(I know I just answered this in response to your other post, but other people might only read this one so I'm doing it again.)
If MS creates code that is derivative of GPL'ed code...
Your argument fails because Novell is the one actually creating the code, not Microsoft. This could very well result in the destruction of Novell, but MS is squeaky-clean.
If you're a patent holder and you knowingly create derivative work from GPL'ed code, then you are implicitly giving license to recipients to use the patented methods.
And that's why Microsoft is doing this kind of thing by proxy (i.e., through SCO and Novell) rather than directly.
You're entirely free to ship the components apart (like NVidia and ATI), letting the end user do the combination, but shipping the combined work is a violation.
The FSF would disagree with you -- it believes that NVidia and ATI are violating the GPL. The problem, though, is that only the copyright holder (i.e., Linus) can sue, and he doesn't care.
Supposing a loadable module functionality for Samba that would allow a reasonably 'separate' entity to exist without incursions into the Samba sourcecode it might be possible for a third party to ship such a module and let the end users do the combining. But it would fairly painful to manage.
Unlike Linus, the Samba copyright holders apparently do care, so this wouldn't fly.
If the Apple platform actually started to make major inroads in server rooms, office suites, groupware and provided a killer alternative to Exchange, MS would be actively trying to take them down a few pegs again.
By the way, that's happening now: MS is actively trying to kill Apple by ceasing development of its Mac software. Over the past two years, the following has been dropped: IE/Mac, Virtual PC/Mac, Windows Media Player/Mac, and now VB scripting for Office/Mac (I'll bet the only reason the whole suite isn't gone is the 5-year promise of support MS made a while back -- MS can't kill it entirely, so it'll just kneecap it instead). In addition, Microsoft is attacking the iPod by coming out with the Zune -- not by directly competing, though, but by setting a precedent of paying the RIAA royalties for music players. Microsoft is hoping the publishers will try to force similar deals out of Apple in the future.
Actually, not quite. The lawsuit that's most beneficial to Free Software is SCO vs. IBM, not SCO vs. Novell. Now Novell is trying to force SCO to drop the suit against IBM, which is actually not in our best interests (since it's virtually assured that IBM would win anyway). In effect, you could say that Novell is trying to rob IBM and us of having the GPL fully proven in court.
Nobody! You know why? Because nobody had any kind of entitlement to it in the first place! Neither artists nor anybody else deserves to profit from their work; we merely allow them to do so as incentive, in order to benefit us. If we decide we're better off without offering that incentive, we can just decide not to do it.
Listen, I don't like the RIAA, either, but THEY get to decide how much they want to sell their product for, and your (moral) choices are "Do I pay this?" or "Do I not pay this?".
It's NOT "their product," damnit! It's a piece of our culture that inherently belongs to the Public Domain, that -- by our grace alone -- the RIAA publishers have the temporary privilage of distributing. If it were a physical product it might be different, but it's not. It's a representation of an idea that's only "protected" for the sole purpose of "promoting the progress of science and the useful arts." Therefore, if we believe that progress is better served by freely sharing it, we have that right.
I mean you can find high quality songs in multiple formats and of questionable legality for free on p2p.
Hmm... I don't know about that. I never got around to using AllOfMP3, but if I had it would have been in order to get the songs in FLAC format, which I haven't seen much of on P2P.
(1) if the RIAA companies never ceded the right to contract their copyrights to this orginization, will U.S. courts respect the establishment of a foreign orginization given that power by law?
Go look up the definition of sovereignty. US law does not apply to Russia by definition, and the RIAA doesn't have a damn thing to stand on.
(2) Even if that organiziation has the power to order such sales in Russia what effect if any does that have on sales conducted with U.S. citizens in the United States?
The liability is on the U.S. citizens, not AllOfMP3.
3) To what degree does AllofMp3 conduct business within the United States, and what effect does that have on the agreement AllofMP3 made with the Russian copyright group?
Although that's true, pointing it out doesn't help the situation. In fact, I think you ought to refrain from doing so because it cultivates an attitude of sheepish acceptance.
