I understand. You're saying the principle behind it is the same (specifically since it's ruled under the same law (copyright)) and thus they should be treated/responded to equally (music piracy & GPL violations).
You are completly right about this, I'm just pointing out that the differences in ideology underneath this is as big as it can get. On one hand you have users of Free software trying to keep things open and Free for everyone and trying to keep those freedoms alive, and on the other hand you have the RIAA/MPAA whose doing the opposite. Analog legal situation: yes. Fighting for the same cause: far from it.
Analog ethical situation: Well, the underlying motivations are opposite, but the ethical situation for those who brake the law (being it "stealing" music/movies or GPL code) is "perhaps" the same. I personally think copyright laws are too strict and simply wrong (the GPL doesn't enforce/use these wrong, restricting parts), and thus I have few moral problems "stealing" music/movies off the internet. I don't believe I'm doing something morally wrong as I wouldn't buy whatever I'm downloading before I downloaded it anyway (however there is a chance > 0 that I would buy it later). But that's just me.
When it comes to the artists: Yes, they should be respected. But again, I don't believe it's morally wrong downloading music I didn't pay for, so I don't feel disrespectful towards those artists. (Read my previous comment on this here.)
The question is whether you believe in IP or you don't. If you don't you shouldn't embrace the GPL or the RIAA.
This was the text I was commenting on. You are saying that if you don't believe in IP then you shouldn't embrace the GPL.
Of course you need copyright to enforce the GPL, they coexist quite nicely and as expected. But patents are not good for software, especially open source software. This was the part I got hung up on, it doesn't make sence. However, someone might read it and think the GPL is inconsistent with copyright law, or that you either support both the GPL and the RIAA or neither. Your post was inaccurate and could easily lead to confusion.
Since it was inaccurate I thought you didn't know what it really meant.
You are refering to freedom as "anarchy". I don't want to live in an anarchy, stealing and murder should and must be illegal. Doing what ever YOU want to do with MY code should and must be illegal. You *can* however do what ever I give you permission to do, and that includes sharing it with others _as long_ as the freedom I gave to you is passed on to those you give my code/binary to.
We are protecting freedom here, what's so hard to understand? People aren't allowed to take away other peoples freedom in regards to MY code. If you must have that freedom, use a less restrictive license. There is however nothing wrong in protecting freedom, and it's still freedom.
Forget the term 'IP', it's only confusing ordinary people who aren't going to look up the details (yes, that means you parent poster).
IP is essentially both trademark, copyright and patents at the same time. *NONE* of those are related, they are simply not covered under the same law, their rules are completly different.
Copyright is what helps protect creative works. People write things in the GPL so that they can ensure it remains open and Free (as in freedom), and copyright is necessary to obtain that goal. (If they don't care if it becomes closed, they can just choose something like the BSD lisence instead.)
Patents (and trademark) are a whole different matter, they're not relevant to this discussion at all. Don't mix them, don't use the term IP unless you actually know what it means and your comment applies to all kinds of IP. Otherwise you're only adding further confusion. I'm not an expert, but atleast I'm humble enough to say so when I'm not sure.
"Believe in IP" is rather meaningless to say (you could be talking about anything), but you should embrace copyright (to a certain extent) unless you want everything created only to exist in public domain from the first second it sees the light of day.
The situation with the GPL is precisely analogous to the situation with downloaded music. (Most) music copyright owners expect a payment of some kind in exchange for their providing you with music. Creators of GPL code also expect payment. The only difference is that the music owners expect payment in the form of money, while GPL code owners expect payment in the form of more GPL code.
No, you don't get it (don't worry though, not many do). This is not about "payment" in any form, people don't use the GPL because they want to "earn" something, if that's the reason then they're confused. This is about Freedom.
There's a *distinct* difference between movie/music piracy and GPL piracy: FOSS was made to keep information *free*, and to promote sharing as a Good Thing. When someone is enforcing the GPL, that someone is preventing information being locked down and is thus protecting peoples freedom. The RIAA/MPAA wants to *prevent* sharing, and stop people from doing what they want with their music/movies.
