I am not going to release your BSDL-ed code. I'm not even going to release any code you may have written and released under a BSD-style copyright declaration under GPL. I know I can't legally do that.
I might include some BSDcd-ed _files_ as part of a project which is _as_ _a_ _whole_ licensed under the GPL. If I do so, I will be careful to establish in the README that some files are not GPL, and I will not touch the headers of the BSDcd-ed files. If I make a formal release, I'll list the files, licenses, and copyright holders in the README when there are multiple licenses.
So it would appear that you are arguing with someone else at this point.
I, personally, would rather release any modifications I make to any code available under the license the original author used, because I cannot expect it to be worth my time to track the pieces I added and raise a fuss if my license to the mods are not respected. I personally feel that it is common courtesy and common sense to not attempt to mix licenses in a single file. That kind of thing can lead to a huge maintenance nightmare.
And that potential maintenance nightmare would be a practical impediment to legal mixture of GPL and BSD licenses in the same file.
Someone tried to release his own code under both the GPL and BSD-style copyright declaration, declaring the copyright and then offering the GPL as an alternative. I have to assume that he was just trying to make it easier for both camps to use the code. It was misguided and unnecessary, because linking BSDcd-ed code to GPL-ed code is not against either license if the project as a whole is under GPL. (The GPL does prevent linking if the project as a whole is _not_ under the GPL, but that only means that there will be files linked to it in GPL-ed projects that can't be linked to it in BSDcd-ed projects. We assume such files will have their BSDcd-ed counterparts in the BSDcd-ed projects.) But if the author really meant to allow a fork that did not contain the BSD-style copyright declaration, he really should have gone to the trouble of forking his source himself. (And should continue to provide new versions appropriately forked, as he might be inclined.)
But I am now re-hashing the history and the conclusion, which means that you have effectively trolled me.
> But I am not sure if the FSF means "every part" if they speak of "as a whole".
They (the FSF) most definitely do not, never have.
I have heard rumors that some developers using GPL have tried to operate under that interpretation, but the FSF has been active in countering the misperception.
My memory is that copyright law uses the phrase, "as a whole" when describing how copyright affects a derived work, where it specifically differentiates the rights over the combination ("as a whole") and the rights over the parts.
Maybe I didn't say it in every post in this particular sub-thread, but I have nowhere suggested that anyone can slap GPL on and remove BSD. In fact, I'm arguing that it's illegal.
So you're now saying that I can't legally do that. I agree with that.
as we scan down the thread and discover that the consensus actually does seem to be to become your own ISP. ("Get a T1 and bring in some neighbors.")
Even sharing a DSL line with a line-of-sight neighbor and installing wireless is in the same class of response because someone has to administer the connection.
So. Compare.
On the one hand you can purchase the equipment, rent the line, etc., and then you have to pay yourself to administer it. (Or maybe hire a part-timer.)
On the other hand, you can sound out the local ISPs and buy enough stock in one that seems sympathetic enough to go ahead and get DSL running for you.
Which is cheaper? Might depend on how hard-headed (and maybe pre-bought) the local ISPs are, as well on your level of experience and skill and whether there is anyone close enough to call when you get in over your head.
What you wrote remains under the license you establish. No license can change that. (And that is part of the problem with Microsoft's attempts at creativity here.)
Copyright law establishes (by necessity) the concept of a derived work which is somewhat independent of the work derived from. If I go beyond fair use in borrowing from your work, I need your permission to do so legally. The result is a combined work.
The parts I borrowed from you remain your work, remain under your copyright, remain governed by whatever license you establish.
But the copyright of the combined work as a whole is mine.
My license for the combined work cannot contravert whatever license I get from you for the portions which I borrowed from you. But I _do_ establish the license terms for the derived work, as a whole.
The license in the BSD copyright declaration does not attempt to go beyond the law about derived works, and that is why it is so simple. But it also fails to establish any rules of behavior. Whatever rules of behavior might be established must be established external to the license in the copyright declaration. That's one of the reasons for three major BSD sub-communities -- each subcommunity has its own set of implicit rules.
The license in the GPL and similar licenses does go somewhat beyond the law, and therefore (attempts to) establish some rules of behavior. Because it does so, it has to have some fairly detailed discussion of the underlying assumptions, the context of application of those rules, etc., and it has to go to certain lengths to define the rules of behavior reasonably unambiguously.
These licenses Microsoft proposes attempt to establish rules of behavior without sufficient definition, context, or anything.
The name indicates a fundamental misunderstanding of both the concepts of open source and the legal problems underlying a license that opens the source.
The terms of the license are built on assumptions derived from that misunderstanding.
