thus providing Apple very cheap software base. You don't want to drive them to Android and later Maemo.
Though Maemo promises to be wicked cool from developer point of view, if you ask me :-)
So was phenol, for that matter. If it kills bacteria in 12 seconds, it's "not nice stuff". Oh yeah maybe the keratin on your skin will prevent it from penetrating. What if it gets in your sweat glands. What if your skin has a lesion, and the keratin is interrupted...
Well, soap and water is "not nice stuff" too, if you need to wash your hands all the time, like doctors and nurses should do between meeting patients.
This one gets filed in the "call me when we've been using it safely for 20 years" category. Until then I will stick to soap and water.
It's also worth noting that this does not remove any bacteria, it just kills them... And also it probably doesn't work as well on dirty hands, the dirt would probably protect the bacteria from plasma reactions. So soap isn't obsolete yet.
Actually, that could work, not in the perpetual energy sense obviously, but certainly you could take the concentrated salt product from your desalinization process and recoup some of the energy by using it for osmotic fuel in this process.
Yes, certainly, but it might make more sense to convert the desalination plant into water filtration plant, considering that you'll be needing this river of fresh water running past the osmotic power plant anyway... ;-)