Linus can't change the Linux license even if he wanted to. All of the 2-3000 contributors would have to agree to that or have their code written out. That is quite simply unrealistic and impossible.
Hope this helps.
Re:Restricting Free (as in speech) Software
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"Anyone who looks at the GPL can see that it's unfree." And yet millions still persist in calling it a free software license. Why's that?
"Most of the license is devoted to laying out restrictions" Most of the criminal law is devoted to laying out restrictions too, yet people still use the words 'free country' all the time. When you look at WHAT the restricitions say, they merely say a tiny minority of GPL'ed software users - the distributers and modifiers - aren't allowed to place restrictions on the vast majority of GPL'ed software users - the people who run the software.
"The GPL denies the freedom of others so you can retain yours.It's not freedom, it's not even close."
Oh right. Thanks for that. I'll apply the same logic to real life.
"The law against murdering people denies the freedom of others so that I can retain mine. It's not freedom, it's not even close. Abolish the murder laws!" Hmmm, interesting view of freedom you got there, bud. I don't think I'll subscribe to it just yet.
Oh and: "My problem is with people like you decide to run around, spreading misinformation about the GPL -- That is that it provides freedom."
"Or even under the ultra-fascist GPL?"
If saying that the GPL provides freedom is misinformation, what exactly is it when you call the GPL 'Ultra-Fascist'?
"Add the FreeBSD, NetBSD, and OpenBSD groups;"
All of whom distribute GPLed software. The FreeBSD and OpenBSD groups certainly won't distribute software they don't consider free. I haven't looked at the policies of the NetBSD people. I'll strike them off the list of the GPL enemies list, shall I?
I think I'll leave this thread here, we've gone round in circles long enough, methinks. Thanks for the trollin', it was a fairly decent mental exercise.
Cheers!
Re:Restricting Free (as in speech) Software
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"As should you. I clearly said that the EULA provides freedom, not becomes free software. There's a difference."
Aaah right. Well yes, the EULA provides a small amount of freedoms in that sense, just as the GPL provides a small amount of restrictions. You can do nothing to EULA-ed software except run it and even then with some severe restrictions and in this straw man example, you expect me to pick out those bits and say it's 'freedom'.
But that's not my way of thinking, it's closer to YOUR way of thinking. I look at the whole EULA and say it's mostly unfree. Just as I look at the whole GPL, and say it's mostly unrestricted - you can do anything to GPL'ed software except for a restriction on distributing it as non-GPL'ed software. You look at the GPL and pick out the one smallish restriction through a magnifying glass and complain about the lack of freedom, just like in straw-man-world you'd expect me to pick out the tiny bit of freedom in a EULA.
"I can do that since you didn't say "neccesary to keep that software free as defined by FSF." All I have to do is point to the BSD license, an OSI approved license."
Wrong answer. I said *keep* the software free. The minute you release BSD code, someone can come along and embrace/extend it slightly and turn it into fascist EULA-ware. You see? Lift that restriction, it turns into proprietary software. You might think that's good, that's between you and your rabbi/witchdoctor/conscience or whatever. I was showing that the GPL contains only the minimum restrictions necessary to preserve software as free or open source software, and I don't think you can argue with that.
And FYI, BSD code IS free as defined by the FSF. The OSI and FSF agree in nearly every case on what constitutes free or open source software.
"Would OpenBSD or FreeBSD gain anything by having Microsofts modifications published?" If Microsoft made decent modifications that other people find useful, then yes, of course, *BSD would gain something - better code, or at least and alternative way of doing something. It's not impossible for Microsoft to make good code, you know. Only a rabid anti-M$er would think otherwise.
"Would Microsoft gain anything by publishing its modifications?" Trickier since MS's current business model depends on secret source code, but if that hurdle was overcome, then yes, Microsoft would gain by having it's bugs spotted and checked a lot earlier for one. And perhaps it could find the community making good modifications to it's mods in return.
"There are many people out there who agree with my views and would like to see the world de-GNU'd"
True. Prominent among your anti-GNU soulmates are Bill Gates, Darl McBride, Rob Enderle, sworn enemies of free software.
That's not what's meant by 'privatisation' - yes the government has been chartering and licensing private works for centuries but privatisation, the way the word is actually used, is the transfer of an actual industry, such as a telecommunications company or a railway, from the state to private owners, not merely the licensing or chartering of works. There's already perfectly good words for that, like 'licensing' and 'chartering'.
Privateering isn't privatisation - unless the government sells off the navy to the highest bidder. Similarly the bridge-building charter wouldn't be privatisation unless there was, say, a state civil engineering firm that was sold off to a private enterprise.
Hope this helps.
Re:Restricting Free (as in speech) Software
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· Score: 1
"Anything under an EULA provides "freedom", according to you.After all, if you pay for it you are free to use it."
You should brush up on your reading comprehension skills. I defined 'free software' the way everyone here defines free software - software that is freely modifiable, runnable, examinable and redistributable. An EULA usually provides only one of those freedoms and is therefore totally unfree.