Calling the sharing of source code "permissive" is not a whole lot removed from calling the sharing of ideas "permissive". Assuming that sharing ideas is permissive behavior reflects the assumption that human relationships must be based in and controlled by tyranny.
And the text of the license, in its effort to be overly simple and yet support the assumption of tyranny, does, indeed support the assumption of tyranny.
You really can't reproduce the good effects of the GPL without writing something as complex as the GPL.
The complexity is in establishing the bases for allowable interaction in a way as to keep the gentlemen who join in the gentlemen's agreement behaving like gentlemen. This is most emphatically not permissive.
If you don't want to take the time to establish the bases of interaction, you really can't establish more terms than the BSD copyright declaration.
In particular, the attempt to say, "You can do anything as long as you do it under this license." results in a license that protects no one from anything.
If I were to be entirely crude, it's kind of like saying your code can have sex with the code of whosoever, but it has do so in this house and no other.
If I were to abuse the metaphor, the GPL would be kind of like marriage (polygamous), in that it establishes rules of conduct under which "fairness" and other necessary concepts of interaction can be established.
The BSD copyright declaration would be kind of like the legal doctrine of consenting adult, in the US. (Remember that, under said doctrine, adults can engage in "consensual behavior", but they are not legally absolved of all consequences of said behavior.)
But this metaphor makes the same error as the licenses in question, that there has to be some sort of tyrannical control over the exchange of information, and that anything which is not regulated by such tyranny is inherently (ergo) permissive.
And it still grasps at the lowest common denominator straw of that tyranny.
Colors and dotted lines. Using algorihtms to generate a projection according to some sort of user spec.
So you see that the chart has to have more than three dimensions. That is correct.
But you are ignoring the problem of defining the axes, and the units. And that problem is even harder than recognizing that there are more than three dimensions.
And then, who figures out the algorithms to project the various relationships into a two-plus-some-fraction dimension, probably non-continuous curve? and should we trust said legal/mathematical genius?
The license requires that you include the _entire_ _unmodified_ copyright declaration. But, then, the law does not exactly encourage altering a copyright declaration, either.
If the original author says,
--------------- Copyright by me, with license Q.
Or, you can also distribute under license P. ---------------
how do you remove the assertion of license Q without altering the copyright declaration?
Note how the declaration of license Q is _part_ _of_ the copyright notice.
Can't legally change it?
Well, then, if you comply with the law and the license, anyone receiving the work and the license becomes aware that the original author offers the (original) source under either license. But the copyright declaration _still_ can't be changed without permission of every contributor.
And, if a contributor fails to specify a license, his/her part is also assumed to be under the dual license.
So, yeah, I could take the dual-licensed part and say that _my_ contributions are under GPL, and the combination of my contributions with the original would also be under GPL. But you can do that with straight BSD anyway. Either way, you have to be very careful to annotate your contributions, so that people downstream from you can undo your contributions to get the original work, sans your contributions and restriction(s).
Without the annotations, the BSD and GPL are incompatible because it becomes difficult to tell what code is under what license, and because the GPL acts against the practical consequences of lack of annotation (ergo, that the whole becomes _assumed_ to be primarily under the license that provides an effective superset of grants). It becomes difficult to inform every person receiving the work of the licenses they are extended.
But the practical results do not undo the legal obligation to transmit the unmodified copyright notice with the file.
Parts vs. whole, and if you can't understand the difference, no wonder you would rather accept the standard MS EULA.
(Talk about appropriation, and the real reason MS is afraid of open source,...)
And if anyone is being flummoxed by this troll, the _parts_ which are not explicitly relicensed remain under their original licenses. Nothing in the GPL or any other license can change that.
> If you quit being an ass and took five minutes to read the GPL, you'd discover that the GPL is incompatible with all open source licenses.
If you were some kind of lawyer, I might even believe you. But you're not, and you're contradicting people who are.
Now, if you'd have actually read the GPL, you'd know that it specifically allows "additional permissions" per section 7 and defines exactly how they act. And section 5's requirement applies only to things already under the GPLv3 (which, even then, preserves additional permissions you could have received separately... funny that).
I mean, you apparently can't read section 7 of the GPLv3. It spells out that the GPLv3 parts are GPLv3, that to use the work as a whole when it's composed of discrete parts with separate licenses, you have to follow *all* of the licenses involved, but that you can split off the section under some specific license and obey only that license.
So why the hell do you keep trolling around here making legal claims you cannot substantiate that contradict both the license and all the lawyers who wrote them?
(And who keeps modding you up for asking silly questions?)
Who keeps modding you up, indeed?
