the mafiaa lobbyist explained to him what a blow to the financial structure of the country would result if he didn't, 'cause all those Chinese bootleggers will flood the market and the US economy would collapse. And other wild fantasies turned reality.
Actually he's sort-of right: the U.S. economy would collapse if we were unable to enforce our patents and copyrights, because we don't actually manufacture physical products anymore. The only trouble is, that'll happen anyway because other countries will just copy our ideas regardless. All the [RIAA|MPAA|BSA]'s protectionism will do is delay the inevitable.
Incidentally, this is why the government is trying so hard to bully the rest of the world into adopting our insane laws.
I'm aware that Novell and Xandros wouldn't be enough on their own, and I hope that IBM and Red Hat would be strong-willed enough to resist making such a deal. But there are still others out there -- what about Mandriva, Linspire, TurboLinux, Mepis, etc.? What if nearly every commercial distro except for RedHat and Ubuntu made such deals (which, given how determined Microsoft tends to be, isn't all that far-fetched)?
When it was just Novell, you know they'd be screwed after GPLv3 because they wouldn't have the resources to fork the last GPLv2 releases of everything. But on the other hand, if Novell and Xandros and ??? ('cause at this point I think we can assume MS will continue making deals) get together, there could be significant forks. And that's really, really bad news.
All the people who've been saying "MS has something else up it's sleeve; just wait for it..." have just been vindicated, I believe.
What the fuck was this guy thinking, to make the same kind of deal despite seeing Novell get blackballed by the community? I mean, even Novell should have known better, but at least they might not have anticipated the response. This guy has no excuse.
And what's even worse (for him) is that this agreement, being after March 28, isn't grandfathered in like the Novell deal. From the article:
The IP assurance deal comes hot on the heels of the release of the fourth, and final, draft of the GNU General Public License Version 3.0 on May 31, which says that distributors that make discriminatory patent deals after March 28 may not convey software under GPLv3.
Re:Why we stayed clear of the GPL
on
GPLv2 Vs. GPLv3
·
· Score: 1
We discussed it and the company president was worried something like the GPL 3 could be a problem in the future. There were serious questions on whether or not we could us our modified code without releasing it. It was going to be used only on our company website and not released for sale to others, yet it would have been there for the public to use for a subscription.
You should have consulted a better lawyer. No future version of the GPL will ever affect what you intended to do, because the GPL is not an EULA. Although they initially tried to add clauses restricting web services to the GPLv3, they took them out again because they realized that providing the software as a service doesn't count as "distribution" under copyright law, and therefore the GPL never applies at all. So even if such language existed in the license it would be unenforcable.
Re:This is what I HATE most about FOSS
on
GPLv2 Vs. GPLv3
·
· Score: 1
And there is nothing wrong with that. But saying that something which inherenting restrictions ones freedom actually promotes freedom is simply wrong.
Laws against murder restrict your freedom to kill people. Laws against slavery restrict your freedom to own slaves. Yet most reasonable people would still consider both those laws to promote freedom because they promote the freedom of the people who would otherwise be killed or enslaved. Is that so hard to understand?
Similarly, the GPL restricts your freedom to close the source code. In doing so, it promotes the freedom of the people who receive the software from you. Is that so hard to stand?
It is not "simply wrong" to say that the GPL promotes freedom!
Re:The next "One major danger"...
on
GPLv2 Vs. GPLv3
·
· Score: 1
You really need to have a look at copyright law if you think that the GPL (a copyright distribution license not a EULA) can restrict this. Users don't agree to the GPL.
Man, I really wish more people understood this! I've been seeing the GPL presented as if it were an EULA (requiring the user to click "I agree" in order to install the software) way too often. OpenOffice is the most conspicuous offender here, but a lot of other software that uses a Windows-style installer is guilty of it too.
Also, I see your point about having software that calls home and updates keys and blah blah blah, but those systems also do not escape the fact that at some point in time, in my own home, the DRMed content must exist in unencrypted form somewhere for it to reach my eyes and ears.
Sooner or later, that "somewhere" where the unencrypted content will be is the monitor itself. The trouble is though, that it would also be decompressed and separated from the audio, which means you'd have to manually re-sync and recompress it, resulting in a loss of quality. It's like the difference between using PlayFair/HYMN on your iTunes songs vs. redirecting the audio output to a file.
This is still unacceptable, because everyone should have the right to de-DRM their media without decompressing or otherwise changing it.
