Microsoft has nothing to fear
on
GPLv3 Released
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· Score: 1
They did not change the language from the last draft.
If Microsoft wants to engage other companies into Microsoft-Novel kind of deals in the future, all they have to do is give the patents to a proxy company that is not "in the business of distributing software", and the proxy company can do the deals for them. I don't think it would be hard for them to find the proxy patent troll for a reasonable fee.
The license leaves the door open not only for Microsoft proxies, it also leaves the door open to any patent troll to do the same, so long they are not "in the business of distributing software"
Actually, there are. Novell got let off easy in a way because FSF feels it's more important to use the Microsoft "coupons" to go after Microsoft's remaining patent rights with GPL3 (after doctrine of Laches, etc. has already cost MS most of those rights). But I don't think Microsoft would be very happy about Novell using GPL3 software because of that. How this plays out will be interesting.
I don't see why Microsoft should be worried. All they have to do is give the patents to a proxy company that is not "in the business of distributing software". The proxy company would be free to engage into microsoft-novel kind of deals over GPLv3 software. Plenty of patent trolls would be glad to serve as proxies for a reasonable fee.
Unless of course, they changed the language in the last minute.
I am not sure google will ever have a need to charge for pop3 access:
A lot of people read their email in multiple locations: at work and at the job. To avoid the confusion of what has been read and what not, the most convenient way is to access the web interface. Other features such as convenient searching your mail, labels and chat are not available via pop3. Also the way they organize emails into conversations is very user friendly and unmatched by most pop3 clients. The ads on gmail are very unobtrusive and do not get in your way at all. For many people (me for one), these features are compelling enough to prefer reading the email online than via pop3.
As long as they keep providing incentives like these for people to actually go and check their email on their web site, they wont have a big problem with showing ads.
Anonymizing this data greatly reduces the value of it. They no longer can use your queries from 5 years ago to determine what you are likely to buy. For example they can no longer see the fact that you where the one looking for maternity cloth 5 years ago so they can not know you are more likely to buy children cloth.
Of course, like you point out, the issue is that of privacy (it always is with data mining), and google offsets the loss by gaining customer confidence.
This information is very valuable as an ad provider. Just do a little data mining, and you will find stuff like "people who search for pregnancy cloth 5 years ago are more likely to click on child cloth ad today" and many other not so obvious relationships.
The only reason google is willing to throw this information away (and money with it) is because customers are concerned about their privacy.
That was only in the movie, no unix is mentioned in the book at all. The computers where running Hollywood OS and the girl in the book was a boy.
The book was more of a collection of random thoughts about chaos theory and how pretentious we are about trying to control everything than about dinosaurs (YAWN). Steven Spielberg pulled a miracle, changed about 80% of what he read and turned the book into something actually worth watching. Giving credit/blame to Crichton about anything you saw in the movie requires quite a bit of salt.
This point surprises a lot of people, and it has been like that for a while. There is a more in depth analysis of memory usage of Gnome and KDE and explains why KDE does so well. The author is a KDE developer so he naturally favors KDE, but as far as I can tell, there is no obvious unfairness in his analysis, and it is very easy to reproduce the tests yourself.
I also asked them to unlock mine because I am traveling, my experience was also very positive. No way in hell I am leaving t-mobile for a $600 apple phone with no GPS, no 3g, kinda large, and an easy to scratch screen.
If it's an apple product by all means go for it. But no one blames MSFT for bugs in Lotus Notes. from the faq on the first page
3. Are Apple products the only one target of this initiative?
Not at all, but they are the main focus. We'll be looking over popular OS X applications as well.
So they are not blaming apple anywhere in their site or implying this vulnerability is apple's fault at all. Where did you get that idea? This is not a project to destroy or harm apple, quite the opposite, it will help them in the long run.
So, this is the best MOAB has to offer? A security bug in a third-party "enhancement"? No, the best they have to offer are vulnerabilities in quicktime, iPhoto, Disk Management, Finder which are apple products. Why CNet and slashdot chose to report on this particular vulnerability, which to many is the least important in the list, is a mistery to me.
I'm not sure I approve of this as a GPL enthusiast
Who are you to approve or disapprove? Your only rights over that code are those given to you by the copyright holders, they have the right of licensing it under any terms they want including "User must wear chicken suit to use this software" license. Saying you don't approve means you don't think a developer should have the right to license his own creation under his own terms (RMS kind of freaky thought).
This benefits everybody, including you. Namesys wins by getting revenew. The companies who license this win as you very well explained. You win because Namesys can stay in business and keep providing you with the GPL version of their hard work.
There are not that many successfull business models with GPL. If they found one and it works for them, more power to them. This has plenty of precedent such as Trolltech, mysql, sun and others (google for dual license)
you and everybody else are free to fork reiserfs if you don't like how they are doing business, _THEY_ are giving you that freedom by licensing under GPL.
you have _more_ options with this. Instead of being restricted by the GPL, you can choose to license under whatever other option they provide.