I think we need a new category of mod: disinformative. Although, deformative might more fully distinguish it from troll.
It bugs me a little because I often find myself having to remind myself that (according to my paradigms) it gets in the way of my (methods) of communicating. (Like yawns, it tends to be catching.)
But my mom convinced me early on that excessive punctuation in speech tends to make the punctuation less meaningful, so I tend to pass the thought on sometimes.
But, back to the topic, I'm less interested in spreading blame around than in trying to get people to recognize that certification is, at best, an approximate business, and if we try to enforce it through peer pressure, we're going to lose, well, precisely those people who don't fit under the conventional umbrella.
Computer logic and legal logic are not the same thing.
If code is released dual-licensed, and one license says the text establishing the dual license cannot be modified, removing reference to either license is just not legal.
Dual-licensing is legal abomination in any case except the case of the perl/gpl license. In that case, the Artistic license leaves _ambiguities_ that would throw a wrench in any courtroom activities, in order to allow what we might call "preaching" to occur. If those ambiguities are not satisfactory, the GPL can be used, allowing a judge to resolve the ambiguities.
The BSD copyright declaration has some ambiguities when viewed as a license, but it does not have the ambiguities of the Artistic license. Moreover, when viewed as a copyright declaration which happens to extend a license (which is the correct way to view it), any ambiguity which would allow the GPL to take precedence disappears.
The only possible benefit would be to try to oil the issue of linking, but that is simply not an issue. You can link GPLed could to code under BSD without any conflict, and the resultant object can be legally asserted to be under GPL. That is because you know which license you are dealing with by looking at the top of the file, and the GPL allows linking to code that allows community-oriented restrictions to be placed on the object.
But the BSD copyright declaration says that the copyright declaration _goes_ _with_ _the_ _code_ _text_ _or_ _it_ _ain't_ _legal_. Thus, every recepient of a derived piece of text _must_ receive that copyright declaration.
Well, there is one other possible thing that can be done with this, and that is, if every line, or, rather, every fragment can be identified as to which license it is under, it might make sense to dual-license. But that is just plain unwieldly in most cases.
When you're mixing BSD and GPL, the best thing (and only thing that is going to prevent court cases from dragging out into the eternities) is to keep each file pure.
Things are getting a little better lately, but I _am_ talking about docs who give those stupid surveys. (Sure, your average patient knows what rubella is, right? And all the more obscure stuff?)
And I'm talking about my sister writes in that she has reactions to antibiotics in general, and every time she goes to a new doctor, the new doctor is absolutely sure that she hasn't tried new brand X.
The doc that messed her up in the first place had no valid reason to be prescribing antibiotics. He was using it as a placebo, and when it didn't take, he kicked the dose up to ultimately dangerous levels.
(And you don't have to swear just because you think the person you are talking to doesn't know what he is talking about, is being an idiot, or just being unreasonable. Use that kind of language in this kind of a situation, and what are you going to say when you really need to get someone's attention?
And, no, I am not giving you any medical advice. Maybe a little advice about communicating, but, surely you can determine whether advice is useful for your situation? And ignore it or refuse it if you don't need it?)
How much of the content is owned by the game maker, and how much by the contributors? That question answered, is it possible to prove that you made at least a best effort to get permission from _all_ the copyright owners?
Can't say whether your informal call for opinions from your users was sufficient as a best effort, but there were probably some who fell through the cracks, and if any of those is a hothead, you and wikia should prepare for some legal action.
Hopefully, all the legitimate copyright owners will be reasonable, and all the hotheads will get lawyers that will help them listen to reason.
However, there was another solution, to start taking voluntary collections from the community.
Or yet another solution, although I suspect it would involve quite a bit of development work -- spreading the wiki server and support activities across the community. Automatically balancing the load would be the toughest part to code right.
I know the theory about secondary infection. I've heard it a lot. It seems to make sense, sort of.
I'm relatively healthy. So are my kids. Why should they be prescribing it for us? Why do they?
But elderly people and people with weakened immune systems are that much more likely to develop reactions through overprescription.
The problem with the conditions that overprescription of antibiotics induce is that they tend to go unnoticed until the patient just doesn't seem to be recovering on schedule. Then you find out that the patient was failing to take the warnings about taking the antibiotic with food. (Active yogghurt, in particular, is good for preventing the damage.)
In their weakened state, they were not interested in food at all. So they were taking antibiotics on an empty stomache.
That is _known_ to cause problems.
I'm not against conventional medicine. I'm just saying that the finger pointing ought to stop.
Making fun of bad science is not the way to make it go away, nor is promoting a closed mind towards anything but conventional medicine.
