You certainly can "combine" GPL software with non-GPL. That is a true statement. You may link (run or compile-time) with any software under any GPL compatible Free Software license.
You certainly can "combine" GPL software with any non-GPL. That is a false statement.
You certainly can "combine" GPL software with proprietary. That is also a false statement.
Furthermore "You can link intact libraries." is also false when using the assumption that we are talking about proprietary software (which you seem to be), UNLESS the copyright holder has made a "clarification" (commonly known as an "exception") as L. Torvalds has done for the Linux kernel.
It might help you in the future to 1. read the GPL 2. work on your reading comprehension skills and 3. study the fundamentals of rational though.
When I write "to date" I usually mean "up to the current date as I write this." But the proximity of the "dateline" to the phrase puts this in doubt in this case.
I see that you are trying to be funny, but the fact is that 1. I am a geek (if the fact that I'm posting on/. isn't enough, how 'bout the fact that I'm an out-of-work UNIX consultant?) who used to suffer at the hands of jocks and 2. I served four years in the US Army, including a stint in the Bosnian combat theater.
So I hope you can appricated how unfunny your comment is to me.
To repeat myself, any use of software distributed under the terms of the GPL, to include modification, is not only not disallowed by the GPL, but is explicitly outside of the scope of the GPL.
Let me quote from devlinux.org: The GPL is "viral" in the sense that one cannot combine GPLed work with other work governed by different licenses. If one were to enhance a GPLed work, then your enhancements would also fall under the GPL terms.
You certainly can "combine" GPL software with non-GPL, and the use of the word "viral" is clearly pejorative.
It is true that code covered by the GPL cannot be lifted and distributed under conflicting terms. Is there any license this isn't true of? Can you lift BSD code and remove the authors indemnification or the "advertising clause" protection if there is one? Of course not. The only thing that makes the GPL different than the BSD license in this way is that the GPL vehemently protects the users freedom as well as the(original) authors.
You can, however, "combine" GPL code by linking, to include compile time linking, with any software under a GPL "compatible" Free license.
Furthermore, and remembering that your sig levels its accusation at GNU as a whole, a significant portion of GNU's distribution is licensed under the LGPL which may be linked with anything.
So, if it seems that the "irony" is lost on me, it is only because that irony only appears to exist if you base your perception of GNU on false presuppositions.
The point isn't the value of the bug, it was the point of the value of human life. Yes the soldiers were in harms way, and the patients were supposed to get better from the treatment, not die, but I think that explicitly saying that the deaths of four cancer patients is a bigger tragedy than the loss of 28 soldiers is pretty sad.
Note that I didn't "compare the two", Byte did. That's precisely my point.
GNU is a free (beer) system with a not-free (speech) viral license. Go figure!
I usually resist the urge to respond to people's sigs, but yours just begs it.
How could software distributed under the GPL be any more free? Have you read the GPL? Are you aware that it is not an end user license? Are you aware that one needn't agree to the terms in order to use GPLed software in any way he chooses? Are you aware that anyone may sell any peice of GPLed software? Are you aware that the FSF actively encourages people to do so?
The only "freedom" that the GPL takes away is the "freedom" to restrict other users freedom if you choose to redistribute it.
Finally, let me address the use of the term "viral" to describe the GPL. The common case is for someone to take a substantial GPLed work and make a few changes and redistribute.
All the arm waving about a small piece of GPLed code "infecting" a larger work is a smokescreen created by people who don't like the fact that they can't take GPLed software, make minor modifications then sell it as software that restricts users. It is well known that Microsoft took the BSD IP stack (under its "non-viral" license) and used it in several of their distinctly non-free OSes.
