Does that mean that Windows will allow the video driver user-mode process to access the Video Card's hardware via port access? (i.e setting the IOPL [I/O Privilege Level] to ring 3 in the process's context)
If so, then a video driver will easily compromise the kernel, for example by programming the DMA to copy memory over kernel physical memory.
If they don't allow I/O port access in the video driver, then how does the video driver get its job done?
Is it limited to the I/O ports that are mentioned in the resource listing of the driver?
Yes, but there are several problems with that with regard to software:
Software has a tendency to monopolize niches. For example, a critical-mass network (Skype, Battle.Net) that is only accessible through one piece of software, which is not free. Sure there are alternatives, but for the specific network niche, you are forced away from these freedoms. This also applies to software formats, and niche applications.
Discouraging free software: The ability to run (and pirate) a closed-source program is a discouragement for many to replace them with free works. If the closed-source program never existed in the first place, a lot more incentive to create alternatives, including free ones would exist.
Wastes effort of Free Software to reverse engineer and otherwise achieve interoperability. Without closed-source software, a lot of Reverse-engineering effort could have gone to writing new functionality.
"You can ignore the existence of closed source software and therefore it is necessarily not a negative thing" sounds good at first, but in practice it is wrong.
The mere existence of closed-source software is harmful, for the above reasons.
Its not the money that's the problem, its the freedom.
Indeed he has the freedom to run the program. But:
He does not have the freedom to view or modify the program (This prevents enhancing the state of the art and requires reinventing the state of the art every time).
He does not have the freedom to share the programs with his friends.
He does not have the freedom to run the program on multiple computers, or in a LAN party.
You vastly over estimate the ease with which people find what they are looking for on Sourceforge
Especially with those download quests, where you wander through at least 8 html pages in your quest to get to the damn installer already...
People very rarely care about more than the target platform, so the various alternate versions offered for download are mostly a waste of time. People never really spend time to figure out which mirror is best, so that selection screen is a waste of time. The "download will start shortly" is also an annoying waste of time.
So why not place 3 large download links for major platforms, that choose a mirror however, and hide the rest of the downloads elsewhere?
Imagine a world where a single link click downloads. I must be day dreaming.
Anyway back to the point. Very large profitable companies (we should all have this problem) sometimes make more money than they have ideas to spend it on.
I thought that's what Banks were for.
You put the money in the bank, and it spends its time and resources figuring out where to re-invest it.
Many of them simply believe that they should not make money that's based on the restriction of the rights of users. If the restrictions on freedom were necessary to prevent something more horrible than the loss of freedom itself, that could be justifiable. But what are we protecting here? A supposed incentive for the creation of works? That's supposed to be more important than the freedom of people to handle data, share with their neighbor and enhance the state of the art?
You are using a government imposed law of user restriction that cannot even be called consensual because most people are too ignorant to understand it to make money, and basing a moral claim on that. Copyright law is not moral code, and its growing further from moral code with every new bill introduced to the world.
I suggest you cease to claim the moral high ground against your users, or switch to a different profession where you can make money morally, and not by restricting your users' freedom.
PS: I have programmed in Ada, C, C++, Java and Pascal and my favorite language is now Ada.
I have programmed in Assembly, Python, C, C++, Pascal, some Lisp and a tiny bit of Java, Haskell and Ada.
I dislike Ada because I believe there are far too many primitives that should be libraries (semaphores and other concurrency features).
I now love the other edge of the spectrum: Python. The "eww whitespace" barrier seems to block/filter a lot of closed-minded programmers, but don't let it prevent you from learning this wonderful language:)
The main reason program verification didn't catch on was that it was hopeless for C and C++.
Java and C#, however, are good enough. (So were Pascal, Modula, and Ada.)
What is the semantic difference between C and Pascal?
As far as I can remember, the only real semantic difference was Pascal's lack of casting. Is this difference really the breaking point of C's provability?
