I don't know what's worse, the fact that a vice president of HP can be so stupid, or the fact that he got applauded for his stupidity. The former doesn't know what Free Software but insists on making a speech about it, and the latter are willing to applaud any praise of the GPL no matter how erroneous that praise might be.
It's one thing to want to limit the number of approved Open Source licenses. I may disagree with it, but I understand the motive. I can also understand his urging his competitors to use the more popular Open Source licenses instead of their own (even though HP still insists on proprietary for most of its software).
But when he says that the GPL is not copyrighted, he is being stupid. EVERY Free Software and Open Source license is copyrighted! Even the sacred and immaculately conceived GPL! For a LWCE keynote speaker to make such a fundamental blunder on the nature of Free Software is scandalous.
Please go to www.fsf.org (the home ofthe GPL) and look up the word "steal". It has quite a lot to say about it. It also recommends that you do not use that word with respect to software.
A "patent" is a different thing from a "patent license". I do not have a "patent license" to use MP3, and even if I did, I am not obligated by the GPL to apply that license to the software distribution. A "patent license" is a license to use the patent. Just like software licenses, they take the form of EULAs, contracts, agreements, and the like. I do not have any with regards to MP3 or Fraunhoffer. As near as I can tell, neither does LAME.
What the GPL is telling me not to do, is to not mix the two licenses. I cannot tell the user that he must meet the conflicting terms of both the GPL and the PL. If I have a PL that says "not for use in commercial products" then I cannot pass that restriction on to my GPL licensees.
The key point is that it is not I nor the GPL which imposes additional restrictions on the user, but a third party not privy to the distribution. Legally, they're not involved.
Why do the major Linux distributors refuse to distribute software encumbered by patents? Because they can get sued by the patent holders for patent violation! Duh! But they will not be sued by software developers for copyright violation. Please understand that last sentence. GPL authors aren't going to be suing you for distributing GPL software in violation of THIRD PARTY patents.
The GPL does not demand you follow all the applicable laws of your jurisdiction, or obey all the contracts and agreements you might have made with third parties, or even to be nice to children and small furry animals. It only demands that you follow the GPL. In fact, RMS and the FSF have explicitly REJECTED licenses as being unfree when they've tried to do this!
...it just suggests GPL3 as the preferred version.
Rather, it demands that GPL3 be the minimum version. It is extremely doubtful that GPL3 will be compatible with GPL2 (in the sense that any mixture cannot be licensed GPL2). New features and bug fixes contributed under GPL3 cannot be incorporated into a GPL2 code base.
"...or later" does not mean "...or earlier". "GPL3 or later" excludes GPL2!
If you read your bolded sentence carefully, you'll see it doesn't forbid me from redistributing the program. Really. Read it again. There is no "patent license" involved! I am under no other license, agreement or obligation. Someone else's patent is not an obligation of mine.
Fraunhoffer might sue me, and that's a risk I will have to contend with. But that has nothing to do with the GPL.
Why is not sharing changes against the spirt of the GPL?
Because that's not the spirit. Read all RMS' voluminous rants if you don't believe me! Where you may be confused is because a lot of people, especially on slashdot, simplify it into "you must share everything". Instead, the spirit of the GPL is to share a certain *class* of changes. The current debate is whether changes to webapps fall into this class or not.
It seems you missed the "or" word I had used. You either need all authors to agree to it **OR** something else. That something else I'll leave as an exercise just to ensure you read my post.
Actually changing the license of an existing project is a much different thing from forking it. In case you haven't realized it yet, "v3 or later" is incompatible with "v2 or later", because it happens to exclude "v2". So while you can indeed fork off a "v2 or later" project into a "v3 or later" project, you need to get everyone's permissions before you can throw away the "v2" from the original project.
In practical terms, yes the end results are the same. But the road to that end result is very different. Imagine you have five authors, but only four agree to the new license. The four fork off a new project while the fifth sulks with the old code. Eventually he relents and joins the forked project. A far far different road than if all five had originally agreed to dump the old license.
The "one true 'freedom'" that RMS constantly bitches about is the freedom to release software under the GPL. In his perfect world there would ONLY be GPL software. It's not freedom that he wants, it's conformity to his ideal.
Personally, I think that making internal changes and not sharing them with the world is against the spirit of the GPL.
Why do you think that? Do you think the same of companies that use GPL software *internally*? You've said yourself that this is okay, and in addition, RMS has gone out of his way to reject licenses that demand this. But what's the difference?