The actual article links to http://www.byte.com/art/9509/sec7/art20.htm which says:
THE BUG THAT KILLED
1985-1987: At least four people died when they were exposed to lethal doses of radiation from Therac-25 linear accelerator machines (made by Atomic Energy of Canada Ltd.), used for radiation treatment of cancer. Software errors caused the machines to incorrectly calculate the amount of radiation being delivered to the patient. The most tragic incident to date of death or injuries to human beings due to defective computer software, [emphasis mine] this incident is a reminder that, as we entrust human lives and health to computers, the seriousness of eliminating bugs becomes a life-or-death proposition.
and goes on to say:
SIN OF OMISSION
1991: American Patriot missiles were fairly successful. However, the failure of some Patriot missiles to track and destroy Iraqi Scud missiles during the Persian Gulf War may have been due to a software problem of the system. During one such Iraqi missile attack, 28 American soldiers were killed in their barracks in Dhahran, Saudi Arabia.
seven times the loss of human life, but less of a tragedy? I guess they are soldiers so fuck 'em, eh?
This story is over two years old, so they have had ample opportunity to correct it. The "comment" button on that page just takes me to the front page. Nice.
Also on that page, "The DoubleSpace automati hard disk comparision software included in Microsoft MS-DOS 6.0 [. ..]" WTF is "automati"? "Comparision" isn't even a word as far as I know, but it looks a lot like comparison. DoubleSpace is disk compression software.
Ironic that there are such glaring errors in an article about buggy software.
Well, I wasn't particularly a fan of Byte before, but now I'm convinced that they suck.
I think that taking reasonable precautions is prudent.
But let's be serious. I enjoyed "The Andromeda Strain" as much as the next guy, but I don't think this is very realistic. A chimp can't catch a cold from me. I can only play host to a limited number of bacteria that a lizard is susceptible to. And they want me to believe that there may be some man-killer bacteria on Mars? Even if you're one of these nutters who thinks that big headed grey dudes seeded our solar system with their DNA, why would you think a flesh-eating bacterium would evolve on a planted WITH NO FLESHY BEINGS?
I think we're all just a bit too eager to see Data dork Yar.
$80,000,000 US. I don't believe this number, but holy shit.
Anyway, you are over-generalizing your personal experience.
Everyone has heard someone say something along the lines of "I don't wear seat belts, because my uncle was in a car accident and was thrown free. If he had his seat belt on he would have been killed in the fire." Even if we assume this anecdote to be true it in no way controverts the statistical fact that a seat belt is far more likely to save the life of an adult than to end it.
So, without regard to your personal experience cigarettes cause cancer, seat belts save lives, and Outlook is a security risk.
You weren't a hypocrite. But you have allowed rotten (neo-liberal?) thinking to cause you to be ashamed of you opinion.
If a gun manufacture made a gun that could be caused to fire by someone who isn't even in the same room as the gun, AND the manufacture was aware of it, AND they did nothing (or touted it as a feature), AND consumers generally didn't understand the implications of this mis-feature THEN there would be a parallel here.
I'm not saying Smith isn't culpable (that's D. Smith, not Smith & W.;-) , I'm just saying that there is a difference between holding a company accountable for a product that is dangerous (and obviously so) when misused for the misuse and holding a company accountable for knowingly creating a shoddy product.
American involvement against the Germans was quite minimal compaired to other countries
Very true. The only ones who did less than the US was France.
Well, perhaps my history book replaced the truth about the French standing on the beach on D-day yelling "Go home Americans, with your dirty guns!" and replaced it with the lie that France fell to the Germans.
The irony is overwhelming. Frenchmen considering Americans to be xenophobic. Aren't these the people who wouldn't allow the word "rocket" into their language?
On the subject of the French language, is it possible to say "Defend the border." in French? They hate American guns except on the occasions when those guns are sparing them from becoming a German province.
I'm philosophically against this too, but claiming that offloading the processing of an 802.11b card onto a 1.xGHz processor is going to "drag down" the system is a steaming pile.
It is actually a good idea from a the perspective of operating the cards. The less going on in the card the cleaner your signal will be.
