People aren't mad about the principle for the RIAA pursuing file-sharers of none-free copyrighted materials. They're mad about the extortionist fear-mongering tactics used and absurd penalties the RIAA is requesting.
Levying the same fine that they impose on commercial copyright violators at these kids whilst at the same time leveraging the fact these children can't afford to defend themselves properly smacks of the kind of bullying that should make the blood rise in any reasonable person.
First of all, my comment was with respect to people tossing disingenuous remarks at the FSF, and more to the point, Richard Stallman himself.
But, to make another point: people tend to not respond well to negative criticism... especially when its source is from people who have little knowledge in the first place of what they are talking about.
Personally, I'm sick and tired of people lambasting about the GPL for what appears to be an ever increasing list of complaints that easily summarize themselves to "I can't distribute code I got free in a closed binary-- you're discriminating against my freedom to leech of your work and keep it all to myself".
Nobody likes smartasses who just complain without ever contributing. This is true for any process, not just software.
What's even more humorous is having people who are zealots themselves about their own beliefs levy that insult at the FSF.
I don't agree with the FSF on a number of points. I take exception, however, at the unwarranted insults I've seen directed at them. Especially since the majority of the hecklers I've seen here on Slashdot have never contributed a line of open-source code in their lives.
It's a terrible name but you don't even give a single reason for your opinion? I think you'd better start on yourself with that cluestick.
"Worse yet, naming a project after an obscure occult reference is likely to be offensive to those of various religions."
LOL.. ok.. either you're dimwitted cause you didn't get the joke or you're just trolling... anyways... the fact you got modded insightful speaks volumes about the karma system these days.
in question will immeadiately be proceeding to massive price-cuts and increasing the coverage/risk of their policies due the now lowered risk of fraud. That, and fairly compensating anyone falsely accused by this "sophisticated technology" for lost time, aggrievment and blood-pressure increase.
You know, insurrance companies qualify for something lower than lawyers in my books. Witness the apparent world-wide increase in premiums due to 911. Of course that had nothing to do with the come-uppance they rightly received during the.com crash because of the greedy and reckless investing these companies engaged in.
Microsoft getting fined this way doesn't turn my crank at all. Also, I'm beginning to wonder why they allow jury trials for issues that are as technically complexe as this, nevermind allowing patents on processes and software in the first place...
This is as stupid a patent as they come: what's a plugin or an applet? Fundamentally it is all in the same family of idea as of linked libraries-- bloody fundamental to every piece of software out there -- except that in this case the software is dynamically downloaded by a browser and then executed within the security context of the browser.
521 million? I'm all for roasting Microsoft when they deserve it, but this is nothing they should have to pay for. Next thing you know Mozilla will get into trouble for having downloadable theme plugins.
I work for a small company that has managed to survive the tech downturn so far. So, from a small company that currently employs about 25 people, let me just say really loud: this kind of landmine would kill us dead.
Whilst nothing in our systems is so exceptionally original or complicated that it should warrant a patent, this news now means that all the obvious problems we've solved in developing our product so far are potentially vulnerable to being extorted by paper-idea profiteering sleezebags-- and it's all legal and fair according to Uncle Sam.
The only good thing that might come out of this situation is it might wake up america's sleeping legislators and force them to face and solve this situation that is quickly escalating to an environment lethal to REAL innovation.
Why should anyone try to start a business on the internet in this climate? Every idea you come up with is susceptible to having a prior patent claim the way things seem to be currently working. It's already bloody hard enough to start a business without having to worry that the processes you want to implement are owned by USPTO licenced crook who is going to wait until it hurts-not-to-pay to come collect on you.
I originally thought he was suggesting some manner of pseudocode that his custom compiler would understand but no others would.
I guess what he's really talking about is having the compiler miss-parse the GPLed code on the fly as it compiles so that the modifications end up in the final binary produced.
