Either way, the story title is misleading (just for a change on Slashdot...): if it doesn't permit commercial use then it isn't a copyleft license in the recognized sense of the word.
What am I missing here? (And I'm not being sarcastic with that, I genuinely don't understand why anyone would want to share the fundamentals of their creation in a way that would compromise any potential future earnings.)
Because the whole is bigger than the sum of its parts.
Exactly. Who is a net contributor to free software? Not even RMS, I'd say. However much code any one person contributes, they'll get back hundreds of times more in even the most basic Linux distribution.
Here's a potential solution that's free as in $ but not free as in time. (To save you the trouble, it fails test
(X) Would require universal adoption by MTAs.)
A wants to send B an email. Case 1: A is on B's whitelist, and email goes through unhindered (this is what would make mailing-lists still practical). Case 2: A is sending email to B for the first time. Their MTAs have a conversation as follows:
A: Hi, I'd like to send a message to B.
B: OK. Please perform this computation (sends some problem that takes a known amount of work, calibrated to take, say 1/10 sec on a modern CPU).
A: Whirr, buzzz. Here you go...
B: Groovy. Let's have your message.
It's cost A 1/10 sec CPU time to send his message - essentially free. But now suppose A wants to spam 100 million email addresses. The processing cost is now prohibitive.
Do you believe that forcing Debian to rename the high-quality patched version of Firefox that they will distribute in Etch, conforming to the FHS and generally forming a harmonious part of a distribution renowned for its stability, and with security fixes to be backported long after Mozilla have abandoned that version to the wolves, will be good for the Firefox brand?
Prime Minister's questions happens weekly, for half an hour on Wednesdays. It used to be twice weekly for 15 minutes, but Bliar thought it would make for a more mature debate if he only had to face the Commons once in a week. Yeah, right.
but because of the dedication and ingenuity he put forth in developing such a simple, powerful MSN addon back when Microsoft knew nothing about him, working from reverse-engineering the source...
Sounds like Microshit should be suing him for breaching their precious EULA - surely it sets a very bad example to reward someone who does something as evil and underhand as try to look at the source code of a program?
It's modded funny, but I actually think it's merely cynical. The actual discussion is an extremely interesting, if sometimes frustrating, read: say what you like about Debian's legal pedantry, the thread certainly doesn't reveal Mozilla in a favourable light.
For me it really brings home the value of freedom: there are obviously big corporate pressures trying to pull Mozilla in one direction, but thanks to Freedom-with-a-capital-F, Debian are fully able to resist, even if it comes down to the desperate step of renaming Firefox.
It's also misleading because Microsoft isn't planning to produce, or indeed mulling producing, any free software - just software one can use without charge.
It's true that the Chinese pair did contribute something highly non-trivial in filling in the details left by Perelman, so in this sense it's not unreasonable for Yau to claim a certain amount of credit for this. However, given the past history, he looks an awful lot like someone vociferously aggrieved to have been accused of robbing a bank in New York when he was actually robbing a bank in Chicago at the time.
Suing journalists is high-profile and attracts attention. The effect of these Chinese politics on journal publishing in differential geometry in the US, particularly for young mathematicians forced to tread on egg-shells and play off one ego against another, happens behind the scenes but is far more damaging for our subject in the long-run.
If that's all it restricts, then most people won't much care whether or not it's free like speech. Being free like beer is enough for the typical user.
GNU Ghostscript is free software... Aladdin Ghostscript, the one hightlighted in bold on the page you link to and the one that they'd really like you to download, is not free software - its license (the A"F"PL) restricts commercial redistribution. Unfortunately the GNU fork is several years of development behind the non-free one.
Note that it's not a "lack of features" that makes kpdf work right. Kpdf has links that work when you press them, table of content browsing, keyword searches, text and image cut and paste, and prints flawless copy. Those are the features you want in a pdf viewer.
The ability to rotate pages, and a status bar at the bottom saying "Page X of Y", would be nice too... maybe in KDE 4.
Slashdot Mirror
Isn't Extinct Ibex the next Ubuntu release?