Applying the restrictions only within the legal domain of copyright **IS** the spirit of the GPL! To subsequently extend it beyond the domain of copyright to encompass the execution of software on servers is what is against the spirit of the GPL.
"v2 or later" is *NOT* trivially convertable to "v3 or later." You either need all authors to agree to it, or you need to fork off the project and then convince all authors to work on the new fork.
The only practical benefit the clause provides is that a future v3 developer can incorporate v2 (but not v1) code. It's so that future versions can be backward compatiblity, not that past versions can be forward compatible.
...why didn't you add that they were a child rapist?
Because I didn't need to. Along with hair follicles (which I also mentioned), semen is among the most common forensic evidence bearing easily analyzed genetic material.
Your argument about "shouldn't shed your crap then..." is about a logical...
I did not say that. Your use of quotes implies that I said that, but I did not. Stop lying and misquoting.
It's not a programming model, it's a delivery model. As near as I can make out they're just web apps that rudely offload processing onto the client. The actual programming model stays the same whether it's a desktop application, webapp or RIA.
...no one should have access to my genetic code without my permission or a warrant.
Then please keep your hair follicles, blood, spit, snot, and other genetic code bearing litter to yourself. You shed it and it's no longer yours to protect.
Rape cases have been solved and the rapists incarcerated because of genetic testing of semen. But you would get rid of this to protect the privacy of the rapist. How can we serve a warrant to test the semen if we don't know who the rapist is without serving to warrant to test the semen to know who the rapist is?
If you don't want me to do genetic testing on the hair follicles you shed, then wear a hairnet! That's not much different from wearing a ski-mask to I can't identify you face. Personally I'm not very comfortable with the idea of people genetically testing my leavings to see if I'm prone to cardiac illnesses, but philosophically it's not that much different from people knowing that I'm prone to cardiac illnesses by merely observing my high cholesterol fatty diet in the company cafeteria.
This does *NOT* mean that I think such underhanded testing is hunky dory. I do not! If I found out my employer was collecting my hair follicles for testing, I would instantly quit! But I have no more legal right to prevent them running my hair follicles through an analyzer, than I have the legal right to prevent them from running a handwriting analysis on the signature I use to endorse my paycheck.
Why is it ten thousand SUVs can drive around Palo Alto with a "somewhere in Texas..." bumper sticker, and no one cares. But when you use a "somewhere in Massaschusetts..." sig, then suddenly people get offended?
The FreeBSD source code tree is a "common" resource. It remains no matter how many people take from it. It remains no matter how many people do not reciprocate. It remains common. That is sharing.
This is much different from putting fence around it, with a little gate, and a reciprocity agreement you must assent to before entering.
but unfortunately it allows people to not 'share back' the stuff they took and improved.
Sharing isn't the word your want. Sharing isn't about attaching strings to your generosity. The word you're looking for is "reciprocality". Please don't confuse the two.
There's this thing called "freedom". It's intimately connected with a concept called "choice". If you don't have a gun to my head, I'm going to use whatever damned operating system I feel like. If that doesn't fit well into your rigid homogenous copyleft world, tough shit.
The BSD license isn't a packaged revolution. It's simply a notice of sharing. Sharing has been around even since before the cro magnon realized that a mammoth was too much for one hunter to eat.
Just like James T. Kirk doesn't believe in the No Win Scenario, I don't believe in the Zero Sum Game. At least not outside the realm of dividing an apple pie up for dessert.
This is not to imply that we should be hoggish and wasteful, only that this lunch I'm eating right now doesn't mean someone else somewhere in the world has to go without. Economics is not a zero sum game because every voluntary transaction results in a net increase of wealth. If I buy an apple from your for a dollar, I'm better off because I now have the apple I wanted, and you're better off because you now have the dollar you wanted. We BOTH win.
It's also the same with resources, since the world is not a closed system and our technology is improving. Maybe oil is running out, maybe it's not. But we're not going to be using oil in the future, any more than we're now cutting down virgin forests to stay warm in the winter. We'll have nuclear and fusion energy. Maybe microwave energy beamed from space. And our energy usage will be more efficient.
And our agrigulture will be more efficient as well. Every year for the last fw centuries we have been feeding more people per acre than the year before. Also, the birthrates of wealthy industrialized cultures have been going down. It's *not* because the government has been putting contraceptives in our drinking water!
This doesn't mean that we should have no concerns. We have real problems that exist that we must honestly face. However it does mean that pessimism and despair aren't the solutions. The way to eliminate poverty is not to eliminate prosperity, which is your solution. Rather you eliminte poverty by eliminating the causes of poverty. Ever notice that the nations with the highest standards of living also happen to be the most free? There's a reason for that.