I still think this circumvents the "preferred form of the work" clause in the GPL. That is, ultimately, in order to test and debug the code properly, the developer would have had to work with the original GPLed code and modify it. In the end then, how the binary form of that work is produced wouldn't matter, since it contains the code of the preferred form of the work.
Perhaps I didn't explain myself properly. I meant that you'd have to go to the trouble of producing an error-free version of gcc that compiled your none standard code properly. Code that you yourself develop and work on-- not some obfuscated version.
As I said, this might keep people at large from figuring out what what was done, but I'm not seeing how this could be valuable in keeping smart people from figuring out the program logic of the modified GPLed software.
Basically you are saying this: If I modify a GPL project so that it contains my none-standard code that can only be compiled by a modified version of gcc I am not distributing, am I in compliance with the GPL as long as I distribute my none-standard modified code?
The GPL states that: The source code for a work means the preferred form of the work for making modifications to it. For an executable work, complete source code means all the source code for all modules it contains, plus any associated interface definition files, plus the scripts used to control compilation and installation of the executable.
This limits the obfuscation tactics drastically since you must be distributing code you work on itself. Ultimately, you might be able to produce a system whereby the code you write is only understandable by your special compiler, but it will still be code that will be human-readable and follow a flow of programming logic.
This tactic will annoy people at large, but won't prevent the smart people from reproducing exactly what your code is doing... which will make the effort described rather pointless. Because, after all, if you are trying to do something worthwhile enough to expend the effort to do that code trickery, there will be smart people interested in seeing what you are doing. Also, since gcc itself is GPLed, you'll have to be making an error-free compiler all-by-yourself.
And, in the end, all of that so you can circumvent the intents of the author who was gracious enough to let you use their software for free.
I have a hard time seeing industry not doing the same-- even if it is kicking and screaming. Actually, I'm kinda hoping this transition to IPv6 will kickstart hightech spending and put this economic lull to an end... GWB might want to think of doing that instead of tax breaks.. anyways.
The stack could have been released under the LGPL and accomplished all the benefits you described.
In fact, this GPL FUD Microsoft loves to spread around like a nasty fart always fails to make mention of the fact that significant elements of Linux are in fact LGPLed and available to companies that wish to write commercial software for the OS. Witness the incoporation of khtml into Apple's Safari browser.
There are some very interesting and compelling technologies coming to linux in 2.6 that, in my opinion, obviously have certain competing OS companies running scared.
IP FUD was the expected strategy Microsoft would undertake; Take this statement from Mr Gates:
"One thing about the GPL is that you can't just license IBM Linux, or Red Hat Linux, The way the GPL works, if you license any Linux, you have to license all Linux." This leaves an un-informed person the impression that they might have to make deals with everysingle Linux vendor/software writer out there. Total utterly dishonest bullshit and a blatant missrepresentation of the GPL.
I can dig competing for my labor costs on the strength of my skills, but I can't compete with developers who make $5,850 a year, because I can't even rent a hole in the wall in my city for that yearly income, let alone feed myself.
Do we really want to 'Flint, Michigan' the entire high-tech industry? At the very least, lets insist that only countries with similar social standards as ours can get looked at for this kind of expatriation of jobs. Personally, I'm not interested in returning to the days of the Industrial Revolution where workers had no rights-- cause thats what it's like in many third-world countries.
What the hell, lets just expatriate everything... I'm sure we can find dollar-a-day workers for it all over there-- course by then they'll be nobody to pay the lawyers and buy the goods they want to sell to us-- at least the lawyers will all die of hunger too, thats should be a good thing.
It's interesting to see them perpetrate a violation of copyright by invoking copyright rights. As everyone knows and has been full well documented here, SCO gave up the right to impose this kind of binary-only exclusions when it distributed Linux previously under the GPL.
