Did you read the part of the letter where he actually mentioned Red Hat, and how unethical they are for making piles of money by selling something that someone else developed for free? The letter is aimed at the coders who are getting nothing, not the corporations whose founders are getting rich off of their work.
Hell, Marx would be appalled at the idea; at least the capitalist bosses pay their workers enough to keep them alive while they exploit them to make profits.
How many books does O'Reilly publish in a year? How many of people write open source code? How many of the people writing open source code even have good enough writing skills (English writing, not programming) to write a readable book?
As for fame, name 5 open source developers who could be named by.5% of the general population. Hell, name one open source developer who any non-geek has ever heard of.
The telephone is irrelevant; the NSA transcribes all of your conversations for you and stores it in a readable format. One day they'll decide to pay off the national debt by publishing it all and selling it.
Well since Stallman has been part of "academia" at MIT for longer you've known about the concept of free software, and probably for longer than you've been alive, you're kind of wrong.
Or did you think all free software has been developed by a bunch of teenage hackers?
Yeah, telling people you have a biological weapon that could kill millions of people would be a great idea. Until the other 2 nuclear powers with accurate ICBMs decided on a preemptive strike.
Exactly what section of the Constitution prohibits states and municipalities from making traffic laws and enforcing them with fines?
Your "conflict of interest" argument is interesting, but since all government money is levied by laws passed by the government, only an anarchist would agree with it.
No, they can't. They have a contract with ICANN which explicitly says they cannot register more than 5000 domain names without paying for them like everyone else.
You left out methods A, D, and E by which ICANN can also terminate the agreement. So, no, those aren't the only ways.
One of them is for ICANN to sue VeriSign for breaking the agreement, which they threatened to do if SiteFinder was left up; if VeriSign lost in court (which, having clearly violated their contract, they almost certainly would) and decided to still deploy SiteFinder, ICANN would be able to revoke their registrar status.
Another is for ICANN to assess fines of $10,000 per violation of the code of conduct. If the total fine is not paid, ICANN can revoke their status. Arguably, each domain that VeriSign makes resolve to their SiteFinder service above the 5000 domains to which they're entitled would count as a minor violation of the argument. Multiply $10,000 times infinity, and there you have an amount that VeriSign isn't going to be able to pay. Poof, no more VeriSign.
Also, I would recommend going to a big electronics store the day before the super bowl, and asking them if you buy a big screen TV and don't like it, if you can return it on Monday. Then threaten to screw over, errr... patronize, their competitors, instead.
Yes, but none of those protocols were developed and patented by Microsoft. What do you think the chances are that MS is going to allow the open source community, or, for that matter, anyone outside of MS to contribute to their "standard"?
And considering how they treat other standards, why should anyone trust them? Look at what they tried to do to Java... it was intended as a standardized programming language that would work exactly the same on any platform to allow the creation of truly portable applications, and they decided to use their browser dominance to get people to start using a non-complying implementation and writing code that wouldn't work except on Windows machines. This, more than IE's HTML and CSS extensions that make the vast majority of the pages on the web non-valid HTML, shows their complete disregard for the concept of "standards". They only like a standard insofar as it can help them control the market.
And the link you give also has another definition:
"A union between two persons having the customary but usually not the legal force of marriage: a same sex marriage".
And how exactly do you propose converting a game that requires you to type in commands that are parsed to a format that just allows hyperlinking? HHGTTG would be ridiculously easy if you were given a menu including, say "hang bathrobe from hook" instead of having to experience the frustration of figuring out exactly what you have to do.
Yeah, but those portions are, most likely, stuff from twm and X (X11R4, specifically, if it was 1988) itself.
Relying on a mostly useless google search and my failing memory, tvtwm was apparently based on the X11R5 version of twm, which would mean it came out in late 1993 at the earliest, which is around the time I remember first using it.
Of course, one of the documents I found in said google search mentions that in 1993 all of the workstation manfacturers agreed that mwm would be the only window manager and they'd stop making any other ones, so clearly tvtwm never existed and we all hallucinated using it.
- MS told Apple to make IE the default browser on Macs or they'd get no more Mac versions of Office, to show how you can leverage a monopoly in applications that you got by leveraging a monopoly in an OS to get a monopoly in another application on a completely different OS.
Antitrust law is based on the behavior of a company. It's illegal to abuse a monopoly, even if you haven't been "declared" a monopoly beforehand. There is, in fact, no mechanism by which the government declares a corporation to be a monopoly which makes them suddenly magically responsible for not breaking anti-trust laws. The government prosecutes companies that break the laws after they're broken.