Both kind of piracy is illegal, but it's waaaay different. The ethical background here is black and white, and can't be put in the same booth, ever.
I'm not American, so I don't know anything about this company, but what would it take for them appear Good in your eyes? What is "The right thing to do?" It's a trend to critisize companies for whatever actions they take, eventhough it looks like they're doing good things (bewear! They're out to get you!). So I'm just wondering: What are they doing wrong? What are they supposed to do?
Which reminds me, when is Linus going to leave the 2.6x tree alone so we don't have to worry about so much broken shit all the time? Imagine if Windows changed it's kernel a couple times a year and broke the video drivers each time. People would bitch endlessly, but I guess as Linux users, we just have to put up with it.
This is somewhat a Good Thing, and somewhat a Bad Thing. The latter is self explained, but the Good Thing about it is that the kernel developers are free to make not only good code, but great code.
How many people bitch about Windows legacy crap? Do you think the developers over at MS wants to support all that old mess? Of course they don't, remember the win2k leak; in the code you could see all sorts of comments relating to hacks (that exact word) to prevent breaking legacy software.
It creates a mess doing that, and one of the beautiful things about free software is that developers are free to persue the best solution to any given problem or task, even if it means rewriting mayor parts of the software (in this case the kernel). In Windows they can't do that, so they're stuck with the same mistakes they made many years ago. (Talk about solid code, eh?)
In SP2 it looks like they finally gave up and decided they *had* to break something to close some huge security gaps (or whatever they were fixing). Free software (including the Linux kernel) doesn't have this disadvantage at all. Securityfixes seldomly break compatabilty, but new features sometimes do. In general, securityfixes are backported all the time, so you can safely use some old free software if a newer version breaks some compatability (given the old one is maintained ofcourse).
But if you don't need the old compatability, the road to great code and great features are ahead. The choice is yours, choose whatever suits your needs. This is a Good Thing, and a good reason to use Free software.
It is a very interesting read, I never thought that could be a legal issue.
Linus' point is that if you write a kernel module you own the copyright to it and can do whatever you want with it. However, it is impossible to compile that code without it containing some kernel code (kernel header files etc). So once it's compiled it contains at least some (if very little) GPL code and thus must be GPL.
If that's true/correct legally is another matter, I've never heard about it. But if he's right, the term "binary-only modules" can't exist legally (with regards to the Linux kernel), and every binary-only module that do exist today are violating the GPL.
I think it's definitely desirable to open (or rather, Free) the source. There are other archs and other emulators that could benefit from a port of the technology, and there are Free Software ethics at stake which affect society, if nothing else.
Yes, I didn't think about other archs. Some posters misunderstood my original question, I was wondering if this mod was near perfect (as opposed to really perfect), and that once it reached that stage it would be complete, and couldn't add anything more to QEMU on its own (it's a single module doing a spesific task after all).
But porting it to other architectures is definitly worthwhile, and freeing it would ensure compatibility with future kernels. I just didn't think about that:)
Open Sourcing the QEMU Accelerator Technology ? As a supporter of open source, the author accepts to open source the QEMU Accelerator Technology provided a company invests enough money to support the project and to recompense the author from the potential loss of revenue. Interested companies can look at the roadmap and make suggestions to the author.
If it actually achieves near-native performance right now, how much better can it get? And since it's already gratis, would anyone want to pay for one that achives actual native performance?
I don't think there's much money up for grabs here, to be honest. But that depends on how good it really is right now.
No wonder there's war and terror in the world when we have people like you. Haven't you considered just for a second that the reason we have exactly war and terror is because some people can't figure out how to leave others alone?
