Well, IMHO you should certainly have included Bruce Perens and SPI in on the discussion, because regardless of who "owns" the Open Source certification mark, they have a direct stake in the use of the name.
Anyone beyond that I would consider optional, depending on the circumstances. RMS would be a good bet, since he is a highly respected voice on licensing, and has done more research into the issues than most other people.
Poling public forums like slashdot would make sense in some cases, it would give air to the issues, and it would help include the community in the decision. Just like in the Bazaar model of computing, opening a proposed license up to public scrutiny could expose flaws you didn't realize. You could even replace the company name with "Widget, Inc." if the company doesn't want their plans to be public.
My biggest problem with the way OSI seems to negotiate licenses is that, from an outsider's viewpoint, the discussions seem to focus on loopholes and legalese, attempting to squeeze the license into the Open Source definition. This process appears to have more regard for the company's lawyers than the users Freedom. In my opinion, having companies writing Free Software is a good thing, but not critical to the survival of the community. If the company wants to get the Open Source brand, they should be committed to writing Free Software, not trying to find how much they can get away with within the bounds OSD so they can use the "Open Source" label in marketing.
You're trying to rewrite history. Eric's "open message" was a response to Bruce's public criticisms.
No, ESR put it in public debate by not consulting the other parties involved with the Open Source trademark (i.e. SPI and Bruce Perens) before labeling the APSL "Open Source". Since he didn't consult them, why should they consult him before replying? Eric's "open message" where he tried to justify his original decision came later, I wasn't talking about it at all.
The way I see it, there exists a piece of intellectual property (the Open Source certification mark). The lawyers are trying to figure out who owns it. In the mean time, the parties involved can either work together (i.e. talking before announcing something is "Open Source"), or apart (i.e. the bickering we see now). Something tells me that working together with SPI and Perens is probably in OSI's best interest.
Using a public forum to discuss personal misperceptions would be a problem, but that wasn't the case here. What we saw with the APSL was an open, public debate as to whether or not the APSL was worthy of carrying the Open Source certification mark. ESR was the one that forced that into the public arena, not Bruce, Ian and whoever the third guy was.
The fact that it the debate was open and public was not because they wanted to roast ESR, but because the issue started out with an open message by ESR, and the whole conflict over the ownership and guardianship of the Open Source certification mark certainly made moving the issue to private discussion difficult.
It might not have been the best way to handle the situation, but I don't see how they had any good ways open to them. If I were in their shoes, I might have done the same thing.
I would certainly agree that the level of flames directed at ESR, and other notable members of the community (eg. RMS, Linus Torvalds and Bruce Perens) has been much higher than it should be. If you disagree with someone, a well reasoned argument is far more effective than a flame. On the other hand, if you can't take the heat, get out of the oven.
ESR has been here for a very long time, he should be very familiar with flaming. He should have known that by trying to speak for the "Open Source Movement" he is setting himself up for flaming. If such a person can't handle the heat, they should get out of the oven.
ESR explains his job as My job, the job I've been doing one way or another ever since picking up the Jargon File in 1990, is to describe and explain and reflect the values of the tribe of hackers. Not to lead it.... That job, I have no problem with, I think he has done it well. The Jargon File, the Cathedral and the Bazaar, Homesteading in the Noosphere, all of these are excellent essays. I may not agree with every point made in them, but they are still very useful and important works, he should be applauded for them.
But with his position in the OSI, he has been trying to lead, regardless of how much he denies it. He has tried to lead Businesses to change to his view of what a license should be, and he has tried to lead the various hacker communities to accept his view of what a license should be. When the APSL issue came up, it became clear to me that I don't agree with what he thinks a license should be.
My problem is not with Apple, they acted in good faith from everything I've seen. My problem is with ESR telling Apple that if they do their license his way, people like me will be happy with it. I can't speak for "people like me", and my opinion won't affect Apple one way or another (I have no plans to get MacOS X Server). But if ESR insists so vehemently (more vehemently than Apple, who apparently plans to change the APSL) that the license is "Open Source", than I have to say the term "Open Source" becomes useless to me, since I won't be able to trust that an "Open Source" license gives me the freedom I want in my software. I'm not saying that all companies should switch licenses to my definition of Free, I am saying that ESR's drive to get companies to change their licenses is pointless as far as I'm concerned, since they aren't coming up with Free Software licenses.