You're using 'free software' in a manner inconsistent with the way almost everyone else here uses it. If you're going to talk here, it helps if we speak the same language.
"Frankly, the GPL is a virus. Anything it touches must become infected, says so right in the license."
You're quoting Bill Gates now. And all this redefining of the language we use is reminiscent of Ken Brown and Rob Enderle's FUD attacks. You're keeping good company these days.
"The open source movement is a different story."
Funnily enough, the Open Source people like using the GPL too. They just don't happen to use the word 'free' as much, since businessmen don't like freedom and 'free' is, unfortunately, ambiguous in English. The software and licenses that the Free Software and Open Source people use are identical.
Look we're never going to agree, but I'll stop thinking you're some sort of proprietary troll if you can tell me one restriction of the GPL that isn't absolutely neccesary to keep that software free or open source in the FSF/OSI/Debian sense (take your pick). No matter which bit of the GPL you make less restrictive, you'll always end up with someone, somewhere, being able to slap a EULA on it and deprive a hapless user somewhere in the world of his freedom. That's the sole purpose of the GPL. It prevents GPL'ed code being proprietarised and no more. You might not like being told you can't slap a EULA on someone else's code, but if you're wanting to start some sort of anti-GPL freedom crusade based on that, then I don't reckon you're going to get many followers - I think most people here can see that the logical conclusion of getting rid of the GPL is just to relegate free software to being embraced, extended, proprietarised and reduced to some sort of ham-radio type hobby instead of the mass social movement/competitive industry that it now happens to be. Maybe you want that. Fair enough.
Re:Restricting Free (as in speech) Software
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I'm guessing that somewhere in the GPL they redefine "Freedom" to mean "Restrictions".
No. The 'Freedom' of the GPL is the freedom to run, copy, distribute, and modify code. The 'freedom' you're banging on about is the freedom to use other people's work to make code that isn't free in those other four senses. Next you'll be telling me that we don't live in a free country because it's illegal to lock random strangers in the basement of a house that someone else built. "I should be free to take away other people's freedom, using other people's property!"
"And why shouldn't Bill Gates be allowed to use the code if he wanted? "
I never said he shouldn't. I was just showing an example of how he could rip code that you wrote out of your GPL'ed app and put it in a proprietary application if he wanted to, thus contradicting whatever it was that you said.
"You misunderstand what I said. If I used GPL'd code, I am forced to license my code under the GPL. Not under any OSI approved license, but the GPL itself."
I understood you the first time and you're wrong. I said that the software AS A WHOLE must be licensed under the GPL, since that's the only way of preventing the GPL'ed code that you didn't write from becoming proprietary software. But individual parts of that software, such as lines of code or files that you yourself wrote, can be under a different license. The code you add to the GPL'ed code merely has to be under a GPL-compatible license for it to be bundled in a GPL'ed app. There's a big list of GPL-compatible licenses on the FSF site for you to choose from.
"Anyone who then uses my code or redistributions my program has to adhere to a laundry list of requirements. "
The onerous laundry list of heinous restrictions that is destroying your freedom reads thus: 1) You aren't allowed to change the license on my code 2) When you give people copies of my code, give people the source code to whatever you gave them. 3) Erm... 4) that's it.
The GPL is of course longer than that, but the rest of it is just closing loopholes and technicalities - if you adhere to the spirit of 1) and 2) above, you'll pretty much be in the clear.
"If I license my code under the GPL, it is restricted. That is non-free as in non-freedom"
Firstly, I've already said that you're not forced to license the code that you wrote under the GPL.
Secondly, you are using the word 'free' in a way which is completely contrary to the manner in which the whole of the free software community uses it. The GPL is a free software license. There are definitions of what constitute 'free software' all over the place.
It frankly amazes me how gung-ho you are about the right to make non-free software. Why do you bother with the free software movement at all, if the most important freedom to you is the ability to make proprietary software? Is 'free software' to you just a big supply of other people's work that you can put in a box and sell it with an EULA full of fascist licensing restrictions?
Erm, it's no secret that Thatcher, Reagan and Pinochet pretty much made up the first wave of privatisation in the 1980s (Pinochet even earlier), and lumping them together in that context is by no means an unfair,cheap or slanderous thing to say. Can you name any other world leader who privatised an industry before about 1985? I can't, off the top of my head.
They happen to be the three names that pop into my head when I think privatisation, and I used them to clarify what I mean by the word, as opposed to what the Economist was talking about in the article that nobody bothered to read. I wasn't trying to associate Thatcher and Reagan with the crimes of Pinochet (although to be fair, they were only too happy to support the mass murdering old fart whenever they got the chance)
And I prefer real bona-fide socialists (preferably of an anarchist or libertarian bent) to Nazis and corporate shills, thankyewverymuch.
Re:Restricting Free (as in speech) Software
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Those apparently multiple restrictions are just different ways of covering the same one restriction. Binary-only code is unfree code. Relicensing GPL'ed code to another license means being able to turn it into unfree code. The GPL does the absolute minimum necessary to prevent GPL'ed code being turned into unfree software, and no more.
