Copyright was created for the good of the general public. It rewards authors only to modify their behavior. Authors don't have natural rights and are not owed jack shit.
> EULAs insist that you cannot use the software without accepting them.
The same is true of the GPL.
That is NOT TRUE of the GPL. Please Read The Fine License, specifically the paragraph in section 0 which states:
"Activities other than copying, distribution and modification are not covered by this License; they are outside its scope. The act of running the Program is not restricted, and the output from the Program is covered only if its contents constitute a work based on the Program (independent of having been made by running the Program). Whether that is true depends on what the Program does."
Well, normally you have the "right" to put code you find on your computer into your own programs and sell it.
Again, not true. I cannot take code out of Microsoft Windows (which is possible using disassemblers), put it in my own program, and sell it.
Moreover, the GPL does allow me to do that, although under certain conditions: the final product must be distributed with source code and licensed under the GPL. Provided I make sure of that, I can sell GPL'd software to my heart's content.
you normally have the right to distribute your own code under any license you choose. If you accept the GPL and put some GPL code into your program, you lose that right.
If you accept a proprietary license and link a proprietary library with your code, you also lose that right. So if that right is something you can't afford to part with, you cannot build on anyone else's code, unless it is public domain, or licensed liberally enough to make it essentially equivalent.
You have some very mistaken ideas about copyright. Copyright covers distribution, but copyright does not cover use. Check out the Wikipedia article on copyright; it's the most useful, least biased introduction I can find in ten minutes.
The CPL is a very nice license, simular to the LGPL in what rights it gives to the user, and the FSF has no philosophical objections with it. However it is not compatable with the GPL for technical legal reasons.
If what you say is true (and from a quick perusal of GNU's licenses article it seems to be), perhaps GPLv3 can be designed so it will be compatible?
The language used on the licenses article is:
"For example, it requires certain patent licenses be given that the GPL does not require. (We don't think those patent license requirements are inherently a bad idea, but nonetheless they are incompatible with the GNU GPL.)"
This is similar language to that used for the Apache Software License 2.0. With any luck, version 3 of the GPL can be designed to make both compatible.
The same can be said about Microsoft's EULA: if you don't accept it, you don't have any right to use their software at all!
You are missing the point. EULAs insist that you cannot use the software without accepting them. If you don't accept the agreement, you are not allowed to click the button that says "I Agree." That takes away a right, because normally you have the right to click a button on your own computer. I don't know whether these agreements are legally valid, but I hope they're not.
You only have to accept the GPL if you want to distribute the software. It is fine to use the software without accepting the GPL.
The ability to mark a form field as required (ie. the user must complete the field before the form is submitted).
Maybe I'm being paranoid, but can anyone else see lazy PHP coders relying on this, and forgetting to do proper server-side input checking? I mean, essentially you're just having to check everything twice... what was wrong with returning a page informing the user of his or her mistakes, exactly?
Wow. Welcome to Slashdot, land of the illiterates.
If you could suspend your Google fanboyism long enough to focus on the text on your screen and actually read, you would notice that I didn't say Gmail is spyware. In fact, not only that, but I said the issue of whether Gmail is spyware is totally unrelated. Irrelevant. Out there. Not germane.
What I am now making a third post to say is that a significant group of persons are concerned about Gmail's privacy implications, whereas the same is not true of a spellchecker or a spam filter.
Is that so hard to understand? I know you bow your head and pray to Google every night, but it isn't my opinion that a lot of people don't like their mail service, it's a fact. Okay? Deal with it!
Geez.
I have never "caught" spyware, by the way, even when I ran Internet Explorer on an unpatched Windows XP for a year. It was about mid-2003 when I switched to Mozilla, so maybe the exploits exploded after that, but I still find it baffling how people can "catch" this stuff.
Your first two examples are totally harmless and useful things: no one would object to a spellchecker and few people would object to a spam filter, providing it worked. It seems like what you are saying is the wording has to be careful, or we ban things that are obviously OK.
Meanwhile, the jury is still out on whether Gmail is wonderful and revolutionary, or a privacy invasion and another sad step towards the monetization of all human social contact. Gmail is questionable, but a lot of people consider it good. Whether or not it counts as "spyware," is another issue entirely.
