> GPL protects the freedom of the code, not the freedom of the developer.
Considering that the people who choose the license are developers, and so are the people that might sign up to help the project, is it any wonder that these developers prefer to preserve their freedom?
How? By overwhelmingly choosing the GPL as their license of choice? You are aware that GPL (v2) is the single most popular software license right now, aren't you?
The GP is wrong, and you're wrong, too. I won't attempt to speculate about what motivates developers to choose a particular software license, but one thing is clear: the majority of the development community doesn't prefer the BSD license, no matter what benefits it may hold for them.
I can't help wondering when the first round of these appears on eBay. I suspect an American gadget hound who doesn't want to be fleeced will be able to pick one up there on the cheap shortly after they arrive in the collective hands of the Third World.
Hey, Mr. Armchair Development Expert: Fuck you.
Sorry everyone, but I think that kind of crass cynicism is unforgivable. This trendy inability to accept that people might actually be poor by circumstance rather than temperament makes me sick. The idea that poverty somehow irrevocably degrades one's moral fibre is just wrong.
I live in a Least Developed Country. I spend every day with people who learn less than USD 200/month, in a town that costs almost as much to live in as New York. Let me explain something to you: People who don't have money aren't any more prone to lie, cheat, steal or sell of their children's future than wealthy people. In fact, in the developing world, it's the wealthy ones I don't trust, generally.
The OLPC project understands this, and that's why they're putting the laptops directly into the hands of the children who will be using them. I don't care if you're rich or poor; it's still really hard to take a child's happiness away from them when they're literally holding it in their hands.
Will XOs appear on eBay? Guaranteed. But I'll bet you dollars to doughnuts that they'll come from the hands of pampered, bored, unimaginative people like you rather than anywhere else.
By 2011, at least 80% of commercial software will contain significant amounts of open source code
If these predictions are correct (which they probably aren't) how do these products stay "commercial"? If at least half of that Open Source software is GPL covered, then %40 of that commercial software will have to be open as well.
You seem to be confused about the meaning of 'commercial software'. It appears that you're actually referring to off-the-shelf software. The vast majority of commercial software is custom-developed for particular business needs, and is often never distributed. As long as it's never distributed, it's possible to integrate proprietary and GPL software without having to GPL the entire application.
Gartner seems to think that kind of thing will become standard corporate procedure in the near future. I would like to applaud Gartner on their vision, because for once they seem to have correctly identified that the thing they are holding, with both hands, is indeed their ass.
There is no revolution. It's just another piece of hardware.
So why, then, does everyone who sees the prototype I've been demo-ing walk away with stars in their eyes?
I've been working in ICT for over 15 years, and I've spent years in some of the most remote areas in the world, trying to extend the reach of the Internet in a way that's useful to the people who live there. Let me tell you that in all that time, I have never encountered anything quite so well-designed for its task as the XO laptop.
I've been evaluating a B2 prototype to determine its suitability to the task of being deployed in a Least Developed Country in the South Pacific region. I can say without hesitation that there is no competing technological device that even comes close. The fact that Negroponte and co. managed to do it cheaper than anyone else, using commodity parts, should be offered as the highest praise, not castigation.
Negroponte ranted left and right how the greedy vendors could make a cheap PC but couldn't, but now his dream is vaporware and he's arrived at a pretty pedestrian sublaptop, that has its analog for the same price with the good ol' commercial vendors.
Vapourware? That's weird. You see, I have an XO laptop sitting right here on my desk. It's remarkably massy, compared to most vapour.
I've been testing the laptop for almost a month now. In fact, when my other 'real' laptop's wireless went south, I switched to the XO full-time for a week. It's not going to break any speed records, but it sure as heck is not pedestrian. A few points:
Its display is - bar none - the best I've ever used. It's crisp, vivid, and handles all lighting conditions better than any other portable device I've ever seen.
Its wireless reception is demonstrably superior to normal laptops. On two or three occasions, I've been the only person in the room who managed to get a decent wireless signal. It was kind of amusing to see a CS professor with extensive experience in long-distance wireless networks sheepishly asking to borrow my XO so he could check his email.
The networking interface is one of the simplest and most graceful UIs I've ever used. It really Just Works.
