That would explain why you love to rant incoherently so much.
You have evidently nothing to add to the conversation so I'll leave it at that.
Ah, yes, the desperate posturing, inevietably and expectedly arriving from the likes of you, as it becomes apparent that the sanctimonious illogic, presumptious lack of reason and conceited diversions have all failed, and the only available course of action is retreat. Braying indignantly all the way out.
Please keep indulging in your fantasies where slavedom is freedom.
That would be "slavery". And based on your musings so far, you are also quite incapable of understanding the meaning of the word "freedom" either.
When 90% of the population finds out that they can live thanks to your generous contributions and finally decide to stay at home and get fat(ter) because, after all, YOU are paying for them, I take it you'll be happy.
Ah, yes, of course, all these wheelchair-bound old ladies conspiring to party on my dime. And all these 9 out of 10 people who are merrily plotting to eke out a poverty level existence so that they do not have to work at my expense. Newsflash: very few people are as socially mis-adjusted as you are. Great majority takes pride in their work and have ambitions well beyond living in a government housing and feeding at the soup kitchen, and subsequently I am in no danger of becoming a sole contributor to society, no matter how badly you wish it were so.
Have a nice, productive, day.
Likewise. Good luck stealing from widows, taking candy from toddlers, or whatever is that you do to pallacate your sense of social "injustice" stemming from the society's very bad taste in not making you a king, or at least a dictator, so that you could enjoy the level of "freedom" you so much desire.
Random packet-filler before encryption and interval randomization of packets both incoming and outgoing.
Again, you assume, which seems to be a persistent characteristics of enthusiasts of such things, that the Ministry of Love is completely incompetent. As I already explained repeatedely, any encryption of any kind, i.e. "random packet-filler before encryption" is grounds for getting your ass in the re-education camp. There are countries already where any private encription of anything, including personal files, is illegal without a government license and thus grounds for imprisonment. Yet technofiles seem to be blissfully ignorant of this simple and effective counter-measure.
On top of that, steganography.
While steganography is to a certain degree effective on its own, to conceal illicit data, it has many many drawbacks, vast increase in data size being one of them, and still does not avoid the problems of plausability of such transmissions and requires prior dissemination of information about the location and the method of extraction of the steganographically hidden data, which information must, by necessity, be itself in clear text and thus be subject to interception. That is, you have to somehow inform the masses of dissidents that the pitcture of Natalie Portman on that bio site contains a hidden anti-fascist-dictator insurgency manual. Thus the Ministry of Love is in a position to simply bust the door of any citizen downloading it, unless way too many of them do, in which case the Ministry can be pro-active and simply block the thing ahead of time. And so on.
The Internet is the most efficient method dissidents currently possess of communicating, if they have good software tools.
Again, that is a delusion. Yes, clandestine operators, whose methods of transmission are pre-arranged and whose contact lists never expand are capable of such things using sophisticated steganography. But that is an anathema of "dissidency". Dissidents must continously expand their target audience, as to inform their countrymen and by doing so immediately lose any advantages such hidden channels have. That is a fundamental problem of a point-to-point communication system, such as Internet, vs the requirements of dissidency. Speaking of spies and clandestine operators, even they are still relying on the short-wave "number stations" as that method is orders of magnitude safer then the internet.
Phones can be run through a listening bank, mail can be opened and read, and Internet packets can be parsed... all these things become equally secure, however, using the above time-tested methods of covert communication.
Again, you seem to fail to understand that all of these methods are only usueful for a spy or an existing cell of resistance, not for any political dissident activity. Furthermore, internet packet parsing can be now automated in a degree far exceeding the other two methods you listed.
However, transmitting by reading your secured message over a phone line is very low bandwidth, and will usually only communicate text (unless one speaks for several hours, which is in itself very suspicious... then again, you could always apply a vocal cipher to JPEG data, and read that).
No, one simply uses the phone to coordinate real-world activities, by using various creative substitution and innuendo techniques, which again is only effective with prior arrangements. Telephony is not a good tool for dissidency. Disposable broadcasts stations, rootfop leaflet launchers and grafitti, are.
Mail containing magnetic/optical media may already be under very heavy suspicion, and may never get through at all because of this factor, so all that can usually be sent is paper (Microdot-sized data storage aside, as we're assuming it would be very hard to sneak this kind of printing technology into [the majority of] the dissidents' hands.
See above. Mail a dissdency tool does not make becau
So what you're is that Theo de Raadt should implement every stupid idea that gets floated past him, or else it's his own damn fault when none of the major corporations donate to OpenBSD/OpenSSH?
No, Theo should just stop being Theo, and start behaving like a human being, with some humility and understanding of others. The problem is not with "implementing any idea floated by him" but with his attitude towards those who do the floating. And yes, it is his damn own fault as he managed to successfully scare a lot of potential donors away with his antics. He is exceedingly lucky that Mozilla and others chose to look past his wonderful personality and donate anyhow in response to his baseless accusatory finger pointing and illogical demands. In Theo's world, nothing ever is Theo's fault, you see.
Again, it is exactly the opposite: in the case of the GPL it is not that you are granted a license, then you got some code, but you get the binaries, *then* you are granted a license over the sources *because* you got the binaries and the license that accompanied them, and *finally* you get the sources.
This is getting bothersome, I already quoted you the exact GPL passage witch makes an explicit exception to this chain of events, granting licenses before the delivery of the code implied by such a grant.
Not only you reply with arguments that have been taking care of *days* before your reply in other parts of the thread,
Oh, I am sooo terribly sorry for not reading the whole damn thread with its hundreds of posts in a timely manner, to your satisfaction, every time some anonymous goofball replies to one of my posts. It might come as a great shock to you, but for me, unlike for some here, Slashdot is an amusing past-time, to be enjoyed whenever I have time and driven mainly by automated email notifications of replies to me. If this does not suit you, Mr. Coward, Anonymous, you can kiss my hairy ass, and then get lost along with the presumptuous attitude your rode on in.
I ask you for opinions sustaining your interpretation
Oh, wait, is this "turbidostato"? I see that ever increasing confidence in your arguments led you finally to the bold move of posting as an AC. In keeping with this progression of assuredness, threats if violence can't be far behind now.
for some lines in a license, and you answer that you already quoted the lines of the license I meant to. Great.
Err, "interpretation"? What is there to "interpret" about the term "third parties"? That they are "third"? As in not the distributor nor the recipient? Is there any other way to look at it? Or "parties"? Are you implying that this term needs interpretation? To, say, avoid confusion with a birthday gathering?
I tell you that currently you won't gain access to Trustix source code from Trustix (operated by Comodo IP Limited), unless you become a Trustix client and you point me to a sources repository operated by DFK Systems Limited, a different company, and your point is? At least you could hide your intent a little bit more by pointing to the community effort (www.trustix.org) instead!
I hope this will not cause you some unhealthy mental fireworks, but the repository I pointed to is what Trustix.com download section links to. There are many mirrors which store the code of the "official" Trustix archives. Although I am sure I am going to hear now endless hair-splitting moaning as to how "mirrors" do not truly qualify, even though their official status and direct feed by Trustix directly contradicts your claims.
