If anyone here is in the Atlanta area and wants tickets to the Serenity preview showing on June 23, my podcast is giving away a pair. Being eligible for them requires some work, but as the work pretty much consists of listening to a bunch of quality science fiction stories, we're hoping it won't be too onerous.
A: I don't know, man. It depends what you mean by "better."
Q: Okay, then, why is it BSD used to be better?
A: Was it? I was busy not noticing.
Q: So you prefer Linux?
A: Um. Yes. Are you an idiot?
Q: Why do you think BSD and Linux are two different operating systems?
A: Probably because they start at different places in the alphabet. Are we done here? (points) Hey, look, there's Tanenbaum! Go ask him why writing a Unix kernel from scratch is impossible!
Q: Thank you for your time. Tune in Wednesday as we ask the BSD leaders why they insist on using one-button mice.
...is that people who can download and watch a show in any of those formats (let alone BitTorrent) are not the ones who really need a tech how-to show.
What you're missing is that Brown's idea isn't actually interactive. What you're doing is looking at your screen while a bunch of IMs and e-mails show up. There's no game here, you're just reading what's presented to you.
I agree it's a gimmick and doomed to failure, but not because the idea itself is bad. The problem is the silly software you need to read it. People are too lazy to download an app for a work like this, and anyway it breaks the illusion.
Similiar things have been been done before on real Web pages and in real e-mail forums. One of these days someone will write an actually interesting story this way, they'll get lucky and it'll become popular, and the art form will start to gain some traction. It's not going to be this Professor Brown guy, but you can't fault him for trying something almost new.
Really, this seems very much like the concept of.Hack//Sign.
It seems more like a watered-down version of Majestic. Anyone remember that game a couple years ago? You'd get voicemail, IMs and faxes from the fictional characters in some big conspiracy story. Great concept; unfortunately the game itself turned out to be a rather obvious and cruddy puzzle game, so I ditched it in the second month.
IANAL, but why can't the Apache people add a clause to their license that explicitly proclaims compatibility with some rev of GPL?
Why should they? It's not Apache's business to bend contortions around another specific license. It'd be like Toyota dealers explicitly inserting a clause in all terms of sale that you're also allowed, if you wish, to own a 2001 Chevy Caprice.
Which world would you rather have? A world with the GPL as a licensing option, or a world without it? The first world has more free software available, software that respects the rights of the user instead of trying to control the user through EULAs and insidious distribution terms.
False dilemma. The existence of other effective free licenses that achieve the goals you describe shows that the GPL isn't strictly needed. It may once have been needed, when there wasn't anything else, and its revolutionary attitude may have inspired more hackers to action than a more relaxed license would have, but today it's no longer the world's salvation. It's the guy still wearing the hippie shirt and singing Vietnam protest songs all by himself, never quite noticing that his friends grew up and bought Volvos.
Incorrect. RTFA. The very last paragraph says, in effect, "Oh, by the way, Apache doesn't dual-license its software and never will, because we'd rather the words we say mean something."
has he done anything actually/useful/ other than fetchmail?
Yes. He's one of those helpful fairies that most open source programmers don't really believe in, but who sometimes sneak into their workshops at night to finish cobbling their shoes. These mythical creatures are sometimes called "documenters."
Didn't Sony get into trouble with this issue regarding Underworld?
They didn't get into trouble; White Wolf and one of their short story authors tried to make trouble, saying "Vampire-on-werewolf action? Been done!" Their brief was pretty thin on the ground, IMO, basically implying that these cliches were White Wolf's invention when it was obvious both sources were drawing from a common pool of cliches. WW failed to get their injunction in court, and it all went nowhere.
That said, the rest of your post is pretty much on-target. Derivatives are strictly controlled under copyright law, and fan fiction is not legal unless the copyright holder explicitly says it is. You can't copyright an idea, but pretty much everything related to a specific expression of an idea is under the creator's control until he gives it away or sells it.
