Apologies, I didnt read the parent post closely enough. Yes, once code is under the GPL you cannot decide that it only be used for commercial or non-commercial use. My point was misdirected.
Take a look at MySQL to see how something can be offered both commercially and under the GPL.
If you are the copyright holder for the entire code, you can license it however you please. The GPL does not remove the right of the copyright holder to do whatever they want with their own code
The battle for the Linux desktop has really been heating up lately
Timed to coincide with the year of Linux on the desktop. Oh wait, that was last year. Oh wait, it was the year before...
and with the planned release of several big commercial apps (Macromedia), it's getting even hotter.
Yep, it will get so hot with Macromedia releasing native Linux apps. Oh wait...theyre not.
I haven't heard of the Adobes, Macromedias, or Intuits of the world scrambling to rewrite their apps in.NET
As above
Don't believe the hype dude; the MS marketing machine has been blowing a lot of smoke up a lot of asses.
Nobody uses VS.Net...all MS FUD. All major software houses have secretly decided to stop production of Win software and are going to release all future software for GNU/Linux only. However we here at/. are the only ones who actually know of this secret. Anyone who says otherwise is spreading MS FUD and is guilty of thoughtcrime.
In real life, if your other half is yelling at you, you then yell back equally loudly, does it cancel the yelling altogether?
Well, if the amplitude is identical, the frequency is the same and the waves are exactly 180 degrees out of phase, then yes they would.
So, the moral of the story:
When your other half starts yelling, start yelling back at the same volume straight afterwards and you may possibly be lucky enough to hear total silence:)
The demise of Germany in WWII started after Operation Barbarossa was launched (the invasion of Russia, for those of you who know nothing about world history). Germany was overcommitted, and could not sustain both the Eastern and Western fronts.
The reason the war ended relatively shortly after America joined in was because the Russians had already put the Germans onto the retreat. The USA only accelerated the inevitable.
Re:GPL software will NEVER be used for this
on
Can Software Kill?
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· Score: 1
If I was selling mission critical applications, I dont think I would sell too many if I told the clients that I provided no warranty for the performance of the software, but they could always view the source code.
Currently there seems to be a growing occurence of eBay account hijacks, where a scammer will appear to have a hundred or so excellent feedback comments, but in actual fact its all a scam. They also offer their products on borderline of what would be considered a reasonable bargain and what would be obviously a scam.
GPL software will NEVER be used for this
on
Can Software Kill?
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· Score: 1
GPL'ed software would NEVER have been used for this in the first place, whether or not it was better.
Read Paragraphs 11 and 12 of the
GPL. There is NO WARRANTY. Nobody in their right mind would use software without any form of warranty in a situation where lives can be lost
I agree totally that quite often a scam is fairly obvious. But, and to use Ebay as an example, Ebay pushes itself as a place to get goods far cheaper than you would normally. So when is very cheap a good bargain and when is very cheap a scam?
And, to state the obvious, is not the scammer the one totally to blame for a scam? What can we do about it? Dunno...but the scammer is still the one at fault.
I've seen several "horror stories" with Paypal first hand. EVERY single time, every one, the person screaming was partly (if not nearly fully) at fault. They sent stuff to people who had shady looking order details, etc, or they ordered things "too cheap to be true".
Let me get this straight? Someone gets ripped off, and THEY are the ones who are almost totally at fault?
Im not sure about American law, but in Australia consumer rights laws will outrank any contract you sign with another party (disclaimer: IANAL).
If you have a legitimate claim against them under consumer protection laws, they cannot remove your right to sue them, no matter what is in your agreement. A bit like the disclaimers you read along the lines of "I hereby waive all right to damages from XXX". Looks good and legal, but if you have a legitimate case to sue, its a meaningless clause.
Its like claiming we'd be more free if the government could take away our right to free speech or public assembly at will.
You misrepresent what the BSD style licenses do. Someone cannot take source code released under the BSD license and make it proprietary. They can USE the code in their own software, but they cannot claim rights to it.
BSD licenses are truly free. You can do what you please with them. NOBODY can take away the rights for others to use the same code in their own software, so your analogy is totally wrong.
