The majority of the world's software engineers work to solve (relatively) local problems, writing in-house applications. A minority work on off-the-shelf software. There is no convincing reason why we couldn't do without proprietary solutions to the latter, and the former will still be busy solving their employers' in-house problems. The brilliant thinker should have no problem (if, indeed, he is brilliant) convincing someone to hire him or contract him to work on solving their problems. If his domain is in the solving of general problems in an elegant manner, he should be writing books, not software.
The fact that software can be easily replicated (and changed) is exactly the reason why it's so important that people be allowed to do this. So long as software remains proprietary, it is only ever going to be moderately useful to society since its development is under centralized control that does not necessarily have the users' knowledge of which parts of the software need improving (nor may they be interested in doing it had they known). Give that control to the users, and you will soon have software custom-designed to the specific requirements of every possible niche of application. Since modifying, running and distributing the software is nearly trivial to do, this is going to happen (with free software). Keeping software proprietary is therefore a mechanism that is going to hold us back in an artificial manner while free software will see us accellerating ahead at unprecedented speeds. This is why proprietary software is unethical. If the same principles applied to automobile manufacture, then whatever information is necessary to replicate an automobile should be made likewise widely available to encourage people to create vehicles custom-built to their own individual needs. Since this is, however, impractical, "free blueprints" isn't currently a pressing matter. Once we get cheap matter replicators, things may change:-)
If I choose to buy a program that solves a problem no one else has solved, that is evil? It isn't unethical to buy free software. Just because the author wants to get a few bucks for his/her effort, that is evil? It isn't unethical to sell free software. If so, then I've been lied to my whole life. That is entirely possible - I really wouldn't know.
I don't think Linus is claiming that Tridgell acted wrongly because of reverse-engineering BitKeeper as such, rather that Tridgell acted wrongly because the effect was to inconvenience Linus and to upset Linus' friend. Linus seems to be a lot more concerned with pragmatic matters (i.e., getting things done) than he is with ideology (free software, open standards, etc.). The latter only matters to him insomuch as it facilitates the former.
There may be a difference between "typeface" and "font". Fonts (in this context) tend to contain computer code, which perhaps _can_ be copyrighted. Not that I would know. There certainly _is_ a difference between copyright and trademark though and it is no surprise that font names can be trademarked - most things can be trademarked if you're a bit careful how your mark looks.
If there is no longer demand for the product, then it is unclear why it is necessary to maintain copyright on it. A copyright on something that is not in demand is pretty worthless. If there _is_ demand for it and the copyright owner - for whatever reason - is refusing to publish, then it is entirely justifiable that society should withdraw the copyright and allow others to publish. Again, if there is no actual demand, then noone actually _will_ publish since there's no money to be made from it. Sitting on a product for 10 years without publishing when you know there are people that would buy the product is, in this case, an abuse of a government-granted monopoly and should be acted against by the state.
The basic difference is that the GPL violators in question are commercial entities that directly profit from their activity, whileas the majority of file sharers in question are copying for their own personal use and are not directly profiting from it. Which one you think is most evil depends a bit on where you stand on individual freedom vs state control and on capitalist vs consumer. Most courts will tend to consider copyright violation done for commercial gain to be graver than copyright violations done for private use. In fact, in many countries (including Norway, which is mine), copyright doesn't usually protect against copying for personal use.
While your opinion on the Beta/VHS case is only implied, I would like to point out that VHS was technically superior to Beta (in the areas of interest to the consumer) and this was the reason for its success. Specifically, VHS had a 2-hour recording time whileas Beta had only 1. This difference made all the difference to the consumer who could then record an entire movie without having to change tapes in the middle. There are other things to say about this particular story, of course. There is a nice summary towards the end of this article: here
I kind of like the way in which they just snuck in that detail and then sort of never mentioned it again in the article. I mean, come on, any idiot could come up with a revolutionary new profit-making scheme (sorry, business model) if it's allowed to include "and then we smack on a 1% government-mandated sales tax that gets paid to me...":-)
While I think you are on to something, I don't think that the clincher is in getting the court system to recognize the fatal flaws of the software patent system. The courts can only do so much - and they certainly cannot actually overturn laws willy nilly just because they think they're stupid. What is more likely to be effective is if, say, some company manages to obtain a patent that potentially has significant negative impact for a substantial portion of the population and then decides to aggressively pursue this patent. Let's say, in way of example, that you have patented a "method to display graphics images within a software application" in such a way as to make inline graphics in web browsers be covered by your patent. You then aggressively pursue anyone who is using this technique and force them to stop doing it. You don't go for royalties because you are interested in bringing down the patent system, not profiting from it. The users of popular web browsers will find that they can no longer see anything but text on "the internet" but have to individually click on every image to get it in a separate window. Such a successful patent is likely to cause sufficient unrest among the web-using masses that legislators may begin to take note. Then, perhaps, they start work to fix the system. Record companies are doing something along these lines right now in conjunction with the work on an EU-friendly amendment to Norwegian copyright law. This amendment will basically make it illegal to convert music you've bought into MP3 files (I paraphrase heavily). Now, MP3 players are reasonably wide-spread in Norway and people really like them. In part for this reason, there is a lot of resistance in parliament already against the law but they will probably cave in since it's basically EU mandated. Nevertheless, this is likely to cause a serious backlash in the general population once it sinks in how much this is going to impact _their_ lives (how much is dad going to like having to buy one CD for the house and one for the car?). The record companies are not likely to come out of this looking very good and in the long term this is going to really burn them. There really are some battles you really don't want to win. But, of course, if they had at all realized this, they wouldn't have started the battle in the first place...