They look down on our society the same way you look down on them, claiming that your way is "the right way", not even considering you might be wrong. They don't want our filthy lives, living like whores and without morals, where money is everything and people are worth nothing. They want a society where women aren't jugded by their looks, where family stick together, where the childern listens and follows the advice of their parents, and where people don't have sex before marrige, and they live in that society.
What I just wrote isn't "the great truth" about muslim/middle east countries, but I am illustrating a point here. You are as much wrong as they are, and they are as much right as you are. It's just another way of looking at and living life. The only way to have peace and freedom in this world is if people like you start to respect other people and cultures for the values that they have, instead of marching ahead with you're ideas of what's right and wrong. The world simply isn't black and white, remember that at least one in five people in the entire world disagree with you (those being muslims).
Yes, I think a lot of their culture down there is discriminating women, and I think they have a lot of wrong morals despite what they say. But most of the time *they* don't think so. They are happy, everyone's just happy. Who knows, even the average person down there lives a happier, better life than in the western world? They have to want the change themselves. If they don't want our society, we can't force them. Just imagine if the US had a mayor money-crack or something, and the middle west (the only ones with a working economy) started invading the US and whatnot and demanded we all switch to muslim culture. Would that be fair? Would we like that?
They like their culture just as much as we like ours. They think their culture is just as "good" as we think ours is. There is no absolute right, and there is no absolute wrong. Western society has it's share of horrible discrimination, wars and other terrible things, and middle east countries certainly has their share as well. I'm not saying they're perfect, far from it. That's not the point.
There is no black or white, there are only grays. In fact, statisticly you might even be wrong. That is, there might be more people living on this world that are happy living their non-western-lives as they are now, and disagree with what you just posted, than there are people agreeing with you. Just like we would oppose the change they might try to force upon us some day.
Just like I can't force you to agree with me. I will not try to force you to believe in more respect for other cultures, you are entitled to your own opinion. I just think other non-western countries are too.
(And for the record, I do actually think certain aspects of their culture needs change, but I also believe they must want it themselves, which is the point I'm trying to get across.)
He thinks everyone is entitled to his opinion, and from all indications is opposed to diversity of opinion if it doesn't conform to his own. In my mind, that is not freedom.
Yes, I agree he is quite "agressive", if that's the right term. And I too sometimes feel he's pushing it a bit too far (I've just listened to a speech from Kuhn, and he seems easier to agree with), but I still feel Stallman isn't doing this for his personal interests though. He might like it, all the attention and so forth, but I still think his motivation is Free Software, and that he puts that first, before himself. (Or at least I hope so.)
That might sound paradoxical when said about Stallman in particular...but do some research on the man, have a good long think about it, and see what you come up with...you might be very surprised. For the purposes of Linux users, Stallman can definitely be considered an ally...but personally I think "friend" would be too strong a word. The man has his own agenda...and not one that necessarily coincides with everyone else's best interests.
The only thing that proves is that everything is relative. You can easily put things out of perspective and into another context, and everything will seem different.
He is the firm believer behind Free software. It's not his God-given job to promote free software, he does so because he wants to, he wants to use his energy for this purpose. If someone had stepped up with equal belifes and equal enthusiasm, there would be plenty of room for both of them. But no one is, so RMS is only filling a role that so far he's best at. He put himself in that role, and no one else has tried the same. Eg. Linus doesn't even want that role, eventhough a lot of programmers want him as a voice for F/OSS. How does that make RMS egocentric?
Stallman at one point criticised the XFree86 group for using a BSD-like license, calling them sellouts who were doing such in order to ensure that X gained popularity...and he then turned around later and did exactly the same thing with the creation of the LGPL. He actually cites software popularity as part of the reason for the creation of the LGPL. He might not remember this particular inconsistency...I, however, do.
I can't speak for RMS, but no one is perfect and I believe everyone has a right to change their mind. I don't see this as a bad thing at all, so what if he became more liberal? I often change my mind about things, and I expect others to as well. If you never change your mind about anything, you will go through life completely static, and you'll never experience personal growth. I believe it's much better to have an open mind than a closed one.