If ESR is looking to get someone to replace him in his stated job as anthropologist to the hackers, I will be sad. He is the best person for that job. If he is looking to get someone to replace him in leading the community away from freedom, I say it is a job better left undone. And no, I don't think that loss of freedom was his intent, I think it is a side effect of him picking an impossible task to do, and the compromises that had to be made to attempt it.
While I agree with many of the points made in the article, I disagree with just as many, and with the final conclusion.
My biggest problem with the articles is it blurs all distinctions. It lumps new users who are trying to lear with new users who aren't. It lumps hackers together with sysadmins, users and power users. Because of this, its argument boils down to "Because there are new users who don't care enough to learn how to administer a system, we should ignore new users".
First off, I think that new users who want to learn should be encouraged, not frightened off. Secondly, I disagree that only hackers and sysadmins should be using Linux.
Linux is essentially Unix in structure. That means it offers good security to keep mere users from trashing the system. That means that it is far far superior to Windows or Macintosh solutions when it comes to giving users desktop machines to do their work without administration headaches. These users only need to know how to do their job on the machine, they have a sysadmin to make sure the security and configuration is handled.
He scoffs at GUI's, yet where I work, a GUI is critical. We do mostly CAD work, and I have yet to see a useful CAD system that doesn't use a GUI (The older AutoCAD for DOS doesn't count, they essentially made their own GUI). I am glad to see he is happy without a GUI, but he should realize that they are important to more than just the "we want an easy point and click interface" crowd.
I do, however share is viewpoint that distributions like RedHat are encouraging the same trend I have seen with Windows NT. They both let users who should barely be touching a computer think that they can be systems administrators, when they really have no idea of what is going on under the hood. At least with RedHat, the hood isn't welded shut.
Agreed! One thing that many people don't seem to realize is that rape and fraud are risks that people have been taking in getting to know people long before the internet became an issue. Personal ads and penpal networks have always had these problems, but the media didn't make a big stink about it.
I've got mixed feelings about the attention the media does give such cases. Hopefully it will raise awareness so people will be more careful. On the downside, you get scary attitudes developing like the Sheriff mentioned in this article, by people who don't have a grasp of the full issue.
It is easy to conceal who you are through email or snail mail. It is foolhardy to assume that a person is safe, just because you think you know him from correspondence. But just because Kira489 was a little foolish doesn't make her at all responsible for the rape.
I for one think rapists (this one included) should be decapitated. The lower "head" for the first offense (plus prison, of course), and the upper head for the second.
minor nitpick: "weary" means tired, "wary" means cautious. I think you meant "wary" in your heading.
I thought Solaris primarily used Type1 fonts. Type 1 fonts are easy to install in Linux. (although I don't know how XFree86's rasterizer compares to Sun's).
I don't see that as the difference between RMS and ESR at all. You make it sound like RMS wishes to exploit software, when what he wants is a community of hackers, sharing Free Software. He pushes his principles and the GPL so strongly because he feels that it is the best chance we have of ever seeing his dream. ESR, on the other hand has a different dream, he wants to see big business sitting at the same table as hackers, on equal footing. The trouble is ESR has shown himself to be willing to compromise on his principles to achieve his dream. Worse, he has positioned himself so when he compromises his principles, it appears as if we compromise ours. I am glad to see him retiring, he was much better as the anthropologist of the hacker community than as the spokesman of Open Source.
I certainly agree that if BSD and Linux used a license like some of the recent ones we've seen from the companies, neither would be as good as they are today.
Think about what his essay said - do you think you could do his job better? Free software would have probably still broken through without him at some point, but would it have done it as fast or as thoroughly as it has.
I certainly don't think I could do what ESR did better than he did it. Even though I disagree with many of the positions he took, I am surprised at how well he did what he set out to do.