I have yet to see another 'run-of-the-mill' laptop continue running when you empty a watering can over its keyboard. The XO does.
It runs on 4 watts. 'Nuff said.
I could go on, but I think I've made it adequately clear that your statements are hopelessly wide of the mark.
Last month, some friends and colleagues of mine delivered twenty XOs to Morovo Lagoon in the Solomon Islands, for use at Distance Learning Centre there. I can assure you that the children who received them in no way concur with your hopelessly cynical assessment of this technology. So, with all due respect, kindly take your baseless grousing somewhere else and let the rest of us get on with the task of trying to leave this world a little better than we found it.
It's just typical stupid geek thinking. For a distro which is supposed to be for new users of Linux, load it up with crap that is guaranteed to blow the install or first boot for a new user.
Actually, this won't happen, because before Ubuntu made this decision, they developed a default graphical failsafe mode. The story was here on slashdot, so you of all people should have seen it.
I think that Ubuntu has made a smart decision with this. They're taking a small risk because there's some certainty that a noticeable minority of desktops won't be able to run Compiz, but they've hedged their bets by ensuring that these users will not be left with an unusable X Window system. Additionally, turning the compositing features off is trivially easy.
Looks to me like they've got the best graphical Linux behaviour no matter how you look at it.
Despite Firefox gaining some popularity (and Safari showing up in random places, like your Grandmother's house) IE still has a sweaty, firm grip on the market.
Mozilla Firefox has a journey ahead of them before the numbers start to show in their favor.
It's not about being in the majority. It's about being a presence.
For as long as other browsers constituted a tiny minority, small-minded web developers could design for IE and IE alone. The rationale for that was: 'We don't have time or money to bother with standards - everyone uses IE, so we make our site work in IE.'
The argument for standards-based approaches is already valid. We can argue that this approach will work reliably on all platforms. Code for the subset of existing standards that are reliably supported, and you can rest assured your site's visitors will have a consistent and predictable experience.
This level of prevalence subverts Microsoft's ability to indulge in Embrace/Extend/Extinguish behaviour, as they are no longer as well positioned to dictate how web content gets displayed.
Firefox's numbers represent a decisive victory for the web community. While it's reasonable to expect that their share will continue to grow, the critical battle has already been fought. Every subsequent step Microsoft takes in the browser wars will be defensive in nature. They can't win any more.
Not that it doesn't excuse Microsoft from its other problems, but wasn't there an article earlier about how Microsoft was helping to *defend* fair-use?
Yes, and it's the same bloody case, too! From the summary:
The Copyright Alliance is backed by such heavy-hitters as the MPAA, RIAA, Disney, Business Software Alliance, and perhaps most interestingly, Microsoft, who is also backing the CCIA's complaint.
So. no matter how this ends, Microsoft wins. But wait - no matter who loses, Microsoft loses, too!
Wow, someone give me a magnet and some copper wire. My head is spinning so fast it feels like a perpetual motion machine.
Look, you either have an object, which is patentable, a work, which can be copyrighted, a symbol, which can be trademarked... or you have an idea, which is only protected until you tell somebody else. If you don't want to share, don't.
The concept of Intellectual Property - i.e. the idea that an abstract construct can have the same properties as a physical construct - is self-contradictory: If it's intellectual, it's not property. The idea has no basis in law, philosophy or history. I've written about this elsewhere, so I won't waste my breath repeating myself here.
As far as the submitter is concerned, the alternatives are clear: You can protect the work, but not the idea. If it's a song, write it down and/or record it, then copyright it. If it's software, put it in a public repository that has reliable tracking and timestamping, and associate it with an appropriate license. As the owner, you can change this license any way you like in the future, so pick something that suits you for the time being and leave it at that.
They also want to have their bases covered when it comes to liability.
Can you point to any instance where Microsoft, or some other comparable company has been held liable for defects in their software? People keep bringing up this argument, but I can not ever recall anyone actually using this in practice.
It's utterly illogical, and I'm amazed that people dare offer it as reason. I think the logic of 'having someone to sue' is a cross between tiger repellant and Danegeld.
For my part, I would fire anyone who suggested this to me as a rationale for any software purchase.