If he's been confronted with this and denied it or whatever, then sure enough he should be rightfully criticised. It doesn't look like that's the case here though, if he cited "software popularity" as one of the reasons behind LGPL, it looks to me like he's openly admitting to just changing his mind.
He is very strict about some wierd stuff, like GNU/Linux and the likes, but saying he's got his own agenda is putting all sorts of funky thoughts into peoples heads that have nothing to do with RMS.
This is the point that RMS is trying to make about copyright. He says sharing music should be legal.
The reason for this is exactly what we're seeing here: the artist are being screwed over by the record companies. If you're a "to be" artist, you need someone to record your songs, distribute them and give you PR. Either you sign the standard (awfull) contract, or you get nothing. Of course they sign it, they want to be artists, right?
If music distribution on the net was legal, artists wouldn't be so much under the mercy of the record companies (which you can see they are taking advantage of). They would get their PR through filesharing, more people would go to their concerts (if they're any good), and they would make more money (income from concerts are mostly theirs to keep). Instead, they're getting fucked over by the record companies, and the only option is not to be an artist at all.
The exception for this are the artists that have sold their 7 records or so, because then the contract expires. Then they are in the situation to renegotiate, and they can actually get a contract that's good for them, so that they earn money.
So big stars earn big bucks, and they will loose money if music sharing is legal, but small artists will definitly win.
Those are basicly the words of RMS, and when I hear examples like this they make sense.
I second that. What an incredibly stupid statement. Like as if they are the ones deciding what is known and what isn't, like as if they must know more than anyone, so if *they* don't know, nobody does.
I mean, why do viruses exist in the first place? Is it because they exploit open, known vulnerabilities? Or is it because crackers *find* vulnerabilites to exploit?
What I've read on the topic says they chose to send twice as many images divided between both channels instead of redundancy (but a lot of pictures even with one channel not working), and they chose to only send the doppler data on channel 2.
Except for that, all other data on the two channels were equal, thus giving full redundancy. The specifically chose not to have any redundancy for the doppler data, for reasons I don't know of.
Then, they call you back and expect you to come right over and fix it "right." In their mind, they paid you to fix the computer and the computer doesn't work.
That's odd, I feel it's the other way 'round. Whenever I'm doing someone a favour, that favour "hangs in the air", and I might get that favour back someday when I need it, but I need something bigger done, so suddenly I owe them a favour. And this might continue, and so on.
But with money, when the job is done and I have the money in my hands, it's a common agreement that it's a "done deal". We're simply finished, the job's over. If there's another problem, then it's another job, and more money to be made.
The exceptions are my siblings and parents where I always do it for free. Anything else would be wierd.
I told him no thanks, please give me a price on 300+ Dimensions as I specified them. He did give me a price, but when I went to my boss to get the check, I found out that the salesguy called him and told him to but the OptiPlex! Then my PHB believed the vendor, and I eventually got fired cuz I would not support them. (The drivers for the network card would not support the latest Windows)
I wasn't trying to be pompous, I'm sorry if I came across that way. I was being picky, but I was being picky about something that caused confusion.
And no you can't do what troll tech does without buying a commercial license...I asked.
I'm not sure what you are referring to here. My point was that people think this other license somehow changes the behavoir of the GPL. It doesn't (that would contradict/violate the GPL). If one chooses to just follow the GPL and not care about the other license, it works like any other GPL program out there.
I hope I didn't create more fuss than I cleared up.
Slashdot Mirror
The GPL, while a perfectly good license, however, is just as restrictive as anything commercial; the cost is simply in a different coin.
;) I guess you're right anyway.
Those were your words, not mine
Thank you for a thoughtful reply.
I understand. You're saying the principle behind it is the same (specifically since it's ruled under the same law (copyright)) and thus they should be treated/responded to equally (music piracy & GPL violations).
