I am not whining I'm just pointing out the inaccuracies of the claim that the GPL doesn't rely on and depend on IP law to exist and function.
In a world where we had no strong IP law the GPL could not exist and there would be no way to accomplish the goals of the GPL. To make the claim that the GPL is somehow attempting to subvert or thwart IP law demonstrates a sever lack of understanding of one or the other or both.
The GPL has a manifesto which justifies its existence and clearly RMS and the FSF felt that such a manifesto was necessary. If its existence offends you, I suggest you take the issue up with them.
The GPL is two pages of restrictions placed on code which rely on the strength of IP law to be enforceable. Try reading it sometime instead of just spouting off the philosophical platitudes justifying its existence.
The concept of "intellectual property" is nothing more than the idea that a person who creates should have some degree of control over what happens to that which they have created.
This is, quite interestingly, something that you must agree with in order to support the GPL. If a person doesn't have this right, then they have no right to place restrictions on their code which is exactly what the GPL does.
I really miss the sound of those mechanical ringers. Somehow it's just not as satisfying to slam down the phone in frustration now that the telephone doesn't half-ring in protest when you do it.
You must be really proud of the great progress Microsoft has made on this front, then. After all, Windows is the poster child for the effect you describe.
What you describe isn't interoperability, it's market domination.
I just pointed out the lunacy that GPL'd code leads to interoperability. It doesn't because it's unusable by developers who use alternative licenses.
Compatibility and interoperability are best achieved by releasing code that can be used by the widest audience possible. If compatability is your goal you should try to eliminate any barriers at all that exist between the shared code and the developers who can use it.
The GPL strives to do lots of things but compatability and interoperability aren't on that list.
The only businesses that won't be able to use governement funded GPL software are those who wish to deprive the rest of us of our rights to do what we want with our computers.
The fallacy of this arguement is that incorporating open code into a proprietary product doesn't lessen the utility or availability of the original code.
Did FreeBSD suddenly stop working or start costing money when Apple grabbed huge chunks of it for their proprietary MacOS X? Of course not. Have the rights of FreeBSD users been trampled and infringed upon? No.
It's absolutely impossible for a company to deprive you of any rights simply because they used code in their proprietary product.
The GPL does not prevent you from using software that you get
Only for really, really tiny values of "using" that don't include incorporating the code into a non-GPL-licensed codebase. It's entirely unrealistic for you to say that simply dumping those theoretical "swoopty file compression routines" into another product as an external binary is a viable use of that code.
Microsoft, or any other non-GPL developer, would be blocked from taking that code and linking to it. They'd be blocked from adding it to their code in order to efficiently use it. Depending on how literal a view you take of the GPL, they're probably blocked from even looking at it to see how it works so they can better design their own compression routines.
This is a signifigant liability which hinders the utility of the code to the point where the developer would be encouraged to develop their own compression routine.
In your example, Microsoft would find themselves unable to benefit from the good GPL'd code. They'd develop their own "ActiveSwoop" compression which is guaranteed to be incompatible with the GPL'd code. Their huge userbase and marketshare gives "ActiveSwoop" considerable market viability even if it's not as good as the GPL code.
End result is the same. Microsoft's code is incomaptible which damages the viability of your GPL code. You've protected nothing by blocking Microsoft from using the GPL'd code. If anything, you've resulted in the quadzillions of Windows users being subjected to worse compression (assuming your GPL code is better than what Microsoft wrote).
My point is that we all pay for taxpayer-funded development. It's unfair that the resulting code might be unusable to some of us.
GPL'ing that code makes it unusable by Microsoft, yes. But it also makes the code unusable by FreeBSD, the Apache Group, the Perl developers. Basically it makes it inaccessable to anyone who uses any license other than the GPL.
In any event, I'm not sure why you think that Microsoft shouldn't have access to the code. If it was taxpayer funded then Microsoft paid for it as much as you did.
GPL code is not accessable unless a person or comapny embraces the GPL for their own code. It's unfair of you to try to enforce your choice of license on everyone else.
Companies are taxpayers just like you are. In either scenario, we've all shared the burden of paying for the development. However, if the code is GPL'd, the companies cannot benefit from it. This simply is not fair.
If we are all going to pay, we should all be able to use.
The GPL in this circumstance is swinging the pendulum to the opposite side of the spectrum. It makes the code that was taxpayer-funded inaccessable to the businesses and proprietary software developers who also paid for its creation.
Government funding of software development should mandate public domain release so that the code is completely unencumbered. Making it GPL or allowing the sponsored developer to keep it closed are equally undesireable alternatives that only serve to block some people from using it.