Yeah. The first time antibiotics almost killed my sister was about twenty-five years ago. Maybe twenty-four.
No mice that I can recall, although the house she lives in now sometimes has mice, and at first she didn't like to lay traps for them.
The colloidal silver thing was more recent, I think my cousin started using the stuff about fourteen years ago. I'd have expected my cousin would not be one to go in for something like colloidal silver, since he's a physicist, and a good one. One of the projects he's worked on was digging into the real mechanisms of the Pons and Fleischman funny business, so I would have expected a healthy skepticism to have kicked in. Who knows?
His head hurt, the doctor couldn't help. The alternative medicine seemed to, for a while.
Colloidal silver really isn't so much homeopathic as it is alternative medicine, but conventional medicine tends to lump all the alternative stuff in the same basket, just as you apparently do.
The second time conventional medicine almost killed my sister was much more recent.
But you seem to be sure that this is the same story that you've been hearing for twenty-five years. Or, what? Anyway, you don't understand it, so _you_ _must_ _mock_ _it_.
Is that what you really think science is?
Where do you think science gets it's bad name? Maybe from people like you who mock things they don't understand.
Yeah. The homeopaths' explanation for why what they are doing works is wrong. They really can't reproduce many of their results dependably.
Yeah, some of the more extreme alternative medicine practices are dangerous. I have another cousin who "cured" herself of diabetes by a bizzare combination of starvation diet and hot baths that has been known to cause heart failure. So, since she put herself at danger because of this alternative medicine business, should I go running around screaming at my legislators and everyone else who will listen, "STOP THE BAD SCIENCE!!!!!!!!"?
Seriously.
That cousin is not diabetic now, and before the treatment, the symptoms were bad enough that she couldn't safely drive, couldn't take care of the kids, was something of a risk to herself and her family.
You have conventional doctors prescribing antibiotics for every minor complaint, so that the antibiotics have become, essentially, a placebo. How is that any better science than what the homeopaths do?
All I'm saying is that bad science is just more of the stuff that happens in this world, and if we try to suppress all the bad stuff just because _we_ know it's bad, well, that's not a good thing, either.
Well, I had intended to comment on my own thoughts after having read the stupid article. Somehow I hit the submit button when I intended to hit the preview button. Not an uncommon experience, I hear. Well.
I do wonder what was overrated at 1. Somebody wanted to suppress some anecdotal? Or was the idea that all science is hackery so offensive? Or is it just my hubris that makes me think what I wrote was worth more than a 0? How much longer should I contemplate my navel?
Crud. The scientific method has a huge advantage. It is systematic, and it is methodical.
The scientific method has a huge disadvantage. It is systematic and it is methodical.
No, I am not talking about disadvantages for purveyors of snake oil, they can always pervert systems and methods to their intents when given enough time, and given enough financial incentive.
Science is not religion. Attacking bad science does not defend science. If you want to help the poor deluded sufferers of faith in homeopathy, well, you could help conventional doctors to learn to take time to listen to their patients, for one thing.
But if you really want to help all the people who have faith in homeopathy (or in any bad science) because they must all be really suffering terribly from their delusions, well, you need to get outside and get a real life. Maybe there are a few people in serious danger because they refuse to go to anyone but a homeopath, but there are also a few people in danger because they go to a conventional doctor who overprescribes. As is noted many places, even if there is nothing more than placebo,...
Hmm. A lot of people get a lot of help from talking to their barkeeper. Shall we compare water with memory to water with something a bit stronger than memory, in terms of damage to health when overused? And don't tell me the barkeep doesn't put on airs, and therefore must be better. I'm not buying that.
Scientists don't have to critique bad science. Let the bad science critique itself. (Per radical creationism.)
More important, not all people learn linearly. (To say the least.) Some people learn better in fits and starts. If that leaves such non-ideal "fields of study" as homeopathy hanging around, who does it hurt? Or, should I say, does it do more damage to suppress the bad science or let it alone?
If scientists are worried about "misplaced funds", I say they should come right out and say, "This project needs funds." If they are worried about mindshare, if they are _really_ worried about mindshare, they should hire more PR specialists. If they want to teach correct scientific method, they should provide examples of such. (And shooting ducks in a barrel is _not_ a good example of correct scientific method.)
Slashdot Mirror
I am not going to release your BSDL-ed code. I'm not even going to release any code you may have written and released under a BSD-style copyright declaration under GPL. I know I can't legally do that.
I might include some BSDcd-ed _files_ as part of a project which is _as_ _a_ _whole_ licensed under the GPL. If I do so, I will be careful to establish in the README that some files are not GPL, and I will not touch the headers of the BSDcd-ed files. If I make a formal release, I'll list the files, licenses, and copyright holders in the README when there are multiple licenses.
