I had a prof who was stressing someone else's opinion that we change from the word "bug" to the phrase "time bomb" so that people would get a better feeling for what they really were -- incorrect sections of code just waiting to mess you up.
And I don't want anyone to be able to take the fruits of that labor and build on top of it while offering nothing in exchange back to me, the taxpayer who funded it.
Why not? I think that the only thing required about taxpayer funded code is that it should be open to everyone. Then Bill can go and build something off of it, so can RMS and -- heaven forbid -- so can you. The point of public property is the betterment of all of the citizens - by exposing this code to everyone the government would succeed at this goal. The point of capitalism is to try and come up with something unique enough in some way that people will pay you for it. Microsoft has taken this intangible public property and made it part of something bigger and convinced many people the world round to pay for it (now, how they went about doing it might lead to a significantly different discussion).
It is hard to make an analogy to real life because with most things when a business tries to co-opt public property for something (imagine a coffee shop in a public square) they are taking up space that cannot be used by someone else and they are required to pay back into the public pot. But with software MS using pieces of BSD doesn't in any way stop anyone else from using those same pieces in some other way.
you can easily extend IE to do approximatly what you want (this feature is pretty well documented at msdn.microsoft.com, though i had never heard of it until i stumbled across it). go to the text for the registry entries here, take the text, save it in a text file with the.reg extension, double clicking it should add it to your registry. Then whenever you select text in IE and right-mouse click whatever actions you have added will show up in the menu (you have to start a new browser to see this).
this registry file is formatted for Win2k (there is probably an easy conversion to NT4.0, but I know that this form won't work out of the box)
i don't claim to be an expert on this stuff but it seems to me that once something is released (under GPL or anything else) that specific instance of that thing (code in this case) is always protected by the license under which it was release.
if this isn't true then no company would ever develop using third party code/software as at any moment the author/copywright owner could come along and demand that the software be removed or a very large fee be paid. any commercial enterprise would be screwed...
in this context if Vidomi violated the GPL then Mr. Avery can command that his code be removed from Vidomi's software. Since Mr. Avery licensed his software under the GPL (for which the established defacto experts are FSF) it makes a lot of sense that Vidomi would want FSF to help them figure out what the word of GPL is. In fact if Vidomi allows Mr. Avery to bend them over and take his code out without consulting the FSF about the validity of his complaint they are allowing him the right to change that license terms of the code that he freely put out on the net some time ago and are opening themselves up to any other vendors/authors whose products/code they have used to come and make demands of them.
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I had a prof who was stressing someone else's opinion that we change from the word "bug" to the phrase "time bomb" so that people would get a better feeling for what they really were -- incorrect sections of code just waiting to mess you up.
And I don't want anyone to be able to take the fruits of that labor and build on top of it while offering nothing in exchange back to me, the taxpayer who funded it.
Why not? I think that the only thing required about taxpayer funded code is that it should be open to everyone. Then Bill can go and build something off of it, so can RMS and -- heaven forbid -- so can you. The point of public property is the betterment of all of the citizens - by exposing this code to everyone the government would succeed at this goal. The point of capitalism is to try and come up with something unique enough in some way that people will pay you for it. Microsoft has taken this intangible public property and made it part of something bigger and convinced many people the world round to pay for it (now, how they went about doing it might lead to a significantly different discussion).
It is hard to make an analogy to real life because with most things when a business tries to co-opt public property for something (imagine a coffee shop in a public square) they are taking up space that cannot be used by someone else and they are required to pay back into the public pot. But with software MS using pieces of BSD doesn't in any way stop anyone else from using those same pieces in some other way.
I just don't see it.
you can easily extend IE to do approximatly what you want (this feature is pretty well documented at msdn.microsoft.com, though i had never heard of it until i stumbled across it). go to the text for the registry entries here, take the text, save it in a text file with the .reg extension, double clicking it should add it to your registry. Then whenever you select text in IE and right-mouse click whatever actions you have added will show up in the menu (you have to start a new browser to see this).
this registry file is formatted for Win2k (there is probably an easy conversion to NT4.0, but I know that this form won't work out of the box)
j
i don't claim to be an expert on this stuff but it seems to me that once something is released (under GPL or anything else) that specific instance of that thing (code in this case) is always protected by the license under which it was release.
if this isn't true then no company would ever develop using third party code/software as at any moment the author/copywright owner could come along and demand that the software be removed or a very large fee be paid. any commercial enterprise would be screwed...
in this context if Vidomi violated the GPL then Mr. Avery can command that his code be removed from Vidomi's software. Since Mr. Avery licensed his software under the GPL (for which the established defacto experts are FSF) it makes a lot of sense that Vidomi would want FSF to help them figure out what the word of GPL is. In fact if Vidomi allows Mr. Avery to bend them over and take his code out without consulting the FSF about the validity of his complaint they are allowing him the right to change that license terms of the code that he freely put out on the net some time ago and are opening themselves up to any other vendors/authors whose products/code they have used to come and make demands of them.