OTOH, from a hardware peripheral point of view it is plain stupid to tie your device's ability to operate to a particular runtime environment. One would be wiser to have a clean and simple interface to simplify writing the driver. From a peripheral manufacturers point of view a driver is an expense that doesn't generate revenue (generally).
I'm trying to get back into computer programming after a very lengthy illness. I'm horrified by how insanely complicated it has all become in the past ten years.
Yeah, the same thing is happening in a lot of fields.
For instance in Physics, once people got a pretty good handle on General and Special Relativity they made up some crap called "Quantum Mechanics" just so you have to have a PhD before you can really do any work in the field.
I was on Peak to Peak for a while. I didn't care for their attitude.
I was out of town at one point so I used their webmail. Then I discovered that it put an ad at the bottom of each outgoing message. This was webmail that came with a dial-up account. I don't see how this is any different than if they put an ad on all mail that goes out through their SMTP server. When I complained (graciously, I used to do phone support) the guy gave me attitude and told me . . . wait for it . . . that this was "the industry standard." I explained that I expected such a thing from a "free webmail" account, like yahoo mail or whatever, but not from something that it part of my dial up service. He replied that I was the only one who complained.
That very day someone on the BLUG (Boulder LUG) was complaining/apologizing that he was posting to the list from his peakpeak webmail that includes SPAM at the bottom.
So it wasn't that no one else was complaining, it was that they weren't listening.
That's just an example. I understand that I am a "demanding" customer (mostly because I won't buy a line of bullshit and because I usually know what the problem is before the support drone does), but I have no complaints about my current ISP, Fairplay Communications (or the ISP I had previous to peakpeak, Blackhat Networking out of Austin, whom I can't say enough good about*). Oh, and for the same price FPCC give a shell and doesn't have an auto-disconnect (which is another "industry standard" "feature" of peakpeak). So it must not just be that I'm an a-hole who hates all ISPs.
Anyway, contrary to what the article above says, peakpeak ain't so great.
-Peter
* While checking my links (I'm over-qualified to be a/. editor, I spell check and check my links:-P ) I discovered that blackhat seems to be off the 'net.
I understand that you have good intentions with this idea. Unfortunately there are more problems with this than you can shake a stick at.
First, there is a name for software that is going to be deprecated in a foreseeable time frame. That name is "beta." If you are writing software with the belief that "in x months people will be better off not running this" you are doing something wrong.
Second, what if you write a really great program, and you put this "feature" in it. The program is great. People love it. They depend on it. And it doesn't have security problems. Meanwhile you get married, have triplets and move to the Amazon. Then your little "time bomb" goes off. Thanks a bunch. Now it falls on "someone" to rip the thing out. Not good.
There are any number of other problems like:
People's clocks don't all agree
What bugs might you be adding by putting this code in there that doesn't enhance the program's operation?
Sometimes people need older versions to meet more important dependencies
Who knows what else?
This is all outside of the fact that I (like many others) don't care for software that thinks it is smarter than I am. That's why I run *NIX in general and Free Software in particular in the first place.
Bottom line: Sounds nice. Makes more problems than it solves.
I play with my cat by whistling at the highest note I can and she bites me. She stops the instant I stop, and just licks me till I start again. Pretty funny trick when you see it. She is smart too, she knows just where to bite me. Back of the knees, between the toes, on the arm just behind the armpit. All the most tender spots.
She does the same thing when I play with the ring tones on my cell phone.
The potential for English sentences to have multiple, conflicting interpretations never fails to amaze me.
I meant "Has anyone looked at the potential negative environmental impact of unintended global cooling from photoelectric proliferation." or something.
Damn ambiguous language. I might save this for an example for when people ask me "why can't I just tell my computer what to do in English?"
Slashdot Mirror
AC, you have never been good with details.
You certainly can "combine" GPL software with non-GPL. That is a true statement. You may link (run or compile-time) with any software under any GPL compatible Free Software license.