So it would appear that you are arguing with someone else at this point.
I, personally, would rather release any modifications I make to any code available under the license the original author used, because I cannot expect it to be worth my time to track the pieces I added and raise a fuss if my license to the mods are not respected. I personally feel that it is common courtesy and common sense to not attempt to mix licenses in a single file. That kind of thing can lead to a huge maintenance nightmare.
And that potential maintenance nightmare would be a practical impediment to legal mixture of GPL and BSD licenses in the same file.
Someone tried to release his own code under both the GPL and BSD-style copyright declaration, declaring the copyright and then offering the GPL as an alternative. I have to assume that he was just trying to make it easier for both camps to use the code. It was misguided and unnecessary, because linking BSDcd-ed code to GPL-ed code is not against either license if the project as a whole is under GPL. (The GPL does prevent linking if the project as a whole is _not_ under the GPL, but that only means that there will be files linked to it in GPL-ed projects that can't be linked to it in BSDcd-ed projects. We assume such files will have their BSDcd-ed counterparts in the BSDcd-ed projects.) But if the author really meant to allow a fork that did not contain the BSD-style copyright declaration, he really should have gone to the trouble of forking his source himself. (And should continue to provide new versions appropriately forked, as he might be inclined.)
But I am now re-hashing the history and the conclusion, which means that you have effectively trolled me.
joudanzuki
> But I am not sure if the FSF means "every part" if they speak of "as a whole".
They (the FSF) most definitely do not, never have.
I have heard rumors that some developers using GPL have tried to operate under that interpretation, but the FSF has been active in countering the misperception.
My memory is that copyright law uses the phrase, "as a whole" when describing how copyright affects a derived work, where it specifically differentiates the rights over the combination ("as a whole") and the rights over the parts.
Maybe I didn't say it in every post in this particular sub-thread, but I have nowhere suggested that anyone can slap GPL on and remove BSD. In fact, I'm arguing that it's illegal.
So you're now saying that I can't legally do that. I agree with that.
Now what were we arguing?
as we scan down the thread and discover that the consensus actually does seem to be to become your own ISP. ("Get a T1 and bring in some neighbors.")
Even sharing a DSL line with a line-of-sight neighbor and installing wireless is in the same class of response because someone has to administer the connection.
So. Compare.
On the one hand you can purchase the equipment, rent the line, etc., and then you have to pay yourself to administer it. (Or maybe hire a part-timer.)
On the other hand, you can sound out the local ISPs and buy enough stock in one that seems sympathetic enough to go ahead and get DSL running for you.
Which is cheaper? Might depend on how hard-headed (and maybe pre-bought) the local ISPs are, as well on your level of experience and skill and whether there is anyone close enough to call when you get in over your head.
Details! Details!
Apple's preview, of course, has a PDF reader. I wonder if it is vulnerable to this one, whatever it is.
What you wrote remains under the license you establish. No license can change that. (And that is part of the problem with Microsoft's attempts at creativity here.)
Copyright law establishes (by necessity) the concept of a derived work which is somewhat independent of the work derived from. If I go beyond fair use in borrowing from your work, I need your permission to do so legally. The result is a combined work.
The parts I borrowed from you remain your work, remain under your copyright, remain governed by whatever license you establish.
But the copyright of the combined work as a whole is mine.
My license for the combined work cannot contravert whatever license I get from you for the portions which I borrowed from you. But I _do_ establish the license terms for the derived work, as a whole.
The license in the BSD copyright declaration does not attempt to go beyond the law about derived works, and that is why it is so simple. But it also fails to establish any rules of behavior. Whatever rules of behavior might be established must be established external to the license in the copyright declaration. That's one of the reasons for three major BSD sub-communities -- each subcommunity has its own set of implicit rules.
The license in the GPL and similar licenses does go somewhat beyond the law, and therefore (attempts to) establish some rules of behavior. Because it does so, it has to have some fairly detailed discussion of the underlying assumptions, the context of application of those rules, etc., and it has to go to certain lengths to define the rules of behavior reasonably unambiguously.
These licenses Microsoft proposes attempt to establish rules of behavior without sufficient definition, context, or anything.
joudanzuki
and moron yourself.
The name indicates a fundamental misunderstanding of both the concepts of open source and the legal problems underlying a license that opens the source.
The terms of the license are built on assumptions derived from that misunderstanding.
Calling the sharing of source code "permissive" is not a whole lot removed from calling the sharing of ideas "permissive". Assuming that sharing ideas is permissive behavior reflects the assumption that human relationships must be based in and controlled by tyranny.