As for restricting your labour, you misunderstand the GPL. It does nothing of the sort. You can license the code YOU wrote under any license you want, and if your software happens to be free software, you can distribute it with GPLed code.
The resulting software, as a whole, is a GPL'ed application, but your own code can be BSD, or public domain, or any GPL-compatible license if you like. If you bother to mark the BSD-licensed bits clearly enough, then Bill Gates himself can come along and take those and stick them into IE8 if he wants.
YOUR labour isn't restricted in the slightest - the only restriction is what you do with the work of the guy who wrote the GPL'ed code, and the only restriction is that you can't do anything that can turn GPLed code into non-free software.
See?
Re:If it's been so "overcautious"...
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Spectrum as Property
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· Score: 2, Insightful
Did ANYONE here RTFA, or is the Economist putting a different article out to people with my IP or something?
The economist article isn't suggesting Thatcher/Pinochet/Reagan style privatisation - which I think of as the government giving out publicly owned utilities to the highest bidder and letting them fleece us for whatever they can get away with. That's roughly what we have now, with heavy government regulation - and the Economist article doesn't even suggest a less-regulated form of that system.
The economist article is advocating a commons approach. Build a bunch of wireless networks, let the spectrum be used by anyone who has equipment sophisticated enough not to interfere with other people's signals, and then everyone can use the spectrum freely for whatever they want. Simultaneously the spectrum becomes more deregulated, and more publicly owned, which must be a good thing, unless you're a telecoms oligopolist.
The last time I read something like this was in an essay by Eben Moglen, who seems to be more of an anarchist than anything else.
Re:Restricting Free (as in speech) Software
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Yeah yeah yeah. Sure the GPL restricts your freedom. In one, and only one way. You're not allowed to take other people's GPL'ed work and use that free software to make non-free software from it.
Anyone who bandies around the word 'freedom' in order to fight for the right to use other people's labour to make unfree software is a hypocritical asshat IMO.
Sorry, but you're missing the point. The fact that the legal immunity that Microsoft is pressuring these guys into signing happens to be with respect to patent law is somewhat irrelevant.
If Microsoft used it's monopoly power to force these guys to sign an agreement allowing it to breach their copyrights while still being able to enforce it's copyrights in return, then that would clearly be an unfair agreement. The fact that it's patents, not copyrights or trademarks, makes no odds to the unfairness of these licenses.
Sure the laws regarding software patents are bogus, but even you should be able to tell the difference between a bogus law applied fairly and one applied unfairly. It would be a bogus law applied fairly if Microsoft allowed it's customers to use Microsoft's patents in return. It would be a bogus law applied fairly if we could be sure that Microsoft wasn't going to use it's patent portfolio against it's customers.
But when Microsoft can go to the patent office 10 times a day, while at the same time denying other patent holders the rights to use their patents in return, then that's not fair. See? (Yes, I know Microsoft's track record at initiating bad IP lawsuits isn't that bad at all, but the mere fact that MS or anyone else has patented your favourite algorithm to perform function X is enough to stifle competition, since the risk of lawsuits still has to be taken into consideration.)
"Whats the point of all this destructive testing? Do you really need your media to be THAT tough? (with the obvious exception of military applications but they can afford to pay for that.)"
I'd have thought the military would want their media to be more destructible, not less.
Picture the scene, you're shot down behind enemy lines with the entire plans for Operation Atomic Puppydog on your person and the bad guys are about to catch and interrogate you. You don't want your ultra-secret military data to withstand sledgehammer blows and being nailed to the tree - and if swallowing it isn't going to destroy it by the time the enemy's crack Special Forces proctology team gets to it, then you're going to be in trouble...
Trouble is, all the GNU Free Patent Licenses in the world won't help you a jot, if Microsoft or whoever sets up a sock puppet company which makes nothing, sells nothing, and owns nothing but a few lawyers, some capital borrowed from the likes of Baystar, and some patents bought from Microsoft, and direct orders from Bill to clobber [your favourite Free/Open Source Software project].
That pretty much renders it invulnerable to a strategy based on defensive patents (or, as in the original article, wording your copyright license to withdraw permission to use your software from patent-abusing shitheads)
You're better off saving your money and just documenting everything as prior art.
It wouldn't be great. Part of the reason SCO went after IBM is not that they expected to win, but that the board were hoping IBM would get irritated enough to buy out SCO, thus pumping up the stock price and providing Darl and all the board with a big pile of free money from the stock options they hold.
If Google bought out SCO, then Microsoft wouldn't find it hard to find another CEO to send his corporation on a kamikaze FUD attack against the Linux community. It's better that we all sit back and let IBM pummel SCO into the ground.
Well yes, the GPL does deprive us of that most vital and precious of our freedoms - the freedom to use other people's hard work in order to make unfree software that deprives those foolish enough to use it of their freedom.