You certainly can "combine" GPL software with any non-GPL. That is a false statement.
You certainly can "combine" GPL software with proprietary. That is also a false statement.
Furthermore "You can link intact libraries." is also false when using the assumption that we are talking about proprietary software (which you seem to be), UNLESS the copyright holder has made a "clarification" (commonly known as an "exception") as L. Torvalds has done for the Linux kernel.
It might help you in the future to 1. read the GPL 2. work on your reading comprehension skills and 3. study the fundamentals of rational though.
Good luck AC. We're all pulling for you!
-Peter
When I write "to date" I usually mean "up to the current date as I write this." But the proximity of the "dateline" to the phrase puts this in doubt in this case.
Damn vage language!
-Peter
I see that you are trying to be funny, but the fact is that 1. I am a geek (if the fact that I'm posting on /. isn't enough, how 'bout the fact that I'm an out-of-work UNIX consultant?) who used to suffer at the hands of jocks and 2. I served four years in the US Army, including a stint in the Bosnian combat theater.
So I hope you can appricated how unfunny your comment is to me.
-Peter
There is absolutely not any such requirement. Again, I ask, have you read the GPL? You can check it out at http://www.gnu.org/licenses/gpl.html.
Furthermore, this is a FAQ.
To repeat myself, any use of software distributed under the terms of the GPL, to include modification, is not only not disallowed by the GPL, but is explicitly outside of the scope of the GPL.
You certainly can "combine" GPL software with non-GPL, and the use of the word "viral" is clearly pejorative.
It is true that code covered by the GPL cannot be lifted and distributed under conflicting terms. Is there any license this isn't true of? Can you lift BSD code and remove the authors indemnification or the "advertising clause" protection if there is one? Of course not. The only thing that makes the GPL different than the BSD license in this way is that the GPL vehemently protects the users freedom as well as the(original) authors.
You can, however, "combine" GPL code by linking, to include compile time linking, with any software under a GPL "compatible" Free license.
Furthermore, and remembering that your sig levels its accusation at GNU as a whole, a significant portion of GNU's distribution is licensed under the LGPL which may be linked with anything.
So, if it seems that the "irony" is lost on me, it is only because that irony only appears to exist if you base your perception of GNU on false presuppositions.
-Peter
The point isn't the value of the bug, it was the point of the value of human life. Yes the soldiers were in harms way, and the patients were supposed to get better from the treatment, not die, but I think that explicitly saying that the deaths of four cancer patients is a bigger tragedy than the loss of 28 soldiers is pretty sad.
Note that I didn't "compare the two", Byte did. That's precisely my point.
-Peter
GNU is a free (beer) system with a not-free (speech) viral license. Go figure!
I usually resist the urge to respond to people's sigs, but yours just begs it.
How could software distributed under the GPL be any more free? Have you read the GPL? Are you aware that it is not an end user license? Are you aware that one needn't agree to the terms in order to use GPLed software in any way he chooses? Are you aware that anyone may sell any peice of GPLed software? Are you aware that the FSF actively encourages people to do so?
The only "freedom" that the GPL takes away is the "freedom" to restrict other users freedom if you choose to redistribute it.
Finally, let me address the use of the term "viral" to describe the GPL. The common case is for someone to take a substantial GPLed work and make a few changes and redistribute.
All the arm waving about a small piece of GPLed code "infecting" a larger work is a smokescreen created by people who don't like the fact that they can't take GPLed software, make minor modifications then sell it as software that restricts users. It is well known that Microsoft took the BSD IP stack (under its "non-viral" license) and used it in several of their distinctly non-free OSes.
-Peter
and goes on to say:
seven times the loss of human life, but less of a tragedy? I guess they are soldiers so fuck 'em, eh?
This story is over two years old, so they have had ample opportunity to correct it. The "comment" button on that page just takes me to the front page. Nice.