I think its a valid question... why not continue to critise SugarCRM for not opening the rest, and praise RH for not closing more?
Witness the latest Fox news-style false-logic bomb being lobbed at the FOSS community. The stupidity of this argument is mind-boggling. It uses loaded terms to imply some logical (and therefore moral/ethical) disconnect in people's behaviour, then uses that to buy acceptance for the very thing we despise the most.
Why do we applaud companies who open their code? Because we like Free Software. Why do we disparage those who take steps to close down their code? Because we like Free Software.
There is nothing inconsistent about this approach. Most people's reaction to MySQL AB's tempest in a teacup was driven by a few 'journalists' who grossly misrepresented the issue (Zonk, I'm looking at you, too). Now I'm beginning to think there might be some method behind their flame-baiting. This feels far too much like a one-two punch to me.
As far as RedHat's restructuring goes, it was mis-handled and RedHat rightly had to eat some crow before they set themselves to rights again. Were they measured against a higher standard? Yes. It was a standard that they set for themselves when they portrayed themselves as a FOSS standard-bearer.
Let me also point out the difference between GPL compliance and supporting FOSS. The GPL (and its sibling licenses) are the single most significant expression of support for the Four Freedoms. But there are other approaches, and one's responsibilities extend beyond that license. Like every other legal document in the world, the GPL has flaws and loopholes. I cannot respect someone who adheres to the letter of the GPL while at one and the same time subverting the Four Freedoms. So when a project backs away from it, they tend to get closely scrutinised.
But let's be clear: MySQL AB passes that scrutiny. Mis-reporting notwithstanding, they continue to show a healthy respect for Free Software and the GPL. I can't say I hold the people who distorted what they did in the same high esteem, mind you.
I have one last thing to say about this cheap-ass excuse for journalism: I don't give a flying woohoo whether Linus agrees with you or not. That's a logical fallacy known as an appeal to authority. Linus, who I am sure is a nice person, and who I know to be a good project manager, is just a guy. Someone with whom I happen to disagree on a number of issues. This kind of rhetorical approach is reminiscent of that kid in high school who was always ingratiating himself with the coolest guys and agreeing with everything they said. Message to the Matt Asay: we all hated that kid's guts. So cut it out.
I'm a bit confused by this. Isn't this what licenses are for? Why not just sue the people selling and profiting from your open source product for breaking the license?
Because that's not enough to constitute infringement of the license. People are welcome to repackage and resell GPL software. But they also need to consider trademark issues. They can call the software almost anything they like, they can claim that their product is just like another, but if they claim that their product is the other one, then the original company can take them to court and sue their euphemisms off.
And that, of course, is why claiming that GPLed software is open to this kind of abuse is the reddest of red herrings. Trading on someone else's good name is well covered in the laws of most countries, and the GPL has exactly zero impact on such abusive practices.
No city can defend against devastating rises in the sea level, either, but I'd still choose Denver over Manhattan for that.
Please stop with this childish refusal to differentiate between theoretical vulnerability and actual, measurable risk. Windows is unsafe. That's an indisputable, established, plain-as-the-nose-on-your-face fact. I've run other operating systems in production environments populated with the same suckers that use Windows PCs. In the four years that I've been doing so, the number of successfully exploited Macs and Linux PCs is zero.
To be clear, these results are statistically significant. I'm talking about well over a thousand users total, in nearly every imaginable use case, with little or no supervision.
You can stand there like some sort of demented Jeremiah screaming about Doomsday tomorrow, but I'm sick of Doomsday today.
I feel this is only a win if Ubuntu and Suse stop embracing proprietary, non-free (as in freedom) drivers. If they don't then the hardware manufacturers will still in in control of your computer, and you'll be at their mercy if there are bugs in the drivers which make the hardware unusable with your selected distro.
I am inclined to trust Mark Shuttleworth when he makes reasonable compromises to make PCs work today. I feel this way because he does so without relenting in his efforts to ensure that a Free Ubuntu remains available to all. It's obvious to anyone who watches how he spends his money that he really is committed to Software Freedom, and that Ubuntu and Canonical are simply means to achieve that end.