Personally, I think the thought of a community this large having one spokesperson is silly. Take a closer look, and see that what might appear to the suits as one community is actually several communities with many common interests, and the idea becomes insane. I think that's why ESR started by evangelizing Open Source to business, but fell into the trap of evangelizing businesses to the various communities, it was the only way to wring something possible out of the herculean task he set out for himself. But we don't want to hear about all these corporations who want to be our friends, we just want to see more code under good licenses.
Rather than replace ESR, I think it would be best for all for him to retire back to coding, and his self-appointed position can fade quietly. If businesses want to come to us, that's fine there are plenty of people they can talk to, once they do their homework. I see no need for us to go out and attract businesses the way ESR wants us to do.
In repeated press releases and articles, RedHat has made their LSB position clear. They like the idea, they will support the process (Note that they are LSB members), but they won't commit to complying with the standard until they actually can read a final standard.
While I would be happier if they committed to complying, I understand their reluctance, and I don't see the big deal. Once the LSB is actually out, we can lambast them if they don't comply. Until then, I think it's safe to assume that they will do the sane thing, and follow standards.
Postscript has many problems that would prevent it from being the protocol for IPP. First, as you've already pointed out, it is pretty proprietary. Secondly, it is a page definition language, not a printer control language. There is no standard way using Postscript to, for example, tell it to print out duplex, or to wait for the operator to load 35# bond letterhead paper, or to colate and staple. These are all things that people need to tell their printers, and Postscript wasn't designed for this level of communication. Hopefully IPP would be.
In most Linux distributions (and most other operating systems as well), the core internet tools, from finger and telnet, to DNS and named are BSD in both heritage and license. There are some other common BSD items (like ld.so and tcsh), but internet tools are the big ones.
Most of the system tools, the compiler, the binutils, the shell, the library, emacs, are GNU in heritage and GPL in license.
Both BSD and GNU are critical to any Linux distribution. Tux should have GNU horns and a daemon tail.
XFree version 3 does not. It's on the todo list for XFree version 4.
If you are careful, I hear you can run two copies of XFree version 3 side-by-side for two different screens. I also hear you can run text consoles on one monitor while the other runs X.
Probably because it is an important question, one that many lurkers may be asking themselves. Sometimes the questions are more important than the answers. In this case, promoting the question made whatever answers it gathers more easily accessible.
They said an IPP printer gets a URL address. Nowhere did they say it uses HTTP. Having a URL doesn't mean HTTP.
The first piece of information in a URL is the protocol. Currently, the most common protocols used are http, ftp and mailto. There is nothing to stop them from petitioning the IETF for adding an ipp protocol to the URL standard. Such a protocol could have it's own security mechanism, default port, and so on. From everything I've seen, this is what they intend to do.
Disenchantment with the mainstream music industry is causing the decline in RIAA CD Sales.
Looking around locally (Albany, NY and NYC), I see the big chain record stores doing poorly, and the smaller independant stores doing well. I like seeing this. The independant stores are offering more of what people want: used music, local artists (often self-published, it's cheap to get your CD burnt in small batches now), and DJ Mixes (also self-published).
Music is all about freedom of expression. The freedom of the artist to make the music they want, and the freedom of the listener to set their style by the music they select. The RIAA and its member companies have been trying to play with this freedom, and it's now starting to backfire on them.
The self-published music industry started the decline in CD sales. MP3 is just another few nails in the RIAA's coffin. The RIAA blames it on the MP3's to divert attention from the real reason, because they don't want people to realize how a talented musician can make it without their "help". You can't really be a multi-million dollar megastar without them, but you can be a respected and fed musician with no help from the record labels.
Why should I have sent it to RMS? He has never touched the Open Source certification mark, OSI, SPI and Bruce Perens all have. In addition, he is on public record as disliking the entire Open Source program, so I doubt he would fight to protect their trademark.
I wouldn't want to give up that much speed on my desktop. On my desktop I can use a full keyboard. If I had a wearable, I couldn't have a real keyboard. Thus a BAT design, modified to be wearable, would be a good thing even if it was slower.