Also on that page, "The DoubleSpace automati hard disk comparision software included in Microsoft MS-DOS 6.0 [. .
Ironic that there are such glaring errors in an article about buggy software.
Well, I wasn't particularly a fan of Byte before, but now I'm convinced that they suck.
-Peter
I think that taking reasonable precautions is prudent.
But let's be serious. I enjoyed "The Andromeda Strain" as much as the next guy, but I don't think this is very realistic. A chimp can't catch a cold from me. I can only play host to a limited number of bacteria that a lizard is susceptible to. And they want me to believe that there may be some man-killer bacteria on Mars? Even if you're one of these nutters who thinks that big headed grey dudes seeded our solar system with their DNA, why would you think a flesh-eating bacterium would evolve on a planted WITH NO FLESHY BEINGS?
I think we're all just a bit too eager to see Data dork Yar.
-Peter
$80,000,000 US. I don't believe this number, but holy shit.
Anyway, you are over-generalizing your personal experience.
Everyone has heard someone say something along the lines of "I don't wear seat belts, because my uncle was in a car accident and was thrown free. If he had his seat belt on he would have been killed in the fire." Even if we assume this anecdote to be true it in no way controverts the statistical fact that a seat belt is far more likely to save the life of an adult than to end it.
So, without regard to your personal experience cigarettes cause cancer, seat belts save lives, and Outlook is a security risk.
-Peter
You weren't a hypocrite. But you have allowed rotten (neo-liberal?) thinking to cause you to be ashamed of you opinion.
;-) , I'm just saying that there is a difference between holding a company accountable for a product that is dangerous (and obviously so) when misused for the misuse and holding a company accountable for knowingly creating a shoddy product.
If a gun manufacture made a gun that could be caused to fire by someone who isn't even in the same room as the gun, AND the manufacture was aware of it, AND they did nothing (or touted it as a feature), AND consumers generally didn't understand the implications of this mis-feature THEN there would be a parallel here.
I'm not saying Smith isn't culpable (that's D. Smith, not Smith & W.
Let's face it. Outlook is unsafe at any bitrate.
-Peter
You aren't seriously complaining that Free Software/OSS hackers aren't catering to your proprietary OS to your satisfaction, are you?
Why don't you complain to your vendor that they are crappy at garnering developer mind-share.
-Peter
PS: What the hell is a Unix?
Just do a compatible word processor? What a great idea! I can't believe that nobody though of that before.
Do you think that 100% compatibility will be hard to achieve?
Well, gotta go. I just had an idea . . . why don't I just invent an engine that runs on water and gives off cotton candy as exhaust?
By the way, KWord uses gzipped XML as its file format.
-Peter
American involvement against the Germans was quite minimal compaired to other countries
Very true. The only ones who did less than the US was France.
Well, perhaps my history book replaced the truth about the French standing on the beach on D-day yelling "Go home Americans, with your dirty guns!" and replaced it with the lie that France fell to the Germans.
Thank you for setting me straight.
-Peter
You are 100% correct.
I was posting too rapid-fire. Thank you for the correction.
-Peter
The irony is overwhelming. Frenchmen considering Americans to be xenophobic. Aren't these the people who wouldn't allow the word "rocket" into their language?
On the subject of the French language, is it possible to say "Defend the border." in French? They hate American guns except on the occasions when those guns are sparing them from becoming a German province.
-Peter
Get the fuck out of here.
I'm philosophically against this too, but claiming that offloading the processing of an 802.11b card onto a 1.xGHz processor is going to "drag down" the system is a steaming pile.
It is actually a good idea from a the perspective of operating the cards. The less going on in the card the cleaner your signal will be.
OTOH, from a hardware peripheral point of view it is plain stupid to tie your device's ability to operate to a particular runtime environment. One would be wiser to have a clean and simple interface to simplify writing the driver. From a peripheral manufacturers point of view a driver is an expense that doesn't generate revenue (generally).