And the text of the license, in its effort to be overly simple and yet support the assumption of tyranny, does, indeed support the assumption of tyranny.
You really can't reproduce the good effects of the GPL without writing something as complex as the GPL.
The complexity is in establishing the bases for allowable interaction in a way as to keep the gentlemen who join in the gentlemen's agreement behaving like gentlemen. This is most emphatically not permissive.
If you don't want to take the time to establish the bases of interaction, you really can't establish more terms than the BSD copyright declaration.
In particular, the attempt to say, "You can do anything as long as you do it under this license." results in a license that protects no one from anything.
If I were to be entirely crude, it's kind of like saying your code can have sex with the code of whosoever, but it has do so in this house and no other.
If I were to abuse the metaphor, the GPL would be kind of like marriage (polygamous), in that it establishes rules of conduct under which "fairness" and other necessary concepts of interaction can be established.
The BSD copyright declaration would be kind of like the legal doctrine of consenting adult, in the US. (Remember that, under said doctrine, adults can engage in "consensual behavior", but they are not legally absolved of all consequences of said behavior.)
But this metaphor makes the same error as the licenses in question, that there has to be some sort of tyrannical control over the exchange of information, and that anything which is not regulated by such tyranny is inherently (ergo) permissive.
And it still grasps at the lowest common denominator straw of that tyranny.
joudanzuki
Colors and dotted lines. Using algorihtms to generate a projection according to some sort of user spec.
So you see that the chart has to have more than three dimensions. That is correct.
But you are ignoring the problem of defining the axes, and the units. And that problem is even harder than recognizing that there are more than three dimensions.
And then, who figures out the algorithms to project the various relationships into a two-plus-some-fraction dimension, probably non-continuous curve? and should we trust said legal/mathematical genius?
which contains a license.
The license requires that you include the _entire_ _unmodified_ copyright declaration. But, then, the law does not exactly encourage altering a copyright declaration, either.
If the original author says,
---------------
Copyright by me, with license Q.
Or, you can also distribute under license P.
---------------
how do you remove the assertion of license Q without altering the copyright declaration?
Note how the declaration of license Q is _part_ _of_ the copyright notice.
Can't legally change it?
Well, then, if you comply with the law and the license, anyone receiving the work and the license becomes aware that the original author offers the (original) source under either license. But the copyright declaration _still_ can't be changed without permission of every contributor.
And, if a contributor fails to specify a license, his/her part is also assumed to be under the dual license.
So, yeah, I could take the dual-licensed part and say that _my_ contributions are under GPL, and the combination of my contributions with the original would also be under GPL. But you can do that with straight BSD anyway. Either way, you have to be very careful to annotate your contributions, so that people downstream from you can undo your contributions to get the original work, sans your contributions and restriction(s).
Without the annotations, the BSD and GPL are incompatible because it becomes difficult to tell what code is under what license, and because the GPL acts against the practical consequences of lack of annotation (ergo, that the whole becomes _assumed_ to be primarily under the license that provides an effective superset of grants). It becomes difficult to inform every person receiving the work of the licenses they are extended.
But the practical results do not undo the legal obligation to transmit the unmodified copyright notice with the file.
Repeat after me:
Part vs. whole.
Part vs. whole.
Copyright law prevents relicensing except by the original author.
The _derivative_ work (the whole) is not the same as the part.
Part vs. whole.
Part vs. whole.
Repeat it several times, and you might begin to understand copyright law.
And you might begin to understand what Microsoft and the ??AA are trying to cheat you out of.
But, no, you are a troll, so there is no hope for you at all.
Must be a full moon. The trolls are out in force.
...)
Parts vs. whole, and if you can't understand the difference, no wonder you would rather accept the standard MS EULA.
(Talk about appropriation, and the real reason MS is afraid of open source,
And if anyone is being flummoxed by this troll, the _parts_ which are not explicitly relicensed remain under their original licenses. Nothing in the GPL or any other license can change that.
Specifically, "as a whole".
The _combination_ is licensed under the GPL. The _parts_ which were licensed under other, compatible licenses remain licensed as they were.
Begone, troll.
Who keeps modding you up, indeed?
I think we need a new category of mod: disinformative. Although, deformative might more fully distinguish it from troll.
Which you are.
well, not that much.
It bugs me a little because I often find myself having to remind myself that (according to my paradigms) it gets in the way of my (methods) of communicating. (Like yawns, it tends to be catching.)
But my mom convinced me early on that excessive punctuation in speech tends to make the punctuation less meaningful, so I tend to pass the thought on sometimes.