I think a much more elegant design is the BAT Keyboard. It's a chord keyboard design that does everything with seven standard pushbutton keys (not twiddly things like the twiddler).
If someone could take the BAT design, convert it into a high-quality membrane keyboard, and put it on an arm sleeve, that would be a great step forward for wearables.
I believe A, that it is just an overcautious misstep, but I have to treat it as B. Apple is a corporation, it is responsible not to any ethical ideal, but to its shareholders. If a situation arises where its shareholders value is threatened, Apple will change its attitudes on a dime. The same cannot be said for its contracts.
Even if Apple has the most benign intentions with this contract, nobody can guarantee that it will stay benign. Look at, for example, Apple's attitudes towards the Mac clone market. They were strongly against the clone market for a long time, then they loosened up and gave clonemakers MacOS licenses, then they got scared and used the wording of their license contracts to kill the entire market.
Regardless of whether or not you think their changing attitude was good, it was a change of attitude which hurt some companies with bad contracts. Since there are no guarantees that something similar won't happen with the APSL, you have to assume they will try, and encourage them to make the license ironclad so they won't be legally able to get away with it.
I sent an email to OSI, SPI and Bruce Perens (covering all bases:-) about that attribution. Someone at OSI checked, found that the original press release from Apple did not contain the attribution. It was the website's error in adding this statement, and they were sent an official nasty letter for doing so.
C'mon now, why does Katz get to plug his book every week? Can I do the same for my favorite authors? Its only fair, after all.
He gets to plug his book every week because he has something new and interesting to say about it every week. You can do the same for your favorite authors, but unless you are saying something new or interesting, I doubt the story will make it online.
If you don't think that his writing is interesting, go to preferences, and click his button. His articles won't bother you again.
Slashdot Mirror
Well, IMHO you should certainly have included Bruce Perens and SPI in on the discussion, because regardless of who "owns" the Open Source certification mark, they have a direct stake in the use of the name.
Anyone beyond that I would consider optional, depending on the circumstances. RMS would be a good bet, since he is a highly respected voice on licensing, and has done more research into the issues than most other people.
Poling public forums like slashdot would make sense in some cases, it would give air to the issues, and it would help include the community in the decision. Just like in the Bazaar model of computing, opening a proposed license up to public scrutiny could expose flaws you didn't realize. You could even replace the company name with "Widget, Inc." if the company doesn't want their plans to be public.
My biggest problem with the way OSI seems to negotiate licenses is that, from an outsider's viewpoint, the discussions seem to focus on loopholes and legalese, attempting to squeeze the license into the Open Source definition. This process appears to have more regard for the company's lawyers than the users Freedom. In my opinion, having companies writing Free Software is a good thing, but not critical to the survival of the community. If the company wants to get the Open Source brand, they should be committed to writing Free Software, not trying to find how much they can get away with within the bounds OSD so they can use the "Open Source" label in marketing.
On the supported hardware, it even looks like they are doing a separate distribution for the iMac, which isn't ready yet.
nelsonrn wrote:
You're trying to rewrite history. Eric's "open message" was a response to Bruce's public criticisms.
No, ESR put it in public debate by not consulting the other parties involved with the Open Source trademark (i.e. SPI and Bruce Perens) before labeling the APSL "Open Source". Since he didn't consult them, why should they consult him before replying? Eric's "open message" where he tried to justify his original decision came later, I wasn't talking about it at all.
The way I see it, there exists a piece of intellectual property (the Open Source certification mark). The lawyers are trying to figure out who owns it. In the mean time, the parties involved can either work together (i.e. talking before announcing something is "Open Source"), or apart (i.e. the bickering we see now). Something tells me that working together with SPI and Perens is probably in OSI's best interest.
Using a public forum to discuss personal misperceptions would be a problem, but that wasn't the case here. What we saw with the APSL was an open, public debate as to whether or not the APSL was worthy of carrying the Open Source certification mark. ESR was the one that forced that into the public arena, not Bruce, Ian and whoever the third guy was.