True freedom is when someone can do what they like as long as it does not interfere with the rights of others. Forcing people to open their code is not freedom, it is forcing your values onto others. If you truly believed in freedom you would accept that not everyone wants their software open sourced. You may not like it, but that is freedom in action.
Maybe we can start a sourceforge project. An open source deoderant formula. We can call it GND, or GND's Not a Deoderant.
And I really feel for the population of Cambridge. The fly swarms that they will have to put up with! Please FSF, bring some fly screens for the poor population!
If only it was an OS X conference, then the inhabitants could be treated to sweet perfume for a few days, accompanied by an influx of the sexiest human beings on the face of the earth!
Im not blaming doctors on this one either. The root cause of this problem is the ambulance chasers, who will try to make a case out of nothing just to make a buck.
I just dont like the idea of a list unless there is some form of screening process before the names are accepted. I would also object to a public list where doctors names could be submitted by members of the public with no verification / screening of the names. Either way leaves the system very open to abuse.
This all depends on the doctor. I'm sure he'll call up his friend Dr. Phil and ask why the lady was sueing him
And Dr Phil will truthfully answer that he was sued for malpractice because he turned up to work drunk?
The danger here is that doctors who got sued quite legitimately will use this to get revenge on anyone who sued them.
What next? A list of anyone who brought a complaint against a doctor?
So next time you go to a doctor you wont know whether he is a good doctor, or only practicing because his patients are too scared to lodge a complaint against him for fear of not being able to get treatment in future.
So you think somebody is just going to get up and give you a nice IT job? Macromedia will start releasing all their software for free just because you cant afford Dreamweaver?
The world does not owe you a living. I started out by doing IT certifications while working packing shelves at midnight in my local supermarket. Spend more time planning and working and less time bitching and thinking the world owes you something and you might actually start moving ahead.
If you cant afford Macromedia software, learn how to develop through notepad / emacs / pico / eclipse / whatever like the rest of us started out doing.
If you flip burgers, then no Dreamweaver is not for you. If you are a professional web developer, then it is worth its weight in gold. I will only use Dreamweaver for web development tasks as it pays for itself with the time I save.
Saying the software is bad because it costs too much for you is like saying airliners should use Cessna's instead of 747s because the jumbos cost too much. No, you may not be able to afford Dreamweaver, but for some of us its the main reason we have not switched over to Linux.
I partially agree, but also partially disagree. If you are a uni student and run a free software project, dont expect to go out in the open market and get employed as a project architect. You may be lucky and skip the junior programmer level, but that will be it.
But..and there is a but...if you are already a senior programmer / project architect, and you also manage a free software project, it will put you in very good stead against your competing candidates for the job. It will be an additional achievement, and you are demonstrating that you can accomplish multiple tasks simultaneously.
To summarise, its very good as an additional achievement, not as a main feature of your CV.
If I make program X, and company Y improves program X, everyone (including me) gets the rights to those improvements
So when you go to the bank to pay your bills, instead of giving them money, hand over a listing of the improvements company Y made to your software. The look on the tellers face will be priceless
Lets say that you and a couple of your friends develop (over a period of a year or so) an absolutely outstanding piece of software that fills a niche in business, going right up to enterprise level. You go out and put it under the GPL.
Step forward a couple of months. IBM realise how good your software is (as an example) and how useful it will be in the enterprise. They start bundling your software with their servers / desktops, provide support for it, customise it for their customers etc.
How do you make your money? You will never get to sell / support / install your software at enterprise level as a giant multi-national is doing it too - legally. They make the zillions through their hardware sales, support, customization etc, while you go around maybe installing it here and there in your local small businesses, barely scraping a living, knowing that you will never be able to compete with the 800 pound gorilla.
but we have to display it in every single room in the house
At 2500 pounds, can you see these things spreading into every room in the house? If anyone could afford half a dozen of these things, I would think their kids are pretty much set up for life, no matter what their attention span
Agreed. Besides the closed standards for the file formats, MS Office is a VERY good product. Getting all the apps to work seamlessly together makes the users life a lot easier.