Which is as good a reason as any to _not_ fill society with gun-toting cops. The easy way to get hold of a gun in the US simply has to be "mug a security guard"... I don't get why anyone would want to make guns that readily available.
It would only have been hypocritical if someone said "look MS is evil but Philips are a bunch of swell guys". Nobody bothers to mention that Philips is the spawn of satan here because nobody around here cares about Philips one way or the other. Lots of people here care about MS, however.
I never said to homebrew it. You need to use algorithms developed by professionals. This means you either use custom algos developed by your organisation's maths geeks, or you use publicly available algos. Whichever it is, you will want one that can easily be hidden in a data stream that is otherwise indistinguishable from noise so that your noise-like encrypted messages can't be spotted for what they really are. Finding such a noiseful channel to utilize is another task for the maths geeks. An alternative to finding a noiseful channel would be to find one that is never monitored by anyone anyway so it doesn't matter that your added noise is alien to it. As an example, if I knew that the local security people don't for some reason monitor nor log ICMP, I could ping some other box in a pattern that encodes my message. The reason that steganography has typically been used within closed groups is that it has traditionally been symmetric in the sense that if you knew how to write the message, you would also know how to read it and vice versa.
For many employers, "you are an employee" is sufficient reason to monitor your communications. This surveillance is, however, very superficial in most cases. Superficial surveillance is unlikely to spot a half-decent steganographic effort and so such is likely to offer some protection. If ever they develop the notion that you require extra special treatment, they might catch on to your hidden messages, of course (or perhaps not). If they do, then I agree they have all the more reason to suspect you of foul play. It's something of a trade-off.
Cryptography is also security through obscurity in that case. The only thing protecting your information is the fact that you haven't properly documented your private key:-)
Steganography is typically used within a closed group. It is typically not used between strangers. Therefore, you don't need to publicize your steganographic protocols beyond a small group of people. Furthermore, if you take the trouble to hide your data with steganography chances are that you will also encrypt it. In this scenario, the two accomplish different goals. Steganography ensures that no-one realizes that you have communicated at all and cryptography ensures that even if the steganography is compromised, they cannot tell what it was you were sending. Steganography is gold to any mole in need of transmitting information from inside a hostile organization to his people on the outside. So long as the hostile org cannot tell that he is communicating, he is safe. Once they figure out, he is busted. Or for anyone transmitting information across an untrusted medium for that matter. If you use PGP to protect your Internet mail, the Feds are going to know that you have _something_ going on and that they might want to keep extra tabs on you. If you also use steganographic techniques, you'll never show up on their radar in the first place.
What is meant by distributing the code in this case? If I use a bunch of GPL products to create a fab web site and just run the resulting software on my web server via cgi-bin or similar, I have not distributed the code as such. I will, however, be using the code to deliver some service or other to a public audience. What obligations does the GPL impose in this case?
Yes, it would only work if the "unclean hands" argument is as strong as was indicated by a previous poster. If it is, however, this could be a silver bullet:-)
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Or, formulated differently, the GPL is about ensuring the freedom of *future* code.
The majority of the world's software engineers work to solve (relatively) local problems, writing in-house applications. A minority work on off-the-shelf software. There is no convincing reason why we couldn't do without proprietary solutions to the latter, and the former will still be busy solving their employers' in-house problems.
The brilliant thinker should have no problem (if, indeed, he is brilliant) convincing someone to hire him or contract him to work on solving their problems. If his domain is in the solving of general problems in an elegant manner, he should be writing books, not software.