While I find the rest of you post interesting , I have issues with people feeling compelled to condemn this practice.
I understand that novel does not violate the GPL, because they did not license the patents from microsoft, instead microsoft licenses the patents to novel customers. Since microsoft is not distributing the software to them, the GPL does not apply to them.
BUT WAIT, Microsoft is distributing the software, didn't they receive 70,000 copies of SuSE? unless they plan to just throw them in the attic, or use them internally, they will be distributing those copies, and thus are restricted by the GPL. If they put any restriction on the people receiving the GPL code (other than those specified in the GPL itself), then Microsoft is indeed in violation of the GPL.
So I don't understand, how microsoft can use those 70,000 copies without violating the GPL. Can anyone explain that to me?
In all fairness, if the system will shut down in 25 seconds, it should say so. It can be as simple as a countdown clock on the confirmation dialog: "The system will shut down in xx seconds".
As the post points out, could this be a serious problem for VR going forward?
Quite the opposite. This means that you can make an audience believe the camera is more than it really is without actually lying. This is like striking gold for advertisers. If this proves to be true, it is an incentive for advertisers to invest into VR technology.
Following the logic from FSF, if you use the software to kill someone, that person will no longer be free to run the software (he is dead ).
Therefore, military use limits the freedom of potential users and is not in the spirit of the GPL. It should also restrict use in prisons for the same reason. It should forbid its use in ROM because the user can not replace the software. It should forbid locking down the software with a phisical lock. It should forbid farting near the equipment since noone will be able to get close to replace the software.
Because there are a lot more users using KDE on linux than BSD. And because most people think of KDE as a linux desktop enviroment before they think of it as a BSD desktop environment.
If you have to teach people something, you have already failed.
Users Don't Read the Manual.
So if your interface expects them to do so, your interface is probably flawed.
They are not trying to guess what the users might do, they are doing some serious research on it.
As a result, they have come up with some great improvements such as kickoff. And their new HIG
It is not about the computer deciding what is best, quite the opposite, on usability you are supposed to empower the user. The link is from what will become their next HIG. It is pretty safe to say that KDE has allways done well in this particular area.
Wow, a link that points to nothing at all, and a lack of an explanation. Gee, an introductory tutorial isn't focussed on security. Maybe that's because they're teaching the language first?
Hi <?php echo $_POST['name']; ?>. You are <?php echo $_POST['age']; ?> years old.
They are teaching to just echo the variable that the user might enter. A newbie will follow this pattern in future projects since that is what he is taught. Asume for a second that the name can be entered by any person, and a site's administrator reads this on a page with code looking like the above.
If a person enters "John doe" for the name, no problem, but if an attacker enters:
<script>//some trivial javascript to send all cookies to attacker's site</script>
presto, the attacker can easily steal the session id and maybe something else from the site's administrator.
What the tutorial should say instead, if it was not broken according to Rasmus definition is:
Hi <?php echo htmlentities($_POST['name']); ?>. You are <?php echo htmlentities($_POST['age']); ?> years old.
either that, or filter out the variable on input (htmlentities is cleaner).
You can read up a lot more about XSS in wikipedia. The tutorial is vulnerable to what they call type 2.
Slashdot Mirror
They did not change the language from the last draft.
If Microsoft wants to engage other companies into Microsoft-Novel kind of deals in the future, all they have to do is give the patents to a proxy company that is not "in the business of distributing software", and the proxy company can do the deals for them. I don't think it would be hard for them to find the proxy patent troll for a reasonable fee.
The license leaves the door open not only for Microsoft proxies, it also leaves the door open to any patent troll to do the same, so long they are not "in the business of distributing software"
I don't see why Microsoft should be worried. All they have to do is give the patents to a proxy company that is not "in the business of distributing software". The proxy company would be free to engage into microsoft-novel kind of deals over GPLv3 software. Plenty of patent trolls would be glad to serve as proxies for a reasonable fee.
Unless of course, they changed the language in the last minute.
OpenOffice works both in windows and linux.
It is unfair to include the cost of office when comparing the cost of windows vs linux.
I am not sure google will ever have a need to charge for pop3 access:
A lot of people read their email in multiple locations: at work and at the job. To avoid the confusion of what has been read and what not, the most convenient way is to access the web interface. Other features such as convenient searching your mail, labels and chat are not available via pop3. Also the way they organize emails into conversations is very user friendly and unmatched by most pop3 clients. The ads on gmail are very unobtrusive and do not get in your way at all. For many people (me for one), these features are compelling enough to prefer reading the email online than via pop3.
As long as they keep providing incentives like these for people to actually go and check their email on their web site, they wont have a big problem with showing ads.
