I used to go through 3-5 a week in my old job. And most don't make noise before failure.
A failing hard drive which fails due to wear and tear on the bearings and head may make noise. But there are lots of things that can go wrong other than long term wear. Platters can just start magically losing data all of a sudden. Heads can be de-aligned. Circuit boards can go out (hard drives run under hotter conditions than video cards and motherboards in many circumstances). or a mechanical part can fail due to a weak build rather than long term wear. None of these types of failure would give you any noise warning prior to failure.
I won't be using any products which take sony memory stick any time soon. I doubt anybody has figured out a way to get a SD or CF card into one of those... Memory stick carries too high a royalty to manufacture. Why people don't boycott it is beyond me. Ditto for xD.
When they do switch to CF or SD dial my number and I'll get a PSP. 2.0 to me sounds like more proprietary BS from Sony.
"Now, if you were someone they have a specific interest in monitoring (say, a suspect in a major FBI case), then that would be another matter. But, frankly, in that case they could just bug your house, plant a couple of cameras, and have done; they wouldn't need to tap in to your communication at the Google level."
Now, if you were someone they have a specific interest in monitoring (say, a major political figure, a business man, a beaurocrat, a teacher, anyone with a career who is ripe for abuse) then that would be another matter. But frankly, in that case they could just get a warrant and bug your house, plant a copule of cameras, and have done; they wouldn't need to tap into your past communications to blackmail or coerce you into something someone (or some group) in power wants from you.
You see, it isn't the morally legitimate uses that are the problems. It is the use where it becomes the norm to "oh I will just check the google database to see what is going on with this person" or "oops, I leaked this political figure's google IM chat on the internet and now he is ruined" or "I saw you had an affair, now your going to pay or fess up" etc etc etc...
It is the abuse of the power that is the problem. And where there is power, there is _ALWAYS_ the abuse.
In my opinion, using jabber in a mainstream IM client (ie, one that is going to be used by joe schmoe and susy ann in jr. high keyboarding class while the teacher isn't looking) is a dramatic step forward.
Google is competing head on with the services that yahoo, aol, and msn provide. Only they are doing it using open standards, and allowing 3rd party clients. From my perspective, this is equivilent of Google putting the rest on notice:
"Look, we aren't going to let you rape your users anymore. We are going to do what you do... Properly."
I think this is a great step forward. Sure, you might think it is a waste of time in the long run.. and you might be right. But something like this NEEDED to be done in order to get the other IM services to play fair. Everyone already knows that the other services would have never opened their protocols without something like this coming forward. The rest will be required to follow suit or bail out of the business. (you may not see it now, but it is coming.. just watch)
In this case, predicting the future and then altering it by doing something in the present just means you switched to an alternate universe. the other one still exists... and you still clicked the link.. you just don't know about it because in your current universe you didn't click it.
while you may not be self centered, you certainly are ignorant...
I am ignorant because I did not post about the british empire? I guess I can't expect a zealot to infer that someone who posts on slashdot might have read a history book at some point in his life.
Pointing to the history of the british empire doesn't make anything in my above post "right" or "acceptable". And the british empire certaintly doesn't give anybody the right to behave as said.
The rule of thumb should be that of two things of equal value to you the more expensive something is then the more environmental cost there was to get it to you.
And here is where you drive my point home. Sure, things SHOULD be this way. But real economics say differently. Environmental costs are not reflective of actual cost of items. This was my point and no matter how many ways you want to twist it that is how the world works. Only in markets which are flooded do environmental costs show through on actual costs.
In every other market out there there is either a low supply or a high demand jacking up the price. Whether it be the 200$ markup on ipods, or the thousands of dollars markup on a ferrari. Their price is not reflective of their environmental impact. If it were they would cost the same as simlar items produced in similar factories. They don't.
It isn't just "dishonest" people and politicians who change the prices on you to not reflect the environmental costs. It is the marketers and the sales person and your peer buyers who are doing much more of a job of fixing your price on the item you want. Taxes and subsidies are (probably) negligable or at least very small when compared to these things.
why would things suck right now? Because the USA would have never been invented? Maybe we wouldn't have a global superpower invading foreign countries to keep their oil prices down so we can all drive around SUV's on 2 hour commutes every day.