The real test of these products is to think about what the reaction would be if Office was the open source alternative, and OO was made by MS. In that situation I can almost guarantee the OSS community would be cheering that it had a far superior product to the commercial alternative. Given this, we can fairly safely assume that Office is still the better product.
Slashdot Mirror
Apologies, I didnt read the parent post closely enough. Yes, once code is under the GPL you cannot decide that it only be used for commercial or non-commercial use. My point was misdirected.
Take a look at MySQL to see how something can be offered both commercially and under the GPL.
If you are the copyright holder for the entire code, you can license it however you please. The GPL does not remove the right of the copyright holder to do whatever they want with their own code
UFO = Unidentified Flying Object
UFO does not just mean aliens. Any flying object that is unidentified is a UFO by definition.
Timed to coincide with the year of Linux on the desktop. Oh wait, that was last year. Oh wait, it was the year before...
Yep, it will get so hot with Macromedia releasing native Linux apps. Oh wait...theyre not.
As above
Nobody uses VS.Net...all MS FUD. All major software houses have secretly decided to stop production of Win software and are going to release all future software for GNU/Linux only. However we here at /. are the only ones who actually know of this secret. Anyone who says otherwise is spreading MS FUD and is guilty of thoughtcrime.
Nothing to see here, move along...
You will also be immune from microsoft compatible applications / games.
And the purpose of buying the PC was?
Well, if the amplitude is identical, the frequency is the same and the waves are exactly 180 degrees out of phase, then yes they would.
So, the moral of the story: :)
When your other half starts yelling, start yelling back at the same volume straight afterwards and you may possibly be lucky enough to hear total silence
No
OS X is for those who care about USING a computer
Windows are for masochists who believe tormenting oneself will lead to enlightenment.
You really need to learn your history a bit.
The demise of Germany in WWII started after Operation Barbarossa was launched (the invasion of Russia, for those of you who know nothing about world history). Germany was overcommitted, and could not sustain both the Eastern and Western fronts.
The reason the war ended relatively shortly after America joined in was because the Russians had already put the Germans onto the retreat. The USA only accelerated the inevitable.
If I was selling mission critical applications, I dont think I would sell too many if I told the clients that I provided no warranty for the performance of the software, but they could always view the source code.
Currently there seems to be a growing occurence of eBay account hijacks, where a scammer will appear to have a hundred or so excellent feedback comments, but in actual fact its all a scam. They also offer their products on borderline of what would be considered a reasonable bargain and what would be obviously a scam.
GPL'ed software would NEVER have been used for this in the first place, whether or not it was better.
Read Paragraphs 11 and 12 of the GPL. There is NO WARRANTY. Nobody in their right mind would use software without any form of warranty in a situation where lives can be lost
I agree totally that quite often a scam is fairly obvious. But, and to use Ebay as an example, Ebay pushes itself as a place to get goods far cheaper than you would normally. So when is very cheap a good bargain and when is very cheap a scam?
And, to state the obvious, is not the scammer the one totally to blame for a scam? What can we do about it? Dunno...but the scammer is still the one at fault.
Let me get this straight? Someone gets ripped off, and THEY are the ones who are almost totally at fault?
Im not sure about American law, but in Australia consumer rights laws will outrank any contract you sign with another party (disclaimer: IANAL).
If you have a legitimate claim against them under consumer protection laws, they cannot remove your right to sue them, no matter what is in your agreement. A bit like the disclaimers you read along the lines of "I hereby waive all right to damages from XXX". Looks good and legal, but if you have a legitimate case to sue, its a meaningless clause.
You misrepresent what the BSD style licenses do. Someone cannot take source code released under the BSD license and make it proprietary. They can USE the code in their own software, but they cannot claim rights to it.
BSD licenses are truly free. You can do what you please with them. NOBODY can take away the rights for others to use the same code in their own software, so your analogy is totally wrong.
True freedom is when someone can do what they like as long as it does not interfere with the rights of others. Forcing people to open their code is not freedom, it is forcing your values onto others. If you truly believed in freedom you would accept that not everyone wants their software open sourced. You may not like it, but that is freedom in action.