He is also a businessman who understands what is required to achieve acceptance of said Freedom in the real world. It's clear that there are interim steps involved, which involve dirtying one's shoes with proprietary kludges from time to time. It's a necessary step, not because of any innate shortcomings in the FOSS model, but because of limitations in the manufacture and marketing of proprietary hardware and software.
Free Software breeds more Free Software. It's not 'viral', as Microsoft likes to say - it's addictive. The benefits of openness and cooperation are immense in a world where intellectual wealth is infinitely replicable. Shuttleworth knows this. In order to addict a wider part of the population, therefore, it's necessary to ensure that some product (heh) reach them, even if it's been adulterated somewhat.
Another name for OIN is GNU/Linux Open Invention Network (GLOIN). I've also heard rumors that the companies involved are going to create a group to endorse the increased usage of Linux on Internet servers. It'll be called the Greater Internet Mobilization of Linux Initiative (GIMLI).
Unfortunately, they were disbanded after a legal challenge by the Seattle Microsoft Advanced Users Group (SMAUG). Cost them a mountain of gold....
You make some good points. But I don't think it's pr4oductive [sic] to imagine what Sir Tim had in mind when he invented http.
Not necessarily productive in any immediate sense, but educative. It does help us understand the current shortcomings of HTTP and to understand as well why it's been hacked into the shape that it's taken these days. I really worry about the naive approaches some so-called Web 2.0 applications take, and wanted to reiterate that those who don't learn from history are condemned to repeat it.
If you want to get religious about "what the web was meant for" then you have to reject not just dynamic content, but any web application that goes beyond Sir Tim's original concept of simple shared documents. But of course, people went beyond that from day one.
Agreed. That's more or less what I was implying, though not nearly as clearly and succinctly. 8^)
Learning what HTTP was originally intended to do and contrasting that with what it became is a useful exercise as long as it's understood that there's no rolling back the clock.
The stateless, agnostic nature of HTTP (I almost said 'the Web', but that's no longer true...) can be used as a feature that enhances the security and the functionality of a website or other online resource, if it's properly understood. But as far as I can tell, the average online application designer today considers HTTP's stateless nature to be a bug rather than a feature.
We are now checking your browser for DNS rebinding vulnerabilities. Not without Javascript you aren't!
Heh, my boy, you just summed up the Web's great affliction in a nutshell.
This particular exploit vector is especially troublesome because turning off the ability to point a name at multiple IPs would break a large part of the Internet. But it wouldn't be an issue for web browsers if we didn't see the need for the Web to be dynamic and interactive. Dynamism and interactivity are really not built into HTTP. It would be more accurate to say that HTTP was designed to be just the opposite.
Website designers and software makers have been trying to turn the Web into a collection of desktop applications since about the time the Web was invented. This runs counter to what Tim Berners Lee intended. HTTP is stateless for a reason. I honestly don't think he made HTTP stateless because he envisioned the havoc that malicious websites could cause, but the principle of agnosticism (i.e. providing content without knowing anything about the requester's capabilities) that's implicit in the protocol is inherently more secure than the desire of many to make websites into remotely-accessed desktop apps.
Unfortunately, this particular horse bolted from the barn in the earliest days of the web, and there's no easy way to get it back in. A wise web developer will nonetheless read and understand the HTTP protocol. Its statelessness and agnosticism can be strengths when considered in the proper light....
...Yeesh, that last sentence makes me feel like Yoda counselling young Luke.... 8^/
Some may deride Novell for their deal with Microsoft, but Lenovo is targeting the corporate world, not OS Holy War advocates.
With all due respect, if corporate management would shut up and listen to what those unwashed hippies are actually saying, they might be able to get their collective head out of their ass and realise that the irrational, unrealistic ideologues are the ones in the Brooks Brothers suits.
Free Software is not jihad. It's a rational and well-developed model for sustainable software development. Even a cursory investigation of the FOSS phenomenon makes this abundantly clear. Dismissing the Four Freedoms as inconvenient rhetoric serves no useful purpose whatsoever, unless the corporate strategy is to take from Free Software and never to give back. And that flavour of corporate piracy is an ideology that I personally find a great deal more offensive than Stallman's.
In the corporate world, big businesses want certainty, even in the face of possibly-baseless claims.