You are completly right about this, I'm just pointing out that the differences in ideology underneath this is as big as it can get. On one hand you have users of Free software trying to keep things open and Free for everyone and trying to keep those freedoms alive, and on the other hand you have the RIAA/MPAA whose doing the opposite. Analog legal situation: yes. Fighting for the same cause: far from it.
Analog ethical situation: Well, the underlying motivations are opposite, but the ethical situation for those who brake the law (being it "stealing" music/movies or GPL code) is "perhaps" the same. I personally think copyright laws are too strict and simply wrong (the GPL doesn't enforce/use these wrong, restricting parts), and thus I have few moral problems "stealing" music/movies off the internet. I don't believe I'm doing something morally wrong as I wouldn't buy whatever I'm downloading before I downloaded it anyway (however there is a chance > 0 that I would buy it later). But that's just me.
When it comes to the artists: Yes, they should be respected. But again, I don't believe it's morally wrong downloading music I didn't pay for, so I don't feel disrespectful towards those artists. (Read my previous comment on this here.)
The question is whether you believe in IP or you don't. If you don't you shouldn't embrace the GPL or the RIAA.
This was the text I was commenting on. You are saying that if you don't believe in IP then you shouldn't embrace the GPL.
Of course you need copyright to enforce the GPL, they coexist quite nicely and as expected. But patents are not good for software, especially open source software. This was the part I got hung up on, it doesn't make sence. However, someone might read it and think the GPL is inconsistent with copyright law, or that you either support both the GPL and the RIAA or neither. Your post was inaccurate and could easily lead to confusion.
Since it was inaccurate I thought you didn't know what it really meant.
You are refering to freedom as "anarchy". I don't want to live in an anarchy, stealing and murder should and must be illegal. Doing what ever YOU want to do with MY code should and must be illegal. You *can* however do what ever I give you permission to do, and that includes sharing it with others _as long_ as the freedom I gave to you is passed on to those you give my code/binary to.
We are protecting freedom here, what's so hard to understand? People aren't allowed to take away other peoples freedom in regards to MY code. If you must have that freedom, use a less restrictive license. There is however nothing wrong in protecting freedom, and it's still freedom.
Forget the term 'IP', it's only confusing ordinary people who aren't going to look up the details (yes, that means you parent poster).
IP is essentially both trademark, copyright and patents at the same time. *NONE* of those are related, they are simply not covered under the same law, their rules are completly different.
Copyright is what helps protect creative works. People write things in the GPL so that they can ensure it remains open and Free (as in freedom), and copyright is necessary to obtain that goal. (If they don't care if it becomes closed, they can just choose something like the BSD lisence instead.)
Patents (and trademark) are a whole different matter, they're not relevant to this discussion at all. Don't mix them, don't use the term IP unless you actually know what it means and your comment applies to all kinds of IP. Otherwise you're only adding further confusion. I'm not an expert, but atleast I'm humble enough to say so when I'm not sure.
"Believe in IP" is rather meaningless to say (you could be talking about anything), but you should embrace copyright (to a certain extent) unless you want everything created only to exist in public domain from the first second it sees the light of day.
The situation with the GPL is precisely analogous to the situation with downloaded music. (Most) music copyright owners expect a payment of some kind in exchange for their providing you with music. Creators of GPL code also expect payment. The only difference is that the music owners expect payment in the form of money, while GPL code owners expect payment in the form of more GPL code.
No, you don't get it (don't worry though, not many do). This is not about "payment" in any form, people don't use the GPL because they want to "earn" something, if that's the reason then they're confused. This is about Freedom.
There's a *distinct* difference between movie/music piracy and GPL piracy: FOSS was made to keep information *free*, and to promote sharing as a Good Thing. When someone is enforcing the GPL, that someone is preventing information being locked down and is thus protecting peoples freedom. The RIAA/MPAA wants to *prevent* sharing, and stop people from doing what they want with their music/movies.
Both kind of piracy is illegal, but it's waaaay different. The ethical background here is black and white, and can't be put in the same booth, ever.
