I am not a lawyer, but my understanding is that using an API which is specifically to access the GPL'd library makes the calling application a "derived work".
I believe this is wrong. If you do not copy the GPL'd code into your code, then GPL does not apply to your code. Remember, the code is copyrighted. GPL only grants you permission to do things that otherwise would be considered copyright infringement (i.e. copy the code). I don't believe that using an API can be ever considered copyright infringement. Using an API is not copying, in any sense. --
You have to GPL stuff that uses the library and is distributed together with the library.
There's an interpreter (called Hugs) for the functional language Haskell out there. It can be linked with the GNU readline library, which is GPL (rather than LGPL). Does it mean that Hugs is GPL now? No, its authors don't distribute readline, so its licence terms do not apply to Hugs.
IF they distributed a compiled Hugs binary with readline, OR a source tree that combines Hugs and Readline, THEN GPL would apply.
Of course they cannot take readline and magically convert it to use LGPL. --
The OO way (which is The Only True Way (TM), beside Organized Religion (TM)) tells us that
PatRobertson ISA Antichrist
BillGates ISA Antichrist
Therefore, RalphReed should have a WorkFor(Antichrist*) method. Or WorkFor(Antichrist&) maybe.
This way anybody who conforms to the Antichrist interface can get RalphReed to work for him.
DISCLAIMER: I am not an American. I am not a Christian. I don't know who this Ralph Reed is. I don't know who this Pat Robertson is. I am poking at the parent post, not at American politics or Christianity. Now please send your thugs away. Please. Pretty pl...[BANG! THUMP! SPLAT!]OK folks. Congrats. Another anti-American heathen went to hell where he belongs. Who's next on our list? --
If you were from Tuvalu, you'd be very happy right now. Wow, $4700 for you -- right out of thin air! Normally, you'd have to work about 5.8 years to earn this pile of money. (Source: CIA World Factbook.) --
Source code is one that intended for reading and understanding by humans (programmers). Its executability or the language it's written in are irrelevant. I write C code so my fellow programmers can read, understand, and change it, if need be. OTOH C code generated by yacc or lex is not source (lex and yacc grammars are).
All sufficently general formal languages are identical in power. Whether a formal statement is written in binary boolean calculus, or that same boolean statement in an electrical diagram, or that same statement sculpted out of transistors, is irrelevant.
Indeed. If it's meant to be understood by humans, it's speech. If it isn't, then it isn't. --
If I buy a car, I can replace whatever part I want by an aftermarket equivalent. Suppose the original lightbulbs in the car cost $15 a pop and have an average lifetime of 100 hours. There's an aftermarket bulb that costs $2 a pop and have a lifetime of 10000 hours.
Now the car manufacturer puts a little lock on the lightbulb compartment, and gives keys only to authorized shops. You say "Screw them" -- and rightly so! -- and break the lock.
Now the car manufacturer puts a little digital lock on the lightbulb compartment. You say "Screw them"...but it's you who gets screwed. Why? Because they wrote a little haiku inside the lightbulb compartment. And you've circumvented a technological measure in order to gain access to the copyrighted work.
Ok maybe you can prove in the court that you didn't really want to access their copyrighted work. All you wanted is to change a lightbulb. Maybe. But the lawyer will cost you much more than the lifetime supply of original lightbulbs. --
What is needed is a programming language that closely resembles English (or other natural language). Not like COBOL, much closer. So closely that programs in that language would be (mostly) correct English texts. It is not necessary that this language will be easy to program in. OTOH it should be very easy to read what is written in it, even for non-programmers.
Here's how it should look like:
Let X be content of file "censorware.exe"
Let Y be byte number 2745 of X
Let Z be Y added with 73091
Let T be byte number Z of X
Publish that in an (hypothetical) Online Journal of Applied Cryptology (a refined version of sci.crypt).
Now that's speech, isn't it?
Disclaimer: I'm not a lawyer. I'm not even an American. --
I work as an SGI developer (that is, I develop on an SGI) and have noticed that it builds ELF executables too. And I do use GNU compilers from time to time. Does it meen that my box runs Linux? Lessee...
me@mybox > su - Password: me@mybox # reboot The system is shutting down, blah blah Unmounting filesystems, blah blah IRIX 6.4 release
where B is a gravitating body and S is a grav-shielded spacecraft.