I would expect pointer arithmetic to be the source of problems, but if I recall correctly, Pascal's pointers have arithmetic as well.
The problem with any verification tool is that it can't know what you expect the program to do unless you tell it. Why should this be any more correct than the program itself?
Many aspects of the program can be described, and not all of them must be proven.
A program can be roughly divided to its requirements specification and the implementation. The requirements leave a lot of "freedom" to the implementation, and the choices in this area are not important to prove.
As a simple example, a "sort" algorithm has a requirement specification:
The input set of elements must contain the exact same elements as the output set of elements.
Every element in the output set of elements, except the first one, is larger or equal to the element before it.
There are also some implicit "requirements" that can and depending on method, must be proven:
The algorithm is deterministic.
The algorithm will halt with a result.
The algorithm will not perform invalid operations (crashes/etc).
There are many possible sort implementations, but any of them can be proven to answer the requirements. The above requirements' specification are not an equivalent description of sort as the implementation.
The basic key behind program proof is that there is a gap and a difference between requirements and implementation and describing requirements is usually much easier. Also, the many implicit requirements (halting, no crashes) derive many provable requirements (even automatically) and themselves don't require manual and potentially error-prone specification.
In other words, if you can write a description of what the program should do that is more accurate than the program, then that description should replace the source code.
You must be writing prolog:-) A requirement specification is not a program implementation. There is no way to automatically deduce a working implementation from the requirements, other than brute force search all of the possible outputs for the input - which is not practical for any non-trivial algorithm with non-trivial input.
Israel IS an apartheid regime! Failing to see that is yet another proof of which side the media are on. I urge you to read the following comparison of Israel with South Africa (though a couple of years old) http://mondediplo.com/2003/11/04apartheid. The sad part is that it only got worse ever since.
The article seems to highlight several similarities between Israel's control of the territories and the apartheid. It does not seem to claim that internally Israel is an apartheid regime. Why is this distinction important? Because Israel has been trying with all its political and military might to disconnect itself from the territories it currently controls, and that would end whatever similarities people find in the Apartheid. The only things preventing Israel from disconnecting itself from these territories are the Palestinian terrorists and Israel's right-wingers. Israel's right wing failed though, and a left-wing government was elected on the premise of disconnecting Israel from the territories, but Hezbollah's war has furthered that by increasing support for the Israeli right-wing.
What you just said has more falseness to it than truth.
After witnessing the opression and humiliation of their fellows in Gaza and the WB, most Arabs grew mad about it. This, coupled with a sense of helplessness, is what translates into terrorism (I speak from experience here). Granted, this context, is not one in which peace would foster.
I agree that Israel's checkpoints and control of the territories is the source of much sufferring and may even be considered oppression. But this does not necessarily mean that Israel is to blame. Israel is trying to stop this, but obviously has no alternatives:
If Israel lessens the restrictions on the checkpoints, experience proves this results in many Israeli terrorist casualties.
If Israel lets humanitarian causes through (Ambulances, Pregnant women, wheelchaired people) this results in many Israeli casualties (Hamas has hidden explosives in Ambulances, fake pregnant bellies, and in wheel chairs).
If Israel removes checkpoints and gives up control of territories (which it is wants to very much), these become sources of terrorists and result in many Israeli casualties.
So Israel really has very little alternative to what it is currently doing.
On the other hand, the Arab world could lessen the propaganda. The Palestinians could choose to negotiate instead of kill civilians, and avoid using human shields and hiding their explosives in Ambulances. The Palestinians could target purely the military and not civilians. The Palestinians could centralize their control so negotiations are actually meaningful (currently, they are not, because even a peace treaty like Oslo is not accepted by many of the factions and there is de-facto no centralized control).
When Israel just came to be, it risked civil war to unite all of the military factions into one body: the IDF. Israelis were killed during this, and it demanded great courage of Ben Gurion and Begin to do this, but they did it anyway. The Palestinians are unwilling to risk civil war to unite their military factions, and remove those who refuse. This lack of courage is one of the main causes of their continued suffering, as it renders any peace accord almost meaningless.