It was a dark day for freedom indeed when RMS invented the GPL.
If you don't like being infected with the GPL, you're perfectly free to reinvent the wheel and rewrite whatever GPLed code you were thinking of using. Or contact the author and cut a deal.
You'd have to do either of those anyway if you wanted to use [insert proprietary licensed code here] for any reason at all.
And mowhere does the GPL force anyone to give up any copyright at all, period.
The FSF does want you to assign your copyrights to them if you want your code included in a GNU project, but that's a different matter.
So you define immoral behaviour as that behaviour which has undesirable social consequences (almost everyone has an idea of what a desirable society is like, although it may differ from person to person, according to whatever load of balls they happen to believe) and define evil as a person performing immoral actions.
Even if an 'evil' person is doing it for some enviromental or genetic reason, you've still got to find some way of curbing evil behaviour.
Perhaps it's cops and jails that are needed, perhaps it's changing society so as not to create 'evil' people in the first place. Where exactly is your conceptual difficulty? Putting someone in jail for doing wrong things is much the same act, whether you did it because they sold their soul to satan, or whether they had a lousy childhood.
No. Believing that it would be a good plan if society was rigged so that people don't murder each other might just be a pragmatic doctrine to do with self-preservation of you and your family, not because there's some form of god in everything, which is what I understand the term "pantheism" to mean. That's one example, there could be many.
"That's kind of what I'm asking, how would an atheist pick?"
Who knows? How does a religious fanatic decide that one book filled full of superstitious mumbo-jumbo is more true than another?
What possesses any of us to adhere to whatever load of balls we happen to believe in? Just psychological happenstance really!
"Just because I don't believe in any gods does not mean that I believe that it is O.K. to kill murder or maim.An athiest is not necessarily an anarchist."
Oh, not you too! Anarchists don't usually (or even frequently) believe that it's OK to kill murder or maim!
Anarchism is just a belief in no government - usually that's because anarchists don't usually subscribe to the theory of human nature that says people are all mass-murdering savages who need the threat of a police force to stop us slaughtering each other for no reason, given half a chance.
Or sometimes anarchists think that the community can police itself without having a government do it for them.
You can probably find some anarchists who'll happily point out that it's governments that do most of the killing, murdering and maiming, and so getting rid of it is a good thing even at the cost of a few privatised murders here and there. And I imagine there are other theories of anarchist "crime prevention" (oxymoronic, but I figure you know what I mean) if you care to look, too.
Anarchists have had a bad press, mostly since the days of the Russian nihilist anarchists who were prone to throwing bombs at monarchs in the 19th century, but nowadays we're a nice bunch, really!
"everything is _only_ a sophisticated collection of atoms"
You're confusing atheism with some sort of nihilism methinks.
Atheism is a belief that there is no god. It says absolutely nothing about whether or not you believe that people or living creatures are special or not.
Eventually morality all boils down to a few axioms to determine whether an action is right or wrong, and that can't be proved or disproved. Some have the categorical imperative, some believe people should be as free as possible, some want the greatest happiness for the greatest number, and some just believe in a few old laws carved on a rock by a mad old dude halfway up a mountain three thousand years ago. Take your pick!
Well some of us atheists use 'evil' as a term of judgement, meaning 'immoral', even though we don't believe in a spiritual evil. Osama Bin Laden is evil because he's murdered thousands of innocent people for his political/religious aims, not because some satanic demon has infiltrated his soul or any such superstitious nonsense.
Oh, and atheists do often believe that some things are right and other things are wrong - even though we don't have the promise of heaven or threat of fire and brimstone hanging over our heads to keep us straight. I've found the odd Christian who simply can't get to grips with that fact, so I felt I had to point that out in case you were one of them!
"Do you mean that manufacturers would be required to implement DRM? But so what? Just because it's there, doesn't mean you are forced to use it."
But if every new computer sold after 2005 was required to be DRM-compliant, it would take, what, 3-5 years before most of the population had upgraded to a DRM-compliant computer? And when your motherboard goes on the fritz, what then?
"Do you mean that manufacturers would be required to implement a compulsory form of DRM that
stopped unsigned OSs from booting? That's also absurd. The big corporate interests behind Linux would never let that happen."
The big corporate interests behind Linux let software patents happen. (Of course software patents happened in the US before Linux did - but they're still happening in Europe, for example)
Remember, there are bigger corporate interests that want DRM. Sony, Disney, Microsoft, you name 'em. IBM is only one behemoth among many...
"Get real, people. With the security that Linux has where any bozo can sneak up behind the machine, start it up with Knoppix, and have access to most sensitive data, there's no way I want a single dollar to be spent on Linux systems from taxpayers' money."
Tsk, those tricksy linux hobbitses. Guess what, they've got Linux reading NTFS partitions these days. Even Knoppix. Now not even the NSA's top-secret ultra-secure NT4 Box with the PGP backdoor algorithm and Lee Harvey Oswald's payroll slips on it is safe from those commie terrorist unamerican linux hackers these days....