I know you're probably offering this as empirical fact, rather than necessarily attempting to validate or justify the idea. But honestly, the utter illogic behind an approach like that is astounding. Enriching one's declared enemy in the hope that they won't attack once strengthened - that's madness.
I believe the proper term for this kind of thing, by the way, is danegeld. Most people do not hold such strategies in very high esteem. English poet Rudyard Kipling, who knew a thing or two about conflict, had a thing or two to say about it.
I'd rather they fix the vulnerabilities How would you detect the idiocy level of the recipient? If you spam a thousand accounts with "OMG check this http://somedomain/hot-teen-s3x.scr" you just know some fraction of the audience will dutifully follow the link and then dismiss every prompt that appears trying to prevent installation.
You know, I think you've got a point - in theory. In practice, however, stupid users tricks just don't have the same catastrophic effect in Linux or OSX. You can point to all kinds of technical details that make it way, but ultimately, you just have to accept that Windows is the least secure desktop environment in wide use today.
Worse, after they get their own machine hacked, they'll blame MSN.
Horse hockey. If people blamed the manufacturer for virus infections, Microsoft would be awash in a sea of litigation. I'll take things one step further and assert that one of the biggest problems software users face is that people do not blame software manufacturers for faults such as this. It's because of this that software security remains an externality for most businesses.
Debugging is still seen as a cost centre, not a profit-driver. And that would be tragic if it weren't so close to being criminal.
Slashdot Mirror
Considering that the people who choose the license are developers, and so are the people that might sign up to help the project, is it any wonder that these developers prefer to preserve their freedom?
How? By overwhelmingly choosing the GPL as their license of choice? You are aware that GPL (v2) is the single most popular software license right now, aren't you?
The GP is wrong, and you're wrong, too. I won't attempt to speculate about what motivates developers to choose a particular software license, but one thing is clear: the majority of the development community doesn't prefer the BSD license, no matter what benefits it may hold for them.
Hey, Mr. Armchair Development Expert: Fuck you.
Sorry everyone, but I think that kind of crass cynicism is unforgivable. This trendy inability to accept that people might actually be poor by circumstance rather than temperament makes me sick. The idea that poverty somehow irrevocably degrades one's moral fibre is just wrong.
I live in a Least Developed Country. I spend every day with people who learn less than USD 200/month, in a town that costs almost as much to live in as New York. Let me explain something to you: People who don't have money aren't any more prone to lie, cheat, steal or sell of their children's future than wealthy people. In fact, in the developing world, it's the wealthy ones I don't trust, generally.
The OLPC project understands this, and that's why they're putting the laptops directly into the hands of the children who will be using them. I don't care if you're rich or poor; it's still really hard to take a child's happiness away from them when they're literally holding it in their hands.
Will XOs appear on eBay? Guaranteed. But I'll bet you dollars to doughnuts that they'll come from the hands of pampered, bored, unimaginative people like you rather than anywhere else.
You seem to be confused about the meaning of 'commercial software'. It appears that you're actually referring to off-the-shelf software. The vast majority of commercial software is custom-developed for particular business needs, and is often never distributed. As long as it's never distributed, it's possible to integrate proprietary and GPL software without having to GPL the entire application.
Gartner seems to think that kind of thing will become standard corporate procedure in the near future. I would like to applaud Gartner on their vision, because for once they seem to have correctly identified that the thing they are holding, with both hands, is indeed their ass.
So why, then, does everyone who sees the prototype I've been demo-ing walk away with stars in their eyes?
I've been working in ICT for over 15 years, and I've spent years in some of the most remote areas in the world, trying to extend the reach of the Internet in a way that's useful to the people who live there. Let me tell you that in all that time, I have never encountered anything quite so well-designed for its task as the XO laptop.
I've been evaluating a B2 prototype to determine its suitability to the task of being deployed in a Least Developed Country in the South Pacific region. I can say without hesitation that there is no competing technological device that even comes close. The fact that Negroponte and co. managed to do it cheaper than anyone else, using commodity parts, should be offered as the highest praise, not castigation.
Vapourware? That's weird. You see, I have an XO laptop sitting right here on my desk. It's remarkably massy, compared to most vapour.