This story is really just about more provocation from SCO and I am wondering if these actions are just manuvering to get IBM to make a mistake. I would be really interested to hear somebody with legal expertise give an opinion on why SCO is moving this way even without ever having received any manner of judgement in the case against IBM -- that is if it's anything more than what appears to be SCO obviously trying to keep media attention on its case because it has nothing to lose.
BSD: groovy, take it man, go ahead, make money from my work and close it up.
GPL: want it for Free? Then make yours Free too. Want to keep it closed and sell your derivative? Pay me money and I'll give you another license.
Free in the BSD sense is very noble and the BSDs have given so much. For me though, given the way everything today is becoming "intellectual property, DMCAed etc..", I just can't digest the idea of somebody making my work THEIR property (closed and commercial) and never seeing a penny of reward.
They're cost-equivalent to ultimate PCs -- not just any PC. But, if you factor in the value of getting a 64bit processor then they are cheaper in my opinion. (I did my comparisons with a fully decked-out Dell XPS)
Performance wise, a 900$ 2.6Ghz P4 beats any of the G4 i/emacs simply by virtue of the 400Mhz memory bus you get with the P4 machines now. But we're talking about the G5 tower which is also a good deal cheaper than the G4 tower.
Anyways, I empathize with what you're saying cause it's still a load of cash to come up with. The G5 I want comes to 5k+ CND$ for me.. but thats cause I wanna get the dual processor (looking at getting a loan for the first time since I've been buying computers). The dual G5 2gig will age well I think, so I'm betting it'll be worth it.
I guess the real point I want to make is: would I spend 5k+ CND$ on a current day PC? No way. Incidentally, the G4 was never worth the price premium for me; but the G5 is. Plus, the mac has other value that price alone doesn't drive.
I told him Mozilla was immune to all of the ActiveX datamining/privacy invasion crap out there. Factor in pop-up control and the fact Mozilla is more standards compliant and he was sold.
(One such site I ran into whilst testing something re-directs you to Microsoft.com after which the "install this active-x control" dialog pops up-- obviously trying to trick users into thinking it was a Microsoft sourced control.)
Getting flash for mozilla is easy now because Macromedia installer recognizes Mozilla and will install its plugin for it. I think the Sun java one does too, but it's been a while so I don't remember.
Thats the beauty of Linux for me.. vendors can sell whatever they want, bundle whatever they want and I, as the consumer, can choose to keep or ditch all of it-- and roll my own version of their distro.
Nobody I know begrudges Microsoft bundling whatever they hell they want. They get aggravated because Microsoft ships it with a "and you will like it" attitude.
I originally fancied Linux because I recognized how much freedom it gave me. Years later, looking at how the market attitudes have so changed, I cherish Linux for being the only OS that absolutely confers to me the right to choose what I want and don't want to run on my computer.
Obviously... the point of original statement, was that a 64bit platform (which, last I checked, includes the kernel and libraries needed for software) allows people to solve problems such as time_t -- which was just a simple example I thought of on the fly -- without coding changes and by just recompiling them for that platform.
The problem of un-available 3rd party 64bit libraries is solved by my company by insisting we get source with libraries we use. It is also solved by having compiler warnings for dangerous pointer arithemetic and having coding practices.
Anyways.... Personally, I find the being able to play with a 2^64 value in a single general-purpose register quite sexy and am glad I won't have to be waiting on Intel for affordable 64bit computers.
Missunderstanding a post isn't a reason to be rude.
Sorry to hear compiling is such a chore for you. I like to write my software so that it re-compiles very easily. In fact we re-compile our 900k+ lines of code every night.
Slashdot Mirror
People aren't mad about the principle for the RIAA pursuing file-sharers of none-free copyrighted materials. They're mad about the extortionist fear-mongering tactics used and absurd penalties the RIAA is requesting.
Levying the same fine that they impose on commercial copyright violators at these kids whilst at the same time leveraging the fact these children can't afford to defend themselves properly smacks of the kind of bullying that should make the blood rise in any reasonable person.