Slashdot Mirror
Linus can't change the Linux license even if he wanted to. All of the 2-3000 contributors would have to agree to that or have their code written out. That is quite simply unrealistic and impossible.
Hope this helps.
"Anyone who looks at the GPL can see that it's unfree."
And yet millions still persist in calling it a free software license. Why's that?
"Most of the license is devoted to laying out restrictions"
Most of the criminal law is devoted to laying out restrictions too, yet people still use the words 'free country' all the time. When you look at WHAT the restricitions say, they merely say a tiny minority of GPL'ed software users - the distributers and modifiers - aren't allowed to place restrictions on the vast majority of GPL'ed software users - the people who run the software.
"The GPL denies the freedom of others so you can
retain yours.It's not freedom, it's not even close."
Oh right. Thanks for that. I'll apply the same logic to real life.
"The law against murdering people denies the freedom of others so that I can retain mine. It's not freedom, it's not even close. Abolish the murder laws!"
Hmmm, interesting view of freedom you got there, bud. I don't think I'll subscribe to it just yet.
Oh and:
"My problem is with people like you decide to run around, spreading misinformation about the GPL -- That is that it provides freedom."
"Or even under the ultra-fascist GPL?"
If saying that the GPL provides freedom is misinformation, what exactly is it when you call the GPL 'Ultra-Fascist'?
"Add the FreeBSD, NetBSD, and OpenBSD groups;"
All of whom distribute GPLed software. The FreeBSD and OpenBSD groups certainly won't distribute software they don't consider free. I haven't looked at the policies of the NetBSD people. I'll strike them off the list of the GPL enemies list, shall I?
I think I'll leave this thread here, we've gone round in circles long enough, methinks. Thanks for the trollin', it was a fairly decent mental exercise.
Cheers!
"As should you. I clearly said that the EULA provides freedom, not becomes free software. There's a difference."
Aaah right. Well yes, the EULA provides a small amount of freedoms in that sense, just as the GPL provides a small amount of restrictions. You can do nothing to EULA-ed software except run it and even then with some severe restrictions and in this straw man example, you expect me to pick out those bits and say it's 'freedom'.
But that's not my way of thinking, it's closer to YOUR way of thinking. I look at the whole EULA and say it's mostly unfree. Just as I look at the whole GPL, and say it's mostly unrestricted - you can do anything to GPL'ed software except for a restriction on distributing it as non-GPL'ed software. You look at the GPL and pick out the one smallish restriction through a magnifying glass and complain about the lack of freedom, just like in straw-man-world you'd expect me to pick out the tiny bit of freedom in a EULA.
"I can do that since you didn't say "neccesary to keep that software free as defined by FSF." All I have to do is point to the BSD license, an OSI approved license."
Wrong answer. I said *keep* the software free. The minute you release BSD code, someone can come along and embrace/extend it slightly and turn it into fascist EULA-ware. You see? Lift that restriction, it turns into proprietary software. You might think that's good, that's between you and your rabbi/witchdoctor/conscience or whatever. I was showing that the GPL contains only the minimum restrictions necessary to preserve software as free or open source software, and I don't think you can argue with that.
And FYI, BSD code IS free as defined by the FSF. The OSI and FSF agree in nearly every case on what constitutes free or open source software.
"Would OpenBSD or FreeBSD gain anything by having Microsofts modifications published?"
If Microsoft made decent modifications that other people find useful, then yes, of course, *BSD would gain something - better code, or at least and alternative way of doing something. It's not impossible for Microsoft to make good code, you know. Only a rabid anti-M$er would think otherwise.
"Would Microsoft gain anything by publishing its modifications?"
Trickier since MS's current business model depends on secret source code, but if that hurdle was overcome, then yes, Microsoft would gain by having it's bugs spotted and checked a lot earlier for one. And perhaps it could find the community making good modifications to it's mods in return.
"There are many people out there who agree with my views and would like to see the world de-GNU'd"
True. Prominent among your anti-GNU soulmates are Bill Gates, Darl McBride, Rob Enderle, sworn enemies of free software.
That's not what's meant by 'privatisation' - yes the government has been chartering and licensing private works for centuries but privatisation, the way the word is actually used, is the transfer of an actual industry, such as a telecommunications company or a railway, from the state to private owners, not merely the licensing or chartering of works. There's already perfectly good words for that, like 'licensing' and 'chartering'.
Privateering isn't privatisation - unless the government sells off the navy to the highest bidder. Similarly the bridge-building charter wouldn't be privatisation unless there was, say, a state civil engineering firm that was sold off to a private enterprise.
Hope this helps.
"Anything under an EULA provides "freedom", according to you.After all, if you pay for it you are free to use it."
You should brush up on your reading comprehension skills. I defined 'free software' the way everyone here defines free software - software that is freely modifiable, runnable, examinable and redistributable. An EULA usually provides only one of those freedoms and is therefore totally unfree.