The fact that it the debate was open and public was not because they wanted to roast ESR, but because the issue started out with an open message by ESR, and the whole conflict over the ownership and guardianship of the Open Source certification mark certainly made moving the issue to private discussion difficult.
It might not have been the best way to handle the situation, but I don't see how they had any good ways open to them. If I were in their shoes, I might have done the same thing.
So tell me, how does a framing carpenter build a nuclear hardened concrete silo, anyway :-).
I would certainly agree that the level of flames directed at ESR, and other notable members of the community (eg. RMS, Linus Torvalds and Bruce Perens) has been much higher than it should be. If you disagree with someone, a well reasoned argument is far more effective than a flame. On the other hand, if you can't take the heat, get out of the oven.
ESR has been here for a very long time, he should be very familiar with flaming. He should have known that by trying to speak for the "Open Source Movement" he is setting himself up for flaming. If such a person can't handle the heat, they should get out of the oven.
ESR explains his job as My job, the job I've been doing one way or another ever since picking up the Jargon File in 1990, is to describe and explain and reflect the values of the tribe of hackers. Not to lead it.... That job, I have no problem with, I think he has done it well. The Jargon File, the Cathedral and the Bazaar, Homesteading in the Noosphere, all of these are excellent essays. I may not agree with every point made in them, but they are still very useful and important works, he should be applauded for them.
But with his position in the OSI, he has been trying to lead, regardless of how much he denies it. He has tried to lead Businesses to change to his view of what a license should be, and he has tried to lead the various hacker communities to accept his view of what a license should be. When the APSL issue came up, it became clear to me that I don't agree with what he thinks a license should be.
My problem is not with Apple, they acted in good faith from everything I've seen. My problem is with ESR telling Apple that if they do their license his way, people like me will be happy with it. I can't speak for "people like me", and my opinion won't affect Apple one way or another (I have no plans to get MacOS X Server). But if ESR insists so vehemently (more vehemently than Apple, who apparently plans to change the APSL) that the license is "Open Source", than I have to say the term "Open Source" becomes useless to me, since I won't be able to trust that an "Open Source" license gives me the freedom I want in my software. I'm not saying that all companies should switch licenses to my definition of Free, I am saying that ESR's drive to get companies to change their licenses is pointless as far as I'm concerned, since they aren't coming up with Free Software licenses.
If ESR is looking to get someone to replace him in his stated job as anthropologist to the hackers, I will be sad. He is the best person for that job. If he is looking to get someone to replace him in leading the community away from freedom, I say it is a job better left undone. And no, I don't think that loss of freedom was his intent, I think it is a side effect of him picking an impossible task to do, and the compromises that had to be made to attempt it.
While I agree with many of the points made in the article, I disagree with just as many, and with the final conclusion.
My biggest problem with the articles is it blurs all distinctions. It lumps new users who are trying to lear with new users who aren't. It lumps hackers together with sysadmins, users and power users. Because of this, its argument boils down to "Because there are new users who don't care enough to learn how to administer a system, we should ignore new users".
First off, I think that new users who want to learn should be encouraged, not frightened off. Secondly, I disagree that only hackers and sysadmins should be using Linux.
Linux is essentially Unix in structure. That means it offers good security to keep mere users from trashing the system. That means that it is far far superior to Windows or Macintosh solutions when it comes to giving users desktop machines to do their work without administration headaches. These users only need to know how to do their job on the machine, they have a sysadmin to make sure the security and configuration is handled.
He scoffs at GUI's, yet where I work, a GUI is critical. We do mostly CAD work, and I have yet to see a useful CAD system that doesn't use a GUI (The older AutoCAD for DOS doesn't count, they essentially made their own GUI). I am glad to see he is happy without a GUI, but he should realize that they are important to more than just the "we want an easy point and click interface" crowd.
I do, however share is viewpoint that distributions like RedHat are encouraging the same trend I have seen with Windows NT. They both let users who should barely be touching a computer think that they can be systems administrators, when they really have no idea of what is going on under the hood. At least with RedHat, the hood isn't welded shut.