Israel has indeed rejected some peace offers in the past, and so did the Arab nations. Rejecting a peace offer has a lot more possible reasons other than "not wanting peace". Sometimes the government disbelieves the seriousness of the offer. Sometimes it is not believed to be possible in the circumstances.
The fact is - the main recent conflicts, with the Palestinians and with the Hezbollah are almost entirely the fault of the Palestinians the Hezbollah, as they are the only ones who can actually put an end to them.
If you disagree with my above statement, please list a few actions Israel could perform to end the conflict, and I will explain why they are either not possible, or will only make things worse, and not end the conflict.
The settlements have few people who migrated from the USSR, actually.
The most vocal ones are religious Jews (very few from the USSR are religious) who were born in Israel, and stay in the settlements for religious reasons.
Those who are in the settlements for the money, would have no problem leaving, because the government rewards very well those that it forces to leave (As in the Gaza pullout).
Saying Israel is a "de-facto Apartheid" is a little, tad, bit, extreme. People of different backgrounds and cultures chose to live separately, and set up different residential areas. Jews and Arabs live side by side in Israel, without a forced segregation.
If you think that the Labour party and other "pro peace parties" being elected would significantly change the situation, think again. They were elected, and they tried to make peace, but there's just too big a gap between Israel and the Palestinians. Israel wants to exist in security next to a weak Palestine state that does not threaten it. The Palestinians want to exist in security next to an Israel flooded by 3 million Palestinian refugees - effectively destroyed as a sanctuary for persecuted Jews.
The "neighbourhood" will remain hostile, as Arab nations, including even Egypt are still very hateful towards Israel (even though in Egypt, the regime prevents this hate from being harmful). Syria propagates the "Protocols of the Elders of Zion" joke as if it were fact, in official books. The Palestinians elected for government a movement who admitted to sending people to blow up in restaurants and buses to kill as many civilians as they could. Hezbollah's leader Nasrallah said that until Israel is destroyed and the last Jew on Earth is dead, his job is not done.
So maybe you should snap out of this illusion that peace is right around the corner, and it only takes some Israeli gut to make it. There's a lot more to do in the Arab nations for peace than there is in Israel.
I think breast cancer is a more specific set of cancers.
It may be possible in the future to prevent breast cancer ahead of time by genetic modification (before getting the cancer).
Sure, it may not be possible too, but you cannot rule that out.
As I said in the GP, I do agree that "curing all cancers" is a moot thing, but preventing a specific type of cancer by DNA modification sounds plausible. Ofcourse other side-effects might ensue.
The barrier for me is giving my credit card or any other form of payment on the net.
I don't trust today's computers' security with my money, and definitely don't trust sites to take only what they advertise to take.
I don't have time to be critical of every spending of every cent from my accounts, and I don't have time to fight for my money back in cases of mini frauds.
Its actually not the money that stops me from using internet services, its the mere thought of giving them a credit card number or such.
I would never watch a YouTube video even if it required 1 cent, and its really not about the money.
He is saying that being able to make money on software is not an important aspect, question or prerequisite for the importance of Free Software.
And that is true. Without the monetary incentive, many will undoubtedly leave the field, but many will still stay - and Free Software will still propsper.
Of course there are technical advantages to using non-free software. Nobody debates this. The thing is, these technical short-term advantages may and will cost you a lot in the long-term.
Of course, each person must do his own goal-oriented balance. If someone does not care at all about freedom, he is free to go join North Korea. If someone does not care much about software freedom, he is free to use closed-source software.
You must remember, though, what long-term risks you are entailing. For example, Photoshop can start encrypting/formatting the images in a secret format such that you can only gain access to them via Photoshop (and perhaps other licensed closed-source software). This sounds far-fetched, but only because Photoshop doesn't have anywhere near the stranglehold on image processing as it would like. If Photoshop managed to gain a monopoly on photo processing (which so many pieces of software, backed by copyright, seem to gain), then they would easily do this.