You're using 'free software' in a manner inconsistent with the way almost everyone else here uses it. If you're going to talk here, it helps if we speak the same language.
"Frankly, the GPL is a virus. Anything it touches must become infected, says so right in the license."
You're quoting Bill Gates now. And all this redefining of the language we use is reminiscent of Ken Brown and Rob Enderle's FUD attacks. You're keeping good company these days.
"The open source movement is a different story."
Funnily enough, the Open Source people like using the GPL too. They just don't happen to use the word 'free' as much, since businessmen don't like freedom and 'free' is, unfortunately, ambiguous in English. The software and licenses that the Free Software and Open Source people use are identical.
Look we're never going to agree, but I'll stop thinking you're some sort of proprietary troll if you can tell me one restriction of the GPL that isn't absolutely neccesary to keep that software free or open source in the FSF/OSI/Debian sense (take your pick).
No matter which bit of the GPL you make less restrictive, you'll always end up with someone, somewhere, being able to slap a EULA on it and deprive a hapless user somewhere in the world of his freedom. That's the sole purpose of the GPL. It prevents GPL'ed code being proprietarised and no more.
You might not like being told you can't slap a EULA on someone else's code, but if you're wanting to start some sort of anti-GPL freedom crusade based on that, then I don't reckon you're going to get many followers - I think most people here can see that the logical conclusion of getting rid of the GPL is just to relegate free software to being embraced, extended, proprietarised and reduced to some sort of ham-radio type hobby instead of the mass social movement/competitive industry that it now happens to be. Maybe you want that. Fair enough.
I'm guessing that somewhere in the GPL they redefine "Freedom" to mean "Restrictions".
No. The 'Freedom' of the GPL is the freedom to run, copy, distribute, and modify code. The 'freedom' you're banging on about is the freedom to use other people's work to make code that isn't free in those other four senses. Next you'll be telling me that we don't live in a free country because it's illegal to lock random strangers in the basement of a house that someone else built. "I should be free to take away other people's freedom, using other people's property!"
"And why shouldn't Bill Gates be allowed to use the code if he wanted? "
I never said he shouldn't. I was just showing an example of how he could rip code that you wrote out of your GPL'ed app and put it in a proprietary application if he wanted to, thus contradicting whatever it was that you said.
"You misunderstand what I said. If I used GPL'd code, I am forced to license my code under the GPL. Not under any OSI approved license, but the GPL itself."
I understood you the first time and you're wrong. I said that the software AS A WHOLE must be licensed under the GPL, since that's the only way of preventing the GPL'ed code that you didn't write from becoming proprietary software. But individual parts of that software, such as lines of code or files that you yourself wrote, can be under a different license. The code you add to the GPL'ed code merely has to be under a GPL-compatible license for it to be bundled in a GPL'ed app. There's a big list of GPL-compatible licenses on the FSF site for you to choose from.
"Anyone who then uses my code or redistributions my program has to adhere to a laundry list of requirements. "
The onerous laundry list of heinous restrictions that is destroying your freedom reads thus:
1) You aren't allowed to change the license on my code
2) When you give people copies of my code, give people the source code to whatever you gave them.
3) Erm...
4) that's it.
The GPL is of course longer than that, but the rest of it is just closing loopholes and technicalities - if you adhere to the spirit of 1) and 2) above, you'll pretty much be in the clear.
"If I license my code under the GPL, it is restricted. That is non-free as in non-freedom"
Firstly, I've already said that you're not forced to license the code that you wrote under the GPL.
Secondly, you are using the word 'free' in a way which is completely contrary to the manner in which the whole of the free software community uses it. The GPL is a free software license. There are definitions of what constitute 'free software' all over the place.
It frankly amazes me how gung-ho you are about the right to make non-free software. Why do you bother with the free software movement at all, if the most important freedom to you is the ability to make proprietary software? Is 'free software' to you just a big supply of other people's work that you can put in a box and sell it with an EULA full of fascist licensing restrictions?
Erm, it's no secret that Thatcher, Reagan and Pinochet pretty much made up the first wave of privatisation in the 1980s (Pinochet even earlier), and lumping them together in that context is by no means an unfair,cheap or slanderous thing to say. Can you name any other world leader who privatised an industry before about 1985? I can't, off the top of my head.
They happen to be the three names that pop into my head when I think privatisation, and I used them to clarify what I mean by the word, as opposed to what the Economist was talking about in the article that nobody bothered to read. I wasn't trying to associate Thatcher and Reagan with the crimes of Pinochet (although to be fair, they were only too happy to support the mass murdering old fart whenever they got the chance)
And I prefer real bona-fide socialists (preferably of an anarchist or libertarian bent) to Nazis and corporate shills, thankyewverymuch.
Those apparently multiple restrictions are just different ways of covering the same one restriction. Binary-only code is unfree code. Relicensing GPL'ed code to another license means being able to turn it into unfree code. The GPL does the absolute minimum necessary to prevent GPL'ed code being turned into unfree software, and no more.