I've been testing the laptop for almost a month now. In fact, when my other 'real' laptop's wireless went south, I switched to the XO full-time for a week. It's not going to break any speed records, but it sure as heck is not pedestrian. A few points:
I could go on, but I think I've made it adequately clear that your statements are hopelessly wide of the mark.
Last month, some friends and colleagues of mine delivered twenty XOs to Morovo Lagoon in the Solomon Islands, for use at Distance Learning Centre there. I can assure you that the children who received them in no way concur with your hopelessly cynical assessment of this technology. So, with all due respect, kindly take your baseless grousing somewhere else and let the rest of us get on with the task of trying to leave this world a little better than we found it.
HTH HAND
Gah, rolling back a mistaken moderation. Sorry.
Actually, this won't happen, because before Ubuntu made this decision, they developed a default graphical failsafe mode. The story was here on slashdot, so you of all people should have seen it.
I think that Ubuntu has made a smart decision with this. They're taking a small risk because there's some certainty that a noticeable minority of desktops won't be able to run Compiz, but they've hedged their bets by ensuring that these users will not be left with an unusable X Window system. Additionally, turning the compositing features off is trivially easy.
Looks to me like they've got the best graphical Linux behaviour no matter how you look at it.
... And Canada will contribute to the project by creating the Stern Maiden Aunt of All Detonators.
Mozilla Firefox has a journey ahead of them before the numbers start to show in their favor.
It's not about being in the majority. It's about being a presence.
For as long as other browsers constituted a tiny minority, small-minded web developers could design for IE and IE alone. The rationale for that was: 'We don't have time or money to bother with standards - everyone uses IE, so we make our site work in IE.'
The argument for standards-based approaches is already valid. We can argue that this approach will work reliably on all platforms. Code for the subset of existing standards that are reliably supported, and you can rest assured your site's visitors will have a consistent and predictable experience.
This level of prevalence subverts Microsoft's ability to indulge in Embrace/Extend/Extinguish behaviour, as they are no longer as well positioned to dictate how web content gets displayed.
Firefox's numbers represent a decisive victory for the web community. While it's reasonable to expect that their share will continue to grow, the critical battle has already been fought. Every subsequent step Microsoft takes in the browser wars will be defensive in nature. They can't win any more.
Yes, and it's the same bloody case, too! From the summary:
So. no matter how this ends, Microsoft wins. But wait - no matter who loses, Microsoft loses, too!
Wow, someone give me a magnet and some copper wire. My head is spinning so fast it feels like a perpetual motion machine.
I'm holding out for the 'Fuck Virginity' group....
... ducks and runs...
IP sucks because it doesn't exist.
Look, you either have an object, which is patentable, a work, which can be copyrighted, a symbol, which can be trademarked... or you have an idea, which is only protected until you tell somebody else. If you don't want to share, don't.
The concept of Intellectual Property - i.e. the idea that an abstract construct can have the same properties as a physical construct - is self-contradictory: If it's intellectual, it's not property. The idea has no basis in law, philosophy or history. I've written about this elsewhere, so I won't waste my breath repeating myself here.
As far as the submitter is concerned, the alternatives are clear: You can protect the work, but not the idea. If it's a song, write it down and/or record it, then copyright it. If it's software, put it in a public repository that has reliable tracking and timestamping, and associate it with an appropriate license. As the owner, you can change this license any way you like in the future, so pick something that suits you for the time being and leave it at that.
[Giving up on moderation to comment here...]
Can you point to any instance where Microsoft, or some other comparable company has been held liable for defects in their software? People keep bringing up this argument, but I can not ever recall anyone actually using this in practice.
It's utterly illogical, and I'm amazed that people dare offer it as reason. I think the logic of 'having someone to sue' is a cross between tiger repellant and Danegeld.
For my part, I would fire anyone who suggested this to me as a rationale for any software purchase.
Witness the latest Fox news-style false-logic bomb being lobbed at the FOSS community. The stupidity of this argument is mind-boggling. It uses loaded terms to imply some logical (and therefore moral/ethical) disconnect in people's behaviour, then uses that to buy acceptance for the very thing we despise the most.
Why do we applaud companies who open their code? Because we like Free Software. Why do we disparage those who take steps to close down their code? Because we like Free Software.