Interesting comment. Lets look at this.
I'm not American, so I don't know anything about this company, but what would it take for them appear Good in your eyes? What is "The right thing to do?" It's a trend to critisize companies for whatever actions they take, eventhough it looks like they're doing good things (bewear! They're out to get you!). So I'm just wondering: What are they doing wrong? What are they supposed to do?
Which reminds me, when is Linus going to leave the 2.6x tree alone so we don't have to worry about so much broken shit all the time? Imagine if Windows changed it's kernel a couple times a year and broke the video drivers each time. People would bitch endlessly, but I guess as Linux users, we just have to put up with it.
This is somewhat a Good Thing, and somewhat a Bad Thing. The latter is self explained, but the Good Thing about it is that the kernel developers are free to make not only good code, but great code.
How many people bitch about Windows legacy crap? Do you think the developers over at MS wants to support all that old mess? Of course they don't, remember the win2k leak; in the code you could see all sorts of comments relating to hacks (that exact word) to prevent breaking legacy software.
It creates a mess doing that, and one of the beautiful things about free software is that developers are free to persue the best solution to any given problem or task, even if it means rewriting mayor parts of the software (in this case the kernel). In Windows they can't do that, so they're stuck with the same mistakes they made many years ago. (Talk about solid code, eh?)
In SP2 it looks like they finally gave up and decided they *had* to break something to close some huge security gaps (or whatever they were fixing). Free software (including the Linux kernel) doesn't have this disadvantage at all. Securityfixes seldomly break compatabilty, but new features sometimes do. In general, securityfixes are backported all the time, so you can safely use some old free software if a newer version breaks some compatability (given the old one is maintained ofcourse).
But if you don't need the old compatability, the road to great code and great features are ahead. The choice is yours, choose whatever suits your needs. This is a Good Thing, and a good reason to use Free software.
Although WINE might not actually be an emulator, I wouldn't count on the name to prove that.
Take for example LAME which stands for "LAME ain't an MP3 encoder", and on their site the first line says: "LAME is an LGPL MP3 encoder".
You are right. I stand corrected.
It is a very interesting read, I never thought that could be a legal issue.
Linus' point is that if you write a kernel module you own the copyright to it and can do whatever you want with it. However, it is impossible to compile that code without it containing some kernel code (kernel header files etc). So once it's compiled it contains at least some (if very little) GPL code and thus must be GPL.
If that's true/correct legally is another matter, I've never heard about it. But if he's right, the term "binary-only modules" can't exist legally (with regards to the Linux kernel), and every binary-only module that do exist today are violating the GPL.
I think it's definitely desirable to open (or rather, Free) the source. There are other archs and other emulators that could benefit from a port of the technology, and there are Free Software ethics at stake which affect society, if nothing else.
:)
Yes, I didn't think about other archs. Some posters misunderstood my original question, I was wondering if this mod was near perfect (as opposed to really perfect), and that once it reached that stage it would be complete, and couldn't add anything more to QEMU on its own (it's a single module doing a spesific task after all).
But porting it to other architectures is definitly worthwhile, and freeing it would ensure compatibility with future kernels. I just didn't think about that
Open Sourcing the QEMU Accelerator Technology ?
As a supporter of open source, the author accepts to open source the QEMU Accelerator Technology provided a company invests enough money to support the project and to recompense the author from the potential loss of revenue. Interested companies can look at the roadmap and make suggestions to the author.
If it actually achieves near-native performance right now, how much better can it get? And since it's already gratis, would anyone want to pay for one that achives actual native performance?
I don't think there's much money up for grabs here, to be honest. But that depends on how good it really is right now.
No wonder there's war and terror in the world when we have people like you. Haven't you considered just for a second that the reason we have exactly war and terror is because some people can't figure out how to leave others alone?