As for restricting your labour, you misunderstand the GPL. It does nothing of the sort. You can license the code YOU wrote under any license you want, and if your software happens to be free software, you can distribute it with GPLed code.
The resulting software, as a whole, is a GPL'ed application, but your own code can be BSD, or public domain, or any GPL-compatible license if you like. If you bother to mark the BSD-licensed bits clearly enough, then Bill Gates himself can come along and take those and stick them into IE8 if he wants.
YOUR labour isn't restricted in the slightest - the only restriction is what you do with the work of the guy who wrote the GPL'ed code, and the only restriction is that you can't do anything that can turn GPLed code into non-free software.
See?
Did ANYONE here RTFA, or is the Economist putting a different article out to people with my IP or something?
The economist article isn't suggesting Thatcher/Pinochet/Reagan style privatisation - which I think of as the government giving out publicly owned utilities to the highest bidder and letting them fleece us for whatever they can get away with. That's roughly what we have now, with heavy government regulation - and the Economist article doesn't even suggest a less-regulated form of that system.
The economist article is advocating a commons approach. Build a bunch of wireless networks, let the spectrum be used by anyone who has equipment sophisticated enough not to interfere with other people's signals, and then everyone can use the spectrum freely for whatever they want. Simultaneously the spectrum becomes more deregulated, and more publicly owned, which must be a good thing, unless you're a telecoms oligopolist.
The last time I read something like this was in an essay by Eben Moglen, who seems to be more of an anarchist than anything else.
Yeah yeah yeah. Sure the GPL restricts your freedom. In one, and only one way. You're not allowed to take other people's GPL'ed work and use that free software to make non-free software from it.
Anyone who bandies around the word 'freedom' in order to fight for the right to use other people's labour to make unfree software is a hypocritical asshat IMO.
Sorry, but you're missing the point. The fact that the legal immunity that Microsoft is pressuring these guys into signing happens to be with respect to patent law is somewhat irrelevant.
If Microsoft used it's monopoly power to force these guys to sign an agreement allowing it to breach their copyrights while still being able to enforce it's copyrights in return, then that would clearly be an unfair agreement. The fact that it's patents, not copyrights or trademarks, makes no odds to the unfairness of these licenses.
Sure the laws regarding software patents are bogus, but even you should be able to tell the difference between a bogus law applied fairly and one applied unfairly. It would be a bogus law applied fairly if Microsoft allowed it's customers to use Microsoft's patents in return. It would be a bogus law applied fairly if we could be sure that Microsoft wasn't going to use it's patent portfolio against it's customers.
But when Microsoft can go to the patent office 10 times a day, while at the same time denying other patent holders the rights to use their patents in return, then that's not fair. See?
(Yes, I know Microsoft's track record at initiating bad IP lawsuits isn't that bad at all, but the mere fact that MS or anyone else has patented your favourite algorithm to perform function X is enough to stifle competition, since the risk of lawsuits still has to be taken into consideration.)
"Whats the point of all this destructive testing? Do you really need your media to be THAT tough? (with the obvious exception of military applications but they can afford to pay for that.)"
I'd have thought the military would want their media to be more destructible, not less.
Picture the scene, you're shot down behind enemy lines with the entire plans for Operation Atomic Puppydog on your person and the bad guys are about to catch and interrogate you. You don't want your ultra-secret military data to withstand sledgehammer blows and being nailed to the tree - and if swallowing it isn't going to destroy it by the time the enemy's crack Special Forces proctology team gets to it, then you're going to be in trouble...
Trouble is, all the GNU Free Patent Licenses in the world won't help you a jot, if Microsoft or whoever sets up a sock puppet company which makes nothing, sells nothing, and owns nothing but a few lawyers, some capital borrowed from the likes of Baystar, and some patents bought from Microsoft, and direct orders from Bill to clobber [your favourite Free/Open Source Software project].
That pretty much renders it invulnerable to a strategy based on defensive patents (or, as in the original article, wording your copyright license to withdraw permission to use your software from patent-abusing shitheads)
You're better off saving your money and just documenting everything as prior art.
It wouldn't be great. Part of the reason SCO went after IBM is not that they expected to win, but that the board were hoping IBM would get irritated enough to buy out SCO, thus pumping up the stock price and providing Darl and all the board with a big pile of free money from the stock options they hold.
If Google bought out SCO, then Microsoft wouldn't find it hard to find another CEO to send his corporation on a kamikaze FUD attack against the Linux community. It's better that we all sit back and let IBM pummel SCO into the ground.
Well yes, the GPL does deprive us of that most vital and precious of our freedoms - the freedom to use other people's hard work in order to make unfree software that deprives those foolish enough to use it of their freedom.
It was a dark day for freedom indeed when RMS invented the GPL.
"ie viral licensing, giving up copyright"
If you don't like being infected with the GPL, you're perfectly free to reinvent the wheel and rewrite whatever GPLed code you were thinking of using. Or contact the author and cut a deal.