Shit look at europe, they are all driving around cooper mini's and they aren't complaining about rollovers.
Well haven't you ever seen The Core? In that movie all they had to do was take the core of their nuclear reactor in their vehicle and throw it out into the core of the earth.. Not to mention that when he tried to lift it with a chain it broke the chain because it was too hot. So he had to lift it with his hands instead which definately could take the heat...
Then just shoot a missile at it until it blows up and shotts you back through a volcanic pipe into the ocean floor where you can pretend to be a dolphin or whale. Then the whaler ship will try to harpoon you and find you and the day is saved...
But it is not just the low(er) gravity on mars that lets its atmosphere deplete faster. It is a lack of volcanos. Without a continuous replenishment of gasses from within the core into the atmosphere, no planet can sustain an atmosphere. No matter how much gravity is holding it down. There will always be a stastically significant number of particle to reach escape velocity in the correct direction in the upper atmosphere.
If some activity is more economical, it is very likely that it is less wasteful overall. Cost is often a measure of effort and if some method takes more effort to accomplish the same thing then it likely it is more wasteful. Sure sometimes when you compare two different things it is not always a fair comparison because the real costs are obscured or shifted by dishonest people, be they politicians or other middlemen. But eventually it is all about economics,...
This is incorrect. The cost of an item is more about its supply or demand. In other words, prices are driven by want and need.
Sure, cost of natural resources, effort (labor), and inginuity factor into its manufacturing cost. But when is the last time you saw an item's price based primarilly off manufacturing cost? you probably won't without looking into highly competative markets with excess supply (hint, this almost never happens).
Actually, hard drive cooling is one of the biggest advantages of aluminum cases. You are simply wrong on this point. without active cooling, on average 80% of the heat leaves the hard drive through the drive rails. This is a significant amount of heat expecially on 7200RPM and 10K rpm drives. And aluminum definately does a better job of it.
Aluminum actually transmitts heat very much better in practical terms. It is just that the article he referred to uses high speed fans sufficiently fast (and loud) that the aluminum had almost no effect.
Now, use slower fans which produce bearable noise levels, and you will see that the aluminum case keeps the system noticably cooler than steel.
This article didn't take into account the cooling advantage with different speed fans. This reviewer did not use the scientific method. He simply set up 2 cases under ONE specific scenerio and took his data points. Since he does not have multiple data points with different configurations then this article is simply useless.
There is one thing I can gather from this article: That is that the reviewer used sufficiently fast (and loud) fans that the aluminum panneling did not have much of a chance to cool. Because the fans were simply pushing the air out as fast as would be needed even inside a plastic casee.
On top of all this, the review did not mention anything about hard drive cooling, something that has already been agreed upon in the community, using scientific testing methods, that aluminum cases cool hard drives significantly better (especially 10K rpm and up)
To sum it up, saying "um no" and pointing to a website which doesn't really know how to test a case using any accepted methodology is just a silly thing to do.
While cheaper color laserjet printers are better for color printing as you say, I can personally guarantee you that HP does not sell a laserjet which can print a photo as high of a quality as their Inkjets using the 6 color cartriges.
Color Laser printing is fine for photos on a budget which you don't plan on hanging on your wall, etc.. but unless you are using inkjet or dye sublimation, you won't be making portraits for the wall.
Color laser printers just aren't precise enough to make high resolution photos in true color.
In all honesty, I don't feel this is such a problem like the article tries to make it out to be...
Small businesses aren't getting screwed because they know enough about their product and can make sure the return is within acceptable policy. It is the big retailer chains who are getting bitten by this because they hire drones to work at the exchange desk who know nothing about products and just refund anything with a UPC barcode on it.
The big chains are already bullying around the little guys. If this is another way that they can have a tougher time simply because of their size then this is fine with me. I say fuck the big chains and get back to the core small time shops.
If there's profit to be made in space, then private companies will find the profit in it on their own. If there's no profit in space, then we don't need it, so why are we funding it?