I hear you about the motherboards and modems. Sigh.
Re:Space travel - no kidding
on
10 Technologies MIA
·
· Score: 4, Insightful
I can sum up your two options right now
There are many more choices than that, simply do to the fact you've made them ridiculously simplistic. Here's another huge broad choice: it's not my choice to make! If people want to move off the planet, more power to them! This isn't a "what, me worry" answer, it's an answer that says I'm not going to be a tyrant and impose my opinions upon others. Personally I am against the government space monopoly, but that doesn't mean I am against space exploration. Quite the opposite.
In addition, your alternative to expansion is incomplete as well. It assumes only tyranny or anarchy can control populations. But there's an alternative even you touch upon: if rich people breed less than poor people, let's get rid of poverty.
Our Telecoms provider simply threatens to stop the service if our regulators impose stricter regulations.
Well duh! If you beat your dog don't be surprised if he growls at you.
You've got what is known as a "monopoly". The solution is simple. Take away their monopoly. With very few exceptions, monopolies are caused by government grants of monopoly. Stop subsidizing the monopoly, remove legal barriers to competition, stop favoring large corporations over small independents via the tax code and corporate privileges, etc. Problem solved.
Of course, there is no guarantee that you'll get your every want and desire. But it sounds like your not getting that anyway from your government. Utopia is not an option so stop looking for perfect solutions and start looking for less imperfect ones.
That's not what I'm talking about. When only X percent of eligible voters vote, and most presidential elections are decided by >10% of the vote, then the winner is not getting the majority of the vote. In the case of the 1992 elections, even if Perot stayed out of the race NEITHER candidate would have gotten a majority.
The Republicans were not complaining about Clinton, they were complaining about Perot. While they still acted like whiny babies, it's a far different complaint. Compare that to the current Democrat meme that the only way Bush won was because of the severe apathy which Republican policies inculcated among the public.
BFD. Neither was Clinton. Or Bush. Or Reagan. Or Carter. Come to think of it, I can't remember the last president who got a vote from the majority of eligible voters.
I don't mind that people point out the obvious that the current president didn't get a majority vote. But I do mind that people only point this out when a Republican is in office.
Slashdot Mirror
I don't know what's worse, the fact that a vice president of HP can be so stupid, or the fact that he got applauded for his stupidity. The former doesn't know what Free Software but insists on making a speech about it, and the latter are willing to applaud any praise of the GPL no matter how erroneous that praise might be.
It's one thing to want to limit the number of approved Open Source licenses. I may disagree with it, but I understand the motive. I can also understand his urging his competitors to use the more popular Open Source licenses instead of their own (even though HP still insists on proprietary for most of its software).
But when he says that the GPL is not copyrighted, he is being stupid. EVERY Free Software and Open Source license is copyrighted! Even the sacred and immaculately conceived GPL! For a LWCE keynote speaker to make such a fundamental blunder on the nature of Free Software is scandalous.
Please go to www.fsf.org (the home ofthe GPL) and look up the word "steal". It has quite a lot to say about it. It also recommends that you do not use that word with respect to software.
A "patent" is a different thing from a "patent license". I do not have a "patent license" to use MP3, and even if I did, I am not obligated by the GPL to apply that license to the software distribution. A "patent license" is a license to use the patent. Just like software licenses, they take the form of EULAs, contracts, agreements, and the like. I do not have any with regards to MP3 or Fraunhoffer. As near as I can tell, neither does LAME.
What the GPL is telling me not to do, is to not mix the two licenses. I cannot tell the user that he must meet the conflicting terms of both the GPL and the PL. If I have a PL that says "not for use in commercial products" then I cannot pass that restriction on to my GPL licensees.
The key point is that it is not I nor the GPL which imposes additional restrictions on the user, but a third party not privy to the distribution. Legally, they're not involved.
Why do the major Linux distributors refuse to distribute software encumbered by patents? Because they can get sued by the patent holders for patent violation! Duh! But they will not be sued by software developers for copyright violation. Please understand that last sentence. GPL authors aren't going to be suing you for distributing GPL software in violation of THIRD PARTY patents.
The GPL does not demand you follow all the applicable laws of your jurisdiction, or obey all the contracts and agreements you might have made with third parties, or even to be nice to children and small furry animals. It only demands that you follow the GPL. In fact, RMS and the FSF have explicitly REJECTED licenses as being unfree when they've tried to do this!