The worms in Worms Armageddon bleed, and that still received an E rating. (They don't bleed by default, but one of the single player missions gives you an option to turn on blood, if I remember correctly.)
Sorry to break the news to you, but I'm quite familiar with BSD, and it wasn't formed by taking GNU/Linux and removing all the GNU tools. It descends from the original UNIX source code.
Additionally, be advised that whereas the BSD license makes the software more free, the GPL makes the software's users more free. But you'd know that, if you had read any of Stallman's "increasingly asinine rantings."
It looks to me like that is saying copyright law must explicitly allow anyone possessing a legal copy of a program to copy it to the extent of using it. So if that's what was codified into law, then I still don't see how copyright covers use in practice. It's as though they said, "Copyright could cover the minimum of copying of software required to use it, but we need to make sure it doesn't." I'll look at that some more, though. It's an interesting link.
The term "open source" is equally ambiguous: it sounds as if all it means is you get to look at the code, not modify it. And many authors in the press have defined it this way.
Free software is quite simple to clarify: "free speech, not free beer." Anyone who hears that will get it. Look how short and simple the Free Software definition is; just four bullet points. Compare that to the Open Source definition. It may not make as good a buzzword, but "free software" ultimately does the best job getting the point across.
With the others, you replace them with other versions. Glibc isn't the *only* c library. Bash isn't the *only* shell (hell, it isn't even the only Bourne shell.)
What happens when you take out coreutils? Bye-bye stat, rm, ls, etc. Do you know what the g in gzip stands for? GNU tar? grep?
Yes, it is possible to take out everything GNU and replace it and have a working OS. When you do that, feel free to not call it GNU.
You want to know something that's much easier to do? Replace Linux. The FSF only asks you to say GNU/Linux because "Linux" is a term people have heard of. A more correct name would be simply GNU.
Copyright law doesn't cover use of the software - only distribution. If someone is not distributing the software, copyright law for the software does not apply. So how can you make a service provider release code for something they aren't distributing?
For this to work as described, the user would have had to sign a contract. Otherwise, it will be just as unenforceable as a EULA (you already had a right to click the Next button on your own computer, etc).
...especially because RMS said recently that the changes will be details.
There is a line in www.gnu.org's license list mentioning that the GPL v3 may be compatible with the Affero General Public License, which seems to implement something similar.
However, I definitely don't think it will end up as absurd as this article makes it out to be.
You might want to check out ArX. It's basically a simpler, cleaner Arch, easier to use, with some extra improvements. I haven't used it personally, but it looks very nice.
2o7.net is a web analysis company, used explicitly by the BBC and other sites. See the replies on the freebsd-chat mailing list where the parent message was posted:
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Copyright was created for the good of the general public. It rewards authors only to modify their behavior. Authors don't have natural rights and are not owed jack shit.
Moreover, the GPL does allow me to do that, although under certain conditions: the final product must be distributed with source code and licensed under the GPL. Provided I make sure of that, I can sell GPL'd software to my heart's content.
If you accept a proprietary license and link a proprietary library with your code, you also lose that right. So if that right is something you can't afford to part with, you cannot build on anyone else's code, unless it is public domain, or licensed liberally enough to make it essentially equivalent.You have some very mistaken ideas about copyright. Copyright covers distribution, but copyright does not cover use. Check out the Wikipedia article on copyright; it's the most useful, least biased introduction I can find in ten minutes.
The language used on the licenses article is:
This is similar language to that used for the Apache Software License 2.0. With any luck, version 3 of the GPL can be designed to make both compatible.
You are missing the point. EULAs insist that you cannot use the software without accepting them. If you don't accept the agreement, you are not allowed to click the button that says "I Agree." That takes away a right, because normally you have the right to click a button on your own computer. I don't know whether these agreements are legally valid, but I hope they're not.
You only have to accept the GPL if you want to distribute the software. It is fine to use the software without accepting the GPL.
Are you thick?
