Since someone made the decision to let them in, they should be allowed to speak. But I don't see why they were invited in the first place; after all, Microsoft generally doesn't invite Gnu and Linux spokespeople to Windows developer conferences.
The GPL has a "mere aggregation" clause, which basically states that you can distribute GPL code alongside proprietary code, without affecting the licensing of the proprietary code, as long as the proprietary programs are separate programs. The distributor has to make source available to all of the GPL components, but can apply traditional rules to the proprietary components.
So no, the RH-AS license does not conflict, and Red Hat follows the GPL. The same is true of the other Linux distros that include proprietary components: supplying source to the GPL and LGPL components is all that is required, and you can forbid people from copying the proprietary components.
A baryon is a particle such as a neutron or proton.
It's one of the two main classes of ordinary matter particles, the other is the lepton (e.g. an electron or neutrino). Baryons "feel" the strong
nuclear force, leptons do not.
Dark matter refers to exotic forms of matter that are "ordinary" from a gravitational point of view,
that isn't made up of baryons or leptons. This stuff either interacts weakly with ordinary matter, or doesn't interact at all (other than via gravity).
Dark energy has positive energy but negative pressure, so it causes a gravitational repulsion.
Einstein's "cosmological constant" one possible example of dark energy. It can be thought of as a property of space.
RMS never, ever claimed that the old BSD license was not a free software license. His objection to it was not that it forced you to include the copyright notice, as every free software/open source license does that. He objected to the advertising clause, and also pointed out that it was being widely violated. The reason is that if there are 75 contributors to a distribution, each using the license, then every web page offering a download and every company offering a CD for sale would have to list all 75 contributors' blurbs in their ads. And this is not a hypothetical: at one point, the FreeBSD distribution contained code from 75 contributors all demanding a line in every advertisement.
So his objection was purely pragmatic: the old BSD license was a pain in the butt to comply with for any project with many contributors. The BSD folks wound up agreeing with him, and got rid of the thing.
Prof. Moglen has already
thoroughly answered this question, so we should
not be wasting a question in the interview on asking it again. All he will do is either point
to the same answer or summarize the same answer.
I therefore ask the moderators to mark the parent down as redundant.
Benchmarks are showing Intel beating gcc by an average of 10 to 15 percent, though there are some cases where Intel's compiler is twice as fast, and a few where gcc wins. On average, Intel does better, but the difference is not huge.
Did you read the article, Omkar? Evidently not; Benford wants humans to go to Mars. His objection to the current shuttle-ISS program is that it offers absolutely zero progress towards getting there: no experiments with true recycling, no experiments with generating artificial gravity by spinning the station. Instead, we're spending billions to have people do trivial stuff, and if you're going to do trivial stuff, it's better to have machines do it.
Basic rule when reading Slashdot: the story will be wrong, you need to follow the link to get the real story. The government is allocating 1 billion yen
($8.3 million) for Linux software developers. In addition, it is spending $450K to study the possibility of switching government computers to Linux. If the study finds that they could switch if problems X, Y, and Z can be solved, they can use the $8.3 million to solve those problems, and
then get all that money back, and more, when they
kick Microsoft out of a hundred thousand or so
government machines.
The best way for an embedded systems company to satisfy the GPL is simply to include the required written offer, good for three years, with the product: if you really want the source code, you could either download it from the web site, or send enough money to cover the company's costs (including labor costs) for shipping you a CD.
A three-line chunk would probably come under fair use. Also, there are some code sequences that pretty much can only be written one way; again it's fair use. The fact that it's the GPL makes no difference here.
The line between fair use and copyright infringement is fuzzy.
The FSF vigorously defends its copyright on code it owns; it does not own Linux. It will be up to Linus and gang to defend their own copyright, though
the FSF might offer to assist.
And no, RMS is not a lawyer. The FSF's lawyer
and
chief enforcer
is Eben Moglen.
I'm happy that the Debian folks are still supporting potato, but this is a switch for them; they dropped support for slink shortly after potato came out, at a time when Red Hat was supporting its last five major releases at once.
Yes, you have to write to users, meaning that it's pointless to use a CSS feature that is broken in MSIE on PCs. Just the same, in this case it appears that MSN is putting out a special, broken page just for Opera users, when if they saved the work and just provided the same page as for MSIE users, Opera users would achieve better results.
That is, MSN is working harder by doing something special for Opera; if they ignored the existence of Opera things would be better.
Now, it's possible that the explanation is stupidity rather than malice; perhaps someone tried to tune the thing to an earlier version of Opera and bitrot set in. But if that's the case,
I'm sure that MSN will address the issue by getting rid of the special casing for Opera.