...it just suggests GPL3 as the preferred version.
Rather, it demands that GPL3 be the minimum version. It is extremely doubtful that GPL3 will be compatible with GPL2 (in the sense that any mixture cannot be licensed GPL2). New features and bug fixes contributed under GPL3 cannot be incorporated into a GPL2 code base.
"...or later" does not mean "...or earlier". "GPL3 or later" excludes GPL2!
If you read your bolded sentence carefully, you'll see it doesn't forbid me from redistributing the program. Really. Read it again. There is no "patent license" involved! I am under no other license, agreement or obligation. Someone else's patent is not an obligation of mine.
Fraunhoffer might sue me, and that's a risk I will have to contend with. But that has nothing to do with the GPL.
Why is not sharing changes against the spirt of the GPL?
Because that's not the spirit. Read all RMS' voluminous rants if you don't believe me! Where you may be confused is because a lot of people, especially on slashdot, simplify it into "you must share everything". Instead, the spirit of the GPL is to share a certain *class* of changes. The current debate is whether changes to webapps fall into this class or not.
It seems you missed the "or" word I had used. You either need all authors to agree to it **OR** something else. That something else I'll leave as an exercise just to ensure you read my post.
Actually changing the license of an existing project is a much different thing from forking it. In case you haven't realized it yet, "v3 or later" is incompatible with "v2 or later", because it happens to exclude "v2". So while you can indeed fork off a "v2 or later" project into a "v3 or later" project, you need to get everyone's permissions before you can throw away the "v2" from the original project.
In practical terms, yes the end results are the same. But the road to that end result is very different. Imagine you have five authors, but only four agree to the new license. The four fork off a new project while the fifth sulks with the old code. Eventually he relents and joins the forked project. A far far different road than if all five had originally agreed to dump the old license.
The "one true 'freedom'" that RMS constantly bitches about is the freedom to release software under the GPL. In his perfect world there would ONLY be GPL software. It's not freedom that he wants, it's conformity to his ideal.
Personally, I think that making internal changes and not sharing them with the world is against the spirit of the GPL.
Why do you think that? Do you think the same of companies that use GPL software *internally*? You've said yourself that this is okay, and in addition, RMS has gone out of his way to reject licenses that demand this. But what's the difference?
Applying the restrictions only within the legal domain of copyright **IS** the spirit of the GPL! To subsequently extend it beyond the domain of copyright to encompass the execution of software on servers is what is against the spirit of the GPL.
"v2 or later" is *NOT* trivially convertable to "v3 or later." You either need all authors to agree to it, or you need to fork off the project and then convince all authors to work on the new fork.
The only practical benefit the clause provides is that a future v3 developer can incorporate v2 (but not v1) code. It's so that future versions can be backward compatiblity, not that past versions can be forward compatible.
...why didn't you add that they were a child rapist?
Because I didn't need to. Along with hair follicles (which I also mentioned), semen is among the most common forensic evidence bearing easily analyzed genetic material.
Your argument about "shouldn't shed your crap then..." is about a logical...
I did not say that. Your use of quotes implies that I said that, but I did not. Stop lying and misquoting.
It's not a programming model, it's a delivery model. As near as I can make out they're just web apps that rudely offload processing onto the client. The actual programming model stays the same whether it's a desktop application, webapp or RIA.
...no one should have access to my genetic code without my permission or a warrant.
Then please keep your hair follicles, blood, spit, snot, and other genetic code bearing litter to yourself. You shed it and it's no longer yours to protect.
Rape cases have been solved and the rapists incarcerated because of genetic testing of semen. But you would get rid of this to protect the privacy of the rapist. How can we serve a warrant to test the semen if we don't know who the rapist is without serving to warrant to test the semen to know who the rapist is?
If you don't want me to do genetic testing on the hair follicles you shed, then wear a hairnet! That's not much different from wearing a ski-mask to I can't identify you face. Personally I'm not very comfortable with the idea of people genetically testing my leavings to see if I'm prone to cardiac illnesses, but philosophically it's not that much different from people knowing that I'm prone to cardiac illnesses by merely observing my high cholesterol fatty diet in the company cafeteria.
This does *NOT* mean that I think such underhanded testing is hunky dory. I do not! If I found out my employer was collecting my hair follicles for testing, I would instantly quit! But I have no more legal right to prevent them running my hair follicles through an analyzer, than I have the legal right to prevent them from running a handwriting analysis on the signature I use to endorse my paycheck.