This would lock you in to Photoshop to access any of your old photos, and there is pretty much nothing that you could do about it.
Also, the mere existence of non-free software is itself a discouragement against development of free software, as it offers a technically viable alternative. Thus, I suggest to avoid payment even if you have to use closed-source software, and in such a case you are not doing a lot of harm to the freedom of software. By paying the software cartels, you improve the short-term technical quality of the closed-source software thereby discouraging the development of free software alternatives, you fund legislation campaigns against software freedom and for more restrictive copyright and DRM.
You talked about using your own brain, so maybe you should try doing it too.
The "which license is more free?" is a silly semantic question and its answer depends on your definition of freedom and who it applies to.
The question "which license is more free?" may instead be phrased: "which license's popularity makes it more possible for people (en-masse) to view, modify, and redistribute copies of their software".
The BSD style license allows people to redistribute lock-in versions of the product, and allows to place further restrictions on the software. That means that if everything is published as GPL, then all copies of it remain free and make it more possible for people to view, modify and redistribute copies of the software. When everything is published as BSD, closed-source companies can create an added-value revision with significant technical advantages that gain a critical mass, and not contribute anything back. Since the closed-source companies saved themselves a lot of resources by reusing BSD code, they will obviously have a huge advantage and get themselves a lot of users that think "best tool for the job" is the most important thing. This will make the new revisions non-viewable and non-modifable and even not allowed for redistribution. Obviously with a world full of technically-advantaged closed software revisions based on BSD code, viewing, modifying and copying becomes less possible, and you lose all freedom on the technically-advantageous versions.
Thus, the obvious answer to the question is that the GPL guarantees more "freedom" (to view, modify and redistribute copies) - which to me means it is more "free".
But ofcourse, you're free to still believe that the semantic meaning of the word "free" is "free" to use a government-mandate to restrict your users from viewing, modifying, and copying the code. But that is quite a twisted view of the word "freedom" which BSD users tend to have.
I have come to my own conclusions on the issue of software copyright, some of them inspired by Stallman's writings, and some of it on my own insights. I think Stallman got it right -- and I don't have to claim some middle ground in order to "prove" I'm a free thinker, like you seem to do.
I have no problem being in an "extreme". For example, I am sure we are both in the extreme opinion that "murdering innocent people is bad". Wow, we are extremists!
The images are a problem if they encourage people to go catch kids to make those images.
If a guy is unlucky enough to be a pedophile, he is expected to avoid sexual satisfaction as to avoid harm to children. You can't expect something that's probably genetic or in any case not in the control of the person to be controlled (i.e aroused by child porn) but you can expect him to do whatever is necessary to not act upon those urges.
The pictures of the WTC are not the encouragement for such acts, and are not problematic - so you cannot compare them with the images that required child abuse and made only for those who seek to view them.
Its not about what is "best for the job". Its about software freedom. For RMS and the Free Software movement, what's "best for the job" is not nearly as important as what helps and guarantees freedom.
RMS and people in the Free Software movement, believe that there is no room for software that takes away the freedoms of the user. And its important to teach kids in schools just that, so that they know to respect those freedoms as they grow older as well.
Software is special, because in software, each piece of software is dependent on so many ideas, that a "patent mine field" renders almost any piece of software impossible to create.
There is really no good way to test triviality.
Patents are meant as a "lesser evil" (monopolies are considered bad) to promote ideas that help society. So the real question is, do software patents indeed increase the amount of good ideas more than they harm society by creating monopolies and raise the barrier to software development?
Also remember that a perfect patent system is not achievable, and considering the pros and cons, you must consider that many "trivial" and overly broad patents will pass through the system, even if it is a good one. Each such patent cancels the good done by many other legitimate advances that were inspired by patents (which I doubt would exist at all) and makes it less likely that patents will actually be beneficial to society.