Gmail is in beta for one reason and one reason alone: to create hype. Everyone who cares already has a damn account.
Way to not trust your neighbors.
You realize this is why America sucks so much, right?
Wow. Welcome to Slashdot, land of the illiterates.
If you could suspend your Google fanboyism long enough to focus on the text on your screen and actually read, you would notice that I didn't say Gmail is spyware. In fact, not only that, but I said the issue of whether Gmail is spyware is totally unrelated. Irrelevant. Out there. Not germane.
What I am now making a third post to say is that a significant group of persons are concerned about Gmail's privacy implications, whereas the same is not true of a spellchecker or a spam filter.
Is that so hard to understand? I know you bow your head and pray to Google every night, but it isn't my opinion that a lot of people don't like their mail service, it's a fact. Okay? Deal with it!
Geez.
I have never "caught" spyware, by the way, even when I ran Internet Explorer on an unpatched Windows XP for a year. It was about mid-2003 when I switched to Mozilla, so maybe the exploits exploded after that, but I still find it baffling how people can "catch" this stuff.
Your first two examples are totally harmless and useful things: no one would object to a spellchecker and few people would object to a spam filter, providing it worked. It seems like what you are saying is the wording has to be careful, or we ban things that are obviously OK.
Meanwhile, the jury is still out on whether Gmail is wonderful and revolutionary, or a privacy invasion and another sad step towards the monetization of all human social contact. Gmail is questionable, but a lot of people consider it good. Whether or not it counts as "spyware," is another issue entirely.
The worms in Worms Armageddon bleed, and that still received an E rating. (They don't bleed by default, but one of the single player missions gives you an option to turn on blood, if I remember correctly.)
Gmail is a bad example. Thirty-one privacy and civil liberties organizations have urged Google to suspend it. Also see EPIC's Gmail privacy FAQ.
Try ArX.
Sorry to break the news to you, but I'm quite familiar with BSD, and it wasn't formed by taking GNU/Linux and removing all the GNU tools. It descends from the original UNIX source code.
Additionally, be advised that whereas the BSD license makes the software more free, the GPL makes the software's users more free. But you'd know that, if you had read any of Stallman's "increasingly asinine rantings."
It's funny you should say that. Have you taken a look at ArX? The author may be no Knuth, but ArX looks quite good. The name is also inspired by TeX.
It looks to me like that is saying copyright law must explicitly allow anyone possessing a legal copy of a program to copy it to the extent of using it. So if that's what was codified into law, then I still don't see how copyright covers use in practice. It's as though they said, "Copyright could cover the minimum of copying of software required to use it, but we need to make sure it doesn't." I'll look at that some more, though. It's an interesting link.
Sorry, I wasn't clear: I intended only to say that the grep found in GNU/Linux is from the GNU project. I am aware it doesn't mean GNU rep :)
The term "open source" is equally ambiguous: it sounds as if all it means is you get to look at the code, not modify it. And many authors in the press have defined it this way.
Free software is quite simple to clarify: "free speech, not free beer." Anyone who hears that will get it. Look how short and simple the Free Software definition is; just four bullet points. Compare that to the Open Source definition. It may not make as good a buzzword, but "free software" ultimately does the best job getting the point across.
...no, seriously, can you back up that claim? I've never heard anything of the sort.
Copyright law doesn't cover use of the software - only distribution. If someone is not distributing the software, copyright law for the software does not apply. So how can you make a service provider release code for something they aren't distributing?
For this to work as described, the user would have had to sign a contract. Otherwise, it will be just as unenforceable as a EULA (you already had a right to click the Next button on your own computer, etc).
...especially because RMS said recently that the changes will be details. There is a line in www.gnu.org's license list mentioning that the GPL v3 may be compatible with the Affero General Public License, which seems to implement something similar. However, I definitely don't think it will end up as absurd as this article makes it out to be.
You might want to check out ArX. It's basically a simpler, cleaner Arch, easier to use, with some extra improvements. I haven't used it personally, but it looks very nice.
2o7.net is a web analysis company, used explicitly by the BBC and other sites. See the replies on the freebsd-chat mailing list where the parent message was posted:
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