Either way, the story title is misleading (just for a change on Slashdot...): if it doesn't permit commercial use then it isn't a copyleft license in the recognized sense of the word.
Live by the sword... die by the sword.
Most people round here don't let considerations like that put them off!
640 channels ought to be enough for anyone...
Yes, I don't think he's worked out that / belongs to the distro and /usr/local belongs to him.
In addition, many Debian users would also consider it a good thing that the main repistory isn't stuffed with non-free proprietary software.
Freedom 0: the freedom to run the program, for any purpose.
Even this most basic freedom will now be denied to Dozers... Why do they stand for it?
Exactly. Who is a net contributor to free software? Not even RMS, I'd say. However much code any one person contributes, they'll get back hundreds of times more in even the most basic Linux distribution.
Here's a potential solution that's free as in $ but not free as in time. (To save you the trouble, it fails test
(X) Would require universal adoption by MTAs.)
A wants to send B an email. Case 1: A is on B's whitelist, and email goes through unhindered (this is what would make mailing-lists still practical). Case 2: A is sending email to B for the first time. Their MTAs have a conversation as follows:
It's cost A 1/10 sec CPU time to send his message - essentially free. But now suppose A wants to spam 100 million email addresses. The processing cost is now prohibitive.
Do you believe that forcing Debian to rename the high-quality patched version of Firefox that they will distribute in Etch, conforming to the FHS and generally forming a harmonious part of a distribution renowned for its stability, and with security fixes to be backported long after Mozilla have abandoned that version to the wolves, will be good for the Firefox brand?
Well, there'll be a patch out a month on Tuesday...
Prime Minister's questions happens weekly, for half an hour on Wednesdays. It used to be twice weekly for 15 minutes, but Bliar thought it would make for a more mature debate if he only had to face the Commons once in a week. Yeah, right.
It's modded funny, but I actually think it's merely cynical. The actual discussion is an extremely interesting, if sometimes frustrating, read: say what you like about Debian's legal pedantry, the thread certainly doesn't reveal Mozilla in a favourable light. For me it really brings home the value of freedom: there are obviously big corporate pressures trying to pull Mozilla in one direction, but thanks to Freedom-with-a-capital-F, Debian are fully able to resist, even if it comes down to the desperate step of renaming Firefox.
It's also misleading because Microsoft isn't planning to produce, or indeed mulling producing, any free software - just software one can use without charge.
Hmmm... "I'd better go back through my recent Poincare Project posts to make sure I haven't assumed the simple connectedness of S^1" (from the blog).
Somehow, I don't think he'll be getting to the nitty-gritty of Perelman's proof any time soon...
It's true that the Chinese pair did contribute something highly non-trivial in filling in the details left by Perelman, so in this sense it's not unreasonable for Yau to claim a certain amount of credit for this. However, given the past history, he looks an awful lot like someone vociferously aggrieved to have been accused of robbing a bank in New York when he was actually robbing a bank in Chicago at the time.
Suing journalists is high-profile and attracts attention. The effect of these Chinese politics on journal publishing in differential geometry in the US, particularly for young mathematicians forced to tread on egg-shells and play off one ego against another, happens behind the scenes but is far more damaging for our subject in the long-run.
You know you're reading Slashdot when... someone says it would be in their own best interest never to have sex!
If that's all it restricts, then most people won't much care whether or not it's free like speech. Being free like beer is enough for the typical user.
Such depressing cynicism! :(
GNU Ghostscript is free software... Aladdin Ghostscript, the one hightlighted in bold on the page you link to and the one that they'd really like you to download, is not free software - its license (the A"F"PL) restricts commercial redistribution. Unfortunately the GNU fork is several years of development behind the non-free one.
Note that it's not a "lack of features" that makes kpdf work right. Kpdf has links that work when you press them, table of content browsing, keyword searches, text and image cut and paste, and prints flawless copy. Those are the features you want in a pdf viewer.
The ability to rotate pages, and a status bar at the bottom saying "Page X of Y", would be nice too... maybe in KDE 4.