Your example is not analagous at all. Anti-trust laws have existed in the US for over 100 years, and every corporation is expected to know that there is certain behavior that they can't get away with. Your example describes an ex post facto law, which is expressly forbidden by the US Constitution; you cannot be punished for behavior that wasn't illegal when you did it.
Slashdot Mirror
Hell, Marx would be appalled at the idea; at least the capitalist bosses pay their workers enough to keep them alive while they exploit them to make profits.
As for fame, name 5 open source developers who could be named by .5% of the general population. Hell, name one open source developer who any non-geek has ever heard of.
Sure it does. I know I wouldn't bother posting this comment if I didn't know it would be protected by copyright law long after I'm dead.
The telephone is irrelevant; the NSA transcribes all of your conversations for you and stores it in a readable format. One day they'll decide to pay off the national debt by publishing it all and selling it.
Lobbying the judicial system with money is, in fact, a felony. You can lobby the legislature all you want, though.
Or did you think all free software has been developed by a bunch of teenage hackers?
I hear Zoloft can work wonders on that disorder. It will also help with how you have to turn the lights on and off 17 times before leaving a room.
Yeah, but after the TSA shoots the thief and then blows up your laptop just to be safe, you're still out a laptop.
Yeah, telling people you have a biological weapon that could kill millions of people would be a great idea. Until the other 2 nuclear powers with accurate ICBMs decided on a preemptive strike.
No no no, information wants to be free, it doesn't want to make us free. It's hypocritical of the information, but what can you do?
Your "conflict of interest" argument is interesting, but since all government money is levied by laws passed by the government, only an anarchist would agree with it.
And it's not like you can't get a third-party plugin if you really do want to have your two year old shooting lasers out of her eyes.
Nearly all books are published by corporations, too, so I guess we can't respect them, either.
No, they can't. They have a contract with ICANN which explicitly says they cannot register more than 5000 domain names without paying for them like everyone else.
One of them is for ICANN to sue VeriSign for breaking the agreement, which they threatened to do if SiteFinder was left up; if VeriSign lost in court (which, having clearly violated their contract, they almost certainly would) and decided to still deploy SiteFinder, ICANN would be able to revoke their registrar status.
Another is for ICANN to assess fines of $10,000 per violation of the code of conduct. If the total fine is not paid, ICANN can revoke their status. Arguably, each domain that VeriSign makes resolve to their SiteFinder service above the 5000 domains to which they're entitled would count as a minor violation of the argument. Multiply $10,000 times infinity, and there you have an amount that VeriSign isn't going to be able to pay. Poof, no more VeriSign.
There, I can make stuff up to karma whore too.
Also, I would recommend going to a big electronics store the day before the super bowl, and asking them if you buy a big screen TV and don't like it, if you can return it on Monday. Then threaten to screw over, errr... patronize, their competitors, instead.
No, they didn't. RTFA you linked to. MacMall is not Apple.
And considering how they treat other standards, why should anyone trust them? Look at what they tried to do to Java... it was intended as a standardized programming language that would work exactly the same on any platform to allow the creation of truly portable applications, and they decided to use their browser dominance to get people to start using a non-complying implementation and writing code that wouldn't work except on Windows machines. This, more than IE's HTML and CSS extensions that make the vast majority of the pages on the web non-valid HTML, shows their complete disregard for the concept of "standards". They only like a standard insofar as it can help them control the market.
They could be buying it for the tax credit.
And the link you give also has another definition: "A union between two persons having the customary but usually not the legal force of marriage: a same sex marriage".
And how exactly do you propose converting a game that requires you to type in commands that are parsed to a format that just allows hyperlinking? HHGTTG would be ridiculously easy if you were given a menu including, say "hang bathrobe from hook" instead of having to experience the frustration of figuring out exactly what you have to do.
Relying on a mostly useless google search and my failing memory, tvtwm was apparently based on the X11R5 version of twm, which would mean it came out in late 1993 at the earliest, which is around the time I remember first using it.
Of course, one of the documents I found in said google search mentions that in 1993 all of the workstation manfacturers agreed that mwm would be the only window manager and they'd stop making any other ones, so clearly tvtwm never existed and we all hallucinated using it.
- MS told Apple to make IE the default browser on Macs or they'd get no more Mac versions of Office, to show how you can leverage a monopoly in applications that you got by leveraging a monopoly in an OS to get a monopoly in another application on a completely different OS.
Your example is not analagous at all. Anti-trust laws have existed in the US for over 100 years, and every corporation is expected to know that there is certain behavior that they can't get away with. Your example describes an ex post facto law, which is expressly forbidden by the US Constitution; you cannot be punished for behavior that wasn't illegal when you did it.