No kidding -- and you know what the worst part is? If it had been an individual doing this, he would have gotten the jail time! But since it's a big corporation responsible, they get the best "justice" money can buy.
Anybody know the names of the dumbass judges/prosecutors that approved this? I, for one, would like to help them realize just how asinine this settlement is by bitching them out!
As far as I can tell labels don't work at all if you use IMAP, multiple machines, multiple clients, and have more then one folder.
What I'd like to see is labels working with the tags from Gmail. Of course, this isn't possible because Google won't use IMAP and doesn't include the tags in the message headers...
Does your ex not want to switch to Revit or similar because of the interface, or because she actually prefers making 2D line drawings instead of 3D parametric models?
No, you don't. Most major CAD systems will import DWG files since they have paid the licensing fees to AutoDesk to include a utility to perform the import.
Do you understand that the issue here is that people shouldn't have to pay royalties to read a file format?
Personally, I think DWG should go exactly the way of MS Office's formats: banned from government use because they're proprietary!
Could you give more details about why you think apt is a lot closer to that "ideal package system" than RPM is ?
I was just going by the parent's "ideal package system" list -- presumably he listed what he did because RPM/[whatever frontend] didn't do those things. Unless I'm mistaken, Portage (which is what I'm most familiar with) fulfills items 1, 2, 3, 4, 5, and 6; and the implication is that RPM (or whatever) does not. That's why Portage, at least, is closer to his ideal.
By the way, apt is not the same as RPM, either talk about dpkg, or compare apt with urpmi/yum/smart... how can you say that apt is better that RPM ? That's like saying Linux is better than a computer, it doesn't mean anything.
First of all, the last time I used an RPM-based distro, I don't recall it having any higher-level tools like yum or whatever. I suppose I could claim that apt or portage is better than nothing at all, which was what was provided on that distro -- would that make you feel better?
Also, how about I amend my statement to say that "Gentoo and Debian's package management systems work better than Red Hat's?" Is that okay?
You must know this and get used to saying it bacause from a legal, and political view point, you still ahve those rights.
No, we lost them -- go read the DMCA. All the copyright holder has to do is say "this was ROT13 encrypted twice" and you have no Fair Use rights anymore.
No, it's for the kids. If it weren't, it wouldn't be bright green, have a child-size keyboard with a weird layout, or use software obviously designed for children.
Because until Vista, Windows* was too braindead to properly use a high dpi display. You wouldn't want a 200 dpi computer screen because everything would be tiny, and couldn't be scaled up without breaking most programs' UIs.
(*To be fair, every other OS was too -- but if Windows had worked it would have driven demand for such monitors by itself.)
Slashdot Mirror
(I know I just answered this in response to your other post, but other people might only read this one so I'm doing it again.)
Your argument fails because Novell is the one actually creating the code, not Microsoft. This could very well result in the destruction of Novell, but MS is squeaky-clean.
And that's why Microsoft is doing this kind of thing by proxy (i.e., through SCO and Novell) rather than directly.
The FSF would disagree with you -- it believes that NVidia and ATI are violating the GPL. The problem, though, is that only the copyright holder (i.e., Linus) can sue, and he doesn't care.
Unlike Linus, the Samba copyright holders apparently do care, so this wouldn't fly.
By the way, that's happening now: MS is actively trying to kill Apple by ceasing development of its Mac software. Over the past two years, the following has been dropped: IE/Mac, Virtual PC/Mac, Windows Media Player/Mac, and now VB scripting for Office/Mac (I'll bet the only reason the whole suite isn't gone is the 5-year promise of support MS made a while back -- MS can't kill it entirely, so it'll just kneecap it instead). In addition, Microsoft is attacking the iPod by coming out with the Zune -- not by directly competing, though, but by setting a precedent of paying the RIAA royalties for music players. Microsoft is hoping the publishers will try to force similar deals out of Apple in the future.