What planet did you just come from? If something isn't profitable then we don't need it? Profit is not what guarantees survival. It does not guarantee food. It does not guarantee housing. It does not guarantee babies. And it CERTAINTLY does not guarantee a flat of land to put your roof on. If anything your idealistic assumptions guarantee one thing only: destruction.
Get your fucking head out of your ass and smell the coffee. Your vision of right wing idealism is a joke. You cannot base your life on profit. That is not how the world works and it never will be. Humanity can not survive it.
The fact that you say that shows that you don't fundamentally understand that you must be granted permission to distribute a program.
You cannot distribute a program if the licensor doesn't agree with your distribution method. By 'striking' portions of a license you effectively lose your permission from the copyright holder, and then you have no legal right to distribute. That is how it works just about everywhere. No permission: No copying.
" But the question is whether I break the copyright law if I link code that "touched" GPL version of the toolkit with the proprietary version of the toolkit. In USA I would, but that's not the case in general."
Yes it is the case in general. Simply because the trolltech has it written IN THEIR COMMERCIAL license that you cannot use code which has been developed with the GPL library with the commercial license. It is in black and white. If you do not agree to the license then trolltech does not agree to let you distribute the code. End of discussion.
In this case you would not be breaking the GPL but you would be breaking the QT Commercial License. Which would mean you are breaking the copyright law because you would be distributing without permission.
You keep trying to bring this back into EULA's instead of licenses. You are making it sound that licenses won't stand up in court. You are wrong. They will stand up in court in almost every country because all a license does is grant the licensee a right to distribute code. If you do not distribute the code as described in their terms, then you have no permission to distribute. Thus you will be breaking the law.
EULA's are a different beast altogether because rather than giving permission to distribute the product, they only give permission on how to USE the product. That is not an available option in copyright law so they are normally not enforceable . Usually just there to scare people off.
Dude, don't you think I already know about copying for intended use? It has nothing to do with this argument.
Secondly, if a provision of the license is invalid, then the entire license to distribute is invalid. That is how it works. You cannot cut and peel from a license which does nothing but grant permission to do something under conditions. If you do not meet ALL conditions, you cannot legally copy it. Period. If the court finds that one of those provisions is invalid, then you are forbidden from copying the software until you retrieve proper permission from the copyright holder.
The license is not a 2 party contract. It is a written statement to the customer which states the conditions of distribution. You know, there is a difference between an EULA and a license. EULA's are not enforceable (and have never been tested effectively in court) because they do not resrict distribution. Instead they restrict use of a program which is in fact not legally possible.
But when you are talking about distribution, it doesn't matter WHAT license you are given. If you don't follow it then you have no right to distribute. No matter how much you disagree with the license, it is not your option to pick and choose what to follow. If you don't like the license your only option is to not use the software. Not take it to court and get sections striken from it. That is not only preposterous, but it sounds like you dreamed it up in a magic fairy tale land. Because I can guarantee you that it has never happened. (and there is no provision in copyright law which would allow it to happen)
The simple facts are that if a license says stand on your head for 30 minutes or you can't distribute the software, then you must do that in order to distribute. If the license says you must pay me 5$ for every copy you distribute, then you must do that. If the license says you must give out the source code to people you distribute to, then you must do that. If at any time you are not in compliance with the license, you are breaking the law by distributing it. Whether a "portion" of the license was ruled invalid or not, you are not following the license and thus have no rights (permission from the owner) to distribute it. If you had a license which stated you must commit murder in order to distribute the software, and you don't commit murder, you have no legal right to distribute the software. Even if a judge deams that portion of the license illegal and throws it out.
I'm sure somewhere the employee contract states that the dev's can't distribute the SW developed within the company;-)
Therefore employees can't release internally developed software in the wild, even though everything is GPL.
Wanna bet? What is to stop them? What is to stop a disgruntled employee from releasing the code in the wild if he feels like it? nothing. Nothing but a contract that says "your fired" if you distribute it.. That doesn't really stop people like you think it might.
There is nothing legally stopping someone from letting it loose in the wild. your assumption that there is is pretty silly.