But, back to the topic, I'm less interested in spreading blame around than in trying to get people to recognize that certification is, at best, an approximate business, and if we try to enforce it through peer pressure, we're going to lose, well, precisely those people who don't fit under the conventional umbrella.
joudanzuki
Actually, we are all beggars, in some senses. Independence is a conceit.
But more power to you as you move ahead. There just isn't going to be any way to satisfy everyone.
Computer logic and legal logic are not the same thing.
If code is released dual-licensed, and one license says the text establishing the dual license cannot be modified, removing reference to either license is just not legal.
Dual-licensing is legal abomination in any case except the case of the perl/gpl license. In that case, the Artistic license leaves _ambiguities_ that would throw a wrench in any courtroom activities, in order to allow what we might call "preaching" to occur. If those ambiguities are not satisfactory, the GPL can be used, allowing a judge to resolve the ambiguities.
The BSD copyright declaration has some ambiguities when viewed as a license, but it does not have the ambiguities of the Artistic license. Moreover, when viewed as a copyright declaration which happens to extend a license (which is the correct way to view it), any ambiguity which would allow the GPL to take precedence disappears.
The only possible benefit would be to try to oil the issue of linking, but that is simply not an issue. You can link GPLed could to code under BSD without any conflict, and the resultant object can be legally asserted to be under GPL. That is because you know which license you are dealing with by looking at the top of the file, and the GPL allows linking to code that allows community-oriented restrictions to be placed on the object.
But the BSD copyright declaration says that the copyright declaration _goes_ _with_ _the_ _code_ _text_ _or_ _it_ _ain't_ _legal_. Thus, every recepient of a derived piece of text _must_ receive that copyright declaration.
Well, there is one other possible thing that can be done with this, and that is, if every line, or, rather, every fragment can be identified as to which license it is under, it might make sense to dual-license. But that is just plain unwieldly in most cases.
When you're mixing BSD and GPL, the best thing (and only thing that is going to prevent court cases from dragging out into the eternities) is to keep each file pure.
joudanzuki
we wouldn't blame him.
Things are getting a little better lately, but I _am_ talking about docs who give those stupid surveys. (Sure, your average patient knows what rubella is, right? And all the more obscure stuff?)
And I'm talking about my sister writes in that she has reactions to antibiotics in general, and every time she goes to a new doctor, the new doctor is absolutely sure that she hasn't tried new brand X.
The doc that messed her up in the first place had no valid reason to be prescribing antibiotics. He was using it as a placebo, and when it didn't take, he kicked the dose up to ultimately dangerous levels.
(And you don't have to swear just because you think the person you are talking to doesn't know what he is talking about, is being an idiot, or just being unreasonable. Use that kind of language in this kind of a situation, and what are you going to say when you really need to get someone's attention?
And, no, I am not giving you any medical advice. Maybe a little advice about communicating, but, surely you can determine whether advice is useful for your situation? And ignore it or refuse it if you don't need it?)
joudanzuki
flywheels slipping their bearings and coming crashing through the firewall?
Or flywheels that shatter from poor balancing?
Or what happens when the clutch locks?
would be this:
How much of the content is owned by the game maker, and how much by the contributors? That question answered, is it possible to prove that you made at least a best effort to get permission from _all_ the copyright owners?
Can't say whether your informal call for opinions from your users was sufficient as a best effort, but there were probably some who fell through the cracks, and if any of those is a hothead, you and wikia should prepare for some legal action.
Hopefully, all the legitimate copyright owners will be reasonable, and all the hotheads will get lawyers that will help them listen to reason.
However, there was another solution, to start taking voluntary collections from the community.
Or yet another solution, although I suspect it would involve quite a bit of development work -- spreading the wiki server and support activities across the community. Automatically balancing the load would be the toughest part to code right.
joudanzuki
I don't know.
I know the theory about secondary infection. I've heard it a lot. It seems to make sense, sort of.
I'm relatively healthy. So are my kids. Why should they be prescribing it for us? Why do they?
But elderly people and people with weakened immune systems are that much more likely to develop reactions through overprescription.
The problem with the conditions that overprescription of antibiotics induce is that they tend to go unnoticed until the patient just doesn't seem to be recovering on schedule. Then you find out that the patient was failing to take the warnings about taking the antibiotic with food. (Active yogghurt, in particular, is good for preventing the damage.)
In their weakened state, they were not interested in food at all. So they were taking antibiotics on an empty stomache.
That is _known_ to cause problems.
I'm not against conventional medicine. I'm just saying that the finger pointing ought to stop.