You'd have to do either of those anyway if you wanted to use [insert proprietary licensed code here] for any reason at all.
And mowhere does the GPL force anyone to give up any copyright at all, period.
The FSF does want you to assign your copyrights to them if you want your code included in a GNU project, but that's a different matter.
Oh. So no chance of rural communities connecting to the net through a broadband moonbounce link then.
Damn, so much for that patent...
So you define immoral behaviour as that behaviour which has undesirable social consequences (almost everyone has an idea of what a desirable society is like, although it may differ from person to person, according to whatever load of balls they happen to believe) and define evil as a person performing immoral actions.
Even if an 'evil' person is doing it for some enviromental or genetic reason, you've still got to find some way of curbing evil behaviour.
Perhaps it's cops and jails that are needed, perhaps it's changing society so as not to create 'evil' people in the first place. Where exactly is your conceptual difficulty? Putting someone in jail for doing wrong things is much the same act, whether you did it because they sold their soul to satan, or whether they had a lousy childhood.
"Isn't that pantheism?"
No. Believing that it would be a good plan if society was rigged so that people don't murder each other might just be a pragmatic doctrine to do with self-preservation of you and your family, not because there's some form of god in everything, which is what I understand the term "pantheism" to mean. That's one example, there could be many.
"That's kind of what I'm asking, how would an atheist pick?"
Who knows? How does a religious fanatic decide that one book filled full of superstitious mumbo-jumbo is more true than another?
What possesses any of us to adhere to whatever load of balls we happen to believe in? Just psychological happenstance really!
"Just because I don't believe in any gods does not mean that I believe that it is O.K. to kill murder or maim.An athiest is not necessarily an anarchist."
Oh, not you too! Anarchists don't usually (or even frequently) believe that it's OK to kill murder or maim!
Anarchism is just a belief in no government - usually that's because anarchists don't usually subscribe to the theory of human nature that says people are all mass-murdering savages who need the threat of a police force to stop us slaughtering each other for no reason, given half a chance.
Or sometimes anarchists think that the community can police itself without having a government do it for them.
You can probably find some anarchists who'll happily point out that it's governments that do most of the killing, murdering and maiming, and so getting rid of it is a good thing even at the cost of a few privatised murders here and there. And I imagine there are other theories of anarchist "crime prevention" (oxymoronic, but I figure you know what I mean) if you care to look, too.
Anarchists have had a bad press, mostly since the days of the Russian nihilist anarchists who were prone to throwing bombs at monarchs in the 19th century, but nowadays we're a nice bunch, really!
"everything is _only_ a sophisticated collection of atoms"
You're confusing atheism with some sort of nihilism methinks.
Atheism is a belief that there is no god. It says absolutely nothing about whether or not you believe that people or living creatures are special or not.
Eventually morality all boils down to a few axioms to determine whether an action is right or wrong, and that can't be proved or disproved. Some have the categorical imperative, some believe people should be as free as possible, some want the greatest happiness for the greatest number, and some just believe in a few old laws carved on a rock by a mad old dude halfway up a mountain three thousand years ago. Take your pick!
Well some of us atheists use 'evil' as a term of judgement, meaning 'immoral', even though we don't believe in a spiritual evil. Osama Bin Laden is evil because he's murdered thousands of innocent people for his political/religious aims, not because some satanic demon has infiltrated his soul or any such superstitious nonsense.
Oh, and atheists do often believe that some things are right and other things are wrong - even though we don't have the promise of heaven or threat of fire and brimstone hanging over our heads to keep us straight. I've found the odd Christian who simply can't get to grips with that fact, so I felt I had to point that out in case you were one of them!
Hope this helps.
Gah, not again, where's the preferences page?
Aah that's better. Sorry about that...
"Do you mean that manufacturers would be required to implement DRM? But so what? Just because it's there, doesn't mean you are forced to use it." But if every new computer sold after 2005 was required to be DRM-compliant, it would take, what, 3-5 years before most of the population had upgraded to a DRM-compliant computer? And when your motherboard goes on the fritz, what then? "Do you mean that manufacturers would be required to implement a compulsory form of DRM that stopped unsigned OSs from booting? That's also absurd. The big corporate interests behind Linux would never let that happen." The big corporate interests behind Linux let software patents happen. (Of course software patents happened in the US before Linux did - but they're still happening in Europe, for example) Remember, there are bigger corporate interests that want DRM. Sony, Disney, Microsoft, you name 'em. IBM is only one behemoth among many...
"Get real, people. With the security that Linux has where any bozo can sneak up behind the machine, start it up with Knoppix, and have access to most sensitive data, there's no way I want a single dollar to be spent on Linux systems from taxpayers' money." Tsk, those tricksy linux hobbitses. Guess what, they've got Linux reading NTFS partitions these days. Even Knoppix. Now not even the NSA's top-secret ultra-secure NT4 Box with the PGP backdoor algorithm and Lee Harvey Oswald's payroll slips on it is safe from those commie terrorist unamerican linux hackers these days....