They look down on our society the same way you look down on them, claiming that your way is "the right way", not even considering you might be wrong. They don't want our filthy lives, living like whores and without morals, where money is everything and people are worth nothing. They want a society where women aren't jugded by their looks, where family stick together, where the childern listens and follows the advice of their parents, and where people don't have sex before marrige, and they live in that society.
What I just wrote isn't "the great truth" about muslim/middle east countries, but I am illustrating a point here. You are as much wrong as they are, and they are as much right as you are. It's just another way of looking at and living life. The only way to have peace and freedom in this world is if people like you start to respect other people and cultures for the values that they have, instead of marching ahead with you're ideas of what's right and wrong. The world simply isn't black and white, remember that at least one in five people in the entire world disagree with you (those being muslims).
Yes, I think a lot of their culture down there is discriminating women, and I think they have a lot of wrong morals despite what they say. But most of the time *they* don't think so. They are happy, everyone's just happy. Who knows, even the average person down there lives a happier, better life than in the western world? They have to want the change themselves. If they don't want our society, we can't force them. Just imagine if the US had a mayor money-crack or something, and the middle west (the only ones with a working economy) started invading the US and whatnot and demanded we all switch to muslim culture. Would that be fair? Would we like that?
They like their culture just as much as we like ours. They think their culture is just as "good" as we think ours is. There is no absolute right, and there is no absolute wrong. Western society has it's share of horrible discrimination, wars and other terrible things, and middle east countries certainly has their share as well. I'm not saying they're perfect, far from it. That's not the point.
There is no black or white, there are only grays. In fact, statisticly you might even be wrong. That is, there might be more people living on this world that are happy living their non-western-lives as they are now, and disagree with what you just posted, than there are people agreeing with you. Just like we would oppose the change they might try to force upon us some day.
Just like I can't force you to agree with me. I will not try to force you to believe in more respect for other cultures, you are entitled to your own opinion. I just think other non-western countries are too.
(And for the record, I do actually think certain aspects of their culture needs change, but I also believe they must want it themselves, which is the point I'm trying to get across.)
Who modded this flamebait? Is Darl somehow given modpoints on slashdot or something? I laughed my ass off reading that, great stuff!
Windows that shrink scale and move all over the fucking place with cool animations
Yes, sounds... nice. And easy to work with.
He thinks everyone is entitled to his opinion, and from all indications is opposed to diversity of opinion if it doesn't conform to his own. In my mind, that is not freedom.
Yes, I agree he is quite "agressive", if that's the right term. And I too sometimes feel he's pushing it a bit too far (I've just listened to a speech from Kuhn, and he seems easier to agree with), but I still feel Stallman isn't doing this for his personal interests though. He might like it, all the attention and so forth, but I still think his motivation is Free Software, and that he puts that first, before himself. (Or at least I hope so.)
Cheers,
Christoffer
That might sound paradoxical when said about Stallman in particular...but do some research on the man, have a good long think about it, and see what you come up with...you might be very surprised. For the purposes of Linux users, Stallman can definitely be considered an ally...but personally I think "friend" would be too strong a word. The man has his own agenda...and not one that necessarily coincides with everyone else's best interests.
The only thing that proves is that everything is relative. You can easily put things out of perspective and into another context, and everything will seem different.
He is the firm believer behind Free software. It's not his God-given job to promote free software, he does so because he wants to, he wants to use his energy for this purpose. If someone had stepped up with equal belifes and equal enthusiasm, there would be plenty of room for both of them. But no one is, so RMS is only filling a role that so far he's best at. He put himself in that role, and no one else has tried the same. Eg. Linus doesn't even want that role, eventhough a lot of programmers want him as a voice for F/OSS. How does that make RMS egocentric?
Stallman at one point criticised the XFree86 group for using a BSD-like license, calling them sellouts who were doing such in order to ensure that X gained popularity...and he then turned around later and did exactly the same thing with the creation of the LGPL. He actually cites software popularity as part of the reason for the creation of the LGPL. He might not remember this particular inconsistency...I, however, do.