I tell you that you won't gain access to the sources for the boxed Zimbra product (which is most of it, if not all, GPL-based) while you can get the Community version, and you have the guts to point to... the community version itself! as a prove... of nothing.
You could be somewhat more sneakily disingenuous, your maneuvering as it stands is too obvious. There is no other way for Zimbra to provide access to sources, otherwise the closed source portions would have to be also included. Zimbra's staff operates the so-called "community" sourceforge site (just click on sourceforge project "home" page). Again you demand that Zimbra store the files on their servers, and provide the source code in a way that you approve of. No such clause exists in the GPL. GPL does not even mention you once, no doubt to your great annoyance.
Ask Microsoft for a Windows 95 copy. To the best of my knowledge you won't be able to get it from them. Ask Microsoft for a legal license to use Windows 95: you can get it (while at current XP prices), at least if you are a big account.
In which case you can also get the product. Microsoft sells "media packs" for Open License customers (I assume this is what you are referring to). You can obtain media packs for any of the products you have a valid license for (some licenses expire). The cost of the pack is the media+shipping. For example Enterprise Sever 2003 Media Pack was around $25 last I looked.
Of course you can provide any example, can't you? Or better yet, you surely can point out a case where the FSF asked for the sources for software they didn't access to the binaries, don't you?
A random case. One of many. In most cases on gpl-violations.org, FSF did not have access to binaries as they were not the customers of these products.
I see you become more and more offensive with every post, which goes a long way to show how civilized YOU are.
A critique of the level of civilized discourse, coming from someone who claims that nearly everybody else is an "idiot" and/or a murderer. How delightfully quaint.
How cute... I thought I simply said "leave me be".
Leave you be? Let me see... first you are whining about me being supposedly a communist, then claim that 99% of the world are "fundamentalist" communists, followed by complaining that the USA and Canada do not operate up to your demanding standards of dog-eat-dog "capitalism", following which you accuse Canadians of being murderers, all the while graciously calling people "idiots", following which you call the elderly, the sick and some children "parasites" and "vegetables", following which you complain how the poor, innocent, "leave me be", you, are being oppressed by my refusal to roll over and play possum in face of your towering illogic.
That is some "leave me be"!
Yes, an "or i'll fucking you" is implied. Yes I made a MS joke, because I understand you are nothing but a Slashbot, so I might just cue you in and make your life easier.
You are making even less sense then usual, which I guess should qualify as some sort of athletic record. Go you!
Your "representative democracy" is nothing more but an attempt at dictatorship, only more organized and thinly disguised.
Ah, yes, let me guess, in keeping with your view of "capitalism", the only "free" society would be one where the laws of the jungle are in effect. No governance, no police, no army, no courts. Every man and his trusty shotgun for himself! You are getting your advanced political ideas from the movie "Mad Max", right?
Anything that limits my freedom is just that.
Your "freedom" to swing your fist ends at the tip of someone else' nose. You cannot do whatever you want, unless you are a hermit in the mountains and completely out of range of any other human contact and providing that your activities do not result in any effects felt outside your hermit domain. Failing that, as soon as you decide to partake in a society, your liberties to do whatever you wish will be limited to account for liberties of others, in any type of community, even "libertarian" or "anarcho-capitalist" one. This compromise is the essence of any society, although it seems to seriously furrow the brows of some impressively dense Neanderthals.
Oh sorry, I used the forbidden word... Am I going to be deported to Siber^H^H^H^H^Ha civilized, pinnacle-of-society jail tonight, for disagreeing with "The People"?
Are you on medication? Did you take it as prescribed?
Conscience-free parasites" are those that YOU support by happily paying for their life while they vegetate.
Yes, particularly the elderly, the disabled, the infirm and the children. Despicable "vegetables" all.
While your complete lack of any comprehension of what a society is can be at times amusing, it is also a sad testimony as to how thin the veneer of civilization truly is. One careless scratch and such vile monsters like yourself are revealed lurking underneath, lusting to dominate, to enslave others and to satisfy that boundless, animalistic greed burning like a fire in their bellies.
Which is fine, after all, it's your money you're wasting.
I find it fascinating that various "anarcho-capitalists" and "libertarians" seem to be always greatly worried about what I do with my money. Your concern for the well being of my dollars is very much appreciated. It is not like dollars are not sentient or are incapable of sufferring, unlike those disposable people, who therefore warrant no concern for at all, right? Thank you for reminding us about the proper order of priorities: first money and material things, then the most selfish of the hoarders of the said money and things, and then the rest of the humanity! I am so glad that you could illustrate that glorious world-view so clearly!
How comes that in your uber-free country you need to force other people to behave the way YOU want?
It is called "representative, parlimentary democracy". Since it is being somewhat more advanced then the law of the jungle, which seems to be the pinnacle of your thought, that idea, created in an attept to achieve a balance between individual's rights and that of the community, is likely going to zoom over your head so high that it might as well be in orbit.
Canadians have chosen to kill people (but hey, they don't do it directly! they have an army for this, so their hands are clean) when said people refuse to keep supporting parasites = don't pay (part of) their taxes.
Again, name one case where the Canadian Army (of all things!) killed any Canadian who refused to pay taxes. At most, you would end up with your assets frozen and income garnished. And you are always free to leave for more "capitalist" places, anytime.
When they finally come to take away what you have earned and you try to defend it,
There are many countries which do not have any taxation. May I recommend Nauru? Russian Mafia's favourite.
In Canada, if you refuse to leave, and yet insist on taking part in the society which has rules incompatible with your worldview, where you are a tiny minority, the onus is on you to either convince others to be like you and change the rules through a valid democratic political process, change yourself or depart. Trying to kill other Canadians, which is what you are talking about, because you seem to value your loot more then their lives, will indeed result in the Police (not the Army) shooting back at your evil ass.
I'll be flying over immediately.
The wee little problem being, of course, us Canadians not wanting the likes of conscience-free parasites as yourself around here.
Err... on second thought, yea, the Candian Taxation Collection Army will bust the doors to your home when you are 2 days late with your $0.25 underpayment of taxes, and will blow your brains out, rape your wife, skin your cat and eat your liver! You would be in a terrible, mortal danger here from all the communist collaborators and our Soviet Canadian Red Army. Do not come here! Save yourself and your fair and square looted loot! Stay away! Warning! Warning! Social Conscience Detected in vicinity of Canada! Anarcho-capitalists run for your lives! Warning! Warning!
Your examples (40 million people without healthcare) only show that a half-assed attempt at capitalism can fail.
Very well then, show me an example of your "perfect" capitalism at work, or at least as close to perfect as possible.
I realize it must be difficult to aknowledge the existance of, oh I don't know, Poland, Czech Republic, Slovakia, tcfka Jugoslavia, Russia (!), Cambodia, Vietnam... when the only continent you know is North America.
If any of these are supposed to be examples of the glory of unrestricted capitalism at work, you have a rewarding career involving oversized shoes, a red nose and a circus tent ahead of you.
And I'll be delighted to know why your perfect Social Democracy needs to kill the ones who oppose it and refuse to take part in it.