Why is it ten thousand SUVs can drive around Palo Alto with a "somewhere in Texas..." bumper sticker, and no one cares. But when you use a "somewhere in Massaschusetts..." sig, then suddenly people get offended?
The FreeBSD source code tree is a "common" resource. It remains no matter how many people take from it. It remains no matter how many people do not reciprocate. It remains common. That is sharing.
This is much different from putting fence around it, with a little gate, and a reciprocity agreement you must assent to before entering.
but unfortunately it allows people to not 'share back' the stuff they took and improved.
Sharing isn't the word your want. Sharing isn't about attaching strings to your generosity. The word you're looking for is "reciprocality". Please don't confuse the two.
There's this thing called "freedom". It's intimately connected with a concept called "choice". If you don't have a gun to my head, I'm going to use whatever damned operating system I feel like. If that doesn't fit well into your rigid homogenous copyleft world, tough shit.
The BSD license isn't a packaged revolution. It's simply a notice of sharing. Sharing has been around even since before the cro magnon realized that a mammoth was too much for one hunter to eat.
Just like James T. Kirk doesn't believe in the No Win Scenario, I don't believe in the Zero Sum Game. At least not outside the realm of dividing an apple pie up for dessert.
This is not to imply that we should be hoggish and wasteful, only that this lunch I'm eating right now doesn't mean someone else somewhere in the world has to go without. Economics is not a zero sum game because every voluntary transaction results in a net increase of wealth. If I buy an apple from your for a dollar, I'm better off because I now have the apple I wanted, and you're better off because you now have the dollar you wanted. We BOTH win.
It's also the same with resources, since the world is not a closed system and our technology is improving. Maybe oil is running out, maybe it's not. But we're not going to be using oil in the future, any more than we're now cutting down virgin forests to stay warm in the winter. We'll have nuclear and fusion energy. Maybe microwave energy beamed from space. And our energy usage will be more efficient.
And our agrigulture will be more efficient as well. Every year for the last fw centuries we have been feeding more people per acre than the year before. Also, the birthrates of wealthy industrialized cultures have been going down. It's *not* because the government has been putting contraceptives in our drinking water!
This doesn't mean that we should have no concerns. We have real problems that exist that we must honestly face. However it does mean that pessimism and despair aren't the solutions. The way to eliminate poverty is not to eliminate prosperity, which is your solution. Rather you eliminte poverty by eliminating the causes of poverty. Ever notice that the nations with the highest standards of living also happen to be the most free? There's a reason for that.
I hear you about the motherboards and modems. Sigh.
I can sum up your two options right now
There are many more choices than that, simply do to the fact you've made them ridiculously simplistic. Here's another huge broad choice: it's not my choice to make! If people want to move off the planet, more power to them! This isn't a "what, me worry" answer, it's an answer that says I'm not going to be a tyrant and impose my opinions upon others. Personally I am against the government space monopoly, but that doesn't mean I am against space exploration. Quite the opposite.
In addition, your alternative to expansion is incomplete as well. It assumes only tyranny or anarchy can control populations. But there's an alternative even you touch upon: if rich people breed less than poor people, let's get rid of poverty.
Our Telecoms provider simply threatens to stop the service if our regulators impose stricter regulations.
Well duh! If you beat your dog don't be surprised if he growls at you.
You've got what is known as a "monopoly". The solution is simple. Take away their monopoly. With very few exceptions, monopolies are caused by government grants of monopoly. Stop subsidizing the monopoly, remove legal barriers to competition, stop favoring large corporations over small independents via the tax code and corporate privileges, etc. Problem solved.
Of course, there is no guarantee that you'll get your every want and desire. But it sounds like your not getting that anyway from your government. Utopia is not an option so stop looking for perfect solutions and start looking for less imperfect ones.
That's not what I'm talking about. When only X percent of eligible voters vote, and most presidential elections are decided by >10% of the vote, then the winner is not getting the majority of the vote. In the case of the 1992 elections, even if Perot stayed out of the race NEITHER candidate would have gotten a majority.
The Republicans were not complaining about Clinton, they were complaining about Perot. While they still acted like whiny babies, it's a far different complaint. Compare that to the current Democrat meme that the only way Bush won was because of the severe apathy which Republican policies inculcated among the public.
And not by the majority of Americans.
BFD. Neither was Clinton. Or Bush. Or Reagan. Or Carter. Come to think of it, I can't remember the last president who got a vote from the majority of eligible voters.
I don't mind that people point out the obvious that the current president didn't get a majority vote. But I do mind that people only point this out when a Republican is in office.