The fact that software can be easily replicated (and changed) is exactly the reason why it's so important that people be allowed to do this. So long as software remains proprietary, it is only ever going to be moderately useful to society since its development is under centralized control that does not necessarily have the users' knowledge of which parts of the software need improving (nor may they be interested in doing it had they known). Give that control to the users, and you will soon have software custom-designed to the specific requirements of every possible niche of application. Since modifying, running and distributing the software is nearly trivial to do, this is going to happen (with free software). :-)
Keeping software proprietary is therefore a mechanism that is going to hold us back in an artificial manner while free software will see us accellerating ahead at unprecedented speeds. This is why proprietary software is unethical.
If the same principles applied to automobile manufacture, then whatever information is necessary to replicate an automobile should be made likewise widely available to encourage people to create vehicles custom-built to their own individual needs. Since this is, however, impractical, "free blueprints" isn't currently a pressing matter. Once we get cheap matter replicators, things may change
If I choose to buy a program that solves a problem no one else has solved, that is evil?
It isn't unethical to buy free software.
Just because the author wants to get a few bucks for his/her effort, that is evil?
It isn't unethical to sell free software.
If so, then I've been lied to my whole life.
That is entirely possible - I really wouldn't know.
I don't think Linus is claiming that Tridgell acted wrongly because of reverse-engineering BitKeeper as such, rather that Tridgell acted wrongly because the effect was to inconvenience Linus and to upset Linus' friend.
Linus seems to be a lot more concerned with pragmatic matters (i.e., getting things done) than he is with ideology (free software, open standards, etc.). The latter only matters to him insomuch as it facilitates the former.
There may be a difference between "typeface" and "font". Fonts (in this context) tend to contain computer code, which perhaps _can_ be copyrighted. Not that I would know.
There certainly _is_ a difference between copyright and trademark though and it is no surprise that font names can be trademarked - most things can be trademarked if you're a bit careful how your mark looks.
If there is no longer demand for the product, then it is unclear why it is necessary to maintain copyright on it. A copyright on something that is not in demand is pretty worthless. If there _is_ demand for it and the copyright owner - for whatever reason - is refusing to publish, then it is entirely justifiable that society should withdraw the copyright and allow others to publish. Again, if there is no actual demand, then noone actually _will_ publish since there's no money to be made from it.
Sitting on a product for 10 years without publishing when you know there are people that would buy the product is, in this case, an abuse of a government-granted monopoly and should be acted against by the state.
The basic difference is that the GPL violators in question are commercial entities that directly profit from their activity, whileas the majority of file sharers in question are copying for their own personal use and are not directly profiting from it.
Which one you think is most evil depends a bit on where you stand on individual freedom vs state control and on capitalist vs consumer.
Most courts will tend to consider copyright violation done for commercial gain to be graver than copyright violations done for private use. In fact, in many countries (including Norway, which is mine), copyright doesn't usually protect against copying for personal use.
While your opinion on the Beta/VHS case is only implied, I would like to point out that VHS was technically superior to Beta (in the areas of interest to the consumer) and this was the reason for its success. Specifically, VHS had a 2-hour recording time whileas Beta had only 1. This difference made all the difference to the consumer who could then record an entire movie without having to change tapes in the middle.
There are other things to say about this particular story, of course. There is a nice summary towards the end of this article:
here
I kind of like the way in which they just snuck in that detail and then sort of never mentioned it again in the article. I mean, come on, any idiot could come up with a revolutionary new profit-making scheme (sorry, business model) if it's allowed to include "and then we smack on a 1% government-mandated sales tax that gets paid to me ..." :-)
While I think you are on to something, I don't think that the clincher is in getting the court system to recognize the fatal flaws of the software patent system. The courts can only do so much - and they certainly cannot actually overturn laws willy nilly just because they think they're stupid. ...
What is more likely to be effective is if, say, some company manages to obtain a patent that potentially has significant negative impact for a substantial portion of the population and then decides to aggressively pursue this patent. Let's say, in way of example, that you have patented a "method to display graphics images within a software application" in such a way as to make inline graphics in web browsers be covered by your patent. You then aggressively pursue anyone who is using this technique and force them to stop doing it. You don't go for royalties because you are interested in bringing down the patent system, not profiting from it. The users of popular web browsers will find that they can no longer see anything but text on "the internet" but have to individually click on every image to get it in a separate window.
Such a successful patent is likely to cause sufficient unrest among the web-using masses that legislators may begin to take note. Then, perhaps, they start work to fix the system.