I can't speak for RMS, but no one is perfect and I believe everyone has a right to change their mind. I don't see this as a bad thing at all, so what if he became more liberal? I often change my mind about things, and I expect others to as well. If you never change your mind about anything, you will go through life completely static, and you'll never experience personal growth. I believe it's much better to have an open mind than a closed one.
If he's been confronted with this and denied it or whatever, then sure enough he should be rightfully criticised. It doesn't look like that's the case here though, if he cited "software popularity" as one of the reasons behind LGPL, it looks to me like he's openly admitting to just changing his mind.
He is very strict about some wierd stuff, like GNU/Linux and the likes, but saying he's got his own agenda is putting all sorts of funky thoughts into peoples heads that have nothing to do with RMS.
This is the point that RMS is trying to make about copyright. He says sharing music should be legal.
The reason for this is exactly what we're seeing here: the artist are being screwed over by the record companies. If you're a "to be" artist, you need someone to record your songs, distribute them and give you PR. Either you sign the standard (awfull) contract, or you get nothing. Of course they sign it, they want to be artists, right?
If music distribution on the net was legal, artists wouldn't be so much under the mercy of the record companies (which you can see they are taking advantage of). They would get their PR through filesharing, more people would go to their concerts (if they're any good), and they would make more money (income from concerts are mostly theirs to keep). Instead, they're getting fucked over by the record companies, and the only option is not to be an artist at all.
The exception for this are the artists that have sold their 7 records or so, because then the contract expires. Then they are in the situation to renegotiate, and they can actually get a contract that's good for them, so that they earn money.
So big stars earn big bucks, and they will loose money if music sharing is legal, but small artists will definitly win.
Those are basicly the words of RMS, and when I hear examples like this they make sense.
I second that. What an incredibly stupid statement. Like as if they are the ones deciding what is known and what isn't, like as if they must know more than anyone, so if *they* don't know, nobody does.
I mean, why do viruses exist in the first place? Is it because they exploit open, known vulnerabilities? Or is it because crackers *find* vulnerabilites to exploit?
Talk about stupid.
What I've read on the topic says they chose to send twice as many images divided between both channels instead of redundancy (but a lot of pictures even with one channel not working), and they chose to only send the doppler data on channel 2.
Except for that, all other data on the two channels were equal, thus giving full redundancy. The specifically chose not to have any redundancy for the doppler data, for reasons I don't know of.
How do you suggest GNU/Linux should approach/embrace the "secure computing" initiative, or is it impossible since it's free software?
Then, they call you back and expect you to come right over and fix it "right." In their mind, they paid you to fix the computer and the computer doesn't work.
That's odd, I feel it's the other way 'round. Whenever I'm doing someone a favour, that favour "hangs in the air", and I might get that favour back someday when I need it, but I need something bigger done, so suddenly I owe them a favour. And this might continue, and so on.
But with money, when the job is done and I have the money in my hands, it's a common agreement that it's a "done deal". We're simply finished, the job's over. If there's another problem, then it's another job, and more money to be made.
The exceptions are my siblings and parents where I always do it for free. Anything else would be wierd.
I told him no thanks, please give me a price on 300+ Dimensions as I specified them.
He did give me a price, but when I went to my boss to get the check, I found out that the salesguy called him and told him to but the OptiPlex! Then my PHB believed the vendor, and I eventually got fired cuz I would not support them. (The drivers for the network card would not support the latest Windows)
Jesus Christ, you must really hate Dell then?
I wasn't trying to be pompous, I'm sorry if I came across that way. I was being picky, but I was being picky about something that caused confusion.
And no you can't do what troll tech does without buying a commercial license...I asked.
I'm not sure what you are referring to here. My point was that people think this other license somehow changes the behavoir of the GPL. It doesn't (that would contradict/violate the GPL). If one chooses to just follow the GPL and not care about the other license, it works like any other GPL program out there.
I hope I didn't create more fuss than I cleared up.