Actually, not quite. The lawsuit that's most beneficial to Free Software is SCO vs. IBM, not SCO vs. Novell. Now Novell is trying to force SCO to drop the suit against IBM, which is actually not in our best interests (since it's virtually assured that IBM would win anyway). In effect, you could say that Novell is trying to rob IBM and us of having the GPL fully proven in court.
Nobody! You know why? Because nobody had any kind of entitlement to it in the first place! Neither artists nor anybody else deserves to profit from their work; we merely allow them to do so as incentive, in order to benefit us. If we decide we're better off without offering that incentive, we can just decide not to do it.
It's NOT "their product," damnit! It's a piece of our culture that inherently belongs to the Public Domain, that -- by our grace alone -- the RIAA publishers have the temporary privilage of distributing. If it were a physical product it might be different, but it's not. It's a representation of an idea that's only "protected" for the sole purpose of "promoting the progress of science and the useful arts." Therefore, if we believe that progress is better served by freely sharing it, we have that right.
Hmm... I don't know about that. I never got around to using AllOfMP3, but if I had it would have been in order to get the songs in FLAC format, which I haven't seen much of on P2P.
Go look up the definition of sovereignty. US law does not apply to Russia by definition, and the RIAA doesn't have a damn thing to stand on.
The liability is on the U.S. citizens, not AllOfMP3.
Although that's true, pointing it out doesn't help the situation. In fact, I think you ought to refrain from doing so because it cultivates an attitude of sheepish acceptance.
No kidding -- and you know what the worst part is? If it had been an individual doing this, he would have gotten the jail time! But since it's a big corporation responsible, they get the best "justice" money can buy.
Anybody know the names of the dumbass judges/prosecutors that approved this? I, for one, would like to help them realize just how asinine this settlement is by bitching them out!
What I'd like to see is labels working with the tags from Gmail. Of course, this isn't possible because Google won't use IMAP and doesn't include the tags in the message headers...
Does your ex not want to switch to Revit or similar because of the interface, or because she actually prefers making 2D line drawings instead of 3D parametric models?
Do you understand that the issue here is that people shouldn't have to pay royalties to read a file format?
Personally, I think DWG should go exactly the way of MS Office's formats: banned from government use because they're proprietary!
Well yeah, you're an aerospace engineer. Us civil engineers are generally stuck with AutoShit's de-- err, AutoDesk's shit.
(I'm a civil engineering student and an EFF member -- do I sound bitter?)
I was just going by the parent's "ideal package system" list -- presumably he listed what he did because RPM/[whatever frontend] didn't do those things. Unless I'm mistaken, Portage (which is what I'm most familiar with) fulfills items 1, 2, 3, 4, 5, and 6; and the implication is that RPM (or whatever) does not. That's why Portage, at least, is closer to his ideal.
First of all, the last time I used an RPM-based distro, I don't recall it having any higher-level tools like yum or whatever. I suppose I could claim that apt or portage is better than nothing at all, which was what was provided on that distro -- would that make you feel better?
Also, how about I amend my statement to say that "Gentoo and Debian's package management systems work better than Red Hat's?" Is that okay?
I'd say exactly the same thing to those incompetant, negligent parents! I'm an equal-oppertunity bastard.
No, we lost them -- go read the DMCA. All the copyright holder has to do is say "this was ROT13 encrypted twice" and you have no Fair Use rights anymore.
Electrical is easy: just use the same principle as track lighting.
Except TeX ; )
No, it's for the kids. If it weren't, it wouldn't be bright green, have a child-size keyboard with a weird layout, or use software obviously designed for children.
Don't bother implementing any kind of "anti-phishing" crap and let the buyer be responsible for his own damn self for a change!
It's still a glaring technical problem though, because the movie doesn't seem to implement your solution.
I wonder if they tested KHTML on it...?
Because until Vista, Windows* was too braindead to properly use a high dpi display. You wouldn't want a 200 dpi computer screen because everything would be tiny, and couldn't be scaled up without breaking most programs' UIs.
(*To be fair, every other OS was too -- but if Windows had worked it would have driven demand for such monitors by itself.)