Could you please explain a single idea you have patented, which is beneficial to society, and would not have existed without software patents?
If you can, please list not only a patent description of yours, but also a few examples of problems you solved with patents, so I can try to alternatively solve the same problems, as a test of "triviality".
The real test of whether patents are good or bad, is not if they are analogous to "physical" patents (although it is an interesting anecdote), but whether they contribute good enough ideas that help enough to justify the monopolizing and limitation that they put on society.
Slashdot Mirror
Does that mean that Windows will allow the video driver user-mode process to access the Video Card's hardware via port access? (i.e setting the IOPL [I/O Privilege Level] to ring 3 in the process's context)
If so, then a video driver will easily compromise the kernel, for example by programming the DMA to copy memory over kernel physical memory.
If they don't allow I/O port access in the video driver, then how does the video driver get its job done?
Is it limited to the I/O ports that are mentioned in the resource listing of the driver?
I don't think you've actually read the flame war between the two.
Linus called Tenanbaum's decisions brain-dead, and implied that he doesn't understand how he became a professor at all.
Tenanbaum was patronizing and said Linus would get an F if he was his student.
They didn't really respect each other too much in that "conversation".
"You can ignore the existence of closed source software and therefore it is necessarily not a negative thing" sounds good at first, but in practice it is wrong.
The mere existence of closed-source software is harmful, for the above reasons.
Its not the money that's the problem, its the freedom.
Indeed he has the freedom to run the program. But:
He does not have the freedom to view or modify the program (This prevents enhancing the state of the art and requires reinventing the state of the art every time).
He does not have the freedom to share the programs with his friends.
He does not have the freedom to run the program on multiple computers, or in a LAN party.
If regular market forces applied, Microsoft would already be out of business.
Copyright law, being a government imposed monopoly is not part of the market or its forces, and allows for such monopolization of a market.
If regular market forces were let loose (copyright cancelled), then the monopoly would be broken very quickly.
Especially with those download quests, where you wander through at least 8 html pages in your quest to get to the damn installer already...
People very rarely care about more than the target platform, so the various alternate versions offered for download are mostly a waste of time.
People never really spend time to figure out which mirror is best, so that selection screen is a waste of time.
The "download will start shortly" is also an annoying waste of time.
So why not place 3 large download links for major platforms, that choose a mirror however, and hide the rest of the downloads elsewhere?
Imagine a world where a single link click downloads. I must be day dreaming.
I thought that's what Banks were for.
You put the money in the bank, and it spends its time and resources figuring out where to re-invest it.
A lot of Slashdot users are "content creators".
Many of them simply believe that they should not make money that's based on the restriction of the rights of users. If the restrictions on freedom were necessary to prevent something more horrible than the loss of freedom itself, that could be justifiable. But what are we protecting here? A supposed incentive for the creation of works? That's supposed to be more important than the freedom of people to handle data, share with their neighbor and enhance the state of the art?
You are using a government imposed law of user restriction that cannot even be called consensual because most people are too ignorant to understand it to make money, and basing a moral claim on that. Copyright law is not moral code, and its growing further from moral code with every new bill introduced to the world.
I suggest you cease to claim the moral high ground against your users, or switch to a different profession where you can make money morally, and not by restricting your users' freedom.
PS: I have programmed in Ada, C, C++, Java and Pascal and my favorite language is now Ada.
:)
I have programmed in Assembly, Python, C, C++, Pascal, some Lisp and a tiny bit of Java, Haskell and Ada.
I dislike Ada because I believe there are far too many primitives that should be libraries (semaphores and other concurrency features).
I now love the other edge of the spectrum: Python. The "eww whitespace" barrier seems to block/filter a lot of closed-minded programmers, but don't let it prevent you from learning this wonderful language
What is the semantic difference between C and Pascal?
