and only ships with an closed-source X app running on SCO?
when linux 2.2 was still the thing, it had somewhat working SCO binary emulation if you dug around. If your binary was statically linked (they mention sco wordperfect(!) in the readme), you might be in luck. I played with it enough to verify that it worked for simple apps, but it broke when I started trying to do socket stuff (which used a streams interface, which wasn't working on linux as I recall).. now given that I don't know how an X app *could* work, but apparantly It's Been Done.
sCary is just the man! runnin' that shugashack.. err shacknews.. server and, like, savin' the world from credit card vandals on the side! man I didn't know he was into that whole bruce wayne/batman thing..
I object to 'masses ripping you off'. It presupposes a mindset that copyright is 'right' in some ethical sense.
That's fair enough. Sorry I am cynical like that.
And I guess that I mean it should be dead in the case of people giving copies to random other people or friends, but not in the case of someone selling many copies to large numbers of people.
I'm going to make an assumption here and guess it's really the "selling" part that irks you.
Whether or not Napster falls into that category is highly questionable. They don't sell copies. They 'sell' a way for people to find other people who are willing to give them a copy, which isn't quite the same thing.
That's an excellent observation and I'll have to wrestle with that tonight. Although I will ask you, if napster actually started charging for their services, would that change your opinion?
I also think the unenforceability problem is a very big problem. It really can't be enforced unless you want to wage a 'war on pirating' like we already have a 'war on drugs'. Even then, it can't be enforced. You'd practically have to have a police state if you wanted to enforce it.
Agreed that enforcability is a "problem". ok, a more concrete counterexample than "that makes napster a head shop right?". That dude who hacked gpl quake and released his (security-related) improvements as binary-only. It was given away for free and to large numbers of people. We can send him to jail or whatever, I don't care about that for the purpose of this conversation. The software is out. Should the fact that many people download it and trade it freely, and you can't really stop them, make it "legal" or even "right"?
More generally, if you create a work and want to exercise some control over its distribution, even if its for what you see as a noble purpose, it sounds like you're saying it should be impossible, no, *wrong*, to take selective legal action against the masses (there's that word again) who would disagree.
If you take out the anti-copyright portions of the GPL, you are left with a requirement that reverse engineering remain trivial because the source code is available,
I would say that as the gpl is only legally enforceable because of copyright law, if you abolish copyright law you are left with public-domain software. well actually I guess all software would be public domain. good luck getting the source though.
are you suggesting some way other than copyright law to enforce the gpl?
Also, copyright does retain its usefulness against large scale distributors. Its still enforceable in that arena.
I would guess that's only because you don't happen to be a large scale distributor. like napster. If you want to press your point, then what exactly qualifies you as a large scale distributor?
... Are you stating that copyright is *practically* dead, as in, "you can't keep the masses from ripping you off", or that copyright *should* be dead, as in "since you can't keep the masses from ripping you off, it shouldn't be against the law"
while it's certainly nice to know this development, (and thank you for your post) I sure as hell wouldn't want to see my company email address associated with "propagandistic lies" on the front page of slashdot. It looks like you're trying to incite the flaming tard hordes to mailbomb the poor bastards who have to work on this crap.
I know damn well it's up to us, not you, to dig for both sides of the story... but that's just cold man. Do you really think the tripe 99% of us are going to send to these guys is going to have a positive effect on their stance?
there was a posting awhile back about how several
stolen laptops were returned to their previous
owners because the perpetrators had neglected to
turn the clients off.
http://slashdot.org/articles/99/08/26/112245.sht ml
Redhat (RHAT) posted a new stock high today. Geeks
throughout the world celebrated. Meanwhile,
Microsoft stocks today were mysteriously slumping.
One company spokeswoman was overheard saying "we
just don't know what happened"..
(sneakers anyone?)
I would try to be funnier but don't have the time..
A little thought will surely reveal
1) The amount of propellent you need to get it
out of earth orbit and to the moon is much better
served just keeping the damn thing up in space:)
2) if you're gonna fly propellent up there you
might as well just have another lunar mission
(robotic of course, that way it doesn't have to
come back), say, to find water in those moon
rocks, with something that was actually
designed to come down on the lunar surface instead
of a rickety space station. A few pieces? you'd
be lucky if you didn't have a new crater. Esp
with nasa's track record. (ok, that wasn't fair)
3) I'd rather send it out into deep space.
(insert random vger joke here..)
4) too expensive
sorry for the possible redundancy. just trying
to think a little realistically..
>Ian Campbell of Nottingham University agrees.