Huh? You mean Canadians kill people who refuse to take part in our system? Really? Name one.
Freenet 0.7 uses UDP to/from random ports with no giveaway 'signature' bytes and is designed to look like streaming or network game traffic.
That is self-contradictory, game traffic by definition uses known signatures. All it takes to detect these "illicit" transmissions is to discard all known approved game/commercial packet types and traffic patterns and what remains must be the dissident communications.
There is still a lot of work to do before it's "dissident ready" (version 1.0+) but already it's much harder to detect than you claim.
Not really, you are simply banking on the Chinese/[insert your dictator here] being incompetent. That is not exactly a reliable strategy.
Tor and i2p are *a lot* easier to find and take action against.
Ah yes, when faced with criticism of potentially putting people in jail for depending on a half-assed "secure" communication method Ian has concocted, the only valid defense is "but the other guys will get your ass in front of the firing squad for sure!". It apparently never occured to you and those promoting Tor and i2p that the Internet, although "cool" and "awesome" and "l33t" is not a safe envrionment for political dissidency in totalitarian states, no matter what "neato" (but utterly and ludicrously dangerous) software you concoct to pretend otherwise.
I hope any and all "dissidents" consider carefully what the Freenet advocates are saying and stay away from this thing as far as away as possible. It's got "a visit to the re-education camp" written all over it.
However, if you are a pedophile, things look much more promising, as you are likely living in a western democracy, where no-one has the legal authority (save maybe Bush's anti-terrorist task forces) to spy on such traffic without a court order and you are not put in danger (at least yet) by mere presence of such traffic.
Good plan, and the Information and Internet Ministry approves of commercial use of SSL sites, to prevent thieves interfering with the National Business, except that the Totalitarian Information Ministry also requires all SSL sites to have all of their keys in escrow with the Ministry. That is a pre-condition of doing business. Any non-escrowed site you are accessing, will be either a) blocked and/or b) you will have a visit from a very friedly Ministry Staff to question you on your indiscretions and educate your as to any further use of the Approved Internet and avoidance of web sites where Enemies' of the State lurk.
Which brings me to my point, shedding light on a positive aspect of Freenet, such as being a way for citizens of repressive governments to freely communicate with each other, giving them a fighting chance to organize themselves into a resistance. China comes immediately to mind, or Uzbekistan. Knowledge is power, communication its' medium, Freenet one of its' tools.
As many have already pointed out, albait semi-coherently, this particular aspect of Freenet is highly questionable. The problem is that in any of these oppressive regimes, the very existence of encrypted traffic in/out of your computer is grounds for imprisonment. China for example has the capability to analyse packets at the ISP level thanks to major work done for them by Cisco, who loves money far more then any of our supposedly cherished principles. Therefore Freenet, be it "dark" or "light" net, is fundamentally dangerous and unuseable in those places. Whats worse, Ian and other Freenet enthusiasts seems to actively mislead less-technically savvy potential Freenet users into a false sense of security. Now combine this with the fact that Freenet's present major, so called "killer" application is child porn, and the fact that the "dark" mode is in fact more suitable for closely-knit pedophile rings operating in western countries, where prosecutors are burdened with a need for warrants and the like, and where running arbitrary encryption software is not banned, and you can see why very many people remain skeptical, to say the least, of the activities of Ian and his helpers and the way in which they (misre)present themselves as champions of Liberty and defenders of the downtrotten.
So let's be clear on another point. Your funding of your goverment is resulting in the killing of people you have never even met and likely had no real reason to kill.
That of course is a logical fallacy.
The killing is done by armies, controlled by governments, controlled by politicians, aided by media, elected by citizens (at least in a democratic state), and all of it financed by taxation/consumer-spending/lobbying/what-not.
But because you are likely an authority and taxation hater, you chose the government's financing as the point to fixate upon. Ignoring the fact that any of the above factors (and probably many more) are all links in the chain leading to "killing people" and this process can be intrerrupted at any of these points. Furthermore, some of these points are in fact essential, as -- for example -- if the defense of a country is removed, or governance eliminated, external attackers or plain internal thugish opportunists would quickly do the "killing of people" for gratis. The difference being that it would be the hapless libertarians quickly learning the true meaning of their success in the cross-hairs of invading barbarians or in the slave-trade pens of warlords.
This has baffled me to no end. Try as I might, I have a hard time imagining the advantages of this approach beyond a false sense of security. Add to this the fact that in places like China, where the authorities are likely to put your ass in the gulag just for trading encrypted packets, or running some suspicious to them services on suspicious ports, which they will detect due to the wonderful all-pervasive ISP surveilance of every packet provided to them by giants of moral integrity such as Cisco, and things become even murkier.
I find the problem intractable from a theoretical standpoint, given current IP protocols and network implementations. But maybe I am wrong. Someone enlighten me please.
You know, it's funny, but if people always supported the systems that gave them everything they had, America would likely still be a British colony.
Sometimes challenging the status quo can be useful.
Never mind that. We would be still hanging off the trees in Africa -- which must certainly constitute the quintessential essence and the very apex of "conservativism".
But I can give you license to drive my car whenever you come to my country; obviously that doesn't mean I'll have to pay for your plane tickets. And if it happens that you never come to my country, thus never exploding your right to drive my car, the license I gave to you is no less "licensing" than if it happens that you come here monthly.
Yet that decision, to fulfill such license, is then completely up to me. I can decide not to come to the country, or not. In effect, it is no different to granting me control of the vehicle, as it is me, exclusively, not you, who decides when such license is fulfilled. That is the crucial distinction which you keep on missing. Same occurs with the GPL, which grants the third parties just such an ability.
But I can give you license to drive my car whenever you come to my country; obviously that doesn't mean I'll have to pay for your plane tickets.
No you dont, similarly the GPL provides for the cost of the medium on which you are obliged to deliver the source, to be paid for by me.
And if it happens that you never come to my country, thus never exploding your right to drive my car, the license I gave to you is no less "licensing" than if it happens that you come here monthly.
Again, such license grants me the discretion when to arrive, and thus the control, of the vehicle. Which was my point all along.
I hereby license you to use my very specific copy of Konqueror any time you visit me. Have I to pay your trip?
See above (bypassing the fact that you have no right to be granting any licenses to an already GPL-licensed code). Should I show up over there (which is now at my discretion exclusively) you better be home and have that Konqueror ready.
There: this morning I hacked a short script (nothing fancy, almost a "Hello World", still my own code). I hereby grant you universal rights for usage, modification, redistribution, whatever, from the moment you gain legal access to it onwards, and grant exactly the same rights to whatever third party you distribute the script be it the original, a copy, or a modification.
Again, you have put in an additional clause, not existant in the GPL, indicating "from the moment you gain legal access to". Which makes your license specifically designed to dis-associate the code from it. And which a scenario would have to be tested in court as I would argue your definition of "gaining legal access" to be synonymous with "granting a license" and thus putting yourself in a position of being obligated to delvier the code.
Am I under obligation to send the script to you?
Yes.