(This is what bugs me when people start railing off about the evils of copyright. It's not an us-vs.-them situation. Open licenses like the GPL and Creative Commons are not against copyright in any way; they're explicit contracts transferring the creator's rights to his expression. Without copyright law these licenses would have no force nor meaning whatsoever.)
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If anyone here is in the Atlanta area and wants tickets to the Serenity preview showing on June 23, my podcast is giving away a pair. Being eligible for them requires some work, but as the work pretty much consists of listening to a bunch of quality science fiction stories, we're hoping it won't be too onerous.
Contest details here:
http://escape.extraneous.org/contest
A: I don't know, man. It depends what you mean by "better."
Q: Okay, then, why is it BSD used to be better?
A: Was it? I was busy not noticing.
Q: So you prefer Linux?
A: Um. Yes. Are you an idiot?
Q: Why do you think BSD and Linux are two different operating systems?
A: Probably because they start at different places in the alphabet. Are we done here? (points) Hey, look, there's Tanenbaum! Go ask him why writing a Unix kernel from scratch is impossible!
Q: Thank you for your time. Tune in Wednesday as we ask the BSD leaders why they insist on using one-button mice.
...is that people who can download and watch a show in any of those formats (let alone BitTorrent) are not the ones who really need a tech how-to show.
What you're missing is that Brown's idea isn't actually interactive. What you're doing is looking at your screen while a bunch of IMs and e-mails show up. There's no game here, you're just reading what's presented to you.
Similiar things have been been done before on real Web pages and in real e-mail forums. One of these days someone will write an actually interesting story this way, they'll get lucky and it'll become popular, and the art form will start to gain some traction. It's not going to be this Professor Brown guy, but you can't fault him for trying something almost new.
It seems more like a watered-down version of Majestic. Anyone remember that game a couple years ago? You'd get voicemail, IMs and faxes from the fictional characters in some big conspiracy story. Great concept; unfortunately the game itself turned out to be a rather obvious and cruddy puzzle game, so I ditched it in the second month.
Why should they? It's not Apache's business to bend contortions around another specific license. It'd be like Toyota dealers explicitly inserting a clause in all terms of sale that you're also allowed, if you wish, to own a 2001 Chevy Caprice.
False dilemma. The existence of other effective free licenses that achieve the goals you describe shows that the GPL isn't strictly needed. It may once have been needed, when there wasn't anything else, and its revolutionary attitude may have inspired more hackers to action than a more relaxed license would have, but today it's no longer the world's salvation. It's the guy still wearing the hippie shirt and singing Vietnam protest songs all by himself, never quite noticing that his friends grew up and bought Volvos.
Incorrect. RTFA. The very last paragraph says, in effect, "Oh, by the way, Apache doesn't dual-license its software and never will, because we'd rather the words we say mean something."
As often as I lose pens...
Yes. He's one of those helpful fairies that most open source programmers don't really believe in, but who sometimes sneak into their workshops at night to finish cobbling their shoes. These mythical creatures are sometimes called "documenters."
They didn't get into trouble; White Wolf and one of their short story authors tried to make trouble, saying "Vampire-on-werewolf action? Been done!" Their brief was pretty thin on the ground, IMO, basically implying that these cliches were White Wolf's invention when it was obvious both sources were drawing from a common pool of cliches. WW failed to get their injunction in court, and it all went nowhere.
That said, the rest of your post is pretty much on-target. Derivatives are strictly controlled under copyright law, and fan fiction is not legal unless the copyright holder explicitly says it is. You can't copyright an idea, but pretty much everything related to a specific expression of an idea is under the creator's control until he gives it away or sells it.
(This is what bugs me when people start railing off about the evils of copyright. It's not an us-vs.-them situation. Open licenses like the GPL and Creative Commons are not against copyright in any way; they're explicit contracts transferring the creator's rights to his expression. Without copyright law these licenses would have no force nor meaning whatsoever.)