As far as I can remember, the only real semantic difference was Pascal's lack of casting.
Is this difference really the breaking point of C's provability?
I would expect pointer arithmetic to be the source of problems, but if I recall correctly, Pascal's pointers have arithmetic as well.
Many aspects of the program can be described, and not all of them must be proven.
A program can be roughly divided to its requirements specification and the implementation. The requirements leave a lot of "freedom" to the implementation, and the choices in this area are not important to prove.
As a simple example, a "sort" algorithm has a requirement specification:
There are also some implicit "requirements" that can and depending on method, must be proven:
There are many possible sort implementations, but any of them can be proven to answer the requirements. The above requirements' specification are not an equivalent description of sort as the implementation.
The basic key behind program proof is that there is a gap and a difference between requirements and implementation and describing requirements is usually much easier. Also, the many implicit requirements (halting, no crashes) derive many provable requirements (even automatically) and themselves don't require manual and potentially error-prone specification.
You must be writing prolog
The article seems to highlight several similarities between Israel's control of the territories and the apartheid. It does not seem to claim that internally Israel is an apartheid regime. Why is this distinction important? Because Israel has been trying with all its political and military might to disconnect itself from the territories it currently controls, and that would end whatever similarities people find in the Apartheid. The only things preventing Israel from disconnecting itself from these territories are the Palestinian terrorists and Israel's right-wingers. Israel's right wing failed though, and a left-wing government was elected on the premise of disconnecting Israel from the territories, but Hezbollah's war has furthered that by increasing support for the Israeli right-wing.
What you just said has more falseness to it than truth.
After witnessing the opression and humiliation of their fellows in Gaza and the WB, most Arabs grew mad about it. This, coupled with a sense of helplessness, is what translates into terrorism (I speak from experience here). Granted, this context, is not one in which peace would foster.
I agree that Israel's checkpoints and control of the territories is the source of much sufferring and may even be considered oppression. But this does not necessarily mean that Israel is to blame. Israel is trying to stop this, but obviously has no alternatives:
So Israel really has very little alternative to what it is currently doing.
On the other hand, the Arab world could lessen the propaganda. The Palestinians could choose to negotiate instead of kill civilians, and avoid using human shields and hiding their explosives in Ambulances. The Palestinians could target purely the military and not civilians. The Palestinians could centralize their control so negotiations are actually meaningful (currently, they are not, because even a peace treaty like Oslo is not accepted by many of the factions and there is de-facto no centralized control).
When Israel just came to be, it risked civil war to unite all of the military factions into one body: the IDF. Israelis were killed during this, and it demanded great courage of Ben Gurion and Begin to do this, but they did it anyway. The Palestinians are unwilling to risk civil war to unite their military factions, and remove those who refuse. This lack of courage is one of the main causes of their continued suffering, as it renders any peace accord almost meaningless.
Israel has indeed rejected some peace offers in the past, and so did the Arab nations. Rejecting a peace offer has a lot more possible reasons other than "not wanting peace". Sometimes the government disbelieves the seriousness of the offer. Sometimes it is not believed to be possible in the circumstances.
The fact is - the main recent conflicts, with the Palestinians and with the Hezbollah are almost entirely the fault of the Palestinians the Hezbollah, as they are the only ones who can actually put an end to them.
If you disagree with my above statement, please list a few actions Israel could perform to end the conflict, and I will explain why they are either not possible, or will only make things worse, and not end the conflict.
The settlements have few people who migrated from the USSR, actually.
The most vocal ones are religious Jews (very few from the USSR are religious) who were born in Israel, and stay in the settlements for religious reasons.
Those who are in the settlements for the money, would have no problem leaving, because the government rewards very well those that it forces to leave (As in the Gaza pullout).
Saying Israel is a "de-facto Apartheid" is a little, tad, bit, extreme. People of different backgrounds and cultures chose to live separately, and set up different residential areas. Jews and Arabs live side by side in Israel, without a forced segregation.