There is nothing inconsistent about this approach. Most people's reaction to MySQL AB's tempest in a teacup was driven by a few 'journalists' who grossly misrepresented the issue (Zonk, I'm looking at you, too). Now I'm beginning to think there might be some method behind their flame-baiting. This feels far too much like a one-two punch to me.
As far as RedHat's restructuring goes, it was mis-handled and RedHat rightly had to eat some crow before they set themselves to rights again. Were they measured against a higher standard? Yes. It was a standard that they set for themselves when they portrayed themselves as a FOSS standard-bearer.
Let me also point out the difference between GPL compliance and supporting FOSS. The GPL (and its sibling licenses) are the single most significant expression of support for the Four Freedoms. But there are other approaches, and one's responsibilities extend beyond that license. Like every other legal document in the world, the GPL has flaws and loopholes. I cannot respect someone who adheres to the letter of the GPL while at one and the same time subverting the Four Freedoms. So when a project backs away from it, they tend to get closely scrutinised.
But let's be clear: MySQL AB passes that scrutiny. Mis-reporting notwithstanding, they continue to show a healthy respect for Free Software and the GPL. I can't say I hold the people who distorted what they did in the same high esteem, mind you.
I have one last thing to say about this cheap-ass excuse for journalism: I don't give a flying woohoo whether Linus agrees with you or not. That's a logical fallacy known as an appeal to authority. Linus, who I am sure is a nice person, and who I know to be a good project manager, is just a guy. Someone with whom I happen to disagree on a number of issues. This kind of rhetorical approach is reminiscent of that kid in high school who was always ingratiating himself with the coolest guys and agreeing with everything they said. Message to the Matt Asay: we all hated that kid's guts. So cut it out.
Because that's not enough to constitute infringement of the license. People are welcome to repackage and resell GPL software. But they also need to consider trademark issues. They can call the software almost anything they like, they can claim that their product is just like another, but if they claim that their product is the other one, then the original company can take them to court and sue their euphemisms off.
And that, of course, is why claiming that GPLed software is open to this kind of abuse is the reddest of red herrings. Trading on someone else's good name is well covered in the laws of most countries, and the GPL has exactly zero impact on such abusive practices.
No city can defend against devastating rises in the sea level, either, but I'd still choose Denver over Manhattan for that.
Please stop with this childish refusal to differentiate between theoretical vulnerability and actual, measurable risk. Windows is unsafe. That's an indisputable, established, plain-as-the-nose-on-your-face fact. I've run other operating systems in production environments populated with the same suckers that use Windows PCs. In the four years that I've been doing so, the number of successfully exploited Macs and Linux PCs is zero.
To be clear, these results are statistically significant. I'm talking about well over a thousand users total, in nearly every imaginable use case, with little or no supervision.
You can stand there like some sort of demented Jeremiah screaming about Doomsday tomorrow, but I'm sick of Doomsday today.
I am inclined to trust Mark Shuttleworth when he makes reasonable compromises to make PCs work today. I feel this way because he does so without relenting in his efforts to ensure that a Free Ubuntu remains available to all. It's obvious to anyone who watches how he spends his money that he really is committed to Software Freedom, and that Ubuntu and Canonical are simply means to achieve that end.
He is also a businessman who understands what is required to achieve acceptance of said Freedom in the real world. It's clear that there are interim steps involved, which involve dirtying one's shoes with proprietary kludges from time to time. It's a necessary step, not because of any innate shortcomings in the FOSS model, but because of limitations in the manufacture and marketing of proprietary hardware and software.
Free Software breeds more Free Software. It's not 'viral', as Microsoft likes to say - it's addictive. The benefits of openness and cooperation are immense in a world where intellectual wealth is infinitely replicable. Shuttleworth knows this. In order to addict a wider part of the population, therefore, it's necessary to ensure that some product (heh) reach them, even if it's been adulterated somewhat.
Unfortunately, they were disbanded after a legal challenge by the Seattle Microsoft Advanced Users Group (SMAUG). Cost them a mountain of gold....