Even more: Am I under obligation to send the script to anyone else *even* if you manage to legally gain access to it and redistribute?
Your license does not formulate that you yourself have to grant access to third parties, only me. You are thus excluded from that obligation. However anyone else would be entitled to obtain it from me, once I had the code (again, unlike the GPL, you make no provisions to distinguish mere possession from distribution).
Very well, show me an example of a Microsoft license granted on any Microsoft software to an individual to which code that indivudual is subsequently never granted access.
And now you, please, summum just a single reputed opinion (say, Stallman) backing your assertion.
I already quoted you the relevant section, where "third parties" are mentioned explicitely.
And you please, can literally produce such a point in the license. The more I look at it the more I see that, by the GPL, I have to GRANT RIGHTS, but nothing is said about PASSING THE SOURCE.
One is equivalent to the other, as you keep refusing to understand. You may charge a fee for the media on which the source code resides, but that's about it.
Were the clever lawyers at the FSF meaning that you should pass a COPY OF THE CODE to any asking so, don't you thing they WOULD SAY SO?
They apparently failed to foresee the lengths to which someone as you would go in order to deny the obvious. I am sure they will work on more explicit spelling IN BIG LETTERS, in the next revision.
You see, the FSF lawyers say copy when they mean COPY and say license when they mean LICENSE:
Sigh, someone obtaining the copy is the direct outcome of granting the licencse. The requirements then stipulate what should happen with that copy. You are really grasping here.
What the heck would mean this point if you *always* were under obligation of giving a copy of the source to anyone that would ask for it???
As per your quoted text, if you distribute the code commercially you are obligated to offer the source as well, unless you are a non-commercial distributor who can mooch of an upstream source archive. I am not sure what your point is. In the case of corporations distributing source to each other, they clearly fall into the category "b" in your quote. The time limitation is intended to limit the burden on distributors of obsolete code which is no longer distributed.
Obviously, point 3 covers the case of the recieving end of point two: you DON'T HAVE TO PRODUCE THE SOURCE AT ALL, if all you recieved was the binaries, which is an acceptable practice, but only in the case of non-commercial redistribution.
That is intended for a case where you do not modify the code and are merely distributing it, and in a case of non-commercial situation, you are then allowed to pass the buck upstream to the original location from which you got that unmodified code so that you can avoid setting up your own repository. This desperate "reasoning" of yours is getting pathetic.
No, it doesn't. Even Stallman was for a while *selling* copies of Emacs.
I am beginning to wonder if there is something wrong with your mental faculties. Yes, one can sell Emacs but once the recipient receives it, he too can sell it to further recipients and so on, under the terms of GPL. None of which releases him from the requirement to provide source code on demand. Stallman's "selling" idea was intended as a means of funding open source projects. That is precisely what RedHat does. Yet you can still obtain all RedHat's GPL-ed code, for free, from their Fedora Core distribution, as the GPL obligates them to. Even though they keep on selling the same code as part of their RedHat Enterprise edition.
It is about giving the four liberties to the USERS of the program. If you are not a USER (like in the case you talk about regarding a network of companies sharing modifications not shared with you), then we are not talking about YOU. But if you are a USER, you already have ALL the means to reach to the source code FROM THE ONE THAT PASSED THE BINARIES TO YOU (with the already mentioned exception 2b).
No, it is about both the users and the authors/contributors i.e. the general community of users of software. That is why "third parties" are specifically mentioned. To wit, GPLv3 expands
do you realize that an "unsubstantiated attack" is the exact description of your post?
My original post is anything but "unsubstantiated", it describes the general mechanisms in play in a Capitalist marketplace, which I am willing to discuss at length. Yours, on the other hand, speaks of my "commuting with nature", a hypothetical activity about which you have no way of knowing and accuses me of being a "communist", which by any sane definition, I am far, far away from being.
You are certainly no teacher in the art of applying "modest amounts of logic and reason" but that does not surprise me, seeing as the only way to believe in the religion known as communism is to suppress reason.
Again, it is a recurring thing with you to accuse your opponents of being "communists", based merely on the fact that they dare to observe some flaws in the capitalist marketplace, which of course makes you appear as a rather unhinged personality.
Well at least you'll find yourself at home with all the fundamentalists out there.
I await eagerly your enlightenment as to my "fundamentalist" positions.
Finally, hate to break the truth to you but everyone who's not an anarchocapitalist can only be a communist.
Err, wait, it was me who was supposed to be a "fundamentalist". I think you've got your definitions mixed up. Claiming that one is in possession of the only, true, unassailable truth and everyone else is a "communist" or "heathen" or some such, is the very definition of fundamentalism.
Call it a socialist if that makes you feel better (I know truth hurts), but that will not change reality.
Although the hole you have dug for yourself with this "argument" is rather deep already, you keep on digging.
You were too stupid to realize that my first post was meant to highlight that condemning the system that gave you almost everything you enjoy in your life...
These days that would be our Canadian Social Democracy, as we are calling it here, complete with our strong social safety nets and Universal Healthcare. And thank you for recognizing its great contributions, although we still have some ways to go to match places like Iceland or Sweden, yet having luckily left USA long behind.
is even more stupid than adopting the one that brought everyone of its adopters to their knees..
You mean those 40 or so million people with no medical care in the US? Really sad, I agree. Truly unconscionable to have so many people so poor and on their knees over there, I concur.
Have a good day.
Likewise.
And please keep deluding yourself... It'll make my life even easier.
Are you a loan shark, arms dealer, human organs trader or a Halliburton stock holder, or some such other lovely person who would seek to benefit from other's misery? How nice of you.
Communist apologists are so funny. Especially when they play naive. Have a good day.
No, it is those, like yourself, who apparently think that anyone to the "right" of Benito Mussolini is a "communist" who are really funny. In a pathetic sort of way. What amuses me personally, is their propensity for firing broadside, ad hominem, wholly off target and unsubstantiated attacks, in response to just about any questioning which would demand a most modest amount of logic and reason on their part to respond, and then hiding behind asine one-liners when called on their non-sequiturs.
As soon as government regulation becomes involved, you no longer have true capitalism.
As someone already responed to you, without external enforcement, capitalism is simply impossible. The concept of "private property", "capital" and a myriad of other things depends on a central, nation-wide, or even in many cases global, entities to dictate and enforce the rules of all of these, artificial, and pretty much arbitrarty from the point of view of many possible societal systems, concepts.
Nice to know you live in a commune, in direct contact with Mother Nature, taking care of your peers an putting everybody's needs before yours. I take it this is the reason why you're drilling wells in Sub-Saharian Africa, clothing the poor and feeding the hungry.
Or maybe, just maybe, you're sitting in your chair and posting bullshit on/.
While amusing, thus has anything to do with the above post how exactly?
This is the future, where you will need the manufacturer's permission to do anything to an item that you supposedly own.
Capitalism is an equal opportunity for wealth.