"Qt license - namely that it has to be contractually binding, which it may or may not be depending on the country and the exact procedure of Qt licensing"
Exactly. now you are starting to get it. Whether or not the license is contractually binding is a very good starting point... Lets see now. If the license is not contracturally binding then there are several courses of action the developer can do:
1) distribute the product without permission, thus illegally (because the license was found to be non-binding)
2) Sue TrollTech and have the contract shuffled around the courtroom and when the judge says "this contract is not valid" then the company must face the wrath of TrollTech who then can sue them for copyright violations because they are distributing without permission.
That is pretty much it. If a company were to get a court order that the license was invalid, then that company would IMMEDIATELY be forbidden from distributing their binary. They would also be liable for copyright infringement because they distributed the binary to others in the past without permission, and made profit on it.
You see, if the license is not a valid contract, then the licensee has absolutely NO permission to distribute. End of story. It is to their benefit to accept the license if they wish to distribute the program.
" without giving the staff permission to release that modified version to outsiders."
That is the KEY WORD. Outsiders. I never said they had to release it to outsiders. Only internal employees. This gives the internal employee the power to go and re-release that software as he sees fit. (whether or not you fire him for that is up to you, but he wouldn't be breaking any laws.)
Besides, your whole argument rests on the fact that they are sending it to another developer who is using a commercial QT to compile and then distribute. In all cases, wether a GPL breach happens or not, it is a copyright violation because they do not meet the requirements of the QT commercial license (which is enforceable if you DISTRIBUTE the program to ANYONE, internal or not.)
Just because the FSF says that internal distribution doesn't count doesn't mean you don't have to distribute the source to those employees if asked. But copyright is CLEAR on the COPYING of a program even for INTERNAL USE is considered copying in legal terms. Which is illegal without permission. To my knowledge the GPL license does not have a clause which gives permission for internal distribution w/o source. If you don't believe me go ask Microsoft, IBM, Novel, Sun, Symantec, Mcafee, Ahead, Apple, Roxio, Corel, and any other company who is doing closed source commercial software. They all know the laws too. They have based their business model around it (and maybe the laws around them).
There is a reason site licenses exist. Because it is ILLEGAL to distribute a program to ANYONE (including internal employees) without permission. The site license gives you the permission to copy internally. But bying multiple boxes of the same software does NOT give you the right to copy (it is a single license).
You are trying to get me to post stories or FAQ's or some bs about it. That isn't what you are going to get. Your fundamental understanding of the word "copy", "copyright", and "distribute" is wrong if you want proof that you are wrong.
If you want proof, go look up the words in the dictionary. And then go read the laws. And then go hire a IP lawyer to tell you again that you are definately wrong. I already have and I work in the software industry in distribution and licensing. I know what I'm talking about. And I'm not going to sit here and dig up URL's for a troll who's origional post was ment to spread FUD about QT and TrollTech.
"* which it ISN'T: a company developing a product in-house using GPL libraries is NOT obliged to GPL it if the product does not leave the company)"
This is exactly why you are incorrect. Distributuion WITHIN a company REQUIRES compliance with the GPL to the letter. This means distributing source (or making it available) to every employee who recieves a copy. Period.
"We are talking about employees of the same company who JOINTLY DEVELOP AN APP and use the GPL version of the Qt for development and testing and the proprietary version for final linking."
Yess, i know we are talking about that. This is against copyright not because it breaks the GPL but because it does not comply with the restrictions set which gives them permission to distribute the code. If you distribute code then YOU MUST HAVE PERMISSION. Your permission is revoked the second you bring a GPL program into the development of that code. That is part of the QT license. If you do not follow the license then you cannot DISTRIBUTE the code..
What kind of crap are you talking about. Everything I have said is perfectly consistant. You are trying to tell me all sorts of crap and you have NO IDEA how copyright works. I know this because you have made one sentence statements which are 100% incorrect in the USA as far as copyright laws go.
"Sorry, it's your (mis)interpretation of my analysis, GPL, and copyright law that is false."
No, my analysis is correct. It is you who do not understand the logic behind what you are arguing about.
Slashdot Mirror
You haven't seen many hard drives fail then..
I used to go through 3-5 a week in my old job. And most don't make noise before failure.