On the other hand, if MSN does not fix it, then it would be appropriate to assume malice.
A lot of folks have been cheating on this one (physical presence). For example, Borders claims (or at least used to) that borders.com is a totally separate, independent company with a physical presence only in a couple of small states, even though every Borders store is full of promotions for borders.com.
We don't lock up people based on how much damage THEY think they can do, we lock them up based on how much damage WE think they can do
What? We lock people up because we have convicted them of crimes, or because they are awaiting trial, which is guaranteed by the Constitution to be "speedy and public". Mitnick was locked up for 4.5 years before his trial, something that is unheard of.
What you're talking about is straight out of "Minority Report", locking people up for "precrime".
Now, given Mitnick's career, he's basically a con man, and I certainly wouldn't trust him even now.
Just the same, even con men have rights.
Not the only person in US history ....
on
Kevin Mitnick Answers
·
· Score: 5, Insightful
I'm the only person in United States history that was held without an initial bail hearing.
No, Kevin, you are not. Haven't you been paying attention to the news lately? Ashcroft has disappeared hundreds of people, who are being held without charges and without any right to see attorneys. Most are immigrants (and in many of their cases, their families don't even know where they are), but at least two are US citizens.
None of these folks are getting bail hearings.
Once the KDE and GNOME folks work out the interoperability issues, end users simply aren't going to care which library you used to implement your app: it will be expected to perform properly whether run from a KDE or a GNOME desktop, or
from some other window manager.
If Sun chose KDE, then they'd be in the position of either writing checks to TrollTech with every sale, or telling their customers that they can't develop proprietary apps without buying a separate license from TrollTech.
In practice, though, a number of software companies are already selling Qt-based apps on Solaris.
I don't repair my own car, and I suspect that most of you don't. So why this insistence on hoods that can be opened by the customer?
Why shouldn't we accept that cars are locked up, and only the company that you bought the car from has the key? After all, they know the car best, and should have the right to protect their valuable intellectual property.
Slashdot Mirror
Since someone made the decision to let them in, they should be allowed to speak. But I don't see why they were invited in the first place; after all, Microsoft generally doesn't invite Gnu and Linux spokespeople to Windows developer conferences.
The GPL has a "mere aggregation" clause, which basically states that you can distribute GPL code alongside proprietary code, without affecting the licensing of the proprietary code, as long as the proprietary programs are separate programs. The distributor has to make source available to all of the GPL components, but can apply traditional rules to the proprietary components.
So no, the RH-AS license does not conflict, and Red Hat follows the GPL. The same is true of the other Linux distros that include proprietary components: supplying source to the GPL and LGPL components is all that is required, and you can forbid people from copying the proprietary components.
What Red Hat calls 2.4.9 has hundreds of patches compared to what Linus called 2.4.9.
A baryon is a particle such as a neutron or proton. It's one of the two main classes of ordinary matter particles, the other is the lepton (e.g. an electron or neutrino). Baryons "feel" the strong nuclear force, leptons do not.
Dark matter refers to exotic forms of matter that are "ordinary" from a gravitational point of view, that isn't made up of baryons or leptons. This stuff either interacts weakly with ordinary matter, or doesn't interact at all (other than via gravity).
Dark energy has positive energy but negative pressure, so it causes a gravitational repulsion. Einstein's "cosmological constant" one possible example of dark energy. It can be thought of as a property of space.
Reverse engineering is completely legal in the US.
Oh, come on. He uses a computer, he has a blog.
He hadn't used a computer at the time he wrote Neuromancer, but that was long ago.
schon's question is wildly misinformed.
RMS never, ever claimed that the old BSD license was not a free software license. His objection to it was not that it forced you to include the copyright notice, as every free software/open source license does that. He objected to the advertising clause, and also pointed out that it was being widely violated. The reason is that if there are 75 contributors to a distribution, each using the license, then every web page offering a download and every company offering a CD for sale would have to list all 75 contributors' blurbs in their ads. And this is not a hypothetical: at one point, the FreeBSD distribution contained code from 75 contributors all demanding a line in every advertisement.
So his objection was purely pragmatic: the old BSD license was a pain in the butt to comply with for any project with many contributors. The BSD folks wound up agreeing with him, and got rid of the thing.
See here for the whole story.
Prof. Moglen has already thoroughly answered this question, so we should not be wasting a question in the interview on asking it again. All he will do is either point to the same answer or summarize the same answer. I therefore ask the moderators to mark the parent down as redundant.