Re:libgcc, libstdc++, and Bison
on
GPLv2 Vs. GPLv3
·
· Score: 2, Interesting
What, so current LGPL "or any later version" code won't get the "anti-Tivoization" and other benefits of the GPLv3? That sucks!
Microsoft backs OpenXML, which is an open, extensible document standard...
Bullshit. Just because Microsoft managed to bribe or con somebody at ECMA doesn't mean the format is actually open. If it were open, it wouldn't be patented, require 6000 pages to describe, or have directives like "display this like some other random proprietary format!"
Personally, I find it easier to write documents in HTML+CSS with a text editor (and then print to PDF from a web browser), than to use any so-called "word processor" program, because they make it too hard to tell what's actually going on with the formatting.
Using a proprietary, custom-made API? Whoop-de-do! If that's your definition of "programmatically accessing the data," I could just as well say that IBM assembly code translated into Sanskrit and optically encoded into a freakin' JPEG is "scriptable" too, because I could conceivably build some software to OCR, translate, and decode it!
If you can do it with OOo files, you can do it with MS '07.
No you can't, because OOXML has shit like "<renderthislikeWord95>some text</renderthislikeWord95>" (among other things). How the fuck do you figure out what that means without getting a copy of Word 95?
Ever heard of the Freedom of Information Act? Governmental transparency is a prerequisite of freedom, and in a transparent government all documents, including "internal" ones, are potentially released. Therefore, all documents, including "internal" ones, need to be in open formats.
When you get right down to it, proprietary formats are un-American.
But I would like to ask why, in a democracy, any organization should be deprived of the freedom of choice in choosing what tools they can use to do their work. Why should ODF be forced on anyone?
Because, in a democracy, all citizens have a right to access government documents. That includes Linux users, people who can't afford to spend $300 on Office, blind people (using specialized software), and people 50 years in the future (long after any proprietary format becomes unreadable -- try opening a WordStar or Word/DOS document in Word 2007 and see how far you get, for example).
Proprietary formats -- all proprietary formats, without exception -- cannot fulfill this requirement by definition.
(Incidentally, Office-type formats are really the least of our worries. Government should be prohibited from accepting building plans in the form of proprietary AutoCAD DWG files, etc. too.)
the two will presumably be tied together, much as we already see most software be delivered today
I hate to break it to you, but most retail software doesn't include (meaningful) support. When's the last time you heard of anybody being able to call up (for example) Microsoft and actually get help, as opposed to relying on the Internet, a techie friend, or the Geek Squad?
Hillary has more experience than Obama in terms of political office. If Ronald Reagan can slaughter Walter Mondale with "the youthfulness of inexperience" line in 1984, the same thing could be said of Obama.
The proper response for Obama to make to that should be "Good! That just means I'm not a corrupt bastard like the other candidates!
Although we now know that the CIA intelligence data was wrong, supporting the use of force was appropriate since, in 2003, we believed that the intelligence data was correct.
WTF?! "We" knew the intelligence data was bullshit back in 2003 too -- the UN inspectors said so! Only the goverment thought it was correct, mostly because it was Hell-bent on going to war and needed an excuse.
Slashdot Mirror
Actually he's sort-of right: the U.S. economy would collapse if we were unable to enforce our patents and copyrights, because we don't actually manufacture physical products anymore. The only trouble is, that'll happen anyway because other countries will just copy our ideas regardless. All the [RIAA|MPAA|BSA]'s protectionism will do is delay the inevitable.
Incidentally, this is why the government is trying so hard to bully the rest of the world into adopting our insane laws.
é in HTML (and Slashdot forum posts).
You're welcome.
I said, "Novell has no more product to sell." Selling is distributing, not using, and the GPL most certainly can prevent that!
I'm aware that Novell and Xandros wouldn't be enough on their own, and I hope that IBM and Red Hat would be strong-willed enough to resist making such a deal. But there are still others out there -- what about Mandriva, Linspire, TurboLinux, Mepis, etc.? What if nearly every commercial distro except for RedHat and Ubuntu made such deals (which, given how determined Microsoft tends to be, isn't all that far-fetched)?
Yeah, but that community does make the software. If the community gets pissed off, Novell has no more product to sell -- hence the GPLv3.
The point I'm trying to wake is that it MS makes enough shills, they'll become the "community." The GPLv2 fork could become the dominant one.
When it was just Novell, you know they'd be screwed after GPLv3 because they wouldn't have the resources to fork the last GPLv2 releases of everything. But on the other hand, if Novell and Xandros and ??? ('cause at this point I think we can assume MS will continue making deals) get together, there could be significant forks. And that's really, really bad news.