A failing hard drive which fails due to wear and tear on the bearings and head may make noise. But there are lots of things that can go wrong other than long term wear. Platters can just start magically losing data all of a sudden. Heads can be de-aligned. Circuit boards can go out (hard drives run under hotter conditions than video cards and motherboards in many circumstances). or a mechanical part can fail due to a weak build rather than long term wear. None of these types of failure would give you any noise warning prior to failure.
I won't be using any products which take sony memory stick any time soon. I doubt anybody has figured out a way to get a SD or CF card into one of those... Memory stick carries too high a royalty to manufacture. Why people don't boycott it is beyond me. Ditto for xD.
When they do switch to CF or SD dial my number and I'll get a PSP. 2.0 to me sounds like more proprietary BS from Sony.
"Now, if you were someone they have a specific interest in monitoring (say, a suspect in a major FBI case), then that would be another matter. But, frankly, in that case they could just bug your house, plant a couple of cameras, and have done; they wouldn't need to tap in to your communication at the Google level."
Now, if you were someone they have a specific interest in monitoring (say, a major political figure, a business man, a beaurocrat, a teacher, anyone with a career who is ripe for abuse) then that would be another matter. But frankly, in that case they could just get a warrant and bug your house, plant a copule of cameras, and have done; they wouldn't need to tap into your past communications to blackmail or coerce you into something someone (or some group) in power wants from you.
You see, it isn't the morally legitimate uses that are the problems. It is the use where it becomes the norm to "oh I will just check the google database to see what is going on with this person" or "oops, I leaked this political figure's google IM chat on the internet and now he is ruined" or "I saw you had an affair, now your going to pay or fess up" etc etc etc...
It is the abuse of the power that is the problem. And where there is power, there is _ALWAYS_ the abuse.
I don't see what your point it?
In my opinion, using jabber in a mainstream IM client (ie, one that is going to be used by joe schmoe and susy ann in jr. high keyboarding class while the teacher isn't looking) is a dramatic step forward.
Google is competing head on with the services that yahoo, aol, and msn provide. Only they are doing it using open standards, and allowing 3rd party clients. From my perspective, this is equivilent of Google putting the rest on notice:
"Look, we aren't going to let you rape your users anymore. We are going to do what you do... Properly."
I think this is a great step forward. Sure, you might think it is a waste of time in the long run.. and you might be right. But something like this NEEDED to be done in order to get the other IM services to play fair. Everyone already knows that the other services would have never opened their protocols without something like this coming forward. The rest will be required to follow suit or bail out of the business. (you may not see it now, but it is coming.. just watch)
Not in the theory of multiple universes..
In this case, predicting the future and then altering it by doing something in the present just means you switched to an alternate universe. the other one still exists... and you still clicked the link.. you just don't know about it because in your current universe you didn't click it.
while you may not be self centered, you certainly are ignorant...
I am ignorant because I did not post about the british empire? I guess I can't expect a zealot to infer that someone who posts on slashdot might have read a history book at some point in his life.
Pointing to the history of the british empire doesn't make anything in my above post "right" or "acceptable". And the british empire certaintly doesn't give anybody the right to behave as said.
The rule of thumb should be that of two things of equal value to you the more expensive something is then the more environmental cost there was to get it to you.
And here is where you drive my point home. Sure, things SHOULD be this way. But real economics say differently. Environmental costs are not reflective of actual cost of items. This was my point and no matter how many ways you want to twist it that is how the world works. Only in markets which are flooded do environmental costs show through on actual costs.
In every other market out there there is either a low supply or a high demand jacking up the price. Whether it be the 200$ markup on ipods, or the thousands of dollars markup on a ferrari. Their price is not reflective of their environmental impact. If it were they would cost the same as simlar items produced in similar factories. They don't.
It isn't just "dishonest" people and politicians who change the prices on you to not reflect the environmental costs. It is the marketers and the sales person and your peer buyers who are doing much more of a job of fixing your price on the item you want. Taxes and subsidies are (probably) negligable or at least very small when compared to these things.
why would things suck right now? Because the USA would have never been invented? Maybe we wouldn't have a global superpower invading foreign countries to keep their oil prices down so we can all drive around SUV's on 2 hour commutes every day.