Record companies are doing something along these lines right now in conjunction with the work on an EU-friendly amendment to Norwegian copyright law. This amendment will basically make it illegal to convert music you've bought into MP3 files (I paraphrase heavily). Now, MP3 players are reasonably wide-spread in Norway and people really like them. In part for this reason, there is a lot of resistance in parliament already against the law but they will probably cave in since it's basically EU mandated. Nevertheless, this is likely to cause a serious backlash in the general population once it sinks in how much this is going to impact _their_ lives (how much is dad going to like having to buy one CD for the house and one for the car?). The record companies are not likely to come out of this looking very good and in the long term this is going to really burn them.
There really are some battles you really don't want to win. But, of course, if they had at all realized this, they wouldn't have started the battle in the first place
ICBMs aren't nearly as useful as you seem to think. :-)
Or would you be ok with running your car on radioactive gasoline?
Which is as good a reason as any to _not_ fill society with gun-toting cops. ... I don't get why anyone would want to make guns that readily available.
The easy way to get hold of a gun in the US simply has to be "mug a security guard"
Well, it is, yes. In large parts of Europe, however, stuff like that still gets slammed down on when it leaks to the press.
It would only have been hypocritical if someone said "look MS is evil but Philips are a bunch of swell guys".
Nobody bothers to mention that Philips is the spawn of satan here because nobody around here cares about Philips one way or the other. Lots of people here care about MS, however.
Biometrics can certainly be spoofed. How easy this is depends entirely upon the equipment being used for recording and verifying it.
2 o wnloads/fingerprint_scanners.pdf
/.-inserted spaces in those links if you're copying them)
Here's a link to a Norwegian article about one successful breach:
http://www.tu.no/nyheter/ikt/article30692.ece
The article links to this Swedish one on the same story:
http://www.nyteknik.se/pub/ipsart.asp?art_id=3739
and this concerning some Japanese experiments:
http://www.rootsecure.net/content/downloads/pdf_d
(mind the
I don't think you can actually buy search result placement from Google. Your search results will always be according to their general algorithms.
Well, what they are proposing isn't actually a drift towards US practices. It's more of a violent jolt into US practices ...
I never said to homebrew it. You need to use algorithms developed by professionals. This means you either use custom algos developed by your organisation's maths geeks, or you use publicly available algos. Whichever it is, you will want one that can easily be hidden in a data stream that is otherwise indistinguishable from noise so that your noise-like encrypted messages can't be spotted for what they really are. Finding such a noiseful channel to utilize is another task for the maths geeks.
An alternative to finding a noiseful channel would be to find one that is never monitored by anyone anyway so it doesn't matter that your added noise is alien to it. As an example, if I knew that the local security people don't for some reason monitor nor log ICMP, I could ping some other box in a pattern that encodes my message.
The reason that steganography has typically been used within closed groups is that it has traditionally been symmetric in the sense that if you knew how to write the message, you would also know how to read it and vice versa.
For many employers, "you are an employee" is sufficient reason to monitor your communications. This surveillance is, however, very superficial in most cases. Superficial surveillance is unlikely to spot a half-decent steganographic effort and so such is likely to offer some protection.
If ever they develop the notion that you require extra special treatment, they might catch on to your hidden messages, of course (or perhaps not). If they do, then I agree they have all the more reason to suspect you of foul play. It's something of a trade-off.
Cryptography is also security through obscurity in that case. The only thing protecting your information is the fact that you haven't properly documented your private key :-)
Steganography is typically used within a closed group. It is typically not used between strangers. Therefore, you don't need to publicize your steganographic protocols beyond a small group of people.
Furthermore, if you take the trouble to hide your data with steganography chances are that you will also encrypt it. In this scenario, the two accomplish different goals. Steganography ensures that no-one realizes that you have communicated at all and cryptography ensures that even if the steganography is compromised, they cannot tell what it was you were sending.
Steganography is gold to any mole in need of transmitting information from inside a hostile organization to his people on the outside. So long as the hostile org cannot tell that he is communicating, he is safe. Once they figure out, he is busted.
Or for anyone transmitting information across an untrusted medium for that matter. If you use PGP to protect your Internet mail, the Feds are going to know that you have _something_ going on and that they might want to keep extra tabs on you. If you also use steganographic techniques, you'll never show up on their radar in the first place.
What is meant by distributing the code in this case? If I use a bunch of GPL products to create a fab web site and just run the resulting software on my web server via cgi-bin or similar, I have not distributed the code as such. I will, however, be using the code to deliver some service or other to a public audience. What obligations does the GPL impose in this case?
I can see it already ... "By taking fire from this robot, you agree to the following terms ..." :-)
Yes, it would only work if the "unclean hands" argument is as strong as was indicated by a previous poster. If it is, however, this could be a silver bullet :-)