Agreed! One thing that many people don't seem to realize is that rape and fraud are risks that people have been taking in getting to know people long before the internet became an issue. Personal ads and penpal networks have always had these problems, but the media didn't make a big stink about it.
I've got mixed feelings about the attention the media does give such cases. Hopefully it will raise awareness so people will be more careful. On the downside, you get scary attitudes developing like the Sheriff mentioned in this article, by people who don't have a grasp of the full issue.
It is easy to conceal who you are through email or snail mail. It is foolhardy to assume that a person is safe, just because you think you know him from correspondence. But just because Kira489 was a little foolish doesn't make her at all responsible for the rape.
I for one think rapists (this one included) should be decapitated. The lower "head" for the first offense (plus prison, of course), and the upper head for the second.
minor nitpick: "weary" means tired, "wary" means cautious. I think you meant "wary" in your heading.
I thought Solaris primarily used Type1 fonts. Type 1 fonts are easy to install in Linux. (although I don't know how XFree86's rasterizer compares to Sun's).
I don't see that as the difference between RMS and ESR at all. You make it sound like RMS wishes to exploit software, when what he wants is a community of hackers, sharing Free Software. He pushes his principles and the GPL so strongly because he feels that it is the best chance we have of ever seeing his dream. ESR, on the other hand has a different dream, he wants to see big business sitting at the same table as hackers, on equal footing. The trouble is ESR has shown himself to be willing to compromise on his principles to achieve his dream. Worse, he has positioned himself so when he compromises his principles, it appears as if we compromise ours. I am glad to see him retiring, he was much better as the anthropologist of the hacker community than as the spokesman of Open Source.
I certainly agree that if BSD and Linux used a license like some of the recent ones we've seen from the companies, neither would be as good as they are today.
Maciej Stachowiak wrote:
Think about what his essay said - do you think you could do his job better? Free software would have probably still broken through without him at some point, but would it have done it as fast or as thoroughly as it has.
I certainly don't think I could do what ESR did better than he did it. Even though I disagree with many of the positions he took, I am surprised at how well he did what he set out to do.
Personally, I think the thought of a community this large having one spokesperson is silly. Take a closer look, and see that what might appear to the suits as one community is actually several communities with many common interests, and the idea becomes insane. I think that's why ESR started by evangelizing Open Source to business, but fell into the trap of evangelizing businesses to the various communities, it was the only way to wring something possible out of the herculean task he set out for himself. But we don't want to hear about all these corporations who want to be our friends, we just want to see more code under good licenses.
Rather than replace ESR, I think it would be best for all for him to retire back to coding, and his self-appointed position can fade quietly. If businesses want to come to us, that's fine there are plenty of people they can talk to, once they do their homework. I see no need for us to go out and attract businesses the way ESR wants us to do.
I think you can turn the recent topics icons off with the disable icons checkbox.
In repeated press releases and articles, RedHat has made their LSB position clear. They like the idea, they will support the process (Note that they are LSB members ), but they won't commit to complying with the standard until they actually can read a final standard.
While I would be happier if they committed to complying, I understand their reluctance, and I don't see the big deal. Once the LSB is actually out, we can lambast them if they don't comply. Until then, I think it's safe to assume that they will do the sane thing, and follow standards.
Postscript has many problems that would prevent it from being the protocol for IPP. First, as you've already pointed out, it is pretty proprietary. Secondly, it is a page definition language, not a printer control language. There is no standard way using Postscript to, for example, tell it to print out duplex, or to wait for the operator to load 35# bond letterhead paper, or to colate and staple. These are all things that people need to tell their printers, and Postscript wasn't designed for this level of communication. Hopefully IPP would be.
In most Linux distributions (and most other operating systems as well), the core internet tools, from finger and telnet, to DNS and named are BSD in both heritage and license. There are some other common BSD items (like ld.so and tcsh), but internet tools are the big ones.
Most of the system tools, the compiler, the binutils, the shell, the library, emacs, are GNU in heritage and GPL in license.