Shit look at europe, they are all driving around cooper mini's and they aren't complaining about rollovers.
you are so self centered.
Well haven't you ever seen The Core? In that movie all they had to do was take the core of their nuclear reactor in their vehicle and throw it out into the core of the earth.. Not to mention that when he tried to lift it with a chain it broke the chain because it was too hot. So he had to lift it with his hands instead which definately could take the heat...
Then just shoot a missile at it until it blows up and shotts you back through a volcanic pipe into the ocean floor where you can pretend to be a dolphin or whale. Then the whaler ship will try to harpoon you and find you and the day is saved...
God I loved that movie.
If anything has taught me well, it was DOOM and DOOMII that we need not wake up the zombies of marz.
They will surely frag us to death.
Good point.
But it is not just the low(er) gravity on mars that lets its atmosphere deplete faster. It is a lack of volcanos. Without a continuous replenishment of gasses from within the core into the atmosphere, no planet can sustain an atmosphere. No matter how much gravity is holding it down. There will always be a stastically significant number of particle to reach escape velocity in the correct direction in the upper atmosphere.
If some activity is more economical, it is very likely that it is less wasteful overall. Cost is often a measure of effort and if some method takes more effort to accomplish the same thing then it likely it is more wasteful. Sure sometimes when you compare two different things it is not always a fair comparison because the real costs are obscured or shifted by dishonest people, be they politicians or other middlemen. But eventually it is all about economics,...
This is incorrect. The cost of an item is more about its supply or demand. In other words, prices are driven by want and need.
Sure, cost of natural resources, effort (labor), and inginuity factor into its manufacturing cost. But when is the last time you saw an item's price based primarilly off manufacturing cost? you probably won't without looking into highly competative markets with excess supply (hint, this almost never happens).
Actually, hard drive cooling is one of the biggest advantages of aluminum cases. You are simply wrong on this point. without active cooling, on average 80% of the heat leaves the hard drive through the drive rails. This is a significant amount of heat expecially on 7200RPM and 10K rpm drives. And aluminum definately does a better job of it.
Aluminum actually transmitts heat very much better in practical terms. It is just that the article he referred to uses high speed fans sufficiently fast (and loud) that the aluminum had almost no effect.
Now, use slower fans which produce bearable noise levels, and you will see that the aluminum case keeps the system noticably cooler than steel.
This article didn't take into account the cooling advantage with different speed fans. This reviewer did not use the scientific method. He simply set up 2 cases under ONE specific scenerio and took his data points. Since he does not have multiple data points with different configurations then this article is simply useless.
There is one thing I can gather from this article: That is that the reviewer used sufficiently fast (and loud) fans that the aluminum panneling did not have much of a chance to cool. Because the fans were simply pushing the air out as fast as would be needed even inside a plastic casee.
On top of all this, the review did not mention anything about hard drive cooling, something that has already been agreed upon in the community, using scientific testing methods, that aluminum cases cool hard drives significantly better (especially 10K rpm and up)
To sum it up, saying "um no" and pointing to a website which doesn't really know how to test a case using any accepted methodology is just a silly thing to do.
While cheaper color laserjet printers are better for color printing as you say, I can personally guarantee you that HP does not sell a laserjet which can print a photo as high of a quality as their Inkjets using the 6 color cartriges.
Color Laser printing is fine for photos on a budget which you don't plan on hanging on your wall, etc.. but unless you are using inkjet or dye sublimation, you won't be making portraits for the wall.
Color laser printers just aren't precise enough to make high resolution photos in true color.
In all honesty, I don't feel this is such a problem like the article tries to make it out to be...
Small businesses aren't getting screwed because they know enough about their product and can make sure the return is within acceptable policy. It is the big retailer chains who are getting bitten by this because they hire drones to work at the exchange desk who know nothing about products and just refund anything with a UPC barcode on it.
The big chains are already bullying around the little guys. If this is another way that they can have a tougher time simply because of their size then this is fine with me. I say fuck the big chains and get back to the core small time shops.