BSD licenses are true freedom, the GPL is not
Or deoderant.
Maybe we can start a sourceforge project. An open source deoderant formula. We can call it GND, or GND's Not a Deoderant.
And I really feel for the population of Cambridge. The fly swarms that they will have to put up with! Please FSF, bring some fly screens for the poor population!
If only it was an OS X conference, then the inhabitants could be treated to sweet perfume for a few days, accompanied by an influx of the sexiest human beings on the face of the earth!
Im not blaming doctors on this one either. The root cause of this problem is the ambulance chasers, who will try to make a case out of nothing just to make a buck.
I just dont like the idea of a list unless there is some form of screening process before the names are accepted. I would also object to a public list where doctors names could be submitted by members of the public with no verification / screening of the names. Either way leaves the system very open to abuse.
And Dr Phil will truthfully answer that he was sued for malpractice because he turned up to work drunk?
The danger here is that doctors who got sued quite legitimately will use this to get revenge on anyone who sued them.
What next? A list of anyone who brought a complaint against a doctor?
So next time you go to a doctor you wont know whether he is a good doctor, or only practicing because his patients are too scared to lodge a complaint against him for fear of not being able to get treatment in future.
So you think somebody is just going to get up and give you a nice IT job? Macromedia will start releasing all their software for free just because you cant afford Dreamweaver?
The world does not owe you a living. I started out by doing IT certifications while working packing shelves at midnight in my local supermarket. Spend more time planning and working and less time bitching and thinking the world owes you something and you might actually start moving ahead.
If you cant afford Macromedia software, learn how to develop through notepad / emacs / pico / eclipse / whatever like the rest of us started out doing.
That depends on what you do for a living
If you flip burgers, then no Dreamweaver is not for you. If you are a professional web developer, then it is worth its weight in gold. I will only use Dreamweaver for web development tasks as it pays for itself with the time I save.
Saying the software is bad because it costs too much for you is like saying airliners should use Cessna's instead of 747s because the jumbos cost too much. No, you may not be able to afford Dreamweaver, but for some of us its the main reason we have not switched over to Linux.
I partially agree, but also partially disagree. If you are a uni student and run a free software project, dont expect to go out in the open market and get employed as a project architect. You may be lucky and skip the junior programmer level, but that will be it.
But..and there is a but...if you are already a senior programmer / project architect, and you also manage a free software project, it will put you in very good stead against your competing candidates for the job. It will be an additional achievement, and you are demonstrating that you can accomplish multiple tasks simultaneously.
To summarise, its very good as an additional achievement, not as a main feature of your CV.
So when you go to the bank to pay your bills, instead of giving them money, hand over a listing of the improvements company Y made to your software. The look on the tellers face will be priceless
Ill take a different angle on that.
Lets say that you and a couple of your friends develop (over a period of a year or so) an absolutely outstanding piece of software that fills a niche in business, going right up to enterprise level. You go out and put it under the GPL.
Step forward a couple of months. IBM realise how good your software is (as an example) and how useful it will be in the enterprise. They start bundling your software with their servers / desktops, provide support for it, customise it for their customers etc.
How do you make your money? You will never get to sell / support / install your software at enterprise level as a giant multi-national is doing it too - legally. They make the zillions through their hardware sales, support, customization etc, while you go around maybe installing it here and there in your local small businesses, barely scraping a living, knowing that you will never be able to compete with the 800 pound gorilla.
At 2500 pounds, can you see these things spreading into every room in the house? If anyone could afford half a dozen of these things, I would think their kids are pretty much set up for life, no matter what their attention span
Agreed. Besides the closed standards for the file formats, MS Office is a VERY good product. Getting all the apps to work seamlessly together makes the users life a lot easier.
The real test of these products is to think about what the reaction would be if Office was the open source alternative, and OO was made by MS. In that situation I can almost guarantee the OSS community would be cheering that it had a far superior product to the commercial alternative. Given this, we can fairly safely assume that Office is still the better product.