Anonymizing this data greatly reduces the value of it. They no longer can use your queries from 5 years ago to determine what you are likely to buy. For example they can no longer see the fact that you where the one looking for maternity cloth 5 years ago so they can not know you are more likely to buy children cloth.
Of course, like you point out, the issue is that of privacy (it always is with data mining), and google offsets the loss by gaining customer confidence.
Germans have always preferred skinny patents
This information is very valuable as an ad provider. Just do a little data mining, and you will find stuff like "people who search for pregnancy cloth 5 years ago are more likely to click on child cloth ad today" and many other not so obvious relationships.
The only reason google is willing to throw this information away (and money with it) is because customers are concerned about their privacy.
That was only in the movie, no unix is mentioned in the book at all. The computers where running Hollywood OS and the girl in the book was a boy.
The book was more of a collection of random thoughts about chaos theory and how pretentious we are about trying to control everything than about dinosaurs (YAWN). Steven Spielberg pulled a miracle, changed about 80% of what he read and turned the book into something actually worth watching. Giving credit/blame to Crichton about anything you saw in the movie requires quite a bit of salt.
This point surprises a lot of people, and it has been like that for a while. There is a more in depth analysis of memory usage of Gnome and KDE and explains why KDE does so well. The author is a KDE developer so he naturally favors KDE, but as far as I can tell, there is no obvious unfairness in his analysis, and it is very easy to reproduce the tests yourself.
I also asked them to unlock mine because I am traveling, my experience was also very positive. No way in hell I am leaving t-mobile for a $600 apple phone with no GPS, no 3g, kinda large, and an easy to scratch screen.
There are a few pictures of the contestants which have failed so far.
Not at all, but they are the main focus. We'll be looking over popular OS X applications as well.
So they are not blaming apple anywhere in their site or implying this vulnerability is apple's fault at all. Where did you get that idea? This is not a project to destroy or harm apple, quite the opposite, it will help them in the long run.While I find the rest of you post interesting , I have issues with people feeling compelled to condemn this practice.
When the researcher is not following a trail, he spends his time sniffing butts at a local bar.
I understand that novel does not violate the GPL, because they did not license the patents from microsoft, instead microsoft licenses the patents to novel customers. Since microsoft is not distributing the software to them, the GPL does not apply to them.
BUT WAIT, Microsoft is distributing the software, didn't they receive 70,000 copies of SuSE? unless they plan to just throw them in the attic, or use them internally, they will be distributing those copies, and thus are restricted by the GPL. If they put any restriction on the people receiving the GPL code (other than those specified in the GPL itself), then Microsoft is indeed in violation of the GPL.
So I don't understand, how microsoft can use those 70,000 copies without violating the GPL. Can anyone explain that to me?
never mind then, I don't have a mac, and I misinterpreted the comments of other people.
In all fairness, if the system will shut down in 25 seconds, it should say so. It can be as simple as a countdown clock on the confirmation dialog: "The system will shut down in xx seconds".
ok, lets assume 0/0 = 1
since 0 * 2 = 0 => (0 * 2) / 0 = 1
just apply commutative property => (0/0) * 2 = 1
since 0/0 = 1, substitute => 1 * 2 = 1
an now you get => 2 = 1
This may be a wacky idea, but:
How about reading the article after you write it?
Following the logic from FSF, if you use the software to kill someone, that person will no longer be free to run the software (he is dead ).
Therefore, military use limits the freedom of potential users and is not in the spirit of the GPL.
It should also restrict use in prisons for the same reason.
It should forbid its use in ROM because the user can not replace the software.
It should forbid locking down the software with a phisical lock.
It should forbid farting near the equipment since noone will be able to get close to replace the software.
Because there are a lot more users using KDE on linux than BSD. And because most people think of KDE as a linux desktop enviroment before they think of it as a BSD desktop environment.
If you have to teach people something, you have already failed. Users Don't Read the Manual. So if your interface expects them to do so, your interface is probably flawed.
They are not trying to guess what the users might do, they are doing some serious research on it. As a result, they have come up with some great improvements such as kickoff. And their new HIG
It is not about the computer deciding what is best, quite the opposite, on usability you are supposed to empower the user. The link is from what will become their next HIG. It is pretty safe to say that KDE has allways done well in this particular area.
From the Dealing with forms section in the tutorial:
They are teaching to just echo the variable that the user might enter. A newbie will follow this pattern in future projects since that is what he is taught. Asume for a second that the name can be entered by any person, and a site's administrator reads this on a page with code looking like the above.
If a person enters "John doe" for the name, no problem, but if an attacker enters:
presto, the attacker can easily steal the session id and maybe something else from the site's administrator. What the tutorial should say instead, if it was not broken according to Rasmus definition is:either that, or filter out the variable on input (htmlentities is cleaner).You can read up a lot more about XSS in wikipedia. The tutorial is vulnerable to what they call type 2.