The only real feature lacking in Mozilla that you may be using in NS4.7 is roaming profiles. If you're not using Navigator's roaming profile support then there really is no reason not to move to Mozilla these days. It's been pretty damn stable since 0.9.6 or so.
I like to compile --disable-mailnews to reduce the bloat.
1. "pardon parcel" should be "part and parcel" 2. "pullet surprise" should be "pulitzer prize" 3. "could of" should be "could have" 4. "for all intensive purposes" should be "for all intents and purposes"
All four fall within that same category of error resulting from mis-hearing the phrase before or in lieu of seeing it written correctly.
All four are real misstatements that I've encountered at least once in the real world. If there are more than five errors, well, I guess I'm as much of a moron as the people I tried to mock.
Errors like this are pardon parcel with learning english from talking and hearing and not by reading. I mean, nobody expects a slashdot post to win the pullet surprise or anything, but he could of spent a moment proofreading his post. For all intensive purposes he has made himself look like a real moron.
If that's the case, I suppose there's nothing stopping MS from turning Windows.NET server into Windows BSD Server next week
Yep, this is exactly right. And if Microsoft were to do that, we'd all win. Microsoft users would get a much more stable server platform and the BSD users would get another point to brag about.
For those that choose to go the "fire proof box" route, please be careful that you buy a unit that's certified to protect media. A fireproof box that will protect papers from catching fire isn't necessarily sufficient to keep tapes and disks from being destroyed by the heat. Make sure you buy one that's appropriate for your intended contents.
That's great and all. At its face, I agree completely. I think that the whole cable internet market is built on a false economy.
Where you lose me is that I don't accept that the presence of NAT is a reliable indicator of who is abusing and who is being abused. If the root issue is as you describe, then let Comcast adjust their ToS and go after their customers who are "ruining it for everyone" by using a disproportionaly high amount of the available bandwidth.
If some random guy has 50 machines NATted to his cable modem but doesn't do anything all day but idle in a MUD, Comcast should do everything they can to keep him happy and online.
For me, I just get DSL because static IP and being able to run a webserver are important to me.
Slashdot Mirror
I am not whining I'm just pointing out the inaccuracies of the claim that the GPL doesn't rely on and depend on IP law to exist and function.
In a world where we had no strong IP law the GPL could not exist and there would be no way to accomplish the goals of the GPL. To make the claim that the GPL is somehow attempting to subvert or thwart IP law demonstrates a sever lack of understanding of one or the other or both.
The GPL has a manifesto which justifies its existence and clearly RMS and the FSF felt that such a manifesto was necessary. If its existence offends you, I suggest you take the issue up with them.
The GPL is two pages of restrictions placed on code which rely on the strength of IP law to be enforceable. Try reading it sometime instead of just spouting off the philosophical platitudes justifying its existence.
The concept of "intellectual property" is nothing more than the idea that a person who creates should have some degree of control over what happens to that which they have created.
This is, quite interestingly, something that you must agree with in order to support the GPL. If a person doesn't have this right, then they have no right to place restrictions on their code which is exactly what the GPL does.
I really miss the sound of those mechanical ringers. Somehow it's just not as satisfying to slam down the phone in frustration now that the telephone doesn't half-ring in protest when you do it.
You're missing my point entirely which is:
If my tax dollars have paid for the development of code, then why should I be blocked from using that code by a license such as the GPL?
The government shouldn't be in the business of software license advocacy. GPL code is only usable if a developer also uses the GPL.
You must be really proud of the great progress Microsoft has made on this front, then. After all, Windows is the poster child for the effect you describe.
What you describe isn't interoperability, it's market domination.
I just pointed out the lunacy that GPL'd code leads to interoperability. It doesn't because it's unusable by developers who use alternative licenses.
Compatibility and interoperability are best achieved by releasing code that can be used by the widest audience possible. If compatability is your goal you should try to eliminate any barriers at all that exist between the shared code and the developers who can use it.
The GPL strives to do lots of things but compatability and interoperability aren't on that list.
This is just wrong. Just as I have the choice to not use GPL'd code, I have the equivalent choice to not buy any particular closed-source product.
If you don't like the restrictions of closed-source, don't buy the software, and you'll be in exactly the same position.
I also never said that the GPL was more restrictive.
The fallacy of this arguement is that incorporating open code into a proprietary product doesn't lessen the utility or availability of the original code.
Did FreeBSD suddenly stop working or start costing money when Apple grabbed huge chunks of it for their proprietary MacOS X? Of course not. Have the rights of FreeBSD users been trampled and infringed upon? No.
It's absolutely impossible for a company to deprive you of any rights simply because they used code in their proprietary product.
Only for really, really tiny values of "using" that don't include incorporating the code into a non-GPL-licensed codebase. It's entirely unrealistic for you to say that simply dumping those theoretical "swoopty file compression routines" into another product as an external binary is a viable use of that code.