You seem not to realise that the quote above is the direct outcome of the one below. The ultimate purpose of Capitalism, from a perspective of a powerful participant, such as a multi-national corporation, is to enslave everybody who can be enslaved by making them dependant on your products and destroy or marginalize the rest, by any means one can get away with. An ability to deprive the consumers of control of the things they supposedly own, or ensuring that such things have built-in obsolesence and are as disposable as possible, to be replaced with even less controllable and more disposable "goods", are perfectly valid strategies from a purely capitalist perspective, where greed and bottom line are the only overriding concerns and where definitions of the nature of "private property" are simply naive holdovers from earlier, simpler times and easily circumvented by technological chickanery.
Why are you reading/. if you can't find enjoyment in obscure jokes?
Sometimes I do wonder.
Fucking lighten up, man. Read this and realize that I was agreeing with you.
You had me there, I do not religiously study the whole of the Monthy Python's career, and I am afraid quite a lof of other people had no clue what you were refferring to, either.
Your confusion about driver's licenses and software licenses can be summarized thusly:
A license to drive a vehicle, or even your hypothetical license to the "money in your pocket" are different from software licenses because they are not specific enough. Software licenses have one-to-one relationships with a unique piece of code. The licenses you mentioned do not, they cover a whole class of things: passenger cars, an unspecified amount of coins, etc. To cast a software license in the terms of cars or money, you would have to rephrase a driver's license to say "a license to drive a Ford 150, VIN:126178631783 and no other vehicle" or "a license to use a $100 bill serial number 123214124 minted in 1992" or some such similar thing. In these cases, those licenses would be then associated with a specific, unique object, just as a particular version of source code is. And in such case, adding "if you can get your hands on one" makes absolutely no practical sense and is an dishonest, empty, rhetorical device.
But even these contrived examples still do not fully match the nature of software licenses, because, again, they have no exact equivalent in licensing of physical objects.
Slashdot Mirror
That would explain why you love to rant incoherently so much.
You have evidently nothing to add to the conversation so I'll leave it at that.
Ah, yes, the desperate posturing, inevietably and expectedly arriving from the likes of you, as it becomes apparent that the sanctimonious illogic, presumptious lack of reason and conceited diversions have all failed, and the only available course of action is retreat. Braying indignantly all the way out.
Please keep indulging in your fantasies where slavedom is freedom.
That would be "slavery". And based on your musings so far, you are also quite incapable of understanding the meaning of the word "freedom" either.
When 90% of the population finds out that they can live thanks to your generous contributions and finally decide to stay at home and get fat(ter) because, after all, YOU are paying for them, I take it you'll be happy.
Ah, yes, of course, all these wheelchair-bound old ladies conspiring to party on my dime. And all these 9 out of 10 people who are merrily plotting to eke out a poverty level existence so that they do not have to work at my expense. Newsflash: very few people are as socially mis-adjusted as you are. Great majority takes pride in their work and have ambitions well beyond living in a government housing and feeding at the soup kitchen, and subsequently I am in no danger of becoming a sole contributor to society, no matter how badly you wish it were so.
Have a nice, productive, day.
Likewise. Good luck stealing from widows, taking candy from toddlers, or whatever is that you do to pallacate your sense of social "injustice" stemming from the society's very bad taste in not making you a king, or at least a dictator, so that you could enjoy the level of "freedom" you so much desire.
Again, you assume, which seems to be a persistent characteristics of enthusiasts of such things, that the Ministry of Love is completely incompetent. As I already explained repeatedely, any encryption of any kind, i.e. "random packet-filler before encryption" is grounds for getting your ass in the re-education camp. There are countries already where any private encription of anything, including personal files, is illegal without a government license and thus grounds for imprisonment. Yet technofiles seem to be blissfully ignorant of this simple and effective counter-measure.
On top of that, steganography.
While steganography is to a certain degree effective on its own, to conceal illicit data, it has many many drawbacks, vast increase in data size being one of them, and still does not avoid the problems of plausability of such transmissions and requires prior dissemination of information about the location and the method of extraction of the steganographically hidden data, which information must, by necessity, be itself in clear text and thus be subject to interception. That is, you have to somehow inform the masses of dissidents that the pitcture of Natalie Portman on that bio site contains a hidden anti-fascist-dictator insurgency manual. Thus the Ministry of Love is in a position to simply bust the door of any citizen downloading it, unless way too many of them do, in which case the Ministry can be pro-active and simply block the thing ahead of time. And so on.
The Internet is the most efficient method dissidents currently possess of communicating, if they have good software tools.
Again, that is a delusion. Yes, clandestine operators, whose methods of transmission are pre-arranged and whose contact lists never expand are capable of such things using sophisticated steganography. But that is an anathema of "dissidency". Dissidents must continously expand their target audience, as to inform their countrymen and by doing so immediately lose any advantages such hidden channels have. That is a fundamental problem of a point-to-point communication system, such as Internet, vs the requirements of dissidency. Speaking of spies and clandestine operators, even they are still relying on the short-wave "number stations" as that method is orders of magnitude safer then the internet.
Phones can be run through a listening bank, mail can be opened and read, and Internet packets can be parsed... all these things become equally secure, however, using the above time-tested methods of covert communication.
Again, you seem to fail to understand that all of these methods are only usueful for a spy or an existing cell of resistance, not for any political dissident activity. Furthermore, internet packet parsing can be now automated in a degree far exceeding the other two methods you listed.
However, transmitting by reading your secured message over a phone line is very low bandwidth, and will usually only communicate text (unless one speaks for several hours, which is in itself very suspicious... then again, you could always apply a vocal cipher to JPEG data, and read that).
No, one simply uses the phone to coordinate real-world activities, by using various creative substitution and innuendo techniques, which again is only effective with prior arrangements. Telephony is not a good tool for dissidency. Disposable broadcasts stations, rootfop leaflet launchers and grafitti, are.
Mail containing magnetic/optical media may already be under very heavy suspicion, and may never get through at all because of this factor, so all that can usually be sent is paper (Microdot-sized data storage aside, as we're assuming it would be very hard to sneak this kind of printing technology into [the majority of] the dissidents' hands.
See above. Mail a dissdency tool does not make becau
No, Theo should just stop being Theo, and start behaving like a human being, with some humility and understanding of others. The problem is not with "implementing any idea floated by him" but with his attitude towards those who do the floating. And yes, it is his damn own fault as he managed to successfully scare a lot of potential donors away with his antics. He is exceedingly lucky that Mozilla and others chose to look past his wonderful personality and donate anyhow in response to his baseless accusatory finger pointing and illogical demands. In Theo's world, nothing ever is Theo's fault, you see.
This is getting bothersome, I already quoted you the exact GPL passage witch makes an explicit exception to this chain of events, granting licenses before the delivery of the code implied by such a grant.
Oh, I am sooo terribly sorry for not reading the whole damn thread with its hundreds of posts in a timely manner, to your satisfaction, every time some anonymous goofball replies to one of my posts. It might come as a great shock to you, but for me, unlike for some here, Slashdot is an amusing past-time, to be enjoyed whenever I have time and driven mainly by automated email notifications of replies to me. If this does not suit you, Mr. Coward, Anonymous, you can kiss my hairy ass, and then get lost along with the presumptuous attitude your rode on in.