I'd be really interested to see the portions of the EULAs you mention. If you have the time, please post them to Slashdot here.
Thanks.
Now, if I was teaching a course on "how to make your hair go grey trying to implement your UI design with a toolkit", I'd choose MFC.
First of all, my comment was with respect to people tossing disingenuous remarks at the FSF, and more to the point, Richard Stallman himself.
But, to make another point: people tend to not respond well to negative criticism... especially when its source is from people who have little knowledge in the first place of what they are talking about.
Personally, I'm sick and tired of people lambasting about the GPL for what appears to be an ever increasing list of complaints that easily summarize themselves to "I can't distribute code I got free in a closed binary-- you're discriminating against my freedom to leech of your work and keep it all to myself".
Nobody likes smartasses who just complain without ever contributing. This is true for any process, not just software.
What's even more humorous is having people who are zealots themselves about their own beliefs levy that insult at the FSF.
I don't agree with the FSF on a number of points. I take exception, however, at the unwarranted insults I've seen directed at them. Especially since the majority of the hecklers I've seen here on Slashdot have never contributed a line of open-source code in their lives.
It's a terrible name but you don't even give a single reason for your opinion? I think you'd better start on yourself with that cluestick.
"Worse yet, naming a project after an obscure occult reference is likely to be offensive to those of various religions."
LOL.. ok.. either you're dimwitted cause you didn't get the joke or you're just trolling... anyways... the fact you got modded insightful speaks volumes about the karma system these days.
in question will immeadiately be proceeding to massive price-cuts and increasing the coverage/risk of their policies due the now lowered risk of fraud. That, and fairly compensating anyone falsely accused by this "sophisticated technology" for lost time, aggrievment and blood-pressure increase.
.com crash because of the greedy and reckless investing these companies engaged in.
You know, insurrance companies qualify for something lower than lawyers in my books. Witness the apparent world-wide increase in premiums due to 911. Of course that had nothing to do with the come-uppance they rightly received during the
Microsoft getting fined this way doesn't turn my crank at all. Also, I'm beginning to wonder why they allow jury trials for issues that are as technically complexe as this, nevermind allowing patents on processes and software in the first place...
This is as stupid a patent as they come: what's a plugin or an applet? Fundamentally it is all in the same family of idea as of linked libraries-- bloody fundamental to every piece of software out there -- except that in this case the software is dynamically downloaded by a browser and then executed within the security context of the browser.
521 million? I'm all for roasting Microsoft when they deserve it, but this is nothing they should have to pay for. Next thing you know Mozilla will get into trouble for having downloadable theme plugins.
I work for a small company that has managed to survive the tech downturn so far. So, from a small company that currently employs about 25 people, let me just say really loud: this kind of landmine would kill us dead.
Whilst nothing in our systems is so exceptionally original or complicated that it should warrant a patent, this news now means that all the obvious problems we've solved in developing our product so far are potentially vulnerable to being extorted by paper-idea profiteering sleezebags-- and it's all legal and fair according to Uncle Sam.
The only good thing that might come out of this situation is it might wake up america's sleeping legislators and force them to face and solve this situation that is quickly escalating to an environment lethal to REAL innovation.
Why should anyone try to start a business on the internet in this climate? Every idea you come up with is susceptible to having a prior patent claim the way things seem to be currently working. It's already bloody hard enough to start a business without having to worry that the processes you want to implement are owned by USPTO licenced crook who is going to wait until it hurts-not-to-pay to come collect on you.
Any strategist would tell you that if you want to win, you don't pick fights with everyone you see.
I'm seriously thinking it's time to call in the men in the white suits and get Mc Bride strapped up and thrown into a padded room for his own good.
"anti-virus software", "desktop license management agents"
Apparently you've confused Linux for a version of Windows.
This kind of sysadmin crap is why I prefer working for a small company.
I originally thought he was suggesting some manner of pseudocode that his custom compiler would understand but no others would.