As the spacecraft has zero mass, it has zero potential energy with respect to the body. Now let's switch our shields off.
What happens? The spacecraft starts falling.
B<---S (Fig. 2)
This is because the spacecraft instantly acquires potential energy. This energy can be utilized when the spacecraft falls onto the body and emits lots of heat upon impact.
B*S (Fig.3)
(* signifies the great thermal explosion.) Let's switch our shields on again (presuming we've survived the impact). The craft starts to float away from the body.
Switch them off, we fall and generate more heat. On again, float away. Off again, falling, generating heat. Cycle through Fig. 1--3 ad libitum.
What we have is a perpetuum mobile of the first kind. Unless the energy required to switch the shields on and off is more than the energy we can generate. In this latter case, the shield is useless (what potential energy do you have with respect to the Andromeda galaxy?)
Note how we don't care about the exact means of establishing the gravitational shield. Use any method. Energy conservation means you cannot win.
Of course there's a smallish possibility that energy conservation does not hold. In which case we're better off fitting our cars and homes with perpetuum mobile. This has much more sense than exploring distant worlds. --
You confuse two different kinds of security by obscurity. You can obscure your encryption method (or your OS), or you can obscure the fact your message (or your computer) even exists.
The former kind doesn't work. The latter kind (which is steganography) may work if you keep low profile.
IOW you probably can leave your briefcase in the trunk of your $500 '78 Subaru, but not of your $800,000 '99 Ferrari. --
A small correction: www.articon.com probably has nothing to do with that. The relevant sites are www.articon.at,.ch,.cz, and.de, but still 3 out of 4 are running Apache on Linux. --
Solaris is disclosed source. Which, for the purpose of this discussion, is the same as open source (i.e. anyone, including hackers, can see the source).
More info:
Bernie Dodwell, business development manager for System Security specialist Integralis Group, said the operating system is insecure because it is open source.
Integralis.com is bought by Articon.com. Incidentally, www.articon.com runs Apache on Linux. --
Clive Longbottom, strategy analyst at Strategy Partners, agreed with his analysis, saying the problems are preventing its adoption in secure areas. He said: "Security needs to be built into the architecture of the operating system. This cannot happen if your source code is publicly available." He added that the issue could lead to proprietary versions of Linux being developed.
Why their website is running Apache on Solaris, then? --
I don't have to go read a book on communists. I work with a man who left Russia after the USSR lost the cold war. He (at the age of 64) has told me all about communism and yeah... it sounds just like the Linux community. So... there's your fucking experience for you, book man.
I AM a man who left Russia after the USSR lost the cold war. I tell you, Linux and communism have nothing in common. So...there's your fucking experience for you, i-work-with-somebody-who-told-me-everything-i-need -to-know man. --
The parent post is a troll. However, I will reply instead of moderating.
Speak for yourself, dmg. If you don't like the consequences of writing open source software, then don't write open source software. Open source programmers, while terribly impoverished, still can buy a local newspaper and find the jobs section.
My local newspaper runs like 32 pages of hi-tech wanted ads per week.
Slashdot Mirror
--
You have to GPL stuff that uses the library and is distributed together with the library.
There's an interpreter (called Hugs) for the functional language Haskell out there. It can be linked with the GNU readline library, which is GPL (rather than LGPL). Does it mean that Hugs is GPL now? No, its authors don't distribute readline, so its licence terms do not apply to Hugs.
IF they distributed a compiled Hugs binary with readline, OR a source tree that combines Hugs and Readline, THEN GPL would apply.
Of course they cannot take readline and magically convert it to use LGPL.
--
The OO way (which is The Only True Way (TM), beside Organized Religion (TM)) tells us that
- PatRobertson ISA Antichrist
- BillGates ISA Antichrist
Therefore, RalphReed should have a WorkFor(Antichrist*) method. Or WorkFor(Antichrist&) maybe.This way anybody who conforms to the Antichrist interface can get RalphReed to work for him.