I ask you for opinions sustaining your interpretation
Oh, wait, is this "turbidostato"? I see that ever increasing confidence in your arguments led you finally to the bold move of posting as an AC. In keeping with this progression of assuredness, threats if violence can't be far behind now.
for some lines in a license, and you answer that you already quoted the lines of the license I meant to. Great.
Err, "interpretation"? What is there to "interpret" about the term "third parties"? That they are "third"? As in not the distributor nor the recipient? Is there any other way to look at it? Or "parties"? Are you implying that this term needs interpretation? To, say, avoid confusion with a birthday gathering?
I tell you that currently you won't gain access to Trustix source code from Trustix (operated by Comodo IP Limited), unless you become a Trustix client and you point me to a sources repository operated by DFK Systems Limited, a different company, and your point is? At least you could hide your intent a little bit more by pointing to the community effort (www.trustix.org) instead!
I hope this will not cause you some unhealthy mental fireworks, but the repository I pointed to is what Trustix.com download section links to. There are many mirrors which store the code of the "official" Trustix archives. Although I am sure I am going to hear now endless hair-splitting moaning as to how "mirrors" do not truly qualify, even though their official status and direct feed by Trustix directly contradicts your claims.
I tell you that you won't gain access to the sources for the boxed Zimbra product (which is most of it, if not all, GPL-based) while you can get the Community version, and you have the guts to point to... the community version itself! as a prove... of nothing.
You could be somewhat more sneakily disingenuous, your maneuvering as it stands is too obvious. There is no other way for Zimbra to provide access to sources, otherwise the closed source portions would have to be also included. Zimbra's staff operates the so-called "community" sourceforge site (just click on sourceforge project "home" page). Again you demand that Zimbra store the files on their servers, and provide the source code in a way that you approve of. No such clause exists in the GPL. GPL does not even mention you once, no doubt to your great annoyance.
Ask Microsoft for a Windows 95 copy. To the best of my knowledge you won't be able to get it from them. Ask Microsoft for a legal license to use Windows 95: you can get it (while at current XP prices), at least if you are a big account.
In which case you can also get the product. Microsoft sells "media packs" for Open License customers (I assume this is what you are referring to). You can obtain media packs for any of the products you have a valid license for (some licenses expire). The cost of the pack is the media+shipping. For example Enterprise Sever 2003 Media Pack was around $25 last I looked.
Of course you can provide any example, can't you? Or better yet, you surely can point out a case where the FSF asked for the sources for software they didn't access to the binaries, don't you?
A random case. One of many. In most cases on gpl-violations.org, FSF did not have access to binaries as they were not the customers of these products.
A critique of the level of civilized discourse, coming from someone who claims that nearly everybody else is an "idiot" and/or a murderer. How delightfully quaint.
How cute... I thought I simply said "leave me be".
Leave you be? Let me see ... first you are whining about me being supposedly a communist, then claim that 99% of the world are "fundamentalist" communists, followed by complaining that the USA and Canada do not operate up to your demanding standards of dog-eat-dog "capitalism", following which you accuse Canadians of being murderers, all the while graciously calling people "idiots", following which you call the elderly, the sick and some children "parasites" and "vegetables", following which you complain how the poor, innocent, "leave me be", you, are being oppressed by my refusal to roll over and play possum in face of your towering illogic.
That is some "leave me be"!
Yes, an "or i'll fucking you" is implied. Yes I made a MS joke, because I understand you are nothing but a Slashbot, so I might just cue you in and make your life easier.
You are making even less sense then usual, which I guess should qualify as some sort of athletic record. Go you!
Your "representative democracy" is nothing more but an attempt at dictatorship, only more organized and thinly disguised.
Ah, yes, let me guess, in keeping with your view of "capitalism", the only "free" society would be one where the laws of the jungle are in effect. No governance, no police, no army, no courts. Every man and his trusty shotgun for himself! You are getting your advanced political ideas from the movie "Mad Max", right?
Anything that limits my freedom is just that.
Your "freedom" to swing your fist ends at the tip of someone else' nose. You cannot do whatever you want, unless you are a hermit in the mountains and completely out of range of any other human contact and providing that your activities do not result in any effects felt outside your hermit domain. Failing that, as soon as you decide to partake in a society, your liberties to do whatever you wish will be limited to account for liberties of others, in any type of community, even "libertarian" or "anarcho-capitalist" one. This compromise is the essence of any society, although it seems to seriously furrow the brows of some impressively dense Neanderthals.
Oh sorry, I used the forbidden word... Am I going to be deported to Siber^H^H^H^H^Ha civilized, pinnacle-of-society jail tonight, for disagreeing with "The People"?
Are you on medication? Did you take it as prescribed?
Yes, particularly the elderly, the disabled, the infirm and the children. Despicable "vegetables" all.
While your complete lack of any comprehension of what a society is can be at times amusing, it is also a sad testimony as to how thin the veneer of civilization truly is. One careless scratch and such vile monsters like yourself are revealed lurking underneath, lusting to dominate, to enslave others and to satisfy that boundless, animalistic greed burning like a fire in their bellies.
Which is fine, after all, it's your money you're wasting.
I find it fascinating that various "anarcho-capitalists" and "libertarians" seem to be always greatly worried about what I do with my money. Your concern for the well being of my dollars is very much appreciated. It is not like dollars are not sentient or are incapable of sufferring, unlike those disposable people, who therefore warrant no concern for at all, right? Thank you for reminding us about the proper order of priorities: first money and material things, then the most selfish of the hoarders of the said money and things, and then the rest of the humanity! I am so glad that you could illustrate that glorious world-view so clearly!
How comes that in your uber-free country you need to force other people to behave the way YOU want?
It is called "representative, parlimentary democracy". Since it is being somewhat more advanced then the law of the jungle, which seems to be the pinnacle of your thought, that idea, created in an attept to achieve a balance between individual's rights and that of the community, is likely going to zoom over your head so high that it might as well be in orbit.
Again, name one case where the Canadian Army (of all things!) killed any Canadian who refused to pay taxes. At most, you would end up with your assets frozen and income garnished. And you are always free to leave for more "capitalist" places, anytime.
When they finally come to take away what you have earned and you try to defend it,
There are many countries which do not have any taxation. May I recommend Nauru? Russian Mafia's favourite.
In Canada, if you refuse to leave, and yet insist on taking part in the society which has rules incompatible with your worldview, where you are a tiny minority, the onus is on you to either convince others to be like you and change the rules through a valid democratic political process, change yourself or depart. Trying to kill other Canadians, which is what you are talking about, because you seem to value your loot more then their lives, will indeed result in the Police (not the Army) shooting back at your evil ass.
I'll be flying over immediately.
The wee little problem being, of course, us Canadians not wanting the likes of conscience-free parasites as yourself around here.
Err ... on second thought, yea, the Candian Taxation Collection Army will bust the doors to your home when you are 2 days late with your $0.25 underpayment of taxes, and will blow your brains out, rape your wife, skin your cat and eat your liver! You would be in a terrible, mortal danger here from all the communist collaborators and our Soviet Canadian Red Army. Do not come here! Save yourself and your fair and square looted loot! Stay away! Warning! Warning! Social Conscience Detected in vicinity of Canada! Anarcho-capitalists run for your lives! Warning! Warning!