If you think that the Labour party and other "pro peace parties" being elected would significantly change the situation, think again. They were elected, and they tried to make peace, but there's just too big a gap between Israel and the Palestinians. Israel wants to exist in security next to a weak Palestine state that does not threaten it. The Palestinians want to exist in security next to an Israel flooded by 3 million Palestinian refugees - effectively destroyed as a sanctuary for persecuted Jews.
The "neighbourhood" will remain hostile, as Arab nations, including even Egypt are still very hateful towards Israel (even though in Egypt, the regime prevents this hate from being harmful). Syria propagates the "Protocols of the Elders of Zion" joke as if it were fact, in official books. The Palestinians elected for government a movement who admitted to sending people to blow up in restaurants and buses to kill as many civilians as they could. Hezbollah's leader Nasrallah said that until Israel is destroyed and the last Jew on Earth is dead, his job is not done.
So maybe you should snap out of this illusion that peace is right around the corner, and it only takes some Israeli gut to make it. There's a lot more to do in the Arab nations for peace than there is in Israel.
I think breast cancer is a more specific set of cancers.
It may be possible in the future to prevent breast cancer ahead of time by genetic modification (before getting the cancer).
Sure, it may not be possible too, but you cannot rule that out.
As I said in the GP, I do agree that "curing all cancers" is a moot thing, but preventing a specific type of cancer by DNA modification sounds plausible. Ofcourse other side-effects might ensue.
The barrier for me is giving my credit card or any other form of payment on the net.
I don't trust today's computers' security with my money, and definitely don't trust sites to take only what they advertise to take.
I don't have time to be critical of every spending of every cent from my accounts, and I don't have time to fight for my money back in cases of mini frauds.
Its actually not the money that stops me from using internet services, its the mere thought of giving them a credit card number or such.
I would never watch a YouTube video even if it required 1 cent, and its really not about the money.
Cancer is not a disease.
It is a whole class of diseases. There are many many types of cancer, each with its own causes, mutations or cell environment changes.
If there is a "cure for cancer" its going to be a hell of a lot of cures.
I have responded to quite a few questions in quite a few forums over the years.
It requires knowledge. Knowledge is not necessarily achieved by reading manuals cover-to-cover.
My knowledge is almost entirely obtained from experience, trial and error, and reading random web tutorials, articles and sources.
He is saying that being able to make money on software is not an important aspect, question or prerequisite for the importance of Free Software.
And that is true. Without the monetary incentive, many will undoubtedly leave the field, but many will still stay - and Free Software will still propsper.
Of course there are technical advantages to using non-free software. Nobody debates this.
The thing is, these technical short-term advantages may and will cost you a lot in the long-term.
Of course, each person must do his own goal-oriented balance. If someone does not care at all about freedom, he is free to go join North Korea. If someone does not care much about software freedom, he is free to use closed-source software.
You must remember, though, what long-term risks you are entailing.
For example, Photoshop can start encrypting/formatting the images in a secret format such that you can only gain access to them via Photoshop (and perhaps other licensed closed-source software). This sounds far-fetched, but only because Photoshop doesn't have anywhere near the stranglehold on image processing as it would like. If Photoshop managed to gain a monopoly on photo processing (which so many pieces of software, backed by copyright, seem to gain), then they would easily do this.
This would lock you in to Photoshop to access any of your old photos, and there is pretty much nothing that you could do about it.
Also, the mere existence of non-free software is itself a discouragement against development of free software, as it offers a technically viable alternative. Thus, I suggest to avoid payment even if you have to use closed-source software, and in such a case you are not doing a lot of harm to the freedom of software. By paying the software cartels, you improve the short-term technical quality of the closed-source software thereby discouraging the development of free software alternatives, you fund legislation campaigns against software freedom and for more restrictive copyright and DRM.
accord users greater freedom than the GPL
You talked about using your own brain, so maybe you should try doing it too.