Making fun of bad science is not the way to make it go away, nor is promoting a closed mind towards anything but conventional medicine.
joudanzuki
Yeah. The first time antibiotics almost killed my sister was about twenty-five years ago. Maybe twenty-four.
No mice that I can recall, although the house she lives in now sometimes has mice, and at first she didn't like to lay traps for them.
The colloidal silver thing was more recent, I think my cousin started using the stuff about fourteen years ago. I'd have expected my cousin would not be one to go in for something like colloidal silver, since he's a physicist, and a good one. One of the projects he's worked on was digging into the real mechanisms of the Pons and Fleischman funny business, so I would have expected a healthy skepticism to have kicked in. Who knows?
His head hurt, the doctor couldn't help. The alternative medicine seemed to, for a while.
Colloidal silver really isn't so much homeopathic as it is alternative medicine, but conventional medicine tends to lump all the alternative stuff in the same basket, just as you apparently do.
The second time conventional medicine almost killed my sister was much more recent.
But you seem to be sure that this is the same story that you've been hearing for twenty-five years. Or, what? Anyway, you don't understand it, so _you_ _must_ _mock_ _it_.
Is that what you really think science is?
Where do you think science gets it's bad name? Maybe from people like you who mock things they don't understand.
Yeah. The homeopaths' explanation for why what they are doing works is wrong. They really can't reproduce many of their results dependably.
Yeah, some of the more extreme alternative medicine practices are dangerous. I have another cousin who "cured" herself of diabetes by a bizzare combination of starvation diet and hot baths that has been known to cause heart failure. So, since she put herself at danger because of this alternative medicine business, should I go running around screaming at my legislators and everyone else who will listen, "STOP THE BAD SCIENCE!!!!!!!!"?
Seriously.
That cousin is not diabetic now, and before the treatment, the symptoms were bad enough that she couldn't safely drive, couldn't take care of the kids, was something of a risk to herself and her family.
You have conventional doctors prescribing antibiotics for every minor complaint, so that the antibiotics have become, essentially, a placebo. How is that any better science than what the homeopaths do?
All I'm saying is that bad science is just more of the stuff that happens in this world, and if we try to suppress all the bad stuff just because _we_ know it's bad, well, that's not a good thing, either.
joudanzuki
It's time for most of the people in the US and Japan to get new doctors, except where do you go?
"You have the flu. I'll get you an antibiotic."
"Why?"
"Secondary infection."
And if you express doubt, most likely there's a sales pitch to follow the lame excuse.
And if you change doctors, it's the same.
Well, I had intended to comment on my own thoughts after having read the stupid article. Somehow I hit the submit button when I intended to hit the preview button. Not an uncommon experience, I hear. Well.
...
I do wonder what was overrated at 1. Somebody wanted to suppress some anecdotal? Or was the idea that all science is hackery so offensive? Or is it just my hubris that makes me think what I wrote was worth more than a 0? How much longer should I contemplate my navel?
Crud. The scientific method has a huge advantage. It is systematic, and it is methodical.
The scientific method has a huge disadvantage. It is systematic and it is methodical.
No, I am not talking about disadvantages for purveyors of snake oil, they can always pervert systems and methods to their intents when given enough time, and given enough financial incentive.
Science is not religion. Attacking bad science does not defend science. If you want to help the poor deluded sufferers of faith in homeopathy, well, you could help conventional doctors to learn to take time to listen to their patients, for one thing.
But if you really want to help all the people who have faith in homeopathy (or in any bad science) because they must all be really suffering terribly from their delusions, well, you need to get outside and get a real life. Maybe there are a few people in serious danger because they refuse to go to anyone but a homeopath, but there are also a few people in danger because they go to a conventional doctor who overprescribes. As is noted many places, even if there is nothing more than placebo,
Hmm. A lot of people get a lot of help from talking to their barkeeper. Shall we compare water with memory to water with something a bit stronger than memory, in terms of damage to health when overused? And don't tell me the barkeep doesn't put on airs, and therefore must be better. I'm not buying that.
Scientists don't have to critique bad science. Let the bad science critique itself. (Per radical creationism.)
More important, not all people learn linearly. (To say the least.) Some people learn better in fits and starts. If that leaves such non-ideal "fields of study" as homeopathy hanging around, who does it hurt? Or, should I say, does it do more damage to suppress the bad science or let it alone?
If scientists are worried about "misplaced funds", I say they should come right out and say, "This project needs funds." If they are worried about mindshare, if they are _really_ worried about mindshare, they should hire more PR specialists. If they want to teach correct scientific method, they should provide examples of such. (And shooting ducks in a barrel is _not_ a good example of correct scientific method.)
joudanzuki