Very well then, show me an example of your "perfect" capitalism at work, or at least as close to perfect as possible.
I realize it must be difficult to aknowledge the existance of, oh I don't know, Poland, Czech Republic, Slovakia, tcfka Jugoslavia, Russia (!), Cambodia, Vietnam... when the only continent you know is North America.
If any of these are supposed to be examples of the glory of unrestricted capitalism at work, you have a rewarding career involving oversized shoes, a red nose and a circus tent ahead of you.
And I'll be delighted to know why your perfect Social Democracy needs to kill the ones who oppose it and refuse to take part in it.
Huh? You mean Canadians kill people who refuse to take part in our system? Really? Name one.
That is self-contradictory, game traffic by definition uses known signatures. All it takes to detect these "illicit" transmissions is to discard all known approved game/commercial packet types and traffic patterns and what remains must be the dissident communications.
There is still a lot of work to do before it's "dissident ready" (version 1.0+) but already it's much harder to detect than you claim.
Not really, you are simply banking on the Chinese/[insert your dictator here] being incompetent. That is not exactly a reliable strategy.
Tor and i2p are *a lot* easier to find and take action against.
Ah yes, when faced with criticism of potentially putting people in jail for depending on a half-assed "secure" communication method Ian has concocted, the only valid defense is "but the other guys will get your ass in front of the firing squad for sure!". It apparently never occured to you and those promoting Tor and i2p that the Internet, although "cool" and "awesome" and "l33t" is not a safe envrionment for political dissidency in totalitarian states, no matter what "neato" (but utterly and ludicrously dangerous) software you concoct to pretend otherwise.
I hope any and all "dissidents" consider carefully what the Freenet advocates are saying and stay away from this thing as far as away as possible. It's got "a visit to the re-education camp" written all over it.
However, if you are a pedophile, things look much more promising, as you are likely living in a western democracy, where no-one has the legal authority (save maybe Bush's anti-terrorist task forces) to spy on such traffic without a court order and you are not put in danger (at least yet) by mere presence of such traffic.
Any questions?
As many have already pointed out, albait semi-coherently, this particular aspect of Freenet is highly questionable. The problem is that in any of these oppressive regimes, the very existence of encrypted traffic in/out of your computer is grounds for imprisonment. China for example has the capability to analyse packets at the ISP level thanks to major work done for them by Cisco, who loves money far more then any of our supposedly cherished principles. Therefore Freenet, be it "dark" or "light" net, is fundamentally dangerous and unuseable in those places. Whats worse, Ian and other Freenet enthusiasts seems to actively mislead less-technically savvy potential Freenet users into a false sense of security. Now combine this with the fact that Freenet's present major, so called "killer" application is child porn, and the fact that the "dark" mode is in fact more suitable for closely-knit pedophile rings operating in western countries, where prosecutors are burdened with a need for warrants and the like, and where running arbitrary encryption software is not banned, and you can see why very many people remain skeptical, to say the least, of the activities of Ian and his helpers and the way in which they (misre)present themselves as champions of Liberty and defenders of the downtrotten.
That of course is a logical fallacy.
The killing is done by armies, controlled by governments, controlled by politicians, aided by media, elected by citizens (at least in a democratic state), and all of it financed by taxation/consumer-spending/lobbying/what-not.
But because you are likely an authority and taxation hater, you chose the government's financing as the point to fixate upon. Ignoring the fact that any of the above factors (and probably many more) are all links in the chain leading to "killing people" and this process can be intrerrupted at any of these points. Furthermore, some of these points are in fact essential, as -- for example -- if the defense of a country is removed, or governance eliminated, external attackers or plain internal thugish opportunists would quickly do the "killing of people" for gratis. The difference being that it would be the hapless libertarians quickly learning the true meaning of their success in the cross-hairs of invading barbarians or in the slave-trade pens of warlords.
I find the problem intractable from a theoretical standpoint, given current IP protocols and network implementations. But maybe I am wrong. Someone enlighten me please.
Sometimes challenging the status quo can be useful.
Never mind that. We would be still hanging off the trees in Africa -- which must certainly constitute the quintessential essence and the very apex of "conservativism".
Yet that decision, to fulfill such license, is then completely up to me. I can decide not to come to the country, or not. In effect, it is no different to granting me control of the vehicle, as it is me, exclusively, not you, who decides when such license is fulfilled. That is the crucial distinction which you keep on missing. Same occurs with the GPL, which grants the third parties just such an ability.
But I can give you license to drive my car whenever you come to my country; obviously that doesn't mean I'll have to pay for your plane tickets.
No you dont, similarly the GPL provides for the cost of the medium on which you are obliged to deliver the source, to be paid for by me.
And if it happens that you never come to my country, thus never exploding your right to drive my car, the license I gave to you is no less "licensing" than if it happens that you come here monthly.
Again, such license grants me the discretion when to arrive, and thus the control, of the vehicle. Which was my point all along.
I hereby license you to use my very specific copy of Konqueror any time you visit me. Have I to pay your trip?
See above (bypassing the fact that you have no right to be granting any licenses to an already GPL-licensed code). Should I show up over there (which is now at my discretion exclusively) you better be home and have that Konqueror ready.
There: this morning I hacked a short script (nothing fancy, almost a "Hello World", still my own code). I hereby grant you universal rights for usage, modification, redistribution, whatever, from the moment you gain legal access to it onwards, and grant exactly the same rights to whatever third party you distribute the script be it the original, a copy, or a modification.
Again, you have put in an additional clause, not existant in the GPL, indicating "from the moment you gain legal access to". Which makes your license specifically designed to dis-associate the code from it. And which a scenario would have to be tested in court as I would argue your definition of "gaining legal access" to be synonymous with "granting a license" and thus putting yourself in a position of being obligated to delvier the code.
Am I under obligation to send the script to you?
Yes.
Even more: Am I under obligation to send the script to anyone else *even* if you manage to legally gain access to it and redistribute?
Your license does not formulate that you yourself have to grant access to third parties, only me. You are thus excluded from that obligation. However anyone else would be entitled to obtain it from me, once I had the code (again, unlike the GPL, you make no provisions to distinguish mere possession from distribution).
Very well, show me an example of a Microsoft license granted on any Microsoft software to an individual to which code that indivudual is subsequently never granted access.
And now you, please, summum just a single reputed opinion (say, Stallman) backing your assertion.
I already quoted you the relevant section, where "third parties" are mentioned explicitely.
And you please, can literally produce such a point in the license. The more I look at it the more I see that, by the GPL, I have to GRANT RIGHTS, but nothing is said about PASSING THE SOURCE.
One is equivalent to the other, as you keep refusing to understand. You may charge a fee for the media on which the source code resides, but that's about it.
Were the clever lawyers at the FSF meaning that you should pass a COPY OF THE CODE to any asking so, don't you thing they WOULD SAY SO?
They apparently failed to foresee the lengths to which someone as you would go in order to deny the obvious. I am sure they will work on more explicit spelling IN BIG LETTERS, in the next revision.