The "which license is more free?" is a silly semantic question and its answer depends on your definition of freedom and who it applies to.
The question "which license is more free?" may instead be phrased: "which license's popularity makes it more possible for people (en-masse) to view, modify, and redistribute copies of their software".
The BSD style license allows people to redistribute lock-in versions of the product, and allows to place further restrictions on the software. That means that if everything is published as GPL, then all copies of it remain free and make it more possible for people to view, modify and redistribute copies of the software.
When everything is published as BSD, closed-source companies can create an added-value revision with significant technical advantages that gain a critical mass, and not contribute anything back. Since the closed-source companies saved themselves a lot of resources by reusing BSD code, they will obviously have a huge advantage and get themselves a lot of users that think "best tool for the job" is the most important thing. This will make the new revisions non-viewable and non-modifable and even not allowed for redistribution.
Obviously with a world full of technically-advantaged closed software revisions based on BSD code, viewing, modifying and copying becomes less possible, and you lose all freedom on the technically-advantageous versions.
Thus, the obvious answer to the question is that the GPL guarantees more "freedom" (to view, modify and redistribute copies) - which to me means it is more "free".
But ofcourse, you're free to still believe that the semantic meaning of the word "free" is "free" to use a government-mandate to restrict your users from viewing, modifying, and copying the code. But that is quite a twisted view of the word "freedom" which BSD users tend to have.
I have come to my own conclusions on the issue of software copyright, some of them inspired by Stallman's writings, and some of it on my own insights.
I think Stallman got it right -- and I don't have to claim some middle ground in order to "prove" I'm a free thinker, like you seem to do.
I have no problem being in an "extreme". For example, I am sure we are both in the extreme opinion that "murdering innocent people is bad". Wow, we are extremists!
Its not the "sick arousal" that's the problem.
The images are a problem if they encourage people to go catch kids to make those images.
If a guy is unlucky enough to be a pedophile, he is expected to avoid sexual satisfaction as to avoid harm to children. You can't expect something that's probably genetic or in any case not in the control of the person to be controlled (i.e aroused by child porn) but you can expect him to do whatever is necessary to not act upon those urges.
The pictures of the WTC are not the encouragement for such acts, and are not problematic - so you cannot compare them with the images that required child abuse and made only for those who seek to view them.
Its not about what is "best for the job".
Its about software freedom.
For RMS and the Free Software movement, what's "best for the job" is not nearly as important as what helps and guarantees freedom.
RMS and people in the Free Software movement, believe that there is no room for software that takes away the freedoms of the user. And its important to teach kids in schools just that, so that they know to respect those freedoms as they grow older as well.
Software is special, because in software, each piece of software is dependent on so many ideas, that a "patent mine field" renders almost any piece of software impossible to create.
There is really no good way to test triviality.
Patents are meant as a "lesser evil" (monopolies are considered bad) to promote ideas that help society. So the real question is, do software patents indeed increase the amount of good ideas more than they harm society by creating monopolies and raise the barrier to software development?
Also remember that a perfect patent system is not achievable, and considering the pros and cons, you must consider that many "trivial" and overly broad patents will pass through the system, even if it is a good one. Each such patent cancels the good done by many other legitimate advances that were inspired by patents (which I doubt would exist at all) and makes it less likely that patents will actually be beneficial to society.
Could you please explain a single idea you have patented, which is beneficial to society, and would not have existed without software patents?
If you can, please list not only a patent description of yours, but also a few examples of problems you solved with patents, so I can try to alternatively solve the same problems, as a test of "triviality".
The real test of whether patents are good or bad, is not if they are analogous to "physical" patents (although it is an interesting anecdote), but whether they contribute good enough ideas that help enough to justify the monopolizing and limitation that they put on society.
I don't think our digestive system leaves any protein intact.
I believe we digest the proteins to their basic amino acids and use those.