Benchmarks are showing Intel beating gcc by an average of 10 to 15 percent, though there are some cases where Intel's compiler is twice as fast, and a few where gcc wins. On average, Intel does better, but the difference is not huge.
Did you read the article, Omkar? Evidently not; Benford wants humans to go to Mars. His objection to the current shuttle-ISS program is that it offers absolutely zero progress towards getting there: no experiments with true recycling, no experiments with generating artificial gravity by spinning the station. Instead, we're spending billions to have people do trivial stuff, and if you're going to do trivial stuff, it's better to have machines do it.
Sorry, this won't wash. Anyone who had a production machine running slink was cut off one month after potato shipped.
Basic rule when reading Slashdot: the story will be wrong, you need to follow the link to get the real story. The government is allocating 1 billion yen ($8.3 million) for Linux software developers. In addition, it is spending $450K to study the possibility of switching government computers to Linux. If the study finds that they could switch if problems X, Y, and Z can be solved, they can use the $8.3 million to solve those problems, and then get all that money back, and more, when they kick Microsoft out of a hundred thousand or so government machines.
The best way for an embedded systems company to satisfy the GPL is simply to include the required written offer, good for three years, with the product: if you really want the source code, you could either download it from the web site, or send enough money to cover the company's costs (including labor costs) for shipping you a CD.
With $1 billion, Microsoft might be able to buy some real estate in Tokyo, but that's about it.
A three-line chunk would probably come under fair use. Also, there are some code sequences that pretty much can only be written one way; again it's fair use. The fact that it's the GPL makes no difference here.
The line between fair use and copyright infringement is fuzzy.
The FSF vigorously defends its copyright on code it owns; it does not own Linux. It will be up to Linus and gang to defend their own copyright, though the FSF might offer to assist.
And no, RMS is not a lawyer. The FSF's lawyer and chief enforcer is Eben Moglen.
I'm happy that the Debian folks are still supporting potato, but this is a switch for them; they dropped support for slink shortly after potato came out, at a time when Red Hat was supporting its last five major releases at once.
Yes, you have to write to users, meaning that it's pointless to use a CSS feature that is broken in MSIE on PCs. Just the same, in this case it appears that MSN is putting out a special, broken page just for Opera users, when if they saved the work and just provided the same page as for MSIE users, Opera users would achieve better results. That is, MSN is working harder by doing something special for Opera; if they ignored the existence of Opera things would be better.
Now, it's possible that the explanation is stupidity rather than malice; perhaps someone tried to tune the thing to an earlier version of Opera and bitrot set in. But if that's the case, I'm sure that MSN will address the issue by getting rid of the special casing for Opera.
On the other hand, if MSN does not fix it, then it would be appropriate to assume malice.
A lot of folks have been cheating on this one (physical presence). For example, Borders claims (or at least used to) that borders.com is a totally separate, independent company with a physical presence only in a couple of small states, even though every Borders store is full of promotions for borders.com.
One is Jose Padilla, another is Yaser Esam Hamdi (born in Louisiana, he has Saudi parents). It's hard to tell how many others there are.
We don't lock up people based on how much damage THEY think they can do, we lock them up based on how much damage WE think they can do
What? We lock people up because we have convicted them of crimes, or because they are awaiting trial, which is guaranteed by the Constitution to be "speedy and public". Mitnick was locked up for 4.5 years before his trial, something that is unheard of.
What you're talking about is straight out of "Minority Report", locking people up for "precrime".
Now, given Mitnick's career, he's basically a con man, and I certainly wouldn't trust him even now. Just the same, even con men have rights.
I'm the only person in United States history that was held without an initial bail hearing.
No, Kevin, you are not. Haven't you been paying attention to the news lately? Ashcroft has disappeared hundreds of people, who are being held without charges and without any right to see attorneys. Most are immigrants (and in many of their cases, their families don't even know where they are), but at least two are US citizens. None of these folks are getting bail hearings.
Once the KDE and GNOME folks work out the interoperability issues, end users simply aren't going to care which library you used to implement your app: it will be expected to perform properly whether run from a KDE or a GNOME desktop, or from some other window manager.
If Sun chose KDE, then they'd be in the position of either writing checks to TrollTech with every sale, or telling their customers that they can't develop proprietary apps without buying a separate license from TrollTech.
In practice, though, a number of software companies are already selling Qt-based apps on Solaris.
I don't repair my own car, and I suspect that most of you don't. So why this insistence on hoods that can be opened by the customer? Why shouldn't we accept that cars are locked up, and only the company that you bought the car from has the key? After all, they know the car best, and should have the right to protect their valuable intellectual property.