>"You could end up with very low-cost 3D-sculpting
>systems that a kid could sit and play about with,
>creating any shape they wanted to," he says.
my first thought here was 'clay'.. and think of
the advantages -- it offers real-time modelling
capabilities, plus it's non-polluting (well,
compared to polymers) and dirt cheap! (pun
intended)
(and completely off-topic: anyone ever read james
joyce's short story of the same name? I was such
a numbskull. "..but why is it named CLAY?"..
wow, I'm ashamed to admit that.. )
> If a company releases a binary-only RPM, and there is no way to actually get at the > source and change some things (like the location of libraries that other distros may have elsewhere) then it doesn't matter if you > can get the binaries installed or not. They simply won't work right.
Um, pardon the off-the-cuff response, but isn't that what symlinks are for? (neglecting, for the moment, library version conflicts)
Nevertheless I feel your pain. Have a friend with a linmodem. (didn't know it when he got it) they have some (crappy) binary kernel module rpms that drive it. Redhat 6.1 that is.
(Anything potentially inflammatory here is not meant to be taken as such.)
One of the most practical problems I see with the gpl is its incompatability with other 'free software' (but non-copyleft) licenses.
Have you ever thought about making changes to the gpl to remove these practical problems. Something along the lines of (but much more legalese than:-)
<ahem> "you may link this program with source code that meets the definition of "free software" as defined by the Free Software Foundation, as long as you can apply the additional *basic* restriction of the gpl (complete source code availability as set forth within the gpl guidelines) to the Program as a whole" {{{optionally: "... and no additional restrictions are imposed on the gpl code as a consequence of linking against said source code"}}} </ahem>
The intent would be to preserve freeness of the entire code base (something the lgpl can't do) while removing the compatibility issue for linking against other free software (think old bsd)
Would something like this be worth a separate license (it seems part of the very spirit of the gpl is incompatability w/ other free software licenses:-) and would a clause like this meet with your approval, since it promotes free software reuse in general, or disapproval, since it potentially degrades the notion of copyleft as defined by the gpl?
more generally, have you ever considered free software compatibility issues in terms of "what can I do to 'fix' the gpl" vs "what can I do to 'fix' other licenses (ie bsd)"?
Slashdot Mirror
when linux 2.2 was still the thing, it had somewhat working SCO binary emulation if you dug around. If your binary was statically linked (they mention sco wordperfect(!) in the readme), you might be in luck. I played with it enough to verify that it worked for simple apps, but it broke when I started trying to do socket stuff (which used a streams interface, which wasn't working on linux as I recall) .. now given that I don't know how an X app *could* work, but apparantly It's Been Done.
buck
here
and a decent article from back in '99 (google cached)
here
poke him in the eye. That'll impress him.
sCary is just the man! runnin' that shugashack.. err shacknews.. server and, like, savin' the world from credit card vandals on the side! man I didn't know he was into that whole bruce wayne/batman thing..
That's fair enough. Sorry I am cynical like that.
And I guess that I mean it should be dead in the case of people giving copies to random other people or friends, but not in the case of someone selling many copies to large numbers of people.
I'm going to make an assumption here and guess it's really the "selling" part that irks you.
Whether or not Napster falls into that category is highly questionable. They don't sell copies. They 'sell' a way for people to find other people who are willing to give them a copy, which isn't quite the same thing.
That's an excellent observation and I'll have to wrestle with that tonight. Although I will ask you, if napster actually started charging for their services, would that change your opinion?
I also think the unenforceability problem is a very big problem. It really can't be enforced unless you want to wage a 'war on pirating' like we already have a 'war on drugs'. Even then, it can't be enforced. You'd practically have to have a police state if you wanted to enforce it.
Agreed that enforcability is a "problem". ok, a more concrete counterexample than "that makes napster a head shop right?". That dude who hacked gpl quake and released his (security-related) improvements as binary-only. It was given away for free and to large numbers of people. We can send him to jail or whatever, I don't care about that for the purpose of this conversation. The software is out. Should the fact that many people download it and trade it freely, and you can't really stop them, make it "legal" or even "right"?
More generally, if you create a work and want to exercise some control over its distribution, even if its for what you see as a noble purpose, it sounds like you're saying it should be impossible, no, *wrong*, to take selective legal action against the masses (there's that word again) who would disagree.
buck
If you take out the anti-copyright portions of the GPL, you are left with a requirement that reverse engineering remain trivial because the source code is available,
I would say that as the gpl is only legally enforceable because of copyright law, if you abolish copyright law you are left with public-domain software. well actually I guess all software would be public domain. good luck getting the source though.
are you suggesting some way other than copyright law to enforce the gpl?
Also, copyright does retain its usefulness against large scale distributors. Its still enforceable in that arena.