If there's profit to be made in space, then private companies will find the profit in it on their own. If there's no profit in space, then we don't need it, so why are we funding it?
What planet did you just come from? If something isn't profitable then we don't need it? Profit is not what guarantees survival. It does not guarantee food. It does not guarantee housing. It does not guarantee babies. And it CERTAINTLY does not guarantee a flat of land to put your roof on. If anything your idealistic assumptions guarantee one thing only: destruction.
Get your fucking head out of your ass and smell the coffee. Your vision of right wing idealism is a joke. You cannot base your life on profit. That is not how the world works and it never will be. Humanity can not survive it.
The fact that you say that shows that you don't fundamentally understand that you must be granted permission to distribute a program.
You cannot distribute a program if the licensor doesn't agree with your distribution method. By 'striking' portions of a license you effectively lose your permission from the copyright holder, and then you have no legal right to distribute. That is how it works just about everywhere. No permission: No copying.
" But the question is whether I break the copyright law if I link code that "touched" GPL version of the toolkit with the proprietary version of the toolkit. In USA I would, but that's not the case in general."
Yes it is the case in general. Simply because the trolltech has it written IN THEIR COMMERCIAL license that you cannot use code which has been developed with the GPL library with the commercial license. It is in black and white. If you do not agree to the license then trolltech does not agree to let you distribute the code. End of discussion.
In this case you would not be breaking the GPL but you would be breaking the QT Commercial License. Which would mean you are breaking the copyright law because you would be distributing without permission.
You keep trying to bring this back into EULA's instead of licenses. You are making it sound that licenses won't stand up in court. You are wrong. They will stand up in court in almost every country because all a license does is grant the licensee a right to distribute code. If you do not distribute the code as described in their terms, then you have no permission to distribute. Thus you will be breaking the law.
EULA's are a different beast altogether because rather than giving permission to distribute the product, they only give permission on how to USE the product. That is not an available option in copyright law so they are normally not enforceable . Usually just there to scare people off.
Dude, don't you think I already know about copying for intended use? It has nothing to do with this argument.
Secondly, if a provision of the license is invalid, then the entire license to distribute is invalid. That is how it works. You cannot cut and peel from a license which does nothing but grant permission to do something under conditions. If you do not meet ALL conditions, you cannot legally copy it. Period. If the court finds that one of those provisions is invalid, then you are forbidden from copying the software until you retrieve proper permission from the copyright holder.
The license is not a 2 party contract. It is a written statement to the customer which states the conditions of distribution. You know, there is a difference between an EULA and a license. EULA's are not enforceable (and have never been tested effectively in court) because they do not resrict distribution. Instead they restrict use of a program which is in fact not legally possible.
But when you are talking about distribution, it doesn't matter WHAT license you are given. If you don't follow it then you have no right to distribute. No matter how much you disagree with the license, it is not your option to pick and choose what to follow. If you don't like the license your only option is to not use the software. Not take it to court and get sections striken from it. That is not only preposterous, but it sounds like you dreamed it up in a magic fairy tale land. Because I can guarantee you that it has never happened. (and there is no provision in copyright law which would allow it to happen)
The simple facts are that if a license says stand on your head for 30 minutes or you can't distribute the software, then you must do that in order to distribute. If the license says you must pay me 5$ for every copy you distribute, then you must do that. If the license says you must give out the source code to people you distribute to, then you must do that. If at any time you are not in compliance with the license, you are breaking the law by distributing it. Whether a "portion" of the license was ruled invalid or not, you are not following the license and thus have no rights (permission from the owner) to distribute it. If you had a license which stated you must commit murder in order to distribute the software, and you don't commit murder, you have no legal right to distribute the software. Even if a judge deams that portion of the license illegal and throws it out.
I'm sure somewhere the employee contract states that the dev's can't distribute the SW developed within the company ;-)
Therefore employees can't release internally developed software in the wild, even though everything is GPL.
Wanna bet? What is to stop them? What is to stop a disgruntled employee from releasing the code in the wild if he feels like it? nothing. Nothing but a contract that says "your fired" if you distribute it.. That doesn't really stop people like you think it might.
There is nothing legally stopping someone from letting it loose in the wild. your assumption that there is is pretty silly.