Both BSD and GNU are critical to any Linux distribution. Tux should have GNU horns and a daemon tail.
XFree version 3 does not. It's on the todo list for XFree version 4.
If you are careful, I hear you can run two copies of XFree version 3 side-by-side for two different screens. I also hear you can run text consoles on one monitor while the other runs X.
Probably because it is an important question, one that many lurkers may be asking themselves. Sometimes the questions are more important than the answers. In this case, promoting the question made whatever answers it gathers more easily accessible.
They said an IPP printer gets a URL address. Nowhere did they say it uses HTTP. Having a URL doesn't mean HTTP.
The first piece of information in a URL is the protocol. Currently, the most common protocols used are http, ftp and mailto. There is nothing to stop them from petitioning the IETF for adding an ipp protocol to the URL standard. Such a protocol could have it's own security mechanism, default port, and so on. From everything I've seen, this is what they intend to do.
Disenchantment with the mainstream music industry is causing the decline in RIAA CD Sales.
Looking around locally (Albany, NY and NYC), I see the big chain record stores doing poorly, and the smaller independant stores doing well. I like seeing this. The independant stores are offering more of what people want: used music, local artists (often self-published, it's cheap to get your CD burnt in small batches now), and DJ Mixes (also self-published).
Music is all about freedom of expression. The freedom of the artist to make the music they want, and the freedom of the listener to set their style by the music they select. The RIAA and its member companies have been trying to play with this freedom, and it's now starting to backfire on them.
The self-published music industry started the decline in CD sales. MP3 is just another few nails in the RIAA's coffin. The RIAA blames it on the MP3's to divert attention from the real reason, because they don't want people to realize how a talented musician can make it without their "help". You can't really be a multi-million dollar megastar without them, but you can be a respected and fed musician with no help from the record labels.
Why should I have sent it to RMS? He has never touched the Open Source certification mark, OSI, SPI and Bruce Perens all have. In addition, he is on public record as disliking the entire Open Source program, so I doubt he would fight to protect their trademark.
I wouldn't want to give up that much speed on my desktop. On my desktop I can use a full keyboard. If I had a wearable, I couldn't have a real keyboard. Thus a BAT design, modified to be wearable, would be a good thing even if it was slower.
I think a much more elegant design is the BAT Keyboard. It's a chord keyboard design that does everything with seven standard pushbutton keys (not twiddly things like the twiddler).
If someone could take the BAT design, convert it into a high-quality membrane keyboard, and put it on an arm sleeve, that would be a great step forward for wearables.
I believe A, that it is just an overcautious misstep, but I have to treat it as B. Apple is a corporation, it is responsible not to any ethical ideal, but to its shareholders. If a situation arises where its shareholders value is threatened, Apple will change its attitudes on a dime. The same cannot be said for its contracts.
Even if Apple has the most benign intentions with this contract, nobody can guarantee that it will stay benign. Look at, for example, Apple's attitudes towards the Mac clone market. They were strongly against the clone market for a long time, then they loosened up and gave clonemakers MacOS licenses, then they got scared and used the wording of their license contracts to kill the entire market.
Regardless of whether or not you think their changing attitude was good, it was a change of attitude which hurt some companies with bad contracts. Since there are no guarantees that something similar won't happen with the APSL, you have to assume they will try, and encourage them to make the license ironclad so they won't be legally able to get away with it.
I sent an email to OSI, SPI and Bruce Perens (covering all bases :-) about that attribution. Someone at OSI checked, found that the original press release from Apple did not contain the attribution. It was the website's error in adding this statement, and they were sent an official nasty letter for doing so.
pica wrote:
C'mon now, why does Katz get to plug his book every week? Can I do the same for my favorite authors? Its only fair, after all.
He gets to plug his book every week because he has something new and interesting to say about it every week. You can do the same for your favorite authors, but unless you are saying something new or interesting, I doubt the story will make it online.
If you don't think that his writing is interesting, go to preferences, and click his button. His articles won't bother you again.