I guess what he's really talking about is having the compiler miss-parse the GPLed code on the fly as it compiles so that the modifications end up in the final binary produced.
I still think this circumvents the "preferred form of the work" clause in the GPL. That is, ultimately, in order to test and debug the code properly, the developer would have had to work with the original GPLed code and modify it. In the end then, how the binary form of that work is produced wouldn't matter, since it contains the code of the preferred form of the work.
Perhaps I didn't explain myself properly. I meant that you'd have to go to the trouble of producing an error-free version of gcc that compiled your none standard code properly. Code that you yourself develop and work on-- not some obfuscated version.
As I said, this might keep people at large from figuring out what what was done, but I'm not seeing how this could be valuable in keeping smart people from figuring out the program logic of the modified GPLed software.
Basically you are saying this:
If I modify a GPL project so that it contains my none-standard code that can only be compiled by a modified version of gcc I am not distributing, am I in compliance with the GPL as long as I distribute my none-standard modified code?
The GPL states that:
The source code for a work means the preferred form of the work for making modifications to it. For an executable work, complete source code means all the source code for all modules it contains, plus any associated interface definition files, plus the scripts used to control compilation and installation of the executable.
This limits the obfuscation tactics drastically since you must be distributing code you work on itself. Ultimately, you might be able to produce a system whereby the code you write is only understandable by your special compiler, but it will still be code that will be human-readable and follow a flow of programming logic.
This tactic will annoy people at large, but won't prevent the smart people from reproducing exactly what your code is doing... which will make the effort described rather pointless. Because, after all, if you are trying to do something worthwhile enough to expend the effort to do that code trickery, there will be smart people interested in seeing what you are doing. Also, since gcc itself is GPLed, you'll have to be making an error-free compiler all-by-yourself.
And, in the end, all of that so you can circumvent the intents of the author who was gracious enough to let you use their software for free.
http://slashdot.org/article.pl?sid=03/06/13/194120 6&mode=thread&tid=95
I have a hard time seeing industry not doing the same-- even if it is kicking and screaming.
Actually, I'm kinda hoping this transition to IPv6 will kickstart hightech spending and put this economic lull to an end... GWB might want to think of doing that instead of tax breaks.. anyways.
The stack could have been released under the LGPL and accomplished all the benefits you described.
In fact, this GPL FUD Microsoft loves to spread around like a nasty fart always fails to make mention of the fact that significant elements of Linux are in fact LGPLed and available to companies that wish to write commercial software for the OS. Witness the incoporation of khtml into Apple's Safari browser.
There are some very interesting and compelling technologies coming to linux in 2.6 that, in my opinion, obviously have certain competing OS companies running scared.
IP FUD was the expected strategy Microsoft would undertake; Take this statement from Mr Gates:
"One thing about the GPL is that you can't just license IBM Linux, or Red Hat Linux, The way the GPL works, if you license any Linux, you have to license all Linux."
This leaves an un-informed person the impression that they might have to make deals with everysingle Linux vendor/software writer out there. Total utterly dishonest bullshit and a blatant missrepresentation of the GPL.
I can dig competing for my labor costs on the strength of my skills, but I can't compete with developers who make $5,850 a year, because I can't even rent a hole in the wall in my city for that yearly income, let alone feed myself.
Do we really want to 'Flint, Michigan' the entire high-tech industry? At the very least, lets insist that only countries with similar social standards as ours can get looked at for this kind of expatriation of jobs.
Personally, I'm not interested in returning to the days of the Industrial Revolution where workers had no rights-- cause thats what it's like in many third-world countries.
What the hell, lets just expatriate everything... I'm sure we can find dollar-a-day workers for it all over there-- course by then they'll be nobody to pay the lawyers and buy the goods they want to sell to us-- at least the lawyers will all die of hunger too, thats should be a good thing.