You see, the FSF lawyers say copy when they mean COPY and say license when they mean LICENSE:
Sigh, someone obtaining the copy is the direct outcome of granting the licencse. The requirements then stipulate what should happen with that copy. You are really grasping here.
What the heck would mean this point if you *always* were under obligation of giving a copy of the source to anyone that would ask for it???
As per your quoted text, if you distribute the code commercially you are obligated to offer the source as well, unless you are a non-commercial distributor who can mooch of an upstream source archive. I am not sure what your point is. In the case of corporations distributing source to each other, they clearly fall into the category "b" in your quote. The time limitation is intended to limit the burden on distributors of obsolete code which is no longer distributed.
Obviously, point 3 covers the case of the recieving end of point two: you DON'T HAVE TO PRODUCE THE SOURCE AT ALL, if all you recieved was the binaries, which is an acceptable practice, but only in the case of non-commercial redistribution.
That is intended for a case where you do not modify the code and are merely distributing it, and in a case of non-commercial situation, you are then allowed to pass the buck upstream to the original location from which you got that unmodified code so that you can avoid setting up your own repository. This desperate "reasoning" of yours is getting pathetic.
No, it doesn't. Even Stallman was for a while *selling* copies of Emacs.
I am beginning to wonder if there is something wrong with your mental faculties. Yes, one can sell Emacs but once the recipient receives it, he too can sell it to further recipients and so on, under the terms of GPL. None of which releases him from the requirement to provide source code on demand. Stallman's "selling" idea was intended as a means of funding open source projects. That is precisely what RedHat does. Yet you can still obtain all RedHat's GPL-ed code, for free, from their Fedora Core distribution, as the GPL obligates them to. Even though they keep on selling the same code as part of their RedHat Enterprise edition.
It is about giving the four liberties to the USERS of the program. If you are not a USER (like in the case you talk about regarding a network of companies sharing modifications not shared with you), then we are not talking about YOU. But if you are a USER, you already have ALL the means to reach to the source code FROM THE ONE THAT PASSED THE BINARIES TO YOU (with the already mentioned exception 2b).
No, it is about both the users and the authors/contributors i.e. the general community of users of software. That is why "third parties" are specifically mentioned. To wit, GPLv3 expands
My original post is anything but "unsubstantiated", it describes the general mechanisms in play in a Capitalist marketplace, which I am willing to discuss at length. Yours, on the other hand, speaks of my "commuting with nature", a hypothetical activity about which you have no way of knowing and accuses me of being a "communist", which by any sane definition, I am far, far away from being.
You are certainly no teacher in the art of applying "modest amounts of logic and reason" but that does not surprise me, seeing as the only way to believe in the religion known as communism is to suppress reason.
Again, it is a recurring thing with you to accuse your opponents of being "communists", based merely on the fact that they dare to observe some flaws in the capitalist marketplace, which of course makes you appear as a rather unhinged personality.
Well at least you'll find yourself at home with all the fundamentalists out there.
I await eagerly your enlightenment as to my "fundamentalist" positions.
Finally, hate to break the truth to you but everyone who's not an anarchocapitalist can only be a communist.
Err, wait, it was me who was supposed to be a "fundamentalist". I think you've got your definitions mixed up. Claiming that one is in possession of the only, true, unassailable truth and everyone else is a "communist" or "heathen" or some such, is the very definition of fundamentalism.
Call it a socialist if that makes you feel better (I know truth hurts), but that will not change reality.
Although the hole you have dug for yourself with this "argument" is rather deep already, you keep on digging.
You were too stupid to realize that my first post was meant to highlight that condemning the system that gave you almost everything you enjoy in your life...
These days that would be our Canadian Social Democracy, as we are calling it here, complete with our strong social safety nets and Universal Healthcare. And thank you for recognizing its great contributions, although we still have some ways to go to match places like Iceland or Sweden, yet having luckily left USA long behind.
is even more stupid than adopting the one that brought everyone of its adopters to their knees..
You mean those 40 or so million people with no medical care in the US? Really sad, I agree. Truly unconscionable to have so many people so poor and on their knees over there, I concur.
Have a good day.
Likewise.
And please keep deluding yourself... It'll make my life even easier.
Are you a loan shark, arms dealer, human organs trader or a Halliburton stock holder, or some such other lovely person who would seek to benefit from other's misery? How nice of you.
No, it is those, like yourself, who apparently think that anyone to the "right" of Benito Mussolini is a "communist" who are really funny. In a pathetic sort of way. What amuses me personally, is their propensity for firing broadside, ad hominem, wholly off target and unsubstantiated attacks, in response to just about any questioning which would demand a most modest amount of logic and reason on their part to respond, and then hiding behind asine one-liners when called on their non-sequiturs.
As someone already responed to you, without external enforcement, capitalism is simply impossible. The concept of "private property", "capital" and a myriad of other things depends on a central, nation-wide, or even in many cases global, entities to dictate and enforce the rules of all of these, artificial, and pretty much arbitrarty from the point of view of many possible societal systems, concepts.
While amusing, thus has anything to do with the above post how exactly?
Capitalism is an equal opportunity for wealth.
You seem not to realise that the quote above is the direct outcome of the one below. The ultimate purpose of Capitalism, from a perspective of a powerful participant, such as a multi-national corporation, is to enslave everybody who can be enslaved by making them dependant on your products and destroy or marginalize the rest, by any means one can get away with. An ability to deprive the consumers of control of the things they supposedly own, or ensuring that such things have built-in obsolesence and are as disposable as possible, to be replaced with even less controllable and more disposable "goods", are perfectly valid strategies from a purely capitalist perspective, where greed and bottom line are the only overriding concerns and where definitions of the nature of "private property" are simply naive holdovers from earlier, simpler times and easily circumvented by technological chickanery.
I think that's Gaydotted from now on...
Or perhaps whatever term exists for laying face-down in the muck with numerous pony hoof-prints on one's back ...
Sometimes I do wonder.
Fucking lighten up, man. Read this and realize that I was agreeing with you.
You had me there, I do not religiously study the whole of the Monthy Python's career, and I am afraid quite a lof of other people had no clue what you were refferring to, either.
Your confusion about driver's licenses and software licenses can be summarized thusly:
A license to drive a vehicle, or even your hypothetical license to the "money in your pocket" are different from software licenses because they are not specific enough. Software licenses have one-to-one relationships with a unique piece of code. The licenses you mentioned do not, they cover a whole class of things: passenger cars, an unspecified amount of coins, etc. To cast a software license in the terms of cars or money, you would have to rephrase a driver's license to say "a license to drive a Ford 150, VIN:126178631783 and no other vehicle" or "a license to use a $100 bill serial number 123214124 minted in 1992" or some such similar thing. In these cases, those licenses would be then associated with a specific, unique object, just as a particular version of source code is. And in such case, adding "if you can get your hands on one" makes absolutely no practical sense and is an dishonest, empty, rhetorical device.
But even these contrived examples still do not fully match the nature of software licenses, because, again, they have no exact equivalent in licensing of physical objects.