Microsoft, or any other non-GPL developer, would be blocked from taking that code and linking to it. They'd be blocked from adding it to their code in order to efficiently use it. Depending on how literal a view you take of the GPL, they're probably blocked from even looking at it to see how it works so they can better design their own compression routines.
This is a signifigant liability which hinders the utility of the code to the point where the developer would be encouraged to develop their own compression routine.
In your example, Microsoft would find themselves unable to benefit from the good GPL'd code. They'd develop their own "ActiveSwoop" compression which is guaranteed to be incompatible with the GPL'd code. Their huge userbase and marketshare gives "ActiveSwoop" considerable market viability even if it's not as good as the GPL code.
End result is the same. Microsoft's code is incomaptible which damages the viability of your GPL code. You've protected nothing by blocking Microsoft from using the GPL'd code. If anything, you've resulted in the quadzillions of Windows users being subjected to worse compression (assuming your GPL code is better than what Microsoft wrote).
My point is that we all pay for taxpayer-funded development. It's unfair that the resulting code might be unusable to some of us.
GPL'ing that code makes it unusable by Microsoft, yes. But it also makes the code unusable by FreeBSD, the Apache Group, the Perl developers. Basically it makes it inaccessable to anyone who uses any license other than the GPL.
In any event, I'm not sure why you think that Microsoft shouldn't have access to the code. If it was taxpayer funded then Microsoft paid for it as much as you did.
GPL code is not accessable unless a person or comapny embraces the GPL for their own code. It's unfair of you to try to enforce your choice of license on everyone else.
Companies are taxpayers just like you are. In either scenario, we've all shared the burden of paying for the development. However, if the code is GPL'd, the companies cannot benefit from it. This simply is not fair.
If we are all going to pay, we should all be able to use.
The GPL in this circumstance is swinging the pendulum to the opposite side of the spectrum. It makes the code that was taxpayer-funded inaccessable to the businesses and proprietary software developers who also paid for its creation.
Government funding of software development should mandate public domain release so that the code is completely unencumbered. Making it GPL or allowing the sponsored developer to keep it closed are equally undesireable alternatives that only serve to block some people from using it.
BovineOne came up with this sign and this sign as a more modern alternative for all the work-at-home types out there.
Work at home the distributed.net way.
The only real feature lacking in Mozilla that you may be using in NS4.7 is roaming profiles. If you're not using Navigator's roaming profile support then there really is no reason not to move to Mozilla these days. It's been pretty damn stable since 0.9.6 or so.
I like to compile --disable-mailnews to reduce the bloat.
1. "pardon parcel" should be "part and parcel"
2. "pullet surprise" should be "pulitzer prize"
3. "could of" should be "could have"
4. "for all intensive purposes" should be "for all intents and purposes"
All four fall within that same category of error resulting from mis-hearing the phrase before or in lieu of seeing it written correctly.
All four are real misstatements that I've encountered at least once in the real world. If there are more than five errors, well, I guess I'm as much of a moron as the people I tried to mock.
Errors like this are pardon parcel with learning english from talking and hearing and not by reading. I mean, nobody expects a slashdot post to win the pullet surprise or anything, but he could of spent a moment proofreading his post. For all intensive purposes he has made himself look like a real moron.
Yep, this is exactly right. And if Microsoft were to do that, we'd all win. Microsoft users would get a much more stable server platform and the BSD users would get another point to brag about.
For those that choose to go the "fire proof box" route, please be careful that you buy a unit that's certified to protect media. A fireproof box that will protect papers from catching fire isn't necessarily sufficient to keep tapes and disks from being destroyed by the heat. Make sure you buy one that's appropriate for your intended contents.
Just because someone has a different opinion than you doesn't make them irrational.
If we are to simply go on the substance of the comments, Sheldon would appear to be the more rational between the two of you, to be honest.
Stop calling him names and respond to the actual substance of his post. Otherwise you're the one who appears irrational and misguided.
That's great and all. At its face, I agree completely. I think that the whole cable internet market is built on a false economy.
Where you lose me is that I don't accept that the presence of NAT is a reliable indicator of who is abusing and who is being abused. If the root issue is as you describe, then let Comcast adjust their ToS and go after their customers who are "ruining it for everyone" by using a disproportionaly high amount of the available bandwidth.
If some random guy has 50 machines NATted to his cable modem but doesn't do anything all day but idle in a MUD, Comcast should do everything they can to keep him happy and online.
For me, I just get DSL because static IP and being able to run a webserver are important to me.
]:8)
My Atari 1040ST would spank that lame-ass A500 of yours! :)