-Peter
I'm trying to get back into computer programming after a very lengthy illness. I'm horrified by how insanely complicated it has all become in the past ten years.
Yeah, the same thing is happening in a lot of fields.
For instance in Physics, once people got a pretty good handle on General and Special Relativity they made up some crap called "Quantum Mechanics" just so you have to have a PhD before you can really do any work in the field.
Fucking monopolistic Physicists.
-Peter
It doesn't say took it, it says tookkit. I don't understand it in context, but tookkit means "fool of a Took" in the Hobbit's native tounge.
-Peter
I was on Peak to Peak for a while. I didn't care for their attitude.
/. editor, I spell check and check my links :-P ) I discovered that blackhat seems to be off the 'net.
I was out of town at one point so I used their webmail. Then I discovered that it put an ad at the bottom of each outgoing message. This was webmail that came with a dial-up account. I don't see how this is any different than if they put an ad on all mail that goes out through their SMTP server. When I complained (graciously, I used to do phone support) the guy gave me attitude and told me . . . wait for it . . . that this was "the industry standard." I explained that I expected such a thing from a "free webmail" account, like yahoo mail or whatever, but not from something that it part of my dial up service. He replied that I was the only one who complained.
That very day someone on the BLUG (Boulder LUG) was complaining/apologizing that he was posting to the list from his peakpeak webmail that includes SPAM at the bottom.
So it wasn't that no one else was complaining, it was that they weren't listening.
That's just an example. I understand that I am a "demanding" customer (mostly because I won't buy a line of bullshit and because I usually know what the problem is before the support drone does), but I have no complaints about my current ISP, Fairplay Communications (or the ISP I had previous to peakpeak, Blackhat Networking out of Austin, whom I can't say enough good about*). Oh, and for the same price FPCC give a shell and doesn't have an auto-disconnect (which is another "industry standard" "feature" of peakpeak). So it must not just be that I'm an a-hole who hates all ISPs.
Anyway, contrary to what the article above says, peakpeak ain't so great.
-Peter
* While checking my links (I'm over-qualified to be a
First, there is a name for software that is going to be deprecated in a foreseeable time frame. That name is "beta." If you are writing software with the belief that "in x months people will be better off not running this" you are doing something wrong.
Second, what if you write a really great program, and you put this "feature" in it. The program is great. People love it. They depend on it. And it doesn't have security problems. Meanwhile you get married, have triplets and move to the Amazon. Then your little "time bomb" goes off. Thanks a bunch. Now it falls on "someone" to rip the thing out. Not good.
There are any number of other problems like:
This is all outside of the fact that I (like many others) don't care for software that thinks it is smarter than I am. That's why I run *NIX in general and Free Software in particular in the first place.
Bottom line: Sounds nice. Makes more problems than it solves.
-Peter
My root password is 1-2-3-4-5.
That sound like a combination that an idiot would have on his luggage.
-Peter
Chris,
You must have me confused with someone else. Your cat has never jumped in my lap or put his paw over my mouth when I whistle.
-Peter
I play with my cat by whistling at the highest note I can and she bites me. She stops the instant I stop, and just licks me till I start again. Pretty funny trick when you see it. She is smart too, she knows just where to bite me. Back of the knees, between the toes, on the arm just behind the armpit. All the most tender spots.
She does the same thing when I play with the ring tones on my cell phone.
-Peter
The potential for English sentences to have multiple, conflicting interpretations never fails to amaze me.
I meant "Has anyone looked at the potential negative environmental impact of unintended global cooling from photoelectric proliferation." or something.
Damn ambiguous language. I might save this for an example for when people ask me "why can't I just tell my computer what to do in English?"
-Peter
Dear Slashdot,
I have been a loyal reader and poster for four years. I have enjoyed slashdot greatly.
In light of this story, however, please cancel my fucking account.
-Peter