Not necessarily productive in any immediate sense, but educative. It does help us understand the current shortcomings of HTTP and to understand as well why it's been hacked into the shape that it's taken these days. I really worry about the naive approaches some so-called Web 2.0 applications take, and wanted to reiterate that those who don't learn from history are condemned to repeat it.
If you want to get religious about "what the web was meant for" then you have to reject not just dynamic content, but any web application that goes beyond Sir Tim's original concept of simple shared documents. But of course, people went beyond that from day one.Agreed. That's more or less what I was implying, though not nearly as clearly and succinctly. 8^)
Learning what HTTP was originally intended to do and contrasting that with what it became is a useful exercise as long as it's understood that there's no rolling back the clock.
The stateless, agnostic nature of HTTP (I almost said 'the Web', but that's no longer true...) can be used as a feature that enhances the security and the functionality of a website or other online resource, if it's properly understood. But as far as I can tell, the average online application designer today considers HTTP's stateless nature to be a bug rather than a feature.
Heh, I picked a fine day to start pontificating about what the web is for....
Happy birthday, Web. You're almost street legal now.... 8^)
Heh, my boy, you just summed up the Web's great affliction in a nutshell.
This particular exploit vector is especially troublesome because turning off the ability to point a name at multiple IPs would break a large part of the Internet. But it wouldn't be an issue for web browsers if we didn't see the need for the Web to be dynamic and interactive. Dynamism and interactivity are really not built into HTTP. It would be more accurate to say that HTTP was designed to be just the opposite.
Website designers and software makers have been trying to turn the Web into a collection of desktop applications since about the time the Web was invented. This runs counter to what Tim Berners Lee intended. HTTP is stateless for a reason. I honestly don't think he made HTTP stateless because he envisioned the havoc that malicious websites could cause, but the principle of agnosticism (i.e. providing content without knowing anything about the requester's capabilities) that's implicit in the protocol is inherently more secure than the desire of many to make websites into remotely-accessed desktop apps.
Unfortunately, this particular horse bolted from the barn in the earliest days of the web, and there's no easy way to get it back in. A wise web developer will nonetheless read and understand the HTTP protocol. Its statelessness and agnosticism can be strengths when considered in the proper light....
...Yeesh, that last sentence makes me feel like Yoda counselling young Luke.... 8^/
With all due respect, if corporate management would shut up and listen to what those unwashed hippies are actually saying, they might be able to get their collective head out of their ass and realise that the irrational, unrealistic ideologues are the ones in the Brooks Brothers suits.
Free Software is not jihad. It's a rational and well-developed model for sustainable software development. Even a cursory investigation of the FOSS phenomenon makes this abundantly clear. Dismissing the Four Freedoms as inconvenient rhetoric serves no useful purpose whatsoever, unless the corporate strategy is to take from Free Software and never to give back. And that flavour of corporate piracy is an ideology that I personally find a great deal more offensive than Stallman's.
I know you're probably offering this as empirical fact, rather than necessarily attempting to validate or justify the idea. But honestly, the utter illogic behind an approach like that is astounding. Enriching one's declared enemy in the hope that they won't attack once strengthened - that's madness.
I believe the proper term for this kind of thing, by the way, is danegeld. Most people do not hold such strategies in very high esteem. English poet Rudyard Kipling, who knew a thing or two about conflict, had a thing or two to say about it.
You know, I think you've got a point - in theory. In practice, however, stupid users tricks just don't have the same catastrophic effect in Linux or OSX. You can point to all kinds of technical details that make it way, but ultimately, you just have to accept that Windows is the least secure desktop environment in wide use today.
Worse, after they get their own machine hacked, they'll blame MSN.Horse hockey. If people blamed the manufacturer for virus infections, Microsoft would be awash in a sea of litigation. I'll take things one step further and assert that one of the biggest problems software users face is that people do not blame software manufacturers for faults such as this. It's because of this that software security remains an externality for most businesses.
Debugging is still seen as a cost centre, not a profit-driver. And that would be tragic if it weren't so close to being criminal.
Actually the next version will be the AAAUUUGGHHHH!
Same hardware spec, ships with Vista installed.
This, of course, is from the beloved children's story, "Rosencrantz's Web."
Actually, it's a reference to "NetCraft Confirms It", the online version of Rosencrantz and Guildenstern are Dead.