"Qt license - namely that it has to be contractually binding, which it may or may not be depending on the country and the exact procedure of Qt licensing"
Exactly. now you are starting to get it. Whether or not the license is contractually binding is a very good starting point... Lets see now. If the license is not contracturally binding then there are several courses of action the developer can do:
1) distribute the product without permission, thus illegally (because the license was found to be non-binding)
2) Sue TrollTech and have the contract shuffled around the courtroom and when the judge says "this contract is not valid" then the company must face the wrath of TrollTech who then can sue them for copyright violations because they are distributing without permission.
That is pretty much it. If a company were to get a court order that the license was invalid, then that company would IMMEDIATELY be forbidden from distributing their binary. They would also be liable for copyright infringement because they distributed the binary to others in the past without permission, and made profit on it.
You see, if the license is not a valid contract, then the licensee has absolutely NO permission to distribute. End of story. It is to their benefit to accept the license if they wish to distribute the program.
" without giving the staff permission to release that modified version to outsiders."
That is the KEY WORD. Outsiders. I never said they had to release it to outsiders. Only internal employees. This gives the internal employee the power to go and re-release that software as he sees fit. (whether or not you fire him for that is up to you, but he wouldn't be breaking any laws.)
Besides, your whole argument rests on the fact that they are sending it to another developer who is using a commercial QT to compile and then distribute. In all cases, wether a GPL breach happens or not, it is a copyright violation because they do not meet the requirements of the QT commercial license (which is enforceable if you DISTRIBUTE the program to ANYONE, internal or not.)
Just because the FSF says that internal distribution doesn't count doesn't mean you don't have to distribute the source to those employees if asked. But copyright is CLEAR on the COPYING of a program even for INTERNAL USE is considered copying in legal terms. Which is illegal without permission. To my knowledge the GPL license does not have a clause which gives permission for internal distribution w/o source. If you don't believe me go ask Microsoft, IBM, Novel, Sun, Symantec, Mcafee, Ahead, Apple, Roxio, Corel, and any other company who is doing closed source commercial software. They all know the laws too. They have based their business model around it (and maybe the laws around them).
There is a reason site licenses exist. Because it is ILLEGAL to distribute a program to ANYONE (including internal employees) without permission. The site license gives you the permission to copy internally. But bying multiple boxes of the same software does NOT give you the right to copy (it is a single license).
You are trying to get me to post stories or FAQ's or some bs about it. That isn't what you are going to get. Your fundamental understanding of the word "copy", "copyright", and "distribute" is wrong if you want proof that you are wrong.
If you want proof, go look up the words in the dictionary. And then go read the laws. And then go hire a IP lawyer to tell you again that you are definately wrong. I already have and I work in the software industry in distribution and licensing. I know what I'm talking about. And I'm not going to sit here and dig up URL's for a troll who's origional post was ment to spread FUD about QT and TrollTech.
"* which it ISN'T: a company developing a product in-house using GPL libraries is NOT obliged to GPL it if the product does not leave the company)"
This is exactly why you are incorrect. Distributuion WITHIN a company REQUIRES compliance with the GPL to the letter. This means distributing source (or making it available) to every employee who recieves a copy. Period.
"We are talking about employees of the same company who JOINTLY DEVELOP AN APP and use the GPL version of the Qt for development and testing and the proprietary version for final linking."
Yess, i know we are talking about that. This is against copyright not because it breaks the GPL but because it does not comply with the restrictions set which gives them permission to distribute the code. If you distribute code then YOU MUST HAVE PERMISSION. Your permission is revoked the second you bring a GPL program into the development of that code. That is part of the QT license. If you do not follow the license then you cannot DISTRIBUTE the code..
What kind of crap are you talking about. Everything I have said is perfectly consistant. You are trying to tell me all sorts of crap and you have NO IDEA how copyright works. I know this because you have made one sentence statements which are 100% incorrect in the USA as far as copyright laws go.
"Sorry, it's your (mis)interpretation of my analysis, GPL, and copyright law that is false."
No, my analysis is correct. It is you who do not understand the logic behind what you are arguing about.