I would guess that's only because you don't happen to be a large scale distributor. like napster. If you want to press your point, then what exactly qualifies you as a large scale distributor?
buck
does that mean the gpl is dead?
I know damn well it's up to us, not you, to dig for both sides of the story ... but that's just cold man. Do you really think the tripe 99% of us are going to send to these guys is going to have a positive effect on their stance?
openbsd (well.. -> theo de raadt anyway) is based in canada. the whole export of encryption thing. sure about the freebsd part?
not to offend any freebsd hackers. or canadians for that matter.
Yours is not the first suggestion in this vein.
e wEnglish.shtml
m l
You ought to be amused by mark twain's 'plan for
the improvement of english spelling' at
http://www.skypoint.com/~camilian/humor/TwainsN
.. and possibly also his amusing critique of the german language at
http://www.crossmyt.com/hc/linghebr/awfgrmlg.ht
there was a posting awhile back about how several
t ml
stolen laptops were returned to their previous
owners because the perpetrators had neglected to
turn the clients off.
http://slashdot.org/articles/99/08/26/112245.sh
Redhat (RHAT) posted a new stock high today. Geeks
throughout the world celebrated. Meanwhile,
Microsoft stocks today were mysteriously slumping.
One company spokeswoman was overheard saying "we
just don't know what happened"..
(sneakers anyone?)
I would try to be funnier but don't have the time..
oh wait was that supposed to be +1 troll or +1
funny? silly me...
ha ha! that's a good one..
:)
A little thought will surely reveal
1) The amount of propellent you need to get it
out of earth orbit and to the moon is much better
served just keeping the damn thing up in space
2) if you're gonna fly propellent up there you
might as well just have another lunar mission
(robotic of course, that way it doesn't have to
come back), say, to find water in those moon
rocks, with something that was actually
designed to come down on the lunar surface instead
of a rickety space station. A few pieces? you'd
be lucky if you didn't have a new crater. Esp
with nasa's track record. (ok, that wasn't fair)
3) I'd rather send it out into deep space.
(insert random vger joke here..)
4) too expensive
sorry for the possible redundancy. just trying
to think a little realistically..
buck
>Ian Campbell of Nottingham University agrees.
.. and think of
..
>"You could end up with very low-cost 3D-sculpting
>systems that a kid could sit and play about with,
>creating any shape they wanted to," he says.
my first thought here was 'clay'
the advantages -- it offers real-time modelling
capabilities, plus it's non-polluting (well,
compared to polymers) and dirt cheap! (pun
intended)
(and completely off-topic: anyone ever read james
joyce's short story of the same name? I was such
a numbskull. "..but why is it named CLAY?"
wow, I'm ashamed to admit that.. )
buck
Ahhhh I don't know. at least it rolls off the tongue easily (*cough* GNU/Linux *cough*)
.. no thank you I actually don't want to get into that debate, just poking fun.
> If a company releases a binary-only RPM, and there is no way to actually get at the
> source and change some things (like the location of libraries that other distros may have elsewhere) then it doesn't matter if you
> can get the binaries installed or not. They simply won't work right.
Um, pardon the off-the-cuff response, but isn't that what symlinks are for? (neglecting, for the
moment, library version conflicts)
Nevertheless I feel your pain. Have a friend with a linmodem. (didn't know it when he got it) they
have some (crappy) binary kernel module rpms that drive it. Redhat 6.1 that is.
He's stuck with the 2.2.12 kernel.
better yet, "endian-little" or "ianend-tlelit"
(Anything potentially inflammatory here is not meant to be taken as such.)
:-)
:-) and would a clause like this meet with your approval, since it promotes free software reuse in general, or disapproval, since it potentially degrades the notion of copyleft as defined by the gpl?
One of the most practical problems I see with the gpl is its incompatability with other 'free software' (but non-copyleft) licenses.
Have you ever thought about making changes to the gpl to remove these practical problems. Something along the lines of (but much more legalese than
<ahem>
"you may link this program with source code that meets the definition of "free software" as defined by the Free Software Foundation, as long as you can apply the additional *basic* restriction of the gpl (complete source code availability as set forth within the gpl guidelines) to the Program as a whole" {{{optionally: "... and no additional restrictions are imposed on the gpl code as a consequence of linking against said source code"}}}
</ahem>
The intent would be to preserve freeness of the entire code base (something the lgpl can't do) while removing the compatibility issue for linking against other free software (think old bsd)
Would something like this be worth a separate license (it seems part of the very spirit of the gpl is incompatability w/ other free software licenses
more generally, have you ever considered free software compatibility issues in terms of "what can I do to 'fix' the gpl" vs "what can I do to 'fix' other licenses (ie bsd)"?
regards, Buck