All the people who've been saying "MS has something else up it's sleeve; just wait for it..." have just been vindicated, I believe.
What the fuck was this guy thinking, to make the same kind of deal despite seeing Novell get blackballed by the community? I mean, even Novell should have known better, but at least they might not have anticipated the response. This guy has no excuse.
And what's even worse (for him) is that this agreement, being after March 28, isn't grandfathered in like the Novell deal. From the article:
You should have consulted a better lawyer. No future version of the GPL will ever affect what you intended to do, because the GPL is not an EULA. Although they initially tried to add clauses restricting web services to the GPLv3, they took them out again because they realized that providing the software as a service doesn't count as "distribution" under copyright law, and therefore the GPL never applies at all. So even if such language existed in the license it would be unenforcable.
Laws against murder restrict your freedom to kill people. Laws against slavery restrict your freedom to own slaves. Yet most reasonable people would still consider both those laws to promote freedom because they promote the freedom of the people who would otherwise be killed or enslaved. Is that so hard to understand?
Similarly, the GPL restricts your freedom to close the source code. In doing so, it promotes the freedom of the people who receive the software from you. Is that so hard to stand?
It is not "simply wrong" to say that the GPL promotes freedom!
Man, I really wish more people understood this! I've been seeing the GPL presented as if it were an EULA (requiring the user to click "I agree" in order to install the software) way too often. OpenOffice is the most conspicuous offender here, but a lot of other software that uses a Windows-style installer is guilty of it too.
Sooner or later, that "somewhere" where the unencrypted content will be is the monitor itself. The trouble is though, that it would also be decompressed and separated from the audio, which means you'd have to manually re-sync and recompress it, resulting in a loss of quality. It's like the difference between using PlayFair/HYMN on your iTunes songs vs. redirecting the audio output to a file.
This is still unacceptable, because everyone should have the right to de-DRM their media without decompressing or otherwise changing it.
What, so current LGPL "or any later version" code won't get the "anti-Tivoization" and other benefits of the GPLv3? That sucks!
Bullshit. Just because Microsoft managed to bribe or con somebody at ECMA doesn't mean the format is actually open. If it were open, it wouldn't be patented, require 6000 pages to describe, or have directives like "display this like some other random proprietary format!"
Personally, I find it easier to write documents in HTML+CSS with a text editor (and then print to PDF from a web browser), than to use any so-called "word processor" program, because they make it too hard to tell what's actually going on with the formatting.
Using a proprietary, custom-made API? Whoop-de-do! If that's your definition of "programmatically accessing the data," I could just as well say that IBM assembly code translated into Sanskrit and optically encoded into a freakin' JPEG is "scriptable" too, because I could conceivably build some software to OCR, translate, and decode it!
No you can't, because OOXML has shit like "<renderthislikeWord95>some text</renderthislikeWord95>" (among other things). How the fuck do you figure out what that means without getting a copy of Word 95?
Ever heard of the Freedom of Information Act? Governmental transparency is a prerequisite of freedom, and in a transparent government all documents, including "internal" ones, are potentially released. Therefore, all documents, including "internal" ones, need to be in open formats.
When you get right down to it, proprietary formats are un-American.
Because, in a democracy, all citizens have a right to access government documents. That includes Linux users, people who can't afford to spend $300 on Office, blind people (using specialized software), and people 50 years in the future (long after any proprietary format becomes unreadable -- try opening a WordStar or Word/DOS document in Word 2007 and see how far you get, for example).
Proprietary formats -- all proprietary formats, without exception -- cannot fulfill this requirement by definition.
(Incidentally, Office-type formats are really the least of our worries. Government should be prohibited from accepting building plans in the form of proprietary AutoCAD DWG files, etc. too.)
I hate to break it to you, but most retail software doesn't include (meaningful) support. When's the last time you heard of anybody being able to call up (for example) Microsoft and actually get help, as opposed to relying on the Internet, a techie friend, or the Geek Squad?
Except for this, the AK-47 is the "Open Office of assault rifles!"
The proper response for Obama to make to that should be "Good! That just means I'm not a corrupt bastard like the other candidates!
Worse than usual? What, have you been living under a rock for the past eight years (maybe more; I was too young to notice before that) or something?!
WTF?! "We" knew the intelligence data was bullshit back in 2003 too -- the UN inspectors said so! Only the goverment thought it was correct, mostly because it was Hell-bent on going to war and needed an excuse.