DISCLAIMER: I am not an American. I am not a Christian. I don't know who this Ralph Reed is. I don't know who this Pat Robertson is. I am poking at the parent post, not at American politics or Christianity. Now please send your thugs away. Please. Pretty pl...[BANG! THUMP! SPLAT!] OK folks. Congrats. Another anti-American heathen went to hell where he belongs. Who's next on our list?
--
Throw the Slashdot patch in, and you're set.
--
--
--
If you were from Tuvalu, you'd be very happy right now. Wow, $4700 for you -- right out of thin air! Normally, you'd have to work about 5.8 years to earn this pile of money. (Source: CIA World Factbook.)
--
Teaching people how to make bombs is legal. Inciting them to do so is not (or should not be) even if you don't provide the parts.
--
--
You can make schematics ("source code") of your hardware, and that would be speech, too.
--
--
Now the car manufacturer puts a little lock on the lightbulb compartment, and gives keys only to authorized shops. You say "Screw them" -- and rightly so! -- and break the lock.
Now the car manufacturer puts a little digital lock on the lightbulb compartment. You say "Screw them"...but it's you who gets screwed. Why? Because they wrote a little haiku inside the lightbulb compartment. And you've circumvented a technological measure in order to gain access to the copyrighted work.
Ok maybe you can prove in the court that you didn't really want to access their copyrighted work. All you wanted is to change a lightbulb. Maybe. But the lawyer will cost you much more than the lifetime supply of original lightbulbs.
--
Read the DMCA (know your enemy).
--
What is needed is a programming language that closely resembles English (or other natural language). Not like COBOL, much closer. So closely that programs in that language would be (mostly) correct English texts. It is not necessary that this language will be easy to program in. OTOH it should be very easy to read what is written in it, even for non-programmers.
Here's how it should look like:
- Let X be content of file "censorware.exe"
- Let Y be byte number 2745 of X
- Let Z be Y added with 73091
- Let T be byte number Z of X
Publish that in an (hypothetical) Online Journal of Applied Cryptology (a refined version of sci.crypt).Now that's speech, isn't it?
Disclaimer: I'm not a lawyer. I'm not even an American.
--
--
Move along, citizens. Nothing to see here. Just another inventor of perpetuum mobile.
--
BS (Fig.1)
where B is a gravitating body and S is a grav-shielded spacecraft.
As the spacecraft has zero mass, it has zero potential energy with respect to the body. Now let's switch our shields off.
What happens? The spacecraft starts falling.
B<---S (Fig. 2)
This is because the spacecraft instantly acquires potential energy. This energy can be utilized when the spacecraft falls onto the body and emits lots of heat upon impact.
B*S (Fig.3)
(* signifies the great thermal explosion.) Let's switch our shields on again (presuming we've survived the impact). The craft starts to float away from the body.
Switch them off, we fall and generate more heat. On again, float away. Off again, falling, generating heat. Cycle through Fig. 1--3 ad libitum.
What we have is a perpetuum mobile of the first kind. Unless the energy required to switch the shields on and off is more than the energy we can generate. In this latter case, the shield is useless (what potential energy do you have with respect to the Andromeda galaxy?)
Note how we don't care about the exact means of establishing the gravitational shield. Use any method. Energy conservation means you cannot win.
Of course there's a smallish possibility that energy conservation does not hold. In which case we're better off fitting our cars and homes with perpetuum mobile. This has much more sense than exploring distant worlds.
--
--
The former kind doesn't work. The latter kind (which is steganography) may work if you keep low profile.
IOW you probably can leave your briefcase in the trunk of your $500 '78 Subaru, but not of your $800,000 '99 Ferrari.
--
A small correction: www.articon.com probably has nothing to do with that. The relevant sites are www.articon.at, .ch, .cz, and .de, but still 3 out of 4 are running Apache on Linux.
--
More info:
Integralis.com is bought by Articon.com. Incidentally, www.articon.com runs Apache on Linux.--
--
Firing up a Google search will probably help. Whatever.
--
--
Speak for yourself, dmg. If you don't like the consequences of writing open source software, then don't write open source software. Open source programmers, while terribly impoverished, still can buy a local newspaper and find the jobs section.
My local newspaper runs like 32 pages of hi-tech wanted ads per week.
So what's your problem again?
--