It's interesting to see them perpetrate a violation of copyright by invoking copyright rights. As everyone knows and has been full well documented here, SCO gave up the right to impose this kind of binary-only exclusions when it distributed Linux previously under the GPL.
This story is really just about more provocation from SCO and I am wondering if these actions are just manuvering to get IBM to make a mistake. I would be really interested to hear somebody with legal expertise give an opinion on why SCO is moving this way even without ever having received any manner of judgement in the case against IBM -- that is if it's anything more than what appears to be SCO obviously trying to keep media attention on its case because it has nothing to lose.
BSD: groovy, take it man, go ahead, make money from my work and close it up.
GPL: want it for Free? Then make yours Free too. Want to keep it closed and sell your derivative? Pay me money and I'll give you another license.
Free in the BSD sense is very noble and the BSDs have given so much. For me though, given the way everything today is becoming "intellectual property, DMCAed etc..", I just can't digest the idea of somebody making my work THEIR property (closed and commercial) and never seeing a penny of reward.
They're cost-equivalent to ultimate PCs -- not just any PC. But, if you factor in the value of getting a 64bit processor then they are cheaper in my opinion. (I did my comparisons with a fully decked-out Dell XPS)
Performance wise, a 900$ 2.6Ghz P4 beats any of the G4 i/emacs simply by virtue of the 400Mhz memory bus you get with the P4 machines now. But we're talking about the G5 tower which is also a good deal cheaper than the G4 tower.
Anyways, I empathize with what you're saying cause it's still a load of cash to come up with. The G5 I want comes to 5k+ CND$ for me.. but thats cause I wanna get the dual processor (looking at getting a loan for the first time since I've been buying computers). The dual G5 2gig will age well I think, so I'm betting it'll be worth it.
I guess the real point I want to make is: would I spend 5k+ CND$ on a current day PC? No way.
Incidentally, the G4 was never worth the price premium for me; but the G5 is. Plus, the mac has other value that price alone doesn't drive.
They just need to put in a call to their favorite guy, Ashcroft, and get him to tell the lawyers to backoff.
I told him Mozilla was immune to all of the ActiveX datamining/privacy invasion crap out there. Factor in pop-up control and the fact Mozilla is more standards compliant and he was sold.
(One such site I ran into whilst testing something re-directs you to Microsoft.com after which the "install this active-x control" dialog pops up-- obviously trying to trick users into thinking it was a Microsoft sourced control.)
Getting flash for mozilla is easy now because Macromedia installer recognizes Mozilla and will install its plugin for it. I think the Sun java one does too, but it's been a while so I don't remember.
Thats the beauty of Linux for me.. vendors can sell whatever they want, bundle whatever they want and I, as the consumer, can choose to keep or ditch all of it-- and roll my own version of their distro.
Nobody I know begrudges Microsoft bundling whatever they hell they want. They get aggravated because Microsoft ships it with a "and you will like it" attitude.
I originally fancied Linux because I recognized how much freedom it gave me. Years later, looking at how the market attitudes have so changed, I cherish Linux for being the only OS that absolutely confers to me the right to choose what I want and don't want to run on my computer.
Obviously... the point of original statement, was that a 64bit platform (which, last I checked, includes the kernel and libraries needed for software) allows people to solve problems such as time_t -- which was just a simple example I thought of on the fly -- without coding changes and by just recompiling them for that platform.
The problem of un-available 3rd party 64bit libraries is solved by my company by insisting we get source with libraries we use. It is also solved by having compiler warnings for dangerous pointer arithemetic and having coding practices.
Anyways.... Personally, I find the being able to play with a 2^64 value in a single general-purpose register quite sexy and am glad I won't have to be waiting on Intel for affordable 64bit computers.
Missunderstanding a post isn't a reason to be rude.
Sorry to hear compiling is such a chore for you. I like to write my software so that it re-compiles very easily. In fact we re-compile our 900k+ lines of code every night.